Chapter 144

I woke up instantly blinking and feeling just fine, I sat up nearly instantly and noticed I was covered in a scratchy blanket.

 

“Well looks like we got the time right.” Vik said noticing me wake up.

“You got everything done in time?”

 

“Yeah, no problem on my side. How do you feel kid?” Vik rolled over and started examining me.

 

“Fine. Actually… Hmm, I feel like my weight is off a bit.”

“Yeah well, that’s what happens when you change out most of your bones for Titanium.” I nodded, I looked at my limbs at my body only for there to be nothing there. No scars or anything but I knew there where Vik had cut into me to replace my boney bits.

 

It wasn’t a complete conversion of course, but last time I had only really updated my chest and back to better integrate my Condor.

 

But it had gone so well. With just what I had done, it was only one adaptation point, although I hadn’t put it in, but what if I finished what I started.

 

Legs, pelvis, ribs, toes and things like that too.

 

All titanium now.

 

I would be a lot harder to break from now on, and more importantly. I would have a stronger platform to place more chrome into.

 

“Well the wounds certainly healed up.” Vik grabbed my attention though as his face was serious. “I wouldn’t normally let someone walk out after a surgery like that. I want you to know the only reason I’m not holding you in an actual hospital bed for a week, is because of your healing. But really kid. Take it real easy for a little bit. This… This sort of thing is stressful on the body. Healing or not.”

 

“I’ll be super careful Vik, promise. We just finished a massive gig, so I’m mostly on tech duty right now anyways. It’s why I thought it was a good time to finish this.”

 

“Alright. Let’s do some tests. Wiggle your toes.”

 

I laughed at the sudden random question and did as ordered my toes moved without any issue. As I ran through the tests I checked my system to see what it had to say about it.

 

MoorE Titanium Bones *Adaptation Titanium Bones 0/2*

 

Well the Adaptation went up, but otherwise I was looking good.

 

“Well, everything looks good, your little secret nanomachines do good work. Still got nothing about where they came from.” Vik muttered, rubbing his face a bit. “Alright. Easy does it for a few days, and let me know if anything starts feeling weird.”

“Will do Vik. Thanks!” I chirped happily as I got up, and after getting dressed walked right out. Stretching as the evening air hit me, I decided to do as ordered and head home.

 

I still had a lot of stuff to build.

 

—–

 

I spent the entire night building new directional mics, then installing them into the housing I made for the other three helmets.

 

It was a lot of work, and despite making something I had already completed. I was improving a lot!

 

*100 Crafting XP Gained.*

 

*Crafting skill level up!*

 

*1 Perk Point Gained.*

 

Crafting 5! I had once again maxed out the skill, giving me a surge of new tricks up my sleeve. Which was good, because my next batch of work was all going to be design work. Hopefully I would get my Engineering level up from it.

 

Of course first, I had to select my perks! I ran through the list of options, with an eye to what I would want long term. Sure something like Salvager would give me more resources, but I made enough eddies now, that wasn’t really a concern.

 

No, the option I decided on was a much better idea for the current me.

 

Enduring builds. You can make it stronger. Tougher. You know the tricks of the trade to make your product rough and tumble.

 

Accepting the perk flooded me with all sorts of things that I could do to make sure my crafting didn’t fall apart. Ways to make my stuff stay working even if you beat the shit out of it first.

 

I shook it off, and refocused on what I was doing.

 

Helmets done. Most of the extra work would be on the chest rig. I would need to modify them a bit to shrink them down, but luckily they were designed for a one size fits all, so that wouldn’t be too hard. No it would be integrating an ECM system into them that would make them a pain in the ass.

 

Hiromi had done as I had asked, and reached out through her growing list of contacts and got specs for some ECM systems that weren’t just cyberware.

 

The Militech personal ECM unit was a neat little pre-unification war military surplus. Honestly it was probably about the same age as my arms.

 

Either way I had the scans for it, that Hiromi sent over, and she was in talks about getting enough for all of us.

 

I just had to figure out how to integrate it.

 

The biggest issue was how the ECM systems worked.

 

See there actually was a reason that the Tyger Claws integrated the ECM into tattoos. The ECM was a visual deterrent. The smart round would be scanning its target, hit the visual ECM and when scanning it, would either be infested with a virus, or simply get so much junk data the targeting would fail.

 

A literal memetic hazard.

 

So this version actually needed a visual component.

 

Unfortunately the main way to use it was a holographic light that the smart weapon would glitch out when scanning.

 

I didn’t really want a holographic light on my chest. That sort of defeated the whole stealth thing. So my first thought was to hide the light.

 

Could I set the ECM’s light to infrared? Or use a non visual light band?

 

Probably not. I realized that Kiroshi and other optics kind of took that option away. So I couldn’t just alter the light to be non visual, how else could I hide it?

 

I was spinning in my chair round and round as I considered it.

 

I would need some sort of hardware, or programming solution… As I spun the neon lights outside my window flowing into my optics over and over.

 

On and off. On and off.

 

On and off?

 

I continued spinning as I considered it. Sure, turning it on and off would solve part of the problem, but the system would have to be smart enough to turn itself on when smart rounds were targeting it…

 

I could program that.

 

A few extra sensors integrated into the armor, and you could easily have it turn itself on and off, and a simple switch to turn it on yourself as well…

 

Because I know my chooms were extra and would probably want to leave it on.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it’s taken without the author’s consent. Report it.

 

Okay that was doable. I had most of that… I would need an actual ECM unit to do the programming to turn it on and off though. So for now, hardware. How to integrate it.

 

I pulled up the CAD and went to work. The easiest place to integrate the ECM system was just on the back of course, it wasn’t very large, and I could easily just place it in the armor. Powering it would just be an extra battery system. Easy peasy, and then the lights.

 

I would need to integrate holo emitters into the armor.

 

Those weren’t super cheap, and it made me realize why Arasaka didn’t have them integrated as standard.

 

But for the safety of myself and my chooms, a few eddies were fine.

 

Placing a few emitters around, I could even have my chooms make their own holo images if they wanted something unique.

 

I would figure out my own once I had it all put together.

 

Either way. The CAD process was going well, earning a few alerts in engineering and even another Technical Ability alert just through figuring out all of these different systems.

 

I pushed away from the desk. That was the chest rig done, apart from the programming, but that would need time.

 

I walked out to the living room to see Jun was gone. I sighed as I instead flopped onto the couch and reached for my guitar.

 

—–

 

The call that came in as I was lazily strumming a few chords to Chippin ‘In surprised me. Especially since the caller ID was someone that should not have my number.

 

*Ringing.*

 

*Ringing.*

 

I considered just not answering, but that was probably a bad idea.

 

I answered.

 

“This is Motoko.”

 

“Good. Come by the Afterlife. We should talk.” Then the call hung up.

 

Okay seriously old ladies hanging up on me must be some weird generational thing, because now I had Rogue of all people doing it.

 

I tapped a finger on my guitar as I considered what the hell was going on.

 

The Arasaka gig? Something about it must have caught Rogues attention. Did she know about the listening post? Was she working with Militech to get info? I sighed as I rose up and got dressed, holstered and armed I left the apartment.

 

Headed to the Afterlife. It wasn’t a long trip, it never was in Night City.

 

—–