Chapter 26: Getting Down to Biz I (Patreon)

Changed the location of the meet to somewhere that would make more sense and you'd actually have to visit in Cyberpunk. I think....

"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."

- Abraham Lincoln

---

They were barely two blocks from Vik's clinic when Santi pulled up Arturo Vargas's contact on his Agent and hit the line. The call connected on the second ring, and a familiar voice answered as the sound of a sports broadcast played somewhere in the background.

"Ghost, my man, calling me back so soon?" Arturo said. "It hasn't even been a day, and I just can't help but wonder what it could be. Por el amor de Dios, don't tell me the warehouse blew up or something."

"I think you'd already know if something happened to the warehouse, Arturo. I need you to find me a truck," Santi said, keeping his tone casual, yet professional as Julia navigated the congested streets of Little China toward the expressway. "I need a Kaukaz Bratsk U4020 with an enclosed cargo bed and loading tools. I need it parked outside my unit by three this afternoon, four at the latest."

There was a pause on the other end, followed by the sound of a chair creaking as Arturo shifted his weight. "A Bratsk? Damn, kid, that's a full-size rig. You moving the entire warehouse or something?"

"None of your business," Santi dismissed his question. "Can you get me one or not?"

"Can I get you one?" Arturo asked, sounding mildly offended. "Choom, I got four of them sitting in a lot behind my Rancho facility, but only one that matches your necessities. She ain't pretty, but she runs clean, though price-wise, it'll run you five hundred eddies a day for the rental."

Santi thought about it for a second and nodded to himself. "Done deal."

"Whoa, hold on, hold on," Arturo said. "There's a catch, amigo. The Bratsk requires a Class-C commercial operator's license to drive legally in Night City. Now, I don't care if you got one or not, but the Badges sure do. If they pull you over in a commercial rig without the proper docs, that's impound, fines, and questions that neither of us want to answer."

Santi rolled his eyes as he already knew where this was going. "How much?"

"Two hundred extra," Arturo replied. "It'll be off the books. I got a buddy at the DMV processing center in Arroyo who can flag the vehicle registration as a pre-approved corporate logistics run for the day. If a badge scans the plates, it'll ping back as a routine Petrochem freight delivery, clean and simple."

"So that'll be seven hundred total. Fine," Santi said with a bit of fabricated reluctance. "You want me to transfer the eddies now or on delivery?"

"I'll never say no to upfront eddies," Arturo said. "And Ghost? She'll be parked outside your unit by three. Keys in the wheel well and everything."

Santi executed the transfer, routing the seven hundred eddies through the Aiden protocol out of habit, even though the amount was small enough that a direct transfer would have been fine, but old habits died hard, especially the ones that kept your identity hidden.

"Pleasure doing biz," Santi said.

"No, haha, pleasure is all mine, kid," Arturo said with an audible grin. "Stay frosty, my ghostly friend."

The line cut, and Santi leaned back in the passenger seat, mentally running through the plans for the evening. The drop with Meredith Stout was at ten tonight, and it'd take place on that decommissioned Petrochem freight terminal off Edgewood Street. That gave him roughly eleven hours to secure the truck, learn how to drive it, load the goods, and get everything into position.

Eleven hours sounded like plenty of time. But anyone with common sense knew that eleven hours in Night City was an eternity for things to go sideways.

"Who were you talking with?" Julia asked, glancing at him as they merged onto the expressway.

"Arturo," Santi replied. "The guy who rented me the warehouse. I'm getting a truck to move some of the cargo today."

"And you know how to drive a truck, how?" Julia asked.

Santi scratched the back of his head as he answered. "Well, I don't know how to do so yet. But it can't be that hard."

Julia deadpanned at him. "Santiago. You're telling me you just rented a truck you don't know how to drive."

"I'm going to learn, Ma," Santi said. "I just need to find a BD for it."

"Ay Dios mío," Julia muttered, turning her attention back to the road while shaking her head. "Your father would have had a heart attack."

Santi chuckled as he pictured how his father would've reacted based on the stuff he'd done as a child. "Pa would've been impressed."

"Ale would've smacked you upside the head and then been impressed," Julia corrected with a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips.

While Julia drove, Santi closed his eyes and dipped into the local commercial subnet. The Kabuki network fell away as they crossed into Santo Domingo's grid, and the architecture shifted in the Kiroshis' display. Whereas Kabuki's Net was a dense and chaotic neon jungle, overloaded with competing data streams from a thousand storefronts and pachinko parlors, Santo Domingo's grid was different. The data nodes were larger and spaced further apart, and the connection pathways were thicker, carrying the immense bandwidth of power plants, factory control systems, and other logistics networks from the solar farms in the Jackson Plains that kept Night City's lights on, to Biotechnica's farms.

And he could see all of it. Instead of the blurry, internally constructed approximation he had been forcing his brain to render for years, he was able to see the actual architecture, projected in clean, 16K high-definition clarity across his retinal display. Every node and every ICE barrier were rendered in colors and geometric structures that his ganic vision had never been able to perceive.

'Yeah,' he thought to himself. 'I was definitely handicapping myself.'

He navigated to the commercial BD marketplaces that operated in the grey space between legal and illegal on Santo Domingo's subnet. The braindance market in Night City was massive, and while the corporate storefronts sold sanitized, consumer-grade experiences like "A Day at the Beach" or "Skydiving Over the Badlands," the real market operated underground, selling anything from combat training BDs, to surgical procedure tutorials, language acquisition packages, and, if you knew where to look, automotive operation simulations.

He needed a specific BD. Not just "how to drive a truck," but a Kaukaz Bratsk U4020 operational experience, and since the Bratsk was a beast of a vehicle with a hydraulic rear cargo lift that required its own set of operational knowledge, driving it wasn't like driving a regular car Galena. It was closer to piloting a small building than anything.

Unfortunately for Santi, his usual BD vendors didn't carry anything as menial as learning how to operate a Bratsk, since honestly, who the fuck wanted to learn how to drive one? But as he expanded his search radius, pulling up vendor listings across the Santo Domingo and Arroyo subnet nodes, one certain storefront he hadn't seen before caught his attention.

The vendor page was well-organized and specialized exclusively in automotive content. Driving simulations for every major vehicle class in Night City. Mechanic tutorials covering engine rebuilds, transmission swaps, suspension tuning, and ECU calibration. Racing BDs recorded from actual street racers running the circuits in Japantown and the Badlands. And, sitting right there in the commercial vehicle category was a Kaukaz Bratsk U4020 full operational BD.

Santi pulled up the seller's profile, noticing that the vendor's handle was "El Capitan." Whoever this gonk was, they were hew to the subnet, at least on the commercial side. The account was only three months old, but the BD catalogue was extensive and priced competitively. The reviews from buyers were solid, averaging 4.8 out of 5 across forty-seven transactions. Whoever this person was, they knew their shit.

He pinged the vendor through the subnet's encrypted messaging system.

[Ghost]: You carry a Bratsk U4020 operational BD. Full sim or partial?

Santi received the response faster than expected.

[El Capitan]: Full sim, amigo. Sixty minutes of real-world operational data recorded from an actual licensed operator. Covers startup sequence, all fourteen gears, highway and urban driving, reverse maneuvering, and full hydraulic lift operation for the rear cargo bed. I'm selling you the real deal.

[Ghost]: Who recorded it?

[El Capitan]: Yours truly. Well, a colleague of mine. I work in logistics, so getting seat time in a Bratsk isn't exactly hard. Figured there was a market for people who needed to operate commercial rigs without going through the six-week DMV certification process.

[Ghost]: Smart hustle. Your catalogue seems solid enough, and you cover a lot of ground for a three-month-old vendor.

[El Capitan]: Appreciate that. But what can I say? Cars are my thing. Always have been. The BD biz is just a side project. My day job covers the bills, but this is where the passion lives.

Santi stared at the message for a moment, then opened his eyes in meatspace and looked over at Julia. "Ma, I found the BD I need. The seller seems legit. I'm going to hop on a call with him to verify the product before I buy."

Julia nodded without taking her eyes off the road. "Just don't go spending a fortune on it."

Santi closed his eyes again, navigated back to the vendor's storefront, and sent a follow-up message.

[Ghost]: You do voice calls? I want to verify the BD quality before I drop eddies on it.

[El Capitan]: Sure thing. Give me a sec to route through a line.

Thirty seconds later, Santi's Agent chimed with an incoming encrypted call. He accepted, and a warm, energetic male voice filled his audio feed.

"Ghost, right?" a man said on the other end of the line. "Nice to put a voice to the handle. Name's not your biz, but I go by El Capitan. I'm just a guy who loves cars and figured out how to make some scratch off that love."

"What's the day job you mentioned?" Santi asked, his voice pitched low.

"Petrochem," El Capitan said, without a hint of shame. "I do supply chain logistics, coordinate CHOOH2 transport routes across the Santo Domingo district. I'll be honest and admit I ain't the biggest fan of corpos myself, but it pays the rent and gets me access to just about every commercial vehicle Petrochem operates while giving me enough downtime to record BDs during my shifts. The company doesn't know, obviously. If they did, they'd probably fire me, sue me, and then fire me again."

Santi let out a genuine chuckle. "A corpo running a side hustle selling BDs. That's a new one."

"Hey, a man's gotta eat," El Capitan laughed. "And let me tell you, the corporate salary ain't what they promise you in the recruitment vids. But enough about my sad life. You said you wanted to verify the Bratsk BD. What do you need to know?"

"Recording quality and Sensory depth," Santi said. "For that, I need full proprioceptive data, not just visual and audio. I want to feel my foot on the accelerator, the clutch engagement, the steering resistance, and the weight distribution during turns. If I'm learning to drive this thing from a BD, I want to get the full experience."

"Oh, you're a purist," El Capitan said, a smile in his voice. "I respect that. The Bratsk BD is recorded at full sensory depth. Proprioceptive, vestibular, haptic, whatever it is you want, you'll get. You'll feel the fourteen-speed transmission click through every gear. You'll feel the steering pull when the cargo bed is loaded versus empty. And the hydraulic lift sequence at the end? I recorded that with a full twenty-ton payload, so you'll get the real-world resistance data. You have my word that you'll get the real deal and the actual experience of operating the rig."

Santi was sold, but he wasn't about to let the conversation end there. Not when he was talking to someone who clearly lived and breathed engines.

"What else do you carry in terms of builds?" He asked. "I saw you've got mechanic BDs. You do engine rebuilds?"

"Do I do engine rebuilds?" El Capitan repeated, sounding almost insulted. "Amigo, I've got full teardown-and-reassembly BDs for the Quadra Type-66, the Thorton Mackinaw, the Mizutani Shion, and I'm currently recording one for the Rayfield Caliburn, which, let me tell you, was not easy to get access to. The Caliburn's ECU alone has more encryption than most corpo servers. Took me two weeks just to get the diagnostic suite running without tripping the anti-tampering protocols."

"What about CHOOH2 conversions?" Santi asked. "To be a little more specific, I'm talking about retrofitting pre-Krash combustion engines to run on synthetic fuel?"

There was a pause. "Now that's a question you don't hear every day. Most people want to go the other direction, converting modern rigs to run on alternative power sources. Pre-Krash conversions... you're talking about old muscle cars, aren't you?"

"Maybe," Santi said.

"Oh, man," El Capitan breathed, and Santi could hear the genuine excitement bleeding through the corpo's professionalism. "You've got a pre-Krash ride? What is it? A Quadra ancestor? One of those old Chevys?"

"Something rarer," Santi said, a smile creeping across his face.

"Don't do this to me, Ghost," El Capitan said. "You can't dangle that in front of a gearhead and then go cryptic."

"Let's just say it's a '70s V8 with a lot of potential and leave it there," Santi said with a slight grin.

"A '70s V8..." El Capitan trailed off, and Santi could practically hear the man's brain cycling through the database of pre-Krash muscle cars. "If you've actually got one, you're sitting on a goldmine. And yeah, I've got a BD for CHOOH2 conversions on big-block V8 engines. Recorded it from a Badlands mechanic who's been doing them for twenty years. Full teardown, fuel rail conversion, injector swap, ECU fabrication from scratch. It's my best-selling niche product."

"How much for the Bratsk BD and the V8 conversion BD?"

"Bratsk is five hundred eddies. V8 conversion is eight hundred. Total's thirteen hundred. And before you even think about asking, let me stop you right there." El Capitan's tone shifted a bit, still maintaining its friendliness. "I don't care how much of a passion we share when it comes to cars, Ghost. I ain't giving you a discount. These BDs are priced fairly, the quality is top-tier, and my margins are already tight enough that my accountant, which is also me, would have a stroke."

Santi laughed. A real, genuine laugh that surprised even him. "Alright, alright. Fair enough. Sending the eddies now."

He executed the transfer of thirteen hundred eddies, and his Agent chimed with the incoming BD files a moment later. Two high-density braindance packages, each tagged with El Capitan's vendor signature and a satisfaction guarantee.

"Pleasure doing biz, Ghost," El Capitan said. "And hey, if you ever want to talk shop about that V8 build, you know where to find me. I'm serious. I'd kill to see a pre-Krash muscle car running on CHOOH2. That's bucket-list stuff right there."

"I'll keep that in mind," Santi said. "And by the way, Capitan, you're selling yourself short, real short. I'd be charging upwards of twenty five hundred eddies for the V8 engine BD."

"Well, prices can increase later on, but you have to start somewhere," El Capitan said.

"Fair enough," Santi agreed. "Be seeing you, Capitan."

"Nova. Pleasure doing biz, amigo," El Capitan said.

Santi cut the line and opened his eyes in the passenger seat, a faint smile still lingering on his face as the familiar facades of Rancho Coronado scrolled past the Galena's windows.

"You look happy," Julia observed.

"Just met a gearhead corpo selling car BDs out of his Petrochem cubicle," Santi said. "Reminded me that not every corpo in this city is a soulless corpo."

"Give him time," Julia said dryly as she thought of her dead husband.

They stopped at the house just long enough for Santi to grab his BD wreath from the desk in his bedroom and for Julia to heat up a container of leftovers in the microwave. They ate standing up in the kitchen, passing the single fork back and forth because neither of them, and within twenty minutes, they were back in the Galena heading toward Arroyo.

Santi slid the BD wreath over his head, adjusting the neural contacts until they seated properly against his temples, and activated the Bratsk U4020 operational BD. El Capitan hadn't lied about the quality. The sensory data flooded through the wreath and into his Neural Link with a clarity that made previous BDs he had used feel like watching a hologram through a dirty window, though that may have been due to the fact that he now had Kiroshi's.

He was suddenly sitting in the driver's seat of a Kaukaz Bratsk, the enormous steering wheel in his hands, the rumble of the turbodiesel engine vibrating through the seat and into the bones of his legs. He could feel the resistance of the clutch pedal under his left foot, the slight play in the accelerator, and the specific way the fourteen-speed transmission engaged when shifting from neutral into first.

The experience lasted sixty minutes, compressed into the remaining drive time through the Neural Link's accelerated processing. By the time Julia pulled into the service road leading to their rented warehouse in Arroyo, Santi had mentally driven the Bratsk through urban traffic, highway cruising, tight industrial lot maneuvering, and a full cargo loading and unloading sequence using the hydraulic rear lift.

He pulled the wreath off and blinked, readjusting to the meatspace interior of the Galena. It was currently 2:03 PM.

"Done?" Julia asked as she killed the engine inside the warehouse.

"Done," Santi confirmed. "I'm pretty confident I can drive the truck."

"You learned to drive a truck in forty minutes."

"Technically, I experienced sixty minutes of operational data compressed into forty minutes of real time through accelerated neural processing."

Julia gave him the look. "You learned to drive a truck in forty minutes."

"Yeah, Ma," Santi nodded. "I learned to drive a truck in forty minutes."

The warehouse was exactly as they had left it, climate-controlled, well-lit, and with the remaining inventory of pre-Krash antiquities organized neatly along the far wall. The Boss 429 Mustang sat in the center of the space, its rusted chassis bathed in the buzz of the overhead fluorescents, waiting for the day Santi would finally have the time and the parts to bring it back from the dead.

They spent the next forty-five minutes pulling the specific crates that would be going to Meredith Stout. The paintings, which were carefully wrapped in protective polymer sheeting. A selection of smaller antiquities that had been appraised and tagged for the Militech deal. Each and every single piece was accounted for, cross-referenced against the inventory list Santi had compiled during the authentication session with Sasha, and staged near the main loading bay door in preparation for the truck's arrival.

Julia handled the lighter items carefully, and Santi moved the larger crates using a heavy-duty dolly he had found in the supply closet, rolling them across the concrete floor and lining them up in the order they would be loaded.

By 2:50 PM, everything was staged and accounted for. They sat on a pair of crates near the loading bay, catching their breath.

"So, how much is all this worth?" Julia asked, looking at the organized row of cargo.

Santi did the math in his head. "After commissions, somewhere around two hundred and seventy thousand eddies in cash. Plus a set of Higurashi 20-13 Mantis Blades."

Julia stared at him. "Mantis Blades?"

"Part of the deal. The buyer wanted a specific piece, and I negotiated the blades as part of the payment."

Julia opened her mouth, closed it, and then shook her head slowly. "I don't even want to know what Mantis Blades are."

"Retractable arm blades," Santi said.

"I said I didn't want to know," Julia replied flatly.

At 3:04 PM, the low rumble of a diesel engine echoed down the service road outside. Santi hit the control panel, and the warehouse door slid open to reveal a Kaukaz Bratsk U4020 rolling slowly down the alleyway, its boxy, industrial frame standing almost at the same height as the surrounding buildings. The matte-grey paint was scratched and faded, the bumper was dented in three places, and the Petrochem corporate logo on the driver's door had been crudely painted over with what looked like dark primer, which Santi guessed to be Arturo's handiwork.

The truck pulled to a stop just outside the loading bay, the air brakes hissing as the engine idled. By the time they stepped out, the delivery driver, whoever Arturo had contracted for the drop-off, had already left. Santi found the keys in the wheel well, as promised, retrieved them, climbed up into the cab, and started the engine.

The turbodiesel roared to life, and the vibration that ran through the steering column matched exactly what the BD had taught him. He backed the truck up to the loading bay, lining the rear cargo bed with the warehouse floor, and activated the hydraulic lift. The platform descended with a mechanical whine, settling flush with the concrete.

Loading everything took another thirty minutes. Julia guided the crates onto the lift platform while Santi operated the hydraulic controls from the cargo bed, raising each load and sliding it into position before securing it with the magnetic clamps bolted to the floor. The paintings went in last, nestled between two padded crates to prevent any shifting during transport. By the time they finished, every piece was locked down tight, and the cargo bed looked like a professionally organized freight shipment.

Santi sealed the rear doors, locked the magnetic clamps with a digital key tied to his Agent, and jumped down from the cargo bed. Julia was heading back inside the warehouse to initiate the closing of the doors from the inside.

"I'll lock up," she said. "You go warm up that behemoth."

Santi climbed into the cab of the Bratsk and settled into the worn driver's seat. The dashboard was a mess of analog gauges and a single, cracked digital display showing fuel level, engine temperature, and cargo weight. His Kiroshis automatically overlaid additional data on top of the instruments, calculating fuel efficiency, estimated range, and optimal gear ratios based on current load weight.

The BD had taught him the mechanics, and the Kiroshis were working in tandem to give him the edge.

Julia emerged from the side door a minute later, locking it behind her and climbing into the Galena she had pulled out just before closing up.

Santi's Agent chimed with an incoming text from Julia.

[Ma]: I'll follow you. Don't drive like a gonk.

[Santi]: I never drive like a gonk.

[Ma]: You drove through a red light last week.

[Santi]: It was yellow.

[Ma]: Amarillo is not verde, Santiago.

Santi grinned as he put the Bratsk into first gear and pulled out of the alleyway.

The drive from Arroyo to the decommissioned Petrochem freight terminal off San Amaro Street took about twenty minutes. The terminal was located on the northern edge of the Rancho Coronado district. Petrochem had shut the facility down and left the freight cars there after a contract dispute with the city council, and the complex had been slowly decaying since, slowly becoming claimed by squatters, overlooked by 6th street gangers, and used by the occasional fixer who needed a quiet place to do quiet business.

As the Bratsk rumbled down Edgewood, Santi opened a line to Julia's Agent.

"Ma, can you hear me?" Santi said.

"Loud and clear, mijo," Julia replied. "This road is terrible, by the way. I think I just lost a hubcap."

Santi chuckled as he shook his head. "Ma, listen. I need to talk to you about tonight."

Something in his tone must have registered, because Julia's voice shifted. "What about tonight?"

Santi gripped the steering wheel and kept his eyes forward, navigating the Bratsk around a crater-sized pothole. "When we get to the drop point, we're going to unload the cargo and set it up. But after that, you're going to need to take the Galena and head home."

Silence on the line.

"The buyer's terms are specific, Ma," Santi continued, and the lie came out smoother than he wanted it to. "Only the seller and the buyer at the exchange point. No additional parties. If they show up and see someone they weren't expecting, the whole deal falls apart. And these aren't the kind of people you want to give a reason to walk away from."

"Who is this buyer, Santiago?" Julia asked, and the use of his full name meant the maternal radar was fully engaged.

"A mid-level corpo procurement agent. They're buying the art and antiquities for a private collection, which means high-end clientele, and they were very specific about operational security." Every word was carefully chosen to sound professional and boring enough to deflect further questioning.

"And you trust this person?" Julia asked.

"I trust the fixer who brokered the deal," Santi said. "Her name is Regina Jones, and from what Sasha told me, she may be kinda new to the scene, but she's solid. She wouldn't set up a meet that puts me at risk."

There was another stretch of silence, and through the Galena's windshield behind him, visible in his side mirrors, Santi could see his mother's face illuminated by the dashboard lights with an expression she wore when she was fighting the urge to argue with a decision she didn't agree with.

"I don't like this," Julia finally said. "I don't like you being out here alone with a stranger who has enough eddies to buy pre-Krash art but won't let you bring your own people."

"Ma, I'm not alone. I've got my deck, I've got my iron, and I've got more quickhacks loaded than I'd ever need. If anything feels wrong, I'm out. I delta before they can blink." He paused, softening his voice. "I need you safe, Ma. That's the whole point. If something goes sideways and you're standing right there, I can't focus on handling it because I'll be worried about you."

That was the truth buried inside the lie, and Julia knew it. She exhaled slowly, the sound crackling through the Agent's audio feed.

"Bueno," she said quietly. "Fine. But you call me the second, and I mean the second, that deal is done. I don't care if it's three in the morning. You call me, and you tell me you're safe."

"I will, Ma," Santi promised.

"And Santiago?" Julia said.

"Yeah?" Santi frowned a bit.

"If anything feels wrong, you forget about the eddies and you come home," Julia said. "No amount of money is worth my son. You understand me?"

Santi felt a tightness in his chest as he nodded. "I understand, Ma."

"Okay," Julia said softly. "Okay."

The decommissioned Petrochem freight terminal materialized through the thin layer of smog clinging to the Northern edge of Rancho Coronado. It was a sprawling complex of cargo containers, concrete platforms, and rusted loading cranes that had died and been left to rot. The perimeter fencing was mostly intact but unmonitored since the corporate security systems had been pulled years ago when Petrochem abandoned the site.

They found a spot towards the western edge of the complex with enough space to park four Bratsk trucks side by side, and the asphalt was stained with oil patches and chemical spills. Santi backed the Bratsk into the space, and the air brakes hissing as he brought the truck to a stop. The engine idled for a moment before he killed it, and the sudden silence of the abandoned area settled around him.

Julia pulled the Galena in behind him, parking near the bay's entrance. She stepped out and looked around the surrounding area, and crossed her arms over her chest.

"This place gives me the creeps," she said flatly.

"It's supposed to," Santi said, jumping down from the cab. "That's why people use it. Nobody comes here unless they have a reason to."

They unloaded the cargo together, working in the same rhythm they had used to load it. Santi operated the hydraulic lift while Julia guided the crates off the platform and into position by the side of the truck, arranging them in a clean and accessible layout that would allow the buyer to inspect each piece without having to dig through a pile.

The paintings were propped against the shipping container, still wrapped in their protective sheeting, while the smaller antiquities were arranged on a pair of metal folding tables that Santi had found stacked in between two containers. By the time they finished, the area still looked like an abandoned freight platform, but a part had been overtaken to hold a private auction.

Santi checked the time on his HUD, and saw that it was just 6:47 PM. He had three hours and thirteen minutes until the meet.

Julia stood by the Galena, keys in hand, watching him with the same expression she had worn every time he had walked out the front door for a gig. An expression that said 'I know I can't stop you, but I need you to come home.'

"I'll be fine, Ma," Santi said, walking over to her.

"You always say that," Julia replied quietly.

He pulled her into a hug, and she wrapped her arms around him tightly, pressing her face against his chest.

"Te quiero, mijo," she whispered. "Come home safe."

"Te quiero, Ma," Santi said. "I'll call you the second it's done."

Julia held on for a few more seconds before pulling back, wiping her eyes, and getting into the Galena. The engine turned over, and she pulled off, its taillights shrinking until they disappeared around the bend.

Santi stood alone in the open air, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of eddies worth of pre-Krash antiquities. He reached into his jacket and felt the cold of the Malorian Overture resting in the deep pocket.

"Why didn't I just wait a little while before heading over?" Santi wondered out loud. "Now I have to sit around with my thumb up my ass while I wait three hours."