Story Seed - Fatal Diagnosis

Image Source: http://steampoweredmikej.deviantart.com/art/Shadowrun-Brain-360663952

Needles whistled softly as he reviewed the holoscan image. The tri-D holo of a brain rotated slowly, displaying the organ, and the implants that took up a sizable portion of the cerebral cortex. "Mikey, I got some bad news."

Michael "Mikey" Horvath was lying on the scanner bed dressed in a paper gown. He looked just irritated enough to make up for the ridiculousness of the garment. The extensive body-mods also added to the tough guy image despite the too short gown. "Bad news? What, did they give me some second hand last gen recycled crap?"

Needles frowned, "Nnnoo...," he said drawing the word out. "This is def bleeding edge tech. Shiniest greymatta cybertech I've seen in a while."

Mikey sat up, sending the tri-D holo into a de-rezzed fadeout as he moved outside the scan field. "Great, that's what I paid for, but what's the bad news, and why is my shiny new tech giving me blackout headaches?"

Needles took a step back, his expression was a mixture of concern and fear. "Well, those kinda go hand in hand. You got more than you paid for, and not in the good way. That new cortex module isn't just an expertise system. I'm pretty sure it's designed to use your drive-by-wire implants to facilitate a full neural override."

"Huh?"

"Somebody's rigged you like a drone chum. That shiny new chrome of yours is using bio-feedback to knock you out so that somebody can hijack your meat. They're using your drive-by-wire to pilot you around like some kind of high end fully rigged out drone. It's one hell of a cybertech achievement, but somehow I don't expect you to be happy about being the latest and greatest combat sleeve for some drone rigger."

"Bravo doc," Mikey said, "but your pal blacked out a bit ago." Mikey's retractable close quarters blades suddenly unsheathed and his muscles began to twitch rapidly as the neural accelerators began to exponentiall increase his reaction time. "Time to die doc, sorry about this, but we can't let our prototypes fall into the hands of the competition."

Needles smiled, his gambit had worked, "I don't know who you are, but nice try, that's some impressive tech. Too bad for you Mikey had me install a spinal cutoff." Needles held up a small fob and pressed the red button. Mikey's body went immediately limp and crumpled to the ground in a rag doll heap. "OK Mikey, let's see if we can cut those strings..."