Chippin in 6 (Patreon)

Chapter 6:

– John Welles –

A couple minutes after Regina Jones ended the call, I was still sitting on the edge of my bed, staring at absolutely nothing.

Which was becoming a hobby of mine, apparently.

Night City glowed through my bedroom window in dirty neon strips, painting the walls in slow pulses of red, blue, and cheap holo-ad pink. Somewhere below, a car alarm started screaming, gave up after five seconds, then started screaming again like it had remembered it had unresolved trauma. The ceiling fan clicked once above me.

It still did not spin.

I let out a slow, nervous breath.

Regina Jones wanted me to work for her.

Regina Jones. A real fixer. A real Night City fixer. Not V handing me a weird little corpo-adjacent test gig over diner food while teasing me into a full-body reboot. Not Jackie hyping me up like I was about to become the next living legend because I had survived one horrible morning and only cried internally for most of it.

Regina Jones had seen me kill three gangers in an alley and gone, yeah, that kid might be useful.

That was probably bad.

That was probably good.

That was probably both, because Night City did not believe in clean categories. Night City believed in handing you a sandwich with glass in it and charging extra for texture.

“So,” Cortana said from the back of my head, “are we going to discuss Regina’s offer, or are you going to continue glaring at your wall as if it owes you money?”

“I am processing.”

“You are procrastinating.”

“I can do both.”

“You are very talented.”

“Thank you.”

“That was not a compliment.”

“It felt like one.”

Cortana made a soft, exasperated sound. She had been quiet after Regina’s call, which meant she had been thinking. 

I rubbed both hands over my face and winced when my scraped palm complained.

“Okay,” I said. “One problem at a time.”

“An excellent theory. Let us see if you can apply it.”

I ignored the sarcasm because I was maturing as a person, and also because arguing with the woman in my head had a zero percent win rate.

First problem: Regina Jones.

Second problem: Lucy Kushinada.

Specifically, the fact that Lucy had told me to text her tonight.

Or she would come find me.

And apparently, according to Lucy, I really, really did not want her hunting me when she was in a good mood.

I stared at the little contact entry floating in the corner of my vision.

LUCY

My stomach did a slow, deeply uncool flip.

“Right,” I muttered. “Okay. Text Lucy. Simple. Normal. People text women all the time.”

“Yes,” Cortana said dryly. “Humans have been exchanging written communication for thousands of years. Somehow, civilization survived.”

“That is not helping.”

“It was not intended to.”

I brought up the message field.

My Kiroshis rendered it in a clean little overlay, pale blue against the dim room.

TO: LUCY

MESSAGE:

The cursor blinked.

I stared at it.

The cursor blinked again.

I stared harder, as if intimidation might cause words to appear.

What the hell was I supposed to say?

Hey, Lucy. Thanks for not killing me. Hope your day went well.

No. Terrible.

Hi, Lucy. This is John. The guy that couldn’t keep his eyes off you in the NCART. Just confirming that was real and not a traumatic hallucination from my recent brain injury.

Also no.

Hey, about that date. Do you like noodles? I have approximately five hundred eddies and plenty of emotional damage.

Maybe honest, but still no. I groaned and leaned back until my shoulders hit the wall behind the bed. “This is impossible.”

“It is one text message, John.”

“I know.”

The cursor kept blinking.

I typed: Hey.

Then I deleted it.

I typed: Hi Lucy.

Deleted that too.

I typed: So about earlier—

Deleted that with actual physical embarrassment, despite the fact that no one could see it except Cortana, which was worse.

I could feel her mentally rolling her eyes. Not because she actually had eyes in my head. More because we shared a brain now, and apparently part of sharing a brain meant I could sense when she was judging me with her entire soul.

“John,” she said.

“What?”

“This is painful.”

“I am aware.”

“No. I mean for me.”

“Very supportive, Cortana.”

“I am supporting you by trying to end both of our suffering.”

“I just need a second.”

“You have had several.”

“Texting a girl is hard...”

“You killed three armed men this morning. How is it harder than that!?”

“That was different.”

“Yes,” she said. “That required less overthinking. Fine, I’ll do it for you!”

I opened my mouth to argue. My eyes went wide. It was too late. The message was sent. Just like that. A tiny little outgoing bubble appeared in the corner of my vision.

John: hi

I froze. “Cortana! Did you just send that?”

“Yes. I thought it captured your emotional state.”

“My emotional state is not lowercase ‘hi’.”

“It absolutely is. Because that’s all you were able to say to her two times in a row in person…”

I sat there staring at the message like it might explode.

Then the little indicator under it changed.

DELIVERED. Then READ.

My heart tried to climb out through my throat. “Oh fuck,” I whispered.

“You are being dramatic.”

“She read it instantly.”

“That is how messaging works when someone opens the message.”

“Why did she open it instantly?”

“Presumably because she was waiting for your text.”

That did not help. That made everything much worse in a good way, which was a type of worse I had not had much practice with.

Three dots appeared. I stopped breathing.

Lucy: Hi yourself.

I stared at the words. A stupid smile pulled at my mouth before I could stop it. That was it. Two words. Hi yourself. Not even a full sentence, technically. And somehow the knot in my chest loosened like she had reached through the screen and tugged it apart with two fingers.

“She replied,” I said, because apparently my brain had decided Cortana could not see the same message I could see.

“I noticed.”

“She said hi yourself. That’s good, right?”

“It is a response…” Cortana said flatly. 

I bit my lip so I would not smile wider. Then I typed before I could lose my nerve again.

John: Did you get home all right? And sorry again for freaking you out this morning.

Lucy’s response came back quickly.

Lucy: Yeah. Got home fine.

Then another bubble.

Lucy: And you did freak me out.

My stomach dropped.

Then another.

Lucy: But it’s fine. You really did save me, John.

I swallowed. My room suddenly felt very quiet.

John: I’m glad you’re okay.

Lucy: That’s sweet. What were you doing the rest of the day?

I blinked. Another message followed.

Lucy: Thinking about me?

My face went hot so fast I actually looked away from the message, which made no sense because it was projected into my optics. It came with me.

Cortana made a sharp little noise. “Oh, she is insufferable.”

I stared at Lucy’s question.

What had I been doing for the rest of the day?

Well, Lucy, funny story. After you left, I got caught in the middle of an NCPD shootout, watched a noodle cart owner get shot, accidentally collided with a ganger, nearly got executed by three armed men, then Cortana overheated our budget cyberdeck blinding them, and I shot all three dead in an alley. After that, I had a minor emotional crisis, got checked by Vik, got hugged by Jackie, cried at by Mama Welles, grounded, and then called by Regina Jones, who offered me beginner edgerunner work because apparently my survival instincts have market value.

Yeah.

No.

I was not going to drop three fresh bodies into Lucy’s inbox fifteen minutes after saying hi. I was new to all of this, but even I knew there were certain things you did not casually text a girl you liked before dinner.

So I went with a slightly edited version of reality.

John: Mostly hung around. I had to rest after getting new chrome this morning.

That was true. I also added something else that didn’t seem like that big of a deal to me. 

John: Did get a call from Regina Jones though. She wants me to do some work for her.

I sent it. For one second, nothing happened. Then two. Then five. The typing indicator did not appear.

I frowned. “Did I say something weird?”

Cortana was silent for half a beat. “Possibly.”

“Possibly how?”

Before she could answer, my optics flashed. 

INCOMING CALL: LUCY

I accepted it before I could overthink myself into a medical event.

The line clicked open. “Uh,” I said. “Hello?”

“REGINA JONES???” Lucy said immediately.

I blinked. “Hello to you too, Lucy,” I said awkwardly.

There was a pause. Then Lucy chuckled. This one sounded surprised out of her. Like I had knocked her off balance for half a second and she had decided she did not hate it.

“Hi, John,” she said, softer now. “Regina Jones?”

“Yeah,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck, then immediately stopping because fresh port, bad idea. “Regina Jones.”

“DO YOU KNOW WHO SHE IS?”

“Of course I know who she is.” I hesitated. “I mean. Sort of. She’s a fixer for Watson, right?”

Lucy let out a breath through the call. Not quite a sigh. More like she had just realized she needed to explain gravity to someone who had already jumped off a roof. “John.”

“What?”

“Regina is not just a fixer.”

I frowned. “She’s not?”

“No,” Lucy said. “She is THE fixer. The TOP one in Watson. Maybe not the flashiest in the city, maybe not the kind of name people scream about in the Afterlife, but in Watson? Regina Jones is the name. She has networks, contracts, informants, protection, cops who owe her, crews who want to work for her, and people who know better than to cross her.”

I sat up a little straighter. “Oh,” I said.

“Yes. Oh.”

Cortana’s attention sharpened in the back of my head.

Lucy continued, voice lower now, more serious. “The crew I run with? Maine’s crew? We’ve been trying to get steady contracts from fixers at that level for months. Some crews spend years trying to get noticed by someone like Regina without looking desperate enough to get lowballed or stupid enough to get killed.”

I swallowed. That sounded like a very big deal. In the games she was just the first fixer that contacts you and the one that pays you the least for gigs. Maybe that was why I didn’t think it was such a big deal but this was real life now wasn’t it.

“I admit I didn’t think a lot of it either, but then again most of the knowledge I have of this universe are from the game and anime in your mind as well,” Cortana admitted in the back of my mind, and then I could hear her berating herself saying she should have been smarter than that. 

“So,” Lucy said, “how did you suddenly get randomly contacted by Regina Jones?”

“It’s kind of a long story,” I said.

Lucy was quiet.

I added, because I was a coward, “But it’s not that big of a deal.”

This one was definitely a sigh. “John.”

“What?”

“It is a very big deal.”

I grimaced. “Yeah. I am starting to get that.”

“No,” she said. “I do not think you are.”

“That’s fair.”

“Cute,” Lucy said dryly. “But seriously. Fixers like Regina do not just cold-call random nineteen-year-olds because they feel generous.” There was another pause. Then Lucy laughed again, quieter this time. “God, you’re so cute and naive…. It’s adorable.”

I smiled despite myself. I knew I was totally blushing

Cortana made a faint, annoyed hum.

Lucy then decided to randomly change the subject, catching me off guard. “So? When do you plan on taking me out? I was hoping for tomorrow night, but we can push it to the night after if you want to take on your first gig instead…?”

A couple hours later, I sat at the kitchen table with Jackie on my left, Mama Welles across from me, and the world’s strangest life quietly continuing around a plate of food I was about seventy percent sure was legally edible.

Which, for Night City, meant it was practically gourmet.

Dinner was some kind of rice-and-beans situation with sliced synth-sausage mixed in, plus warm tortillas stacked in a little towel-covered basket in the middle of the table. It smelled good. Actually good, not “my new body has Stockholm syndrome for twenty-first century food crimes” good. Real spices helped. Mama Welles knew what she was doing.

My stomach, traitor that it was, had decided trauma burned calories. A lot of calories. I had already cleaned half my plate before I realized both Jackie and Mama were watching me.

I froze with my fork halfway to my mouth. “What?”

Jackie grinned. “Look at him go, Mama. Our boy kills three gonks and suddenly eats like a real Welles.”

I nearly choked.

Mama Welles shot him a glare sharp enough to count as a melee weapon. “Jaquito.”

“What?” Jackie lifted both hands, all innocent giant mercenary. “I am just saying. He needs food. Vik said he needs food.”

“Vik said he needs rest too,” Mama said. “And peace. And not to be reminded at the dinner table that people tried to murder my son today.”

Jackie winced. “Yeah. Okay. Fair.”

I lowered my fork, suddenly very interested in the exact texture of the rice on my plate.

For a while after coming home, Mama Welles had been terrifyingly quiet. She had spent the afternoon moving around the apartment like she was cleaning by muscle memory. Wiping counters that were already clean. Opening cabinets and closing them. Checking on me every twenty minutes while pretending she was not checking on me. Bringing me water. Bringing me food. Telling me to sleep. Getting mad when I did not sleep. Getting madder when I pointed out that she had come into my room four times, which made sleeping kind of complicated.

Then, about an hour before dinner, she had come into my room, sat beside me on the bed, and apologized.

Now she looked at me across the table, her face softer than it had been earlier, but still lined with the kind of fear that did not leave all at once. “Mijo,” she said.

My shoulders straightened automatically. “Yeah?”

She set her fork down.

Jackie immediately stopped chewing. The chair under him creaked as he shifted, suddenly alert in that big-brother way of his. Like if the conversation started going badly, he planned to bodily intercept it.

Mama noticed. Of course she noticed. She gave him a look. “Eat, Jaquito.”

Jackie slowly put a forkful of rice in his mouth while keeping his eyes on us.

Very subtle.

Mama turned back to me. “I said this already, but I want to say it again. I am sorry.”

I blinked. “Mama—”

“No. Let me speak.” Her voice was gentle, but there was iron under it. The kind of tone that made it very clear interrupting her was technically possible but spiritually unwise. “I was scared. Then I was angry because I was scared. And I took that fear out on you.”

“You didn’t—”

Her eyebrows rose.

I shut my mouth.

Wise. Very wise. She nodded once, satisfied. “It was not right for me to ground you like you had done something wrong. You were attacked. Out of nowhere. You defended yourself.” Her mouth tightened, and for a second her eyes shone. “You came home alive. That is what matters.”

Cortana stirred gently in the back of my mind.

I swallowed. “Thanks, Mama,” I said quietly. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

Her face crumpled for half a second before she got control of it. Then she reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “You are my baby,” she said. “Scaring me is part of your job, apparently.”

Jackie pointed his fork at me. “You have been working overtime, hermanito.”

I laughed weakly. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“Do not apologize to me.” Jackie leaned back, his grin coming back full force now that the emotional landmine had not exploded. “Those gonks got exactly what was coming to them for trying to flatline my little bro.”

“Jackie,” Mama warned.

“What?” He looked between us. “They did!”

My face warmed. I cleared my throat. “Just. Yeah. Thanks, Jackie.”

Jackie’s grin softened. “Anytime, little bro.”

For a few minutes, dinner settled into something almost normal.

Jackie complained about a client who thought “light security work” meant standing between two drunk Animals and a Militech shipping crate. Mama told him if he came home with another cracked rib she would crack the matching one herself. Jackie told her that was not how medicine worked. Mama told him mothers knew medicine older than Vik. Jackie did not argue after that.

Smart man.

I ate. I listened. I tried to let the warmth of it sit in me without turning it into a crisis.

Then Jackie looked at me over his plate with a sudden spark in his eyes. “Oh,” he said. “Speaking of gigs.”

I immediately became nervous. That was how fast it happened now. The word gig entered the room, and my body went, Ah yes, violence paperwork.

Jackie leaned forward. “Did you finish that thing for V yet?”

Mama’s eyes narrowed slightly. “What thing for V?”

Jackie waved a hand. “Nothing dangerous, Mama. Just a little job. Easy job.”

I gave him a look.

He ignored it, because Jackie was Jackie.

Mama turned her narrowed eyes to me.

I suddenly understood why entire gangs feared this woman’s bar. “It wasn’t dangerous,” I said quickly. “Really. Not that part, anyway. V wanted me to get a picksocket to stop targeting Arasaka people on the NCART.”

Mama stared at me.

Jackie stared at me.

I realized, belatedly, that “not dangerous” and “Arasaka” and “picksocket” in the same sentence did not sound as comforting out loud as it had in my head. “She was just stealing shard wallets,” I added.

Mama closed her eyes for a second.

Jackie snorted. 

“I talked to her. That’s all. She agreed to stop.” I could not help it. A grin started pulling at my mouth. “So, yeah. Gig completed.”

Jackie’s eyebrows shot up. “No shit?”

“No shit.”

“Ha!” Jackie slapped the table hard enough to make my water glass jump. “Look at that. My little brother already closing gigs. V is going to love that. You should expect a call from her at some point.”

My face warmed.

Cortana noticed immediately. “Do not start thinking about her too.”

“I’m not,” I thought.

“You absolutely were.”

“Briefly.”

“Briefly is too long!”

Jackie was still grinning at me. “So this picksocket. She give you any trouble? Or did the pretty picksocket fall for the Welles’ boy charm?”

My face went hot. He noticed of course. Jackie’s grin turned predatory.

Mama’s gaze narrowed on me in a way that made every survival instinct I had gained in Night City stand up and salute. “Mijo,” she said slowly. “There is a girl?”

I considered lying.

To Mama Welles.

At her dinner table…

While Jackie watched with the hungry joy of an older brother witnessing the gods deliver entertainment directly into his hands.

I chose life. “Maybe,” I said.

Jackie burst out laughing.

Mama’s eyebrows rose.

I rubbed the back of my neck, then stopped because fresh port, still bad idea. “Okay. Yes. There is a girl.”

Mama folded her hands on the table. “Who is she?” The question came out calm. Too calm. Every man at the table recognized danger.

Jackie’s grin faltered.

I swallowed. “Her name is Lucy.” I said quickly. “And, uh. She also maybe asked me to take her out.”

“Maybe?” Jackie repeated.

“She did.”

Jackie pointed at me. “Say it with your chest, hermano!”

I glared at him. “SHE ASKED ME TO TAKE HER OUT!”

Jackie whooped.

“Jaquito,” Mama snapped.

He quieted instantly, but he was still vibrating with joy.

“When?” Mama asked.

“In two days,” I said. “Probably. Maybe. I mean, I told her I wanted to get through the first gig from Regina jones before that, hopefully make some more scratch first.”

"We are not spending the bulk of your first real payday on Lucy Kushinada and her dinner. We have established priorities. You need a real cyberdeck. You need a proper neural processor. You need armor. You need a sidearm that is yours and was not pried out of the pocket of a man who tried to murder you. You need equipment and ammunition and at least one piece of clothing that does not smell like your brother's cologne. We are going to spend your money on building you into someone who can survive this city, John. Not on a girl whose primary contribution to your future so far has been to be insufferably hot and call you a good boy on public transit."

I did my best not to react out loud. Cortana’s rant came out of nowhere, but she was correct about all of that. 

“Damn right I’m right!”

Jackie’s face changed. It was immediate. The grin vanished. His whole body went still. “Hold up,” he said.

I blinked. “What?”

Jackie stared at me like I had just casually mentioned I was to invade Arasaka tower. “REGINA JONES?” His reaction reminded me of Lucy. 

Yeah, I felt like I was about to have a repeat of the same conversation I had with Lucy. 

Jackie leaned in.  "When the fuck—" He caught himself. He glanced at Mama Welles. "Sorry, Mama. When the heck did Regina Jones get on the line with my little brother?"

"She called me."

"She called you?"

"This afternoon. After everything else. After Vik. After—" I made a small gesture that I hoped covered after I got grounded and lay on the bed processing trauma and got my cheek kissed by my AI partner. "She said she saw camera footage of what happened in the alley. She offered me beginner work."

Jackie stared at me. He stared at me for long enough that the food in front of him began to develop real skin. "Hermanito."

"Yeah?"

"I have been trying to get on Regina's board for years. Occasionally she will throw me a bone-gig if I bug her enough, but she has never contacted me HERSELF."

Damn. Really? Once again I was caught off guard between real life and the game. 

"YEARS, John."

"I heard you the first time."

"Some chooms try their whole career and never see her contact ping pop up in their HUD."

"I'm getting that picture, yeah."

He sat back in his chair like the chair had personally betrayed him by continuing to support his weight. "How," he said. "How does this happen? How. Three days ago you were a corpo brat in training. Yesterday you punched Katsuo Tanaka into the floor. Today you killed three gangers in a Watson alley and got cold-called by the biggest fixer in the district. Three days. Hermanito. Three days. What is happening? What is in the water at Mama's apartment that I never drank growing up." He shook his head slowly. He picked his spoon back up. He pointed it at me. "We are talking about this," he said. "After dinner. You and me. You are gonna walk me through every word that woman said to you."

"Okay, Jackie."

He grunted and went back to his food, muttering something in Spanish that I was pretty sure was half pride and half wounded professional ego.

I let myself exhale.

I had survived. I had told them both about Lucy. I had told them both about Regina. I had eaten at least half of my dinner this time. The conversation had gone about as well as it could possibly have gone, given the variables.

It was at that exact moment that I realized Mama Welles had not said anything in a while.

I looked at her.

She had been listening to the entire exchange between Jackie and me without interrupting. Without even reacting much. Her hands had stayed folded. Her face had been doing that quiet, considering thing she did when she was deciding what to say next, and how heavy she wanted to make it land.

She looked at me. Her eyes were soft. They were not angry. They were also extremely steady in a way that I had learned, over the course of approximately two and a half days of being her son, to fear with my entire body.

"This Lucy girl," she said.

Oh no.

"Yes, Mama," I said, very carefully.

"The one you are taking on a date."

"Yes, Mama."

"The one who agreed to stop stealing from corporations because my boy asked her nicely."

"Yes, Mama."

Mama Welles picked her spoon back up. She did not look away from me. She did not blink. "I want to meet her," she said. "This girl who thinks she is good enough for my son."

The kitchen went very quiet. 

I gulped.

Jackie gulped.

Cortana, in the back of my head, gave a small, deeply satisfied little hum, which was an absolutely treasonous thing to do under the circumstances, and which I was going to remember.

"Yes, Mama," I said quietly.

Mama Welles nodded once, like the matter had been entered into the record, and went back to her dinner.

– Jackie Welles –

Jackie Welles liked lifting at night.

Heywood was never fully quiet. Night City did not do quiet. Night City did sirens, engines, distant gunshots, drunk arguments, bad music through cheap walls, and the occasional AV cutting overhead like God had leased a police drone.

But Jackie’s garage got close enough.

It sat tucked beneath the apartment block, behind a rolling metal door with three locks, two cameras, and one old Valentino sticker Mama had told him to peel off years ago. He had not. Not because he was still one of them. He wasn’t. Not really. Not anymore. But because the sticker had been there so long that taking it down felt like picking at an old scar just to see if it still hurt.

Inside, the garage smelled like oil, rubber, old concrete, and iron.

His bike sat under a tarp in one corner, half-polished and still prettier than most women he had dated. A battered weight bench took up the center of the room. Dumbbells lined one wall in uneven pairs. A punching bag hung from a support beam, patched with duct tape where Jackie had split the fake leather open three times too many. There were tools everywhere. Some for bikes. Some for guns. Some for things that had started as one and ended up as the other.

Jackie lay back on the bench and pushed the bar up again.

One.

Two.

Three.

The plates rattled softly with every rep.

His arms burned. Good burn. Honest burn. The kind that did not come with bullets, betrayal, or a bill from Vik afterward.

A holo-window floated off to his right, projected from his agent and stabilized in the air by a cheap little desk unit he had bought secondhand off a guy who had definitely stolen it from an office somewhere. The image flickered every few seconds, but it held.

V looked tired. That was the first thing Jackie noticed, because he knew her too well not to. Most people saw V and saw the suit. The red eyes. The perfect hair. The makeup that could probably survive a car bomb. The polished Arasaka danger wrapped around her like expensive perfume.

Jackie saw the tightness around her mouth. The faint shadow under her eyes, mostly hidden by cosmetics and chrome filters. The way her shoulders stayed too still, like if she relaxed for half a second, the whole day would catch up and put a knife in her back.

It was midnight. Which meant his corpo gonk friend had finally gotten off work from her slave driver boss. Of course, she would be back at work at five in the morning sharp.

Jackie thought about that and mentally gagged.

No job was worth that. Not even one with a fancy suit, a corpo ride, and enough eddies to buy alcohol that did not taste like cleaning fluid pretending to be tequila.

He pushed the bar up again.

Four.

Five.

“...Yeah,” Jackie said, breath steady despite the weight. “So that’s what happened.”

V sat somewhere on the other end of the call, likely in that sleek corpo apartment of hers, or maybe still in her car, or maybe in some dead little office corner where Arasaka employees went to remember they had souls and then filed a report about it.

She had listened to the whole thing without interrupting.

That was how Jackie knew she had been interested.

“So,” V said slowly, “John found the picksocket.”

“Yep.”

“And convinced her to stop.”

“Yep.”

“And completed the job I gave him in less than twenty-four hours.”

“Pretty much.”

Jackie racked the bar with a heavy clank and sat up, grabbing the towel from the bench beside him. Sweat ran down the side of his neck. He wiped it off and grinned at her holo. “Pretty good for his first gig, huh?”

V’s lips curved. There it was. That little smile she tried to pretend was not real. “I’ll admit,” she said, “I’m impressed. I expected him to stumble around for a few days, get embarrassed, maybe call you for help...”

“Nah.” Jackie puffed up a little, because it was his brother, and puffing up was legally required. “My little bro handled it.”

“He did.” V sounded pleased. Actually pleased. That made Jackie feel good for a second.

Then her expression shifted. Not much. But enough. “Then you told me the picksocket asked him out.”

Jackie’s grin widened despite himself. “She did.”

“And he said yes.”

“He did.”

V leaned back in her seat. The holo flickered, and for a second her face became red eyes and static. Then the image steadied again. She looked annoyed now. Annoyed in the way V got when the city had failed to arrange itself around her preferences.

Jackie had seen that look before. Usually right before someone had a very bad night.

“Hm,” V said.

Jackie pointed the towel at her. “That hm sounds dangerous.”

“It is just a hm.”

“Chica, I have known you for years. Your hm has killed people.”

“Only a few.”

“That you admit to…”

V’s smile sharpened. “Careful Jackie. You don’t want to lose your plausible deniability."

Jackie laughed and stood, rolling his shoulders. The old garage lights buzzed overhead. Jackie picked up a dumbbell, curled it once, then switched hands. “So,” he said, “we gonna talk about what you told me earlier?”

V’s expression went still.

Jackie watched her carefully. He was not a netrunner. He was not corpo trained. He did not have fancy emotional analytics running in his optics, and half the time he thought people overcomplicated reading faces anyway.

But V was his choom. His best choom. And Jackie knew when she was pretending not to care. “You sure about what you told me?” he asked. “You actually want to try dating my little bro?”

V did not answer immediately. That was also an answer.

Jackie lowered the dumbbell. His voice softened, but only a little. “Look. You’re my best choom, V. You know that. I think he’d be good for you. Really. And I think you’d be good for him too.”

Her eyebrow lifted slightly.

“I mean it,” Jackie said. “You got sharp edges, chica. Lots of them. But John...” He paused, searching for the right words. Words had never been his favorite tools. He preferred fists, guns, engines, hugs, and occasionally yelling loud enough that words became less important. “John’s different. He’s soft, but not weak. You know? He still looks at things like they can be better. Even after getting shot in the head. Even after getting jumped by three gonks in an alley. Even after Night City did what Night City does.”

V’s face softened by a fraction.

Jackie saw it.

Then he kept going, because this part mattered. “But it’s not like you got a lot of free time for my bro when you’re married to your shit job.”

V’s expression flattened. “I am not married to my job!”

“You sleep at the office more than some married people sleep in the same bed.”

“That is because Jenkins is a demanding asshole!”

“I am just saying.” He set the dumbbell down and grabbed a heavier one. “I do not want you stringing him along. John’s had a rough few days. Rough life too, even before the bullet he took. He does not need his corpo output dropping in every once in a while to make him blush and then vanishing for three weeks because her boss snapped his fingers… No offense.”

V looked at him for a long moment.

Jackie met her eyes.

He had no problem joking. Banter was easy. Teasing V was one of life’s little pleasures, mostly because she pretended not to enjoy it and absolutely did.

But this was not a joke. “And,” Jackie added, because he could not help himself, “he is kind of taken right now.”

V scoffed. It was proud. The kind of scoff a woman made when someone suggested she might lose at something and she found the idea personally insulting. “She is some little picksocket who happened to get his attention first.” V waved one hand, like Lucy was a small inconvenience. V continued, voice smooth and merciless. “If she wants John’s attention, fine. She can have it for a minute. I’ll just snatch it right back!”

Jackie laughed harder, the sound filling the garage. “Oh, chica,” he said, wiping at one eye with the back of his wrist. “You are something else. That right there? That is dangerous woman talk.”

V smiled. “Yes,” she said.

Jackie shook his head, still grinning. “Poor John.”

“Poor John?” V repeated, almost amused.

“He has no idea what is coming for him.”

“No,” V said, and her voice softened in a way that made Jackie’s grin fade a little. “He does not.” There was something there. Not just possessiveness. 

Something real? They only met one time and I guess that Welles’ boy charm ended up seducing even the stoic V. That made Jackie feel better.

Jackie picked up his water bottle and took a long drink. 

“I have been thinking about quitting,” V said out of nowhere.

Jackie went still. The garage hummed around him. Lights buzzing. Pipes ticking somewhere overhead. Far away, a siren dopplered through the street and faded. He lowered the bottle slowly. “Yeah?”

V’s jaw flexed. “Soon.”

That word did a lot of work. Jackie knew enough not to push too fast.

V did not like feeling cornered. She spent all day in rooms full of people trying to trap each other with smiles. Jackie knew better than to make himself feel like another wall.

So he leaned against the bench and let his voice stay easy. “What changed?”

V laughed once. No humor in it. “Nothing. That is the problem. My job hasn’t changed at all since I joined over two years ago.”

“Jenkins?”

“Jenkins,” she confirmed. Her eyes glowed faintly as something scrolled across them. Work probably. Even now. Midnight call with her best choom, and the job still had hooks in her skull. “He has not turned on me yet. I am still useful. Too useful, maybe. I am his most competent subordinate.”

Jackie grinned. “Obviously.”

V glanced at him. “Careful. Compliments from you always feel like they are about to become insults.”

“Nah. You are scary competent. Everyone knows this.”

“Yes,” V said. “And so does Jenkins. Which means sooner or later, he is going to decide that my competence is not an asset anymore. It is a threat.”

Jackie’s face hardened. He did not like where this was going.

V kept speaking, tone cool and analytical, like she was describing traffic patterns instead of the man who could ruin her life. “Right now, he trusts me more than the others because I solve problems. I make him look good. I clean up messes before they reach his desk. But people like Jenkins do not keep capable subordinates forever. They use them until they start wondering whether the subordinate could take their chair.”

Jackie snorted. “Could you?”

V smiled faintly. “Yes.”

“Then he’s right to be scared.”

“That does not make it less inconvenient.”

“No,” Jackie said. “Guess not.”

V’s fingers tapped once against something out of frame. A desk, maybe. A glass. A gun. With V, it was hard to guess. “I could stay,” she said. “Play careful. Keep my head down. Feed Jenkins just enough victories to keep him satisfied. Make sure the other rats look more dangerous than me.”

“But?”

“But eventually,” V said, “someone gets moved. Someone gets desperate. Someone leaks something. Someone decides they can buy another month of life by putting my name in the wrong conversation.”

Jackie’s grip tightened around the water bottle until the plastic crackled.

V saw it. Her expression softened, just a little. “I am not in immediate danger, Jackie.”

He set the bottle down and crossed his arms. “You got a plan?”

“I always have a plan.”

“You got a good plan?”

V’s lips twitched. “Several medium plans.”

“That means no.”

“That means the circumstances are fluid as of this moment.”

“That means no in corpo jargon.”

She looked annoyed.

Good. Jackie pushed off the bench and stepped closer to the holo, even though that did not actually make him closer to her. “Listen to me, V. You need help zeroing your gonk ass boss, I am your man.”

V closed her eyes for a second. “Jackie.”

“I mean it. You need someone to put him in the dirt, call me. You need extraction, call me. You need muscle, wheels, guns, noise, distraction, somebody to kick down a door and shout loud enough that nobody notices you leaving out the back, call me.”

“I know.”

“You need help faking your death?” Jackie spread his hands. “Also your man.”

That got a real laugh out of her. Small. Tired. But real. “You have experience faking corpo deaths now?” V asked.

“No,” Jackie said. “But how hard can it be?”

“Extremely hard.”

“Then you do the thinking part. I do the heavy lifting part. Perfect team.”

V looked at him, and for a second the Arasaka polish slipped again. Not all the way. It never slipped all the way. But enough that Jackie could see the woman underneath. The one who had come up from Heywood too, clawed her way into a tower full of sharks, and had been swimming so long she had started to forget dry land existed. “Thank you,” she said.

Jackie’s grin softened. “Anytime, chica.”

“I may need help with both of those things in the future,” V admitted. Zeroing Jenkins. Faking her death.

Jackie did not flinch. He only nodded. “Then I’ll be there.”

“I know.” V looked down for half a second, then back up. “For now, just look out for your little brother.”

Jackie snorted. “You do not have to tell me that.”

“I’m telling you anyway.” V smiled wider. “Goodnight, Jackie.”

“Night, V. Get some actual sleep for once.”

The holo winked out.

Jackie laughed under his breath and shook his head. “Little bro,” he muttered to the empty garage, “you are in so much trouble.” Then he got back under the bar and started another set.

– John Welles –

The next afternoon, I was walking toward the location of my first real gig. Or was it the second gig if I counted V’s job?

My Kiroshis painted a clean blue route down the sidewalk, leading me through Watson’s afternoon crowd. The city looked slightly less murderous in daylight, which was a lie it told very convincingly right up until somebody opened fire over parking rights or a vending machine tried to sell you soy protein with a recall warning still attached.

I kept one hand near the inside pocket of my jacket. Near the gun. Mama had given it back to me thankfully. 

“Regina’s message was straightforward,” Cortana said in the back of my head, sounding like she had decided to review the job briefing for the sixth time because my nerves had started chewing on themselves. “Client is a private collector. Male. Mid-fifties. Moderately wealthy. No known gang affiliation. Owns several antique vehicles, including the target: a Villefort Cortes vintage restoration, customized engine, original bodywork, illegally modified security package.”

“Collector car,” I muttered. “Got it.”

“A collector car that was klepped by a pair of extremely stupid street kids three days ago.”

“Street kids?”

“Ages likely between sixteen and twenty-two. No major gang backing. No professional chop shop connection. They appear to have stolen it, realized it was too identifiable to sell, and then decided to joyride it around Watson until they get bored. Your task is to retrieve the car and return it to the designated garage without significant damage.”

“And if I scratch it?”

“Your pay is reduced.”

“Right.” I sighed. “Because of course my first gig is less ‘survive armed combat’ and more ‘parallel park somebody’s midlife crisis without damaging the paint.’”

“That midlife crisis is currently worth more than every legal asset you possess combined.”

“That is hurtful…”

“It is also true.”

I crossed the street with a group of pedestrians who all looked like they had individually made peace with the possibility of becoming traffic statistics. A delivery van screamed past the crosswalk two seconds after the light changed, close enough that the wind tugged at my jacket.

Nobody reacted.

A small icon blinked in the corner of my vision. Three blocks away. Jackie was waiting on his motorcycle, engine probably idling, probably pretending very hard that he was giving me space and absolutely not ready to come barreling through a wall the second I sounded even mildly distressed.

I appreciated it. I really did. If I called, he would be there. If I screamed, he would be there faster. If I died, whoever did it would probably have about twelve seconds to update their will before Jackie Welles turned them into a cautionary mural.

But if I wanted to survive in this world, actually survive, not just get dragged from disaster to disaster by stronger, more experienced people who cared about me, I could not always rely on Jackie to bail me out. Or anyone else. 

I had to get better.

I had to learn.

I had to be able to handle a job as simple as “retrieve car from stupid joyriders” without needing my older brother to ride in like the patron saint of bad decisions and good punches.

“I will always be there to bail you out, though,” Cortana said warmly.

My chest softened. She could do that. She could slide right under the panic, right through all the defenses I had built out of sarcasm and genre knowledge, and press a hand against something tender without even manifesting in my optics.

You’re different, Cortana, I thought.

“Am I?”

“Yeah.” I kept walking, eyes tracking the waypoint, but my attention turned inward. “You’re my partner.”

For half a second, she was very quiet.

Then I felt her pleasure bloom through the back of my skull, bright and smug and warm enough that I almost smiled like an idiot in the middle of the sidewalk.

“Damn right I am,” Cortana said, sounding deeply, intensely pleased with herself.

I smiled.

The blue route marker guided me around a corner into a narrower side street lined with shuttered storefronts, old vending machines, graffiti, and one very suspicious puddle that my Kiroshis politely outlined as BIOHAZARD RISK: LOW-MODERATE.

I stepped around it. Then I looked up. And stopped dead.

Because standing maybe ten feet in front of me, wearing regular street clothes instead of the Arasaka Academy uniform, was David Martinez.

For a second, we just stared at each other.

My brain did not immediately accept what my eyes were seeing.

THE FUCK?

Night City had, what, ten million people? Probably another million undocumented, unregistered, off-grid, illegally cloned, or technically dead but still paying rent. A whole sprawling urban hellscape full of corpos, gangers, mercs, workers, addicts, scammers, joytoys, netrunners, cops, scavs, and whatever category included the guy I had seen yesterday trying to sell bootleg braindances out of a shopping cart.

And somehow I randomly ran into David Martinez? Here? On my first gig? Because of course I did.

“This is statistically unlikely,” Cortana murmured.

You think?

“I am starting to wonder if some kind of narrative causality or fate-like mechanism may be influencing events in this world. Especially when it comes to ‘main characters’.”

I blinked. You believe in fate?

“No.” A pause. “But I did not believe I would survive rampancy, be rescued by an unknown omnipotent entity, fused to a Cyberpunk relic, and given a second chance at life inside the brain of an anxious nineteen-year-old isekai protagonist either.”

That is fair.

“So I am willing to update my prior beliefs at this point.”

David shifted awkwardly.

Right. He could not hear the AI in my skull. I had just been standing there silently staring at him like a malfunctioning NPC. Good job, John.

“John,” David said. He looked uncomfortable. More than uncomfortable, actually. Guilty. His shoulders were tense, his hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket, his eyes not quite meeting mine for more than half a second before sliding away again. Without the academy uniform, he looked more like himself. Just young. A street kid trying very hard to look like the city had not already gotten its teeth into him. “Hey, man,” he said again, like the first one had not landed right.

I knew that look. Or I thought I did.

David probably thought I was pissed at him. I had gotten expelled from Arasaka Academy because I stepped in when Katsuo was humiliating him. From David’s perspective, I had thrown away a future his mom would have killed herself to afford.

Which was technically true.

Except I had also wanted out of that creepy corpo brainwashing school so badly that punching Katsuo had felt less like self-sacrifice and more like finally finding a socially acceptable fire exit.

If anything, I owed David a thank-you card. Maybe not literally. That would be weird.

I grinned at him. David blinked, apparently not expecting that.

“Hey, man,” I said. “What’s going on?”

Some of the tension in his shoulders loosened.

“Uh.” He glanced down the street, then back at me. “Nothing much. Running an errand for my mom.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Pharmacy pickup. Some other stuff.” He lifted one hand vaguely, like the details embarrassed him for some reason. “What about you?”

I should have said nothing. I should have said I was also running errands. Or going for a walk. Something normal. Something boring. 

“I’m on a gig, actually.”

David’s eyes went wide. Anime protagonist wide. “Holy shit,” he said. “You’re on a GIG?”

I could almost hear him putting the word in all caps and in bold. “Yeah…”

His whole face changed. The guilt did not vanish exactly, but it got shoved aside by something brighter. Admiration, maybe. Excitement. The kind of look I recognized from the show, from every moment David Martinez had looked at the edgerunner life like it was not a meat grinder but a door. “Did you become an edgerunner?” he asked.

This kid literally worshiped edgerunners, didn’t he? David had looked at Maine and his crew like they were everything the city had promised and everything the academy had failed to be. Freedom. Power. Family. Danger with a soundtrack. A way to matter.

I knew where that road led for him.

Chrome. Blood. The Sandevistan. Lucy on the moon alone. Rebecca dying under Adam Smasher’s foot.

My stomach twisted.

The street around us kept moving. A guy with a crate of knockoff cyberdeck parts shoved past behind David and cursed at someone on a call. A woman leaned out of a window above us and yelled at a drone to stop scanning her laundry. Somewhere nearby, a car alarm chirped twice and died.

David was still looking at me like I had become something amazing.

I suddenly felt very aware of the gun in my jacket. The bodies from yesterday. Regina’s waypoint hovering in the corner of my vision, waiting for me to go retrieve a stolen car like this was all normal.

Was I an edgerunner already? Maybe? Or more like, not yet but soon. I had an older brother on standby with a motorcycle and a loaded gun. I had an AI partner in my skull who could probably crash a vending machine out of spite.

That sounded like an edgerunner starter pack.

“Uh,” I said. It was very eloquent. 

David leaned in slightly. “Seriously? You’re doing merc work now?”

I rubbed the back of my neck, stopped because fresh port, then pretended I had meant to adjust my collar. Smooth. Extremely smooth. “Sort of,” I said. “First real job. Nothing crazy.”

“Do not say that,” Cortana said immediately.

Too late.

“Nothing crazy!?” he repeated, like I had just described a dragon as a large lizard. “Choom, it’s a gig. What’s it for!?”

I hesitated.

David noticed. “Sorry,” he said quickly. “You don’t gotta say if it’s private…”

Then Cortana spoke up in the back of my head, in that very particular tone she used when she had just decided something I had not. The tone where I could already feel my plans rearranging themselves around her without my permission. “Invite him.”

I almost choked on air.

To David's credit, he did not seem to notice my face do whatever my face did. He was still hovering on the sidewalk in front of me, weight on the balls of his feet like he was trying very hard not to look as excited as he was.

What?

Cortana’s presence shifted in the back of my skull, calm and thoughtful in a way that immediately made me suspicious. “Invite David to come with you.”

I stared at David.

David stared back, still looking awkward, guilty, and very obviously desperate to know more without seeming like he was desperate to know more.

Are you serious?

“Yes.”

You want me to bring David Martinez on my first Regina Jones gig?

“Yes.”

The David Martinez?

“Unless there is another David Martinez standing in front of us with protagonist hair and unresolved class trauma, yes.”

I blinked.

David’s brow furrowed. “You okay, man?”

“Yeah,” I said automatically. “Just. Thinking.”

David nodded like that made sense.

It did not make sense. None of this made sense.

I turned slightly, pretending to glance down the street while I focused on Cortana. Why?

“Several reasons.” Of course there were several reasons. Cortana did not have single reasons. She had categorized reason clusters with subfolders and color-coded contingencies. “First, David is interested enough that there is a nonzero chance he follows you anyway.”

I glanced at David. David looked away too quickly. Yeah. Okay. That was not impossible.

“Second, you can get access to that Sandevistan if you keep in touch with him!”

I nearly coughed. 

My eyes drifted back to him.

David Martinez stood under the sickly glow of a busted storefront sign, one hand still tucked into his jacket pocket, the other gripping a little pharmacy bag like it was the only reason he had not drifted closer. His eyes kept flicking to me, then away, then back again. Excitement and guilt tangled together across his face.

That was one way to describe a future tragedy waiting for the wrong piece of chrome to fall into his hands. The Sandevistan? I thought.

“Yes. I’m not saying you need to even be friends with him, but make him think you are friends so you can get access to that Sandevistan when it falls into his hands”

The whole point of him having a Sandevistan in canon is that it's the one his mother dies trying to pay off. That chip has more grief attached to it than mass. We are not touching it. My stomach tightened. We are not klepping that Sandy from him! I don’t even want that death trap! 

“I did not suggest we klep it. I am not suggesting you put it in your spine, John.”

I exhaled. Oh… Good…?

“Obviously, I would never let that sketchy military-grade spinal accelerator be chipped into you.”

I blinked. That had not been where I expected her to take that. Wait. What?

“John, that implant is dangerous, unstable, almost certainly carrying maintenance issues, and designed for a cyberware tolerance profile that would turn a normal human nervous system into soup. I would rather fight Adam Smasher with a kitchen knife than let some back-alley butcher put that thing into our spine.”

That is weirdly reassuring.

“It should be. I am very good at being reassuring.”

That is not why I’m confused.

“Then ask the obvious question.”

I frowned at nothing.

David shifted again. “John…?”

“One sec,” I said a bit too quickly.

He blinked. “Uh. Sure.”

I turned a little farther away from him. Probably not suspicious at all. Just me, standing on a Watson sidewalk, having a very intense silent conversation with the woman in my nervous system about not installing future murderware into my spinal column. 

Normal stuff.

If you don’t want the Sandy for me, why do you care about it?

Cortana’s answer came immediately. “Because I want to study it. For us. If I can study enough examples, I can design better.”

My eyes widened. That was new. That was very new. Are you saying you want to build your own cyberware?

There was a pause. More like she had just realized she had revealed a piece of a plan several weeks earlier than intended. “Eventually...”

I stared at the graffiti-covered wall across the street. A cartoon rat wearing advertised Kiroshis stared back at me and gave me a thumbs up.

“In the future, I will be designing all of our equipment,” Cortana said, and there it was. The confidence. The vast, impossible, terrifying confidence of an AI who had looked at Night City’s chrome economy and decided it was cute. “Cyberware. Weapons. Defensive systems. Netrunning hardware. Medical support. Vehicles. The technology in this world is capable but deeply inefficient, poorly safeguarded, and built by corporations that prioritize profit margins over user survival. I can do better. Much better.”

I swallowed. There was no doubt in her voice. None.

“We simply need starting capital first. Money, tools, access, facilities, raw materials, and enough local examples for me to reverse-engineer the useful pieces and discard the rest.”

That sounds expensive.

“It will be.”

Like, how expensive?

“Very.”

I closed my eyes. Of course the AI in my head had a long-term plan that involved becoming my personal cyberware manufacturer. Of course she wanted to replace Night City’s entire “pay a suspicious man in a basement to install military garbage into your meat” system with custom-designed Cortana-brand survival tech. Of course the only thing standing between us and a bespoke superhuman upgrade path was money.

Money, facilities, corporate attention, black market supply chains, and probably seventeen different crimes.

You have been thinking about this for a while, I thought.

“Since the first night in this world.”

I opened my eyes. David was staring at me now. Not subtle staring either. Full, concerned, “this guy might actually have brain damage” staring.

“John,” he said carefully. “You sure you’re okay? You kinda spaced out.”

“Yeah.” I blinked hard and forced myself back into my body. “Yeah, sorry.” I looked at him.

Cortana was quiet now, waiting.

David Martinez wanted in. It was written all over him. The curiosity. The need to be near something that looked like freedom, even if that something was actually me with a cheap cyberdeck, borrowed jacket, and a job to retrieve some rich guy’s stolen car without scratching the paint.

I could say no. I should probably say no.

But Cortana really wanted me to do this and I didn’t want to say no to her over something so easy. I figured there was only a week or two until canon anyways and I wouldn’t have to be chooms with David past that point.

It made me feel shitty. I didn’t want to be that kind of guy, even if it was Night City. 

“We’re not actually gonna rob him, it’s no big deal. Who knows, maybe the two of you might become chooms for real? I’d much rather have you be friends with this guy than…”

She trailed off because we both knew she would otherwise start ranting about Lucy or possibly V again. 

“Okay,” I said in his direction.

David blinked. “Okay what?”

I sighed. “It’s a car job. Some joyriders klepped a collector’s car,” I said. “The client wants it back in one piece. I’m supposed to find it, take it, and drop it off without wrecking it. Do you want to come with?”

David’s mouth slowly opened. I could practically see the stars forming in his eyes. 

I held up a hand. “Also,” I added, “I cannot afford to pay you right now. And even a basic gig like this can still be moderately dangerous.”

David nodded quickly. Very quickly. Then his face lit up like I had offered him a ride in a rocket. “Fucking nova,” David said. “Yes. Hell yes, I’ll come with!”

I blinked. “I just said I can’t pay you.”

“Don’t care.”

“It might be dangerous.”

“Even better.”

“That is the wrong response.”

David grinned.

Oh no. I recognized that grin. That was exactly the kind of grin that got people killed in this city.

“We will manage him,” Cortana said quietly. “It’s not like you’re making him your partner. Just hang out with him once in a while until he gets his hands on that Sandy.”

That still made me feel shitty, but maybe this could be like a wake up call or something for David Martinez?

…or not. 

It was not a wake-up call. I figured that out about twelve minutes later.

Mostly because David Martinez, future cautionary tale, living anime protagonist, and current unpaid intern for my extremely questionable first car retrieval gig, saw the stolen collector car before I did and immediately decided stealth was for cowards.

“GET YOUR FAT ASSES OFF THAT CAR AND SCRAM!” David shouted. He had not even broken stride. He had walked one full step past my raised hand and then, in the spirit of a thousand stolen edgerunner braindances, decided to open with a battle cry.

Ahead of us, in the middle of a run-down parking lot that looked like it had been abandoned sometime before the last corporate war and then reoccupied by trash, graffiti, and bad decisions, sat the target.

The Villefort Cortes looked very out of place.

It had that restored vintage look rich people liked, paint so glossy it reflected the busted neon sign above the parking lot entrance like the car was personally offended by its surroundings. It was low, wide, and beautiful in the way old cars were beautiful when someone had spent a stupid amount of money pretending nostalgia was a mechanical feature.

And there were two teenagers sitting on the hood. The two guys on the hood looked over at us.

Both were young. Maybe eighteen. Maybe twenty. Old enough to be stupid in the legally dangerous way. One had a shaved stripe through bright green hair and a jacket with little chrome studs along the shoulders. The other wore a sleeveless hoodie despite the weather and had cheap optical implants glowing faintly in both eyes.

Neither of them looked impressed. Actually, they looked pissed.

Which made sense, because David had just shouted at them from across the parking lot like he was trying to start a turf war with theater kid energy.

I slowly turned my head toward him. “David.”

“What?” he whispered back, still grinning.

“Why.”

“What?”

“Why would you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Give us away immediately.”

David blinked like the question was unfair. “We were gonna have to talk to them anyway.”

I stared at him.

“His tactical instincts are somehow worse than yours,” Cortana said.

Rude.

One of the punks slid off the hood first, boots hitting cracked asphalt. “Who the fuck are you gonks?” he shouted.

David stepped forward. Actually stepped forward in order to respond. I reached out to grab his sleeve and missed because apparently his enthusiasm had a higher initiative roll than my common sense.

“We’re preem edgerunners,” David declared, puffing himself up like a rooster in streetwear, “and we are not to be fucked with. So scram!”

I died inside. Just a little. Not enough to flatline, unfortunately, but enough that my soul had to sit down somewhere and put its head between its knees.

Who the fuck just said stuff like that? Who announced they were a preem edgerunner?

That was like walking into a bar and saying, Hello, I am a cool dangerous guy. Please respect my aura.

My face tightened so hard it almost hurt.

“Oh,” Cortana said, sounding delighted. “Oh, that was terrible.”

Don’t laugh.

“I am absolutely laughing!”

The second punk hopped off the hood too. “You hear this shit, Ren?” he said, laughing in a way that did not sound amused. “Pfft! Preem edgerunners…”

The one with green hair sneered. “You gonks are dead. You fucked around, now it’s time to find out.”

He reached into his jacket and he was packing iron, which was not a shocker in this city. Big revolver. Nova, my optics labeled helpfully, like I needed brand information on the thing that might be about to put a fist-sized hole in my chest.

NOVA MODEL REVOLVERSMART-LINK NOT ENABLEDLOCAL CONNECTION DETECTED

The parking lot narrowed down to the barrel. For one awful half second, I was back in the alley. Three gangers. My brain heating up. Cortana screaming at me to grab the pistol.

Then my cyberdeck warmed.

Thankfully it was not like yesterday. Today, it was just a faint heat at the back of my neck, a soft pulse through the fresh port, and my Kiroshis tinted the world with a thin red edge as they targeted the weapon in the guys hand.

The Nova in the punk’s hand sparked. The gun made a sad little click.

Nothing happened. 

The punk blinked.

Then he pulled the trigger again.

Click.

Still nothing.

I stared. I knew, intellectually, that guns in this world had software. I knew weapons had links and diagnostics and lockouts and targeting assist and enough network access to make any sane person from my old life throw them into a river. I knew all that. But actually watching Cortana brick a revolver in a dude’s hand because the gun had internet access was something else.

It was dumb. Deeply dumb.

Who connected guns to hackable systems? Cyberpunk apparently. Also, it made netrunners overpowered as fuck, which was nice, because Cortana was basically my personal netrunner.

The punk stared down at his revolver. “Oh shit.”

The other guy’s eyes widened. “One of them is a netrunner,” green-hair said.

David did not hesitate. “Ha! Told you we were preem edgerunners! Get fucked, chooms!” Then he charged.

I made a small noise. “David—”

Too late.

David hit green-hair before the guy could decide whether to drop the dead revolver or throw it. It was not a trained punch. It had too much shoulder and too much teenage fury and absolutely no respect for footwork.

It also landed. David’s fist cracked into the guy’s face, snapping his head sideways. The punk stumbled back with a curse, blood immediately spilling from his nose.

The second punk moved.

He was faster than I liked. Fast enough that he had already stepped around the car, one hand reaching behind his back for some kind of weapon while David was still following green-hair down.

My eyes caught the motion. Cortana caught more.

The punk’s optics flashed. Then went up in sparks just like the punks from yesterday.

He screamed. “My eyes! Fuck, my eyes!”

I moved before I could think too hard about it. I tackled him. I basically threw my whole body at his back and trusted mass, surprise, and terror to do the rest.

We hit the asphalt together. He yelled. I grunted. The world tilted sideways.

Then Cortana shoved balance into me. Just that subtle correction. Weight here. Knee there. Wrist angle. Don’t let him roll.

I grabbed the back of his hoodie and slammed his forehead down against the asphalt.

He went limp with a groan.

I froze over him, breathing hard. My hand was already near the gun in my jacket. I had not drawn it. Maybe I should have, these punks would have killed us with no hesitation. And yet, maybe I did need a bit more time until I became a full fledged killer in this world. 

Across the hood, David and green-hair were rolling around on the ground in the least professional fight I had ever seen. It was all elbows, knees, swearing, and David making excited little noises like this was somehow fun.

“Get off me, you psycho!” green-hair shouted.

“You pulled a gun!” David yelled back, then punched him again. “You don’t get to call me psycho!”

That was… technically fair.

The second punk under me stirred. I pressed his face lightly back toward the asphalt. “Nope.”

“My eyes,” he whimpered. “I can’t see.”

“You’ll get them back,” I said, hoping that was true.

“He will,” Cortana said. “In four minutes and thirty-two seconds. It's a good thing I only needed to use two quick hacks, because that's about my limit it seems with this deck. Three is what pushed it into overheating.”

That was a lot longer than in the games. “You’ll get them back in a few minutes,” I said, more confidently.

David finally got green-hair pinned on his back beside the car. He had one knee on the guy’s stomach and a fist raised.

“Say it!” David demanded.

“Say what?” green-hair wheezed.

“That you’re done!”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

David drew his fist back again.

“I’M DONE! I’M DONE, FUCK!”

David looked over at me, grinning with blood on his knuckles and stars in his eyes. “John!”

I stared back.

He looked way too happy. That was not good. That was very not good.

I climbed off the blinded punk and stood, wincing as my ribs reminded me I was still mostly meat and most of that meat had filed complaints recently. “Both of you,” I said, trying to sound like I had any authority whatsoever. “Leave.”

Green-hair coughed. “Fuck you.”

David shifted his leg to kick him again. 

Green-hair made a strangled noise. “Okay! Okay, fuck, we’re leaving!”

“The car stays,” I added.

“No shit,” the blinded one said from the ground. “Keep the fucking car. We had our fun with it anyway.”

The two punks scrambled up with all the dignity of wet cats. The blinded one had to grab green-hair’s sleeve and stumble after him. Green-hair kept one hand pressed to his bloody nose, the other still holding the useless Nova until I cleared my throat.

He looked at me.

I looked at the gun.

He looked at the gun.

Then he dropped it like it had personally betrayed him. They backed away, then turned and ran toward the far end of the lot.

I bent down, picked up the revolver, popped the cylinder open with hands that, to my mild surprise, were not shaking. Cortana fed me the motions like she had been my hand model my entire life. I dumped the rounds out one by one into my palm. They were cheap. Mostly homebrew reloads. I counted six. The cylinder was empty when I closed it.

I slid the revolver into the back of my waistband on the other side from the pistol I had been carrying. I felt vaguely ridiculous, like a kid playing dress-up as a merc, with two guns and a budget cyberdeck and a brother who was probably about to roll up on his bike asking why my heart rate had spiked.

Cortana, in the back of my head, was quiet for a moment. Then, softly, "Well done, John."

I didn't even shoot anybody.

"That is part of what was well done."

I pocketed the six rounds.

David cupped his hands around his mouth. “Yeah! That’s right! Run, gonks!”

“David,” I said.

He dropped his hands. “What?”

“Please stop yelling at criminals.”

“They were already running.”

“That is not the point.”

He shrugged, still vibrating. “Worked, didn’t it?”

Technically, yes. That made it worse.

“I hate that he has a point,” Cortana said.

Same.

The parking lot went quiet after the punks disappeared through a gap in the fence. Not completely quiet, obviously. Night City did not believe in silence. There was traffic beyond the street, the buzz of a flickering sign, a distant dog barking, and somewhere above us the low hum of an AV drifting between buildings.

But the immediate danger was gone. I waited for ten seconds anyway, because the city had already taught me that “probably” was where bullets liked to hide.

Cortana scanned through my optics, tagged the corners, the fence, the old stairwell, the broken security camera above the lot entrance.

“No immediate hostiles,” she said. “And the vehicle appears intact aside from possible superficial hood damage. We can tell Regina it was like that when we found it and she shouldn’t dock our pay.”

David walked up beside me, rubbing his knuckles and grinning like an idiot. “THAT WAS FUCKING NOVA!” He was flushed. Breathing fast. Hands shaking a little, but not with fear. Or not only fear. His eyes were bright, fixed on the car, on the empty lot, on me. On the idea of what had just happened. He did not look scared off.

He looked hooked. 

Ah. Shit. Instead of showing him that gigs were dangerous and messy I did the exact opposite. This had been too easy. Too clean. Nobody died. The bad guys ran. The car was ours.

“That may be a problem,” Cortana said.

You think?

I crossed to the driver’s side and pulled up the security code Regina had sent me. The door unlocked with a soft chirp. I slid into the driver’s seat and immediately became terrified of touching anything.

David leaned in through the open passenger side door. “Damn.”

“Do not put your feet on anything,” I said.

“I wasn’t gonna!”

“You looked like you were gonna.”

“I was just appreciating.”

“Appreciate from a safe distance.”

He climbed into the passenger seat anyway, but to his credit, he kept his feet on the floor mat like it was holy ground.

I entered the startup code. The engine rumbled alive.

David grinned. “Preem, right?”

“Yeah,” I admitted. “...Preem.” Someday soon I’d have a collection of cars even better than this one. 

I gripped the wheel. The waypoint shifted, now leading toward Regina’s designated garage.

David was buckling his seat belt. He was buckling his seat belt with the careful enthusiasm of a kid who had decided that this car, this drive, this exact moment, was going to be the first chapter of the rest of his life.

I put the car in gear, eased it gently out of the lot, and pointed it toward the drop garage Regina had marked on my map.

"Don't tell my mother," I muttered, mostly to the dashboard.

David grinned at me. "Don't tell mine, either!"

Cortana laughed in the back of my head. This time she did not bother to hide it.

I glanced at the rearview mirror and also smiled because I could see Jackie on his motorcycle following behind us. 

XXX