Private Never Fade Away

[Xan Deesa]

Denon/Smogtown​

Late Evening/Rainy​

It was all coming together. Finally the parts were gathered and Xan had a basis for what she wanted. All she needed was someone that could put it all together for her. That pursuit had taken her all over the galaxy in search of someone who could do it for her, but one person kept sticking in the back of her proverbial mind. He had made a name for himself and she had managed to steal a sneak peek or two into who he was before he came to Denon. She trusted him the most out of everyone. He wasn't a man who would try to use her or implant some system to bind her to his will like some protocol droid.

Her timing likely left a lot to be desired when she let herself into his body. But his beauty sleep could wait. He was the one that ousted her secret to the entirety of Darkwire, after all. Some payback was in order for the drama he dropped into her lap.

"Ehhh, what's up, Doc?" Her voice resonated in his head. A few seconds later she appeared in his vision. Her hologram stuttered into existence with a smug grin and crossed arms as she stood across from him. "Eden was a bit of a mess, been wanting to catch you in private. You did kinda put me in a pickle after the little stunt you pulled bac there." She spoke calmly, though there was a maniacal undertone as she disappeared and reappeared right in front of him, her holographic face mere inches from his. "Don't worry, I forgive you. Was kinda needed, to be honest." She whispered to him before walking away with a snicker.

When she looked at him again, she had a much more serious look on her face. "I need your help. I'll pay you whatever number you put down, I don't care how long it takes, but you need to help me with something. And trust me when I tell you, it's important." She stated bluntly.

Doc Painless

 

[Doc Painless]

Doc Painless had never been a heavy sleeper. His nightmares, twisted reminders of all the mistakes he'd made in the life he'd tried to leave behind, had long since seen to that. Back in Baker's Row, he'd taken to sleeping sporadically - a few hours here, another couple there, quick power naps between long hours of work. Smogtown had only made that tendency, one he knew all too well was unhealthy, even worse. Here there was a very real chance he'd get shanked and robbed in his sleep, and he knew it. Every little sound and flutter of air made him jerk awake, convinced that he was about to have to fight for his life. He'd been right about that a few times already.

That day, though, the sound came from within. The Doc jerked awake in much the same way nonetheless, his cybernetic fingers closing instantly and automatically around the heavy blaster pistol he kept hidden under his pillow. The barrel of the gun swept across the dimly lit room - he slept with the lights on, sputtering and weak though they were - methodically covering every potential entrance and hiding spot. He'd drifted off in the same place he usually did now: the small cot at the back of his makeshift clinic, a rusted cargo container he fought a constant battle to keep relatively clean and sanitary. The story of his Smogtown "facility" was making do with whatever he could.

Finally, the worlds that had woken him percolated into his addled brain. "Wha... Xan?" The Doc rubbed the back of a cybernetic hand over his equally cybernetic eyes, an unnecessary gesture left over from when all of those bits had been organic. He lowered the gun, taking deep breaths and trying to slow the rapid beats of his heart. Living down here was killing him... and not just because every lungful of smog probably took minutes off his life expectancy. It was the stress of always being on guard, always suspecting everyone and everything of wanting to get the best of him. He'd hated the Corpos before he ever came to Smogtown, but he hated them more now.

Both for what they'd done to this place, and for what it was doing to him.

"I... yeah, sorry," the Doc told her, trying to parse what she was saying. He needed recaf, but he was out again, and he'd nearly gotten himself caught the last time he'd ventured a few levels up to try to sneak into a convenience store. Cameras were everywhere on Denon, a dire threat to a man still on CorpSec's Most Wanted list. "I didn't realize how things..." had ended? are going? "were between the two of you." He still didn't know what was up with Cartri and Xan, except that the latter seemed to be hiding from the former, who was convinced she was dead. Why? He didn't know. He didn't ask. He was part of Darkwire, but he wasn't up on the personal lives of its Shadowrunners.

He started as her holographic face sprang into being, nearly reaching for the gun again. She seemed to like scaring him, perhaps her little bit of revenge for... whatever it was that he'd accidentally done wrong in whatever was going on with her... relationship, or whatever it was. He was too tired and too isolated to think too hard about it; he was lucky if he got to see any of his old Darkwire comrades for so much as a few hours every few months, at this point, and the galaxy kept on turning without him. How was he supposed to keep up? With a sigh, he shoved aside that unproductive negativity. Xan was here because she needed something, and he was going to help.

"Okay," he told her, "I'm listening, and I'll do whatever I can. What do you need?"

Xan Deesa​

 

[Xan Deesa]

He was understandably taken by surprise, though seeing him with a blaster was still something she wasn't used to. She had never seen him actually use a weapon, but his reaction was a clear indication that it wasn't the first time he was stirred awake by something. Plus the few camera shots she got of him painted a clear picture on how he came to look like he knew what he was doing with his weapon.

He apologized and Xan's smug look disappeared as her hologram approached him. She took a seat on his bed, her gaze locked onto him as her figure made no dent even on the bed. "It's cool, choom. It's a hell of a mess. I'm still gathering the courage to actually sort that mess out with Cartri. Going from being his big sis to just disappearing out of his life left us in a bit of a situation with our relationship. But that's not why I'm here. You got enough drama on your plate, you don't need mine as well." She turned to cross her legs on the bed and faced him fully, her mask disappearing as she stared at him. "Quite simply put... I want a body." She stated softly.

"I've been looking all over for people to assemble a body for me to get into, but I don't trust anyone. Except you. I've seen your work. I know you're as good as they come. I want you to build me a human replica droid. As good as one can get... and to my specifications. And I don't want any extras beyond what I say or what you would suggest." She looked around for a bit then back to him. "You'll probably need an upgrade from this dump to do a proper job. Tell me what you will need. Everything, down to the last nut or bolt. I can arrange it for you. I'll even make use of that smuggler that's been helping you out, help keep your presence off the books." Her voice was low, but determination dripped with every word she spoke. She was so close. She wasn't going to let this chance slip through her fingers.

She chewed at her lower lip for a moment as she looked down at her hands. "I miss it, Doc. I miss it all. The happiness, the heartache, feeling hungry or tired, feeling the acid rain ruin my hair or the smell of this karking planet. I miss it." Her voice cracked slightly. If she could actually cry, she would right now. And the fact that she couldn't only worsened her mood. "You don't know what this is like. Nobody knows what this is like. Only person that can comprehend this is Frankie and she has it even worse than me. I'm done, Doc. And if I can't get a body again, I'm going to wipe myself out of existence. I don't care how many people's cybernetics I have to short out, how many devices I need to destroy, I will do it if you can't help me." She pledged, her golden eyes locked onto his gaze.

Doc Painless

 

[Doc Painless]

A bit of a situation. They were all in a bit of a situation since that whole mess with Xopsaloff had gone down, weren't they? Their shadow war against the Corporate Authority had spilled out into the open, the path from quiet oppression to outright martial law lubricated by the bursar's blood. You could look at it with hope, decide that the first step in convincing the people of Denon to throw off their chains was to show them just how chained they really were... or you could look at it with despair, see that you'd made everything worse for everybody, and there was no guarantee that it would lead anywhere. Which way the Doc leaned depended on the day.

He pried no further into the Xan-Cartri affair; the slicer was right that he had enough problems of his own, and Xan was about to drop a different major one in his lap. The street medic listened carefully to everything she had to say... and to the desperation behind the words, the utter yearning that had pushed her to the brink of madness and self-destruction. She meant every word she was speaking, that much he could tell. If he didn't help her, if she was left with nowhere to turn, something desperate and dramatic and terrible was going to happen. The two of them had never been close, just running in the same circles, but he couldn't leave her to that.

The Doc had been forced to move on from "do no harm", but he still did his best to heal more than he hurt.

"I understand," he said quietly, once she had finished. Denon was beautiful, in a strange sort of way, and life - real, physical, tangible life - could be too, if you had the chance to really live it. Wasn't that what Darkwire was fighting for? The chance for ordinary people to break out of the cycles of drudgery that the CAD had locked them into, to wake up from their mass-media indoctrination and recognize that they could be the masters of their own destinies if they stopped letting the uber-rich keep them down? Xan was just a more literal example. She didn't want to be stuck watching from the sidelines forever. She wanted to feel again. Wouldn't anyone?

But could he really do it? It would certainly be the first resurrection the Doc had ever performed.

"I know this won't change your mind," the street medic told her, "but I have to say it up front. Call it a holdover from being required to consent patients to surgery." He cracked a little smile at that, the kind of smile he used to coax other people into smiling at his jokes, then remembered that she was in his head. Body language probably didn't really read for her. "I'm not a droid specialist. I attach machines to living tissue. Building an HRD from scratch is... well, it's outside my area of expertise." Which was a nice way of saying he'd never done anything like it before, and as with any new procedure, it could all too easily go wrong.

"I'm not saying I won't do it," the Doc assured her. "I will. I'll do whatever I can, for you and for any runner. But..." He wanted to tell her she might be better off seeking out a droid tech, or an AI expert, but stopped himself. All of them were wanted criminals now, hunted across Denon and beyond. If she had come to him, it was because he really was the only person she could trust. It was him or nobody, and even if he wasn't remotely the right kind of specialist for this, being the only man for the job made him the best by default. He sighed. "But you'll have to bear with me while I figure this out. This is a first for me, and I don't want to feth it up."

Getting out of bed, his tattered nightshirt billowing around him in the recycled air, the Doc crossed to the battered terminal that sat on a low table against the far wall. Using the HoloNet was out of the question unless he wanted to give away his identity and location, but he still knew how to connect to the CryptNet; thank the Force for all the Darkwire techies who'd figured out how to set that up. "It's your body," he told Xan, getting ready to open a new design document, "so tell me what you're thinking. Better yet, show me." It would be easy for her to hope over to the terminal, he knew, and then she could show him the kind of HRD design she wanted.

Xan Deesa​

 

[Xan Deesa]

Xan felt a wave of relief when he agreed. He warned her that this was new for him and that there was a margin for things to go very wrong in this operation. She didn't care. Either she had a new body, or she ceased to exist. Either of those choices sat quite well with her in her current predicament. All she wanted was for it to end. "Doc, you got all the time in the world. I ain't gonna rush you with this, I'll help you with everything I can and order whatever you need, for this and for future use on others, all I need is someone who can do this." She reassured him, her hologram giving a bright smile as she regarded him for a moment. "If I had a body I would kiss you right now." She snickered happily.

He moved over to his terminal and asked her to show him what she had in mind. Xan's hologram disappeared and her face appeared in the corner of his screen, appearing as a little cartoon giving useful tips on what was going on with his screen. "This form does have some perks, I will admit." She commented as the cartoon glanced to him. She commandeered his computer completely, pages opening and files saving on their own as Xan pieced the design together. The looks of the body, the augmentations and cybernetics, she even went further and pieced together every detail one would need for this. Composition of the flesh and how to make it, the skin, the programming to make it compatible for her to use to her specifications. She pretty much gave him the equivalent of an instruction manual on how to put it all together. "Don't worry about software and stuff. You can plug it in and I'll build the code to make it work for me. As for the cybernetics and stuff, we already have it. A friend of mine helped me to get it. It's currently stored in a spot not too far from here. The rest I'll sort out for you." She explained to him.

Her cartoon disappeared and her hologram returned, bent over his shoulder to study the screen. "I'm probably going a bit vain on the looks and stuff... but kark it, it's my body. I want it to be perfect." She admitted with a chuckle as she looked at him. "I hope all this helps with putting it together, Doc. I saved it as a backup as well in case something happens with the terminal. Plus, I have the entire galaxy's knowledge at my disposal, might as well use it for something like this." She moved back to the bed and sat down... if he followed her with his gaze... and laid back on it.

"What's gonna happen to me, Doc?" She asked softly. "Like... the Jedi and those folks all believe you become one with the Force as a living being when you die. I'm... not. I'm not alive anymore. And even with a body... I'll still just be code swimming around in a droid's head, essentially. Did they... really... rob me of a chance to the afterlife? If I die, either in that body or in the transition into it, will I just... cease to be?" She sat up and looked to him. "Will I just... not exist anymore? Like a droid that gets destroyed?" Her cracked voice shuddered with a sigh as she looked at the ground. "What kind of people do this to someone? I'm not a saint... I've murdered hundreds of people in my life, it's what I was made for. But... do I deserve to have my very essence as a living being stripped away from me?!"

Doc Painless

 

[Doc Painless]

She was grateful, giddy even, just that he'd said yes. The Doc sighed internally, feeling himself tense with the weight of expectation and responsibility. He hadn't really expected her to heed his warnings, not when she was so fixated on this, not when he was the only one she trusted to help her... but now a terrifying worm of doubt and looming failure coiled around his heart. He'd replaced limbs, organs, even spines, but he had never built a person from scratch. If he fethed this up, if he couldn't deliver on the promise she'd extracted from him, he knew that all this joy and hope would shrivel up like a fruit left out in the sun.

Thankfully, Xan seemed to have a clear idea of what she wanted - and of exactly how to produce it. The design, which he'd been expecting to have to draft exhaustedly over multiple different versions, was already complete, and even the materials (and the recipe for creating them) were prepared. All he had to do was actually carry out the assembly, the delicate joining of synthskin and durasteel and mechanical approximations of nerves. One might think that, with an instruction manual provided, that would be easy... but the Doc knew better. If all it took was a step by step guide to perform surgery, then no one would have to go to medical school.

Operations like this, biological or mechanical, required skill, experience, and steady hands.

The street medic chuckled when Xan mentioned vanity behind her design, how she wanted her new body to be perfect. "Hey, if I were starting from scratch, I'd want the same." He had already remade his own face once, just before he came to Denon, hiding from his past. If he'd had the equipment, the supplies, and a trustworthy surgical aid, he'd have done it again to help evade CAD detection. But there was a certain appeal to going even further, to crafting a body without the scars, aches, or pains he'd accumulated over the years. That wasn't a possibility for him, though. Xan's AI could transfer to a new form. His squishy brain could not.

Of course, there were other trade-offs... trade-offs that Xan herself had evidently noticed.

"I don't know, Xan," the Doc quietly replied, his voice calm but a little sad. "I'm a scientist, not a priest, and I don't know anything about souls. I'm not one of the people who can feel the Force, and I don't know what it would be like to 'become one' with it." He shrugged, tapping away at the terminal as he transferred everything he would need to his datapad. "To me, consciousness is just an electrical pattern, the biological process that organics artificially reproduced in droid brains when the first AIs were created. Medicine tells me that death is a separation of atoms: calm, peaceful, and final. I can live with that."

He smiled at Xan's face on his screen, a soft, reassuring expression. "But I don't know everything, not even close, and this is even further outside my area of expertise than building droid bodies. But here's what I believe, for what it's worth. If there is an afterlife where we're all meant to go, one that the Force creates and sustains, I don't think little mortals like us or the CAD can derail that. What they did to you... I can't imagine, Xan. But I know that the CAD isn't more powerful than the Force, and that means I believe that you'll end up where you're supposed to be. They can't take your soul from you."

Wherever dead organics went, the Doc had to believe, was where Xan would go too when she was gone.

Xan Deesa​

 

[Xan Deesa]

Xan listened in silence as the Doc spoke. The only indication of her still listening was her avatar and comm connection still displaying. At first she was starting to think that she made a mistake asking him about stuff like this. His views on life and death was a lot more radical than she expected from someone like him. She figured he had a belief of some sort as a doctor... apparently he was as grounded to reality as one could get.

Yet his tone shifted and his words earned a smile from Xan. His words meant a lot to her and every sentence was memorized by the former Shadowrunner. Her interactions with people were rocky at best. Without a body or anything to relate to anymore, most conversations merely served to ruin her mood overall. But in a few occasions, the people she talked to managed to make her feel normal again, whether it was intentional or not. Being asked about the latest movies she had seen was one. This was another. A little piece of chatter that didn't add anything at all to the overall motions of the galaxy, but to her these little snippets were things that stuck with her. "Thanks, Doc. It means a lot. I hope you're right." She muttered gently as her hologram disappeared. "If you want, I can take you to the stash." She offered.

She wasn't sure if Konor would still be there or not, his last stay on Denon was rather distasteful to say the least. Regardless, they wouldn't need him to get the stuff to the Doc or to find him a better place. "I've seen a place not too far from your container that could probably be a better stay for you. It's still in the area, so not exactly a Seven Corners cloud cutter. But it's more secure there, it's covered by a local gang. You can expect a monthly mandatory 'donation' but the dudes keep the scum away. It's also a lot bigger, more space and proper rooms." She explained calmly to him. She wanted to get him out of that dump. The least she could do was try and find him a low profile place to stay that wouldn't let him wake up dead.

At the abandoned house that was falling apart as it was, Xan appeared in his line of sight again. "Okay, follow me." She led him through the decaying house and pointed out any booby traps that were set up. "I had my friend set some surprises up in case people found the stuff. His name's Konor. Rough dude, but he's got a good heart... sort of. Somewhere. Still working on it." She snickered slightly as the hologram turned a corner and stopped by a plate on the ground. "In there. I'd suggest you get a contact on the line to help you out. If you need to bribe him, here you go." Immediately a notification popped up for him, displaying a deposit of a ludicrous sum of money into an account that he certainly hadn't made himself. "Should cover a tip, livelihood, pretty much everything else you can think of. The account is secure, so you don't have to worry about using it." She explained casually as her hologram stood over the plate on the ground.

Doc Painless

 

[Doc Painless]

The Doc hoped that what he'd said would be a genuine comfort to Xan. He never lied to his patients - and she was effectively a patient now, if an unusual one - so he couldn't spin her some story about firm beliefs in some kind of perfect afterlife. For his own part, he didn't want to live forever, now or in Force heaven, or whatever. He was ready to rest when his work was done, to be free of cares. But if Xan was afraid of such an ending, it was his role to comfort her as much as he could without lying. The Doc had seen the power of the Force firsthand, even if he couldn't feel it, and he knew it was immense. Maybe it had power over death, and beyond.

And he'd never seen anything that showed that the CAD, for all its influence, could defy the Force itself.

Thankfully, he didn't have to keep going into a conversation he was utterly unqualified to have; he was a cybernetic surgeon, not a counselor, and some things were beyond the ability of his easy way with people to smooth over. Instead, the eager Xan was ready to go to the stash. "Lead the way," the Doc told her. He'd been in his nightshirt and boxers this whole time, a reminder of his abrupt awakening, so he took a moment to dress. He hauled a pair of crumpled pants up to his hips and belted them; he'd lost weight down here, and they didn't fit well anymore. Then he pulled a padded jacket around his shoulders and pulled up the hood, concealing his gaunt face.

Boots came on last, scuffed and grimy from walking Smogtown's pollutant-mired streets.

Following Xan's directions, the Doc ghosted through back streets, alleyways, and maintenance catwalks. He was getting very, very good at moving unseen. His augmented eyes helped him spot cameras - and the various drifters of the underlevels - before they could get a good look at him. He was a shadow in a ragged cloak, just one more lost soul swallowed by the endless city... an image he deliberately cultivated. To be poor on Denon was to be discounted as an individual, to be considered unworthy of notice unless you caused inconvenience and needed to be punished. It was the way to stay unnoticed even in the midst of a surveillance culture.

Xan pointed out a potential new hideout... and the Doc felt his heart jump at the thought. He could happily deal with gangsters and their demands for protection money if it meant getting out of Smogtown, where he could feel his life expectancy shrinking with every breath. Still, he needed to be careful. Rushing into anything down here was a good way to get mugged at best, and more likely dead in an alley. "More space would be great," he told her. "Security, too, given... everything that's going on. I'll look into it. Thanks, Xan." He'd have to scope out the space, learn the surroundings, find out if he could safely move his equipment up there.

The house they arrived at was... well, 'dilapidated' was too gentle a word. But that was the kind of place that tended to get overlooked, and overlooked was ideal when you had something valuable to stash. It was far better to hide something well than protect it well, since one negated the need for the other. Whoever had set this place up, though, had clearly done both. The Doc walked carefully, stepping over pressure sensors and ducking under tripwires at Xan's direction, until they finally reached the stash itself. He knelt beside the plate where Xan was "standing"... and then saw the notification. His eyes got wide; that was a lot of credits.

Better not to ask where they came from. "I... thank you, Xan. I'll make sure I use them to get anything else we might need, and of the best quality." His mind swam with possibilities for equipment and medicine; with funds like these, he could rebuild the clinic he'd had in Baker's Row. Probably better, to be honest. But his first priority had to be Xan herself; this was a gift, but it had purpose behind it. Silently he triggered a signal out to one of his contacts, a taxi driver he'd trusted with a number of errands before. There was no message, as that could be intercepted, only a series of coded beeps that meant nothing to anyone but the two of them.

He would help get things moved where they needed to go.

The Doc knelt beside the plate where Xan was "standing", preparing to open it. "Let's see what your guy found for you," he told her, "and we'll make it all happen from there." Hopefully it was all there, and in good shape.

Xan Deesa​

 

[Xan Deesa]

Seeing him get hopeful made her happy. She had been keeping an eye on him as much as she could. She had to give him credit, he was doing a marvellous job at keeping a low profile and not getting noticed by the Corpos. When he was absolutely speechless at the deposit of credits, she couldn't hold her laugh back. She giggled like an idiot for a bit before her hologram looked at him again. "I figured you'd like that." She teased him with a wink.

He approached the cover and her hologram backed off to look down along with him. "It's good stuff, trust me. I think even you might be impressed." She quipped as she waited for him to open it up. Underneath the cover was a stairway leading to a small basement room. The only illumination was a tiny lamp turned off on top of a crate. "Just be careful of the tripwire halfway." She warned him before he descended. "There's a thermal detonator in a crack on the left wall. You don't wanna trip that, trust me." She warned him as her hologram pointed out the wire along the stairs. In the room was a small batch of crates, filled with various parts and cybernetics of very high quality, and all sealed tight. On most of the crates was the very prominent name of "Locke and Key Mechanics" while the others were of a very exclusive Zeltron company. "I've had a lot of time to figure out what I wanna do. The rest of the stuff we'll have to order." She admitted with a shrug.

"I'd love to help ya out, Doc, but uh... I'm a bit thin right now." She snickered as she watched him. For someone with enhanced strength like him, the crates would theoretically not be an issue, though there was the variety of traps in the house that he had to dodge as he moved about. At least Xan could point them all out. "If you need any help on the software side of things, just let me know. I'll help in any way I can." She offered him.

Doc Painless

 

[Doc Painless]

Carefully, gingerly, the Doc followed Xan's instructions as he descended into the secret chamber. Truthfully, he'd been expecting some kind of buried stash box, not a full on underground room. The Doc didn't ask where these crates of expensive, top-of-the-line components had come from; after years in the galactic underworld, he knew better than that. He just went ahead and pulled down the crates from their shelves, stacking them one by one on top of each other. Picking them up wouldn't be much of a problem; his cybernetic arms bristled with powerful synthmuscles, and could lift much heavier weights than this. Actually moving them around, though...

Getting out of here with an armful of crates without setting off one of the traps was going to be tricky.

"This is... a tall stack," the Doc muttered, his voice muffled by the crates piled in front of his face. "Help me watch my footing, will you? If I happen to be, y'know, second away from stepping on a mine, I'd love a heads-up." He did his best to peer around the crates as he gingerly picked his way back out, minding the tripwires. Thankfully, his cybernetic eyes had recorded the location of each trap Xan had pointed out, and worked with his internal positioning system to alert him whenever he was getting close to one. One cautious step at a time he made his way back out, back up the hidden stairs (cycling them shut behind him, in case Xan wanted to reuse the spot) and out of the house.

Well, most of the way out. There was no way he was lugging these crates all the way back to his clinic. He was physically capable of it, but it would draw far too much attention, and that was one thing he couldn't afford. "I know a guy who can help transport this," he said, giving a confirmation signal to the trusty taxi driver he'd contacted fifteen minutes earlier. The taxi came around the corner only about sixty seconds later, cruising up to the front of the dilapidated house as if it were a perfectly normal place to pick up a passenger. The Doc hustled out to meet it, quickly opening the speeder cab's trunk and stowing the boxes in side. Most of them fit.

The last couple of them would have to go in the seats, with one sitting on the Doc's lap.

The cabbie was a Rodian with a nasty scar across his snout - the remnants of a wound that had nearly killed him, a wound The Doc had treated a few months back. They exchanged no words; on the highly-connected planet of Denon, the voiceprint of someone on the Most Wanted list could trigger a law enforcement alert, and CorpSec might well be listening in any publicly registered vehicle. The Doc gave his ally a hand signal they'd practiced in the past, and the Rodian nodded. Time to head back toward Smogtown, so that he could start putting all these fancy new parts together. The Doc typed out a quick message on his datapad for Xan to read.

"If you've got anything you need ordered, now's a good time to start that process."

Xan Deesa​

 

[Xan Deesa]

Xan snickered like an idiot with his request to help him spot the traps that were strewn throughout the building. The odds of him actually needing help to spot them was rather low, given the chrome he was packing in his body. Though she wouldn't shy away from helping him out. "Of course! The last thing I need now is my only Doc getting his legs blown off by a landmine." Her snickering persisted as she used his eyes to highlight any traps in his direct vision. His brain could take care of the rest that she couldn't outline for him directly.

There was a degree of entertainment in watching him lug the crates around and trying his hardest to not actually detonate an explosive. She had started to question her own sanity a while ago with the amusement she got out of watching people get put in very uncomfortable positions. For now, though, she would simply watch and help him out while keeping her laughter out of his mind.

After a surprisingly short time he was fully packed in and heading back to his own place. "Got no faith in me at all, huh?" Her voice erupted over the speakers of the speeder. "You moof milkers are too afraid to say anything instead of just asking if I got you guys isolated." Her voice sounded offended, but there was no hiding the laugh that she fought to hold back. "And yeah, Doc, I'm way ahead of ya. Got everything ordered that you might need or want. Even paid premium shipping in case of pirates or whatever else the galaxy tries to throw at us. They'll let you know when they arrive on Denon, all you have to do is tell them where to deliver. Even secured an alias and everything so getting them to you won't be a problem." She reassured him. She hoped that she did a good job, he was likely terrified of meeting anyone outside of the Slums with the Corpos on the hunt for him. But that's why he had her.

She was quiet for the rest of the drive, only breaking her silence after he was alone again. "What can I do for you, Doc?" She asked him softly. "You're literally giving me a life again. What can I do for you? Aside from wiping your bounty and stuff, sadly that's not gonna be an easy crack for me." She was disheartened to tell him that. It was likely what he wanted most and she would try her best to give him just that. Unfortunately there were some networks that she simply couldn't just invite herself into. She needed a physical link for that.

Doc Painless

 

[Doc Painless]

The Doc laughed when Xan's indignant voice erupted in the cab. "Sorry," he told her, holding up his hands in surrender before her mock outrage, "force of habit. I can't do all the things you can do. The wrong word at the wrong time and place, or a glimpse of my face on a public cam, can pretty much end my life there and then. I've gotten a little paranoid, though I like to think my reasons are understandable." The Rodian cabbie grunted, still uninterested in talking. That was part of why the Doc had come to rely on him so much; he was quiet, discreet, and kept to himself. The lack of small talk never bothered him.

Xan had taken care of it all, it seemed. The shipments would soon be delivered, and all the parts would be in place. All that would remain then would be to actually perform the assembly... a thought that still made the Doc nervous. He was used to joining flesh and machine, lining up nerves with wires and painstakingly recreating connective tissue, but this was different. A more arrogant surgeon might have assumed it would be easier, just like cybernetics without having to worry about the delicate organic elements, but the veteran street medic knew better. There was an art to droid engineering that was equal to his own art, and he was no expert in it.

Thank the Force he'd have Xan to help him when he started the process.

"What can I do for you, Doc?" The question caught him off-guard... and the subsequent disclaimer hit harder than it should have. He knew she couldn't just wipe away his place on the Most Wanted list. It wasn't like the Corpos only kept one copy, and every officer would suddenly forget his name and face when they were removed from the database. No, he would be branded a terrorist until the day the CAD fell, if they ever actually managed to pull that off. Nothing anyone could do about that, even if it was the only thing he really wanted. So he just smiled, though the look was more than a little sad. "You've done a lot for me already, Xan."

And it was true. A new clinic spot, enough credits to get well-established there... that was enough.

They waited a while for Xan's deliveries to be completed, giving the addresses of nearby abandoned buildings to avoid easy detection and tracing. The Doc used the KryptNet to look up tech school lectures and textbooks on droid assembly in the downtime, quickly skimming across thousands of hours of content for the most relevant information. He was bright and well-educated, and his cognitive augmentations helped him learn and process extremely quickly, but it was still an adjustment to learn the principles of droid body engineering compared to his own field of expertise. He was going to need all the help he could get to do this right.

A human replica droid was just about the most complicated kind... but also the closest to his actual specialty.

Maybe those would cancel out.

When all the parts had been delivered, the Doc carefully laid them all out in his small clinic, preparing them on and around his treatment table. He had to snort with laughter at the sight before him; the scene resembled nothing so much as the lair of a serial killer in the midst of dismembering his latest victim, only without the blood. His tools were ready, his supplies were assembled... all that remained was actually diving into the assembly. He hoped he was up to the task; he couldn't let Xan down, couldn't betray all her hopes. He was tired, running only on a few hours of interrupted sleep, but he was used to working under such conditions.

He took a sip of caf. "Okay. Here we go. Stop me if I'm about to feth something up." And then he began.

For a man who'd never trained as a droid tech, he was doing pretty well.

Xan Deesa​

 

[Xan Deesa]

Xan wasn't oblivious to his thoughts after she asked her question. She had a very good idea on what he was thinking as he stood in silence for a very long while before he gave his answer. Even with all of her capabilities, she felt like she couldn't do enough. But no matter how many systems she sliced and stuff she deleted, it wouldn't be enough. The only way to clear his name was to topple the CAD. That was at least something she could help with.

She kept quiet as he prepped to begin with the operation. This was too important for her to be jumping in and making jokes. It was only when he spoke to her that she pulled one last joke. "Hey, whoa! Hold up!" She shouted, sounding very serious as her hologram appeared in front of him. "Remember to wash your hands." She teased before she disappeared.

The rest of the time she didn't intervene unless he asked for help from her. Whether it was pointers or examples she could pull from the holonet, or actual hands-on help on the software side of things. This body had to be perfect, she wouldn't settle for anything less than just that. Luckily the Doc was up to the task, she was very sure of things in that regard. It was quite interesting to watch him construct muscles, bone and other important stuff, then integrate the cybernetics with the rest of it. She encouraged him to take a break and to only work on this when he didn't have other patients, they were more important to his reputation than she was.

But slowly the body would start to take form. It started out as a very disturbing corpse as the base parts got fitted and more parts piled on top. Though it steadily started to turn into a full-blown body and Xan could feel the excitement brewing. It took everything in her power not to try and hijack the body while it was still getting built. It was getting close...

Doc Painless

 

[Doc Painless]

Building a person from scratch, as it turned out, took more than a little time.

Doc Painless managed to finish something like a skeleton on that first day, a basic chassis to hold the HRD's most essential systems... not that those systems were in place yet. It would be days more before the internal bits, the figurative blood and guts of the creation, were fully put in place. The Doc worked on it whenever he could; Xan had encouraged him to put his other patients first, and he did not neglect anyone or turn anyone away, but every moment he wasn't either in consultation with someone or catching a few hours' sleep he was working on her new body. He was pushing himself hard... but that was nothing new for him. He'd lived under pressure for years.

He was trying to be a good man. He knew he had a lot to make up for, and nothing ever felt like enough.

Soon, the HRD resembled nothing so much as a flayed body splayed out on his operating table, synthmuscles and semi-cybernetic wiring exposed where there ought to have been skin. The Doc tried not to leave it that way for long; it unnerved his patients, and to be honest, it unnerved him a bit too. But the sculpting of features, the moulding of synthskin, these were things that could not be rushed. The Doc had dabbled in cosmetic surgery before, smoothing burn scars and fixing shattered noses, but never to this degree. He had to throw away many a lump of synthskin which just didn't come out right, the features imperfect. Imperfect wouldn't do.

His trash bin looked like it must belong to a particularly brutal and grisly serial killer.

Xan was with him every step of the way, though she was mostly hands-off unless he asked for her help. And he did. The Doc was not a proud man, and saw no shame in admitting that others might know better than he did. Besides, he wanted this HRD body to be truly a creation of them both, with Xan having a hand in deciding her own form. Almost nobody ever got the chance to design and build a better physical form for themselves. Even the Doc, with his extensive cybernetic modifications, could only switch out the parts that nature had given him, not truly redesign himself. If he could have, he'd have made himself taller, gotten rid of his lower back pain.

If Xan was going to be the rare person who did get to design herself, it'd better end up perfect in her eyes.

It took about a week, in the end. Shorter than might be expected, but no small chunk of time either. No longer did the body laid out on the operating table resemble a flayed corpse; instead, it looked like a young woman in repose, her eyes gently shut as though she'd drifted off... though they were eyes that had never yet opened. It... no, she was just as Xan had asked for. The Doc looked at her and saw a person, just waiting to wake. It was perhaps the finest work he had ever done, proof that his capabilities went far beyond fixing factory maimings and bar fight injuries, beyond even the combat-grade cybernetics he'd worked on for Darkwire shadowrunners.

The Doc looked down at her and smiled. "She's ready for you, Xan." He paused, chuckled. "You're ready."

Xan Deesa​

 

[Xan Deesa]

The progress was steady over the days... though it was by no means slow. Whenever the Doc wasn't sleeping or busy with patients, he was busy with her body on the operating table. Plenty of times he had to deal with her laughing in his head over the utterly horrified looks from his patients as they looked at the mangled body being worked on. She was almost tempted to take it for a spin without any skin or features, just to see how the populace of Smogtown would react to a walking flayed corpse.

Every day brought more progress to the body. If Xan wasn't helping him with the actual composition and instructions for the body parts or cybernetics, she was busy coding the brain of the HRD to be compatible with her. She wanted to be able to plug in and move right off the bat, she didn't have time for faults or issues with her turning the brain into the new host for her engram.

Eventually, after only a week of hard work between the two of them... it was done. As he looked down at the body, Xan's hologram appeared across from him with a look of awe and joy. "I'm struggling to believe that this is real, Doc." She muttered, her holographic hand moving over the body as she inspected it. "It's perfect." She smiled at him with glimmering eyes as she started to laugh. "I'm-I'm... I'm almost too afraid to actually move in. Like... it-it's me. It's the new me." She took a deep breath to calm herself. "I'm gonna feel again. I'll be able to laugh and cry again, I'll..." The hologram paced in circles for a few moments as she laughed away.

She finally turned her attention back to the body. "Okay... see you on the other side." She quipped. The hologram disappeared and her comm connection with him severed. Every device all over the galaxy either froze for a second, rebooted or simply stuttered a bit before they returned to normal. It was merely seconds, but for Xan it felt like days, weeks, months of sifting through data, purging herself, recollecting and zipping up all of herself and the knowledge she wanted to keep, before she deposited all of it into the body. The constant stream of data cut out, the oceans of code disappeared, everything broke up and fell apart until it all went black...

The first thing was the HUD that stabilized and static that cleared up. Then bright light above her and air rushing into her lungs. Almost immediately she went into a coughing fit and turned onto her side, her eyes tearing up as the coughing scratched at her throat. She grunted, though it sounded more like a droid's distorted groaning as the vocabulator came to life alongside her vocal chords for the first time. She continued to cough for a few more seconds until she calmed down with several deep breaths.

Xan's new eyes studied her surroundings, her HUD pinging all kinds of stuff and hovering ID's above them all. It might have been an overload to a normal person, but to Xan it was a calming breeze after a raging storm. Her mind was quiet, kept together and, most importantly, her own. Carefully she sat up, yanking awkwardly at her gown before her hands drifted all over. Her hair, her face, her body, the gown, the bed she sat on. Finally her gaze turned to the Doc.

"Doc?" She spoke up softly, reaching up to hold onto her throat for a moment. Tears formed and soon streamed down her face in sheer joy as she took another deep breath. "I'm... here..." She muttered, a massive grin etched onto her face. "I feel... hungry." She snickered softly as she clutched at her stomach. "Doc... I'm really here." If her voice could go higher, she would be screaming at the top of her lungs. For now, though, enthusiastic whispering would have to do.

Carefully she stood up, gasping as the cold floor hit her bare feet. She was wobbly for a moment, but after a few moments of standing and careful pacing she turned to the Doc and grabbed hold of him in a powerful embrace. "I'm really here." She whispered as she held onto him, her tears merely pooling against his clothing.

Doc Painless

 

[Doc Painless]

In all the many different things the Doc had lived through, there was perhaps nothing as agonizing, nothing as nerve-shredding, as the wait for Xan's body to power up. As the seconds ticked by, the moments after the disappearance of digital Xan but before physical Xan stirred, a million worries ran through his mind. This wasn't his speciality, as he'd said a dozen times. What if he'd screwed up? What if Xan got stuck in a body that didn't work right, or something corrupted her code? What if her body just fell apart as soon as she tried to use it? There were so many different things that could go wrong, and the stakes were achingly high. Each heartbeat, each breath, thundered in his ears.

And then, she coughed. That body he'd built actually coughed.

A choked little sob of relief wrenched itself free from the Doc's too-tight chest, a moment's release from the tension that had gripped him with a durasteel hand ever since Xan had made her request. She grunted. She blinked. She breathed. When she actually sat up, the Doc smiled so wide it seemed like it might split his face in half. "Doc... I'm really here." She made it to her feet, real, functional feet, and enfolded him in a tight hug. He hugged her back just as tight... and was surprised to find that he, too, was crying. "Yes," he choked out, trying to get control of himself as he half-sobbed and half-laughed. "Yes, Xan, you're really here. You made it. We did it, together."

A week ago, when Xan had woken him in the middle of the night by literally jumping inside his head, the two of them hadn't been particularly close. They had known of each other, worked together a handful of times, but they hadn't really known each other. They'd been more colleagues than friends, running in the same circles because they believed in the same goals, even if they were very different people. Now, though... what they'd just gone through together, well, that wasn't the kind of thing you forgot. They were still different people, but now they saw each other. The friendship forged out of an experience like this was the kind of bond that never fully faded. Just like his bond with Shai.

Only this time, he was on the giving end of saving a life, just like Shai had saved his.

Finally the Doc stepped back, dabbing embarrassedly at his eyes. "Okay," he said, "I heard you say hungry, which is a great sign. Let's find you a first meal that won't make your brand new stomach sick... which rules out most of the street vendors around here. I know a guy. How do you feel about stretching those legs for the first time? We'll take it slow." He smiled at her, and it was a smile full of warmth and triumph alike. "I picked up some basic clothes in your size, so you're not traipsing around in a surgical gown. I'm sure you'll find something that'll suit your style better in the next few days. You've got time now, Xan. Let's go get your life back."

Xan Deesa​