Chương 9: Burned Bridges II

Viktor released his wrist, turning his back on the man in disgust. He walked over to a secure medical lockbox, punched in a code, and pulled out a heavy plastic bottle filled with thick red capsules. He walked back and handed the bottle directly to Julia.

"Julia, listen to me very carefully," Viktor said, his tone shifting into the authority of a medical professional.

"These are highly concentrated neuro-inhibitors and synthetic cortisol stabilizers. You will make sure he takes one every twelve hours for the next three months. No exceptions. If he misses a dose, his immune system will wake up, identify the carbon-mesh as an invasive parasite, and his brain will literally attack itself. Do you understand?" Julia clutched the bottle to her chest like a lifeline, her eyes wide.

"Every twelve hours. Yes. I understand."

"Good," Viktor nodded. He leaned down, looking directly into Santi's eyes.

"Now, for the rules. For the next two weeks, you do not connect to anything. Not the CitiNet, or a local subnet. Absolute isolation. Your brain needs to heal around the mesh."

"I know the protocol, Vik," Alejandro interrupted, stepping forward.

"After two weeks, we introduce him to-""I said shut the fuck up, Ale!" Viktor roared, his voice echoing off the concrete walls. He pointed a finger at Alejandro's chest.

"This isn't for you to understand! You were just about to connect him to the local net a minute ago, and you would have, had I not stopped you. You already made your choice! This is for Santi and Julia to understand, so you don't push him into an early grave because you want to see how fast his new toy is!" Alejandro accepted the reprimand, clamped his jaw shut, and took a step back. Viktor turned his attention back to Julia and Santi, his voice lowering back to a steady, serious rumble.

"After the first two weeks of zero connectivity, you can start the integration. But it has to be slow. Some air-gapped sandbox environments. Maybe some filtered, throttled data streams. You want to keep the training wheels on for four solid weeks." Santi frowned, processing the timeline.

"That is highly inefficient. A six-week total delay before full operational capacity-""It's not about efficiency, kid, it's about keeping you from flatlining," Viktor said firmly.

"Your brain is essentially learning how to use a brand new limb. If you try to sprint a marathon before you learn how to crawl, the sensory overload will trigger a localized stroke. That means that any real connection to the open Net before a month and a half is an absolute no-go. And even for the first three months, the exposure has to be gradual and limited.

Only after the three-month mark, when the pills are done, and your body accepts your neural link as a part of you, can you freely connect to the open architecture. Are we clear?" Santi looked at the massive ripperdoc, sensing the unyielding boundary in the man's tone.

"Yes, Vik. We are clear. I will adhere to the safety parameters you've set." Julia nodded fervently, her hand resting protectively on Santi's shoulder.

"I'll make sure of it, Viktor. Thank you. Thank you for saving him." Viktor offered her a sad, tight smile.

"I didn't save him, Jules. If anything, I might have just killed him, and we don't know it yet." He sighed, rolling his shoulders to alleviate the lingering surgical tension.

"Why don't you take the kid out to the stairwell? Give his legs a minute to wake up before you try to walk him to the cab. Ale and I need to have a little chat." Julia didn't argue. She helped Santi down from the chair. The boy wobbled slightly, his equilibrium temporarily thrown off by the invasive surgery, but he caught his balance quickly. He looked back at Viktor, offering one last polite nod, before following his mother out the heavy steel door. The hydraulic hiss sealed the room once more.

Viktor walked over to his desk. He pulled a second tumbler from the glass, tossed a cube of ice into it, and poured a heavy measure of the cheap synthetic whiskey. He walked back over and held the glass out to Alejandro. Alejandro looked at the whiskey, then up at Viktor.

"I'm good, Vik. I need a clear head."

"What, you too good for the well-rail sludge now, Mr. Executive?" Viktor mocked.

"Take the damn drink, Ale. You're going to need it." Alejandro hesitated, then reached out and took the glass. Viktor picked up his own, and they stood there in the sterile light of the clinic, two chooms from a past life sharing a moment of heavy silence. Alejandro took a slow sip. The whiskey burned like battery acid going down, a stark contrast to the aged scotch he had grown accustomed to in the corporate towers. He lowered the glass, looking at Viktor's exhausted face.

"Vik, I know you think I'm a monster for this," Alejandro started, his voice low.

"But if you knew what was coming-""Why?" Viktor interrupted.

"I told you," Alejandro defended.

"The boy's latency-""Don't give me that optimized corpo bullshit!" Viktor snarled, slamming his glass down on the metal tray so hard the liquor sloshed over the rim.

"I know you, Ale! I've known you since we were pulling gigs in Santo Domingo with nothing but pipe-iron and cheap handguns! You don't cut your own kid open because he types too slow! You may be a ruthless son of a bitch, but you love that boy. So tell me. What the fuck terrified you enough to make you run a fifty-year-old suicide protocol on an eight-year-old child?" Alejandro stared at Viktor. His eyes shifted to the boxing gloves on the table, and then to the blood on the surgical tray. He had crossed the line.

But there was no going back now.

"I fished something out, Vik," Alejandro said, his voice dropping to a whisper.

"I used my Militech clearance and built an air-gapped terminal in my home. And I pulled a piece of encrypted telemetry out from the data streams." Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. Viktor's brow furrowed, his medical anger slowly shifting into a cold dread.

"Telemetry from where, Ale? Who did you rob?" Alejandro took a step closer, the neon lights of the monitors reflecting in his dead eyes.

"I didn't rob anyone in the city. I used a chip I had from a few years back and pulled the telemetry from beyond the Blackwall." Viktor froze. The blood completely drained from his face, leaving him looking like a corpse under the fluorescent lights. For a man who spent the last couple of years elbow-deep in blood and chrome, there were very few things that genuinely terrified Viktor. The Blackwall was at the top of that list.

"Jesus Christ, Ale," Viktor breathed, taking a step back, looking at his old friend as if he were looking at a walking plague.

"You gotta be fucking kidding me."

"I'm not," Alejandro said grimly.

"I had captured a microsecond from an entity's wake when it pressed against the membrane. The things waiting in the Old Net... they aren't just rogue code, Vik. Some of them are gods. And the Wall isn't going to last forever. It's only a matter of time before it cracks. And when it does, standard ICE isn't going to save anyone. A standard neural link isn't going to save anyone. They will burn the meatspace to ash."

"So you decide to poke the hornets' nest?!" Viktor shouted, his voice cracking with sheer disbelief.

"You brought Blackwall static into your own fucking home?! Where you live with your wife and kid?!"

"I brought the armor!" Alejandro roared back, slamming his own glass down next to Viktor's.

"I found the Chrysalis Protocol in that data! I found nanotech! I found a way to make my son strong enough to survive what's coming!"

"You didn't make him strong, you gonk, you made him a beacon!" Viktor screamed, stepping fully into Alejandro's space, towering over the Solo.

"Do you have any idea how much noise a petabit-scale organic processor makes in the Net?! If NetWatch catches a whiff of him, they'll flatline him! If a rogue AI feels him in the stream, they'll possess him! You didn't give him no armor, you strapped a fucking bomb to his chest!"

"He will learn to hide!" Alejandro spat, his instincts flaring and his cybernetic arm tensing.

"I will teach him to hide! I will be keeping him safe!"

"You're an arrogant dumb piece of shit!" Viktor bellowed. Viktor didn't stop to think. The rage and the sheer moral revulsion of what he had just been forced to do boiled over. Viktor's right arm snapped out, his heavy fist twisting in a brutal left hook. The punch caught Alejandro flush on the cheekbone. Despite the synthetic plating reinforcing his jaw, the sheer force of a heavyweight boxer throwing a bare-knuckle punch sent Alejandro staggering backward.

He crashed into the metal tray, sending sterilized scalpels and empty vials scattering across the concrete floor. Alejandro touched his face. He pulled his fingers away, looking at the bright smear of red blood. He looked up, his hazel eyes completely devoid of warmth, shifting instantly into the cold stare of a Militech killer. But Viktor, instead of backing down, stepped forward, slipping into a tight boxing stance. He threw a fast jab, aiming for Alejandro's nose.

Alejandro's combat reflexes engaged, and he swatted Viktor's jab away with his flesh hand, stepping inside his guard. Viktor anticipated it, pivoting his hips and throwing a devastating uppercut meant to shatter Alejandro's ribs. The blow landed, knocking the wind out of Alejandro. However, he absorbed the blunt shock, planted his boots, and retaliated. Alejandro threw a short elbow strike right into Viktor's sternum, causing Viktor to grunt and drop his guard for a fraction of a second.

It was all the opening an experienced corpo operator needed. Alejandro swept his leg, kicking Viktor's boot out from under him. As the massive ripperdoc lost his balance, Alejandro grabbed him by the collar of his scrubs and used Viktor's own momentum to slam him violently into the concrete floor. The impact echoed through the basement and left Viktor gasping, the air completely driven from his lungs while his vision blurred.

He looked up to see Alejandro kneeling over him, his matte-black cybernetic arm raised, the synthetic knuckles balled into a fist that could punch through a cinderblock wall. Alejandro's eyes were wild, the combat stims in his system screaming at him to finish the threat. The metal fist hovered inches from Viktor's face, trembling with suppressed force. Viktor stared up at the monster pinning him to the floor, waiting for the killing blow that never came.

Alejandro stared down at the man who had just saved his son's life. He looked at the betrayal and the raw, bleeding knuckles of the only real friend he had left in Night City. It reminded him of the look of betrayal of the people he had killed nine years ago in an attempt to erase all traces of Project BLACKGLASS. Alejandro squeezed his eyes shut, letting out an agonizing yell of frustration.

He lowered his cybernetic arm, unclenching his fist, and pushed himself off of Viktor, stumbling back until he hit the surgical chair. He leaned heavily against it as his breath came in ragged gasps. Blood dripped slowly from his cheekbone, staining the collar of his tactical shirt. Viktor lay on the floor for a long moment, staring up at the harsh fluorescent lights. He tasted copper in his mouth.

The blood coming from Alejandro's cheek was a testament to just how good a boxer Viktor had once been, and a testament to how dangerous Alejandro truly was to have ended the fight in a few seconds.

"Are we done?" Alejandro rasped, wiping the blood from his chin with the back of his hand. Viktor slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position, wincing as his bruised sternum protested. He ran a hand over his face, looking at the blood on his own knuckles.

"Yeah," Viktor muttered, his voice hollow.

"Yeah, Ale. We're done." Alejandro stepped forward, offering his flesh-and-blood hand. Viktor looked at it for a moment, then grabbed it. Alejandro hauled the massive ripperdoc off the floor, steadying him until Viktor found his footing. They stood there in the mess of the clinic they had created, surrounded by scattered tools. Viktor walked over to the desk. Amazingly, the two cut-glass tumblers were still sitting upright.

Viktor picked his up, swirling the remaining whiskey, but he didn't offer the other one to Alejandro. Viktor took a long, slow drink and swallowed it down, his eyes never leaving the floor.

"I don't even know who you are anymore, Alejandro," Viktor said, his voice quiet and stripped of all anger. He looked up, his eyes meeting the man's.

"Get the fuck out of my clinic. And don't ever come back." Alejandro flinched, the words hitting harder than the hook to the jaw.

"Vik, try to understand. I had to-""Get out!" Viktor roared, his voice echoing off the concrete.

"Take your kid, take your corporate blood money, and get the fuck out of my sight!" Alejandro stared at him. He knew a burned bridge when he saw one. He walked over to the desk, picked up his own glass, and downed the cheap synthetic whiskey in one swallow. He set the glass down softly on the metal desk, turned, and walked toward the heavy steel door. As he passed Viktor, he paused, reaching out and laying his flesh hand gently on Viktor's broad shoulder.

"You're a real friend, Vik," Alejandro whispered, his voice thick with genuine sorrow.

"Thank you... for everything." Viktor didn't look at him. He kept his eyes locked on the concrete wall, muttering under his breath, his voice trembling with a mixture of rage and heartbreak.

"A real friend would have never forced me to do what you did today." Alejandro closed his eyes, the truth of the statement carving a hole in his chest.

"I'm sorry," Alejandro said softly.

"But you were the only one I ever trusted enough to perform the surgery." Alejandro let his hand fall from Viktor's shoulder and didn't say another word. He left the chip with the eddies on a shelf by the door, hit the hydraulic release, and stepped out into the stairwell, leaving Viktor alone in the bloody light of the clinic, the heavy steel door sealing shut behind him.