[NORTH KABUKI – Kowalski’s Clinic]

  Wednesday | 16 JUN 2077 | 09:45

  [Night City Status: Mostly peaceful]

  Will plopped himself down in the chair at the reception desk. He was exhausted. In the past week, he and the good doctor had performed the Herculean task of cleaning out all the trash, including bodies in various states of decomposition, left behind by the facility's previous owners. Getting rid of all the trash was a different kind of nightmare, since waste management wasn’t a top priority for Night Corp in Kabuki. They had been forced to hire Nomads with a dump truck to drop off all the various debris, human remains, and garbage at the Night City Municipal Landfill. NCPD had outright refused to help, reminding Will why he had left in the first place.

  Once the building had been cleaned, they were able to tackle the repairs. Doc Kowalski bought enough plaster and plywood to build a small house from some Yakuza owned construction company. Together, they patched bullet-holes and as much structural damage as they could. Despite being the location of, what was apparent to Will, a huge ultraviolent massacre and years of black market organ harvesting, it was actually a pretty nice place.

  Will spent the last days scrubbing dried blood from every surface he could reach. Spraying down whole rooms with bleach, sanitizing as much as he could before opening day. While Will cleaned, Kowalski made arrangements with REO Meatwagon Inc. to bring in patients around Watson who couldn’t afford to be admitted to Night City Medical Center. He hired two medtechs, an older woman by the name of Naomi Alexis, and a Veteran combat medic from the Unification Wars named Bob Jones Jr. Will hadn’t met either of them yet, as they weren’t set to start until Saturday.

  “I don’t think I’d be able to run my own business,” Will told Kowalski. Kowalski turned his head slightly. He was sitting at a desk across from Will, tallying costs and typing a million words a second.

  “Is not so hard, not here. Try starting business in Europe or Poland, now that is hard.”

  There was a buzz at the door. Will and Kowalski both looked up at the monitor above the door to see the video feed from outside. It was a middle-aged man wearing 6th Street gang colors. Will pressed a button, and the door opened. The man shambled inside, looking haggard and pale. Will’s secondary job was to provide security for the clinic. Kowalski agreed to pay him on a case-by-case basis if he had to bounce anyone, though that was more his idea than Will’s.

  “Hey, I need a quick fix, boys. Nothing crazy, had a prescription for betahaloperidol once upon a time-” he didn’t look good. Kowalski stood and ushered him to the ripperdoc chair, where he sat on a disposable plastic cover.

  “How long have you been off your meds?” the doc inquired as he connected an external biomon to the vet’s neuroport.

  “Couple o’ weeks. Been having nightmares again, it’s getting bad.”

  For the first time, Will got a really good look at the man up close. Skin and bones. He thought to himself. The vet’s eyes looked hollow, and his pupils were dilated. Will sensed that the vet was just barely keeping it together. He could relate. There was more to the story, of course, and it was Will’s job to assess the safety concerns of the patient and the clinic staff. At the moment, the clinic staff was just Will and the doc, but it was literally in his job description to investigate potential dangers, right under ‘corpse disposal’.

  “You’re far from 6th Street. What’s your name, sir?”

  “Do I look like an officer?” he asked indignantly before coughing hard into his hand. “I used to work for a living. Corporal Remington Stanley.”

  Will nodded, “Sorry about that Corporal. I was a cop for a while. I still call everybody sir and ma’am.”

  The vet looked thoughtful for a moment. Kowalski worked silently, running diagnostics while the two talked. The vet sighed, “You’ve probably seen about as much action as me then. Cop in Night City?”

  “Yeah, quit a few months ago. How long have you been out of the service?”

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  “Not long enough,” he said bitterly.

  There was no use beating around the bush, so Will asked the important question. “6th Street ripperdoc wouldn’t treat you, or you didn’t want treatment from him. Why come all the way to Kabuki?”

  Will could see shame on the vet’s face. He didn’t push, just waited for an answer. Eventually, it came. “I fucked up. I’m not welcome there anymore. That’s all I want to say.”

  “You don’t have to say anymore. I just need to know if we need to take any precautions. Is anyone after you?”

  The vet just shook his head, done talking. Done remembering, too, from what it looked like to Will. There was another buzz at the door, a Tyger Claw and a joytoy. Kowalski looked up from his equipment and nodded, “Let them in. They can take a seat while I finish with our friend here.”

  Will walked back to the reception desk and, with one finger, opened the door. Kowalski pulled the privacy curtain around him and the vet. Will stood to greet the guests, but quickly soured as the claw shoved the joytoy hard through the door and into the front office. She fell to the ground and didn’t move. Will kept cool, “Excuse me, sir. Violence in the waiting room goes against our patient safety policies. Please refrain from doing that again."

  Will’s eyes kept steady, betraying no emotions, but his hand rested on the butt of the Lexington. The Claw, walked in with a swagger, full sleeves of luminous ink ran up and down each arm telling a story of what Will couldn’t say. The Claw just made an obnoxious expression, looked around, and spat on the floor.

  “This our clinic. Fix my bitch, mother-fucker.”

  Will smiled. “The doctor is with a patient right now. Please have a seat. Would you like a beverage? We have NiCola and Cirrus Cola.”

  “Fuck you, suck my dick.”

  Will just shrugged, “No thanks, but I appreciate the offer. How about you, ma’am? Can I get you anything?” he asked the joytoy. She had been on the ground for almost a minute now, not daring to rise. She shook her head fast, eyes down. The Claw didn’t seem to like Will talking to her. He got up in Will’s face, eyes wide, doing his best impression of a peacock. Nothing Will was doing was de-escalating the situation, but he couldn’t do much unless the Claw pulled a weapon or tried to assault a patient. Kowalski’s deal with the Tyger Claws was essential to the clinic running in Kabuki.

  “Sir, no offense was intended. We will continue to honor our special relationship with the Tyger Claw. Please, I’m begging, just have a seat. The doctor is almost done with his patient and will see you shortly.”

  The Claw did not back down. If anything, being reasoned with sent him into an irrational rage. He walked over to the privacy curtain and pulled it back forcefully. Will could see the Corporal tense up, his face no longer pale, now bright red.

  “6th Street pussy, get the fuck up. I don’t have all day.”

  Kowalski straightened up and turned to the Claw angrily. Before he could say a word, the Claw had pulled out a bright orange A-22B Chao smart pistol. He pointed it at the Corporal, “I said. Get. The. Fuck. Up.”

  Will’s Lexington was out now, aimed at the Claw’s skull, ready to throw metal. The stand-off didn’t last. One second, the Claw was holding the Chao, the next second, his arm was sliced off at the elbow. Corporal Stanley, betahaloperidol addict, had just lost control and deployed a mantis blade from his right arm. Will activated his Sandevistan between heartbeats, then leapt over the desk, flying slowly through the air. It was obvious that the Corporal was experiencing time dilation too, and in a split second would decapitate the Claw and bring down a whole lot of trouble onto all of their heads. Will couldn’t let that happen. The moment his feet touched ground, he pushed hard, redirecting the momentum and slamming into the Corporal shoulder-first. The two were sent rolling over the ripperdoc chair and onto the floor.

  Time sped up for Will, but he was unsure if the Corporal’s own Sandevistan was still active, so he held him down. “Stop! You can’t kill him.”

  The Mantis blade slid back into place. Will was about to let out a sigh of relief when the Corporal threw him into the air with inhuman strength. Will landed hard on his back next to the joytoy, the air exited his lungs with a loud puff. This was not going well.

  The mantis blade deployed again, and the Corporal stalked closer to the screaming Claw, who was desperately crawling away in the opposite direction and leaving a trail of blood in his wake. Will scrambled to his feet, “No. Don’t do it!”

  Corporal Stanley just grimaced and froze in place, then collapsed to the ground. Kowalski stood above him, holding a stun baton in one hand and a bottle of betahaloperidol in the other. Will was still panting from the skirmish when Kowalski looked him in the eye with a smile, “See? Running business in Night City is not so hard.”

  Unbelievable. Will thought as he got to his feet, he heard the familiar ping in his ear again. It was Regina Jones.

  [EDITED ON 3/3/2026]

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  -Bob