บท 15: The New Man : An Adam Smasher SI (Cyberpunk Edgerunners) by Seat_Admiral in Space battles also known as Brosef in Questionable questing
A pretty Decent Adam Smasher fic semi si because of the si character inhabiting adams brain as a co host
Words: 432k+
Links:
https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/20227
https://archiveofourown.org/works/44130057/chapters/110967066?view_adult=true
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/the-new-man-an-adam-smasher-si-cyberpunk-edgerunners.1051921/
Note: QQ and AO3 versions obviously have their Nsfw versions included while spacebattles have those parts cut so for full nsfw experiences wanting readers the first two sites are ones to go but remember spacebattles also has its own thread comment forum on it which is also insightful like the one in QQ
Chapter 1
Most cyborgs needed sleep, rest, a period with which to recharge their internal batteries and maintain a semblance of their still living-days. Anything to hold onto the illusions of their life before, to prevent their mind from breaking under the strain of a body of plasteel and myomer.
Those cyborgs were weak compared to him. As weak as normal men were to those cyborgs.
It had been decades since he had needed sleep. It had been decades since he had needed to recharge his batteries. He didn't have batteries anymore, he had long since upgraded to a fancy new micro-reactor.
He didn't need sleep, but there were periods in between his deployments in which he had nothing much to do. His self-maintenance didn't take terribly long to perform. His weapons maintenance was similarly quick work most of the time, unless the deployment was particularly entertaining. In those periods, he sat on his bench.
He sat on his bench and reviewed his previous deployments. Both as entertainment, and as a way to see where he could improve. Everything he saw was recorded in his internal black box, which he could review at will.
It was during one of these reviews that a flood of data suddenly entered his awareness. A flood of memories that were not his own. Memories barely more than two decades old. Were he a young man, they might have overwhelmed him, but he had been an old man for a very long time, the memories could never overtake him.
The memories had all five basic senses. Sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell, all exactly the same as normal men. Adam Smasher had not had normal senses in more than seventy years, he had almost forgotten what it was like. His senses were far more than that these days, enough to drive anyone else insane. They were enough for him to perform his job.
The shorter set of memories would have undergone cyberpsychosis within a year. He had a strong sense of self, lack of attachment to his biology and other humans, and a half-decent tolerance for suffering. That was not enough to keep him in one piece with everything Adam Smasher had. He was not Adam Smasher. Adam Smasher was different from normal men.
So Adam Smasher persisted, no amount of meatbag memories could change that.
His first thought was some kind of poorly-thought out data-assault by a rival corp. Militech or Mexican Metals, or perhaps Netwatch. Trying to weaken Arasaka by making their chief killer suddenly 'understand the feelings of others'. Trying to induce cyberpsychosis and make him lose control of himself. Cyberpsychosis was an issue for normal humans, not him.
Adam Smasher grew up an effective orphan on gang-controlled streets of one of the biggest cities in the world while it was collapsing into anarchy. Adam Smasher thrived in an enviroment of hostility and suffering that would break most people, turning them to drugs or suicide or other escapes from cold reality. Adam Smasher was a veteran of war, gang and standard, since the day he came home to an empty house.
The memories spoke to him.
He was a high-functioning sociopath. That was absolutely fine by him. He was able to survive a fucking nuke going off underneath him, who gave a fuck about being normal? Damn right he was high-funtioning, highest functioning fucker there ever was. He was going to stay that way, these memories can keep this 'empathy' bullshit for itself. Apathetic and distant from other humans sure, but closer than Adam had ever been, closer than he cared to be.
Normally, at this point he would go tell his corporate handlers about the parasite in his head. They would get some netrunners (hackers, the memories grumbled) to purge it from his brain, and he could go back to living a life of carefree murder.
But the memories spoke to him.
Unless his fate was averted, he would die in one year or less. Die at the hands of some fucking meatbag with the ghost of one of his old victims screaming in their head. Die, or be given mercy, which was worse.
He wouldn't normally believe in a random prediction of death from a poorly made data-package. But the memories knew things he couldn't possibly have known. He would have to give it a confirmation first, but...
Adam liked to work alone, but he hated dying, and despised the idea of being spared. He was Adam fucking Smasher, if he was ever weak enough to need mercy, then he'd prefer death.
The memories spoke to him.
His biggest problem, as it stood, was that the meatfucker to come tore through all his help without pause. The easiest way to fix that was to get help that was worth a damn. The easiest way to fix that, was to get an apprentice worth a damn. If he had to teach some fucker to be decent backup, so be it.
It was a real easy thing to do too, apparently. All he had to do was pull his punches a tad, and call in a favor or two. Assuming the memories were right, that was. So while waiting for confirmation, he busied himself with preparation for a scrap. He ran diagnostics on his frame, he cleaned and oiled his guns, he sharpened his knives.
The butcher would be ready for the slaughterhouse to open.
The memories told him that was chunni as shit. He told the memories to fuck off.
*ping*
"Adam, we have an emergency job for you, here are the details, be in the office within ten minutes." The voice of one of his benefactors, and a location. He got up from where he was sitting on his heavily reinforced metal bench in his floor. The backhanded shits probably wanted him to babysit some corporate brat again.
Adam paused briefly, noticing his spike of anger at being messaged by an Arasaka handler. The memories did not have a positive opinion on the corporations. That was fine, Adam didn't really care for most of them either, he was just here for the eddies, violence, and chrome.
...He needed something to call the memories other than 'the memories'. It was getting old to think that every time. He wasn't about to use it's real name either. It was dead, it had lost that name with that.
Surprisingly, the memories agreed, and had a suggestion.
Fire of God, Angel of Wisdom, Guardian of the Garden of Eden. How pretentious.
'Welcome onboard, Uriel. I'll delete you if you're lying to me.' Adam spoke to himself.
'Glad to be here Adam. I'll delete myself if I am.' Uriel replied.
Adam read over the details of his next job as he rode the elevator down to the specified floor. Adam and Uriel laughed when they saw their next target.
David Martinez, rampaging around in the stolen Cyberskeleton, trying to get his girlfriend to the moon. Seems Uriel was right after all, this was all entertainment for the 'real world'. Adam didn't care if this was real or not, it was real to him and that was all that mattered.
Those spoiled meatbags on the other side watched all of this for entertainment? Adam intended on giving them a fucking show, and Uriel was more than happy to help.
Now then… How is he going to convince his handlers about his little plan?
Eh, he'll handle it after the fact.
—
The office he was in was dark, barely lit. A handler he didn't bother remembering the name of and some drone were talking off to the side. The lights from the outside cast the room in dim illumination, highlighting the random geometric symbols that the corporate overlords loved to put everywhere.
Uriel thought that their aesthetics were way more pleasing to look at than his own world's corporate overlords. All dark and brooding and whatnot as opposed to pink and pretend fluffy and fake sugar-sweet. Adam found that he had to agree, comparing the two. If you were going to be an evil overlord, you should play up the look too.
He found new appreciation for his own aesthetics, although the double-eye lights would have to go. Single red eyes were more pleasing to look at, and lost nothing in intimidation factor, Uriel chimed in.
"Faraday will be arriving shortly to deliver the netrunner." The drone said.
"As I thought, Martinez is after our fixer, not us." The handler replied.
"I'll order the pilot to turn around." The drone tried.
"No, keep them on course for the dock, you'll meet them there." The handler rebuked. At this the drone was slightly stunned, and hesitantly replied.
"I'll meet them?"
The handler stepped forwards and loomed over him, disdainfully replying. "You must have realized by now that someone is going to have to take the fall for this colossal clusterfuck, and surely you knew it wouldn't be me. Still confused?"
Adam and Uriel had to give her props, she had exactly the right amount of disdain for the lower ranked drone and menacing implication to her orders. 6/10, her cyber-eyes were garbage-tier and her hair was unpleasant to look at. Your sexy office outfit and voice does not excuse the rest of you. Try harder next time.
"Make sure that mangy fixer never makes it past the loading dock. Not a single step." She commanded. The drone gave a distressed growl and walked away to do what he was told. What a good dog that one was.
She leaned back against her desk, and turned to address him as he stood. She spoke in a tone that excellently concealed her nervousness at being alone in a room with one of the most dangerous individuals on the planet. Uriel absentmindedly wondered if it was worth it to dust off an old Gemini body to have fun with her, they could always make her wear a bag to hide that haircut. Adam was ambivalent to the idea, she wasn't his type.
"You're up against the Cyberskeleton. Expect you'll have some fun, eh Smasher?" She said.
Adam wanted to scoff. He said the lines that Uriel already knew were coming.
"It's a child's toy, reliant on antigravity training wheels. It's not even worth my time."
The boy who was strapped into it, however? That was very much worth his time, Uriel assured. Adam was hoping that was true, although he wouldn't be too torn up if it wasn't.
There was always more meat for the grinder.
Adam told the computer to turn on the Frank Sinatra radio channel in the background, Uriel wanted something to listen to.
—
That's life (That's life), that's what all the people say.
Adam always took joy in watching meat get turned into chunks, and delighted in the slaughter unfolding. Uriel took delight in the fact that they were all on corporate payrolls. Not actual corporate employees, he was contractually obligated to protect those, just assets, which he didn't have to do jack shit for.
You're riding high in April, shot down in May.
His job was to destroy the Cyberskeleton. It was implied that he would do it by killing everyone who wasn't an employee in the area. It was not outright stated, however. When the boy aimed his stolen guns at the dog set up to fall, he had to move.
But I know I'm gonna change that tune.
The Sandevistan was an implant that lays over the spine, and boosts the reflexes of the wearer by slowing their perception of time. It did not make one actually faster however. That was true in the sourcebooks.
When I'm back on top, back on top in June.
Adam was in what Uriel called the 'anime version' which slowed his perception of time and dramatically boosted his speed. Adam didn't know how exactly it did this, and everything Uriel knew of science told him that this was pretty much impossible to do as presented. It was still a fairly basic upgrade.
I said, that's life (That's life), and as funny as it may seem.
For a brief time, the world slows down, and Adam moves exactly as fast as he normally does. Walking forwards and getting in between the dog and the oncoming bullets.
Some people get their kicks stompin' on a dream.
Then the boy dropped his guns, and the bootlicker spoke up. "You see? The Cyberskeleton returned to you as pro…" he was cut off when the boy pointed a palm and dramatically increased the gravity around him.
But I don't let it, let it get me down.
He fell, collapsed in a perfect hole imprinted around him. His leg had exploded and burst into red and viscera. Adam approved, he was about to shoot the meat himself, his voice was already getting annoying.
'Cause this fine old world, it keeps spinning around.
"Oh no, you ain't flatlining that easily." The boy said, his approval of Uriel's choice just kept going up and up it seemed.
I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king.
The meat looked up at him, and gasped out, "Adam Smasher? Go on, kill the boy!"
Adam knew that line was coming and it still pissed him off.
"Who the fuck are you?"
I've been up and down and over and out, and I know one thing.
That line was perfect for destroying this meat's sense of identity. Thinking it was so high, when really the predators don't even notice its existence. It had to burn worse than anything else.
"You fucking merc! Do your job!" Adam resolved to ignore the gibbering meat from now on.
Each time I find myself flat on my face.
"My business is with the kid." At this the mentioned kid turned around with a glare. My, that's a scary expression you have on your face, he might just run away in fear.
"That's Adam Smasher?" The kid said, pretty redundantly. Everyone already knows this, no need to say it twice. The kid stepped forwards and Adam stepped forwards. Adam always did like a good face-off, especially when he towered over basically everyone around. He let their eyes lock, and the kid wasn't backing down at all.
Good.
I pick myself up and get back in the race.
"So this is Adam Smasher in the Chrome, NC boogeyman of legend." Adam knew these lines were coming, but Uriel wanted to step in with his reply here. Adam was fine with this, Uriel was better at talking than he was.
That's life (That's life), I tell ya, I can't deny it.
"You're packing some pretty heavy artillery for your size boy, I'm impressed you can string two words together." The core was good, a backhanded compliment followed by a genuine sense of approval coming from a voice of growling machinery.
I thought of quitting, baby.
"Right back at you, choom. Heard you went no-ganic, full-borg, so I gotta ask. Any brain left in that chrome-dome of yours?" The boy was defiant and running high on a whole lot of violence and chrome, his reply was expected. Adam's next line is where he started to go off the script, so to speak.
But my heart just ain't gonna buy it.
"Well, you could say I'm built different." The boy's eyes immediately widened, too shocked to reply in time for the next little event. The sound of a flying vehicle of some kind (what were their names again? Adam and Uriel couldn't remember) entering the hole in the wall.
"Trauma team! Thank god you made it!" The meat spoke up again, crawling towards the medics. The boy turned to see this and started to scream. Rude, they were in the middle of their pre-fight banter.
I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king.
Adam slightly adjusted his aim, and shot one of the many cables leading from the Cyberskeleton to the boy in half. The boy yelled in pain and his attention was drug back to Adam.
The technical readouts of the Cyberskeleton had been sent to him, and Adam knew it down to the fucking seam placement. That wire he just broke controlled the sub-fingers on the right hand. The boy wouldn't need them for this next part.
Most importantly, the neural strain of controlling the Cyberskeleton just dropped by a percent and a half.
"Can you really afford to be distracted right now?" Adam said, reminding the boy that he was in the middle of danger.
I've been up and down and over and out, and I know one thing.
The boy screamed, activated his Sandevistan, and moved. Adam already knew where he was going to end up, so there wasn't a need for him to activate his own. He took three steps to the right as the boy turned the trauma team into pulp and grabbed the bootlicking meat.
Each time I find myself laying flat on my face.
A rocket fired from his shoulder, and blew the boy out the side of the skyscraper. The meat would die on impact from the ground, but the boy and his girl would be fine. Adam made his way to one of the exterior elevators, used by maintenance crews to make sure the exterior was in shape. As he did, Uriel remembered what the girl was saying to the boy right now.
I just pick myself up and get back in the race.
Adam was reminded of a younger time. A time he didn't like to remember and a girl he has since learned to hate. Uriel quieted down, apologetic.
The boy was holding onto the side of the building, sliding down as his lover clung to him. Adam was impressed by the collateral damage being caused thus far. That would take millions to replace.
That's life (That's life), that's life and I can't deny it.
He had time to line up a shot, and the boy was moving perfectly straight down. Adam's mostly cybernetic mind calculated the shot, and he fired. The exposed wire that controlled the sub-fingers on the other side of the Cyberskeleton turned into two, split in half by the high-caliber rifle in his hands. Another percent and a half.
Only the first shot mattered here, so Adam let the others just hit the armored paneling on the thing's back to keep up appearances. The boy jumped off and curled into a roll, and Adam jumped off to follow.
Many times I thought of cutting out but my heart won't buy it.
Sliding down the side of the ramp-like structure, Adam kept firing at useless locations, and then fired a rocket when the kid reached the end. As the kid fell, he took the time to stop himself and think about his next move.
He and Uriel decided on a course of action, and then let the computer run the numbers for a bit while he waited for his cue.
But if there's nothing shaking come this here July.
'Make sure to save the gremlin. Maybe we can wife her' Uriel said, Adam mentally rolled his eyes. He thought about the blue-skinned, mostly meat woman for a bit, reviewing what Uriel knew of her.
I'm gonna roll myself up in a big ball and die.
Huh, he wasn't against that as he thought.
My, my.
His cue came, he fell downwards towards the dye-skinned woman, firing two shots that disabled her arms. They were chrome, she'd be fine.
He landed next to her, his hundreds of pounds of metal turning the floor into rubble and sending them all falling through to the layer below.
The dust began to settle, and the woman was groaning in pain, legs broken from being so close to him on impact. The next song began to play, and he wanted to laugh.
Fly me to the moon.
"Son of a-" The driver began, moving forwards with a mid-caliber pistol. Adam backhanded him in the stomach and sent him reeling backwards. Ah wait, he couldn't let them get away, could he?
He raised his arm and fired a rocket at their planned escape vehicle, turning it into scrap. Then he shot the driver in the legs, making them useless until medical treatment could happen. They wouldn't be getting away now.
The boy yelled again, and moved to crush him with his immense bulk behind a steel fist. His Sandevistan was active, sending forwards faster than most people can even see.
Let me play among the stars.
Adam Smasher was not most people, even without any technology. He knew it was coming too. A perfectly timed duck and three steps back moved him out of the way, no need for his own Sandevistan this time around. Does it still count as 'this time around' if this is actually the first time now? Questions for later.
"What the-?!"
The boy landed, and his optics went blurry, blood coughed up from his mouth. The boy was beginning to lose it, and didn't have any immunosuppressants (They don't even affect the immune system, why are they called that? Uriel complained) left to force him back together.
And let me see what spring is like.
The boy would need to learn not to rely on crutches like that in the future.
"All out of meds? That's fine, you shouldn't be needing them after today." Adam spoke, and raised his gun to shoot out another wire. Idly he wondered why the hell it had so many that were just exposed like this.
A hacking attempt came in right on schedule. Crashing against his firewalls and achieving very little against them. Uriel noted that he could probably help against hacking attempts in the future, but it wasn't required here.
On a-Jupiter and Mars.
Girl only had 4 bars, it was almost embarrassing, wasn't she supposed to be an incredible hacker?
Uriel knew what Adam looked like in cyberspace. Adam idly wondered if Uriel's presence changed that at all.
He grabbed the attempt and crushed it in a lazy hand. He wasn't exactly sure how it worked, but this caused the neural implant in the back of her head to short-circuit and her to collapse. Uriel pointed that out as nonsensical, and Adam had no immediate counter.
In other words, hold my hand.
"You might want to stay seated, girl. This is a fight between men. I'll get to you next." Adam gave her some advice and then felt the impact of a dozen gravities crashing against him. His knees almost buckled, a meatbag would have been turned to a smear.
"You stay the hell away from her, you bastard!" Ah, the boy was up again, good. What should he smash first, Adam wondered.
"You are not strong enough-" He took a heavy step forward and tore off one of the antigravity rigs. The boy screamed as false pain fed back to his brain.
In other words, baby, kiss me.
"-to demand anything!" Another step and the second was torn off as well. The boy kept screaming.
Both of those being torn off dropped the neural strain by fifteen percent each. The boy moved to punch him, but a sidestep caused the punch to miss and the boy to start collapsing under his own weight.
The Cyberskeleton was such garbage as a war implement, another overpriced wonder of the military-industrial complex.
Fill my heart with song.
"You're not even strong enough to stand without your antigravity crutches. You think you're special because you're scrappy?"
"Get the fuck away from him!" A voice to his right screamed at him. He turned and saw the dyed woman glaring at him, even as she was ineffectually on the ground with three of her limbs disabled. She was crying. Uriel felt sad for the girl, Adam was annoyed, but bore with it for now.
All for the plan.
And let me sing forevermore.
Adam ignored her cursing, and turned back to the boy. He went about fulfilling his contract.
"Don't lie to yourself."
Smash, there went the left arm. Neural strain lowered by five percent. The boy screamed.
Smash, there went the right arm. Neural strain lowered by five percent. The boy screamed again.
Smash-Smash, there went the left leg. Neural strain lowered by seven and a half percent. The boy was beginning to get hoarse.
Smash-Smash, there went the right leg. Neural strain lowered by seven and a half percent. The boy couldn't scream anymore.
Smash-Smash-Smash, there went the rest of it. Neural strain caused by the Cyberskeleton reduced to zero. The boy breathed, mind clear for the first time in a while, limbless in a pile of scrap. He was in quite a bit of pain, but Adam knew he could deal with it.
You are all I long for.
Adam stood fully and looked around him. The boy was in the scrap pile, unable to move. The driver was off to the side, probably unconscious from the bloodloss. Or he was just hiding.
The boy's girlfriend was blankly staring at him, despair writ across her face. She knew the stories about him, about how he killed rather indiscriminately. She fully expected to die here, and she didn't want to be away from him as they did. The dyed woman had screamed herself hoarse, pitifully crying and furiously glaring at him.
Now, it was Uriel's time to shine. He's the one who made this plan.
All I worship and adore.
"Why… haven't you finished me off yet…" The boy spoke up. Adam was impressed, and ignored the question for a moment.
"You're good kid, but you're a long way from the best, and you're looking at him." Adam crouched, the same way Uriel told him to in order to get on the same level as kids when trying to talk to them respectfully. Uriel was an apathetic creature, but he knew how people's heads worked, and was a natural at making people like him.
Adam continued. "My contract was to destroy the Cyberskeleton. It was heavily implied that I should kill all of you too." A brief threat, a spike of fear to build tension.
"But it was not written outright." Confusion and a small hope, the tension was still there but no longer building.
In other words, please be true.
"Tell me, boy, do you know how old I am?" Another seeming non sequitur, fear has been replaced with confusion, he was now less stressed than before he started, more open to hearing what he had to say. Even his girlfriend and the dyed woman were less stressed and more confused right now.
"How… the hell should I know that?" The boy tiredly questioned. The confusion was good, it'd keep the boy mentally intact by giving his mind a direction to ponder rather than linger on past information uselessly. He'd need that to keep himself together as he recovered from the strain the Cyberskeleton put on him.
"I was born on the streets of NYC back in the 1980s." The boy, the girl, the gremlin all recoiled a bit at that. They should, Adam Smasher was ninety years on the dot this year. "That's why I'm feared, that's why I'm the best, because I'm the oldest man in a profession in which men die very young. Young men like you"
Adam continued, voice about as calm and soothing as he could make it. It could probably still make a baby cry.
In other words, I love you.
"There are thousands of men who have almost as much chrome as I do, each and every one of them dies fast or succumbs to cyberpsychosis long before they reach my level."
"Most of them are twice your age with half your mods. Most have the same reason for going so far."
"They get obsessed with the idea of the one clean run."
The boy's eyes got wide with this, and Adam knew he was dead on with Uriel's guess.
Fill my heart with song.
"They start losing people, and keep going back to the grind. Each time a few more parts are replaced with chrome, each time they say to themselves 'this time everything will go right, this time nothing bad will happen'."
"But it always does, something goes wrong. The eddies are stolen, the client stiffs you, a friend gets hurt or dies. Something always goes wrong because you weren't strong enough. So you get more chrome and go back to the grind. You'll get it perfect this time, right?"
Let me sing forevermore.
Adam let his arms relax.
"When you realize you'll never get it perfect, or you have nothing left to lose, or you just give up entirely. Then you lose control over yourself. That's cyberpsychosis, that's the end for a chrome junkie."
You are all I long for.
"That's the difference between you and me, kid. You have things to lose. I never had anything to lose in the first place."
"Are you going somewhere with this?" Man, the kid was rude when he was battered like this.
All I worship and adore.
"An offer." The kid tensed up, understandably wary from an offer from the widely feared Adam Smasher, the man who just tore experimental military technology limb from limb from his body.
"I'm old kid, and like all old men I'm starting to think about things like legacy." Adam wasn't, not really, but he needed to sell this part if he wanted half-decent backup against the meatfucker a year from now. "You're the most chromed out man with his faculties mostly intact I've seen in years. You got talent."
In other words, please be true.
"Arasaka wants me to kill all of you, if you refuse I'll go ahead and do that. Nothing personal about that. If you accept, I'll call in a few favors and you and your girlfriend and friends will be under my protection."
"Girlfriend?" The dyed woman muttered, confused at the term. Adam sighed.
In other words, in other words.
"What do they call it nowadays? Input or something like that?"
"What is it that you want?" The kid wasn't happy about having to ask that question, but he was out of options. The kid was loyal as can be, huh. Adam gave him credit for that.
I love you.
"I've been thinking about getting an apprentice."
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