Club 99 (continuation)

This happened about nine years ago.

I am a journalist, you know. Not a big, global name who can expect to be recognized on sight everywhere on the planet, but I have a reputation, recognized by my colleges, in national scale. More or less.

In all honesty, I seldom write anything about life changing subjects, such as politics and scientific controversies. Corruption in the Parliament, international spying.

Specially back them, my field of expertise had been narrowed to celebrities. Life, extra-conjugal affairs, the kind of articles people like you never read. I will not apologise for that, journalism is a profession, not a religious call, and fuck you for suggest the contrary with that raised eyebrow of you. Pays the bills, not everybody is as serious as you are. Some people like gossip.

Someone has to provide that material, it is part of the cultural ballast of any civilization since Baby Steps Age. I am proud, maybe not “proud”, “proud”, but serene about my role in this industry.

Anyway, we are talking about nine years ago.

I was dealing with a handful of particularly tricky cases. Decided that I needed something discreet and trustworthy enough to register images from distance and under bad conditions.

When opportunity presented itself, I could not afford to lose it.

So, naturally, I made the decision of replace one of my eyeballs for a cybernetic camera of high quality.

Up to that point, noting difficult about it. There is enough material online, available for the right price. Far from cheap, but nothing ridicule. I could find some sort of plan, was solid investment. Most doctors don’t touch cybernetic implants, but enough of them do those implants if you explain why you need one.

I should be able to not only store the images, in visual-document formats that discredit accusations of fraud. Should be possible for me to upload the material to somewhere in case I wasn’t able to walk away undetected after collect the material.

So I though, but the more I consulted the technical specifications, less satisfied I was with this aspect.

What you can buy online, in friendly and entirely non-criminal sites, is technically good. Unless you need safety for your information. Because it is all designed to be easily accessible by our secret police agencies. What makes it easily accessible for high budget private-security companies too, because, of course it does.

The people I was stoking professionally had one of the best, paramilitary level, security companies working for them. Platinum-SSS plan, the best security money can buy. They would NOT put a bullet through my head, because that is bad publicity.

They certainly would remove my eyeball with a spool, neglecting anesthesia_ and they actually did that_ if necessary. However, even before that, they would hack my cybernetic camera and destroy any evidence I had. Before it could reach a server elsewhere.

No product in circulation, accessible for anyone in the market, would help me.

You know the next step in that history, because you saw it many times, I am sure. Everyone has. “I knew a guy, who knew a guy, who had this weird ex-girlfriend with a sister. And this sister…. tralala, etc.” Long story short I got myself this map, draw by hand if you wish to believe it. Pencil on paper. Crazy!!

Little words on the side, which where the supposed passwords for different check-points along the way.

All that to reach a place named “99 Club”, which, very obviously, was not paying for publicity in large vehicles of media. Because they were not interested in expand their consumer basis too much. It is a niche establishment, with a very specific idea about target public. This is a “to cyborgs by cyborgs” hub. The place to go when you want your entire skeleton replaced by that material used in military tanks for armour. That is where you find someone who will put you in contact with the witch-doctor who perform that kind of abomination, in the kind of fanatic who pays for that shit.

Except for the non-metaphorical and non-uplifted cockroaches and rats everyone that has anything to do with a place like that is at least a person of questionable-legal status. Half-time criminal, with the other half hidden in shadows, if you wish to say it in diplomatic terms.

The technology used by the people here in their bodies is all illegal, in a degree or another, more often than not in several.

However, and that to me was a meaningful “however”, I would not need to worry about any intentional backdoors included by the original engineers to facilitate the life of legal authorities. Facilitate the life of legal authorities does not figures high in the list of priorities of people in a place like that. It does not figures low in that list either, just to be clear. You don’t find it anywhere close to that list.

I am not saying those things cannot be hacked. In absolute terms, anything that can be accessed can be hacked, and if it has a connection with any net it is **** through that connection. All I am saying is that the order of difficulty involved in any attempt to hack that sort of stuff is in another level.

Short after I enter the “Club” and get myself a drink, for the price of a talking dog, this very nice articulate individual (I am going with “individual”, if that choice of words do not bother you terribly) it spoke some French, so, could be a gentlemen. I am willing to risk the bet that it was not a hive-mind. Do not ask me anything beyond that.

Worse people have threatened my life with less polite words, I am just saying. No one ever did that in such a believable tone.

Apparently, being a cop or a journalist in places like that is an indiscretion punishable by capital penalty. Of ****.

On the bright side there was no line about **** attached to it. Just plain and simple ****. Thank God for the small miracles!

I am, as I explained to you in the first lines of that text, a public figure. My face is well ignored by most people, but my name and retinal scan are public enough to not require a master spy to find and validate.

_Look, friend, I am a journalist. However, I swear to you, I am NOT here looking to expose any secrets you may have hidden under rat excrement and who knows what. I am not gastronomic critic either. All I wanted when I left my apartment hours ago was to buy a cybernetic camera that I can trust! For my work.

My presence of spirit must have granted me some credit. Because I did not urinated my pants right there. And continued drinking the stuff in the glass I was holding.

Place was dirty, and the glass cup between my fingers at that moment can easily, without injustice, be included in the broad definition of “the place”. Despite that, I was grateful for having something to do, sitting there. While I was waiting for something to happen.

_No one is going to kill you here in this room, reporter. You may relax, I think. Nothing is about to happen. I was just kidding, more or less.

Was not. However, that was not a lie either. More like a civil joke.

Don’t see why anyone would kill me in that room, knowing that I had no way to communicate with the outside, and would need to leave eventually.

_Oh, my fuck! Ronald. Is that you??

The voice came from the other side of the room. Due to the smoke I could not see the person who as speaking with my still very human eyes. The sound was vaguely familiar.

_Virginia!?

Aunt Virginia was my mother’s older sister. My mom never allowed her much chance to be alone with us, because she was kind of certified as psychiatric case. Also, because she was involved with vampires, I found out later. Eventually, when I was around twelve, she disappeared for good. I never could find out if she was alive or not.

Until that day.

_Oh, boy! I am so proud of you!! My friends see everything you publish, Ron. I am your biggest fan.

It was her, really.

She was a vampire thrall now. Also, a proper, full package, cyborg. With one of those artificial skeletons. And eyes that did no effort to hide the fact that they where not a product of biological evolution. Or even genetic engineering .

She looked younger than me, what is to be expected from vampire thralls. But also a little bit disturbing in your aunt, who is older than your mother by decades.

Cyborg aesthetics, if they call that aesthetics, actually helped alleviate the sensation of looking at the crazy aunt from my childhood. More energetic and seemingly younger than she was back them. And she was always energetic to a fault.

That happy coincidence saved my life. No one was using hyperbole. The normal outcome for situations like that is the reporter or the cop never being seem again.

My continue survival was dependent on never reveal anything about that place, or how to reach it. My aunt had to call her “master” and beg to him. He gave is word that if I ever started talking more than I should that would became a problem for him, personally. The man has some degree of influence inside his Nocturnal Court, and his world carries some weight because of that.

He even paid for my camera! Without anyone asking it.

Vampires can be surprisingly generous sometimes. For no apparent reason.

Helps compensate how many people every single one of them kills in regular basis, when they lose control during hunts. I am not brave enough to reject that kind of generosity from someone like him!

Aunt’s friends really seemed to know my work. However, cyborgs can have means to access the net inside those cybernetic brains of them. They may have been just polite, indulging my aunt and saving my ego. We will never know, I suppose.

On the other hand, people do read gossip about the private life of celebrities!

Not you, of course. I am not suggesting.

Mostly all kinds of people, actually, you see. Not everyone, but every sort of people, including some that are totally inconspicuous. You would be surprized.

This camera was a lot better than the one I had in mind, among other things because it has a connection through technomagic, with a system that retransmits information from the astral plane. The nearest possible thing to actually impossible to hack. Not even an actual fairy king can interfere with it. What is, you can imagine, a important quality for vampires. Since fairies don’t get along with vampires.

I was caught, as I assumed I would probably be, but the images were safe to be recovered lather. Beyond the reach of the security team.

They took me to a pantry next to the kitchen, where one of the fellows half-extracted the camera from my head. With an, actual, silver spoon.

I swear to you, for whatever you please. A damn desert spoon made of silver! As if werewolves were real and those gentlemen suspected me to be one. Completely preposterous! In any case, they stopped once the cables connecting the camera to my brain got exposed.

For once, they were not expecting anything with that level of quality.

In addition to that surprize, one of the fellows noticed a small logo somewhere. Despite the blood and who knows which other corporal fluids. And despite my pitiful winning and begging (you don’t really though I would keep that unmentioned. As if hopping to leave the impression that I was impassive and unmoved, like a marble statue. Did you?). I didn’t knew that logo was there myself, and would not have recognized its meaning.

This professional security team did knew it was the logo of a Nocturnal Court.

Mind you, vampires don’t usually intimidate people on purpose. They cannot kill people, on purpose, legally. They cannot target any one individual, for vengeance.

Vampires kill humans by accident, while hunting. They must hunt unwilling humans to drink blood, and to keep their sanity. They cannot kill anyone on purpose. It would be ****; Does not change anything the fact that vampire society is the one authority keeping track of every human accidentally killed during a hunt.

If you do the math, considering how often humans die during hunts, because the vampire drinking from them lost control; Well, objectively, is not possible for any authority to look in much detail all those cases.

Nocturnal Courts would have time to do nothing else, if they tried to investigate all hunt accidents.

Humans do not fear vampires. If and when a powerful human feels the need to go against a particular vampire, you can be sure this powerful human does that! That said, even the most dangerous and arrogant mobster or legal authority in human society will pause and think a second time. Asking himself if that is the time and the place when they will choose to pick that kind of fight.

The security team holding me for questioning in that occasion decided the time for that was another and the place elsewhere.

I got out of this with a cyborg camera hanging from that empty cavity where my eyeball used to reside. And images that turned into enough money to pay all my bills for five years.

After a visit that doc who installed the camera I also got back that great piece of cybernetic art.

More importantly, the adventure was what opened to me the chance to write some articles about serious topics.

A source inside the Nocturnal Community is the kind of advantage that makes you someone to be consulted in this country. Probably, anywhere in Lira System. Of course, it implies the need to make some favours from time to time. Choose a certain kind of words to comment actions from certain political figures connected to a rival Vampiric Court. Pick words from a different list when the subject of commentary is for the court where your contacts are.

I am no thrall! Got the offer, once. Decided against the lifestyle.

Does not mean I am above reasonable exchange of favours, and basic courtesy.

As signs of age start accumulating in my face, I catch myself wondering if they will ever offer me full membership. The chance to be transformed into a vampire. Proper citizen of Nocturnal Society.

I also wonder what would be my answer. If the offer happened to be made.

I am not sure if vampires have serious journalist among them. Know for a fact they do like to engage in gossip.