AN: This is the last chapter before we go on a short week or two hiatus. I'll upload a bonus chapter over the hiatus for every 400 stones. So, keep stoning away.
The House of the Reaper has opened its arms to welcome:
Novices Jeff, Dario Adam, and Roseta Azmair
Their contributions and dedication to our cause will be honored through the Net and through the Stars.
---
The chrome he was running had been state of the art for a sixteen-year-old, which was a qualification that aged about as well as milk in Night City. His Paraline Mk.1 was still a capable deck, but the Mk.1 designation meant it was two full iterations behind the current production model, and the firmware he had written to optimize its performance could only compensate for so much when the underlying hardware was running on processing architecture that had already improved twice over.
The Ex-Disk was the same story. The Mk.1 he currently had served him well, but the Mk.3 offered eighteen terabytes, triple the capacity, with a data transfer rate that would let him load, deploy, and rotate daemon libraries in real time rather than pre-staging them before a breach.
Those were upgrades. Swapping out the old for the new. But the two pieces of chrome that Santi had been reading were something different entirely. They were additions.
The first was a Memory Compression Unit.
The MCU was a specialized co-processor that integrated directly into the cyberdeck's memory architecture, and its function was elegant in its simplicity. It took the thousands of daemon routines, quickhack templates, ICE-cracking algorithms, and operational subroutines that a high-level netrunner accumulated over years of work. Essentially, it was a sprawling library of code that normally consumed terabytes of storage and required careful manual management, and it compressed them into a fraction of their original footprint using a proprietary encoding scheme that preserved full operational fidelity while reducing the memory load by a factor of eight.
What that meant in practice was that Santi could carry his entire operational library, every daemon, every quickhack variant, every custom exploit he had ever written, loaded and ready to deploy, without having to choose which tools to bring on a given gig. It would eliminate the need for pre-staging, and deciding whether to load the Synapse Burnout or the Short Circuit before a breach. All of it would be compressed, indexed, and accessible in real time.
The second addition was a Synaptic Relay Network.
The SRN was a neural-interface upgrade that replaced the standard communication pathways between implants with a dedicated, high-bandwidth relay system that operated at near-instantaneous signal speed. In a standard chrome loadout, each implant communicated with the Neural Link through individual signal pathways that operated sequentially, processing commands in the order they were received. However, the SRN collapsed that sequential architecture into a parallel processing grid, allowing every piece of chrome in Santi's body to communicate simultaneously.
The practical implication was deep enough, and thinking about how his Kerenzikov could fire at the exact same instant his Kiroshis tagged a threat, instead of the current setup where the optics detected the threat, transmitted the data to the Neural Link, which then sent the activation signal to the Kerenzikov, which then engaged, it was basically a no-brainer for Santi.
The delay between those steps was measured in fractions of a second, imperceptible to most people. The SRN would make his entire chrome loadout operate as a single, unified system rather than a collection of separate implants communicating through a switchboard.
Combined with his custom unified firmware, which had already eliminated the corporate bloatware and communication conflicts between his existing chrome, the SRN would give him a hardware-level integration that no other runner in Night City was running. The firmware handled software while the SRN would handle hardware. Together, they would turn his body into a machine that processed input and output at speeds that the original manufacturers of his individual implants had never designed for. Though he would need to rewrite the firmware again once he got things installed.
He spent the second day running simulations and modeling the projected performance gains of each upgrade against his current operational baselines. The Paraline Mk.3 alone would increase his breach speed by roughly forty percent, and the Ex-Disk Mk.3 would eliminate the storage constraints that occasionally forced him to pre-stage his loadout. The MCU would turn his daemon library from a curated selection into a complete arsenal while the SRN would tie it all together into a response architecture that would make his current setup feel like it had been running on lag.
The total cost, sourced across three different vendors and one very specific ripperdoc who was the only person on the planet Santi trusted to open his skull, came to about 130,000 eddies.
It was a lot of money, but it was also the difference between walking into Dino Dinovic's world as a runner who could handle the work and walking in as a runner who was going to get himself flagged by a corporate ICE division because his hardware couldn't keep pace with his ambition.
Once he had his mind set on things, he brought up Vik's contact and called him to ask if he could drop by, to which Vik obviously said yes, and just a few hours later, Santi was descending the stairs from the alley entrance. The hydraulic door at the bottom slid open smoothly with a pressurized hiss.
The interior was a clean, ordered, and bathed in the cool, clinical light of surgical-grade overhead panels, with Vik's operating chair positioned in the center of the room and the walls lined with the precise, organized array of tools, implants, and medical hardware that defined the workspace of a man who had been cutting chrome into people for longer than Santi had been alive.
Vik was at his workbench when Santi walked in, his back turned, his hands working precisely on a small component that Santi scanned, and his Kiroshis tagged it as a disassembled neural interface housing. He didn't look up immediately, finishing what he was doing before acknowledging a visitor, a habit that conveyed respect for both his own work and the work of whoever was about to ask him to perform it.
"Kid," Vik said, setting the component down and turning on his stool to face Santi with a warm expression. "Been a while. And see, I told you that you would keep on growing."
"I think I should've stopped by now," Santi said.
"You better hope so," Vik replied. "I've fitted your spinal chrome twice already. A third adjustment is going to require me to have a conversation with your vertebrae that I don't want to have."
Santi pulled up a stool and sat down across from the ripperdoc, his elbows on his knees, and he laid out the upgrade plan.
Vik listened without interrupting, his eyes tracking Santi's face as he spoke, the expression behind the glasses shifting through the diagnostic spectrum of a doctor evaluating not just the request but the patient making it. When Santi finished, Vik turned back to his workbench, set down the neural interface housing he had been working on, and removed his magnification loupe before facing Santi again with his full attention.
"I'm guessing you've been thinking about this for a while," Vik said matter-of-factly.
"A few weeks of planning," Santi lied. "I've got a meeting with a new fixer in four days, and the work that's coming through his pipeline is going to be a step up from what I've been handling. So I need the hardware to match."
"Which fixer?" Vik asked.
"Dino Dinovic," Santi replied.
Vik's eyebrows rose a fraction. "I think I've heard of the guy, and I can only say that he plays in deep water, kid. Corporate targets and hardened vaults, and Most runners who work for him are ten years older than you and carrying twice the chrome."
"Which is why I'm sitting here," Santi said as Vik studied him for a moment, then nodded slowly with resigned acceptance.
"The Paraline and the Ex-Disk are swaps," Vik said, pulling a notepad toward him and sketching a quick diagram of the cranial access points. "Same slot, better hardware. I pull the old ones, prep the interface sites, install the new units, run calibration, and you walk out the same day. Trust me when I say this, but the Mk.3 Paraline alone is going to feel like someone dropped a second brain into your skull. The processing architecture is three generations ahead of what you're running now, and with your custom firmware ported over, the performance gains are going to be... Significant. Very significant."
"What about the MCU and the SRN?" Santi asked.
"Since they're new installations," Vik said. "The MCU integrates into the deck's memory bus, which means I'm opening up the same cranial access point I use for the Paraline and routing an additional co-processor into the existing architecture. It's clean, minimally invasive work, with negligible recovery time. Your Neural Link is already running a carbon-nanotube mesh that integrates with new hardware better than anything else I've ever worked with. The MCU will slot in like it was always supposed to be there... though the SRN is a different conversation."
"How different?" Santi asked.
"The Synaptic Relay Network replaces the signal pathways between every implant in your body," Vik said while leaning forward with his hands clasped between his knees. "That means I'm running new relay conduits along your spinal column, branching out to the Kerenzikov, the Kiroshis, and the Neural Link junction points. It's not all that dangerous, but it's not a quick install either. The relay fibers need to bond with the existing neural tissue, and that bonding process takes time. You'll be under for a few hours while I do the physical installation, and then you'll need twenty-four to forty-eight hours for the relays to fully integrate before you stress-test them."
"What does full integration feel like?" Santi asked.
"Like someone turned down the lag on your whole body," Vik said. "Right now, when your Kiroshis tag a threat, the data goes to your Neural Link, your Neural Link sends an activation signal to your Kerenzikov, and the Kerenzikov engages. That chain happens faster than almost anyone can perceive, but the SRN makes it happen simultaneously. When the Kiroshis tag the threat and the Kerenzikov fires at the same instant, because the relay network allows parallel signal processing instead of sequential, and your body stops being a collection of parts talking to each other and becomes one system. With that unified firmware of yours running on top, I honestly don't know what the upper limit of your response time will be. I've never installed an SRN on a rig that was already as tightly integrated as yours."
"But it can all be done in one sitting?" Santi asked as Vik studied him for a moment.
"Yes," Vik said finally. "Two swaps and two new installs can actually be done in one sitting, one anesthesia cycle. I'd rather do it that way than have you come back four separate times and put you under four separate rounds, and since your body's young. It recovers fast. The chrome is compatible with your existing architecture, especially with that custom firmware you've built, which, by the way, is still the most impressive piece of software I've ever seen come out of a teenager's head."
"You've said that before," Santi said.
"I'll keep saying it until it stops being true," Vik said. "Now, the cost. Four pieces total. The Paraline Mk.3 runs sixty thousand. The Ex-Disk Mk.3 is twenty. The MCU is thirty. And the SRN is twenty. That's one-thirty all in, parts and labor, and I'm not charging you my standard rate on the labor because, frankly, kid, you've been keeping me in business since you were fourteen and I consider that a standing discount."
"I've got eighty right now," Santi said. "The rest I can quickly source."
Vik waved his hand in dismissal. "Pay me eighty now; the rest comes when it comes. In this city, that makes you my favorite patient by a considerable margin."
He set the cases on the operating table beside the chair, opening each one in sequence. The Paraline Mk.3 sat in its cradle, sleek and compact and carrying the dense, precision-machined weight of hardware that cost sixty thousand eddies for a reason. The Ex-Disk Mk.3 was smaller, a dark rectangular module with contact pins that gleamed under the surgical lights. The MCU was a flat and circular co-processor no larger than a coin, its surface etched with microscopic circuit traces that caught the light in iridescent patterns. And the SRN was a kit rather than a single component, a collection of relay fibers, junction nodes, and bonding agents packed into a case with the careful, labeled organization of a surgical instrument set.
Santi looked at the four cases, then at Vik, and transferred 80,000 eddies to Vik's account through his Neural Link.
Transfer authenticated: 80,000 eddies.
Remaining balance: 18,789 eddies"
"Let's do it," Santi said.
Vik gestured to the operating chair. "Sit down. I'm going to run a full diagnostic before we start, check your current implant health, verify the interface sites, and make sure there aren't any surprises hiding in your neural architecture that I don't know about." He reached for a pair of surgical gloves. "The procedure will take approximately four hours. When you wake up, you're going to feel like someone rewired your brain, which is because I will have literally rewired your brain. I'm telling you this now before you do something stupid when you wake up. The SRN integration needs forty-eight hours before you push it. No diving, no quickhacks, no Kerenzikov activation for two days. After that, you run a calibration cycle through your firmware, and everything should come online clean."
"So two days of downtime," Santi said as he settled into the chair and felt the cushioned surface adjust to him.
"Two days," Vik confirmed. "I know that's an eternity for someone like you, but your Neural Link needs time to recognize the new relay architecture and establish stable signal pathways. If you push it before the integration is complete, you risk signal ghosting, phantom inputs, or in the worst case, a feedback loop that could fry the SRN before it's even online. And I am not installing a second one because you decided to test your Kerenzikov twelve hours after surgery."
"Understood," Santi said.
"I mean it, kid," Vik said, pointing a gloved finger at him. "Two days without any action. I've had runners on my table who said 'understood' and then jacked into the Net in the cab ride home. Two of them are dead. One of them was in a long-term care facility in the Pacifica project, with a Neuralink that occasionally tells him he's a vending machine. Don't be any of those people."
"I said understood, Vik," Santi said. "I mean it."
"Good," Vik said, his tone softening. He attached the diagnostic leads to Santi's temples, the Neural Link junction at the base of his skull, and the monitoring pads along his forearms and chest. The clinic's medical telemetry system hummed to life, projecting Santi's vitals, neural activity, and implant status across a wall-mounted display.
"Everything looks good," Vik said, reviewing the readouts. "Your existing chrome is in excellent condition. The Kerenzikov's running clean, the Kiroshis are nominal, and your Neural Link's throughput is... Still absurd. Every time I look at your numbers, I have to remind myself that you're sixteen and not a mil-spec combat netrunner with twenty years of experience."
"I'll take that as a compliment," Santi said.
"It is one," Vik said as he prepared the anesthesia injector, "Last chance to change your mind."
"No chance," Santi said.
Vik placed the injector against the port at the base of Santi's skull. "Count back from ten."
"Ten," Santi said. "Nine. Eigh..."
---
Stones are much appreciated.
The infamous P@treon exists for those of you who want to continue reading ahead during this hiatus.
patreon .com/Crimson_Reapr (Don't be a gonk, remove the space)
They get around long-form chapters (4-6k words each)