Chương 48: Real Eyes, Realize, Real Lies I

"The eyes are useless when the mind is blind." - Mark Twain The morning sun broke across Night City with a bright shine. It was rare for NC to get a day like this. The smog that usually choked the sky into an overcast ceiling had thinned overnight, and by 9 AM, the sun was throwing clean, golden light across the windshield of Julia's Galena as she navigated the congested streets of Santo Domingo toward Watson. The engine purred like a panther, while the bodywork was a mess of rust.

The Galena looked like absolute drek, and it drove like a dream.

Santi sat in the passenger seat, one arm resting on the door, watching the neighborhoods scroll past, leaving behind the decaying homes of Rancho Coronado, weaving through the industrial sprawl of Arroyo, and up into the corridors of Kabuki. As they drove, the scenes they witnessed as they passed by were nothing new, but the sunlight made everything look different.

The graffiti on the megabuildings caught the light in a way that made gang tags and political slogans glow with an almost festive quality their creators most definitely intend or possess. Julia drove defensively and with a running commentary on the behavior of every other driver on the road.

"That damn gonk just cut across three lanes without signaling," she muttered, her right eye twitching as she tapped the brake just as an overloaded Thornton Colby swerved in front of them.

"In a construction zone in broad daylight. These people have absolutely no respect for others."

"Ma, can you stop already?" Santi asked as he rolled his eyes.

"You've been narrating every single gonk's traffic violations since we left the house."

"And I will continue to narrate them until people in this city learn how to operate a vehicle," Julia replied, the car automatically downshifting as they turned into the narrower side streets of Little China.

"Your father used to do the same thing, and it drove me crazy. Then I started driving in this city and understood completely why they do it." They parked in a tight alley spot two blocks from the Vik's clinic. Julia killed the engine and sat for a moment, hands still on the wheel, staring through the windshield at nothing in particular.

"Hey, you okay, Ma?" Santi asked, an eyebrow rising in concern. Julia exhaled slowly and nodded.

"The last time I was in Viktor's clinic, he called my Agent in the middle of the night and told me you were on his table with shattered ribs because some chromed-up solo decided to use your chest as a punching bag." She turned to look at him, her dark eyes carrying the residual weight of a memory that would probably never fully heal.

"I sat next to you for hours, mijo. Singing to you while you were under, not knowing if you were going to wake up with brain damage or not wake up at all. And then before that, you had gotten all this chrome in you, and even farther down, when you were eight years old, your father was telling me it was all going to be fine." Silence weighed the car down as she stared at his face for a while, a melancholic smile starting to creep on her face.

"You were so small, my papacito... And now look at you, all grown up." Santi didn't know what to say, so he put his hand over hers on the steering wheel and squeezed it. Julia closed her eyes, a tear slipping past her closed lids as she nodded to herself.

"Ay papi," she let out a heavy sigh.

"You might not think it now, but in the future, when you have children of your own, you'll realize just how fast time flies... If only Ale was here to see you..." Santi shifted uncomfortably in his seat at the mention of his father. He stared out through the windshield, trying to remember the man who had once been his father.

The "evolution" his brain had undergone had allowed him to remember things more sharply, which, paired with his photographic memories, allowed him to encapsulate an almost perfect mental image of his father. He really was his father's spitting image... But all this thinking about his father started to sour inside of him as he remembered that the very reason he was able to better recall details was also part of the reason why his father wasn't with them anymore.

And thinking about that made him remember that Militech had been the ones to zero him, and he was just hours away from going into bed with one of their execs. The thought alone made him want to vomit, and his mind was pulled deeper into an abyss of his own making when his mother finally broke the silence.

"Bueno, that's enough of that. Let's go get you those eyes your lovely Polish kitty recommended." They walked the two blocks in comfortable silence, weaving through the morning foot traffic of Little China. Even at nine in the morning, the district hummed with energy as street vendors were done setting up stalls and the scents of frying synth-noodles and cheap coffee mixed with the ozone tang of too much neon running too close together.

They approached a group of Tyger Claws who were leaning against a row of parked Kusanagi bikes outside a pachinko parlor, their chrome glinting in the unusual sunlight, but they paid no attention to the tall, white-haired kid and his mother walking past. The Chakra Harmony storefront looked just as it had before, cluttered windows still full of cheap plastic crystals, synth-crystal healing pyramids, and tarot card sets that promised to align your chakras for twenty eddies.

The bell chimed weakly when Santi pushed the door open, and the scent of patchouli and burning incense hit them both like a wall. Julia wrinkled her nose.

"How is this smell even legal?"

"I don't know what makes you think it is," Santi said, leading her through to the back door without stopping. They stepped out into the enclosed alley and down the sunken stairwell, stopping just in front of the reinforced clinic door. A green laser swept past his face as the biometric scanner went to work, chirped in recognition, and sent a signal for the door to hiss open on its hydraulic track. The familiar cocktail of medical-grade alcohol and ozone bathed the clinic, and it always would.

Santi stepped in first, boots quiet on the tiled floor, and looked around, noticing that the clinic was the same as it had been during his last visit. Clean and organized, the way Vik always liked to operate. Vik was at his workbench near the far wall, his back to the door as he sorted through a tray of micro-surgical instruments. He had a tank top on, exposing his powerful shoulders, turning at the sound of the door, his circular wire-rimmed glasses catching the overhead light as he did.

When he saw Santi, a warm and tired smile creased the lines around his eyes.

"Well would you look at that, kid. This is the second time you've dropped by unprompted in less than twelve months. People are going to start thinking I'm running a daycare down here." Then his gaze shifted past Santi's shoulder, and his smile changed into something softer. Stolen novel; please report.

"Julia," Vik said quietly, setting down a pair of neural calipers.

"Good to see you walking in here under your own power for once, instead of sitting in that chair crying over the knucklehead of a son you've got." Julia let out a short laugh, then crossed the distance and wrapped her arms around Vik. He stiffened for half a second before returning it, resting one of his hands on her back.

"It's good to see you, Viktor," Julia said, slightly muffled.

"You too, Julia," Vik replied, his voice carrying genuine warmth before he stepped back to study her face.

"You look good. You look healthy."

"Well," Julia said, wiping the corner of one eye.

"I have my son to thank for that. He's shaping up to be a good young man. He's even got himself a girlfriend."

"Ma, c'mon," Santi called out.

"I already told you it's not like that." But his words didn't matter, especially not to Vik, who was finally having a normal chat with someone for once.

"Hah, it was about damn time you did," Vik chuckled.

"I was starting to think you were batting for the other team. Nothing wrong with that, you do you, who am I to judge, but it's just that that's usually the case when you've got a handsome young man who says he's not interested in a girl." Santi sighed and hung his head.

"She's not my output, Vik. We're just chooms." Julia scoffed as she turned to Santi.

"That hug she gave you yesterday begs to differ."

"Oh, so he's a player. Making moves already, I see you, kid," Vik chuckled again as he gestured toward the pair of metal stools near his workbench.

"How about you two take a seat so we can go down memory lane for a bit?" They talked for a while. Julia filled Vik in on the small, mundane details of their life that Santi never would have thought to mention. How the neighbors were decent enough, even if their houses were falling apart. How Santi had fixed the hot water heater, installed new solar panels a while ago, everything. And all the while, Vik listened attentively, understanding just how much the little things in life mattered.

Eventually, the conversation reached the natural pause where pleasantries ended and the real purpose for their visit began.

"So," Vik said, leaning against his workbench while crossing his arms.

"I'd be a gonk to think that you decided to drop by unannounced just for a social call. And Julia, I doubt you want any chrome. So tell me, what do you need, kid?" Santi straightened his slouching back on the stool.

"I need a set of Kiroshi optics. I'm down for some Mk. 2's, but I'd prefer Mk. 3, if you got them." Vik raised an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth twitching with amusement.

"Kiroshis, huh? Let me guess, you finally got tired of lugging that handheld deck around and having to jack in and out every time you pull a gig? I say it's 'bout time. You lasted longer than I thought you would, doing that. All that chrome was throttled by the fact that you had decided to skimp out on Kiroshi's. It's like driving a Rayfield with no windshield." Santi scratched the back of his head and let out an awkward chuckle, but Julia spoke before he could.

"Viktor," Julia said, her tone flattening into a no-nonsense register that Santi recognized as the precursor to something uncomfortable.

"Could you believe that my bright, brilliant son has been a complete gonk? If it wasn't for this cute Polish girl, I would've never known that he had been pulling stunts that could fry his brain. Running around in the Net without cybereyes." Vik looked at her with confusion, his gaze flicking to Santi and back.

"Well, I mean, sure, Julia, he doesn't have optics. But he's got the Paraline, and so long as he's jacking into the deck and giving it the extra processing power and reading the data it displays back through the neural interface, everything's chilled. Is it ideal? Not really, but it works. I mean, shit, there been plenty of runners who operated that way back in the day." Julia's expression didn't change, but she looked at her son with eyes that made a shiver run down his spine. Santi sighed.

"I haven't been doing that, Vik." The clinic went quiet, leaving nothing but the hum of equipment and the distant, muffled bass of Kabuki bleeding through the concrete above.

"Come again?" Vik said slowly.

"I haven't been jacking into the handheld deck for gigs. Not for a long time." Santi said as he met his eyes.

"I've been building the visual architecture of the Net inside my head. My Neural Link processes the raw telemetry and translates it into spatial data that I then use to construct an image internally. ICE structures, subnet mapping, daemon compilation, if it's got netrunner on it, I've done it all with no optics or external display." Vik stared at him, his arms uncrossing and his hands dropping to the workbench behind him.

"Wait, let me see if I got this right. You've been rendering the Net in your head, in real-time, all the while you've been compiling offensive code and still maintaining physical awareness." Santi nodded slowly.

"Well, when you put it like that-""How in the fuck haven't you fried your synapses?" Vik said, the words escaping his lips before he could catch himself. He closed his eyes and pressed two fingers against the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. Several seconds passed before he opened them again, his tone shifting from alarmed to reluctant.

"Alright. You know what, actually, maybe the evolution your brain has undergone would allow it. After all, that carbon-nanotube mesh stimulated thousands of new synthetic neural pathways and has sent your neuroplasticity so far off the charts that standard models just don't apply." He paused, rolling his jaw.

"But shit, I'm no scientist, kid. I'm a ripper. I'm throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks." He pushed himself off the workbench and took a step closer as his expression hardened.

"But I'll tell you this. Even if your brain can handle the processing bandwidth, and that's a big if, the thermal load is still real. Your organic tissue doesn't care how evolved your neural pathways are. Heat is heat. The Paraline generates thermal output when it processes data, and if the Kiroshis aren't there to share that load, the deck is dumping all that heat directly into your grey matter. If it hasn't cooked you yet, it will.

Maybe not today, maybe not next month, but you're definitely looking at cumulative thermal damage down the line. Scar tissue on the mesh. Degraded synaptic response times... And once that starts, I doubt you'd find any chrome in the world that fixes it."

"I get it," Santi said quietly.

"That's why I'm here." Vik held the look for a while longer, then nodded and walked toward the secure storage cabinet on the far wall, keying a code into the lock.

"As long as you understand that chrome isn't an end-all, be-all. It gives, and it takes just as much, if not more," he said over his shoulder.

"You're in luck, kid. Kiroshi Mk. 3s are usually on backorder for up to four months. Corporate supply chain's been a mess since that Kang Tao shipping fiasco last quarter, and then you take into consideration the little shitshow that is being mounted in our own backyard by the NUSA, and God knows just how long that line truly is. But I had a client cancel on their pair last week. Some solo out of Heywood who decided mantis blades were a higher priority than being able to see properly.

Gonk move in my opinion, but his loss is your gain." The cabinet opened, and Vik withdrew a matte-black Kiroshi case that was sealed, setting it on the surgical tray before popping the clasps. Inside, nestled in form-fitting anti-static foam, sat a matched pair of Kiroshi Mk. 3 optical implants. Two synthetic spheres, about the size of natural human eyes, their surfaces a matte gunmetal grey threaded with hairline circuitry.

"Now these... these are the real deal, Kid," Vik said, lifting one with care.

"Full-spectrum scanning. Integrated threat-detection overlay. Real-time data rendering with a bandwidth ceiling that, matched with your natural processing power, will make your Paraline sing. I'll be pre-loading the standard diagnostic suites, environmental analysis packages, and a facial recognition database tied to the NCPD public registry." He set the optic back in its foam.

"Figured you'd want the works."

"That sounds preem, Vik," Santi said.

"You bet your ass it is. Procedure usually takes about ninety minutes," Vik continued.

"Less invasive than the Paraline installation, but it's still brain-adjacent work. And the real Nova shit about this bad boy, it can be routed to the optical nerves through a synthetic bridge that interfaces directly with your Neural Link, which means you'll have full native integration from the second you boot up. Meaning you won't need to calibrate anything since your Link will treat the Kiroshis like they've been there since day one." He gestured toward the surgical chair.

"Hop on, the chair ain't gonna sit itself." Santi slid off the stool and walked to the chair, settling into the familiar chair that he had sat in on multiple occasions that marked new points in his life. Julia stood near the door, arms wrapped around herself in an identical posture she had once held when he had first gone under in this very room.

"Julia," Vik said gently, loading a pneumatic hypo-syringe with a clear sedative.

"This will be a straightforward procedure. Ninety minutes, tops. You can wait upstairs if you'd like, but you're more than welcome to stay."

"I'll be staying," Julia said softly. Vik nodded and turned to Santi, pressing the hypo against his neck.

"Just a pinch, kid. You know the drill."

"I know the drill," Santi confirmed. There was a soft hiss, and the cold spread through his bloodstream as the world went soft around the edges and lights blurred into warm halos.

"Count backwards from ten."

"Ten. Nine. Eigh..." His chin dropped, and the biomonitor chimed in a slow and steady pace.