by L. E. French
Darkside Seattle: Street Doc
by L.E. French
Dedication
For Eric, who introduced me to cyberpunk.
For Bob, Greg, and Mike, who have willingly suffered through my cyberpunk games for many moons.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 1
Stale sweat and thick smoke ceased to bother me after two shots of cheap whiskey. I leaned on the rough, grimy bar of yet another place I hadn’t bothered to check the name of, brooding over a tumbler with two more fingers of alcohol. Maybe if I slammed all that down too, I’d pass out and wake up to discover my life hadn’t been tossed into the toilet. Probably not.
Some guy in worse shape than me shuffled to the sex robot in the corner of our dimly lit hellhole and pulled its black plastic curtain shut. Tinny country music didn’t block out the sound of that poor slob fucking a machine. At least he knew it was clean, I suppose. Those things self-sanitized.
I raked a hand through my short, dark hair for the five-hundredth time. By now, I had to look and smell like shit. Before blundering into this dump, I’d wandered in a daze long enough to forget what a real bed feels like. My uptight, Japanese mother would scream with rage if she saw me, and not only because my wife tossed me out and the board took away my medical license. Surgeons must be clean-shaven. Suits must be respected. Cleanliness must be upheld.
Above all, appearance.
Sipping at my whiskey, I tried to use the uplink in my head to check the time by reflex. Nothing happened. Brad, my boss, had disabled the whole implant. Never mind that I paid for the medical upgrades myself. Never mind that it did more than control diagnostic and surgical nanosuites. No, Hideo had to be punished and isolated. My access to the news and weather needed to be cut off.
Worse, I couldn’t access my bank account. Three days ago, I landed in the gutter with nothing. A greasy Mexican in a pawn shop took my wedding ring for a wad of paper cash. With what I had left, I could maybe feed myself for another few days. Assuming I didn’t blow it all on a bender. Maybe I could wander into a dark alley and let some gangbanger beat me up for the cred I didn’t have so I could spend some time in an emergency room.
One of the four other assholes in this dive fell out of his chair and hit the sticky floor with a thump. Everyone noticed. No one cared. The bartender, a beefy man with a mohawk and clothes in better shape than mine, tossed a dingy, stained hand towel over his shoulder and approached the guy. He checked the drunk’s pulse and grunted. I wish I could say it surprised me to see him rifle through the guy’s pockets and take all the cash he found. Tucking a handful of bills and change into his pocket, the bartender picked up the guy’s half-empty glass of crappy beer and returned to the bar.
“He dead?” I asked out of curiosity.
“Nope. Not yet.”
I knocked back the rest of my whiskey, hoping it would make my brain shut up. Nothing else had worked yet. Setting the glass on the bar, I tried to figure out what to do with myself. My wife, Ai, had everything. She’d probably already filed for divorce. I could go back and contest it. Except then I’d have to stand up in a courtroom and argue about whether I could pay child support or not. I’d get arrested and nothing good would come from that.
“You want another one?” the bartender asked, already reaching for the bottle.
“No.” I fished money out of my pocket and sighed at the pathetically thin stack of worn paper. Dropping a bill on the bar, I watched the bartender notice and nod at how much I thought the swill he’d served me was worth. When I stood and headed for the door, he didn’t stop me, so I figured we were even.
I stepped outside and hunched my shoulders in the light rain and harsh neon of evening in Darkside Seattle. The locals called it DeeSeat. Until three long days ago, I’d only heard about this place on the news. Every day, the chipper blonde on the holoscreen started the morning by reporting about someone knifed, shot, run down, or overdosed the night before in Darkside Seattle.
Then I went to work at the most advanced surgical center in the country, where everything gleamed and sparkled. My Madison Park office floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked Lake Washington. I imagined Brad, the chief surgeon, going through my desk, tossing my stuff into a box and shoving it into storage. Or maybe he threw it all out. Hell, the bastard probably gave it to Ai.
I ignored the hookers catcalling me and the chipheads begging for a fix, a burger, or spare change. Hard plastic screens covering the walls flickered as I shuffled past, half of them broken or broadcasting static, and the other half unable to connect to my disabled ’link and pick an advertisement based on my preferences. I turned away from the random brunette shoving her airbrushed, gold-painted boobs at screen after screen. They reminded me too much of Bunny’s augmented breasts.
Muffled gunshots shattered a memory of bending Bunny over my desk at work. When I looked up, I saw two men wearing black pleather trench coats with a creepy pair of eyes painted on the back stumble through a door into an alley festooned with broken crates, overfilled dumpsters, and rotting garbage. One half-carried the other. He used their bodies to shut the door and leaned against it. The other man slumped in his arms, unable to help.
Someone thumped against the door from the inside, knocking the two men to the wet concrete. My past as an emergency room doctor sent me running to their aid. Adrenaline coursing through me, I dove in head first, not giving a crap about good guy or bad guy. These men—up close, I realized they couldn’t be older than twenty—needed help. Throwing myself against the door, I held it shut while someone on the inside tried to shove it open.
The one able-bodied kid patted the other down, shoving aside the shreds of a red wool scarf. At first, I thought he might be mugging the guy. Way to go, Hideo. Bravo for jumping in and doing the wrong thing. Then I saw blood smeared on his hands.
Their assailant stopped trying to open the door. I let go and lurched into a crouch beside the fallen kid. “What happened?” Shoving his hands out of the way, I probed for a wound, not sure what I could do about it under these conditions.
Brad could take away my license, but he couldn’t take away the part of me that had demanded I become a doctor in the first place.
“Shot,” the one kid sobbed, panic making him seem even younger than I thought. I revised my estimate of his age down to sixteen. He shrank on himself, huddling inside his trench coat. “He had a gun. We didn’t think he’d have a gun.”
“Where?” When the kid covered his face, I focused on finding the wound. I shoved the dying kid’s coat aside and found blood on his plastic mesh shirt, then the bleeding wound in his side. At a guess, it probably hit his kidney, which he’d survive if I could stop the bleeding. Getting the bullet out in this alley seemed like a stupid idea without tools. I didn’t even have a pocket knife. “What’re your names?”
The kid whimpered as I revealed the injury. “We have to get out of here. Deadbolt’s gonna kill us.”
His panic reminded me of my four-year-old daughter when she woke up from a nightmare. Ai had much better skills at handling her terror. I only ever floundered. Hotshot surgeon man could keep his shit in the operating room, but not in the face of a little girl’s tears. Out here, I had no Ai to fall back on.
“We can move him, but we’ll have to be careful.” I did everything in my power to scoop up the unconscious kid wi
thout making his injury worse. He weighed too much for me to move very fast. So long as we didn’t have to go far, I’d manage. “Lead me someplace we’ll be safe for a while and I’ll help your friend.”
The kid scrambled to his feet and wiped his face. “What can you do?”
The real answer? Not much. We’d probably reach a squalid dump in time to watch this poor kid die. No ambulance would get here soon enough, even if I had the ability to call for one. Looking into the other kid’s eyes, seeing how much he needed his friend, I couldn’t tell him that. Instead, I forced myself to pretend everything would be fine. With a determined nod, I squared my shoulders and took the first step out of the alley.
“I’m a doctor. Let’s go.”
Chapter 2
Panting and shaking, I stumbled inside an abandoned gas station. Delusion, as my guide insisted upon calling himself, slammed the door shut, throwing a cloud of dust over us. I laid Phantom on the first surface I saw, a grime-covered counter strewn with garbage. The elite surgeon in me curled my lip in disgust at the conditions I had to work under.
Checking Phantom’s pulse, I found it thin but still present. This kid might make it. I stripped his coat off with care and hiked up his shirt while scanning the small cashier’s office. “Delusion, I need a knife, something like tweezers, clean water, something to soak up blood, and whatever you can find to hold him together afterward. Any kind of tape or a needle and thread. Something.”
Delusion produced a survival knife with a black handle and serration on the back edge. I would have preferred a scalpel. Something about beggars and choosers flitted through my mind and I took the knife. Thank goodness Phantom was already unconscious.
“I’ll look around for the rest, Doc.” Delusion dove into the task of searching the shelves and drawers behind the counter. He seemed happier to have a task and a way to contribute. At the least, it kept him too busy to fret.
I shucked my suit jacket and let it fall on the floor. Holding the knife, I noticed my hands shaking. The stupid disabled implant controlled all the hormones released by my emotional state to keep that from happening. I’d have to calm myself down the old-fashioned way. “No pressure,” I muttered. “Just going to blind extract a bullet in a dirty shack with a dirty knife, no assistants, no nanites, and no blood transfusions.”
On the bright side, if I killed Phantom, he’d be no worse off than if Delusion had dragged him home. “I hope you’re healthy, kid.” I took a deep breath, held the tip of a knife much too large for the job, and visualized what I meant to do.
Delusion burst in and scared the shit out of me. I dropped the knife and squealed like my daughter. Somehow, I managed not to wet my pants. Or maybe I did and couldn’t tell since I was already soaked.
“I set a bowl outside to collect rainwater,” Delusion said, apparently oblivious to my distress. Or maybe he didn’t care. He held out a pair of needlenose pliers, an old box of feminine sanitary pads, and a roll of duct tape. “Will this stuff work?”
Picking up the knife, I nodded. Combined with a few deep breaths, crouching and straightening gave me a chance to calm down. “Set it all on the counter.” While Delusion obeyed, I steeled myself to cut this kid open.
Delusion gulped and covered his eyes. “Don’t kill him,” he whimpered. “That’s my brother.”
No pressure, right? “Chikusho,” I breathed. Snatching up the pliers, I cringed at the amount of grease and dirt on the metal. I wiped them on my pants and hoped Phantom had gotten his tetanus booster. With a deep breath, I eased the tip of the knife into the wound. Blood filled the cavity as I cut his flesh and eased the wound open.
I waited for a nurse to do her job at the same time I waited for my implant to tell me exactly where to find the bullet. And then I scolded myself for being such a creature of habit. This problem fell on me and whatever I could convince Delusion to do. No crutches.
“Delusion, grab a pad and use it to soak up blood for me.”
He gulped and followed my order. As an assistant, he could’ve been worse. “There’s a lot of blood,” he whispered.
“There’s always a lot of blood.” I gritted my teeth and did the damned job. When I got a grip on the bullet with the pliers, I felt a rush of victory. Then I wiggled it out of Phantom’s body and wanted to whoop. I hadn’t felt anything but determined and confident during a procedure since medical school. One week after I graduated, I got my emotion regulator. The upgrade had been worth it. Until now, of course.
In that moment, I hated Ai more than I’d ever hated anyone or anything before. Then I remembered I still had a patient to save. And dammit, I could do anything and save anyone with these incredible hands. With Delusion’s help, I washed the wound and covered it with pads and duct tape.
Phantom’s pulse remained weak but steady, and I was a god. “He still needs real medical care,” I told Delusion with a grin I couldn’t suppress, “but he’s going to live.”
Delusion hugged me and sobbed his gratitude into my bloody shirt. When he pulled away, wiping his nose, he looked up at me with wide eyes, the gaze of a child in awe of his hero. I basked in the glow. “I called for a ride,” he said with a sniffle. “They’ll be here soon.”
“Good.” Hands on my hips, I felt like a goddamned superhero. With nothing but my bare hands and some crappy tools, I saved a kid’s life. Brad couldn’t take that away from me. Neither could Ai. My attention wandered to the office of this old gas station. With some work, it could make a cheap surgical suite good enough for DeeSeat. If I could get people to pay me something, I could get the right tools, maybe even hire a nurse.
“I don’t suppose you could afford to pay me something? I’m kind of…” I groped for ways to fill in the blank that didn’t seem pathetic or reveal too much. “Life is kind of beating me down right now.”
Delusion wiped his knife on his jeans and stuck it in the sheath clipped to his belt. “I don’t have anything, but Mom does. Come with us and you can ask her. She’ll want to meet the guy who saved Phantom’s life anyway.”
Call me a bad person if you want, but hearing they had a mother surprised me. I’d figured them for street kids. “Sure,” I said, still sitting on a cloud of invincibility. With a good night’s sleep, a solid meal and a change of clothes, I could take on Ai in court, get the charges against me dropped, and have my license reinstated. I could do anything. Only the knowledge I looked like hell stopped me from marching home.
Five minutes later, I saw a black SUV stop on the cracked asphalt in front of the gas station. I hadn’t been inside a road-rider in years. My car, a top-of-the-line sedan from only two years ago, accessed the city’s paid grid and drove itself without touching the ground. Using the paid grid meant I soared over the schleps stuck in the public grid, or worse, the ground-bound grid.
Through the dingy, cracked glass, I watched two brawny men in trench coats like Delusion and Phantom’s step out of the large vehicle and destroy my sense of victory. I could imagine each of them snapping me in half by glaring too hard. Delusion burst outside and ran to the one with the mohawk. He threw his arms around the man in the drizzle and held on for dear life.
Still inside, I gulped and checked Phantom’s pulse again. No matter how heroic I might have been in Delusion’s eyes, if this kid died, I had a strong feeling those two men wouldn’t take it well.
Chapter 3
I picked up my suit jacket, smearing it with blood. Nothing could save it now, so I wiped my hands on it. Phantom still breathed and his heart still beat. My hands still shook too.
The door opened and a wall of man stepped through. His thick beard was enough to make me question my sanity for remaining in the room. Muscles bulged across his entire body and his mohawk stood in rain-wilted spikes. He clomped heavy black boots across the small room until he stood toe-to-toe with me. I had to look up to see his face.
“Delusion says you saved Phantom’s life,” he rumbled, his deep voice resonating in my chest.
My mouth went dry
. At work, I always had the ability to call for security and the understanding that the doctor is the god in the room. No such barrier divided us here. This man radiated contained violence like a tiger paced inside him. An unbidden, unwanted visual of him punching his giant fist through my chest made me shiver. All thoughts of asking for payment fled.
“Yes,” I squeaked. “He, ah, he still needs care.” My voice cracked. I cleared my throat. “I did what I could here.”
He stared at me, his dark eyes hard and flat. “Can you provide that care?”
“W-with the right tools and environment, yes.” For the moment, I decided to be proud of myself for not wetting my pants and for only stuttering once.
His attention shifted to Phantom. “Get in the car,” he spat at me.
“Yes, sir.” I used extreme care to avoid touching him as I stepped around him. The moment my foot hit the asphalt outside, a voice inside my head screamed for me to run. Delusion had already climbed into the car. The other big man stood beside the open door, waiting for Phantom and the mohawk. They had no idea I’d been invited along.
I’d done my best for Phantom, but these people terrified me. Turning to flee, I saw the drab, gray street with its broken asphalt and scraggly weeds. Screens on the walls showed half-naked women and products I couldn’t afford anymore. Flashing signs offered sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll without the glamor implied by the cliché. I had nothing to run to, only things to run from.
With a sigh, I hurried to the car and climbed inside. Delusion flashed me a grateful smile and clutched at my arm. Sitting on worn leather seats, we watched mohawk guy carry Phantom outside with more gentle care than I expected. Both big men climbed into the front seat, Phantom held in mohawk guy’s lap, and the other guy started the engine.
Too nervous to speak, I gripped the plastic armrest and concentrated on breathing. We bounced over potholes and cracks. I saw crumbled buildings, desolate empty lots, a collapsed section of freeway, and blackened tree trunks stabbing the darkening sky. DeeSeat lived up to its name here, and I wondered how big a mistake I’d made by getting into this car.
