Cyberpunk: I'm Not Cheating

Night City is hard to describe. Gunfights, violence, and flying chunks of meat are actually the least of its problems. The real problem is the system, and the system is built to eat people alive.

The way it works at the bottom is this: you need chrome to survive, and chrome needs you in return. Get a high-performance implant and you are on the hook for maintenance fees, forever. All it takes is one bad break, a layoff, a car accident, something random, and you lose everything, including the chrome. The corps and the scavs will dig it out of your body without a second thought and watch you fall apart.

As for cyberpsychosis, don't kid yourself. You need implants before you can even qualify. No chrome and the doctors won't call it cyberpsychosis, they'll call it bipolar disorder and consider that doing you a favor.

Vito followed his memory and a few directions from strangers and found Misty's place. He walked in to find Misty sitting with a middle-aged woman, the same one from earlier in the day, the one who had known Fredo.

"Meda, I know this hit you hard, but people need something to hold onto to keep going. You can't let grief be the thing that breaks you."

Misty was talking her through it, a reclining chair, some incense burning, doing what she could.

She looked up at Vito walking in with an armful of bundled-up clothing and said quietly.

"Could you wait just a moment? You can set your things on the sofa."

Vito said: "Is Viktor around? I need some work done."

Misty called Viktor, had a brief exchange, and came back:

"Doctor Viktor has time. Do you know the way to the clinic?"

Vito had walked the route to Viktor's clinic a thousand times in the game. In reality it was his first time.

"Should be fine. I'll come back if I get lost."

He went out the back door and headed straight for Viktor's basement clinic from memory.

The alley was close enough to how he remembered it. He found Viktor without any trouble.

Viktor looked more like a boxer than a doctor, arms thick enough to drop a bull, and a row of small red marks on his right forearm from the short-acting stimulants he used to steady his hands during surgery.

"Son, what can I do for you?"

Vito put down the bundle of clothing, unwrapped it, and set a severed head on the counter in front of Viktor.

"Can you take the eye implants out of him and put them in me?"

Viktor had seen plenty in his time, but not this. The masked young man standing in front of him looked like a genuine cyberpsycho.

"Sorry son, I don't harvest other people's eyes here. You'll need to find somewhere else."

Vito took his mask off and explained.

"I went to an underground clinic this morning. Coming out, scavs picked me up. I dealt with them, but I've got no implants at all and I don't know when the next group shows up. I need at least one eye installed before that happens. I heard you're the best ripperdoc in Watson. I've got nowhere else to go. This head belongs to one of the scavs, he had it coming. Please help me."

Viktor thought it over and took the head.

"Eyes aren't plug-and-play, it comes down to compatibility. Some underground clinics source from the scavs and do dirty work on the side, so it's not surprising you got flagged."

He worked on the head for a while, then extracted the implants.

"Kiroshi eyes, proper brand. A scav running Kiroshi usually has other decent hardware on him. How did you take them down?"

Vito looked around for something to ditch the bloodied clothing in, found no bin, and at Viktor's gesture tossed it by the fence near the door.

"I'd just finished watching MAX-TAC kill someone and was heading back to my hotel when I noticed these three following me. Lured them into an alley and handled it."

Viktor was cleaning the remnants of flesh off the implants. "I heard about that MAX-TAC thing. The one they shot, Fredo, he was a regular of mine."

Vito frowned: "How does someone end up with no arms and nobody to help in this day and age? What happened to him?"

Viktor let out a tired laugh.

"He cut them off himself. Working factory, doing well, saved up some money. Decided to amputate and go with implants to improve his output. Then the factory hit a rough patch and he was the first one cut. Couldn't keep up the maintenance payments. All he could do was watch the factory owner and the company repo everything, including the arms."

Vito went quiet. Viktor kept going:

"Word on the street is Fredo had cyberpsychosis. Way I see it, anyone who goes through something like that isn't just going to be fine."

The subject was sitting heavy so Vito changed it:

"You like boxing?"

Viktor was running disinfectant over the implants. "Love it. Not the kind where people stack chrome all over themselves, that's what you young ones like. I prefer old school boxing, proper weight classes."

"I like that too," Vito said. "The old school stuff you're talking about."

Viktor paused, mildly surprised.

"Who do you follow?"

"Can't remember many names. Mayweather, Pacquiao, those ones."

Viktor's hands stopped. He laughed: "Finding footage of those legends isn't easy. They were retired before Johnny Silverhand blew up Arasaka Tower."

After some work, Viktor had the eyes cleaned and ready. He gestured for Vito to get in the chair.

"Starting now?" Vito asked.

"Of course not. I need to run a compatibility check first. If I turn you into a cyberpsycho that's my reputation gone."

Vito waved his understanding. After the examination Viktor said:

"Excellent base you've got. These Kiroshi implants will match you well. Your luck's not bad either, most people can't just grab eyes off a body and expect them to fit."

Viktor poured Vito a beer to wash down the anesthetic, a Viktor clinic tradition by his own account.

The surgery was over quickly. Barely enough time to register the visual stutter as the Kiroshi came online before the readout appeared.

Optical cyberware installation complete. Interface active.

A UI came up, close enough to the game: cyberware status, Street Cred, eddies account, all attribute levels.

Vito went straight for his stats. All five, exactly as expected, all twenties. He was running five times the numbers of a fresh V off the opening, legendary-tier across the board right from the start.

No Relic meant no taking a bullet to the head and crawling out of a dumpster to start over. But Vito wasn't bothered by that. Being a living legend suited him just fine. Besides, his name started with a V too.