Vibranium and Chrome 5

Wakako Okada

Wakako's office was sparse but comfortable. Her walls were lined with screens that displayed information, requests, and the endless flow of jobs that came through Westbrook. When a client came in, she always made sure to click the button on her table that hid the monitors, but alone, like she was right now, they were up in full.

She was one of the few who didn't do everything via a neural implant. Call her old-fashioned, which she was, but Wakako Okada had grown up with monitors and hard tech, and she stuck to them whenever she could. Right now, she sat at her desk, alone in her office, with her fingers steepled beneath her chin, her weathered face illuminated by the soft blue glow of her monitors.

She had been working for the past five hours, reviewing contracts, processing information, and turning down jobs that did not feel right. She had been a fixer long enough to have grown a feel for the good or the bad. Jobs that were as likely to screw you over as they would your runner. It was that instinct that had kept her alive for the past few decades as the scene grew ever more turbulent, and it was those instincts that told her that the gig she personally created and gave out to those fools had been a mistake.

She had known it even before she decided to go through with it. That was why she picked the four mercenaries. They were good at their job, but they were also brash. Two of them had a history of working for Maelstrom, and the third was a former scav, which made them people who were very disposable—people she could sacrifice without tugging on what was left of her heartstrings.

The call came through at 11:47 PM, distracting her from her musing.

"Okada, it’s me," a voice said on the other end. One of her contacts. "The client is asking again. They want to know if you’ve changed your mind about the Clouds gig."

Wakako closed her eyes. She had already turned this down twice. The client had lost something precious to him. Her contact refused to give more details or tell her what it was yet, but they needed it back urgently by the look of things. It was supposed to be a standard retrieval job, really, except Wakako’s instincts had screamed at her. Something about it felt like bait.

"Tell them no," she said flatly. "I don’t have the mercs available for a job like that right now. The Tyger Claws are stretched thin, and I’m not going to waste resources on a job that feels like a setup."

"The client is going to be disappointed."

"That he will." Wakako terminated the call, barely hidden annoyance peeking through. Her contact, Chen Li, was an upcoming fixer. Brash and overconfident, as most younglings were bound to be. She was certain even he must have sensed how fishy the gig was, but his pride and hunger to make a name for himself blinded him. She was going to have to cut him off sooner rather than later, before he brought her down with him when he eventually reached too far, she realized with sadness.

She sat in silence for a long moment, letting the weight of her decision settle on her tiny frame. The ability to focus on profit over morals, the accumulation of connections and contacts but never friends, only people who could be discarded when their use ran out or when the cost of associating with them began to outweigh the benefit. The life of a fixer was a hard one, not in the way most runners or solos had it. It was more complicated than simply having a gun in hand and shooting a fool.

Wakako Okada had been doing this for forty years, longer if you counted her earlier life. She had survived five husbands, two corporate purges, and the constant threat of being buried by stronger players in the game. Her survival came from one simple rule: trust her gut. That was what allowed her to be the slightest bit kinder, softer. It was what gave her the leeway to assist young runners like the brother-and-sister duo that came to her a few days ago looking to start working as mercs.

A few minutes passed as Wakako sat in place until the alarm of her digital clock blared and forced her to focus once more.

12:05 a.m.

She was growing sluggish, and it was time to clock out. At the rate she was going, she probably had two or three years left, but not any more than five before her body and mind began to give up in ways no amount of cybernetics would protect her from, unless she was ready to go full borg, and she didn’t think she had it in her.

She stretched in her seat, her bones creaking slightly, and decided it was enough for one night. The pachinko parlor would be fine without her. Her people had their orders. The youths worked the front while the younger ones handled logistics, and the Tyger Claws Ryoko had stationed around her parlor stayed hidden in the shadows, ready for trouble.

She stood up and moved toward the back exit, nodding to her bodyguard as she passed. He was a big man, cybernetics running up his left side, loyal as they came. He had been with her for twelve years.

"Going home?" he asked.

"It has been a long day," Wakako said. "Keep the usual watch. Call me if anything comes up."

She waved at the youths scattered throughout the shop, gave subtle acknowledgment to the Tyger Claws members positioned around the perimeter to show them that she knew they were there. They didn’t mind. Instead, they bowed respectfully, so she gave a huff in annoyance, then called a Delamain and got a ride home.

The ride home was quick. Feeling the weight of her age, she sagged in her seat as the AI that ran the cab corporation tried to engage her in small talk, but after a few minutes of her ignoring it, it got the message, then shut up and focused on driving. She arrived home a few minutes later.

Her apartment was located in a better part of Japantown, on the twenty-third floor of a building that catered to successful businesspeople. She had bought it years ago and, with careful cash, spread the payment across enough shell companies that no one would ever trace it back to her directly.

She waved at the receptionist, got on the elevator to her floor, then entered her personal room. In contrast to her workplace, her apartment was lavishly furnished. The parlor was wide, with a clear view of the city. To the side was the luxuriously stocked kitchen, and to the other was the bathroom. She stared at the sheer opulence before her for a second, her eyes drifting to a picture frame hanging on the side of the wall. It showed her and her late husband. He was the one who had redecorated the place, and she didn’t have the heart to change anything.

She was going to have to move out, she realized. She would leave the house as she had the past four that held memories of her husbands, whom she had loved as much as herself, despite the rumors.

She moved to the bathroom and changed out of her work clothes, slipping into comfortable pajamas taken from the laundry. A wave of her hand turned the faucet on, and she washed her face, her reflection staring back at her in the mirror, an old woman’s face, lined, weathered, hardened by decades of difficult choices. She shook away dark thoughts. She was more morose than ever; perhaps she needed to change her medication.

She moved toward her bedroom, ready for the deep sleep that came to her most nights. She walked toward the small relic lamp on her bedside table, the one her fifth husband had given her on their one-year anniversary shortly before he died of a heart attack, but her feet froze a second later.

Someone pulled on the lamp cord, and the light partially illuminated a figure sitting in the reading chair beside her bed. The shadows had hidden them perfectly. A silenced Lexington pistol lay on the table beside the chair, close enough to grab but far enough away to show no immediate threat.

Wakako's wide eyes searched the shadow, looking for something, an identifier. Was this an assassin sent to kill her? A corpo looking to silence her? A fellow fixer, angry with how she did business and wanting to move in on her turf? An Edgerunner who had felt stifled? Her mind raced, yet she tried not to show it. Other than her eyes widening, her features remained calm.

The figure remained quiet for a long second, and when he finally spoke, the voice was calm and controlled. Male. Unfamiliar. Without any of the telltale masking distortion used by most corponinjas or assassins. That ruled out a corpo client.

"Sit down. We need to talk."

Wakako's heart did not race. Neither did her hand shake. After forty years in this business, she had learned to keep her body under control regardless of what her mind was thinking, so she moved slowly, making sure the man could see her at all times. Then she sat on the edge of the bed, her movements deliberate.

"The Arasaka vault," the figure said. It was not a question. "You found it a few days ago. You sent mercenaries to loot it. How did you find out about it?"

Wakako's mind raced through the possibilities. That ruled out a stifled Edgerunner. Only one of the four she sent had survived the job. She had paid the rambling former Maelstrom member enough to keep quiet for a few days in a motel, and then he had disappeared, thanks to a quiet word from Wakako to Ryoko. She doubted his body would ever be found. However, she had a better idea of the threat she faced now, and it forced her to rethink her strategy.

"Who are you?" she asked, buying time even as she calculated distances and exit routes out of here. She remembered the ramblings of the sole survivor, he spoke of a deadly man with a metal arm who had killed his team in less than a minute.

"...A memory," the man said after a pause. "And that’s all I will say for now, until you answer my questions."

Wakako considered the question for a minute, contemplating just how much she could share and how much she’d be forced to keep. The figure leaned forward slightly, revealing dull blue eyes, eyes Wakako had seen on soldiers who had survived some of the worst atrocities of the Fourth Corporate War. She changed tactics immediately. She was going to tell him everything. What the hell had those fools brought upon her?

"I got the location of the vault from a Netrunner with a grudge against Arasaka. During one of her escapades, searching for a way past their ICE, she came across something. It was a location forgotten by even Arasaka, so I bought the information off her hands with hopes that I could use what I found in it to put a knife in Arasaka's guts," she said, not managing to hide her hatred for the corporation.

The man remained silent, then moved back into the obscuring darkness that hid his face before asking, "The man that escaped?"

Wakako's jaw tightened.

"He is dead," she said carefully. "The entire gig was a bust. Nothing came of it. Shortly after he escaped and reported to me, an Arasaka strike team hit the vault. The runners must have triggered some alarm that alerted Arasaka when the vault was breached."

There was silence again, but this time she was the one to break it with a question of her own. "Now, how did you get here, and who are you?"

The figure contemplated her question for a few seconds, then leaned forward again, closer this time, and a shaft of light caught the edge of a jawline—strong features.

"I climbed," the man stated. He was curt, she noted. Not used to speaking a lot or speaking too much. He kept quiet for a few long seconds, and Wakako could see his jaw tense and flex as he considered something. She gave him the time he needed. She was old and practiced at keeping quiet and allowing others to gather their thoughts. Whatever had been running through the man's head came to a halt as he made a decision.

He reached up and pulled the lamp fully, bathing his figure in light.

The man looked... normal. She had expected some half-borg solo or a ninja chromed to the gills, but the figure the light revealed looked plain. His hair was long, his face young, and he was somewhere between late twenties and early thirties. However, it was his eyes that told the true story. His plain features could not mask the dull blue, empty orbs. Wakako looked away from them before she got sucked in and turned to the sole piece of chrome she could pick out on him, a cybernetic left arm.

"My name is Bucky," he said. "James Buchanan Barnes. You woke me up, Okada. I have been asleep in cryo for fifty-eight years. I... I am a man out of time with nothing to lose, and I would like to understand why. So give me something solid, a good reason why I should not put a bullet in your head and search for better sources for an answer."

Wakako ignored the threat, and despite the empty way he delivered it, she knew he could and would make good on those words. Instead, she processed this information the same way she processed all information, with an eye toward advantage. Then she came to a decision.

She smiled, the practiced one she used for business, not the rare one she gave her children and grandchildren.

"Because I can make you an offer you'd be hard-pressed to reject," she stated with confidence.

"I’m listening."

"I do not have the answers you seek on hand, Mr. Barnes, but I will make you an offer, one that would benefit you as much as it would me. You are a man out of time, yes," Wakako continued, using his own words, her mind already spinning the speech in a way he would hopefully find favorable.

"But you are also something rare. You are capable. You woke up from cryo, naked, and still managed to kill three hardened and chromed-up Edgerunners. Then you went ahead to track me down to my house, knowing I was the fixer who sent them, and you breached my security. Everything about you speaks of the skills and training that make a person valuable in this world you’ve found yourself in, very valuable."

She leaned back slightly, allowing him to digest her words.

"Continue," Bucky said a short moment later, and she hid her joy at those words.

"I'm going to offer you a partnership," Wakako said. "I'll give you a loan, enough eddies to establish yourself. I can get you false IDs, a safehouse, and documentation. I can reintroduce you to the world, teach you how it works now, and in return, you work for me."

"No," he stated with a hardness that made Wakako shift the angle of her pitch.

"Then you work with me. At a discounted rate of course. I can set you up as a solo, vouch for you and get you jobs that require someone with your particular skill set. You can take jobs from other fixers, but I will always get first dibs on you."

He looked into her eyes for a long second, and this time she forced herself to hold his gaze as she continued.

"I might not have the answer, but we both know the people who do, Arasaka. But right now, you are unknown, which is both good and bad. However, you can’t stay unknown. You need a reputation. The more your reputation as a solo builds, the more jobs you can get, the more chrome you can chip in," she added in an uncharacteristic usage of street slang. "But most importantly, the more likely you’ll be to get information and gigs from rival corps targeting Arasaka, or from Arasaka themselves, which means the more likely we can get the information you need. In Nightcity, power and reputation translate to everything else."

Bucky was silent for a long moment. His eyes studied her with an intensity that made Wakako second-guess her path for the first time in decades. What if she had made a mistake somewhere in her speech? She felt a flutter of uncertainty in her stomach. What if he refused?

But before she could sink into the mire of her uncertainty, he nodded, a jerky motion that almost made her sigh in relief.

"Alright," he said. "But I need to understand the world first. You teach me. Then we talk about jobs."

Wakako smiled wider. This was going to be a good arrangement. She could feel it in her bones, the same instinct that had kept her alive all these years. This man, this impossible man from another time, was going to change everything in Westbrook.

"I think," she said slowly, "this is the beginning of a very profitable relationship, Bucky."

He nodded in agreement before speaking. "But first, tell me, have you ever heard of the Avengers?"