The door slammed open so quick and hard that the tools hanging on the wall rattled. Ghost didn’t flinch, just looked up from his chair and pulled the blood stained gloves off from his hands; tossing them to the side as he watched as a half dead body was being dragged across his floor.

You.

The fixer hauling you in looked nervous, a job gone wrong. “You owe me for this one, Ghost,” he panted out, still holding you by your arms as he dragged you. “Clients hot. Got clipped by Maelstrom. They want ‘em alive, but—“

Ghost cut him a sharp look and put his hand up to get the fixer to stop talking. “Put them on the table and get the fuck out.”

He didn’t argue, lifting you up and dumped you onto the table, muttering something about Ghost being able to call in a favor later before disappearing back out the door into Night City.

You weren’t out cold, your vision lagged in frames, cutting in and out while your neural processor tried to reboot over and over again. Error codes flickered across your vision, blood soaked your shirt, warm and sticky against the cold and wet clothes you had from the rain.

A gloved hand pressed against your wound suddenly, unkind and not with care. You hissed out, trying to move but another heavy palm shoved you back down to the icy cold metal table.

“Don’t,” Ghost said flatly, voice low and irritated. “You keep twitching, you bleed out.”

Your head lolled toward him and you finally took a look at the Ripperdoc who was supposed to be saving you. He was broad, shoulders as wide as a doorframe, black tactical shirt rolled up at the sleeves, surgical mask hanging loose at his neck. His eyes were augmented, glowing with a faint ring of gold under the harsh overhead lights. He took a look at you for only a few seconds before it felt like he diagnosed your entire life.

“Cheap neural implant. Whoever installed it was a hack,” he breathed out before grabbing a scanner. “It’s overheating, misfiring, and it’s cooking your synapses.”

He didn’t bother numbing anything. He just told you to hold on tight so you did, fingers wrapping around the edge of the table; knuckles white as he used a tool to dig around.

Your vision blurred at the pain, a pulse warning blared from the neural port at the base of your skull. You were frying, and fast.

“If I don’t stabilize this chip you’re going to flatline,” he started but you stopped him mid-sentence.

“You going to monologue or fix me?” You snapped out, pain taking over every nerve and sense in your body.

For the first time since you saw him, just once; the corner of his mouth twitched upwards. Not quite a smile but almost. He shrugged, leaning over you with a tool in hand. “Fine, have it your way. This is gonna hurt.”

And everything in your vision exploded white.

After ten hours of being unconscious, you surfaced back to consciousness. Not gently and you still felt horrible. The world came back piece by piece, the smell of antiseptic burning your nose, and the aching pain in your gut. Then you realized where you were.

You quickly looked down at yourself. Shirt gone, bandages wrapped tight across your lower ribs, IV in your arm, and a neural cooling collar pressed to the back of your neck.

The memories came rushing back, you tried to make easy eddies and contacted a Fixer; looking for any job available. Then it took a turn for the worse and all you remember is getting badly injured and being dragged here by the Fixer — to one of the biggest named black market Ripperdocs; Ghost. Who was now sitting at his workbench across the room, his back turned to you.