The Protagonist System

Out of the 8,500 people that had been detained for rioting, only a handful actually regretted it. The act itself was quite stupid in hindsight; but, sleeping in a bed that felt like a cloud and two buffet-like meals in a row, one for breakfast and one for lunch, was worth it. None of the on-duty guards said anything to them for tucking some of it away in their pockets and under their clothing to eat back in their rooms.

They weren't cells, no matter what the guards claimed. Most of them were about the same size as their apartments and the mostly metal aesthetic actually worked to make the place almost home-like. If there had been some posters on the hallway walls or vidscreens mounted in key areas around the place that showed ads, most of them would have assumed they were inside a middle class megabuilding.

When the warden announced that all rioters would be fined and then released in time for supper, almost none of them wanted to be kicked out. A few of the more industrious ones asked if the fine would change if they stayed for an extra hour and the guards said that it wouldn't.

Word about that quickly spread and they all agreed that being released early, before getting the 3 square meals a day that they should have had, was unfair and inhumane. So, they all made their way to the gigantic cafeteria that again had a huge buffet laid out, only it had main meal foods that most people had only heard of in stories.

Again, most of them stuffed their pockets with as much as they could and the guards only looked on as if they weren't doing anything wrong. This only confused a few people, since they assumed the guards also did the same thing as them. It was too good of an opportunity to pass up and not take advantage of.

The fine was half the cost of renting a joytoy on the street and they had spent the night and a day in the best accommodations they ever experienced, and some of them had spent time in every type of jail cell across the city. The food was free and they could eat as much of it as they wanted.

“I'm just curious.” One of the longtime repeat offenders asked the closest guard as he literally stuffed a gravy covered roast down his shirt. “If we happened to riot again tonight, you know, for no reason...”

A bunch of people around him laughed.

“...will it be you guys that'll pick us up again?” He asked and licked off his fingers.

The guard held up a finger and went still for a moment. “The boss says it depends on if the Police Commissioner does the smart thing or the fastest thing after his meetings in City Hall.”

That made laughter spread over most of the people in the cafeteria.

“Yeah, he doesn't think so, either.” The guard said with a smile. “We'll be patrolling the downtown and the area around the properties Atlas Incorporated owns. We won't be out in force, since he's splitting up the people he hired to give us the shifts we want to work and won't force us to do what he wants us to do.”

“Jesus! What kinda corpo is he? A saint or something?” Someone asked.

The guard smiled and he had an evil glint in his eyes. “A saint? Oh, no. He's only releasing the rioters from last night and not everyone we captured.”

That sent a surprise ripple of awareness across the entire room and everyone started looking around. What they didn't see were any hints of gang colors.

“Holy shit!” The roast stealing guy exclaimed. “He's keeping the gang members!”

The guard nodded. “They'll be checked and interviewed by him personally. If any of them have outstanding warrants, bounties, death sentences, or are already escapees...”

That made a lot of the people smile, because they were sure that most, if not all of the gang members had rap sheets longer than their arms and wouldn't be seeing the light of day ever again.

By the time they all ate, stole food for later, and gathered their things from their rooms, they were all ready to be released and had paid the 50 eurodollar fine. A selected amount of people rode up the large freight elevator and climbed into the large hexagon shaped cargo container that was full of rows of seats on multiple levels. The thing rotated and let the next batch of rioters exit the returned elevator and they climb aboard, then it happened again and again. They filled up almost all 18 of the cargo containers with a few seats left over in the last one.

To their surprise, the huge ship flew them from there to each of their streets. None of them had noticed that the people around them were also their neighbors that lived in the same megabuilding or just down the street. They sure as hell noticed the streets they had totally wrecked the night before were both cleaned up and repaired.

“All that work for nothin'!” Someone shouted and another round of laughter came from everyone that had heard him.

The ship moved on to the next block and dropped off the next hexagon container full of rioters. This continued on until all of them had been returned to where they lived or where they wanted to get dropped off. Not surprisingly, about 500 of them wanted to be dropped off near the Atlas Incorporated warehouse, which just so happened to be where the ship was being stored.

“Before you think you have to do the same things you did last night to get our attention.” The guard said as he ushered them out through the loading dock door. “The boss said that littering and loitering is enough to have you picked up. If you break anything around here, you'll be fined again.”

That had all the men and a few of the women give him large happy smiles. If they were only going to be fined for causing damage, then that meant they could stick around and it wouldn't cost them anything to get another night in a nice bed and three meals with as much food as they could eat.

*

Gloria and Victor were exhausted when the number of people begging for help finally came to an end. The last few were mostly just patchwork and not really life threatening, so they didn't feel bad about making them wait until last. The two of them went into the bathroom and took off their surgical gloves and didn't put on new ones, like they had after every patient, and washed up.

“Drek, we've been at this since last night and most of today.” David said and collapsed backwards on the workstation chair. He had pulled his weight as he troubleshot problematic cyberware and both Vic and Gloria appreciated his help. He also really enjoyed Vic's customized software suite on his medical grade cyberdeck that let David do a lot more than his own limited resources usually could.

Victor came back over to the work area and motioned to the surgical bed. Gloria gave him a grateful look and laid down on it with a loud sigh. He patted her arm and sat down on the floor next to it and leaned back against it as he closed his eyes.

“Where did you get such preem progs, anyway?” David asked.

“Veder.” Victor answered and Gloria hid her reaction to hearing his name.

David gave Vic a pointed look, even though the ripperdoc wasn't looking at him. “Do you think you could...”

“It's proprietary and for business use only.” Victor cut him off. “Veder's pretty strict about who has access to his coding.”

“But, you have it...” David started to argue.

“Only because he helped redesign my setup and fixed the programs I use.” Victor said. “The kid's pretty brilliant with his design specs and his programming.”

“But...” David started again.

“Yes, he'd know.” Victor cut him off and smiled, because he knew what David was going to ask. “I don't know how he'd know, he just would.”

Gloria nodded. “From what I've seen, and what he gave me access to, I have to agree with that. He'd know and he wouldn't appreciate not being asked about it first.”

David pouted and thought about trying to pull one of the programs apart, then he saw his mother had the classic mom look on her face that said he had better behave or he would get smacked.

“Alright, fine. I'll message the gonk about it.” David said and closed his eyes. He let out a similar sigh to his mom's after a minute. “It's just going to leave a message, no matter the priority.”

Victor let out a chuckle. “After last night? He's either celebrating missing it all or sleeping after being up all night.”

Gloria didn't want to think about him like that and tried to focus on Mama Welles and wondered how things had turned out at the bar.

“Why didn't you call him?” David asked and Gloria's mind derailed as it went right to what might have happened if Veder had shown up there last night.

“What makes you ask?” Victor asked back instead of answering.

“He's left a few messages asking about it.” David said and moved the vidscreen to show them. “They're in the clear and not encrypted, so I didn't block them from reaching you while I was working on your cyberdeck.”

Victor sat there for a minute to think of a good explanation. “Personally, I think he's become too good at what he does.”

“What?” Gloria asked.

“Huh?” David asked at almost the same time.

“Gloria and I pretty much stripped all of his cyberware out and instead of making him awkward around other cyberware and cybersystems, he's actually performing better and has more insights about how it works, how to tweak it to perform better, and to reduce the effect it has on the mind and the body.” Victor explained.

Gloria sat up to look down at the top of his head. “Are you saying he can cure cyberpsychosis?”

“Cure it? Try stopping it before it ever takes hold.” Victor said.

“How?” David and Gloria asked.

“Billy.” Victor said and didn't elaborate.

“Wait.” Gloria said and sat there and thought about it. “His arm... it was malfunctioning, wasn't it?”

“It was glitching like a flashlight with weak batteries.” Victor joked and they didn't laugh. “The kid was losing it as the thing affected him more and more as he grew, then Veder showed up and fixed it with a bit of programming and some wires, modified the superstructure slightly, and adjusted the outer plating. Now it works better than a real arm and the kid actually sees it that way.”

David and Gloria stared at him and wondered if he had any other stories.

“There's a few more, where he pops by on the weekends to give me a hand with anything taxing or problematic I encountered during the week. Other than that, he fixed and adjusted every part I had in stock and it all works like it was straight from the factory.” Victor said and opened his eyes to look up at Gloria. “He's a wizard of unprecedented skill and I didn't want to rely on him and let my own skills go to waste.”

Gloria nodded and placed a hand on his shoulder. “We should grab something to eat.”

“I've got it.” David said and stood. “There's a taco place just down the street.”

“Nothing special for me, please. A couple regular ones and no extra sauce.” Victor said.

“I'll have the mouth burner and the faux-cheese spread.” Gloria said and tried to send him some eddies.

David refused the transfer. “Thanks, I said I got it.”

Gloria wanted to ask where he got the money and decided she would wait until later and would ask a few others about it, like Mama Welles and maybe her son Jackie. What had he been doing with her boy when they left the bar and went out for a drive across the city?

David left and Victor stood up and took the vacated seat at the workstation. Gloria looked at Vic and he gave her a blank face back.

“Go ahead and ask.” Victor said.

“You think I made a huge mistake with Veder, don't you?” Gloria asked.

Victor sighed and leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “I don't think it, because I know you made three of them.”

Gloria laid back down and knew it was going to be bad. “You might as well hit me with them.”

“Doing it with him was the first one.” Victor said and Gloria barely stopped her wince. “The second was not following through with it when you had the chance, and the third was after that when he asked you about it and you said no.”

Gloria sighed at the judgment in Victor's tone. “He's David's age, Vic. It was fun and we both enjoyed it. I just couldn't see myself settling down with a kid, or having another kid with a kid half my age.” She said to defend herself. “I'd be in my late 50s by the time any kid we had turned 18, and that's assuming I got pregnant right away, which I really didn't want to be. If we waited for him to be older before becoming a family, then I could be in my 60s or 70s.”

Victor nodded. “That's kind of my point. You didn't bother asking him what he thought about that. Does he even want kids? This world sucks on a normal day and then there are times when it's absolutely horrible like last night. Do you really think he'd want to bring another life into this mess without at least talking to you about it first?”

Gloria wasn't sure what to say at first. She had assumed kids were a part of a relationship and that Veder wanted her to be a part of it, while she was firmly against both things. “It doesn't matter now.”

“Not really, and there's no real way to fix it without acting like a hypocrite.” Victor said. “You just have to be careful when you randomly meet on the street, or somehow gain mutual friends, or happen to attend the same corpo parties he'll be invited to.”

Gloria laughed. “That'll never happen, so I won't be worried about it.”

Victor chuckled as well. “Now you know the real reason I didn't call Veder in.”

Gloria was surprised. “I thought you said...”

“That was for David's ears and it's a perfectly reasonable excuse. He doesn't have to know the depths of your problems.” Victor said and glanced at the time. “It's getting late. Are you going to head home or head over to a certain bar and check up on your new chooms?”

Gloria sat up again and shrugged. “After we eat, David will want to check on Jackie and then we'll head on over to the Coyote to see how Mama Welles is doing. Jackie's been out of the loop since last night and doesn't know what went on with his chooms in the Valentinos. I'm sure he's gonna tear up the streets to drive back over there as soon as possible.”

“Are you sure he didn't leave already?” Victor asked as David entered. “Is Jackie still at Misty's?”

“He's waiting for us to finish up, since Mama Welles assigned him to guard us.” David said and handed over the tacos they ordered. He sat down on the surgical bed next to his mother and the three of them chowed down on the tasty treats that seemed to hit the spot right where they needed it. “I messaged him and he's going out to check the car...”

“FUCKING DREK! IT'S GONE!” Jackie's voice echoed down the stairs.

“I think you're going to need bus fare.” Victor said with a chuckle and bit into his second taco.

*

Wakako Okado sat in the safe room and tried to not curse at her situation. She called everyone she knew in the gang and no one was responding. It wasn't until she branched out to their legitimate businesses that she finally reached someone important, the manager of the Cloud club.

Wakako felt a modicum of relief as Mikoto agreed to come down to release her and to bring some food. She hadn't eaten since yesterday afternoon, almost 24 hours ago, when she had been locked inside the safe room. That fault would be fixed as soon as she was free. Enough food to last a week and issuing the proper authorization to herself to open the thing.

Her old stance of only being loosely associated with the Tyger Claws was no longer viable and she was okay with that. She could still be a prominent Fixer, it was just her facade of not favoring them would no longer be necessary. She would still be a ruthless bitch to everyone and not just outsiders, so everyone would assume that it was business as usual. It wasn't.

Wakako waited impatiently for her rescuer and then she rushed out through the barely opened secured door as soon as it moved. She had to message her important contacts, and burn the middlemen for it, to figure out how to mitigate the damage her actions had caused to Atlas and Atlas Incorporated.

When those middlemen couldn't be contacted, her hope was dashed. When she looked outside to see the entire place had been cleaned up and there was no evidence of the Sixth Street Gang's assault on her empty pachinko parlor, she knew she had lost much more than what she assumed she was going to from Atlas retaliating. None of the people she tried to contact responded. None of them.