Cursed Edgerunner Chapter 23 (Patreon)

Once I tossed Takeda into the locked-up safe house with Regina's hidden operative taking custody of him. I strode out where that 'Jane Doe' was standing off next to the still-dissolving curse.

And as I approached, Jane Doe said with some annoyance. "You didn't kill it with a cursed tool or cursed energy. This thing is going to come back soon enough you know?"

I blinked before taking in the curses form before nodding as I realized that was true enough. Dust was 'kinda' just crystallized magic. While Cursed Energy was an entirely different thing basically.

So with a hum my mantis blades snapped out from my forarm and I slammed the sharpened blade into the curse's skull as I enhanced my body. And, by extension, my implants with cursed energy.

'Gotta keep that in mind... I don't want people I kill to come back as curses to hunt me down. I can't believe I forgot that with how there was the whole segment with Maki and the 'King of Sexism' in Naoya.' I mused to myself.

Then, looking back at Jane Doe I raised an eyebrow and rubbed my thumb and two front fingers together in the clear motion to say, 'Give me money'

Jane Doe snorted but nodded, and her eye's glowed as she sent a ping request through my own eye's to preform a bank transfer. And after making sure the ping connection didn't have anything else but the wire transfer code. I accepted the wire.

A soft chinging noise rang out as five thousand eddies hit my dry account like the most beloved rain hitting parched soil.

Then Jane Doe spoke with a slow drawl. "Jake Bariss, for someone new to Night City, you sure are putting chrome on real fast. And that Maloran? Where did you pick up a piece like that?" 

I gave Jane Doe a dry look before I said flatly. "Officer, I am not under arrest am I?"

And without missing a beat she retorted dryly. "Only on the charges of being too cute to curb stomp. Now, while I am interested in how you got such a piece. I do owe more than just a pretty penny for helping me exorcise that curse... As it's not like I have a cursed technique or access to cursed energy either."

She took a deep breath before she said more seriously. "You are making a name for yourself Jake. All to in fact, a new kid rolls into Night City out of nowhere. Taking over two dozen on the clean side commissions and bounties, not failing any of them, and VERY noticably getting chromed up?"

"People are noticing you. In fact, my handler after I told him we met on that Scav clean-up. Asked for your deets, as he wants to send you on more scav and put you on the raider cleanup missions on the border of the Badlands."

Raider cleanup missions in the badlands? Fuuuuuck that noise!

The badlands were filled with the most horrid shit imaginable. Curses that wander across the Deadlands, 'nomads' that were just bandits with a sense of pride. And of course, military death squads belonging to different corps that were trying to rob other corps' supply lines between major cities.

"Raider clean up missions in the badlands? Screw that, I would rather straight up attack one of the Maelstrom's major bases." I said flatly.

Because while the Raider's might have the strongest cyberware. They had two things the gangsters here in Night City didn't have.

An organized raider gang would have REAL military hardware in armored floating tanks, direct energy weapons. And most importantly, Curse User's who were superhuman assholes with a god complex and delighted to cause other people suffering.

Jane Doe gave a thin smile before she said knowingly. "Yes... I can tell that, while you aren't scared of a scrap. You are more on the strategic side. Still, would you be interested in having my superior have your deets if he has a gig he can't have his operatives in the force handle?" 

I nodded in agreement and sent over a synthesized line number and said bluntly. "That line is only good for two devices. Yours and the very next person you send it to. Any other's beyond that will be unable to contact me."

Then I took a breath before asking more curiously. "If you can say, what were you doing messing around with that curse?"

Jane Doe's face twitched in clear annoyance at the reminder and she said in exasperation. "I am on the Scav Task Force, as you might have guessed. And we got a supposedly credible tip that a scav lab was in an old factory's basement."

She shook her head and said flatly with a sigh. "It most certainly WAS a Scav den at one point. Now it was clearly being used to make the worst kind of Black Market BD's with extreme fetishes and such. That curse was clearly the result of the bad stuff that happened there."

I tsked as I got the picture. Checking the clock on my HUD in my Kiroshi Eye's I saw that there was still good daylight. So I shrugged and asked Jane. "Fuck it, want me to come over and help exorcise any cursed energy in the area? I ain't got shit to do for the rest of the day anyway."

Jane raised an eyebrow before chuckling and saying with a throaty chuckle. "Oh? Then I guess I will have to thank you again Jake. If there IS another curse there. I will pay you a combat fee to deal with it... It's not like it's my money anyway."

And as we continued walking back under the underpass to head to the factory she had been at. I could only mentally agree with Jane.

'Paying someone to do your dirty work with someone else's money is the best feeling, I bet.' I thought with some amusement.

Still, her giving me the knowledge that my actions were getting my name out there was something I owed her. It made more sense, given how Regina went to such lengths to get a line out to me at this point.

I was still very much a ghost to most people. I was trying my best to make it as difficult as possible for some Netwatch Hacker to burn my organs to a crisp after remote hacking me from a damned stoplight camera.

'Hmm, I wonder if I could walk into the Afterlife at this point? Or make my contact info a bit easier to get so I can get some jobs with better Fixer's like Padre?' I mused to myself.

But then I shuddered at the thought of someone like fucking Faraday getting my contacts. And I knew that I would shoot that fucking sleazeball the moment he tried to set me up for a mission.