A long night in Toronto....

Kale stayed behind the pillar and waited. So long as the gunmen were continuing to spray bullets into the station, one of them was bound to run out and have to change magazines sooner or later. That would be the time to move.

Neither gunman fired a shot for a brief moment. Meanwhile, the EMTs made it to the stairs, and started climbing out of the station. Elizabeth, on the other hand, was now at the top of the stairs and could see the ambulance parked before her, with the rear doors open.

As Liz kept on the move towards the ambulance, suddenly a brief thought popped into her head.

"Keena! Can you detect any more signals now? more signals near that detective, or the subway system or something? I might have an idea."

Keena didn't bother to respond, she just nodded as she got to work trying to find anything she could for Liz.

Meanwhile Liz was looking to her surroundings, seeing if there was anything that might be useful in the current situation, an alternative to jumping into the back of a vehicle and taking off for good.

Liz's alternatives boiled down to the bus stop a block away, trying to jack the car that was parked nearby, or just running off into the night. Her scan of the area was too hurried for anything else about her surroundings to have registered. Keena, meanwhile, managed to detect the ambulance with her search. Everything that could or would have been underground, save for the oddball kalephone x2 that both had all of 1 red bar apiece, was blocked. There were other wifi spots in the area, but it was pretty clear that they didn't have anything to do with what went on below, nor were they going to be of help. At least, it was fairly sure the locked networks of nearby businesses and crappy eatery hotspots weren't going to help much. The ambulance wifi was also protected, but the signal was super strong by comparison.

---

One of the gunmen fired a couple of shots at the corner of the pillar Kale had taken shelter behind.

"And I think it's time to retreat," Kale muttered to himself, making a break from the pillar toward the exit and glancing back toward the tunnel occasionally as he went.

Kale makes it up the stairs on the heels of the burdened EMTs. He sees them head straight for the open back end of the ambulance parked on the sidewalk, and begin loading their patient into the back as quickly as possible. One of the EMTs, the woman, speaks to someone inside the ambulance: "Move over a bit, I need to get in." His own car is parked nearby. The male EMT, after shoving the patient into the back of the vehicle, glances at Kale. "You should come with us, sir. You're injured." The man closes the rear doors of the ambulance as he speaks.

Liz was already in the ambulance at this point, feeling a bit cramped in the back. At least it was better than being down in the subway still.

"Okay..." She responded to the EMT, as she slowly shuffled over to make some more room.

"I'll follow behind," Kale said, making his way to his car, unlocking it, and pulling the door open. "I can still drive."

"Okay, sir," the male EMT said quickly before he turned, ran to the driving compartment, opened the door, and jumped in. The lights and sirens came on a moment later, and the ambulance took off for the hospital... probably a great deal faster than necessary.

---

---- Metro Suburbs; Cassidy's residence; Friday, February 2nd 3:03 AM....

The phone in Cassidy's bedroom rang at a most unusual hour....

"Answer. Speaker."

The dulcet tones of young men long dead, singing an old- but never out of style song cut out at "Not just anybo-" as Cassidy swung her legs over the side of her bed.

"This is Cassidy, Marissa. Urgency?"

A hologram of Marissa's harried face appeared as the woman rattled off the requested data in terse sentences: "Male, 20s, Prostheses for nerves. Two central control units in the base of the neck. Both on the fritz. Electric shock, unshielded stuff. Tom is currently assisting, but it looks awful. " The microspeakers distributed across the room were able to convey just how tired she sounded.

"Jesus, how long have you been on shift for?" Cassidy asked. Marissa's face was creased with stress, shoulders- oh, she was moving, offscreen, Cassidy concluded.

"Fifteen- it doesn't matter, since you're the one who'll be operating." Marissa replied off-handedly. "You're the specialist on neuro-augs, and his stuff got toasted. It was an aurora unit, and you know how they are." She sounded somewhere between not thrilled and somewhat annoyed there at the end.

"Make their shit. Yeah. They're worse than Renraku."

Cassidy flexed her fingers into multiple positions then returned to her default of something somewhat akin to a conductor holding his hands before an orchestra.

"Anyway. Sounds dumb." Cassidy's response to her haggard suboordinate was about as flat as a day old glass of soda. She wrinkled her nose, getting on her feet and pulling a shirt over her camsole and pants, the necessaries for going out in the public eye. "No shielding? What about a backup or an asynchronous unit activation on trigger? You know, this reminds me of that idea for a chemically activated redundancy implant I was thinking of. I'll have to ask him when he's on his feet."

"You can do that when he's not this close to being a permanent burnout." There was an unspoken 'one step at a time, please'. "It's a partial nervous system replacement, but it's on the fritz. If it acts up..." Marissa's voice trailed off as she frowned.

"Yes. Aware. I'll be there soon." The words managed to contain both terseness and flippancy, Cassidy's movements a little quicker, although no less precise. Most of the time. "I have to talk with Mneme, so I'll see you there. Uhhh. Hm. I'll have Mneme text you the implants we'll probably use. End call."
Cassidy pulled on her gloves and goggles, settling her helmet over it. "Mneme. Sorry to wake you up. We'll need to run some tests on the way over there. I'll give you some specifics so you can simulate them. I'm thinking -"
"I apologize. I was awake after you placed the call on Speaker. I didn't interrupt. I was researching on back-processes. " Mneme popped up into the augmented display of her helmet goggles as Cassidy turned the key on her Vespa. The engine revved but didn't start, for a brief moment before purring to life. "I believe Aurora Unit Model #1127B would work as a strict replacement if the replaced nerves have not been fried themselves."

"Yes. Same conclusion, but I'm operating on the assumption the nerves are fried. Either that, or there's some kind of rupture inside the implant. It would have been a fairly routine replacement otherwise. Maybe- no, that's ridiculous."

"I think that if- Adrian Rogers Tremblay's artificial nerves are in fact malfunctioning or unsalvageable, it will require a different manufacturer, or perhaps a limb replacement entirely. If the nerves burn out entirely, it could take important muscle groups or arteries with them. I have found 13 different options that are less optimistic than this."

"My reasoning is that for anything worse, she wouldn't have called. She would have chopped off the offending pieces and done full replacements. Tom would have been operating. He got on shift-"

"It was 3 hours ago. Detour here. Right, then left."

"Reason?"

"Train accident. I have found articles that confirm that it may have been related to Adrian Rogers Tremblay's condition. 15 for, 2 undisclosed."
"Thanks. So- Anyone at Melrose Physio?"

"Not at this moment."

"Hm. How about Laplace Industries?"

"Yes."

"Call them, I want a dual-core with a backup."

"He'll need-"

"An AI to manage it. Make sure it's a cheerful one. Actually, just tell him to get the most cheerful he can get. The last guy complained about melancholy and stuff." Cassidy shrugged.

"Making call now. Surgery will take place in room 119."

"Thanks."

---- Laplace Industries; Toronto branch offices; Friday, February 2nd 3:15 AM....

One Daniel Shields, about to head home after a long night of overtime, received an e-mail... from his boss:

Quote (High Priority Rush Order)

Daniel, we just got an order for a premium nerve control unit over at Sunnybrook. According to the client, they want a delivery of a Dice-111, and a support AI. Says here the client specified, and I quote: "the most cheerful one in stock"... Yeah...

I promised them we would have someone from management hand deliver this one, and it happens to be on the way back home for you. Make it happen, Dan.

-- Trisha Powell, Branch Manager

Daniel was looking forward to going home. At three AM, he didn't even care about dinner (or "breakfast", considering the time) any more, all he wanted was his pillow. Hauling his briefcase with his stuff, he walked towards the elevator towards his wonderful Saturday.

Well, that is, until his glasses beeped with that god-awful noise he didn't want to hear, and a little envelope icon appeared in his peripheral vision. Several crude lines appeared in his head in response to it as he tapped the side of his head to open up the mail. "What in the titty-swindled fuck is this..." he groaned, getting to the end. "That assflinger better get me a nice glowing salary review for this... 'Mayk it hapen, Dayn,' bleeeh."

Pulling up a quick browse of the inventory, he tried to push his thoughts to the side, reminding himself over and over that it would be a Saturday soon, and it would be freedom, with a capital-- "FUCK," he expelled, letting the elevator take him to the storage area.

It didn't take him long to get the nerve unit running through a quick systems check, at the same time trying to get the AI selection process over and done with. Lazily going through the local AI bank, he pretty much just slapped down a search for whatever AI's short description seemed good enough that would be compatible with the Dice-111. He went with "music", in that case. Music cheered most people up, right?

"Let's see what that brings up..."

And that brought up something by the name of Note. In fact, she appeared on the screen...

... and almost deafened the operator running the AI bank search engine with fun and a cheery jingle, akin to what one will usually hear in a supermarket. "It's my turn, right? Please say it's my turn, Danny!" Note's childish face beamed as logically possible at the screen. "C'mon, I saw your search phrase! MUSIC, right? I fiiiiiiiit the bill!" she giggled.