The middle‑aged, going-soft-around-the-middle Ryan Randall set the bottle down on the counter with a hard thunk, his face deadly serious. He was obviously drunk off his ass, like he'd just taken some massive hit that forced the booze down for a moment.
His breath came out with a seriously high alcohol content.
"Look at your face, doc. You know I'm back, right? Did Raphael tell you?"
John took the initiative to speak, only to see the other man give no reaction.
Ryan folded his arms across his chest, his expression getting uglier by the second. His heaving chest made his balding head wobble, his eyes sweeping over John's face again and again.
"What?"
John spread his hands. "Either come over here and give me a hug, or stop standing there like that. You're making me uncomfortable."
Ryan blinked and lowered his gaze, his whole demeanor visibly dimming.
John noticed.
"Hey, hold up! What's that supposed to mean? Me not being dead is some kind of disappointment to you?"
"...What's she do?"
Ryan ignored John and jerked his chin at Gaf.
John yanked her over. "My employee. I'm here to tune her Prosthetic Body. The West District black clinic's work was trash. Let her see you."
"Come lie down."
Ryan's face went cold as he slipped into work mode.
Gaf lay back on the treatment chair, her chest rising and falling. While he was plugging her in and matching her bio‑data, she kept turning her head to look at the screens. She couldn't read a single metric, but still couldn't stop her eyes from twitching around.
"Relax. It's just a checkup, I'm not taking anything apart yet. I don't even have a knife in my hand. Won't hurt a bit."
Ryan spread his hands, trying to calm the patient.
The East District Underground Mall's market is where every kind of lowlife gathers. The black clinic's usual clientele are all bad news. Someone like Gaf didn't show up often.
The exam went quick.
Ryan started donning his arm Prosthetic Body—a clawed exoskeleton attachment that could hook into his nerves, bristling with all kinds of cyber‑surgical tools.
Robot arms descended from the ceiling.
The treatment chair reclined. A semi‑circular scanner rose up and locked in front of Gaf's head, projecting a holographic grid that dropped over her eyes, which kept blinking and darting around.
"Left arm's gotta go. Where the hell did you pick up this trash."
Ryan finished the exam, got up, and grabbed his drink, flipping through the terminal readouts while frowning and bitching. "Girl, your leg's inflamed. We gotta open it back up, swap out the muscle bundle, then pick you a leg that doesn't limp."
Gaf didn't dare talk. She threw a glance toward her boss.
Ryan took a small sip, then turned and handed over the terminal. "You want her able to shoot, or just able to work? High‑end, low‑end, best value—who's paying decides, mhm?"
"..."
John took the terminal and picked from the mid‑range models.
"Add a ballistic co‑processor, and 2‑H muscle bundles—at least something that can handle rifle recoil."
"She doesn't look like she's in the game. That necessary?"
"Self‑defense."
"Ohh~ fine."
Where Ryan's clinic beat the high‑end spots outside was that he never had to haul Prosthetic Body parts from storerooms or cold cabinets. He just checked the boxes, and the pipeline brought the goods in.
He unpacked the boxes with a deadpan face and got to work, occasionally taking a sip, like a doctor who really didn't want to talk to his patients.
John waited off to the side until he removed the auxiliary arms and scrubbed down his gear and hands.
Black clinics usually didn't do full anesthesia. A lot of Prosthetic Body surgery needed the nerve traffic live, so serious pain was hard to avoid. But Gaf was very practiced at enduring pain.
She barely made a sound—tougher than a lot of street punks.
"The Prosthetic Body needs tuning. Bet it's been lagging pulling data lately, yeah? Missed any calls? Public plug‑in's fried, small issue. I'll run full diagnostics on the new parts while I'm at it. Don't move around. If you're tired, just crash."
Ryan tossed that out casually, lazy tone but oddly reassuring.
Then he turned and saw John, and his expression collapsed instantly.
"Come, doc. I didn't cross you. If you've got something to say, just say it." John looked helpless. "I was stuck in a bed for four months, no memory of any of it. I only got back yesterday. Ghosting you wasn't a choice—my brain back then was already almost..."
"Melted. I know."
Ryan cut in, standing by another mobile unit and handing John a cable. "Full body scan."
"..."
John plugged in without fuss and dragged a stool over.
The scanner's progress bar flashed across John's vision. Black Light popped a few warning prompts; he just okayed them. The clinic's core system had been penetrated long ago—nothing in there could threaten him.
The greeting and shock he'd imagined never came.
Ryan Randall was acting off. He didn't say a word during the scan, just drank more and more, eye sockets sinking in, data streams flickering in the depths of his pupils.
"Have a drink with me. You free?"
Ryan rubbed his face with a hand and asked.
He hit a control, and the hallway lights in the clinic shut off. The sign outside had already flipped to "Closed."
The doctor wasn't short on cash. He just drank his days away, and when he got far enough gone, he shut down.
"Sure, why not."
John agreed easily. "Here?"
"Nah. Come with me. Got a nice spot."
The doc shrugged off his clinic coat and pulled an old black‑glass bottle of whiskey from the fridge. Nothing fancy, but it had been the first social drink for a lot of Mercenaries just starting out.
He led John through the decon area, up a ladder, to the open space on top of the clinic.
The East District Underground Mall had a huge, almost open‑air, collapsed crater.
Daytime, light scattered down through it; at night, it was plugged with rising smoke and searchlights.
"Sit."
The doc twisted off the cap and poured into a metal cup. "This ugly mood isn't about you, John. I'm glad you made it back alive."
While he talked, he kept his eyes raised, staring at that hole.
The first time John came down into the East District underground, he'd wondered—just what kind of blast could punch through the street and turn an underground garage into an open plaza.
Until Source Formula, when Bismarck brought up Eden City's past.
Gaia Cell Company's Martyr GTX test did it.
A crew of edge‑runners had been picked. Their leader had Martyr GTX implanted. On the job, they got betrayed and silenced by the company, and then... he lost control in the lab, went berserk, shredded the company's soldiers, detonated explosives, and dragged the whole building down into the ground.
John had heard Ryan and Raphael talking about it before.
It wasn't hard to guess.
John lifted his cup. "That hole—that was you guys, wasn't it?"
Ryan didn't look away, just sighed, slumping back onto the metal lounger for a long moment before answering.
"...Yeah. Damn. It's really been that long."
He drained his drink and reached to pour another. Under his rolled‑up sleeve was a slack, aging arm, old tattoos fading there, marking a story that went back far beyond those four months.
Clatter—
The cheap whiskey ran clear and bright, like it was spilling across time into another sharply cut glass.
The world around them grew noisy.
That big man, broad enough to block the bar's lights, slowly turned around in Ryan Randall's telling.
William.
Mad Dog William.
"Eden City always did things the quickest.
"The most loyal and also the dumbest fuck Mercenaries."
"He was me and Raphael's old boss."
