It did actually occur to me that what I was creating was a war crime, that if I had made it at home, would have likely ended with my name on a particularly large missile, strapped to a stealth drone. I had created a gas that was lethal to damn near everyone on this planet, even with the astounding level of lung replacements throughout the population. I had then sent that gas off to be used on up to and maybe more than eighty people, wiping out the large caravan.

  I still slept like a baby.

  Well, at least I did for the first night, the one I knew my friends would just be camping. When they got closer to the caravan, I started to worry about them. That night required a sleep aid.

  But the night after I developed the poison? No nightmares, no temptation to call off the attack, no wracking guilt as I lay in bed staring at the ceiling. The closest thing to any of that I had was when I needed to get up at three AM to use the bathroom.

  And honestly, not feeling a thing? It really didn't bother me.

  This wasn't some young adult drama, where the hero struggles with the weight of his choices, feeling guilt as it lays heavily on his shoulders. The Raffen Shiv were fucking bastards. They killed and raped and murdered, and the world was better without them in it. Hell, I had even spent some extra time making sure that their deaths were painless, even if someone had been awake or somehow woke up. They would feel euphoric in a way that was similar to an opioid high before slipping into unconsciousness and dying. I could have easily made it the most painful thing they had ever experienced, had them clawing at their skin as it bubbled and curled from their muscles.

  Either way, the threat of Wraith and Raffen Shiv was passed, for now. By the time I woke up on the second night after they left, Samwise was waiting to report that Kaytlyn had been in contact, confirming their success. I had him pass that on to Dakota, as well as the confirmation that the campground was ready for the Aldecaldos to move in. She had responded by explaining that she already knew, then one-upped me by sending me footage of the whole thing, apparently taken by the Nomads she had sent.

  I got back at her by forwarding her a few thousand credits, as if she had been the one to complete a gig for me. The lack of response confirmed I had at least thrown the fixer for a loop, which was a win in my book.

  Learning my friends were alive, well, and successful might have made me a bit giddy.

  For the time that the team was away, I was not just sitting idle, wringing my hands and chewing my nails. I dedicate myself to continue working my way through the Institute's tech branches. I made sensors and scanners, tools, and even a few toys. I also worked through some Enclave tech, making some of their communication arrays, as they had managed to compact some complicated radio tower systems into towers less than ten feet tall. I finished the twelfth day putting together the last of some Enclave bits, most of them more about the methodology and creation details than the actual tech.

  On the thirteenth day, I spent the morning building a standard broadcast satellite for Pre-War America. Its systems were a mix of simple, almost archaic tech and SCIENCE!. It still contained Vacuum tubes, but the solar panels were slightly more efficient than what was available in Cyberpunk. I was hopeful that I could combine it with on-hand and Titanfall tech to create something even more potent than the sum of its parts. Not that I was lacking in relatively safe, environmentally friendly power generation methods.

  The satellite also boasted a thrust system that didn't rely on regular rocket or jet fuel, but was instead powered directly from a fusion reactor. These thrusters boasted rather incredible fuel-to-power ratios, the fusion generator taking a ridiculously low amount of fuel to generate oodles of energy. This explained how Mr. Handy and Mr. Gutsys were flying around the wasteland by the time the Fallout games took place.

  Technically, I had already gotten one of these fusion thrusters by unlocking the Mr Handy blueprints while building robots, but the version attached to the satellite was much more precise. After all, it was attached to a satellite that had to adjust its orbit by minuscule amounts. Having the two gave me a much wider breadth of understanding around the thruster, making me confident I could create significantly larger versions, should I have the need.

  I was just sending the satellite away to be processed for scrap when Jackie, Riggs, and Kaytlyn returned. I walked out of the workshop as Murtaugh was directing the spare shades back into storage, my friends gathering by their cars.

  "Hey guys, how did it go?" I asked, handing them some bottles filled with cool water. "I saw a recording of the actual event, but how was the trip to and from."

  "Recording? Who the hell recorded us?" Kaytlyn asked, sounding surprised.

  "One of the Nomads," I responded before repeating my question. "How did it go?"

  "The ride was fine, Genio," Jackie responded, clapping my shoulder. "Camping under the stars preem, thinking I might take Misty some time. Could be romantic."

  I chuckled and nodded in agreement. Together, we headed back to the Shack, where Jackie whipped up some sandwiches for everyone that were genuinely fantastic. I don't know why we hadn't thought about it before, but luncheon meat was the perfect use for the meats and vegetables we hadn't quite gotten right yet, since you couldn't really tell what texture was what when you bit into it, just that it had texture.

  After we talked a while about the trip, and Jackie wrapped up a few sandwiches for Misty and his mom, I went back to the garage. With my friends back, I no longer had to worry about rushing off to save them, which meant it was time for my final large-scale project, something I had seen on its branch for a bit, but that I had been holding off making.

  So Vault-Tec had several different air purification methods they designed for their vaults, which I locked down during my first kick through their tech to prepare for our own vault. Surprisingly, however, they did not have the final say in air purification, that title belonged to the Clear Skies Alliance, and later Hornwright Industrial. They developed a, one that, if used in a network, could purify enough air to make even the most inhospitable places livable. It was an incredible piece of technology, one that was co-opted by a mining company to pull worthwhile materials out of the air around particularly noxious mines.

  I got to work making the several-meter tall device, working in stages, starting first with the base and moving upwards as I copied down the design. While the base had a few interesting bits, the really impressive part was the top rotating end, which was where the particulate gathering happened. This was done by protecting two massive electromagnetic fields. The first was a set of gigantic fins that rose nearly a hundred feet into the air, projected similarly to how the energy barriers were created but with several times lesser energy output.

  The fin spun slowly inside the second electromagnetic field, which was shaped like a giant cone. Both of these fields were permeable to air, but the magnetic charge interacted with contaminated and floating particles in the air. Basically, the cone charged them, and then the spiral fins dragged them down, pulling them into an actively sucking vacuum unit. From there, the particulates stuck into a filter or were consolidated into a forge to gather as resources. I stuck with the filter design since I had no interest in the resource-gathering bit.

  Alone, the tall device would generally increase air quality in a small area by a detectable but ultimately useless amount. However, by putting into a network of dozens of machines, it could create an actual bubble of cleaned, purified air. Of course, there were downsides. The electromagnetic fields played hell with most simple communications, as well as a lot of electronics. The fact that the fields pointed straight up stopped it from being a major issue, and the fact that you could spread them out a bit meant our radios would work, but standing under one was a good-sized dead zone.

  No matter the issues they caused, I wanted them around the Ridge. Any problem they made, I could solve, and the idea of having actual clean air to breathe was too good to pass up.

  The design process only took about an hour, but the construction took considerably longer due to the device's large size. Even worse, it needed to be bolted down to a concrete base or some other foundation since it was way too tall and had way too many moving parts to free-stand without help. We ended up using one of the foundations left over by one of the large solar panel arrays that we had long since scrapped in favor of Elerium generators. It was in the far western corner of the main chunk of the Ridge, outside the wall, which was the perfect place. I planned on having a ring of them around the entire town, which would drastically reduce the number we needed inside the town, which in turn would make compensating for their interference easier.

  Technically, they did get in the way of our defensive firing line, but that didn't quite matter to me at the moment. Between my most recent resource-freeing discovery, our near-perfect recycling system, and our rapid production capabilities, I had no issues telling Murtaugh that the air filters would be acceptable casualties in the case of a large-scale attack.

  With the help of a few MRVNs and Riggs, we managed to get the first unit installed without incident, though there were a few close calls.

  "I'm gonna have to build something to make this easier," I said with a frown, looking up at the spinning device. "Maybe by a mini crane or some sort of rig?"

  "We could always," Samwise pointed out, both Riggs and I slowly turning to look at the AI.

  "...We have a crane?" I asked, slightly confused. "Where?"

  "It's parked by the workshop."

  "and why didn't you mention that forty-five minutes ago?" I asked, looking at the AI in confusion. "Would have made this whole thing so much easier!"

  "It was funny watching you do it without one," Samwise responded, before turning around and walking back towards the garage.

  My eyes went wide as I watched him walk away, before looking over at Riggs, who simply shrugged.

  "Huh... sense of humor… that's new," I said, a smile slowly spreading across my face. "Good for him."

  When I recovered from his prank, I had Samwise dedicate a third of our Ridge production capacity to making more of the air purifies. It would take longer, but it would ensure we would remain flexible. I still had a day and a half of production, and I planned on putting it to work.

  With my last big project completed, I started to work my way through a string of military equipment. Mines, grenades, tools, rucksacks, packs, weapon attachments, BDUs, ballistic weaves, and modular armor plating, I basically spun through a whole armory by the time the sun was setting. I once again skipped the gunpower weapons since I had access to anything I could need from the Cyberpunk worlds, and I was already pretty heavily invested in mag weapons.

  Most of the tech was basic, almost World War II-esque, but it filled a void of simple tools and engineering information I hadn't gathered yet. Not only that, but knowing I had everything needed to run a basic army was reassuring, even if it was all a weird parity between retro-advanced and out-of-date.

  By the time I finished the military tech, it was getting very late. I only had one day left with this tech tree, but while I was feeling the pressure, it was more from the fear of missing something than it was not having enough time. Somehow, I had managed to grab most of what I wanted, if not everything, even managing to make the Sierra Madre vending machine tech, which I had been pretty sure was made up prior to getting access to it. The list of tech I had managed to acquire permanently was pretty astounding, especially considering that this was only my fourth tech tree.

  I even decided to, at the last minute, skip the all-nighter. For a few days, I had planned on using some stims that Frank was working on to get some extra time by skipping sleep for at least forty-eight hours. But now, seeing as I was done with things I needed, had worked my way through everything I wanted, and was now chipping away at things that might eventually come in handy, pushing myself like that seemed useless.

  Instead, I headed to bed after finishing a pair of night-vision goggles.

  It felt like I had only just put my head down on my pillow when my radio cracked to life, snapping me awake. I nearly jumped out of bed, grabbing it from my nightstand.

  "Missed that, Murtaugh, please repeat," I asked, holding the radio up so I could clearly hear from it.

  "Sir… one of the salvage units brought something back with them," He explained. "It's… well, it's probably easier to explain once you see them. We are at the Bio lab. Frank needed to convert it to a medical suite to save them."

  "Alright, I'll be there shortly," I responded, already grabbing my armored underlayer and clipping my radio to my belt.

  I quickly made my way to the Shack, the town mostly dark, the moon the only real light source. I pushed into the Shack and climbed the stairs to the bio lab two at a time, quickly pushing inside, moving past Murtaugh.

  The room had changed considerably. The workstations had been pushed to the side, clearing the center of the room. Newly installed temporary walls, which descended from the ceiling and attached to the floor, marked out the space as the surgery suite, with a large window along the wall closest to the door. Inside the room was an array of advanced medical equipment and tools. Using that equipment and tools were Frank and Samwise, both of them working hard on their patient.

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  The single flesh and blood occupant of the room was looking rough, to say the least. Both of their arms were gone, as was a good chunk of their lower stomach. They were covered in blood and cyberware oil, with a trail of bullet wounds along their legs and side. They were also covered the variety of bruises, scraped cuts, and abrasions that covered her body, especially her face. It was clearly a miracle they were alive. I could see that Samwise was pulling out bullets and using our very meager supply of stimpaks to heal the wounds, while Frank was patching up the chunk of missing stomach. They had dozens of lines hooked into them, and by the speed that Frank and Samwise were moving, time must have been of the essence.

  "The scavengers were moving to a new location when one of them spotted movement in a nearby pile," Murtaugh explained, moving up to stand beside me. "Normally, they would be skipped over it, and the scrap crew would move a large distance away to avoid distractions, but the scans showed some similarities to someone you described."

  "Yeah, I can see that."

  The woman on the table was short, very short, with pale white skin and several red tattoos. She was covered in bruises, and her left eye was swollen, completely shut, bloody, black, and blue. Her light green hair was a mess, and half of it seemed to have been torn off of her scalp.

  Unless something really screwy was going on, the poor, broken person in our surgery suite was, from the Edgerunners anime. The problem was, just like Jackie, she was supposed to be dead.

  By now, one of my greatest regrets from my previous life was that I hadn't finished consuming Cyberpunk media. The game was left unfinished, and I had only seen bits and pieces of the anime. I would give a couple of my fingers and an inch of height to be able to fix that, but that wasn't going to happen.

  I did know some information about the show. I knew the main character,, was supposed to get some sort of. I knew that Rebecca was best described as a gun junky gremlin with a sailor's mouth. I also knew that most of the characters died and that it was one of those shows where nobody really wins, which was probably why I stayed away from it, even as I was getting back into Cyberpunk.

  I knew from a rather brutal YouTube short that Rebecca got flattened by Adam Smasher, literally.

  And yet here she was, just like Jackie, somehow still alive and not compressed by a massive borg. Assuming she survived her injuries, at least.

  "Put the town on silent alert. Keep the lights off, but get security up and running," I said with a frown, scratching my cheek. "Put the spare shades on patrol, then get Riggs armed and up here. I want him to keep an eye on her at all times, especially if she survives."

  "On it, sir."

  Murtaugh stepped away and started talking into his radio, while I focused on the surgery in front of me. I watched as Frank stitched and repaired her intestines as best he could, the small girl losing about a foot of her small and a few inches of her large in the process. Samwise finished repairing the bullet wounds and stepped back, acting as nurse as Frank worked, handing him tools and whatever else he needed.

  After a few minutes, Riggs stepped into the bio lab, taking up position by the window, on the opposite side as us. He was fully loaded and armored, and as he watched the surgery, one hand stayed on one of his pistols. Murtaugh stepped closer as well, having finished getting the town awake.

  "Is there any news from the city?" I asked, looking back at him for a moment before focusing back on the surgical suite. "Any big break-ins, recent shoot-outs, reported Edgerunner crap, something that happened in the last several hours?"

  "Give me a moment…"

  Murtaugh went off to check what I asked as I tried to puzzle out how this poor small woman had managed to get herself so fucked up. It was obviously not Adam Smasher, who, as far as I could tell, was following Yorinobu Arasaka, wherever he was. Thankfully, Murtaugh came through after about fifteen minutes of looking online.

  "I think I found it, sir."

  He passed me a tablet, showing a news report about a recent break-in. It showed security footage of a team breaking into a Militech facility for still unknown reasons. Their security was triggered, but the team seemed to be handling it well. Until the largest one, Maine, if I remembered correctly, seemed to get confused, stepping out of cover right into the line of fire of a heavy turret. A tall woman, who had been standing nearby, dove to drive him back into cover but ended up taking a line of bullets along her back and head.

  Whatever caused his initial confusion, the death of the woman seemed to impact Maine viscerally, the large cyborg snapping almost instantly. Suddenly, he was on his own team, fighting both Militech and his crew, throwing a shocking amount of ordinance at them both. He eventually went down, driven to the ground by some heavy Militech weapons that blew chunks out of his metal body.

  Unfortunately, by that point, he had already done enough damage. He had slammed a fist into Rebecca's face, grabbed her hair, and swung her at a nearby Militech grunt, knocking him off his feet, before swinging her again. This time, her hair tore free, and she was thrown into a line of still-shooting Militech soldiers. After that, Militech finished off everyone else we could see before the security footage cut out.

  "That… that certainly paints a picture," I said with a frown. "I didn't see David or Lucy among the group, but it looks like the rest of the team is dead. The scavenger team scanned the area where they found her, right?"

  "They did, no one else was alive."

  "Send out another team and look around. The other teammates' bodies might be there," I pointed out. "We could at least confirm that they were all killed. Don't stay too long though, connecting her to us is not something I'm willing to do just yet."

  I considered my options as I watched Frank finish up the surgery by injecting a final stimpack into her stomach to help her heal. I cursed to myself, mentally moving the mass production of stimpaks much higher up the list of things to do. Most of the surgery could have been rendered pointless if we had had more of them, after all. Once Frank checked on a few more things, he slowly exited the room, washing his hands before actually detaching them, Samwise helping him affix his normal hands to the stubs.

  "How is she doing?" I asked as they came around.

  "She is pulling through, though we had to jump her heart a few times when she first got here. In all likelihood, that will need to be fixed," Frank explained. "We managed to repair the damage, and her vitals are low but stable. Unless we missed a failure in one of her internal mods, I see her pulling through."

  "Good, that's good. Okay, here is the story, everyone. Our scavenger patrol found her, and recognized her from me doing research on local groups, ones I considered hiring for security," I instructed, running my hand through my hair. "That's why they brought her back, but I kept her around because I'm a bleeding heart and because I'm naive and assumed she would join us if I got her back on her feet."

  "Why the story?" Riggs asked, his eyes still on Rebecca.

  "Because otherwise, I brought some random edgerunner to the Ridge with no explanation," I explained with a frown. "I know what she is from, and you know what she is from, but I can't explain that to them. It's not worth the potential mental trauma."

  "What do you actually know about her?" Murtaugh asked. "You admitted there was a lot you didn't know about this world."

  "I…she is a chaos goblin with a love for overkill," I said with a wince. "But she was part of a team of… decent people? Kinda? Decent for the job they had, for what you can expect from this world."

  "Do you really plan on hiring her," Samwise asked.

  "Honestly? I don't know. There's a large chance we just send her back to Night City once she is up and moving around," I admitted with a frown. "Riggs, she doesn't go anywhere near my stuff, and absolutely nowhere without you."

  "Understood."

  "Good. Frank, how long will she be out for?"

  "Technically, I could wake her up now." He answered. "Though, I wouldn't recommend it. She needs sleep and time to recover."

  "Great, let her stay that way. Gives me a chance to explain everything to the crew," I instruct him, the AI doctor nodding cleanly before cutting in with a question.

  "Should I prepare some arms for her?" Frank asked. "Her connection points will need to be repaired… but her shoulders are surprisingly intact."

  "... no. I'm not handing her any of her tech until I can get a better feel for her personally," I responded after some thought. "Wrap them up to keep them clean, and we can promise to get a ripperdoc out to look at her, with some cheap temporary arms to get her functional. Vik would probably be happy to help, and we can bribe him with some food."

  "What is the best-case scenario you are hoping for, Jackson?" Samwise asked, a question mark on his chest screen.

  "...Best case, she wakes up only mildly traumatized and grateful, and I get a good feeling from her. I invite her to join us, and she accepts. We then ease her into our secrets," I responded after some thought. "In case you're curious, the worst-case scenario is that she wakes up broken and screaming, and I realize I can't trust her. The options vary in that case, from killing her myself to just shipping her back to the city."

  "Very well, I understand."

  "Unfortunately, for now, everyone but Riggs has to go back to pretending to be a dumb robot for now," I said with a wince. "It sucks, I don't like it, but we can't risk her cluing into you being AI."

  "Understood, sir," Murtagh confirmed, everyone nodding.

  After another few minutes of watching the patient, I eventually leave the bio lab behind, returning to my trailer to sleep for the remaining hours of the night. The following morning, Kayt and Jackie were waiting for me on the first floor of the Shack. Jackie was putting together a simple breakfast as I walked in, sitting down heavily in one of the seats by the table.

  "What's up, Jay?" Kayt asked. "Riggs said something happened last night?"

  "Yeah, nothing major… or well, not in the grand scheme of things, at least," I assured them, leaning forward as I did. "Last night, one of the scrap teams stumbled onto a barely surviving member of a team of edgerunners. Because I had considered hiring them for a while to help Kayt with security, their description was in the shade's database as a person of interest. They ended up bringing her back here, and Frank treated her. She is upstairs recovering."

  "And recovering well," Frank said, descending down the stairs. "Technically, I could wake her now, but it would be better if she rested a bit longer."

  "Right. Well, either way, I woke up while Frank was already working on her, and I figured we may as well help her out," I said with a shrug. "We recovered four bodies near where we found her, and their fight made the news, so we have a pretty good idea what happened…"

  I showed them the footage, but when Kayt saw it, she cursed, shaking her head.

  "Goddammit Maine…"

  "You knew them?" I asked, genuinely surprised.

  "We bumped elbows a few times, he was into some big cyberware, and I delivered a few bits to him," She explained with a shrug, though I could see the sadness in her eyes. "Looks like he finally hit the limit. That pause he makes, stepping out into the line of fire? That's a moment of Cyberpsychosis, same with what happens next. Which one of them survived?"

  "Small, pale white skin with red tattoos," I described, pretending to not know her name, or to have at least forgotten it.

  "Rebecca is the one who survived?" She asked, sounding genuinely surprised. "Damn. She is a handful, Jackson. She might be someone you just drop off in the city and wash your hands of."

  "How so?"

  "She likes her guns, but she is all about quantity, not quality. She's wild, not a lot of finesse, like how we usually like to roll," She explained, shaking her head. "She would have hated every mission we've done, save maybe our first Wraith raid. And if what I heard from Maine is true, she would have probably ruined any one of them by snapping and opening fire because she was bored."

  "Jeez, Kayt, take it easy," Jackie said with a frown. "Poor Chica just lost her crew."

  "And? She's a fucking statistic, Jackie," Kaytlyn said, rolling her eyes. "The only reason it even matters is because the shades picked her up because they thought she was important, right?"

  Kaytlyn looked at me, and I winced and shrugged.

  "Pretty much," I responded. "We would have never known about it if they had missed her. And we need to know this anyway, Jackie. Offering her a job was on the table, but it's sounding a lot less likely now."

  Jackie frowned but reluctantly nodded, continuing to make breakfast while considering what we had said.