PRIVATE House Call

[Amos]

Downtown

It was a view that ten years he would have killed for now.

Now it almost seemed droll.

There was something about the old lights of Night City that he missed. This high up he didn't catch them anymore, even with his eyes they were difficult to see. With how much he paid for this fucking place he supposed that should have been true. Now he was bleeding all over it, shame that was. He would have to pay the cleaners double next week. They were good girls, never asked any questions or bothered him with any nonsense.

Honestly he wished that half his employees were half as reliable. Rolling his shoulder Amos let out a hiss as he pulled away from the injury in his side, flickering his gaze towards the bullet wound in his abdomen before throwing himself onto the couch. Fingers reaching towards bar located just behind him. A wince carrying through his side as he managed to grab the bottle of whisky on his side. "Christ what's keeping her."

He complained as he used his mouth to uncork the bottle.

The access he had granted her would carry her through the front door, and he'd called her...ah fuck, maybe time was moving a bit strange because of the blood loss.

It had been a long time since anyone had managed to get this close. He wasn't entirely sure who'd hired these guys, but they'd been professionals. Two steps to the left and he would have been a goner. It was lucky that he never slept in the same bedroom two nights in a row. They must have surveilled in but never long enough to watch his real routine. A small stroke of luck that had kept him alive this time around. Something to be grateful for.

Finally, just as he brought the bottle to his lips he heard the sound of a door opening. The elevator slid open, and the loud pang of his auto-turrets called out the fact that @Queenie had finally arrived. Target recognition software pinged her features, and then quickly allowed her access into the lounge where Amos lay half sprawled onto the couch. A hand clutched at his bloody side. In-between him and her lay three corpses. Two of them heavily augmented. The third seemed to be impaled on an ornate figure of a Knight.

"Mind your step." Amos urged. "The Auto-Turrets did most of that."

He assured her, not wanting to appear to be one of those augmented weirdos.

 

[Queenie]

Typically people of Amos' stature in the city were not her clientele. After years working beneath the boot that trod on those already down, Queenie had made a promise to herself never again. Instead she would use her talents, knowledge, and skills to assist those in need who could not afford the help.

Amos could afford just about whatever his heart desired. But Amos was also on a very short list of exceptions for her. Considering all that he'd done to help her over the last few years...

Her eyes settled, wide and round, on the dead bodies between herself and the man.

...it was only right that she helped him in return.

Violence was not part of Quinderosa Costa's repertoire, no matter how much it had been for her parents. Blood didn't turn her stomach, but the savagery of the streets never settled well. Green shifted from cyber-corpses to bleeding Amos. Right, no questions. The woman's fingers curled around the handle of an oversized briefcase in one hand and the straps of an oversized shoulderbag on the opposite shoulder. With care, she stepped around the bodies, managing to miss most of the blood so it wouldn't track, and made her way over to the couch and the mess sprawled across it.

"You did not say it was an emergency," she remarked to him quietly as she set down case and bag, "you said quick fix."

A brow curved upward at him over pursed lips as she pulled a Medtech kit from her bag and set it on the coffee table.

"It is a good thing I already know that you have trouble telling the truth. Can you take off your shirt or do I need to cut it off?"

 

[Amos]

"Details." He remarked softly, wincing slightly as he tried to reach to loosen the hem of his shirt. Frowning slightly as he looked up at her. "I have trouble giving out details."

There was a very good reason for that.

It was a quick lesson to not give anyone information. In the corporate world things like that were almost as precious as ones own name. There were few people that he wanted to know this had happened, fewer still whom he would let slip that someone had needed to treat him at all. That was why he had called Queenie, he knew that she wouldn't speak with anyone.

Amos had worked had to make sure that no one knew where this apartment was. He would have to figure out a way to track down whoever had sent this squad to kill him. This place was expensive, but he loved the view. Losing it would be an absolute shame. Another floor would be nice, but the penthouse was too ostentatiou-

Pain lanced through his side and Amos couldn't help but hiss. "I think you need to cut it."

Amos remarked, swallowing.

"It's not an emergency." The arm that had limply tried to remove his shirt shifted to the side, his torso moving so that she could get a better angle on the wound at his side. "I'm not going to bleed to death."

He remarked, and then smiled at her through the pain. "Thanks for coming, It was either you or Yella and I remembered what you said about her."

Amos couldn't help but let the joke roll over his tongue, savoring the victory. He wondered what else he would taste that night.

 

[Queenie]

"It is not a quick fix either..." Queenie tutted him as she pulled out a secondary medical kit meant for flesh and not for tech.

As for what she'd said about Yella, the woman gave him a wary side-eye with faint marks of amusement. Yella had earned her name for the amount of talking she did. Given all the rumor vines she seeded and how far and quickly they spread, she might as well have been yelling them like a herald in the square.

Cloth ripper in her hand, she affixed it over the bottom hem of his shirt and sliced it up the near side of his torso, allowing the material to open along the length of his side.

"Give me," the command was short with an open hand gesturing to the bottle in his hand which she would set aside, well out of reach, and then - "take this," a hand offered him a pain relief stim while she fished for a local anesthetic in her kit.

"The bullet is still inside," she told him and given his background he knew exactly what that meant; she'd be fishing for it.

"I know I am not supposed to ask," Queenie pre-empted the next question while she prepped the wound with antiseptic and cleaned away the blood, "but are they from Militech?"

 

[Amos]

Amos frowned for a moment, glancing down at the stim wearily. He usually didn't like taking anything that dulled his mind too much. Alcohol was easily stymied by filling the belly, something like this not so much. Still, whatever she was about to do was probably going to hurt a hell out a lot more than he wanted to actually feel. Besides, a second assassin would already have come.

"Fuck, I hope not." He answered her with a grimace.

Only one of them had actually made it to his bedroom. There had been four total. Two had been taken by the auto-turrets, one had gone into his study and the other had gone searching in his bedroom. Amos had been quick enough with the man in his bedroom, the second one had taken a moment longer.

It was then that he remembered the carpet in his bedroom was white. "I think they would just have taken me at the office."

He said with a frown.

"Or at least give me the dignity of sending more than four." This had barely been an attempt. The Turrets still had more than half their ammo and he'd reached his own gun. At least the last one had managed to poison some of his glasses before he'd killed them. This lot had been amateurs by comparison, though it did make him wonder who had sent them in the first place.

Not to mention why. "I'm going to need to track down why."

Amos said with a grimace.

 

[Queenie]

Between the two of them they had enough history and connection with Militech for any of this to make sense. Somehow. Queenie was not part of this world of his, though, so she could pass no judgement on the how of things. That these men were amateurs was not a fact she would have come up with on her own. Amos was good at what he did and despite not exactly knowing what it was that he did, the fact that he was still alive and as whole as he was spoke volumes that he did not need to speak himself.

No questions. That was the basis of their relations.

"Mm," she mused, seeing the track of further questions his last words might offer and purposefully not taking it.

"Some of them might have useful parts..." Queenie continued, filling a needle with anesthetic and giving it a tap. She looked to Amos past the needle, silently asking for permission to raid his assassins for whatever tech might still remain intact. Once they were done with this mess of his, of course. Waste not, want not.

 

[Amos]

He was more than sure that she was right about that. These guys might not have been complete professionals, but they'd moved like their cybernetics were expensive. That sort of gear didn't come cheap. "Tell you what."

There was always an angle.

"Help me find where they got them." She hadn't taken the first hook, but then there hadn't been any bait on it. "Then you can have whatever you want from them."

Amos knew that he could rely on her, and that meant she was useful in all of this. There were others that he could trust, but why put more assets into play when he could just use the one. The more that he could get from Queenie the better. Besides, he wasn't putting her in any danger, and the mods she would get from the corpses were well worth her time. Plus that was on top of what he'd pay her for the house call. "Come one."

He urged with his most winning smile. "You can make sure I don't pull out my stitches while you help."

 

[Queenie]

"You know it is a bad idea."

Queenie stared at the man in something close to sternness that she had difficulty relaying, then stuck him with the needle in the side to numb the wound.

Brow furrowed over pursed lips, she pulled the packing from the wound and reached for a pair of forceps, "Nothing will come back to me?"

It wasn't that she was hiding from anyone, exactly, but she had pulled a lot of contact strings over the past few years to get the tech and gear she needed to set up her underground surgery. Even now, she relied on those clandestine connections to be able to provide her with tech upgrades and updates or new information. It had nothing to do with any transgressions against her former employer, Queenie just wanted to help people.

But Militech didn't like doing that and she didn't want to garner any of their attention along the way. One wrong move or misstep and she could get shut down. Or worse...

Her gaze shifted back toward the downed assassins, wondering if her operations would put her in such a situation.

"It's not just me, Amos," she reminded him. There were countless lives at stake.

 

[Amos]

He winced slightly as the needle jabbed into his side. Lips pressing to a thin line for a brief moment before he shifted slightly. "Nothing at all."

Amos said, not bothering to deny that it was a bad idea. There were never any good ideas in Night City, only the least worse choice. He'd learned that lesson more than thirty years ago. The Corporate world was only worse, especially when it came to this sort of business. Someone had wanted him dead, and they had been good enough to figure out his address. That meant they at least warranted some respect.

It also meant he couldn't use his usual contacts.

There was a good chance that whoever had done this would have corporate connections. He needed people closer to the streets.

"You'll be fine, they all will be." Because once he figured out who had done this, he would make sure that none of them would walk away alive. There were a dozen ways he could do it, frame the Nomads, the Teachbarbs, half a dozen gangs that he could pull a name from. It didn't really matter, whoever had taken a shot at him wouldn't be walking by the end of the week.

"I'll even promise you security." He told her. "New cameras in your parlour."

He could take some equipment from what was going out of date.

What he had access to was still twice as good as anything civilians could get their hands on. "I think the blood loss has me feeling generous."

Amos said with a grin at her.

 

[Queenie]

He always knew how to hook the right bait. Queenie frowned, managing not to pout. New cameras at Nowear would be especially useful...

She broke her gaze from him, attempting to keep interest from showing too much, and stuck him with the needle a second time on the opposite side of the entry wound, "Maybe I poke another hole in you and you feel extra generous."

But that wasn't her style.

Numbing agent fully dosed, she reached one last time into her kit and withdrew... a stylus. This she held up to his face, "Lie back. Bite down. Don't break, I only have one."

He really brought out the sass in her like no one else did. Didn't give him a whole lot of time to rebuke her, once he was in place, she braced her hand against his side and in went the forceps to find that wily bullet.