Damien and Marcus stepped into Roger’s office just as one of his patients was leaving. The unknown woman flashed a mouth full of sharp, metal teeth as she passed by them to exit out the door that they’d entered through. The sight of her unnatural fangs sent a chill down Damien’s spine, and he wasn’t sure if Roger was the one that had given her those monstrosities.

The doctor stood next to the reclined patient’s chair at the center of the room; the same one Damien had waken up on the day before.

“What the hell was that?” Damien asked.

Roger shook his head, the ceiling lights above shining off the metal strips etched into the side of his face. “Don’t ask. It’s some stupid fad with the youngsters, and I don’t understand it one bit. Guess I’m just getting old.” He said that last part with a musing and somewhat regrettable tone.

Damien wasn’t sure if that was just an offhand comment or if Roger actually meant it. The doctor certainly looked a decade or two older than Kat and Marcus--who both appeared to be in their early twenties-- but he couldn’t be sure of anyone’s age with all the cyberware augments.

“Yo Doc, any U.P.S. packages come through?” Marcus said. “I heard the Royals were giving out gifts.”

Roger let out a slow chuckle. “So that’s who they belonged to? I wasn’t sure where they came from so I sent them through the scanner. Now that you mention it, it should have finished analyzing the items by now.” He made his way to a counter at the edge of room where a keyboard connected to a monitor mounted on the wall. A few clicks of the keyboard brought up a message stating that the analysis was complete, and another click closed the message and replaced it with a list of items. Damien and Marcus both stepped forward to get a better look.

U.T.S. Package Contents:

Titanium 20mm Hinge (x4)

O.S. II Variant Core

Kimura Base Plate

Thomson Single Barrel (x3)

G.P. Optical Cone

G.P. Torso Link

G.P. Bone Pin (x24)

Tarian Extended Clip (x8)

Decommissioned NPD Grenade Shell (x5)

“Looks like a big mishmash of random parts.” Marcus said.

Roger agreed with a hum. “They’re smart to keep their shipments jumbled up. It discourages hackers since they’ll be stealing incomplete gear. Looks like the only compatible parts here are the optical scanner components, and even then it’s only a rank two variant.”

“Eh, I already got a rank two scanner,” Marcus said. “It’s all yours if you want it, Dame.”

“Sure,” Damien said. Why not accept a free upgrade?

Roger started typing on the keyboard once again, his fingers clanking into each key. “Like I said, it’s missing the full set, so you’ll have to pick one of the variants. I’ll have the inventory system bring the items out and I’ll leave the options up on here so you can decide which one you want.”

“But I still don’t have any funds,” Damien said. “Can I pay you back after?”

Roger shook his head. “It’s fine, I won’t charge you for the labor. But you’ll have to pay for parts or bring your own in the future if you want upgrades.”

“Got it, thanks.”

“I guess Dame will get the optical scanner components and you can keep the remaining scraps, Doc.” Marcus said. “I’ve had my fun. Consider it a gift for those arms you’ve been working on. Speaking of which, you said they were done, right?”

“Mhm. Finished them earlier today. Wanna install them now?”

Marcus raised his damaged, limp wrist. “Yeah, these ones have had enough wear and tear.”

Roger chuckled in agreement and waved him over to the reclined chair at the center of the room. As they casually prepared for the procedure, Damien turned back to the monitor where a new screen layout showed the rank two optical scanner variants.

Standard Variant:

Zoom - allows user to zoom in up to 4x

Snapshot - allows user to take and save pictures through the optical scanner

Special Ops Variant:

Thermal Vision - grants access to thermal vision mode

Night Vision - grants access to night vision mode

Battle Variant:

Quantify Armor - scanning humans reveals the general state of the target’s sub-dermal armor

Damien pondered his options.

The first one seems like it has a lot of utility, and it would be great for espionage and infiltration jobs. The second one just sounds cool in general, and it would be a lot of fun to to have different modes of vision. The only problem is, I don’t know how useful it would be at this point. The third one seems to only be useful for battle, but something tells me I’m gonna be getting in a lot of fights…

After taking a minute to make his decision, Damien turned around to see a one-armed Marcus seated in the patient’s chair. He watched as Roger carefully connected a new, all-metal arm to the shoulder joint. The doctor wore a mechanical glove which appeared to have a different tool on each finger, and he cycled through the fingers on the multipurpose glove to firmly attach the prosthetic in place. It was a surprisingly quick procedure, and it didn’t appear to be painful at all.

Once Marcus confirmed that his new arm worked fine, Roger got to work detaching the remaining outdated arm, the two men cracking lame jokes the entire time. Damien found the exchange oddly endearing. He couldn’t help but notice that he was starting to warm up to these new acquaintances.

He’d only spent a day and a half with these people, but he felt like he’d gotten a good idea of who they were and how they operated. Kat and Roger were more low key, but Marcus wasn’t afraid to put himself out there. Maybe that’s why he’d made so many enemies. Yet his gut told him that there was something more to story between Marcus, the Royals, and Lieutenant Zhurkov. The little outburst during their confrontation with the NPD gave him the impression that he’d missed out on something.

During their drive here, Damien had tried to respectfully prod for more information about the other two parties, but Marcus just as respectfully shut it down, and really quickly at that. For the most part, the big pirate was an open book, but this was one area of his life he clearly didn’t want to share.

The procedure ended a few lame jokes later, and Marcus jumped to his feet the first moment he could and let out a few wild swings to test his new bionic arms. His face lit up with excitement. “Feels just as good as I thought they would. And they look awesome, don’t they?”

Damien gave an honest nod. The silver, all-metal arms looked great, and they gave him an even more intimidating look. Not that he needed it.

Roger turned to Damien. “Alright, you’re up next. Did you decide which one you want?”

“Yeah, I’ll go with the Battle Variant.”

“Can’t go wrong with that one.” Roger signaled towards the patient chair then disappeared into one of the rooms at the back of the cluttered office. Damien leaned back in the chair, and watched as the doctor returned a few moments later with a mechanical visor and a few small components in his hands. The visor went around Damien’s head and covered his eyes, turning his vision completely black. He then felt a chip slide into his neural slot.

“It might get a little bright but try to keep your eyes open,” Roger said. “Should only take a few minutes.”

Damien gave a nod then watched as the visor slowly shifted from pitch black to a blinding white, before cycling through what seemed like every color in the spectrum, and returning to darkness once again. A message then appeared before the black backdrop.

Optical Scanner II - Battle Variant Installation in progress…

A progress bar appeared underneath and it started filling up right away. It took ten seconds for the bar to reach one hundred percent, at which point the message disappeared. Damien then felt the chip slide out of his neural slot, and the visor slip over is head, revealing a blurred vision that stabilized within seconds.

“All done,” Roger said. “You’re good to go.”

“Yo, Dame. Try it out on these guns.” Marcus said while holding an exaggerated flexing pose.

Damien scanned Marcus, and for the first time, the information window revealed an armor rating. “Says they’re at one hundred percent.”

“That’s actually the status of his overall armor, not just the arms you scanned.” Roger said. “If you want to analyze specific body parts, you’ll have to upgrade your optical scanner further.”

Marcus grinned. “I knew that, I just wanted to flex.” He then turned to face Roger. “Thanks for everything Doc, you’re the best.”

“No worries. You know I do this stuff because I love to.”

“In that case, maybe we should get injured more often.” Marcus said jokingly.

Roger chuckled as he removed the multipurpose mechanical glove. “If that’s what you really wanna do, I won’t stop you. Just make sure you bring your own replacement parts or at least the funds to pay for them.”

Another reason to get more funds…, Damien thought to himself as he began to contemplate what other types of upgrades were waiting for him once he’d have the means. These thoughts only added to his desire to start making money.

“Well, Dame,” Marcus said. “It’s about time we head out. The meeting starts soon and we don’t wanna keep Zero waiting.”

Those words were music to Damien’s ears. This meeting likely meant that he could finally progress with his new quest and see what this Zero person had in store for him.

“Alright. Let’s go.”