Astrid Parker

Astrid Parker (a.k.a. Skinner)

A former corporate paramedic looking for a way to move past the tragic loss of her parents. A first-responder by nature, she's generous to a fault and always looking to help those in need.

Physical Description

Identifying Characteristics

Isometric light tattoos on her cheek, arm, and back

Special abilities

Neural Link: Interface Plug
Cybereye (right): Chyron, MicroOptics
Cyberaudio suite: Audio recorder, Voice Stress Analyzer, Internal Agent
Cyberarm (left): Medscanner, black plastic covering
Toxin Binders

Apparel & Accessories

Wears boho tops, jeans, and beaded jewelry.

Mental characteristics

Personal history

Born to edge-runners, Astrid's life has always been that of an urban nomad. She's lived through times of boom and famine, and while she's tasted the finer things she's also fine eating a prepack meal over a hot-plate. Her mother, a netrunner who had turned her back on the corporate world, kept her close and as safe as she could. Living in numerous squats on the edge of the C.H.S.M. helped provide her anonymity as well as a somewhat rough & tumble childhood for Astrid. She was an only child, and her father was often out and about doing various gigs. Astrid was the oldest of the street kids in her neighborhood, and she often took on the role of "adoptive mother" especially for the younger kids. She was especially fond of Thea, who she felt was a little sister. The street kids odd-jobs for a local 'fixer' type by the name of Moses Reed, the Astrid helped make sure the money went to food and medicine instead of drugs and crappy toys as much as possible. She always felt there was something off with Reed, but she could never quite get a handle on what it was that bothered her. When Astrid was 18, and her street kid family were heading in their teenage years, her mother had managed to get her into a corporate paramedic training, in the hopes of giving her a better life. It was a rare chance in a world where most kids born under the highway didn't get chances... so she took it.

Education

While unable to attend formal schooling, Astrid's mother made sure she got the best virtual education possible. An early investment in a neural-link and her mother's hacker talents allowed her to attend numerous VR courses. She took a keen interest in psychology, cyber-technology and medicine.

Employment

Astrid worked for many years for Rushlight Biomedical in their paramedic training program, often working double-shifts. She left the corporate world and returned to D-town with the death of her parents.

Mental Trauma

Feelings of guilt for having escaped the streets for her chance at corporate life, Astrid feels responsible for the terrible things that happened to her 'street kid family' while she was gone. Her family's death at the hands of a cyberpsycho, and the causal way the corporate world treated her mother broke Astrid's belief that she could help others 'within the system'.

Intellectual Characteristics

Honest, hard-working, and bright. Initially comes across as a bit aloof.

Personality Characteristics

Motivation

Charitable (3)
Honesty (2)
Guilt Complex (1)

Female Medtech (Cyberpsychosis Therapist)

View Character Profile

Age

Children

Gender

Female

Eyes

Brown eye, Red-tinted Cybereye

Hair

Glowing azure techhair

Skin Tone/Pigmentation

Chemskin with permanent professional make-up

Height

5' 2"

Weight

140 lb

Quotes & Catchphrases

"Safety first!"

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Code Blue

Astrid had lost track of the number of resuscitation attempts she’d been involved in over the years. That first week as a junior member of a Rushlight Biomedical Response Team she found herself covered in blood, desperately working to get one of the Rushlight security specialist breathing again while the rest of the team returned fire. Some damn stupid corpo had gotten himself in serious trouble with a local gang at a brothel down in Renton while slumming, and was currently being stabilized by the lead medic. That left the junior medic to take care of other casualties. Unfortunately, the gang took saving the corpo’s life all personal. After what seemed like hours of work with gunshots whizzing by overhead—probably a few minutes real-time—the Rushlight AV got back on station-keeping and started filling the gangers with depleted-uranium mini-gun rounds, which took the fight out of them quick. Astrid had managed to stabilize her patient, and the team took both the primary and the casualties back to the AV. The pilot made a tricky hover maneuver to pick everyone up, and in the end the team made it back to base with everyone alive. In retrospect, that had to be considered on the whole a “good week”. She had lost a number of colleges in those Response Team missions in the years since, and while the medical treatment was top-notch for the staff, luck didn’t hold out forever. Not all Response Team missions were balls-out, guns-blazing glory. More often than not, the client was some mid-level executive type who blew an embolism or heart value under constant 24/7 stress at the office and needed immediate treatment. The high-level execs tended to have their own personal care teams. Once in a while a well-off individual might be in a tight spot and need extraction or a fast ride to the ER, and they ran the gamut of humanity: edge-runners, mob bosses, diplomats, politicians, popstars, and even the occasional bewildered and bleeding lottery winner. For the most part, though, Astrid never felt like the people that they saved were all that worthy of saving at least at the risk of a half-dozen lives in the hot-zone. Rushlight wasn’t in the business of doing ‘pro-bono’ work, and for the most part the average joe either died on the street or were dropped off at a clinic by an Uber. As such, working in the clinic was a tiny bit more rewarding. Still, Astrid was a professional and spent many long shifts “paying bills” for Rushlight in those high-billing missions. This, however, was the first time she’d ever been trying to resuscitate someone she loved. The stench of the settling pond was intense. MRLD and Astrid had waded out to find the submerged tank where Thresh was supposed to be, and MRLD dove down to secure a line so they could hoist it out. The water was too deep to attempt to open the tank underwater, and as worried as Astrid was for Thresh, she knew their best chance was to get it out of the water first. Old Evil Voice made it clear that Thresh didn’t have much air left… Between VLK’s van and Box, the four of them managed to hoist the steel tank up and out of the muck. The work was backbreaking and slow. There was no time to get heavy equipment on site, and there was nothing for klicks. Astrid pulled herself out of the old crabbing suit they were wearing for some protection from the fetid water, but her face and hair were still covered in the scum. Grabbing his tools from the van, VLK cut the bolts holding the tank shut while Astrid fidgeted anxiously with her medbag in hand. Finally the hatch swung open and Astrid rushed to check Thresh’s vital. Bluish tinted skin and no sign of breathing had her mind fearing the worst. The medscanner in her cyberarm told her that the blood was still oxygen rich, so between that, the cold and the chemical coma there was still hope. Tears rolled down Astrid’s face as she set to work saving her friend… A few minutes later, Thresh inhaled deeply, then settled down into a steady rhythm. Breath in. Breath out. Running the medscanner over her one more time, Astrid felt joy and triumph. Then, as the adrenaline’s effect began to fade, bone-deep exhaustion. Thresh’s all-black eyes popped open a few minutes later, taking in the sudden light and noise of her friends celebrating it’s return to the world of the living. “What the fuck happened? Where am I?” Astrid fell back and flopped to a seat on the ground, shoulders slumped and feeling emotionally and physically spent. The weight of the past few days finally lifted from her, and she just smiled back at Thresh. “I’m not explaining anything until I get a shower…” “Well, that’s not very considerate, Skinner,” Thresh commented. It was acting as if they had just woken up from a nice rejuvenating nap. VLK replied bluntly, “In the middle of no-where Monroe at a settling pond full of cow-shit.” “OK, that’s some information at least,” Thresh replied, continuing to look around bewildered. Again, it would go down as a “good week” after all.

The Long Years

Astrid’s first few months in the Rushlight Biomedical Paramedic Training Program were brutally difficult. Thanks to years of earnest self-study and eavesdropping on VR seminars, she had all the background you could get from a textbook. The problem was the bench sciences where she had no experience with lab work, and had to struggle to keep up in what was already an accelerated program. To make matters worse, she started having vivid nightmares almost as soon as she arrived at the campus. She’d wake up in a cold sweat, images of Thea’s broken and violated body floating in her mind, sometimes accompanied by images of the bullet-ridden corpses of Arjay, Box, and Mikos. Moses Reed’s face featured in the dreams all too often. She got through those first few months mostly on determination, with some solace from her new friend Kara Kletskova, a fellow freshmen in the program. Kara would hear her sobbing at night. Astrid couldn’t share much in the way of the truth of the situation—plenty of her digital background to get into the program was a fine piece of creative writing—, but having someone to confide her worries for her family left behind was some help. Kara was from one of the well-to-do families living in the Eastside enclaves. In addition to helping keep Astrid from having a complete mental breakdown that first year in the program, she was a supportive lab partner when they were in the same courses. Kara also recommended Astrid talk with the Rushlight on-premises psychiatrists who were more than happy to offer mood stabilizers, sleeping pills, or whatever else the students needed. They didn’t stop the nightmares, but Astrid could at least shake off the after-effects in the morning and get on with the day. Astrid’s progress that first year was considered average, with Kara doing better in the standings, but what really saved her was once they started doing procedures. Astrid was a natural after all those years of tending to her friend’s injuries in D-town, and her empathy resulted in very high marks for “bedside manner” with patients. The second year was also the beginning of “live fire exercises”. Being a paramedic was not just a matter of treating the injured, but often doing it while being shot at. Astrid was cool in a crisis, and helped Kara keep her wits during the long and stressful training field exercises. They celebrated their completed second year with a trip to a mall clinic for the full fashionware treatment for them both: techhair, chemskin, and light tatoos. In the start of their third year, cybernetic augmentation was mandatory. Most of the students including Astrid already had neural interface links, but Rushlight and their clients expected their staff to be state-of-the-art. Astrid had learned plenty about cyberware over the years, but the idea of having a fully-functional limb sawn off or eye removed, and then replaced with a machine, was more than a bit terrifying. Because the cybernetics were part of the program, it was done in phases. After each phase, the students would be given a series of therapy sessions to help them integrate the new functionality, and to ensure that nobody suffered from cyberpsychosis. It was these sessions that Astrid recalled most fondly years later: the patience, empathy, and understanding the therapists demonstrated through these treatments she found inspiring. At the end of the fourth year, Astrid and Kara graduated the training program, and then moved on to the residency training. Rushlight Biomedical offered numerous medical services, including treatment clinics, cyberware installation services, and pharmaceutical labs which the graduates of the paramedic program were expected to staff. The real heart of the practical on-the-job experience, however, was as junior members of the response teams.

A Desperate Plea

Astrid Parker was on her way up. Her internship application passed all the final deep background checks—in large part due to the skills of her Netrunner mother—and she was due to report for her first day in the Rushlight Biomedical Paramedic Training Program in the morning. Astrid’s test scores put here near the top of class, and the program offered a couple of perks that she was keen to take advantage of. She was gathering up some personal belongings in the small apartment she shared with her mother. Her personal allotment wasn’t much for the freshmen corporate housing, but she wanted to take along a few precious hardprint books—an 18th birthday present from her father—and a few pieces of jewelry. She wasn’t going to need much of anything else as it was all provided by Rushlight. Dad was off on a job down in Oregon. Astrid and her mom had been living on their own for as long as she could remember, but he made a point of writing emails regularly, the occasional vid call, and a weekend visit when he could manage. The life of an edgerunner solo was always on the go, and he had to keep a low-profile, so he didn’t get a chance to visit face-to-face often. Her mom was able to do her gigs through cyberspace, but they still lived in the shadow of the highway and kept a low-profile far from the glittering lights of the Seattle Executive Zone. Astrid couldn’t wait to get out of D-town. She also was looking forward to getting far away from Moses Reed. Astrid’s closest friends were a gang of street kids; orphans living in and around D-town. Astrid, as the oldest of the group, took it upon herself to help them. Arjay, Box, Mikos, and little Thea would all get “gigs” from Reed, and Astrid would come along to make sure they didn’t get in over their heads, clean up any injuries, and make sure that whatever eds they were rewarded with were spent mostly on food, decent shoes, and warm clothing. On the few occasions she dealt with him, Moses always made Astrid’s skin scrawl. The boys idolized him, and from what Astrid could tell he always dealt straight with them. Over the years, his gigs kept them going, and they usually had a safe place to sleep at night as a result of his patronage. There was just something about the way he looked at Astrid that bothered her. She worried that someday soon Thea would start getting his attention too. Done with her inventory and packing, Astrid went to check in with her mother. Amira Parker was laying as she often was in a netrunner’s chair, multiple interface leads connecting her to a cyberdeck. Gentle lights played across her cybernectic eyes, and her attention was well away from the physical world of the apartment. Astrid donned a pair of smartglasses laying next to the chair, and pulled an electronic lead out from her right wrist. Taking a moment to take a deep breath and steady herself, she pushed the lead into a port on the cyberdeck and tapped a button. Jacking into a cyberdeck always felt like an elevator falling. Astrid stumbled a little catching her balance as her nervous system adjusted to the barrage of electronic signals. After just a few seconds the VR world resolved into being around her. She was in a simple rectangular room, her mother’s “lobby”. It was mostly an empty space, but the textures on the walls were a scintillating pattern of blue isometric shapes which Astrid always found beautiful. Her mother’s gentle voice filled the room, “I’ll be with you in a minute, honey…” She always said, “a minute”, but it usually took more like 5… Astrid filled the time scrolling through a virtual display that hovered near her avatar’s head, checking for any interesting social feeds from her friends. Eventually, the lobby’s wall began to pulse with light, and the avatar of Astrid’s mother stepped through. Netrunners, like most of the world’s edgerunners, put a lot of stock in appearance. Reputation was currency in that world, and first impressions mattered more than anyone liked to think about. Amira’s avatar was a humanoid shape—although many of her associates in the net tended for animalistic shapes—outlined in shimmering azure light. Some script-kiddies would go for simulated fur or hair, but most professionals felt it wasted processing cycles better spent elsewhere. The more impressive part of her avatar was the aura. You felt her exude control and authority in the space, and it always gave Astrid a little shudder down the spine when she first came into the room. “So, you are all packed?” The words were more thought than spoken. “Yes. Leaving most things behind and packed up a crate for you to store for me. Not sure when I’ll need again.” “I’m so proud, my sweet. I still have some work to do, but if you can be home by midnight, I’ll order you something special and we’ll have a late-night dinner to celebrate.” “Sounds good.” For a moment, the avatar hovered, inspecting Astrid’s presence, and then nodded as she strode back through the wall. “Until then.” Another free-falling elevator ride later, and Astrid was standing again next to her mother’s form on the netchair. Looking down, she noticed that her mother’s hand was wrapped around hers, gently squeezing a moment, then letting go. Astrid removed her own neural interface jack and took off the glasses. Astrid got dressed for going out. She had already told Arjay that she was leaving D-town and had asked him to let Box and Mikos know but not until tomorrow. Now she needed to talk with Thea, and she was usually found at the local punk club. While D-town lacked much in the way of investment or services, it more than made up for it in large, derelict spaces. The local punk scene moved about a lot, but the fans always knew where to find the current location. This week it was in an old warehouse, or more accurately on the roof of an old warehouse. Most of the rest of the building was underwater. It didn’t add much to the quality of the smell, but it made for an excitingly reflective surface for stage effects. When Astrid arrived, she was dressed in her usual loosely flowy dress, dark colors, and heavy boots—heels and other non-sturdy footwear were a liability in this part of town. The majority of the crowd were in the usual arrays of blacks, even more blacks, and the occasional white. While the ganger-types had the flashier fashionware, most of the locals lacked the glow effects. The bands were usually decked out, and they were the focus of the show anyhow. Astrid scanned the crowd looking for Thea. She spotted her standing near the stage chatting up one of the stage gaffers about the gear and instruments. Thea was always the life of the party, and even when she was a little girl she had ‘stage presence’ in a group. Thea also tended to shift clothing styles like a snake sheds it skin, and she often crafted up her own look. Today Thea was dressed in synth-leather pants, T-shirt, and an old pair of combat boots with short-cropped blonde hair. She was sporting an old leather bomber jacket festooned with tiny prismatic mirrors. Astrid worked her way towards the stage, but since the act hadn’t started yet there wasn’t yet too much of a throng so she made good progress. When she got there, Thea was done with the gaffer and was “holding court” with her group of punk friends waiting for the show. Like Thea, they were all tweens or just barely teenagers. Catching sight of Astrid, Thea shouted out, “Mommy!”. Astrid blushed. She hated it with Thea called her that, and that was why she did it so often. Her friends all looked over and--expecting to see someone much older than an 18 year old--briefly looked past Astrid. “Hi, Thea,” Astrid returned as she closed the remaining distance. “Please don’t call me Mommy.” With a mischievous twinkle in her eye, Thea replied, “Fine. Don’t call me Thea then.” With a little sigh, Astrid nodded in agreement, “Right. Hi, Thresh. How’s it going?” Thea proceeds to introduce Astrid around to her friends, referring to her by her street handle. “This is Skinner. She’s a choom. A sweet one at that,“ taking a moment to look Astrid’s outfit up and down, “If a bit of a square.” Thea had insisted the boys and her all pick out street handles, although she had gone through about a dozen of them herself in the intervening years. “You staying for the show?” Thea asked after a few minutes of idle conversation. “Um, I can stay a while, but I… have…” pausing a little uncomfortably, “an early morning. Look, can we go somewhere nearby for a quick chat?” Thea assessed her friend a bit more closely, catching that something was up, “OK. I can give you 15 minutes.” She gathered up her drink and threw a look at one of her friends. “Verge, don’t let them start without me.” Astrid and Thea worked their way around to the far side of the stage which was a lot less crowded. A few of the bouncers were hanging around keeping folks out, but Thea knew all of them by name and was able to get them through for a bit of private space. The pair stood near the corner of the warehouse roof, looking out over the last light of the day in the distance. You couldn’t see the downtown at all from here, but there were plenty of lights and AVs flying about in the distance. The highway still dominated the skyline, full of traffic busily flowing by. Thea turned to throw a serious look at Astrid. “Ok, Astrid, what the fuck?” Astrid had spent the better part of a week practicing this conversation in her head, but now that it was here, her mind went blank. “Thea, my love. I’m leaving D-town in the morning and I want you to come with me.” “Seriously!?! Did you hear that on some sappy vid?” “No, I’m serious. My mother and I have been working on getting me into a medical program for years and it’s finally happened. I check in tomorrow and I’m not coming back.” A brief moment of shock covers Thea’s face, but she quickly recovers. “Stupid bitch. OK, what does that have to do with me exactly?” “They have a dependency allowance for the top three spots in the class, and I’m #2. Come with me. The boys will be fine, but…” "Living some corpo suit life may be your dream, but it’s not mine. We’re out here trying to burn this shit to the ground, to bring it down. The fuck happened to 'Blaze your way down the rebel path?!' Ain’t never gonna change the world living inside the beast, Skinn. Fuck!" Astrid tried to recover, “A real roof over our head, a safe place to sleep at night, and decent food. We can get you into the best conservatory in Seattle. Please…” By this time, Thea was in a full-on rage, but tears were streaking down her cheeks at the same time. “No. Hell no.” and just like that she turned and stormed back into the crowd. Astrid’s own face was wet, the lights of the stage blurring through her tears. Every fiber of her being wanted to chase Thea down and get her to safety, but too much of what she had said felt true. It had been her dream, not Thea’s. She wanted desperately to share it with her somehow. But it wasn’t going to happen.

Superhero Syndrome

“Box, please stop fidgeting,” Astrid says in a calm if slightly annoyed voice. The big man has been laying on his stomach for a couple of hours now, and was getting restless with his chin resting on his crossed arms. The vid was playing some ridiculous television drama which Box was weirdly into and Astrid was doing her best to keep him distracted, but it had been a long day. “I’ve gotten all the shrapnel out and the swelling under control. I’m just trying to get it all closed up cleanly. Give me another hour and you should be good to go.” With a heavy sigh, Box settled back down. The injury itself wasn’t life-threatening, certainly not for someone as buff as Box, but it was potentially crippling if not treated properly. In the van hours earlier, Astrid had been able to bandage the wound up enough that Box figured it was all good, so he was planning to head back to his place after the job. It wasn’t until Astrid pointed out he’d probably have to crawl his sorry ass back here to her place every day for months for treatment if he didn’t get it dealt with properly that he agreed to spend the time. Astrid was a medic and therapist more than surgeon, but she had assisted in plenty of procedures back at Rushlight so she felt like she could handle it. The facilities—as in the former garage in the Triangle where Astrid had set up her little clinic—were not all that great for a surgical procedure, but Box wasn’t the usual patient either. The sniper bullet would have probably killed most people outright. His armor had taken out some of the energy of impact. In addition to him just being a tough son-of-a-bitch, the medical-grade titanium lacing over his bones and spine had help shield the neural tissue. The damage had still resulted in spinal epidural hematoma, which had to be drained in addition to making sure any bullet fragments were removed before sepsis or metal poisoning set in. Box had been a big kid, and always dished out as much as he could take. Growing up, Astrid mostly had to just keep his cuts clean, and help keep him more or less fed, and he was generally fine. His biggest problem was—and still is—never knowing when his injuries were serious and not something he could just “walk off”. The medscanner had found numerous scars from old wounds, and even a few unremoved fragments of metal, so she had been keeping busy the past few hours trying to get this little patch cleaned up. Both Astrid and Box had lived for years in the corpo world, so their friendship had mostly picked up where it had left off. In a world of constant double-dealing, back-stabbing, and frighteningly easy abuse of power, it was good to have someone to watch your back that you could trust. Still, Box was never what you’d call talkative. Another 45 minutes, and another episode of Housewifes & Hengernades later, Astrid finished up, gave Box a hypo of antibiotics for good measure, and tapped him on the shoulder. “OK, big guy, you are all done. Just move slow for a while and try to get a decent night’s sleep. I recommend the cot instead of the work-table.” Box pushed himself up, then rolled his shoulders and arm. He gave a bit of a quizzical look. “Feels the same as when you started, but whatever you say.” Astrid gave a brief snort, and pointed at a surgical tray filled with bloody metal fragments. “You are a crazy man.” She gave him a brief friendly kiss on the check, “Get some sleep here. I’ll head up to ’s office and crash on his couch again. You don’t need to be climbing up a 50 meter rope in the middle of the night until that surgical glue fully sets anyhow.” After getting him settled on the cot, and dropping an MRE and a bottle of water on his lap, she left him to the vid and the garage. It was late at night by the time she’d finished up the procedure and the cleanup. The Triangle was still hosting a few groups of hard-core barflies, but it was easy enough to cut through the winding hallways, up the stairs, and up to Arjay’s office. He was up and working, but Astrid slipped in, gave him a little wave, and settled down on the couch for some much needed rest.

Freud and Friends

The morgue hallway was eerily dark, and the smallest sound would echo back with a harshness that set your nerves on edge. Your own breathing became ominous in such a space, and the air was heavy with the scents of powerful chemicals and a hint of decay. Approaching the bank of lockers, Astrid pulled it open to find a non-descript body covered in a hazy plastic sheet. In the low lighting, it was hard to tell much more. Another medtech was there, and from the uniform Astrid thought she must be back at Rushlight. Together, they heaved the body onto a gurney, and rolled it across the hall to an examination room. The lighting here too seemed fuzzy and dark… normally they are uncomfortably bright as if the lighting consultants wanted to make sure not a single shadow could exist in the room. Here, nothing seemed clear except where the work lights shined down into intense pools of white light. The body was on the examination table, and Astrid busied herself with arranging the tools she’d need for the procedure: a mix of her own gear as familiar as the back of a hand, and a few items that belonged to the hospital, the autopsy saw in particular. It was a dangerous looking, hand-held tool: a ceramic cutting blade imbued with heaters to cut through bone cleanly, cauterize blood vessels, and non-metallic to avoid the dangers of hitting an unknown cyberware power-element. It was a little too small a cutting blade for the job, intended instead for limbs, but it would have to do. Calmly, with the lights showing only on the pale neck, she rolled the body over to start the cut just above the back of the neck, and smoothly rolled the body back and over slowly. The head was held in place by the spinal column until the cervical vertebrae are sliced cleanly through somewhere between C4 and C6. There was a tiny spark as service lines for the neural interface link were cut, and the head fell cleanly back into a waiting specimen tray. The other medtech quickly moved it into a waiting cold-chest, and as the head was arranged onto chilled plastic with clouds of dry-ice swirling underneath, the face fell into the beam of the work light: Thea’s face. Astrid was shocked, looked back to the body which was clearer now. The body was horribly bruised and slashed, a victim of so much violence. Astrid felt tears welling up in her eyes, and a scream building in her throat that was unable to escape. The medtech pushed the lid down tight, and while picking up the chest turned and grinned at Astrid. It was Threshold, it’s all black eyes locking with Astrid’s for a moment. “It’s all your fault she’s dead,” it whispered matter-of-factly as Threshold retreated into the darkness that lay beyond the work lights. The chiming sound grew louder inside her ears, gently growing with each pulse. Astrid gasped and felt hot tears in her eyes rolling down the sides of her face, briefly still paralyzed as her mind and body quickly rose to consciousness. The picture-in-picture of the chryon in her right eye was displaying another sleep report from the biomonitor. She’d had another rough night, and her internal Agent was noting that the alarm she had set had been going off for several minutes. Taking a few deep, shaky breaths, Astrid dried her wet cheeks and face on her sleeve. She reassured herself it was all just a dream, and after a few more moments the adrenaline of “fight or flight” started to fade way. She shut off the alarm, and reassured her Agent that everything was fine so there was no need to call for help. The biomonitor showed her antisympathic pathways were bringing her heart rate back down and her breathing slowed back to normal. “Another glorious morning in D-Town,” she murmured to herself, followed by a heavy sigh. Astrid rolled out of her bunk, did a series of quick morning stretches, and then started making herself some coffee and heating up a protein pack in the galley microwave. The slightly cramped space of the old trawler cabin was cozy and felt safe, so she settled down on a bench and swung down an old table to eat. She considered firing up her local data feed to check on the daily news and social feeds, but after a moment decided instead to be quiet with her thoughts for a change. There had been a time when therapists had therapists. While apprenticing these days you still observed other sessions for practical training, but the field had long ago decided that pharmaceutical solutions were just too cheap, quick, and profitable not to use. Back at Rushlight, Astrid like most of the staff were on regular mood stabilizers and hormone balancers, encouraged to use Surge for long shifts and sleep meds afterwards. Pills, air-hypos, and implants did the job that a "head-shrink" used to do. Mediation, visualization, and self-awareness practice were all still routinely employed to help cyberware users and stressed corps get through their day, but old-school talk therapy or dream analysis was left to spiritual advisors and the local yoga studio. Astrid had read a lot of the last-century material in the past year. It’s easy to find online, and there were plenty of chatrooms full of debates and pho-VR therapy sessions of people cos-playing Freud or Blechner. Astrid knew she was deeply depressed, wrestling with her own demons and past, but really didn’t have a clear idea of where to go from here. The loss of her mother, the memories of her childhood and her mother’s strengths and failings as a parent, knowing now more than ever the pain that her street kid orphans felt, it was all too much. That’s probably why she’d fallen so hard for Chryz. She was like a collage of everyone she had loved in her life assembled in a beautiful package. She had wanted to fill her heart with her, and instead ended up with a bigger hole. Rushlight’s answer worked only as long as it was all fully funded, and as evidenced by the past year of having gone cold-turkey on the corp firmware maintenance regimen, it clearly hadn’t actually fixed a damn thing. Their plan was to just keep using the products until you die, which is what most people did one way or the other. was an enigma pretty much of its own choice, and Astrid respected the bravery that choice took every day. It still scared the hell out of her at times, and the ghosts of their childhood were still very much in the room. That intellectual knowledge didn’t make it hurt any less. Wrapping up her meal, Astrid debated crawling back into the bunk and spending the rest of the day crying, but she didn’t have the luxury to indulge that urge anymore. She had bills to pay, people to patch up, and friends who needed her to make it another day under the highway. Heading out to the Triangle was the order of the day. had been uncharacteristically quiet on his social feeds the past few days, so Astrid was keen to see how he was doing. Besides, he had a few ampoules of synthetic precursor she needed. Compared to the liters per hour that Rushlight’s automated labs could turn out, it was practically artisanal pharmaceutical making but even a few doses of the stuff could come in handy. Hopefully, he’s also heard from Box and Mikos recently. Those guys were both tough as kids and are tougher now, but still be good to check in on them too.

The Morning After

In the darkness, a swirl of voices growing louder. The sound of Astrid’s mother singing her to sleep, the sound of little Thea weeping softly in Astrid’s arms, Siyanthini's moans of pleasure, the sickening sound of breaking bones as Moses Reed’s face explodes in a rain of blood… Astrid started awake to see greyish sunlight filling the room. In the corner of her cybereye, the biomonitor readout plotted a graph of her sleep cycles the past few hours, and a reminder to rest for a few days to fully recover. A sharp wince of pain from her right side as she tried to sit up was a more effective reminder. She was lying on the couch in Arjay’s office above the Triangle with the sounds of the early lunch crowd starting to file in downstairs. A worn India Sherpa-style blanket was tossed over her, and Arjay was sitting at his desk working his laptop, talking away on a call, and constantly shifting his attention—Astrid idly wondered if the man still talked in his sleep like he did when he was a boy. Astrid reached over with her left hand, activated the medscanner in her cyberarm, and slowly ran it up and down over her side under her shirt. The display in her cybereye showed it was healing, with no sign of infection, but the inflammation and bruising was likely the reason it still hurt. She lifted up her top to check the bandage, and noticed it has been decorated with an intricate graffiti-style image of a band logo. “What the fuck…” she whispered to herself trying to recall exactly how she had ended up in Arjay’s office. She recalled the fire-fight, going to the concert was super excited about, and a lot of partying. Something about the other guys talking up her pulling out the bullet fragment from her side in the middle of the chaos, and asking her to show off the bandage as proof. Astrid vaguely recalled some green-haired woman taking way too much interest in it—oh right, Thresh had also been kind of creepily entranced earlier too. “Damn BD freaks,” she thought. At least she’d done the work herself getting that fragment out. Back at Rushlight, whenever staff was injured, they liked to have the noobs do the work to get practice on people who weren’t paying top-dollar for theirs services. In retrospect, Xenos could have handled it, but doing the work herself meant the scarring will be minimal and the chemskin self-knitting should take care of the rest in a few days. Anyhow, she didn’t recall partaking in the party drugs, but she definitely took something strongish for the pain which is probably why the evening was a blur. She did remember not wanting to go all the way out to her place, and Arjay guiding her back to his office in the early hours. Sitting up carefully, and slowly rolling her shoulders and arms to stretch them, she caught Arjay’s eye during one of his brief moments of transition. He smiled and nodded over towards a large “to go” disposable carafe of coffee and some protein packs sitting on the desk, and went back to his business. Astrid acknowledged with a grateful if weak smile and slowly made her way over. She noticed the branding of the carafe and figured Box had probably supplied it from his day-gig. While sipping coffee and enjoying some much-needed food, she ran through her Agent’s calendar and news feeds. Naturally, there wasn’t a damn thing about a firefight in D-town in the primary newsfeeds—the big media outlets couldn’t be bothered to look under a highway—but there was a story about the incident in the neighborhood blog noting the businesses that were damaged by fire and contact IPs for donations if anyone was able to help them get back on their feet. The only other mention of it was Arjay’s personal feed promoting links to his “show”. Reviewing her schedule, Astrid did have few patients coming in today, so she folded up the blanket, straightened up the couch, cleaned up her breakfast and gave Arjay a quick kiss on the head before heading out. She grabbed up her backpack as she headed downstairs. Walking past the lunch regulars in the Triangle, she headed towards the back of the building to her clinic. OK, “clinic” was too strong a word. It was probably a vehicle garage at some point, but now it was a make-shift infirmary and repair shop. As she opened the door, she reached into her jacket pocket to pull out a hemostat that was still pinching a bullet fragment. Giving it a quick rinse, she dropped it into a glass jar along with a few other bullet fragments, some metal shrapnel, and a broken knife-point—her “collection” from over the years at Rushlight and since coming back to D-town. She settled down at her makeshift workbench—a old door over a couple of metal saw horses—and unpacked her backpack’s content for the day’s work. She offered regular cyberware maintenance and tune-up, basic health services, and meditation practices and therapeutic conversation for coping with the alien feelings cyberware users had on a daily basis. It wasn’t a tenth of what you could get at even a mediocre city clinic, but it was for most in D-town better than nothing.

Home

Astrid stepped through the hatch, swung the heavy door back into place, and spun the wheel to seal it. "Home, sweet, home," she thought as she sighed deeply, leaning against the heavy door catching her breath from the effort. Having recovered, she looked about the room in the beam of her tiny high-output flashlight, found the old marine generator she had salvaged, and flipped it on. With a groan, it turned over and dozens of strings of holiday lights flared into life. The space was oddly tilted, lightly furnished, but cozy and quiet. The quiet is what she liked the most. A year ago, she would come home to her corporate micro-apartment, and her agent would cheerfully chime and provide a run-down of the state of the house: the temperature of the climate control, hours since she was last home, recommended purchases, suggestions for dinner, what was showing on the vid, and the daily update from Rushlight Biomedical’s communications officer. She had been meaning to figure out how to opt-out of the smart-home blitz, but she spent so little time at home she never got around to it. The chryon in her cybereye would show a days’ worth of mini-format verts, and she’d ignore them as she woofed down an MRE she grabbed on her way out the door at work. There were perks for working double-shifts like a steady supply of food and Surge boosters, and she was on the fast-track for promotion, so really all she did at the place was get a few precious hours of sleep. Like her mother, she had thrown herself into work, ignoring the gnawing sense that the corporate life didn’t really fit her and the guilt she had for leaving the streets in the first place. Life back then had been endless, deeply engrossing work. She spent shifts out with the rapid response teams, treating customers in the clinic, stints assisting in surgery, and worked in the synthetics lab assisting with pharmaceuticals runs. When there weren’t shifts open, she’d hang out with Takai down in maintenance talking tech and cyberware, even letting Edgar ramble on about Manga crap for hours just to avoid long stretches of time alone. She had gone out with Iran Solari, one of the suits, to kill whatever free time she had, although like all those eager wanna-be execs he really didn’t do much beyond scheme, fuck, and sleep. The chyron didn’t show any verts these days. Mostly it complained about poor signal, flashing a little icon which if she wanted to select would have been happy to suggest some satellite-based solutions she could purchase. With the generator on, her home router was booting so it would get some limited data service soon anyhow. Having grown up in a dozen different squats not too different than this one, she moved easily across the room, set down her bags, unholstered her pistol to place it on it’s shelf, and tossed some instant coffee into the little microwave mounted to what was once a little shipboard galley. Nothing matters more to a Netrunner than physical security, so her mother always liked her bolt-holes to be a sanctum, safe from the dangerous world just outside. A century ago, this had been a sea-going fishing vessel, probably a trawler, but only the front half was accessible so it was hard to know for sure. Half of it was buried in the soggy muck of the Duwamish mire. Home for Astrid had always been more of a flurry of comfortable sensations than a place anyhow. She remembered the warm air blowing off racks of servers, the acrid whiff of ozone and soldering flux, the soft humming of security turrets trained on the door, and her mother’s scent that permeated the cushion on the interface chair from countless hours of life plugged into her cyberdeck. Astrid would spend her time attending VR classes, reading, or out on the streets with the neighborhood kids trying to keep them from getting themselves killed. As long as she was there when mom jacked out, that’s all that really mattered. Of course, all of it was gone. That bitch Kletskova saw to that. Metro PD had already planned to confiscate all the gear when they realized her mom—no doubt lying dead on the floor—had tens of thousands of eddies worth of illegal hacking gear. Kara quoted some long-forgotten regulatory statute claiming Rushlight had the rights to it all to pay for the unreimbursed response, and had the place cleaned out with a half-hour. At least with Metro PD, Astrid might have been able to take a few personal items from the impound instead of them being liquidated immediately. "Probably made Tara in accounting happy for a month, the…" The otherwise blank chryon flared up with a bio-monitor warning interrupting her internal tirade. Her pulse and bp had risen suddenly, and the agent wanted to ask if everything was ok. Astrid pushed the anger back down, taking a few deep breaths and calming herself. At this point, it might as well be ancient history, but damn it still hurt like hell. When she had arrived that night, the place was nearly empty. The clean-up crew had least done a decent job of getting all the biologicals out, so she didn’t have to clean it up herself. Lying among the piles of junk that they didn’t deem worth resale, she had found a single old-school photograph hardprint of her mother. That’s all she had left, other than a lot of damn questions. That night she decided she was done with Rushlight and the whole damn rat-race. Iran was pissed no doubt, but she’d always had the nagging feeling that he hadn’t fit either. D-town had not been her childhood home, but it was surprising familiar. She even ran into a few of the old street kids who through some weird twist of fate also ended up in the shadow of the highway. Mom had prepaid the rent on the place for a year, but time was running out and soon Astrid would have to put her mourning on hold to find a paying gig…