Chapter Twenty-Five – Hundred Burgers With Fries And Drink

Chapter Twenty-Five – Hundred Burgers With Fries And Drink

“#357EC7. This is the most infamous colour of the techworld. It is the colour used for the Blue Screen of Death.

Unless they used #357EC7.”

–TechNews WorldWide Article, 2038

***

“Bad news?” I asked.

See-Three made a dismissive gesture. “Not so much bad, just news. Actually… yeah, news.“

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked. “The weird emphasis, I mean.”

“Well, news has gotten around about the clinic,” See-Three said. She leaned down and grabbed a rag from under the hospital bed, then used it to wipe the area around the prosthetic she’d just installed. “It’s not a bad thing, but it made the rounds quick. You gotta understand, the body-modder community is huge, but it’s also pretty tightly knit? It’s a hobby that’s either super expensive, or demands a lot of time. And people are dedicated about it.”

“What’s that got to do with the news spreading fast?” I asked.

“Free prosthetics would be huge already. Free Samurai-grade prosthetics? Even if they’re not top-of-the-line? Yeah, every modder in New Montreal knows, and more than a few would be willing to trade two limbs for one of these.” She tapped the box the arm had come in, which still had a shoulder and a bit in it.

“Shit, are we worried about robbery again?”

See-Three blinked all three eyes, which really just meant flicking them on and off quickly. “No. Stray Cat, this is in your basement, basically. And it’s a floor above another Samurai’s home. There’s rumours that the rest of the building has samurai in it too.” Her head turned very slightly towards Rac, then back to me.

Right, I was probably feeding those rumours, wasn’t I? Well, that couldn’t hurt too much.

“Plus you did shoot the mayor, and tracked down the last bunch that stole shit from you, so your rep’s pretty solid. No one wants to mess with Gomorrah either.”

“She has a better rep?” I asked.

“She lights aliens on fire while laughing,” See-Three said. “She doesn’t need to be seen executing someone in public for people not to want to fuck with her.”

Fair.

“Okay, so news is spreading, that’s good no?” I asked. “We want to help people. We mostly want to help the ex-Sewer Dragons first, but I don’t mind keeping this up afterwards. I don’t think it would cost too much to keep the printer fed for this. We’re talking… what, a couple of bucks per prosthetic?”

See-Three nodded. “Yeah. We’re accepting tips right now, and we’ve already made over a hundred thousand credits.”

I stared. “How much?” That sounded like a lot. That was… like, a hundred burgers with fries and a drink.

She shrugged. “It’s less than you’d think? We need a lot of consumables to keep operations running. Anyway, the issue is that the clinic’s too popular on the Mesh. We set up a site for people to sign up for operations. It crashed because too many people were applying. We’re way too popular.”

“How many applicants?” I asked.

“Thirty thousand, last time I checked,” See-Three said.

“Fuck,” I muttered. “How many operations can you do in a day?”

“That really depends. Yesterday was our most productive day yet, but keep in mind we’re still setting up. We got through twelve, but half of those were single and partial replacements. Like what I just did. We did a four-limb replacement job this morning, on one of those people the Sewer Dragons messed up. It was a nightmare. Took three solid hours.”

Assuming twelve a day, thirty thousand… uh, that was a lot of days. And while See-Three was sure news got around, that was in the body-modder community. There would be others. I wasn’t even sure if we had gotten in touch with all of the former Sewer Dragons and their victims yet. That alone could take a few weeks since most of their operations would be on the more complicated side.

“Shit,” I said. “I… don’t know what to do. We could expand some, I guess.”