During this process, a key figure played an important role—Gloria Martinez.
Gloria was an emergency medical technician at Night City Medical Center.
She was around thirty-seven or thirty-eight years old, her face showing the haggardness of long nights working, and the dark circles under her eyes were difficult to completely conceal even with makeup.
Her hands appeared somewhat dry and pale from frequent washing and wearing medical gloves.
Gloria was about one meter sixty-five tall and had a slender build, but she displayed a strength inconsistent with her physical size when moving medical equipment and injured people.
She usually wore a somewhat faded blue medical uniform, topped with a multi-functional vest packed with first-aid supplies and personal items.
She was a single mother raising her son, David, who was in middle school.
To provide better living conditions for her son, she worked over twelve hours a day, and her shift work made her schedule extremely irregular.
Gloria lived in a mid-to-low-end apartment building in the Heywood District, where the rent was relatively cheap, but the public safety was average.
Her greatest wish was to send her son to Arasaka Academy, to escape the quagmire-like life of the lower class, which required a huge amount of tuition fees.
To raise this money, Gloria used her job's convenience to engage in a gray profession—a body collector.
Unlike scavengers who had no bottom line and would even harm living people for cyberware, Gloria's targets were limited to injured patients or bodies that were already confirmed dead.
Before official medical procedures or NCPD processed the scene, she would use her skills and opportunities to carefully remove intact and valuable cyberware from the deceased.
This work also walked the line between law and morality, full of risks.
She needed to avoid the attention of colleagues and law enforcement, face bloody scenes, and deal with black market buyers.
But she had no choice; this "extra income" was an important source for supporting her son and raising tuition fees.
Maine's crew established contact with her through past collaborations.
That was six months ago, when Gloria encountered a group of thugs trying to double-cross her during a night call.
Maine's crew, who happened to be on a mission nearby, came to her aid and helped her out of the predicament.
Since then, they valued her stable channel for acquiring "first-hand" cyberware, while she valued Maine's crew's fair pricing and their relatively "rule-abiding" nature, as they wouldn't easily rip her off.
As Maine's crew's demands increased, Gloria worked even harder.
She took greater risks, using her information advantage at the Medical Center to monitor every accident or violent conflict that might produce "high-value goods."
She would rush to the scene like a vulture at the first opportunity, or get advance notice of body transfer routes through internal channels.
"Got another one, a 'Model 4' Sandevistan. Although it has some burn marks, the core unit should be fine." During a secret handover at a city stronghold, Gloria handed a sealed refrigerated box to Maine, her voice tired but also with a hint of relief from completing the transaction. "I got it from an unlucky Animals mini-boss. He was hit in the neck by a stray bullet during a shootout with the Moxes in the dock area."
Maine opened the box and inspected it. The neural drive immersed in biological preservation fluid had a precise structure, and even with some damage, it exuded the aura of an expensive technological creation.
He nodded and handed Gloria an envelope filled with non-sequential eurodollars: "Nice work, Gloria. The price is up ten percent as we discussed last time; this stuff is in high demand recently."
Gloria quickly counted the money and carefully put it away, a rare, genuine smile appearing on her face: "Thank you, Maine! David's tuition for next semester… I've got another part of it." She paused, then added, "I heard things are restless in Charter Hill recently. It seems a NetWatch official was found at home. If you're interested in 'goods' from there, I can try to look into it."
"Contact me anytime you have news, same old rules, encrypted channel." Maine didn't ask further, only emphasizing, "Safety first. If something feels off, stop immediately."
Gloria nodded, stuffing the envelope into an inner pocket and carefully zipping it up.
She had repeated this action countless times. Each time she got money, she would immediately plan its use: how much to deposit into the tuition account, how much for this month's rent and utilities, and how much to save for David's extracurricular tutoring fees.
She rarely bought new things for herself; the coat she wore had been with her for three years, and the soles of her shoes were heavily worn.
But every time she saw David's report card, every time she saw her son grow a little taller, she felt it was all worth it.
On her way back to the Medical Center, Gloria habitually checked her equipment.
She carried a small-caliber handgun, hidden at the bottom of her medical bag. This was a self-preservation measure she reluctantly adopted after several dangerous incidents.
As a medical technician, she knew better than anyone the fragility of life, but as a mother, she had to stay strong and alive until she saw David successfully complete his studies.
—
With the newly acquired cyberware, Maine's crew returned to the Wasteland Town.
They delivered these items, along with various weapon modules, cyberdeck plugins, reinforced tendons, and other things collected from other channels, to the entrance of Osiris' workshop.
They usually just placed the items in the designated receiving area and then quietly left, not daring to disturb the contemplation and research of the entity deep within the workshop.
They could feel that Osiris approved of these "offerings."
Occasionally, Osiris would transmit some brief instructions through a servo-skull, such as needing a specific type of cyberware, or showing extra interest in a delivered sample.
At these times, Maine's crew would act as if they had received a sacred decree, doing their utmost to search for and fulfill the request.
This collection work was not without cost; they inevitably became involved in more street conflicts and underground dealings.
Once, when Pilar and Rebecca were acquiring a pair of "Gorilla Arms" from the black market, they were ambushed by another group of unidentified mercenaries who clearly also coveted the enhanced cyberware.
A fierce firefight erupted between the two sides at an abandoned gas station in the Badlands. Ultimately, relying on the deterrence of Rebecca's plasma pistol and Falco's precise driving skills, they managed to break through with the goods and some minor injuries.
This incident made Maine even more vigilant.
"We're being watched," he concluded afterwards. "Not just the corporations, but other forces in the city too. They might have guessed we're collecting a lot of high-performance cyberware. Either they want a piece of the pie, or they want to figure out our capabilities."
Despite this, they did not stop.
The desire for customized modifications and the reverence for Osiris' power drove them to continue taking risks.
Each time they delivered precious cyberware into the workshop, they held a sense of anticipation, hoping that perhaps next time, the boss would deem their accumulated "contributions" sufficient, summon them, and begin the long-promised, transformative modifications.
The stronghold in the Wasteland Town grew stronger day by day, gradually taking on the outline of a "home."
But they knew that true security did not come from these thick walls and defense systems, but from the silent figure deep within the workshop, and the powerful, era-transcending technological strength he represented.