A radio in one of the highest windows had the volume high enough to be heard from the dead-end alley.
"Good afternoon, Night City! For those who suffered the tragic experience of missing my charismatic voice this morning, let me remind you that yesterday's death lottery final count was 35... it's been weeks since we've seen such low numbers!"
But neither the scavengers, Dorio, nor Faelan were paying attention to one of the city's most recognizable voices. They were completely absorbed by the results of the experiments taking place before their eyes.
"What did you do to me?" Ursula's voice trembled in horror as she ran her hand over her skin, which, far from being smooth as expected for someone in her twenties, had wrinkled and turned a darker shade.
The question snapped Dorio out of his stupor, and he began timing.
Faelan didn't reply. Instead, he stepped closer and gripped her arm firmly as he examined the changed skin. Remembering what happened to Valgen, Ursula didn't dare move.
"The Oak Bark Potion looks good," Faelan thought to himself.
He had been wanting to test other aspects of his first trap for a while. Accustomed to using druidic plant magic, he had decided the next step wouldn't be animals, but potions.
He could generate the plants needed for the potions himself. He just needed to practice a bit to brew functional ones and then test their effectiveness, duration, and so on.
"Dorio," he called. "One bullet to the shoulder," he said, tapping the desired impact point.
Dorio pulled out his silenced handgun and fired without hesitation.
Ursula closed her eyes, bracing for pain, but instead of a stinging itch or even a push, she didn't feel any heat at all. She opened her eyes and looked at her shoulder, only to see a faint white nick against her now-altered skin.
Faelan raised an eyebrow under his mask and suddenly pulled out a knife, cutting the same spot where the bullet had hit. Nothing—just another thin, longer white nick.
"Yes, the effects are as expected," he nodded internally.
The scavengers and Dorio watched the scene in disbelief.
Why did it seem like that skin was better than installing a light subdermal armor?
"Do you feel any stiffness in your movements?" Faelan asked Ursula. "Any discomfort? Dizziness? Thirst?"
That voice sounded unexpectedly young...
But Ursula cooperated as if her life depended on it (which it undoubtedly did). She flexed her arms and fingers, but although her skin was clearly hardened on the surface, it didn't seem to affect her flexibility.
It made no sense, but she gave an honest answer.
Soon after, her skin began to return to normal, much to her relief.
"Five minutes," Dorio reported.
"Good," Faelan pointed to a corner of the alley and addressed Ursula. "You passed. Wait there while it's your colleagues' turn."
Ursula looked at him in surprise—was he really going to keep his word?
With no choice but to trust him, she moved to the corner and sat in silence, reflecting on what she had just drunk.
Dorio handed another bottle to one of the two remaining scavengers and stepped back as Faelan approached.
Dorio activated the thermal sensors in his optics.
The scavenger took a deep breath and mimicked Ursula, downing the entire bottle in one gulp.
"My arm!" he cried out in fear as he saw his right arm disappear. "Wait, I can still feel it?" he asked, confused.
Was it some kind of phantom sensation?
What the scavenger didn't notice was that little by little, his entire body disappeared to the other onlookers. Implants, clothes, body—everything had become invisible.
Except to Dorio, who already had his heat signature locked in.
But there were no electromagnetic signals, no sound, no heartbeat, no shadow, not even a smell.
"How do you feel?" Faelan asked his second guinea pig. "Any strange sensations?"
"I feel a strange coolness all over my body..."
But before he could even finish describing his experience, his body became visible again to everyone.
"Two minutes."
"Too short," Faelan gave the scavenger another Green Silence potion and waited for the invisibility to return. "Dorio, shoulder again."
BANG!
"Shit!" the scavenger clutched his shoulder in pain as his invisibility vanished at the exact moment he was hit.
"Mmm, it fades faster if you take a hit," Faelan noted mentally. "Good, go to the corner with the other one," he said, waving his hand like shooing a fly.
The last scavenger looked pale as he glanced at Dorio and Faelan.
Was he going to get the gift of a bullet to the shoulder too?
"Dorio, three non-lethal shots."
BANG!BANG!BANG!
"Fuck!" the scavenger collapsed into a pool of blood. Why did I get three?! The others only got one bullet! he protested silently.
Dorio grabbed his jaw and plugged the bottle directly into his mouth, forcing the scavenger to swallow the contents.
A greenish smoke began to emanate from the bullet wounds, while the flesh bubbled and expelled the bullets, healing the wounds in just over thirty seconds.
Dorio watched the effects closely this time.
Even military-grade stimulants didn't come close to this level of efficacy!
At most, they prevented bleeding out while applying a cocktail to keep the wounded alert and awake for a few hours.
But Faelan frowned as he watched the rapid healing.
"This one's defective," he muttered, shaking his head. "The healing shouldn't have taken that long or been so painful."
He had seen the scavenger's pained expression when his flesh began bubbling—it was clear he still hadn't nailed this potion. It would need improvement.
"The last one."
Dorio pulled out another bottle, and this time the scavenger took it meekly, a single thought in his mind as tears began to fall.
Please don't shoot me again!
Fortunately, his prayer seemed to work, and he wasn't shot.
But nothing happened either.
Dorio gave his boss a questioning look.
"Oh, right," Faelan realized the issue with this potion. "The Owl Eyes potion won't work—they don't even have real eyes to begin with."
No matter—the experiment had given him the results he wanted.
The good news was that he confirmed he could make functional potions, but the bad news was that he had to test every new formula to ensure it met the standard, since even though he instinctively knew what to combine, minor details like proportions apparently needed to be worked out through trial and error.
"That's all," Faelan turned to leave the dark alley. "As promised, I won't kill you."
Ursula and the two other scavengers breathed a sigh of relief when they saw he was really leaving.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Their bodies dropped lifelessly as Dorio blew on the barrel and calmly tucked the weapon back into his jacket. Naturally, the boss wasn't going to be the one to reset them—that fell within his job scope.
He crouched and placed a chip into each body's neuro-link for a few seconds before removing it and moving to the next. Kiwi and Sasha prepared a thirty-minute memory wipe from their systems, combined with a daemon to loot their bank accounts and reclaim money that no one would be using anymore.
The only one who didn't go through the process was the first scavenger—now a flower vase. His implants were too damaged to extract any useful data.
But the body of the blue-haired woman the scavengers had been looting?
Yes, she went through the chip too, but Dorio refrained from activating the money-claiming function—she might have family who needed it.
After all, many implants continued functioning for a while after their host's death, and it was better to make sure nothing problematic had been recorded.
Once Dorio checked their pockets for anything worth taking, he hurried to catch up with Faelan, who was already leaving the crime scene.
"Hey, boss," Dorio couldn't hold back his curiosity. "Do you have more of that first one you tested? Is it safe? I think if you combine it with a light subdermal armor, it'd be like wearing a heavy one without worrying about the weight, right?"
Combine a subdermal armor with the Oak Bark Potion?
The thought hadn't crossed his mind.
"I'll make a few more later, see if what you said is possible," Faelan replied. "Luckily, it seems I won't be drawing attention in Japantown after all."
"You're gonna use that thing that makes you invisible to sneak in?"
Faelan nodded. As long as he drank Green Silence potions, no one would see him—he'd be invisible to everyone unless hit by a stray bullet.
As for potential thermal readings, he didn't care much. As long as they couldn't see his appearance, they could only guess from the heat signature that he was human. It wasn't even real proof.
"Take the rest of the day to prepare and relax," Faelan suggested to Dorio. "Better to close the trap before the rat escapes."