Chapter 23: The Rite of Restoration
Rebecca drove the battered Goodwood as if it were a combat-jet, the engine's roar a tearing scream as it rocketed toward Night City. Joric's massive frame was crammed into the passenger seat, his dark crimson robes a stark, alien presence in the vehicle's cluttered interior. The servo-skull hovered silently in the back, its oculars a faint, pulsing light in the gloom.
Rebecca's heart hammered in time with the pistons. Her hands were clamped so tightly to the steering wheel that her knuckles were white. Through a blur of tears, she kept glancing at the silent, red-robed figure beside her.
Joric, in contrast, was perfectly still. His optical sensors calmly scanned the blur of the passing wasteland as it was devoured by the dense, decaying, neon-drenched megastructures of the city. The air began to thicken with the complex stench of ozone, chemical exhaust, cheap synthetic perfumes, and the unidentifiable metabolic waste of a metropolis. This was Night City. It matched the data-fragments in his archive, but it was far more real, more raw, more oppressive.
"Almost there... It's in Watson... a clinic called the 'Thousand Needles,' Glen's place..." Rebecca's voice was still trembling.
She wrenched the wheel. The car screamed into a dark, trash-filled alley, the sound of the brakes drawing a few barks and a paranoid glance from a curtained window. The car slammed to a halt at the back door of a non-descript shop. A flickering neon sign above it was misspelled: 'THOUSAND NEDLES – REPAIR & MODS'.
Rebecca was out of the car before it stopped rocking, stumbling as she threw herself at the reinforced metal door. Joric extricated his large form from the passenger seat, the servo-skull drifting silently after him. His sheer size and crimson-lit optics drew several hostile stares from the alley's shadows, but a single, indifferent glance from him was all it took for those shadows to pull back.
The clinic's interior was even smaller and more chaotic than the alley. The air was a thick cocktail of harsh antiseptics, burnt wiring, cheap lubricant, and the un-scrubbable, metallic tang of blood. Unidentified, secondhand, and broken cybernetics were piled in boxes and on shelves, choking every corner. A single, stained, old-model medical chair and a simple operating slab dominated the center of the room.
A thin, disheveled man with hollow eyes—Glen—was frantically working a life-monitor, trying to stabilize Pilar, who was unconscious on the slab. He wore a filthy leather apron, his arms covered in crude, self-installed data-jacks.
Dorio was there, too, leaning against a wall with her arms crossed, her face grim. Her eyes widened in shock as Joric entered.
Pilar was deathly pale, his breathing shallow. His abdomen was covered in thick gauze, already soaked black with blood. He was hooked to several whining, jury-rigged machines, his vitals fluctuating wildly.
"Glen! How is he?!" Rebecca ran to the table.
The ripperdoc looked up, his face slick with the sweat of failure and panic. "Rebecca... Gods, you're here... I... I'm trying! I slowed the bleeding, but the internal damage... his nerve-bundles are shredded, infection is off the charts, and the shrapnel from that old chrome of his... I can't... He needs a real trauma center, high-grade..."
His voice trailed off as his gaze locked onto Joric, and then to the hovering servo-skull. His mouth fell open. "Who... what the hell is that?"
"Glen, just shut up! This is the Boss, he can save him! Boss, please!" Rebecca was sobbing, focusing all her hope on Joric.
Joric ignored the ripperdoc's stunned expression and moved to the slab. His optical lenses performed a full, comprehensive scan. A cascade of nanometer-scale damage-assessment data flowed through his vision: Condition: Critical. As described. Patient's state has been exacerbated by the ripperdoc's crude, unsanctified ministrations.
Joric raised a hand, silencing whatever Glen was about to say. His voice, filtered through the vocalizer, was flat, without a trace of emotion. "Assessment complete. The damage is treatable. I require a clear, sanctified field."
"S-Sanctified? Here?" Glen looked at his own blood-spattered, junk-filled workshop as if Joric were insane.
Joric did not explain. The servo-skull's oculars flashed blue, and an invisible, low-power sterilizing-ultraviolet field and an air-purification wave instantly expanded from it, creating a perfect, sterile bubble around the operating slab.
At the same time, several slender, precise mechadendrites emerged from beneath Joric's robes, their tips gleaming with a variety of advanced medical tools: a high-frequency las-scalpel, a nano-stitcher, a tissue-regeneration inductor, and micro-extraction claws.
Glen and Dorio could only stare, their minds unable to process the level of technology on display.
++[Servo-skull: Assistive Augury. Monitor vitals. Project optimal incision-litany.]++ Joric commanded in a burst of binary.
++[Affirmative.]++ the skull replied, its jaw clicking as it projected a perfect, 3D holographic map of Pilar's internal trauma, detailed down to the last torn capillary.
The surgery began.
Joric's movements were a blur, faster than their eyes could track, yet possessed of an absolute, mechanical precision and grace. The laser made bloodless, perfect cuts. Nano-probes delicately extracted shrapnel. A faint energy-field stimulated tissue to regenerate at an accelerated rate. Microscopic machines swarmed over the shredded nerves, not just repairing, but optimizing the damaged pathways and shoddy, old-world interfaces.
Glen was mesmerized. His own crude tools clattered to the floor. He watched like a lowly acolyte, muttering, "Impossible... that precision... that tech... it's... it's not possible..."
Dorio held her breath, finally understanding the source of Rebecca's desperate hope. Rebecca herself had her hands clamped over her mouth, silent tears of relief streaming down her face.
The entire procedure took less than an hour.
When Joric retracted the final mechadendrite, the horrific, gaping wound on Pilar's abdomen was gone. It was replaced by flawless, newly-knitted skin, with not even a scar to mark the trauma. His color had returned, and his breathing was deep and even. He looked healthier than he had before the injury.
Joric produced a syrette filled with a self-fabricated, high-energy nutrient solution and handed it to the servo-skull, which injected it into Pilar's neck. "Wake him."
The stimulant was instantaneous. Pilar's eyelids fluttered. He looked blankly at the ceiling, then his hand instinctively went to his stomach.
"I... I'm not dead?" His voice was hoarse, but strong.
"PILAR!" Rebecca threw herself at the slab, laughing and crying at the same time.
Pilar sat up. The motion made Glen gasp, but Pilar did it with an ease that shocked even himself. He looked down, flexing his limbs. "Holy... I feel... I feel preem! Like I'm brand new! All my old, glitchy pains... they're just... gone?"
He looked at Joric, his eyes filled with a new, profound awe. "Boss... you..."
Joric inclined his head. "Part of the transaction. Remember the 'payment' your sister promised."
Glen finally snapped out of his shock, stumbling forward, his voice trembling. "S-Sir... Magos... how? How did you do that? That technology... it was a miracle! I... I've been a ripper in Watson for fifteen years, I've never seen... please... I must know..."
His eyes were burning with a desperate, fervent hunger for the knowledge, for the sheer technological supremacy he had just witnessed.
Joric's crimson optics turned to Glen, analyzing him. The ripperdoc was crude, his sanctum a hovel. But he had tried, and his awe at the technology, his thirst for the knowledge, was genuine. A potential acolyte? A lay-servitor to enact his will in this city?
He did not answer Glen's frantic questions. He simply stated, "Your protocols are unsanctified. Your knowledge requires... re-consecration."
He turned away, his gaze falling on Rebecca and Dorio. "He must not remain here. Return him to your safehouse. He will require 24 hours of rest to adapt to the new neural interfaces."
His attitude was cold, direct, as if he had just completed a simple device repair, not performed a resurrection. The contrast only made him seem more unknowable.
Without another word, he turned and strode for the door, his dark red robes sweeping the floor. The servo-skull drifted silently after him.
Rebecca nodded dumbly, and with Dorio, helped a still-dazed Pilar off the slab.
Glen stood frozen, watching the red-robed figure and his floating skull disappear into the alley. A storm was raging in his mind. What he had seen today had shattered his entire understanding of medicine and technology.
That final, cold judgment... "Your knowledge requires re-consecration." Was it a condemnation, or was it the faintest starlight, a path to a higher doctrine?
He opened his mouth, but no words came out, his mind reeling.