By seventeen Kevin had three names circulating through Night City that people actually said with a straight face—Vault-Tec Medical Clinic for care that didn't gut you, Aperture Science for chrome that ran cool, Black Mesa for weapons that didn't quit—and not one of those names pointed at him because every visible role was covered by Gen 3 Synths he built and trained: front-desk secretaries with perfect voices, triage nurses who remembered faces, surgeons with steady hands, lab techs who never mis-labeled a sample, floor orderlies who moved like they'd pulled doubles for years, delivery drivers in crisp white vans who could thread a firefight and still hit a time window, security posted at ambulance bays who spoke softly until they didn't; the only human in the machine was Kevin, and he stayed buried behind cameras and consoles, surfacing in the halls only when he needed to look like an unremarkable aide pushing a cart. He sat that morning in the monitoring room alone, lights low, wall of feeds tiled across his vision—lobby wide shot, corridor splits, OR anterooms, pharmacy cages, ambulance approach, loading dock, generator floor—and he worked his checklist without drama: badge audits clean, waste stream sealed, med gas pressures nominal, courier vans checked out on the minute, clinic net dark to the outside as always, fallback lines green; on a side screen he replayed a ten-minute behavioral sample from the day-shift secretaries (eye contact balanced, escalation script followed, no canned phrases repeated), marked "pass," and moved on. The glass doors at the lobby opened and two new figures stepped into frame, a red-haired woman in a yellow jacket with the guarded posture of someone nursing pain and a teen about her age range trailing half a step behind, and Kevin gave them the standard two-second scan—hands empty, no heat bulge at the waist, gait controlled, eyes on signage, not the cameras—tagged them in his head as routine walk-ins here for a checkup, and flicked to the loading-dock cam to watch a white van roll in with VAULT-TEC MEDICAL DELIVERY SERVICE stenciled on the doors, the Synth driver handing a manifest to the Synth quartermaster with a clipped "Delivery four, on time," as the quartermaster replied, "Dock three, thank you," both voices so ordinary nobody ever thought twice. Out front the receptionist Synth smiled with the exact warmth people paid for and said, "Welcome to Vault-Tec Medical, how can we help?" and the boy answered, "Walk-in for a checkup, my mom's been feeling off," and the receptionist said, "Of course, we'll get you seen," then slid a digital slate across, "Name and a contact, please; pricing is on the board, no surprise fees," and pointed without flourish to the wall: a simple list of consult, imaging, labs, procedures, each with a number next to it that never changed between visits. As they sat in the waiting area they were close enough to hear the room's everyday talk without trying; two older men compared experiences over pill bottles, one saying, "Other shops nickel and dime you; here they tell you exactly what they're doing before they touch you," and the other nodding, "Last place strapped me down and cut before the anesthetic even hit; these folks? Counted me down, talked me through it, I was awake and never panicked," which made the red-haired woman exhale and the boy glance over like he was cataloging proof; behind them a pair of solos leaned on their elbows, one saying, "Black Mesa sidearms don't jam," and the other replying, "You can't buy them, choom, they only outfit their people," and a third voice from a seat away cutting in, "I heard Aperture won't sell a flashy unit even if you wave eddies—only safe runners, lower neural load," and someone added, "My cousin's running one of their field-test knees, says his landings don't scream anymore." The triage nurse Synth called, "Gloria Hernandez," and they followed her down a hall so clean it looked boring on purpose; the nurse walked them into a bright exam room, verified ID, clipped a cuff to the woman's arm, and said, "Doctor will be right in," then crossed two small items off a prep sheet and stepped out. The doctor Synth entered with a tablet and a soft "Good morning," washed hands to the wrist, and started with direct questions that didn't waste time: "Dizziness? Chest pain? Any numbness?" then, "Medications? Allergies? Last time you ate?" He listened to lungs, counted pulse, pressed along ribs, checked pupils, and translated each step into plain speech, "Lungs clear, heart regular, blood pressure a touch high but consistent with pain and nerves, muscle tone reduced—common if you've been pushing through fatigue," and the woman asked, "Is it serious?" and he shook his head, "Not from what I'm seeing; we'll order basic panels today—CBC, electrolytes, kidney and liver function—plus a quick scan to rule out anything structural; if those are normal, your plan is movement and hydration, nothing heroic." The boy said, "How long for results?" and the doctor replied, "Routine labs by this evening, scan summary before you leave; if anything flags we call you, not a bot." The woman looked at the pricing board printout the nurse had left and said, "We can pay in parts?" and the doctor said, "Yes, the front desk can set a plan; also, if cost is a barrier, the clinic sometimes offers a data-collection contract through a partner—Aperture Science—to eligible patients; it offsets bills if you agree to come back on schedule and give feedback on approved devices; it's optional and you can decline without impact," then closed it off with, "We don't pressure; you decide." The boy frowned slightly, "Does that mean experiments?" and the doctor said, "No, it means devices that have already cleared internal safety and are in field evaluation—think knee ligaments or retinal clarity packages that reduce strain; we never place anything that spikes neural load, and we don't do installs without proper anesthesia and consent," and he let that sit until the woman nodded. The nurse knocked, returned with a small cart, drew blood with practiced steadiness, labeled tubes while the labels printed, and said, "Imaging will be in room four; it's down the hall to your right," then handed over a hydration packet and a simple one-page "what happens next" sheet that was exactly what it said. In the hall a teen in a work vest told a friend, "Aperture's eye package made the night smear go away; it's not flashy, just sharp," and his friend asked, "How much?" and he said, "Less than a cheap ripper if you count the follow-ups they cover," while across from them a courier in a white jacket—another Synth—passed with a cooler stamped with a serial and said into an earpiece, "Delivering anticoagulants, route five, ETA twelve," and the guard at the ambulance door replied, "Copy," without breaking posture. In the imaging room the technologist Synth positioned the woman, "Hold still, easy breath in, now out," and the machine hummed, the screen drew clean pictures, and five minutes later a summary popped up on the doctor's tablet down the hall: no bleed, no fracture, nothing red. He came back to the room and said, "Scan is clean," then, "When labs come back, we'll call; for now, move at a pace you can talk through, three short walks today beat one long one tomorrow," and the woman asked, "Pain?" and he answered, "We can prescribe a non-opioid that won't fog you; if you'd rather avoid meds, I'll print a list of stretches and heat/ice schedule," and she said, "The list," and he printed it with boxes to tick because she looked like the kind who would. The boy asked, "What about emergencies?" and the doctor slid a card across, "Clinic emergency line—humans answer; if you can't reach us, city emergency as usual," and then he added what every good clinician adds because people forget, "If your gut says something is wrong, come in; don't wait to see if it gets worse." They thanked him, and at checkout the front-desk secretary Synth spoke in the same steady tone as before, "Total for today covers consult and imaging; labs are included; if you choose a plan, it's interest-free; here is the optional field-data information sheet—no commitment," and the boy asked, "Is this the same thing other folks mentioned?" and she said, "Yes; it is designed to help patients manage costs and give the clinic real-world insight; you can read and ignore it," and he took the sheet and tucked it into his jacket without comment. In the lobby a pair of workers in faded overalls argued in low voices: "Buddy at the yard says Black Mesa rifles eat dust like candy," and the other replied, "Doesn't matter if we can't buy them," and a woman with a bandaged wrist cut in, "I heard their guards used some kind of green beam on a crew that tried to jack an ambulance—no one wants to be that crew," and someone else said, "Clinic food's good though; real soup, not paste," and laughter rolled benignly across rows of molded chairs. Back in the monitoring room, Kevin logged a minor alert—two teens loitering behind the service stairwell, moved along by security—tagged housekeeping for a sticky spill outside lab two, confirmed the ambulance bay barrier cycled properly, and never once looked back at the two walk-ins beyond the initial pass because nothing in their body language pinged as threat; they were just a mother and son among dozens on a Tuesday. He did a final sweep of delivery routes: three vans out, three return windows amber on the board and trending to green, Synth drivers checking in with exact timestamps and short, human-sounding status lines; he signed a release for the pharmacy to prep a low-cost pain kit matching the doctor's note, and approved the print queue so the discharge packet for "Gloria H." would include the exercise sheet with diagrams and a hydration reminder that wasn't written like an ad. In the waiting area the boy skimmed the field-data flyer—"you keep your autonomy," "you choose appointments," "we cover maintenance," "you can stop at any time"—and slid it to his mother; she said, "Later," and he nodded. Their names were called again for a quick debrief—"Scan clear, labs pending, we'll call by evening; walk the long way home if you can, stop when you need to, eat real food if you have it, water over soda"—and they left through the same glass doors they had entered, past a small sign for the cafeteria most people missed on the first visit, and into a street that already sounded a little less harsh than it had a month ago. Kevin marked the hour as "quiet," archived the shift's footage to cold storage, and moved to the next block of tasks, not thinking about the boy's careful way of helping his mother stand, not interested in the yellow jacket, not cataloging anything except risk, because on a day like this the only thing that mattered was that the systems hummed and the city didn't bleed on his floor. Behind them the lobby talk rolled on without drama—someone asked if Aperture had a website and got a shrug, "No net, you gotta walk in," someone else swore the clinic's payment plans didn't flip to collections if you missed by a day, a courier told a kid not to run near the gurney lane and the kid listened—and it all added up to the same quiet conclusion: this place worked the way a clinic should, boring, predictable, and fair. For Kevin it was just another line of calm on his dashboard; for Gloria and the boy it was the first time in a long time a building with white walls hadn't felt like a threat; and for the story neither of them knew they were in yet, it was the first of the tiny collisions that would line up later like fate, two faces in a feed he barely glanced at walking straight into a future he had been building in secret for years.
