Benny, we took your Cat. If you want it back, make it worth our while.

Corner of Prester and John, 0300

come alone or the kitty loses all of his lives. Love, the Full Metal Jackets.

I read the glowing red email in my right eye again, the glittering ruby letters firing electric signals as it
spilled out the grim message for me to absorb. My eye displayed it all, the artificially-cooled server farm
I was standing in, with a thermograph readout that showed most objects in the room as cold blue
squares, with a number of connections and hoses that ran between them, showing arcing blue and
yellow lights as the machines hummed, flashed and talked to one another, traffic wardens directing their
digital signals into the Net and beyond, all over the world, flashing off of Sat Links, passing through the
red and green gates of local municipal receiver nets, back into the cold black space behind the data, to
reassemble at user workstations and interface points or dropping through cell sites to built-in receivers
and cell phones. My right eye winked closed, and the email was sorted and moved up four spaces in the
spreadsheet that occupied the left side of the eye and moved into storage. The pupil contracted and a
small red light began flashing over in the lower right as my eye recorded the room. I scanned my head
slowly to the left and the right, getting the dimensions and the height of the room, scanning over several
counters filled with various hot and cooling objects in the room’s artificial temperature field.

Tools, cold blue, cooling noodles and some kind of lumpy meat in a bio-plastic tray, four or five crushed
cans all cold blue, with the garish label in green and red saying “Hugunzapah! The Drink of Choice”.
Cynically I wondered whose drink was that choice, aside from the room’s only other occupant.
Huguzapah was a disgusting brew of fermented chilies, filtered water, crushed peyote and opium and
fermented potatoes and a huge splash of absinthe. A drink of it left your throat on liquid fire and your
head spinning like a gyroscopic top, with a reputed hallucinogenic quality that often left a 24 hour
hangover. My gaze continued tracking the fading yellow and red heat trails of six pairs of combat boots,
the metal eye recording the heat trail while my left eye, (the one that hadn’t been impacted by the
rocket-propelled grenade), watched the rooms huge LED screen on the left wall replay the same footage
over and over, from the internal shielded and armored cameras. Six men, all wearing ancient BDU pants
in green and olive patterns and vests with the same, trooping out of the room and politely shutting the
vault door.

Full Metal Jackets. Fuck! A booster gang of no small stripped chassis, these assholes were numerous,
powerful and well-armed and supplied, the terror of the East Combat Zone. Rumor had it they fronted
for such legitimate sources such as NASA, The Secret Service and several embassies in the area, as well
as the usual scum and villainy of lower Night City. Many of them like myself were vets, wounded in the
service, cyberized and loaded with prosthetics and programs and hardware that were both legal and
highly illegal (if such a thing even counted for anything on these nights) and ready to serve the highest
bidder. I was no exception, even if I did consider myself a slightly better class of man and machine than
the burn brains who roamed the Combat Zones, looking for murder, intrigue, murder, cyberwear and
murder.

My gaze swept the room further, flesh and metal working together as neurons processed,
microprocessors hummed and silver threaded molecule-wires spat energy into computer models and
made projections, analysis and outcomes on the black screen of my skull. The warmest shape in the
room besides myself was the body lying on the floor in front of me, my late friend and business
associate, Snort. Blood ran all over the floor in drying silver pools, to both eyes it appeared dark and
thick, clotting slowly in the artificial cold of the server farm. Snort had been a heavy-set tall fellow, a
former vet and Fixer of reputable talent. Fixers were a combination salesman and repairmen, they
worked the Street ferrying deals and offers of employment and hustling talent for opportunities both
legal and illegal for fees and a cut off the top. Snort was Known, which meant most people in the Year
2056 wouldn’t kill him right away and nick his boots. He had been watching my cat for me while I was
on a little “trip” virtually overseas and I was paying him for his time and his patronage. It seems that he
had involuntarily quit both his life and his profession while I was gone.

Snort’s many cabinets and drawers and safes in the vault were all empty and rifled through and even his
pockets had been slashed open. His head was missing (not surprising as his head contained a very
valuable CV-134 MicroSystems Cyberbrain with full backlogs and over 200,000 TB in storage). His eyes
were both custom-built and most of the other hardware in his now missing bald dome would fetch high
prices to desperate types out there on the Street. The silver blood he was bleeding was one of the
reasons the Street had given him the Handle Snort. He had an addiction for anything you could inject,
drink, imbibe, swallow, ingest, inhale, suck, sniff, absorb, or snort, (hence the appellation) and tried to
avoid becoming sober at any cost. The Biolayer 3000 system he had installed was tailored to the user
and was one of the few that could not be stripped from a system to be used for another. It was an
artificial blood, pheromone, kidney, epidermal and liver implant that cycled the user’s fluids and
repaired the system and essentially regenerated and accelerated healing up to six times the owner’s
ability upon successful implementation.

It also caused massive clotting every time it was used it in .02% of the population and flatlined the user,
so it had its drawbacks. Snort had said he lived for the chance it would kill him (he used to joke it was
Terminal Roulette). Sadly it seemed he met his end from several large .50 cal. Rounds in his chest,
despite the armored vest he had been wearing and the stolen sub-dermal plating lining his chest cavity.
The silver blood of the Biolayer 3000 pooled out of his torso, cooling faster than blood in the artificial
cold. Frustrated, I scanned the server farm, all locked behind exalceum plating, which allowed the
captive servers to breathe but also resist being stolen from even a desperate booster gang.

How had the Jackets found my cat? Tortured Snort until he talked, or caught a coded email or text from
one of his projects? If he had been high and messaged various groups about his doings, one of them
might have come to look him up. Even Snort would sell me out for the right price and time, the price
being “How Much?” and the time being “Now”. Maybe he had taken my money, turned around before
my track in the floor was cold and sent out a NHT (Now hear this). We had been mates for a while, even
been in the same Battalion back in 2044, but Credit is Credit. The Street Taketh and the Street Receive
and tough shit if you come in second.

My right arm reached forward and hovered over the Cybermodem that Snort recorded most of his
transactions on and the right index fingernail pulled back with a click, displaying two metal jacks which
slid out and plugged into the Modem with a click and rapidly began dismantling attack barriers and
hacking Walls until I found the Processor Program that guarded the Modem like a mythological Beast
guarding a sorcerers castle. Appearing in the Castle/Modem/Processor as a bald black man about two
meters high and about fourteen stone, dressed in a hooded robe of blood red, covered in Credit signs all
over. Cloaking myself in the digital mix with a glittering cape of countering numbers, the cape
whispering coded commands to “ignore” me and allow me to walk up to the Castle and enter as the
massive gate came crashing down, the stolen pass phrase lighting up in my mind as my Search
Subroutine (appearing as a grouchy pipe smoking dwarf) located Snort’s passwords and I said
“Huguzapah Sucks Shit!” The next digital/wooden gate crashed as well and I saw in the grey stone of the
Castle (as the Modem fed the image to my human brain which in reality was an enormously
concentrated stream of numbers) a grouchy Imp sitting at a wooden bench scribbling with a pen onto
several reams of foolscap on a wooden desk while a torch guttered above. Still cloaked in my cape, I
gestured and another Program flew from somewhere behind me, transforming into a beautiful
Sorceress in a red scanty-dress with blind steel eyes who tickled the chin of the embarrassed Imp who
giggled and stared and the lovely Sorceress while I invisibly sneaked up and began copying all the
foolscap into my modem, (appearing in Snort’s hard drive along with my Image as a magical pouch
which expanded and swallowed all the foolscap up with a burp).

I pulled my fingers out of the Cybermodem and suddenly the Castle was still once more, no one present
as I left the Construct and whooshed back into my head, the Sorceress and Cape and Dwarf programs
powering down and vanishing into my installed Cybermodem once more. I scanned the files internally,
processing them far faster with my right eye then my left. My right arm and both my legs (cyberized
since the War) clicked and ran a quick self-diagnostic, tiny reception pins sending testing pulses and
probes into joints and arterial segments, coming up clean. My old Sarge had warned me, “Check your
metal, stroke your meat, keep it handy, and always cheat.” Sadly, he later discovered that no matter
how much implanted body-plating you have, it just won’t protect you from (and here’s the irony)
depleted Uranium armor-piercing rounds. I wish I could remember his last name.

Scanning the code I found two entries (visual) of Snort putting out a coded message which read “Cat for
sale, a real find, super sneaky cover your behind”. This was Rhyme/Street/Speak which translated
meant “my cat was for sale to the highest bidder.” A reply of “The Kitty has lives of 9, tell us where we
can make him mine”. That was Rhyme Street Speak, a coded message with a mythic element for this
case it was (“Selling a property with a stealth application, and the nine lives meant that multiple parties
were both interested and also would be accompanying the Buyer).

Snort had even agreed to meet buyers in his location, which meant that 1) he fucked me over and 2) he
had the buyers meet him in one of his regular hangouts. Aside from the protected cameras which had
recorded everything (and probably transferred the footage to the local Media or Cops by now) he oddly
didn’t seem to have any backup. Snort wasn’t stupid even though he was daft, why was there no
physical backup? Was whatever mind-altering drug he was on jacking him up so he felt he could take a
whole boostergang?

Too bad for Snort, but fuck him, he backstabbed me. Irritated I looked over his Recipe Book, an online
journal that contained all his imbibed potions to date, the last entry showed that he had taken
something new, something called “Cat of Nine Tails”. One helluva drug, or whatever it was. Had the
Jackets paid him with an advance “freebie” and overcome Snort and then murdered him? I checked my
eye’s chronometer and it showed 0100! Shit! I had less than two hours to make the drop and there was
no way I could take on a Boostergang by myself. I was going to need some help. But first…I accessed
the Cybermodem and began painstakingly erasing all traces of my presence, from bio-scans to camera
cyberware image photography to EM scans and camera footage…

0145 found me leaving Snort’s place, no apparent record of me present. I’m good, but it still took too
much time that I found I didn’t have. I moved with purpose deeper into the guts of Night City, the still
California air smelling of tin and the hint of a storm. A cop V-8 sped by on its cushion of air, armor-
plated doors covered in old gun shot and laser burns, red and blue lights flashing as it soared on hyper-
boosted fans and jets into the humid night air. A bum wandered on one steel leg, long since devoid of
its power pack, leaning against the neo-crete and slurring about “fresh fishes”. A Media, a one man
camera show and news crew stood on the corner of David and Enron, drone camera taking shots of
three bloody bodies all covered by canvas tarps and surrounded by crude holo-chalk outlines. The
Media was dressed in a real smart suit, chrome eyes reading both the script and voicing a concerned
report to the millions that would upload this report on an app or an implanted smart phone, showing
the Street to the Citizens.

I kept to the shadows, black armored trench coat and steel combat boots hiding my armored trousers
and glanced at my implanted Cybermodem in my right arm, covered with my sigil, a Deck of Tarot Cards,
all in modern face. My right eye was showing a Thermo Pattern and Infrared, so even the darkness of
the humid City Streets could be seen clearly. I was headed for a bar, a rocking mecca of entertainment
that would get me the help I needed to get my cat back. A cat maybe just a cat, but a man has to have
some standards.

The BitCoin was a Greaser Bar in Lower Night City, all filled with Mexicans and Hispanics of every flavor.
Solos, combat mercs, Nomads and even a few Cops hung out here, for the 24 hour 7 days a week of
Credit, Murder and Mayhem, and well as work, any kind of work you can imagine. The owner was a
Corporate, Snort’s brother, named Zegazny Philcompton the 4 th. He and Snort hadn’t spoken in years
and he was the one who had built up the Family Fortune. The doors were wide, the windows open and
some kind of rice and tapas were cooking on the humid wind. Rowdy mariachi music clanged inside, all
played on holographic instruments as the speakers howled and the diners drank, fought and partied.
They were all Chipped In, plugged into the Now that was the Street, and like an avenging ghost I plunged
into their midst.

Until that is, I was stopped by the Bouncer, seven feet tall of Body Plating, Boosted Limbs and Reflexes,
Armored eyes and ears and nostrils , and a mouth with a real galvanized jaw, all painted black with
implanted neon-green LED’s shining all over, powered by an electric power plant deep within that very
impressive armored chest. He stared down at me, flanked by two compatriots dressed in cheesy biker
leathers and chrome, swapping a can of Tee Tequila Gold Reserve back and forth. The massive electro-
piston fired hand stopped me dead in my tracks and the huge head leaned in to get a better look.
Servos whined as the figure loomed straighter and extra vertebrae clicked into place, socketing one after
the other, letting the figure grow to an impressive nine feet tall, stabilizing rods extruding from the feet,
digging into the neo-crete.
On a computer-boosted speaker, Big Chrome intoned “Sorry Nigger, we don’t serve darkies in this here
joint.” His two friends convulsed into tequila-fueled laughter and one of them strummed an imaginary
guitar and I’ll be dammed if it didn’t play a short “Dum Dah Dum Dah” from a speaker in his elbow. They
convulsed again from giggling and the locals inside brayed laughter, sounding more donkey than man. I
nodded to Big Chrome and said “That always been your policy?” Big Chrome balled up a fist with
whining hydraulics and spoke over his own machinery, “That’s the policy I was hired for Nigger, so take a
fuckin hike.” Guitar guy strummed the air again and his speaker played, to more drunken hilarity among
himself and the watching customers. I was going to have to make this a good one.

There was no way I could fairly fight this guy and win, but that’s why they call me Benjamin, Benjamin
the Deck. I don’t hit you. I hack you. Slowly it seemed as Big Chrome pulsed, boosting his computer-
fueled reflexes and yet I was faster. My mods were speed, and stamina, not as much strength but I hit
you fast and I kept hitting you, while you are taking continual damage.

My processer in my neck was a Kata-6103, wrapped around my metal spine with gooey neuro-fiber, over
and over and over, each cubic inch over 1000 Credits. Pulsing with electrified neurons, my right hand
index fingertip slid back and my jacks shot out with cracks like pistol shots, stabbing into the armored
ports that lay just behind Big Chromes left ankle and put it into diagnostic mode, which caused it to pull
the extruding strut into the socketed leg that was closed, causing the strut to slam horribly into the joint,
bending and throwing BC off balance. Even as he was bracing for a fall and hitting at the same time, I
seized control of his right arm and threw it out by firing volts from his chest power plant into the servos
at his wrist. His right arm flew out and smacked the second biker at his side right in the nose with a
crunching sound and the biker fell to the ground, out cold and his nose horribly splayed all over his
bleeding, ruined left cheekbone. I then accessed the sub processor in Big Chrome’s right shoulder blade
and ran it into Combat Mode while seizing the elbow port and having it retract sharply at a forty five
degree angle into the chest of Big Chrome, slamming into the implanted armor and discharging the
power plant right into the chest cavity. I followed up with a system wide diagnostic that paralyzed the
entire system with devastating results.

Big Chrome shook as he electrocuted himself and fell right at my feet, his arm smashing into his chest,
the shell that was jacked into the shotgun built into his left thigh went off with the armored door still
closed and he screamed as the battle computer in his chest overloaded as the chest power plant
shocked him into unconsciousness. The scream was literally on stereo and he lay still, a fully Borged out
Cyber Solo, brought down by little old me. The biker to the right stared at me in horror and his elbow
must have gotten stuck because it played the mariachi theme for me as I walked into BitCoin, stepping
over his spasming friend and the other biker who was bleeding and I patted him on the shoulder, the
jacks in my finger vanishing back inside and the nail retracting.

There was considerable jeers from the patrons at the show outside and I was awarded that most sincere
sign of Respect on the Street, a wide berth. Someone paged a Trauma Team AV-4 Response Vehicle for
the wounded and my gaze swept the bar, watching the pulsing frantic dancers, scanning for the ones I
wanted, Chainsaw Charlie and Nasty Nancy.
Chainsaw Charlie had been in the same unit as me, similar to me and Snort. He was a big white man,
naturally about seven feet tall, with shoulders like a Harley (wheel to wheel). He had been hit by a
flamer blast, horribly scarred and burned. They had to replace his face, his chest and all his limbs and
when they had, they glued the rest together with hellfire and let that lurch off to kill foes horribly. He
never spoke but merely sneered or glared as the need warranted. He could pull off his left hand and
right hand and wield horribly-built diamond bladed chainsaws, whose battery-powered blades would
buzz until your teeth ached and the horrible sneer/grimace that never left his face would smile even
more horribly. He was armor-plated from head to toe. He had no friends except his girlfiend Nasty
Nancy and I spell it correctly.

Nancy had been a fashion model one time if you believe the stories and rich parents who could buy you
the moon and top it with a galaxy and your own private space station. Not ship but station. She had
amazing cybernetics, stuff you have never seen, small and sleek and lithe and powerful. Long slender
nails, speed processors and a full skeleton reinforce that could stand the toughest blows, strikes, blades
and impacts. She and her parents were attacked by a Booster Gang when they were coming back from a
fashion show in New York and their private flier had crashed right there on the street, into a fuel truck.
She was dragged out of the flames by a fire fighter who later died, everyone else burned to molecules.
Intense work by the doctors gave her the same tricks as Charlie, killed all her pain receptors, extensive
and I mean extensive cosmetic and neuro- surgery and she went back to modeling while she finished
school and years of painful cybertherapy. After doing this, she somehow met Charlie at a party in
California and he helped her kill the BoosterGang that killed her parents. They had been inseparable
since but they both owed me and owed me big. It was time to collect.

Charlie leaned on the left bar of Bitcoin, huge arms adorned in scar patterns that concealed extensive
and I mean extensive body plating. He wore an armor jacket and thigh high boots and a thick turtleneck
with a stylized bow and arrow on it. His twin cyber optics glowed green, one of them a targeting pattern
and another that ran read-outs as he scanned the room, Nancy at his side, one slender hand
intertwining his, she dressed all in black, skintight and armored as well, both bristling with weapons,
Charlie had three pistols that I could see and a massive shotgun across his back, Nancy bosting twin
cyber sabers across her hips, eyes glowing with infrared imagery. She sipped from a wine-glass and he
drank from a thick pewter-colored stein.

They both looked at me as I approached and I nodded and leaned next to them, but not too close.
“Charlie, Nancy” I said. Charlie merely looked at me and sneered, the ugly rictus of his mouth and
scarred face increasing as the plastic skin looked like it was fighting to leap off his head. Nancy tilted her
head at me, which wasn’t much of an improvement. They were Solos, elite fighters who could turn me
into paste without raising a sweat, and here I was to collect on favors from the past. I hoped this would
work out. I accessed a file inside my spinal processor called “The Negotiator”, a skill chip implanted that
would make me more silver-tongued and charismatic. All taken from the brain scans and nervous
systems of skilled negotiators and diplomats, code made into talent. “Booster Gang by the name of the
Full Metal Jackets, took my cat. I want it back and I need help thinning out the herd. You in?” I checked
my eye-time and my right eye read “0234”. Shit we had to move. “0300 Prester and John, full combat
mode, taking down Boosters, what do you say?”
Nancy placed her glass on the bar and looked at Charlie who sneered even more and slammed back
whatever was in his stein. He stared at her for a long moment, and she looked at me and nodded. She
snapped the glass stem in half and looked at me and made a “Credit” gesture with thumb and
forefinger. My chip let me understand the nuance, they help and all IOUS cancelled. I nodded
brusquely and Nancy gave me a little wave and push off gesture, and again I got it, let me go do my thing
and they would follow. I turned away and made my way rapidly to the back of the Bitcoin and hurried
outside, watching warily as I made my way down the urine-smelling street to the meeting spot.

This near the Combat Zone, there was no one out, just burned-out tenements and empty buildings all in
advanced stages of decay. I could hear the distant sounds of shots screams and explosions while a Cop
AV-8 hovered over the Zone a few blocks away and hundreds of feet up. Flashing red and blue lights lit
up the stormy-sky while thunder growled and the auto-gun on the AV-8 opened up on the Street it was
over with a “whap whump whap whump” (grenades and auto fire) and I heard screams and cursing and
saw flames leap high from where it was aiming. Hopefully not a bad omen.

On the corner of Prester I looked and saw what I came for, a tall man dressed all in antique camos and
loaded with weapons, one booted foot on a large carrying case that was armored. I stepped up, right
cyber optic scanning for snipers and acknowledged the man who turned his white face to me slowly, the
three foot Mohawk on his head streaked with dried blood, most likely a victim’s maybe even Snort’s. He
studied me and beckoned me to come closer. I did, slowly, doing things inside my body, activating my
speed processor and my Cybermodem, the Tarot Deck on it gleaming red as Programs were activated,
my index finger readying my jacks. The man made a halting gesture when I came within a dozen feet
and said in a strangely high voice “Yo, be cool, Deck man. Ain’t you getting to close to your kitty without
pay, you code?” “Dobermans be covering you most excellently.” I saw red dots travel off his chest and
realized that they were now on my back. At least four of them. If I so much as twitched, those most
likely explosive shells would shred my back, skull and legs without even a sound, armor jacket or no.

“What’s the price, Boost? How much to walk with my cat, intact you code?” The tall man smiled a thin
smile and said” You work for us till you rezz out, you dig code man? You our pet deck, you hack for us,
most excellent benefits and trueblood for us, otherwise you go away, fine red mist and a mess.” “What
be your answer code man?”

I studied the man closely and made no move. He had a steady smile on his face and the name patch on
his antique camos said “Hartman”. He had at least three very big hand cannons that he could get too
very easily and I knew he was faster than me. However, he was standing next to my cat, and that was
mine. I closed my eyes, dreading the outcome and activated my Deck.

My cybermodem whined and pulsed, Programs out and ready as I stepped into the City Net, there at the
Corner of Prester and John. The whole Net here was a Grid, glowing blue squares near several burned
out ones where Nodes had been burned, destroyed or terminated for non-payment. Up above an
enormous Sat Link pulsed, ready to sweep myself to the Stars, to orbit E earth in one gigantic electronic
leap. I saw the glowing features of Hartman in front of me, and saw the booby traps he had laced
around the box in front of him. I stepped forward in the Net, and swept upwards as my Programs came
forth. My Sorceress, sweeping wide in her scanty gown, chrome eyes glowing as she let out a shriek and
one of the traps glowed green and vanished into her mouth, as she opened wide and absorbed it. My
Dwarf lunged forward, pickaxe hacking at the yellow trap and it melted away in his hand as he roared
victory. My Sorceress ate another one, this one a pale blue like the Net, and I was by the box, Hartman
still frozen, in the real world he was the one with speed but no one could move faster than a Runner,
especially Benjamin the Deck, and my hand fell upon the case and it opened and out sprang my cat.

Glowing red, a huge Tom with one eye, my CAT (Counter Attack Terror) lunged for the presence of
Hartman and shut him out of the Net, locking down his access and restricting all credentials with the
local City Servers. Panicking, the Jackets pet Runner tried to blow a trap that was wired into the Nodes
that surrounded us in the burned out buildings and with contemptuous ease my CAT froze the
command, rerouted the sub-routine that would trigger the explosion and activated the Programs active
in the Jacket’s Runner Deck, and I smiled as I heard his cybernetic scream as the Hellhound, a most evil
program and hard to counter, stop his heart into popsiclehood. CAT looked at me, nodded and rubbed
against my legs before looking up and sneering at me, as only a CAT can, and cut my access.

I came too, lying on the ground seeing only static for a long moment and then my right eye booted up
again, slowly, a dull pain in my leg and arm. I cut the pain receptors, and saw that I was laying on the
corner of Prester and John, the “cage” blown to pieces around me and the various bits of Hartman lying
all over the cracked and stinking pavement. I heard what sounded like chainsaws whining and screams
from a nearby building and custom-blades striking into flesh and metal, near a burning building not far
away. Charlie and Nancy were making good on their end, and I doubted there would be much left if the
Cops ever bothered to show up. CAT was installed and at home on my Deck, in my Cybermodem, a
satisfied red light glowing on the remains of my arm. I realized that the explosion had blown the lower
part of the arm to bits, and my right leg was heavily damaged with shrapnel and explosive bullet fire, but
no apparent “meat damage”. I activated my TRAUMA TEAM ACCESS and heard sirens and the whirling
AV-6 sounds that indicated the Ambulance Company would be on its way to meet me.

I was going to be alright, minus a hospital stay and I got my cat. Who says I don’t attract pussy?