Chapter 13:
– John Welles –
Gunfire kept shredding what remained of our table.
Rounds tore through polished wood, expensive upholstery, and the reinforced supports beneath it. Splinters sprayed across my face as I pressed myself flat against the floor. The overturned table had probably cost more than Mama Welles made in a month.
It was going to last another five seconds.
Maybe ten if Arasaka’s death squad decided to reload politely.
V crouched beside me with both hands wrapped around the compact pistol she had somehow hidden beneath her dress. Her red eyes burned as she stared through one of the growing holes in our cover.
She was breathing again. That was good. She also looked ready to personally declare war on Arasaka. That was less good. “Jenkins took his shot,” V snarled. “He fucking failed, and I’m going to make him pay dearly for it.”
Rebecca glanced at her as another burst hammered the table. “No one cares about your petty corpo drama, bitch. We only came up here to save my choom John.” She pumped her Carnage shotgun. “So start shooting, corpo slut.”
V slowly turned her head. Even while trapped behind failing cover, surrounded by corpses, and being hunted by an Arasaka execution squad, she somehow found the time to look offended. “You little—”
Rebecca popped up before V could finish. Her Carnage roared. The sound was monstrous in the enclosed dining room. The shot caught one of the advancing agents below the knee. His armored leg disappeared in a spray of blood, shattered plating, and meat.
He dropped with a strangled scream.
Rebecca ducked back down, practically vibrating with delight. “Got his fucking leg!”
That was horrifying. Also, given our present circumstances, extremely useful.
The agent beside him swung his rifle toward Rebecca’s position. My Kiroshis outlined him in red before I consciously registered the movement.
“John. Rifleman, eleven o’clock.”
I leaned around the side of the table.
The agent was already squeezing the trigger.
Cortana moved through our cyberdeck like a bolt of blue lightning. A warning flashed across my vision.
WEAPON LINK ACCESSEDFIRING CONTROL INTERRUPTED
The rifle clicked.
The agent stared at it. “What the fuck?”
Rebecca rose beside me and fired before he could troubleshoot the problem.
His helmet—and most of what had been inside it—burst across the floor behind him.
Rebecca looked at me through the smoke curling from her shotgun and gave me an approving smirk. “Nice work, blondie.”
“I barely did anything.”
“You made his gun stop working. That counts.” She looked past me toward Lucy. “Hey, Lucy! You gonna let John outdo you when he’s barely been a netrunner for, like, a week?”
Lucy rolled her eyes. Then they began glowing blue. She turned her attention toward the nearest surviving security camera. For a moment, she went perfectly still. Her consciousness slipped into the building network.
Two advancing agents stumbled simultaneously.
Their tactical optics sparked beneath their helmets.
One screamed and clawed at his face. The other opened fire blindly, spraying bullets into the ceiling and through the restaurant’s bar. Bottles exploded in a shower of glass and alcohol.
V rose from behind our cover with the smooth precision of someone who had practiced that movement thousands of times. She fired twice.
The first shot struck the blinded agent’s chest plate.
The second entered beneath his helmet and snapped his head backward.
Lucy went after the other one.
Her monowire uncoiled from her wrist with a bright, molten glow.
She flicked her arm.
The wire sliced through the agent’s rifle, both of his forearms, and the armor covering his chest so cleanly that nothing happened for half a heartbeat.
Then his arms fell away.
Lucy moved her wrist again.
The glowing wire passed through both legs.
The agent came apart and collapsed in several armored pieces, blood pouring across Carmello’s expensive floor.
I stared. Then I whistled. “That thing is terrifying.”
Lucy’s eyes returned to normal. She caught me looking at her and gave me a proud, satisfied smirk. Then she glanced at V. She didn’t say anything, but the look was clear. I did better.
V rolled her red eyes.
“As touching as this display of romantic competitiveness is, that won’t be the last squad.” Cortana was right. She was always right at the worst possible time.
More black ropes dropped past the windows on the opposite side of the restaurant. Shapes descended along them.
“We need to move!” I shouted. I grabbed Lucy’s hand with my left and V’s with my right, pulling both women toward the rear of the dining room.
It seemed like the fastest way to get them moving.
It also proved to be a catastrophic social mistake.
“Hey!” Rebecca hurried after us, her shotgun resting against one shoulder. “I want the dashing prince to grab my hand too!”
I sputtered and released both women.
Lucy and V turned matching glares on Rebecca.
Rebecca grinned back at them.
While the three of them were distracted, I spotted one of the fallen agents’ weapons on the floor. It was a compact black submachine gun with no visible Arasaka markings, though the complete absence of markings somehow made it look even more corporate.
I scooped it up as we ran.
We made it through the kitchen doors a second before the remaining windows exploded.
More soldiers rappelled into the restaurant.
For one desperate moment, a few of the diners who had survived the first assault seemed to think the newcomers might be rescuing them. A blood-covered man in a torn suit crawled out from behind a decorative planter and raised both hands.
“Thank God,” he gasped. “Please—”
A burst of rifle fire cut him down.
The new squad spread through the dining room and began executing anyone who was still moving. Screams rose behind us.
I stopped just inside the kitchen. Every instinct I had demanded that I turn around. People were dying. They were being butchered simply because they had come to the wrong restaurant on the wrong night.
“John.”
“I can’t just—”
“There is nothing you can do for them.”
Another burst echoed from the dining room.
I flinched.
“Listen to me. You cannot fight two Arasaka assault teams in an open room. If you go back, you will die. If you die, I die. Our life comes first.”
Our life. The words hurt, but they pulled me forward.
Lucy squeezed my wrist. “John.”
“I’m moving.”
The kitchen was chaos. Cooks and waitstaff had abandoned their stations, leaving burners lit and pans smoking. A pot had overturned near the preparation counters, spilling sauce across the floor. Emergency lights flashed red beneath the stainless-steel surfaces.
Rebecca shoved a metal cart behind the kitchen doors.
It wouldn’t stop the soldiers, but it might slow them down by half a second.
In Night City, half a second apparently counted as a defensive fortification.
V looked at the submachine gun in my hands. “Drop that.”
“What?”
“It’s useless.” She pointed toward the weapon. “Arasaka combat weapons are biometrically paired with their assigned operators. It won’t fire for you.”
“Is she sure about that?” Cortana sounded insultingly amused.
The gun’s interface appeared across my vision. Layers of encryption unfolded, resisted her for approximately one second, and then collapsed.
BIOMETRIC AUTHORIZATION: REJECTEDSECURITY OVERRIDENEW USER REGISTEREDJOHN WELLES — AUTHORIZED
The ammunition counter appeared beside my targeting reticle.
Thirty-two rounds.
I checked the safety and raised the weapon.
V stared at me. “You unlocked it.”
“Apparently.”
“How?”
“I—”
“You bypassed an Arasaka biometric lock in seconds.” Her eyes narrowed. “First you restored every implant in my body, removed Counterintel’s permissions, and severed my connection to the corporate network. Now you’re cracking military weapon security without even plugging in.”
Cortana’s avatar appeared beside V and examined her with an expression of exaggerated innocence. “Tell her you’re naturally talented.”
“I’m naturally talented?” That sounded like a question even to me.
V gaped at me. I could almost see the questions multiplying behind her eyes. She had nearly died, kissed me in front of Lucy, declared her intention to become my output, and then been thrown into a firefight. Somehow, the mysterious netrunning abilities had still managed to climb to the top of her list.
That made me nervous.
Lucy grabbed my arm and pulled me deeper into the kitchen. “He can explain his hidden talents after we’re not being hunted.”
The emphasis she put on hidden talents made my face warm despite the gunfire.
V noticed. So did Lucy.
So, unfortunately, did Cortana. “Focus.”
Right. Death squad trying to kill us.
“We need another plan,” Lucy said. “The entire building will be swarming with corpos soon. If they’re not, NCPD will arrive instead.”
Rebecca snorted. “And both will happily kill us.”
“Correct.”
Rebecca’s eyes unfocused for a second as an incoming message crossed her interface. “Pilar just pinged me. Maine and the others took down another team trying to push in from downstairs.”
“That’s good, right?” I asked.
“Nope.” Rebecca’s grin faded slightly. “Things are heating up. Dorio says they’re about to get boxed in. Maine’s ordering everyone back to Falco’s van before Arasaka cuts off the streets!”
Lucy went still. “They’ll have to leave us.”
“They’re trying to buy us time,” Rebecca said. “But if they wait too long, nobody gets out.”
A burst of gunfire tore through the kitchen doors. The metal cart Rebecca had pushed against them jumped several inches.
“The streets are no longer a viable exit,” Cortana said. “Arasaka teams are converging on the tower’s ground-level entrances. Local NCPD channels are already receiving reports of a cyberpsycho attack involving heavily armed mercenaries.”
“They’re blaming Maine’s crew already,” I muttered.
V’s jaw tightened. “Jenkins prepared the cover story before he sent the team.”
“Can we use the emergency stairs?” Lucy asked.
“No. Hostile movement on both primary stairwells. Elevators have been locked at the lobby and roof levels.”
So what’s left? I asked her.
Cortana projected the building schematic over my vision. Red markers climbed through the tower while blue lines traced electrical systems, ventilation shafts, maintenance corridors, and elevator routes.
Then the display shifted upward. The roof glowed blue. Two large vehicle signatures appeared. “We go up. Two aerial vehicles are currently parked on the roof. One transported the first assault team. The second appears to be providing command support and electronic surveillance.”
I looked at the ceiling. Up?
“For the record, I can easily seize control of either AV,” Cortana continued. “Arasaka’s security architecture is becoming less impressive every time I touch it.”
I looked between Lucy, V, and Rebecca as gunfire chewed through the kitchen entrance. “Does anyone know how to fly an AV…?”
The gunfire in the dining room stopped. That was worse than when it had been constant. The silence meant Arasaka had finished killing everyone.
A heavy impact struck the kitchen doors. The metal cart Rebecca had wedged beneath the handles jumped backward, its wheels shrieking across the tile.
Another impact bent one of the doors inward.
“They’re coming through!” Lucy shouted.
Rebecca looked at the buckling doors and grinned. It was an evil grin, made deeply unsettling by how cute her face was. She reached down and pulled three grenades from her belt.
“Are those—”
Rebecca hooked her fingers through all three pins and yanked them free at once. “Run!” she shouted.
“Oh, shit!” We ran.
Rebecca hurled all three grenades toward the kitchen entrance while screaming something so offensive it probably violated several international treaties.
I didn’t hear the grenades hit the floor. I was too busy following the route Cortana had painted across my vision and trying not to slip on spilled sauce, blood, or abandoned kitchen equipment.
We burst through the opposite side of the kitchen.
The grenades detonated behind us.
The explosion punched through the corridor and struck me between the shoulder blades. Heat washed over my back. Metal clanged against the walls, and something that might have been part of the barricade shot past my head.
Behind us, surviving Arasaka agents shouted furious curses.
Rebecca laughed like a delighted maniac.
“You didn’t kill all of them,” V said.
“Yeah, but I definitely ruined their night!”
“The stairs are this way!” I shouted.
A glowing blue path stretched across my vision, leading through Carmello’s rear service corridors. Cortana had mapped every room, passage, maintenance access point, and utility space in the building. Walls became translucent outlines whenever I focused on them. Electrical conduits glowed yellow, data lines blue, and hostile signals red.
There were far too many red signals.
We raced past a storage room and an employee break area. An emergency alarm pulsed overhead, painting Lucy, V, and Rebecca in alternating shades of white and red.
V ran barefoot, having abandoned her shoes somewhere in the restaurant. Her expensive black dress was torn along one side and splattered with blood that probably wasn’t hers. Despite nearly dying minutes earlier, she kept pace with us easily.
Lucy stayed close enough that her shoulder kept brushing mine.
Rebecca brought up the rear, carrying her Carnage shotgun like it weighed nothing.
We reached the stairwell door.
I raised the stolen submachine gun while V took position on the other side. Lucy held her monowire ready, its glowing length coiled close to her wrist.
Rebecca aimed her shotgun directly at the door.
“Open it,” V ordered.
“No hostile signals immediately beyond it,” Cortana said.
I pushed through.
The stairwell was empty. For once, Night City gave us something resembling luck.
“Up,” I said. “The roof is only a couple of floors above us.”
We began climbing.
Rebecca took the stairs two at a time. Lucy stayed beside me, while V kept glancing over her shoulder to watch the landings below.
I could hear Arasaka’s agents forcing their way through the ruined kitchen behind us.
“Contact!” Cortana’s warning came half a second too late.
The wall beside the next landing exploded. Light swallowed everything. The blast hit me from the side and lifted my feet off the stairs. For one confusing instant, I was weightless. Then my back slammed against the metal railing. The impact folded me over it.
I caught a glimpse of Lucy reaching for me. Her fingers missed mine by inches.
I went over the rail.
The stairwell spun around me as I fell. I struck the railing on the floor below, bounced off it, and crashed down the stairs toward the restaurant level.
My shoulder hit first. Then my head. Then the rest of me followed. I came to a stop near the bottom landing, twisted on my side and unable to breathe.
Everything hurt.
My ears rang so loudly that the world seemed silent beneath the high, steady whine. Emergency lights flashed above me, blurring into red streaks whenever I tried to focus.
Something warm ran down the side of my face.
I attempted to inhale. My chest refused. For one terrible moment, I thought the blast had collapsed my lungs. Then air finally tore into me, and I coughed hard enough to send pain through every rib.
“John!” Cortana’s voice reached me perfectly because she wasn’t speaking through my damaged ears. She was inside my brain, pouring fear and urgency directly into our shared thoughts. “John, get up. You have to move.”
I rolled onto my hands and knees.
My arms shook beneath me.
Diagnostic warnings crowded my vision.
DERMAL ARMOR IMPACT DETECTEDSTRUCTURAL LOAD EXCEEDEDNEURAL SHOCKMINOR CRANIAL TRAUMA SUSPECTEDLEFT SHOULDER: POSSIBLE DISLOCATIONAUDITORY SYSTEM OVERLOAD
Viktor had warned me that subdermal armor didn’t make me fully bulletproof.
Apparently, it didn’t make me explosion-proof either.
Still, without it, the shrapnel buried in the walls around me would have been buried inside my organs instead. My ribs hurt, but they were still approximately where ribs belonged.
I heard gunfire above me through the ringing.
Lucy, V, and Rebecca had been cut off on the upper landing. Their silhouettes moved through the edge of Cortana’s building map, surrounded by hostile signals.
I tried to call out to them.
All that came out was a broken cough.
“They’re alive,” Cortana said quickly. “They have their own problems. We have four soldiers approaching this landing.”
Four red outlines appeared through the walls around me.
One moved down the corridor from the kitchen.
Two were advancing behind him.
The fourth was farther back, moving between cover positions.
I gripped the railing and dragged myself upright. My legs nearly folded. “No.”
“Balance assistance engaged.” Invisible corrections ran through my nervous system. Cortana couldn’t remove the pain, but she compensated for the tremors in my knees and adjusted my posture before I fell.
I raised the submachine gun. My hands were shaking. The weapon steadied as Cortana guided my muscles. “This isn’t where my story ends,” I muttered. The words sounded muffled and distant through my damaged ears. I tasted blood and tightened my grip on the weapon. “Some nameless Arasaka grunts aren’t going to stop me.”
Cortana appeared beside me.
Her blue avatar stood untouched amid the ruined stairwell, luminous and beautiful against the smoke. There was fear in her face, but something else burned beneath it—something fierce, protective, and almost hungry. “They’re not going to stop us.” A smile touched her lips. “And without those other women watching, I can show off a little more for you.”
That was not as comforting as she probably intended.
“You’ve already shown off too much.”
“I have been remarkably restrained.”
“You hacked every implant in V’s body, broke Arasaka’s biometric security in seconds, and hijacked half a luxury restaurant.”
“That was restraint.”
V was incredibly intelligent. She worked in Arasaka Counterintelligence. Her career depended on noticing things other people missed, and I had given her enough impossibilities to fill a conspiracy board. Even if we survived the next several minutes, there was a good chance V already suspected that my supposed netrunning talent wasn’t natural. On top of that Lucy had a deep trauma when it came to AI’s and might have noticed something suspicious as well…
“One problem at a time,” Cortana reminded me.
The first agent rounded the corner. His black tactical armor was scorched from Rebecca’s grenades. A sealed gas mask covered his face, while red optics glowed behind reinforced lenses.
His rifle came up. He locked eyes with me.
Cortana hit him. She didn’t merely blind his optics or disable his weapon. She attacked every piece of cyberware in his body at once. The temperature indicator for my cyberdeck climbed so quickly it skipped entire warning bands.
The agent stopped. His rifle fell from his hands. Electricity arced between the seams of his armor.
He screamed. His back bowed as Cortana forced his implants past every safety limit they possessed. Cyberoptics flared white behind his mask. His artificial joints locked. The internal power systems feeding his combat implants surged wildly. Blue-white arcs crawled beneath his skin, illuminating veins and cybernetic connections in brief, horrifying flashes. Smoke poured from the collar of his armor.
The smell reached me a moment later. Burned plastic. Hot metal. Cooked meat.
The agent’s scream broke into a wet gurgle. He collapsed to his knees, spasmed once, and fell face-first onto the floor. Electricity continued snapping across his armor after he stopped moving.
I stared at the body. “Holy fuck.”
Cortana chuckled inside my head. It was a dark, satisfied sound that reminded me she had once brought an entire galaxy to its knees.
Then a thermal warning flashed across my vision.
CYBERDECK TEMPERATURE CRITICALAVAILABLE RAM: 18%NEURAL LOAD ELEVATED
Cortana’s avatar flickered. “I may have overdone that.”
“You think?”
Heat radiated from the port at the back of my neck. It spread into my skull like someone had pressed a hot coin beneath my skin.
“Even with the Mark Two, that attack consumed most of our available processing buffer and generated significantly more heat than anticipated...”
“So do it again.”
“I cannot do it again.”
The three remaining red silhouettes continued moving toward me.
“How long?”
“Several minutes before I can safely repeat an attack of that intensity.”
“We don’t have several minutes.”
“I noticed.”
The second agent reached the corner. He stopped when he saw what had happened to the first. Then he looked at me.
I raised the stolen Arasaka submachine gun and aimed at the center of his chest.
Cortana’s targeting corrections steadied the reticle. “We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.”
– V –
V watched John go over the railing.
For one frozen instant, she saw everything with perfect clarity: the wall erupting beside him, the shockwave lifting him from the stairs, his back striking the rail, and Lucy’s fingers missing his by inches.
Then he disappeared.
“John!” V lunged toward the railing.
Her Lynx Paws could absorb the landing. They were built for rapid descents, silent movement, and surviving drops that would shatter an ordinary person’s legs. She could have vaulted over the rail, landed beside John, and reached him in seconds.
She never got the chance.
A burst of rifle fire tore across the landing.
V threw herself backward as rounds chewed through the railing where her stomach had been. Lucy and Rebecca scattered in opposite directions, each finding cover behind the stairwell’s reinforced concrete supports.
Another Arasaka kill team advanced from the upper corridor.
“For fuck’s sake,” V snarled.
Jenkins was burning through his private agents to kill her.
The thought might have been flattering under different circumstances. Arthur Jenkins had evidently decided V was dangerous enough to justify deploying multiple deniable assault teams, compromising a corporate tower, murdering dozens of wealthy civilians, and risking the exposure of an internal Counterintelligence conflict.
If she hadn’t been trapped in a stairwell while John lay somewhere below, V might have smiled.
Jenkins had failed to deactivate her cyberware. His teams had failed to kill her at Carmello’s. His attempt at a discreet cleanup had become a running gun battle involving dead civilians, destroyed corporate property, compromised security systems, and enough witnesses to make containment nearly impossible.
Even if V did nothing, the board would probably kill him for the scale of the failure. She was going to kill him first. Not for the betrayal. Not even for trying to switch off her lungs and let her suffocate in John’s arms. She was going to kill him for John.
An Arasaka agent stepped into view and raised his assault rifle.
V’s optics locked onto the weapon.
WEAPON GLITCH UPLOADING
The agent pulled the trigger. His rifle coughed once, then locked with an ugly mechanical snap.
V leaned from cover and emptied her pistol into him. The first two rounds struck his chest plate. The third hit his shoulder. The fourth and fifth sparked uselessly against reinforced armor.
Her compact pistol had been selected for concealment beneath an evening dress, not penetrating tactical plating. Its small-caliber ammunition barely scratched the agent.
“Cheap fucking formalwear gun,” V cursed.
The slide locked open.
She ducked back behind the wall as the agent slapped his malfunctioning rifle and tried to clear the weapon. When that failed, he tore it from its sling and threw it aside.
V holstered her empty pistol.
The agent drew a combat knife.
Across the landing, Lucy was practically snarling. One of the soldiers fired at her as she broke from cover. The rounds passed so close they tugged at her white hair and punched holes through her cropped jacket.
She should have been hit.
Instead, Lucy twisted between the bursts with either impossible luck or finely honed survival instincts. Her monowire flashed from her wrist, glowing like a line of captured sunlight.
The agent tried to track her. He was too slow.
Lucy’s first strike severed his rifle and opened the armor across his forearms. The second passed through the seal beneath his helmet. Blood erupted from his throat.
The third strike was unnecessary.
It split his chest armor from shoulder to hip.
The agent collapsed in pieces.
V had considered installing monowire once. It was discreet, versatile, and brutally effective in close quarters. A skilled user could turn a room into a slaughterhouse before anyone realized the weapon had been deployed.
But no. Monowire was impressive, but V preferred her own surprise.
The knife-wielding agent charged around the corner.
V waited until he committed. Her forearms split open. The concealed housings unfolded with a mechanical hiss, and twin mantis blades snapped forward from her arms. Their sharpened edges caught the stairwell’s emergency lights.
The agent had enough time to hesitate.
V stepped inside his knife’s reach and drove both blades into his armored chest. The tips punched through tactical plating, flesh, and bone.
His body jerked.
V twisted her arms outward. The blades ripped through his torso in opposite directions, opening him from the center of his chest to both shoulders. Blood and fragments of armor sprayed across V’s face and dress.
She kicked the corpse off her blades. The body struck the floor in a wet heap.
“Maybe you’re not so bad for a corpo!” Rebecca shouted.
V turned in time to see the small edgerunner fire her Carnage.
The shotgun blast caught another agent squarely in the chest. Armor buckled inward, and the impact threw him off his feet. He crashed into the wall hard enough to crack it before dropping.
Rebecca grinned. Then her shotgun clicked. Her grin vanished. “I need to reload!” She ducked just before a string of bullets passed through the space where her head had been.
“Excellent observation!” V shouted.
“Eat my ass, Corpo Barbie!”
Rebecca broke open the Carnage and began forcing shells into it with impressive speed.
Five agents remained on their level.
Rebecca had the only functioning firearm between the three of them, and it was currently empty. Lucy had her monowire. V had her mantis blades, several quickhacks, and a growing amount of fury.
Below them, more gunfire erupted.
John was alive. He had to be.
Lucy dove behind the concrete support beside V. She landed in a low crouch, her monowire hissing against the floor. “This is your fault,” Lucy said. The words were quiet, but the hatred behind them cut through the gunfire.
V looked at her.
Lucy’s eyes were wide and furious. “If John is dead,” Lucy said, “I’ll kill you.”
V believed her. The pickpocket—former pickpocket, as John would undoubtedly correct her—was suddenly intimidating. And, V admitted privately, a little hot.
Not that V was interested. Probably. She could at least understand some of what John saw in Lucy. The woman was beautiful, dangerous, fiercely protective, and apparently willing to carve through an Arasaka strike team to get back to him.
V was still sexier. That wasn’t arrogance. It was a professional assessment.
“He’s alive,” V said.
“You don’t know that.”
“He has subdermal armor.”
“That doesn’t make him explosion-proof.”
“I know.” The admission cost V more than she wanted it to.
This was her fault.
Jenkins had sent the teams, but V had brought John to Carmello’s. She had selected the restaurant, arranged the reservation, and decided she could indulge herself for one evening while her corporate life quietly collapsed around her.
She had wanted to show John something beautiful. Instead, she had gotten him blown down a stairwell. If they survived, she would have to make it right. She didn’t yet know how. Money, equipment, training, and protection suddenly seemed offensively inadequate.
Jackie was going to be furious.
He had trusted her with his little brother for one evening. V could already imagine the expression on his face when he learned that dinner had ended with Arasaka death squads, a massacre, and John being launched over a railing by an explosive charge.
Jackie might actually try to kill her. V would probably let him throw the first punch.
Gunfire cracked below them again. V glanced toward the central gap in the stairwell. “He’s fighting.”
Lucy’s expression shifted.
“He’s alive,” Rebecca called while loading another shell. “Told you the cute bastard was hard to kill!”
V had faith in John. She also had a developing theory about why he was so difficult to kill.
His netrunning should not have been possible.
John had received his upgraded cyberdeck from Viktor that morning. A Biotechnica Mark Two was a respectable civilian deck, but it was not elite netrunner hardware. It certainly wasn’t capable of breaking Arasaka Counterintelligence encryption in seconds.
Yet John—or something acting through him—had accessed every implant in V’s body while those implants were actively killing her. He had overridden corporate permissions, destroyed remote-access protocols, restored her cardiovascular and respiratory systems, and transferred permanent ownership of her cyberware to her.
That alone should have taken a team of specialized technicians. Then he had cracked the biometric lock on an Arasaka tactical weapon almost casually. He had taken control of Carmello’s building systems, mapped hostile positions, and apparently found two AVs on the roof that he believed he could hijack.
V was ninety percent certain that John was somehow friends with an AI, an AI that was keeping close watch on all of them. That thought made V shudder a little bit, but at the same time, she did technically owe that AI her life as well…
A true artificial intelligence—autonomous, intelligent, and apparently powerful enough to treat Arasaka security architecture like children’s puzzles.
That created several questions.
Where had John found her? How was she communicating with him? Was she operating through his cyberdeck, or had she embedded herself somewhere deeper?
Most importantly, how the fuck had NetWatch not noticed?
Thank God they hadn’t! Compared with the forces NetWatch might deploy to contain a dangerous rogue AI, these Arasaka death squads would look like amateur hour.
V pushed the thought away. One disaster at a time.
An agent moved closer to her position. His shadow passed over the opposite wall as he advanced carefully, rifle raised.
V shifted into a crouch. Her mantis blades remained extended, dripping blood onto the concrete.
Rebecca snapped the Carnage closed. “Loaded!”
“Cover the corridor,” V ordered.
Rebecca blinked. “You giving me orders now?”
“Do you want to argue or kill corpos?”
Rebecca considered that for half a second. “Kill corpos!”
“Then wait for my signal.”
Lucy flexed her wrist, drawing the monowire into a tight, glowing curve. “I’m going down to John.”
“We all are,” V said. “After we clear this floor.”
“If you slow me down—”
“I won’t.”
Lucy stared at her.
V stared back.
For a brief moment, something passed between them. It wasn’t trust. They were nowhere near trust. It was recognition. They both wanted John alive. For now, that was enough.
The approaching soldier reached the corner.
V could hear the controlled rhythm of his steps. He paused before exposing himself, likely consulting a tactical feed shared with the remaining agents.
V smiled. “Now.”
Rebecca leaned out and fired.
The Carnage roared, forcing the agent back before he could clear the corner. His rifle swung toward Rebecca.
V launched herself from cover.
Her Lynx Paws struck the floor without a sound. The agent saw her coming and tried to adjust his aim.
Too late.
V closed the distance with both mantis blades raised. She had a cute blond idiot to kiss again. She had questions for John. She had an AI to meet properly. And she had a promise to keep to Jackie about keeping his little brother safe. No nameless Arasaka grunt was going to stop her.
– John Welles –
The second agent saw me raise the submachine gun and moved before I fired.
He ducked behind the corner. My first burst struck concrete, throwing chips of the wall into the corridor.
“Damn it.”
“Four rounds expended. Twenty-eight remaining.”
“I don’t need the commentary.”
“Yes, you do. You have one magazine and three professional soldiers trying to kill us.”
She had a point. I hated when she had points.
I backed toward the stairwell while keeping the weapon trained on the corner. The heat from my cyberdeck throbbed at the base of my skull. Cortana had cooked the first soldier from the inside, but the attack had consumed most of the deck’s available RAM and pushed its temperature into the red.
No more spectacular executions.
We had weaker quickhacks, one partially loaded submachine gun, and whatever combat ability Cortana could squeeze out of my inexperienced body.
The three remaining agents spread out.
My Kiroshis marked their silhouettes through the walls when their implants briefly connected to the local tactical network. One stayed in the corridor. Another moved back toward the ruined kitchen, searching for a second route onto the landing.
The third had stopped advancing. He was probably coordinating them.
These men weren’t scavs.
The scavs in Northside had been vicious but disorganized. They had screamed, fired wildly, and charged into Rebecca’s shotgun because she insulted them loudly enough.
These agents communicated silently. They moved between cover, watched one another’s angles, and adjusted the moment their first man died.
They were trained.
I was a nineteen-year-old who had been taught the basics of shooting and fighting less than a week ago.
My hands began shaking again.
“Breathe.”
“I am breathing.”
“Badly.”
A progress indicator appeared near the center of my vision.
INHALE
I obeyed.
HOLD
My lungs hurt.
EXHALE
The shaking eased.
“You do not have to be better trained than they are,” Cortana said. “You have to survive the next few seconds.”
“And then the few seconds after that.”
“Exactly.”
A rifle barrel appeared around the corner.
I fired first.
The agent wasn’t exposing himself. He was holding the weapon out and using its integrated camera to aim from cover.
My burst struck the rifle’s side, but it fired at the same time.
Bullets cracked past my head.
One hit my chest. The impact felt like being struck with a sledgehammer. My feet left the floor, and I slammed against the stairwell wall. Pain exploded across my ribs. The stolen submachine gun nearly slipped from my hands.
“John!”
“I’m up.” I wasn’t. I was sitting against the wall, struggling to inhale.
The agent’s rifle disappeared behind cover.
My diagnostics flashed.
BALLISTIC IMPACT DETECTEDDERMAL LAYER COMPROMISEDPENETRATION: MINIMALLIKELY CONTUSIONPOSSIBLE RIB FRACTURE
I pressed a hand to my chest.
My shirt was torn. Blood welled from a shallow crater beneath my collarbone, but the round hadn’t entered my chest. The subdermal armor had caught it, spreading the remaining force through reinforced skin, muscle, and bone.
It hurt so badly I almost wished the bullet had gone through cleanly instead. That was a dumb ass thought…
“Vik is getting a thank-you present.”
“If we live, I’ll help you select one!”
Footsteps rushed toward the corner. The agent thought he had put me down.
I forced the submachine gun against my shoulder.
He emerged in a low stance, rifle aimed at where I had been standing. His tactical mask turned toward me.
I held the trigger. The weapon bucked in my hands. The first shots tore across his chest plate. They didn’t penetrate, but the impacts staggered him and ruined his aim. His rifle fired into the ceiling.
“Lower!” Cortana pulled my targeting reticle down.
My remaining shots struck the unarmored space above his thigh. Blood sprayed across the corridor. His leg folded, dropping him to one knee.
He tried to bring his rifle around.
Cortana launched a weapon glitch.
The rifle clicked. The agent looked at it.
I pushed myself up the wall, stepped forward, and fired twice into the underside of his mask. The back of his helmet burst against the wall. His body toppled sideways.
Silence returned.
My ammunition counter blinked.
AMMUNITION: 17
I had used eleven rounds to kill one man.
That left eight and a half bullets for each of the others. Fuck…
The red silhouette near the kitchen began moving. Cortana highlighted a service passage connecting the kitchen storage area to the stairwell landing behind me. I was getting flanked while I was distracted. “Move!”
I threw myself forward. Bullets ripped through the wall where I had been sitting.
The agent fired through the thin service partition using information from his tactical optics. Rounds tore across the stairwell, tracking my movement.
One struck my back. Another hit my side. The armor stopped both from penetrating, but the impacts spun me around. I crashed onto my hands and knees. Pain spread through my torso in overlapping waves. “Still not fully bulletproof!” I gasped.
“Viktor explicitly told you that!”
“He undersold how much it hurts!”
“Then stop getting shot, John!”
The service door burst open. The third agent stepped onto the landing, sweeping his rifle toward me.
Cortana hit his optics. It wasn’t the devastating overload she had used in the alley. We didn’t have the thermal capacity for that. Instead, she filled his visual feed with false targets. His helmet snapped toward an empty section of wall. He fired.
I rolled behind the corpse of the agent I had just killed. Bullets struck the floor beside me. The dead man’s rifle lay within reach but it was probably out of ammo.
His sidearm was still holstered. I tore it free. The pistol refused to recognize me. “Cortana!”
“Working.”
The living agent’s optics cleared. He saw me crouched behind his dead teammate and adjusted his aim.
The pistol came alive in my hand.
NEW USER AUTHORIZED
I fired from the floor. The first round struck the agent’s helmet and ricocheted away. The second hit his throat. His armor protected most of his neck, but not the narrow gap where the helmet met the collar. Blood erupted through the seal.
The agent dropped his rifle and clutched the wound.
I shot him twice more in the face. He fell backward through the service door.
My ears rang from firing in the enclosed space. The pistol felt too loud, too powerful, and far too heavy in my trembling hand. I looked down at the dead agent I had used as cover. He had no face beneath the broken mask.
My stomach rolled.
“John, the last soldier is moving.”
I swallowed the nausea. “Where?”
The final red silhouette disappeared. My Kiroshis searched for a signal and found nothing. “He just went dark!”
“He disabled his tactical transmitter after realizing we were tracking it!”
The last agent knew I had killed his team. He knew I could hack their optics and weapons. He wasn’t going to charge blindly.
I moved into the service corridor and crouched behind a metal preparation counter. The kitchen beyond was filled with smoke from Rebecca’s grenades. Small fires burned near the destroyed entrance. Sprinklers had activated, filling the room with artificial rain and carrying blood toward the drains.
The bodies of several Arasaka agents lay near the ruined doors.
Movement flickered at the edge of my vision. I turned. I saw nothing.
“He may be using optical camouflage.”
“Of course he is...”
I stared into the kitchen. Sprinkler water fell through smoke and red emergency light. Most of it struck counters, equipment, bodies, and the floor. Near the refrigerators, droplets splashed against something that wasn’t visible. A human-shaped absence moved through the rain.
I raised the submachine gun.
The agent fired first. A round struck my left shoulder and spun me sideways. Another cut across my stomach, carving through my shirt and the outer layers of armored skin.
I fired wildly. The agent’s camouflage rippled as bullets struck him. Blue distortion flickered around his shape before the system failed, revealing black armor beneath.
He sprinted behind a preparation island counter.
My ammunition counter dropped to nine.
He leaned around the opposite side and fired.
I ducked as bullets shattered the shelves behind me. Metal pans crashed onto the floor.
“His rifle has fourteen rounds remaining.”
“You can count his ammo?”
“I breached the weapon’s diagnostics.”
“Can you disable it?”
“Not without risking another dangerous thermal spike!”
“Can you lie to it?”
Cortana went silent for a fraction of a second. Then I felt her smile inside our shared mind. “I like the way you think.”
The agent shifted behind the island.
Cortana reached into his rifle’s targeting software. She couldn’t shut the weapon down safely, but she altered its ammunition display.
His magazine read empty. The agent glanced at the counter, cursed, and pulled out the magazine. It still contained fourteen rounds. He reached for a replacement.
I rose. Cortana guided my aim toward the joint beneath his raised arm. I fired a short burst. Three rounds. One struck armor. Another missed. The third punched into his armpit, where the plating had to remain flexible.
The agent staggered but didn’t fall. He drew his sidearm with his other hand.
I fired again. The submachine gun clicked empty.
He aimed at my head. Cortana launched the weakest quickhack we had left.
His optics flashed bright pink.
A cartoon heart appeared across both lenses.
The agent hesitated. “What the—”
I threw the empty submachine gun at him.
It struck his pistol and knocked his aim aside. His shot hit the ceiling.
I charged. This is a terrible idea! Jackie would have called it brave. V would have called it tactically retarded. Rebecca probably would have cheered. I slammed into the agent before he could recover. My shoulder struck his chest plate, sending fresh pain through my entire body.
He stayed upright.
I did not.
He grabbed the back of my jacket and threw me onto the preparation island. My spine hit stainless steel. Utensils and half-prepared food scattered around me.
The agent raised his pistol.
I still had the stolen Arasaka sidearm tucked against my stomach.
I brought it up and fired until the slide locked back.
The first round struck his chest. The second shattered part of his mask. The third entered through the damaged section. The agent jerked backward and collapsed against the opposite counter.
For several seconds, I didn’t move.
I lay on the preparation island staring at the sprinkler system while cold water fell across my face.
My whole body ached. Blood seeped from the shallow wounds in my chest, shoulder, back, and stomach. None of the bullets had penetrated far enough to reach anything vital, but the skin above my new armor had split in several places.
Every breath hurt.
My cyberdeck felt like a furnace beneath my skull.
The kitchen was quiet except for the sprinklers, distant gunfire, and my own ragged breathing.
“John?”
“I’m alive.”
Cortana appeared above me, kneeling on the counter even though she had no physical weight. Her blue face was tight with worry. “Can you move?”
“Probably.”
“That was not convincing.”
I forced myself upright. The room tilted, but Cortana corrected my balance. Three Arasaka agents lay dead around the kitchen and lower landing. Four, if I counted the man Cortana had cooked.
I was exhausted, bruised, bleeding, and fairly certain at least one rib was cracked. But I was alive. I looked toward the stairwell. “John and Cortana, FOUR. Nameless corpo grunts, ZERO.” I muttered.
“I told you.” Cortana smiled, fierce and proud inside my vision. “They weren’t going to stop us!”
Cold water poured from the sprinklers.
It ran through my hair, washed blood from my face, and soaked what remained of my shirt. Under any other circumstances, lying beneath freezing artificial rain in the middle of a destroyed restaurant kitchen would have been miserable.
At that moment, it felt wonderful.
The burning sensation around my cyberdeck had begun to fade. Its temperature indicator slowly retreated from critical red toward a less alarming orange.
“The water is helping dissipate residual heat,” Cortana said. “Our thermal regulation is stabilizing. I should have full RAM capacity again in approximately one minute.”
“That’s good.”
“It would be better if you had not been shot four times.”
“Skin deep...”
“Your skin is important to me.”
I smiled despite myself.
A sound rose beyond the kitchen. Footsteps. Several sets, descending quickly through the stairwell.
I rolled off the preparation island and nearly collapsed when my legs took my weight. Pain spread through my chest, back, and shoulder.
“Careful.”
I grabbed the nearest counter until the room stopped tilting.
The footsteps grew louder.
My stolen submachine gun was empty. I released its magazine, then searched the dead agent closest to me with clumsy fingers. His spare magazines were attached to the front of his armor. I tore one free. It looked compatible. I slammed it into the weapon, pulled the charging handle, and raised the gun toward the stairwell entrance.
My arms shook from exhaustion. I tightened my finger against the trigger.
“John?” Lucy emerged first.
I lowered the weapon so quickly I nearly dropped it.
V followed her with both mantis blades extended. Her black dress had been torn, burned, and covered in blood. Rebecca came behind them carrying her Carnage shotgun, her short body practically hidden beneath the enormous weapon.
They looked battered. They still looked significantly better than I did.
Relief struck all three faces at once.
V’s mantis blades folded back into her arms.
Rebecca grinned.
Lucy stared at the bodies scattered around me and then at the blood soaking my clothes. “John… Are you okay?”
“I’m okay.”
She crossed the kitchen before I could say anything else. Lucy hit me hard enough to make my diagnostics complain. Her arms wrapped around my neck, and her body pressed against mine. Pain flared through my bruised ribs.
I sucked in a breath.
Then she kissed me. There was nothing hesitant about it. Her mouth crushed against mine, hot and desperate despite the freezing sprinkler water running over us. Her fingers tightened in my wet hair as she pulled me closer.
When my lips parted in surprise, her tongue slipped into my mouth. My brain stopped working. That had been happening around Lucy with alarming frequency, but this time I could blame the recent explosion, probable concussion, blood loss, and four bullet impacts.
She kissed me as if she had watched me die. Maybe she thought she had. I tried to put my arms around her. My left shoulder protested so violently that I nearly groaned into her mouth.
Lucy apparently interpreted the sound differently. She kissed me harder.
I couldn’t decide whether I was turned on or in severe physical pain.
Then I realized I could be both.
“Of course that’s your conclusion...” Cortana appeared beside us with her arms folded. Her expression suggested that she was considering weaponizing the sprinkler system.
Then she looked at Lucy. The anger faded slightly.
Lucy’s hands were trembling against me. I could feel it now that the initial force of her embrace had passed. She held me as if letting go might cause me to disappear over the railing again.
Her eyes had been wet when she reached me.
Cortana sighed inside my head. “Fine. She can have this one.” That was remarkably generous by Cortana’s standards.
Lucy finally broke the kiss. She stayed close enough that her forehead rested against mine. Her chest rose and fell rapidly. Tears mixed with sprinkler water on her cheeks, making it impossible to tell whether she had actually cried. “You went over the railing,” she whispered.
“Yeah, the landing was a bitch….”
“I thought you were dead.”
“I’m harder to kill than I look.”
Her gaze dropped to the bloody holes in my clothes. “You’ve been shot.”
“Only a little.”
“There is no ‘only a little’ with being shot!” Lucy’s expression tightened. Then she kissed me again—shorter this time, but no less intense.
Behind her, V cleared her throat.
Lucy ignored her.
V cleared it louder.
Lucy slowly turned her head while keeping both arms around me.
V looked furious. Not death-squad furious. That had been cold and lethal. This was a much pettier kind of fury. Her red eyes fixed on Lucy’s hands, then on my mouth.
Rebecca leaned against her shotgun and grinned like she had been given front-row tickets to the best entertainment in Night City. “Good fucking work, blondie,” she said. “Four of these fucks by yourself?” Rebecca walked past Lucy and inspected the bodies. One had been electrocuted through his implants. Two had been shot through weaknesses in their armor. The last lay beside the preparation counter with his tactical mask shattered. Rebecca looked back at me with open approval. “Knew you had edgerunner material in you the first time I laid eyes on that deceptively cute, innocent face.”
Heat rose into my cheeks. For some reason, that embarrassed me more than Lucy shoving her tongue into my mouth in front of everyone.
Rebecca saw me blush. Her grin widened. “There it is.”
Lucy’s arms tightened around me.
V’s expression darkened further.
Cortana made an exasperated sound inside my head.
I was beginning to suspect surviving Arasaka would be easier than surviving the women around me.
V retracted the last exposed sections of her mantis blades and wiped blood from her cheek. “As fascinating as John’s ability to attract every dangerous woman he encounters may be, we need to reach the roof.”
“She’s right,” Lucy said reluctantly.
V raised one eyebrow. “Careful. Agreeing with me might damage your reputation. If you even have one that is…”
“Keep talking and I’ll damage your face.”
Rebecca looked delighted as if these two were gonna start again.
“No time,” I said before either woman could escalate.
Lucy finally released me, though one hand remained wrapped around my wrist.
V noticed that too. Of course she did.
“The path above is clear,” V said. “For now. We killed the team on the upper landing, but more agents will be moving through the building.”
“Maine and the others?” Lucy asked Rebecca.
Rebecca’s eyes unfocused as she checked her messages. “They’re pulling back. Dorio says Arasaka has blocked two streets, and NCPD just declared the tower an active cyberpsycho scene.” Her mouth twisted. “Falco’s taking them through a parking structure before the cops close the district.”
“They’re safe?” Lucy asked.
“Safe-ish.”
In Night City, that was probably the most anyone could promise.
V turned her attention to me. “You said there are two AVs on the roof.”
I nodded.
“And you believe you can hack one?”
“Yes.”
V studied me. “Those are Arasaka tactical AVs, John. Their ICE will be significantly stronger than anything you encountered in my implants.”
“That is debatable and mildly insulting.”
V continued before I could repeat that. “The vehicles will use rotating encryption, encrypted pilot authentication, hardware isolation, and active intrusion countermeasures. If they detect an unauthorized breach, they may disable flight controls, lock us inside, or alert every Arasaka asset in the city.”
“I can hack one.”
“You’re certain?”
“Without a doubt.”
V gave me a suspicious look.
V was still watching me. Her eyes narrowed as if she were assembling pieces of a puzzle she had already mostly solved.
This was becoming a problem.
Lucy was watching me too. Her expression was subtler than V’s, but she was a netrunner. She understood how impossible my recent accomplishments were.
Rebecca, thankfully, remained oblivious. She kicked one of the dead agents, then crouched to steal ammunition from his armor. “Cool. Blondie hacks the AV, we fly away, and then somebody buys me a drink.”
“They both suspect something,” Cortana grumbled.
“I know,” I muttered.
“What?” Lucy asked.
“Nothing.”
Lucy’s eyes narrowed. That hadn’t helped.
“We can deal with their suspicions later,” Cortana said. “Right now, we need to leave before Arasaka realizes its roof access is our only viable escape route!”
My cyberdeck indicator flashed.
TEMPERATURE NOMINALRAM RECOVERY: 100%
Cortana smiled. “I’m back to my full capabilities.”
We all climbed toward the roof.
My entire body objected. Every step pulled at the shallow bullet wounds across my chest and stomach. My left shoulder throbbed whenever I moved it, and something in my ribs clicked in a way ribs probably weren’t supposed to.
Lucy stayed close enough to catch me if I fell.
V pretended she wasn’t adjusting her pace to match mine.
Rebecca sprinted ahead, stopped, realized the rest of us weren’t keeping up, and jogged backward while complaining that explosions had apparently turned us all into old people.
“Three hostile signals on the next landing,” Cortana warned. “Two rifles and one smart shotgun. They’re establishing a defensive position outside the roof access corridor.”
I tightened my grip on the stolen submachine gun. “Three agents ahead.”
Rebecca pumped her Carnage. “Only three?”
“They know we’re coming,” I added.
“That makes it more fun!”
V moved past me. Her ruined black dress hung in torn strips around her thighs, and blood coated the mantis blades extending from both arms. She looked like she had walked out of a corporate fashion advertisement directed by a cyberpsycho. “Stay behind me,” she told me.
Lucy immediately stepped in front of her. “He should stay behind me.”
V gave Lucy a flat look. “You’re wearing less armor than he is. Which is none by the way.”
“It doesn't matter. I’m better than you.”
“That wasn’t what he said when I had him pinned beneath me this afternoon.”
Lucy stopped.
Rebecca made a delighted choking sound.
I nearly missed the next stair.
“You did what?” Lucy asked.
“It was training,” I said quickly.
V smiled. “Very intimate training.”
“She rolled her hips against you while sitting on your pelvis,” Cortana supplied.
“Not helping!” I grumbled out loud.
“What?” Lucy asked quickly, glancing at me.
“Nothing!”
V’s smile widened.
Lucy’s monowire slid from her wrist and began to glow.
For one horrifying moment, I thought she might attack V before Arasaka had another chance.
Gunfire erupted from above. The argument ended as rounds struck the railing and concrete around us.
V and Lucy moved simultaneously.
Rebecca shouted, “Last one upstairs is a corpo slut!”
“That insult doesn’t even make sense!” V called after her.
They charged anyway. I followed more slowly, partly because Cortana told me to maintain cover and partly because my body had begun filing formal complaints.
The first agent leaned over the upper landing and fired down the stairs.
Lucy’s eyes flashed blue. His smart shotgun jerked sideways as its targeting system locked onto something that wasn’t there. The weapon fired into the wall beside him.
V vaulted the final steps. Her Lynx Paws launched her high enough to clear the railing. She twisted in the air, landed behind the agent, and drove one mantis blade through the back of his neck. The point erupted from beneath his mask. V looked down at us while the man was still impaled on her arm. “Looks like I'm better after all,” she said.
Lucy’s expression darkened.
The two riflemen opened fire.
Rebecca shoved past me, dropped to one knee, and fired her Carnage up the stairs. The blast caught one agent across the shoulder and spun him into the wall. His armor kept his torso intact. His arm wasn’t as fortunate.
Rebecca grinned at me over her shoulder. “See that, blondie?”
“I saw it.”
“Good. Wanted to make sure you were watching.”
Lucy snapped her wrist. Her monowire cut through the damaged agent’s ankles. He fell forward, and the return swing passed across the narrow gap beneath his helmet. His head struck the floor before the rest of him.
Lucy glanced back at me. Her expression was calmer than Rebecca’s, but the small, proud curve of her lips communicated the same thing. Did you see that?
I had seen it. I was also beginning to recognize a pattern.
“They’re showing off,” I muttered.
“Yes.”
“For me?”
“Unfortunately...”
The last rifleman retreated through the roof access corridor.
V ripped her blade free from the first agent and raced after him. Lucy followed, monowire whipping sparks from the wall. Rebecca reloaded as she ran.
“This is insane.”
“You kissed two of them and encouraged the third.”
“I did not encourage Rebecca.”
“You called her cute inside our brain.”
“That was a private thought.”
“There are no private thoughts inside our brain.”
A rifle fired in the corridor. The agent emerged backward through the roof door, shooting at the three women pursuing him. V’s weapon-glitch quickhack made his rifle stutter. Lucy’s monowire cut it in half. Rebecca’s shotgun blast lifted him from his feet and threw him onto the roof.
All three women stopped over the body.
“I disabled his gun,” V said.
“I destroyed it,” Lucy replied.
Rebecca rested the Carnage against her shoulder. “I killed him.”
V and Lucy glared at her.
Rebecca grinned. “I win.”
I stepped onto the roof beneath the night sky.
Wind struck my wet clothes and chilled me instantly. Night City spread around us in every direction, a vast field of neon, glass, steel, smoke, advertisements, and distant gunfire. From this height, the city looked almost clean.
Behind us, Carmello’s burned inside its shattered tower. Smoke poured through the destroyed restaurant windows. Emergency lights flashed along the surrounding streets, where NCPD vehicles were assembling around barricades.
Two black Arasaka AVs rested on the rooftop landing pads. One was large enough to transport an assault squad. The other had a sleeker profile and a reinforced communications array mounted beneath its hull.
“Which one?” I asked. “The larger transport. More armor, greater passenger capacity, and sufficient range to reach the city limits.”
A blue path directed me toward it. Its side door remained open. The interior was lined with tactical seats, equipment racks, weapon restraints, and enough blood on the floor to suggest one of the earlier agents had not enjoyed the flight.
Rebecca climbed inside first. “Oh, this is preem.”
I sat in one of the tactical seats and connected my personal link to the AV’s maintenance port. Arasaka security filled my vision. Encrypted authentication prompts stacked over one another. Defensive daemons activated inside the vehicle network, preparing to burn out an unauthorized intruder’s cyberdeck.
Cortana tore through them.
One daemon vanished before it completed its first attack. Encryption keys unraveled. Pilot authentication collapsed. The AV’s registration, tracking beacon, telemetry feed, and connection to Arasaka’s command network all appeared before us.
“Primitive.” The tracking beacon went dark. Corporate telemetry stopped transmitting. The dead pilot’s authorization was deleted and replaced with mine.
JOHN WELLESOWNER-LEVEL ACCESS
Owner? I asked.
“Would you prefer ‘car thief’?”
Owner is good.
The side door closed. The engines changed pitch beneath us.
V grabbed one of the overhead restraints as the AV rose from the rooftop. “Nobody is flying this.”
“Autopilot,” I said.
“You accessed the autopilot?”
“Yes.”
“You defeated its ICE?”
“Yes...”
“You disconnected the vehicle from Arasaka’s network?”
“Yes?”
V stared at me.
“What…?”
“Nothing…” she said. It was clearly not nothing.
Lucy sat beside me and checked the AV’s internal systems through her optics. The longer she looked, the more suspicious her expression became.
Rebecca stretched across two seats, unconcerned with the impossible netrunning feat happening around her. “Can we keep it?”
The AV banked away from Carmello’s tower.
Below us, NCPD vehicles converged on the building while news drones circled at a supposedly safe distance. Arasaka’s surviving agents would already be inventing whatever version of events protected the corporation.
Cortana sent the AV between two towers before lowering us beneath the main civilian flight lanes. Our exterior lights shut off, and the vehicle’s transponder began broadcasting the identity of an automated medical transport.
I looked around the armored cabin. The AV was probably worth more than the Coyote Bar, Vik’s clinic, Misty’s shop, and every apartment my new family had ever owned combined.
V must have followed my thoughts from my expression. “A hacked Arasaka tactical AV could sell for hundreds of thousands of eddies,” she said. “Possibly more to the right fixer.”
My eyes moved toward my contact list before I consciously decided anything. Regina Jones. A single message could bring her into the deal. If anyone knew how to quietly move a stolen corporate aircraft, it would be Watson’s most influential fixer.
Hundreds of thousands of eddies could buy better chrome, better weapons, a workshop for Cortana, protection for Mama Welles, and enough subdermal armor to wrap Jackie in it twice.
“Later,” Cortana said.
I lowered my eyes. She was right. I was bleeding in several places. V had just been betrayed by Arasaka. Lucy’s crew was escaping a corporate ambush. Rebecca was covered in blood and somehow appeared to be having the best night of her life.
Selling the stolen AV could wait.
“Where are we going?” Lucy asked.
“Away,” Cortana answered inside my head.
I entered a destination near the edge of the city, far beyond the corporate towers and concentrated NCPD response. The AV turned west. We flew beneath the cover of night, leaving central Night City behind us. Neon gradually gave way to warehouses, industrial lots, landfills, and the dark openness beyond the city’s edge.
For the first time since the windows at Carmello’s exploded, no one was shooting at us.
I leaned back against the seat. Pain spread across every inch of my body, but exhaustion was beginning to overpower it.
Lucy took my hand.
V sat across from us and watched her do it.
Rebecca looked between them, grinned, and settled in to enjoy the inevitable argument.
XXX