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Long chapter…

Chapter 10:

– Rebecca –

Last night was pretty fun.

Way better than normal fun. Normal fun was getting drunk, shooting bottles off a roof, stealing Pilar’s food and watching him lose his shit, or seeing how many rounds she could dump through a target before Maine yelled at her about ammo costs.

Illegal street races. Police raids. Stolen racecars! Lucy’s new input in the driver’s seat first, looking like some soft blond puppy until everything went sideways and he suddenly turned into a getaway driver with pretty eyes and panic-controlled reflexes.

Rebecca lay sprawled across her bed with one arm hanging off the side and a dumb grin still stuck to her face. She had gotten back late. Really late. Later than she’d meant to, because once Kiwi had stopped acting like she was too dignified to enjoy herself, Rebecca had decided the stolen race car needed a proper farewell tour around the city.

A long one. A very long one. Maybe a little longer than necessary.

But when the fuck else was she going to get her hands on a car that fast?

Rebecca spent her eddies on things that mattered. Guns. Ammo. Gun parts. Ammo for the gun parts. Weird custom shotgun shells some guy in Santo claimed were “experimental” and “probably legal if nobody asked questions.” She didn’t have her own ride because rides were expensive and boring compared to weapons that turned people into chunky salsa!

So if Night City dropped a race-tuned Quadra into her lap, she was going to use it. At unreasonable speeds.

While Kiwi pretended not to enjoy it. That part had been nova too. Kiwi was always wrapped up in those thick walls of hers, calm voice, dead eyes, cigarette smoke, everything filed down until it didn’t look like anything could touch her. But last night, somewhere between the third illegal turn and Rebecca nearly clipping a Tyger Claw bike, Kiwi had actually laughed.Not loud.

Barely anything, really. But Rebecca had heard it!

“Ha,” Rebecca muttered into her pillow, still pleased with herself.

The other fun part had been Lucy. Or, more accurately, Lucy’s date.

John Welles. Lucy’s cute little maybe input.

Rebecca rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling, her grin fading into something more complicated and annoying. Because yeah, teasing him had been fun. Watching Lucy get all territorial had been even better. Lucy, who usually acted like she had one foot on Earth and the other on the fucking moon, had been clinging to that boy’s arm like Rebecca might stuff him in her pocket and run off with him.

Which was rude! Also a bit fair. John was cute.

Not just cute-looking, though he had that too. Tall, blond, blue-eyed, soft around the edges in a way Night City usually chewed up fast. But it was the rest that stuck in Rebecca’s head. The way he blushed like nobody had ever flirted with him before. The way he tried to sound tough and then admitted he was carrying a Unity and a Nova like that was supposed to impress her. The way he looked at Lucy when she laughed, like he’d just fixed something broken by accident.

And then the police showed up, and suddenly cute little John had stolen a car, smashed through a barricade, and lost NCPD in Kabuki like some baby merc with a guardian devil riding shotgun in his skull.

Rebecca groaned and dragged both hands down her face. “Fuckin’ Lucy,” she complained to the empty room. “Where the hell’d you even find him?”

Where did Lucy even find that? The NCART? Nobody found anything on the NCART except pickpockets and weird smells.

She was jealous. Obviously she was jealous. She had eyes. She had taste!

It was not fair.

Rebecca wished she and Lucy were better friends. And not the fake crew-adjacent friends. Or the “we stand in the same room and don’t shoot each other” friends. Actual friends. The kind where Rebecca could casually say, ‘Hey, so if you’re not using the cute input all the time, maybe we could share?’

She snorted. Lucy would probably monowire her in half.

Still. Worth asking someday.

Maybe?

Probably not.

Rebecca sighed hard enough to make it dramatic, then rolled out of bed.

She forgot, briefly, that she had no blanket tangled around her because she had apparently kicked it onto the floor sometime after passing out. She hit the ground bare-ass first with a soft thump.

“Ow.” She sat there for a second, naked, hair a mess, legs splayed, blinking at nothing. 

Her apartment was quiet. Too quiet.

Which meant Pilar was still asleep.

Lazy fuck.

Probably stayed up all night jerking off, scrolling porn, or doing both while pretending it counted as “research.” Rebecca didn’t even want to know. The walls were thin enough that she already knew too much about her brother’s habits, and most of it made her want to bleach her brain, her ears, and possibly the entire building.

She pushed herself up, scratched her bare stomach, and padded across the floor toward the pile of clothes near her chair. The apartment looked like someone had robbed an armory and then lost interest halfway through organizing the evidence. Clothes on the floor. Gun mags on the table. Old takeout containers. A shotgun leaning against the wall like it paid rent. 

Maine was still looking for a new gig. After the Tanaka job got fragged, everybody had been stuck waiting for the next halfway decent opportunity. Faraday had some replacement garbage, sure, but replacement garbage was still garbage, and Rebecca had no interest in spending her day sitting around while Maine decided how badly they needed eddies.

She needed something to do. Something loud. Something bloody. Something that paid.

Her optics flashed.

Rebecca froze. A message notification blinked across her vision.

JOHN WELLES.

For one full second, she just stared. Then her mouth split into a vicious, delighted grin. “Oh, you dirty little gonk,” she said, already laughing. “Trying to cheat on Lucy with me already?” She planted one hand on her hip and flicked the message open with a thought. “Of course you couldn’t resist my sexy charms. Nobody can. I was very charming last night. Also very armed!”

The message opened.

Rebecca’s grin paused before it could get to full size. Then her eyes went wide.

John: Hi Rebecca. It's John. from last night. You said to message you if I needed help with guns, and this is sort of gun-adjacent, so I picked up a gig from Regina Jones. Scav den in Northside, under a condemned clinic. People are going missing. Regina thinks they're harvesting chrome. Job is confirm it, pull out anyone still alive, and clear the place. It pays well and I'd split it fair. Fair warning, it's real, it's dangerous, and I need somebody who can actually shoot. You were the first person I thought of. You in?

John was messaging her, asking if Rebecca wanted to help clear out a scav den.

Rebecca read the message twice. Then a third time, just to make sure she hadn’t hallucinated the words. Her heart kicked. A slow dangerous excitement crawled up her spine.

Regina fucking Jones! Not Faraday’s scraps. Not some half-assed low-pay job with bad intel and worse client terms. Regina. Watson’s top fixer. The kind of fixer Maine had been trying to get real work from for ages!

And John Welles, Lucy’s blushy little input, had just asked Rebecca if she wanted in. On clearing out a disgusting scav den? Something she would do for free, and now she was gonna get paid for it!?

Rebecca threw both fists into the air. “FUCK YES I’M IN!”

Through the wall, a muffled voice groaned something that might have been "some of us are SLEEPING, you psycho!"

"SOME OF US HAVE JOBS, PILAR!" she hollered back, and blinked her reply off to John:

Rebecca: FUCK YES. count me in choom!!!

Then, after a second, she added:

Rebecca: Does Lucy know you’re texting other sexy girls for murder dates? ;)

Rebecca grinned at her own message.

She bolted across the room naked.

Her foot hit an empty bottle, sent it skittering, and nearly took her with it. She caught herself on the edge of the table, cackling, then grabbed the first clothes she saw. Black top. Shorts. Jacket. No, better jacket. The one with the reinforced lining. Boots. Where the fuck were her boots?

One boot was under the bed. The other was beside the shotgun.

She yanked her clothes on in a manic rush, at the same time as bouncing on one foot while trying to pull up her short shorts.

– John Welles –

I was sitting on the second floor of the Coyote, pretending I looked like someone who knew what he was doing.

The Coyote Bar was familiar in a way that still felt borrowed. The smell of old wood, beer, gun oil, floor cleaner, fried food, and Mama Welles’ cooking was wafting throughout the building. Downstairs, the bar was still waking up. Chairs scraped. Someone laughed too loudly for the hour. A bottle clinked against glass. Mama’s voice cut through it all every now and then, stern enough to make grown men sit straighter.

I sat in one of the upstairs booths with my back to the wall and the stairs in view because Jackie had spent the last few days explaining, in increasingly creative ways, that only idiots sat with their backs to doors in Night City. Especially Mercs who will one day have enemies. 

I had a cup of coffee in front of me, a cheap pistol under my jacket, Regina Jones’ gig details hovering in a private Kiroshi overlay, and a growing sense that I was about to do something extremely crazy again.

I had already messaged David and Rebecca.

David had answered almost immediately.

David: Wait seriously? You want me on a real gig? An you will pay me!?David: Hell yeah, man. I’m in.David: Where do I go?David: Should I bring anything?David: I mean I don’t really have anything but I can bring myself.

That one had made me close my eyes for a second.

Rebecca’s reply had been somehow even more enthusiastic.

Rebecca: FUCK YES. count me in choom!!!Rebecca: Does Lucy know you’re texting other sexy girls for murder dates? ;)

I had stared at that second message for too long.

Now I was waiting for both of them to show up at my mother’s bar so we could go over a plan for clearing out a scav den like that was a normal way to spend the afternoon.

“You need to take charge when they get here,” Cortana said. Her voice came from inside my head, smooth and close and impossible to ignore. 

“I know,” I murmured.

“You say that, but you’re sitting there thinking about how Rebecca called it a murder date...”

“I am not…”

“You absolutely are!”

I took a careful drink of coffee to avoid answering. It was too hot and tasted like it had been brewed out of spite.

Cortana appeared in my vision a second later, leaning against the edge of the booth like she belonged there. Blue light, crossed arms, and a look that said she knew exactly how much bullshit I was currently full of.

Nobody else could see her. Nobody else could hear her.

That was probably good, because if Mama Welles saw the way Cortana looked at me sometimes, I had a bad feeling she would demand to meet the AI living in my brain before she met Lucy.

“This is your gig,” Cortana said. “Not Rebecca’s. Not David’s. Regina contacted you. You accepted the work. That makes you responsible.”

The word hit harder than I wanted it to. Responsible. For David, who was excited in exactly the wrong way. For Rebecca, who was probably excited in an even worse way but at least knew what she was doing with a gun.

For whoever the scavs had taken, assuming any of them were still alive.

For myself.

And for Cortana, because overheating my brain with cheap cyberware again was apparently on the list of things we were trying not to do.

“I know,” I said again, quieter this time. “I’ll lead them both.”

Cortana’s expression softened just a little. “Good.”

There was something warm in her voice. Pride, maybe. Approval. Whatever it was, it made my chest feel strange.

“I mean,” I added, because apparently I had a survival instinct but no self-preservation when it came to ruining moments, “I’ll try to lead. I have been doing this for, what, three days?”

“Four, technically.”

“Oh good. I have achieved veteran status.”

“You’re inexperienced, not useless,” Cortana said. “There is a difference. You listen. You think. You adapt. You don’t posture unless panicking forces you into it.”

“That last part sounded almost like an insult.”

“It was mostly fond.”

“Mostly?”

She smiled. “Take the compliment, John.”

I did. Or I tried to.

Then someone from a couple booths down called out, “Hey there, Welles junior!”

My shoulders tightened before I even looked over.

There were some voices that sounded oily. Not literally. Nobody’s voice could actually leave a film on your skin. But Kirk’s came close.

He was lounging in a booth like the bar belonged to him, one arm thrown over the backrest, a cheap suit trying very hard to look expensive and failing everywhere that mattered. His hair was slicked back. His smile was worse. A half-empty drink sat in front of him even though the day had barely started, and his very fat bodyguard occupied the booth beside him like someone had poured a man into a jacket and told him to look intimidating.

Kirk Sawyer. Heywood’s knockoff version of a fixer. Or more like a discount fixer. A fixer-shaped stain that wouldn’t go away?

I had no idea why Mama had not banned him from the Coyote yet. Maybe because he technically paid his tab. Maybe because throwing him out would cause more trouble than ignoring him. Maybe because Night City had some kind of quota for sleazeballs per neighborhood and Kirk was keeping the worse ones away?

In canon, every gig he gave V went bad. Every single one.

And standing there in real life, hearing his voice scrape across the bar toward me, I found it very easy to believe the universe had not been exaggerating.

“I hear you’re running the edge now,” Kirk said, raising his voice enough that a few people nearby glanced over. “Got yourself kicked outta that fancy academy, started taking gigs, huh? Good for you. Real good. I always said Welles blood was meant for the streets.”

That was literally an insult that he tried to make sound like a compliment…

Cortana was suddenly very still in my vision, which meant she was paying attention in a way that made me nervous on Kirk’s behalf.

“I got a pretty good gig I need running, if you’re interested,” Kirk continued. “Simple work. Easy money. Pay’s good too.” He leaned forward and smiled wider. “Five hundred whole eddies.”

I blinked. That was it? That was his pitch? Five hundred eddies?

I wondered, briefly, if he thought I had recently been shot in the head hard enough to make that sound appealing.

Actually, knowing Kirk, that might have been exactly what he thought.

Cortana’s voice turned dry. “I believe he is attempting to recruit you through insultingly low compensation and bullshit confidence.”

“Yeah,” I muttered. “I caught that.”

Kirk’s smile twitched. “What was that?”

I looked at him fully.

The bar noise seemed to dip around us, though that might have just been my focus narrowing. I did not like public confrontation, but it was something I was working on fixing. 

“Not interested,” I said and was proud of myself for how coldly I said it.

Cortana grinned at me, flashing a playful thumbs up.

Kirk gave me a wounded look so fake it almost deserved applause. “Come on, kid. Don’t be like that. You ain’t too big for local work already, are you?”

“No,” I said. “Just too busy.”

“With what?”

I let a second pass. Then I shrugged. “Real gig. From a real fixer.”

Kirk’s face tightened. I probably should have stopped there. I did not. “I’m working for Regina Jones.”

That shut him up fast. It was actually kind of beautiful. Kirk’s mouth opened, then closed. His bodyguard looked between us like even he understood that the name Regina Jones had changed the shape of the conversation. A couple nearby patrons glanced over with more interest than before.

Kirk tried to recover. “Regina, huh…?”

“Yeah.”

“Didn’t know she was handing work to baby mercs now.” Kirk’s smile collapsed into something smaller and nastier. For a second, I saw the calculation behind his eyes. Annoyance. Jealousy. Disbelief. Maybe a little fear. Not of me, exactly. Of what it meant if Regina Jones had noticed Jackie Welles’ little brother before Kirk had managed to sink his hooks in.

Then he grumbled something under his breath and turned away, muttering to his bodyguard.

I exhaled slowly.

Cortana’s avatar looked delighted. “That was well done!” 

Dealing with people like that is annoying. At least when it came to Katsuo I was allowed to punch him. “I feel like I’m going to throw up…”

“Yes, but with authority!” She smiled wider. “You dismissed a parasite, invoked a higher-status professional contact, and did not overexplain.”

My optics pinged.

A new message appeared.

David: I’m close. Like five minutes.David: Maybe six.David: Got lost.David: Never mind, found it.

A second ping followed almost immediately.

Rebecca: almost there murder date boyRebecca: brought the fun gunsRebecca: dont start without me or ill be pissed

I stared at the messages.

Then I rubbed both hands over my face.

Cortana leaned closer, her blue light filling the edge of my vision.

“Ready?”

“No.”

“Good,” she said. “That means you understand the situation.”

Downstairs, the front door opened, and the Coyote swallowed another burst of Heywood noise from the street.

I straightened in the booth. My gig. My team. My responsibility.

God help me.

Rebecca and David arrived almost at the same time.

David came in through the front door downstairs looking like he was trying to seem casual and failing hard enough that I could see it from the second floor. He looked around the Coyote with wide eyes, taking in the bar, the regulars, the bottles behind the counter, the Valentinos-adjacent atmosphere, and probably wondering if he was supposed to act tough or respectful.

Rebecca did not have that problem.

Rebecca hit the Coyote like a thrown grenade.

The front door opened, and a short blur of color, chrome, attitude, and gunmetal came through it. She took one look around, spotted me upstairs, and immediately sprinted for the steps like she had been launched. A couple patrons jerked out of her way on instinct.

I did not blame them.

She came up the stairs two at a time, grinning so wide it looked dangerous, then slid into the booth across from me with enough momentum that the table rattled.

Her shotgun thunked upright against the side of the table a second later.

A few heads turned.

Rebecca ignored all of them. “Couldn’t get enough of me last night, huh?” she asked, leaning forward on her elbows with a grin sharp enough to cut glass. “I knew it. One police chase and you’re already calling me for another date.”

My mouth opened. Nothing came out. That was becoming a problem around women in Night City.

In my defense, last night I had mostly experienced Rebecca as a rapid-fire chaos gremlin orbiting Lucy, Kiwi, a stolen race car, and a police raid. Seeing her in daylight, without Lucy pressed against my side and without NCPD trying to kill us, made it easier to actually look at her.

Rebecca was… colorful.

That was the safest word my brain could find. Bright tattoos. Bright hair. Bright eyes. Sharp little grin. Compact, dangerous, and cute in the same way a custom-painted landmine might be cute if someone put stickers on it.

Unfortunately, the silence that followed must have looked exactly like embarrassment.

Rebecca’s grin widened. “Oh my god, you are.” She pointed at me, delighted. “You’re doing the blushy thing again. Fuck, Lucy wasn’t exaggerating. That’s adorable.”

“I’m not—”

“Choom, you are extremely doing the blushy thing.”

“She is correct,” Cortana said.

“Not helpful,” I muttered.

Rebecca’s eyes flicked toward my mouth. “What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“Uh-huh.” She leaned back, still smirking. “You always talk to yourself, or is that only when cute girls make you nervous?”

“Careful,” Cortana said, her voice turning dry. “This one smells weakness.”

I took a drink of coffee because apparently scalding my tongue was better than answering.

David reached the booth a second later. “Yo, John,” he said, a little breathless from taking the stairs too fast. “Choom, thanks for inviting me.”

He looked excited. He also looked awkward. Very awkward.

His uniform was gone, replaced by street clothes that made him look even younger somehow. Not younger in the actual-age sense. Younger in the this kid has no idea what he just agreed to sense. His eyes kept darting between me, Rebecca, the shotgun, and the rest of the bar like he was trying to memorize the moment so he could brag about it later.

Rebecca looked over at him.

Then she looked back at me.

Then she looked at him again.

“WHO THE HELL IS THIS?”

David sputtered. “I’m— I mean, I’m David. David Martinez.”

Rebecca blinked. “...Okay?”

“I helped John on a gig a few days ago,” David said quickly.

Rebecca’s eyebrows rose. “Did you?”

“Yeah.”

“With what?”

David opened his mouth but then stopped. He looked at me for help.

I almost smiled despite myself. “He helped me recover a stolen car for Regina,” I said, leaving out the embarrassing details of him almost blowing it.

Rebecca’s expression changed immediately.  She looked David up and down, reevaluating him slightly. Not much, but slightly. “Huh.”

David straightened like that single syllable from Rebecca had given him actual mercenary credentials.

It absolutely had not. I cleared my throat before this could get worse. “Thanks for coming. Both of you.”

Rebecca gave me a lazy little salute. “You said scavs and Regina. That’s two magic words right there.”

David slid into the booth beside Rebecca, still trying not to stare at her shotgun. “Yeah, man. Seriously. I’m ready!”

“He is not,” Cortana said in my head.

I agreed with her.

I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the Nova. The Unity stayed with me because it was still the pistol I was most used to, which was a sad sentence considering I had been using guns for less than a week. The Nova had come from the joyrider punk, and it was functional after I asked Jackie to help me check it over.

It was heavy. Unsubtle. Scratched along the barrel. Probably stolen before it was stolen by the punk before it was taken by me.

Night City recycling.

I set it on the table, muzzle pointed safely away from everyone, then pulled out a handful of spare rounds and placed them beside it.

David stared. His eyes practically lit up. “Is that for me?”

“For the gig,” I said. “You carry it only because walking into a scav den unarmed is stupid. You do not draw it unless I tell you to or unless someone is about to kill you. You do not wave it around. You do not point it at anyone you are not ready to shoot. You keep your finger off the trigger unless you mean it.”

David nodded quickly, reaching for the revolver like I had just handed him Excalibur.

I caught his wrist before he touched it. His eyes snapped to mine.

“I’m serious,” I said.

Some of the excitement flickered. “Yeah,” David said, quieter. “I got it.”

I let him take it.

He picked up the Nova with both hands, reverent and thrilled and nervous all at once. That worried me more than I wanted to admit. I had seen that look before. Not in real life, exactly. In the anime. In every version of David Martinez where danger felt like proof he mattered.

Rebecca was staring at me now. Just staring. Then she pointed at David. “You invited some gonk who doesn’t even have his own iron on a gig to clear out a scav nest?”

David’s grip on the Nova tightened.

Rebecca did not care. “You know they’re gonna shoot at us and shit, right?” she continued. “Like, that’s the whole thing with scavs. They don’t come out and ask politely if they can borrow your kidneys. They shoot you, carve you open, sell your chrome, and dump what’s left in a bathtub.”

David went still. For once, the excitement cracked enough that I saw the fear underneath. His eyes dropped to the gun in his hands. For half a second, reality seemed to land on him. This was not a stolen car in a parking lot. This was not shouting at punks and getting lucky. This was not the hallway at Arasaka Academy, where the worst thing that had happened was bruised knuckles and humiliation.

This was a scav den. People died in places like that. People disappeared in places like that. People were taken apart in places like that.

I almost felt relieved when David looked nervous.

Then his jaw tightened, and the look vanished almost as fast as it came.

He gave Rebecca a grin that was too sharp and too forced. “I can handle some basic scav gonks. They’re gonna wish they never crossed paths with David Martinez.”

Rebecca stared at him. Then she looked at me. Her expression said, Really? This one?

Honestly, fair.

“Now,” Cortana said. “Take charge now.”

My stomach tightened. So I sat up straighter. “Okay, listen up you two,” I said with enough force to take charge.

Both of them looked at me.

Rebecca still had that amused glint in her eyes, but she was listening. David looked eager again, but uncertain enough to stay quiet.

“This is my gig,” I said. “Regina gave it to me. I asked you both here. That means I’m in charge.” The words felt ridiculous coming out of my mouth. I said them anyway. “When we get to the scav den, you follow my instructions. Both of you. If I say stop, you stop. If I say fall back, you fall back. If I say don’t shoot, you don’t shoot. If Cort—”

I caught myself half a second before disaster.

Rebecca’s eyes narrowed slightly.

David blinked. “If what?”

“If I call something out,” I corrected, heart suddenly hammering, “you listen. No running ahead. No showing off. No fucking around. We are not going in there to look cool.”

Silence settled over the booth.

David swallowed and nodded. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Okay. I’ll listen.”

I believed that he meant it. I also knew meaning it and doing it under fire were not the same thing.

Rebecca had gone very still. For one strange second, I thought she might push back. Laugh it off. Tell me I was too green to order her around. Point out that she had been shooting people longer than I had been in this universe. Instead, her mouth curled into a slow smirk. “Damn,” she said. “There it is.”

I blinked. “What?”

She leaned forward, chin propped on one hand, eyes bright with wicked amusement. “You taking charge again. Just like last night!”

My face warmed immediately.

Rebecca noticed, because of course she did. “I think I definitely see why Lucy likes you,” she continued. “So cute and so reliable. All nervous one second, then suddenly acting like you know what you’re doing. That’s a dangerous combo, Welles.”

“I am trying to run a briefing.”

“Mhm.” Rebecca’s grin widened. “Very serious. Very commanding. Very blushy.”

David looked between us, confused.

Cortana sighed inside my head. “Your attempt at taking charge was good, at least.”

“At least?” I muttered under my breath.

Rebecca’s eyes sparkled. “Still talking to yourself, huh?”

I stared at her.

She stared back.

Then she laughed.

I dragged one hand down my face and reminded myself that this was still better than everyone ignoring me.

I got out of the booth before Rebecca could find another way to make me blush.

That was the plan, anyway.

“Okay,” I said, grabbing my coffee and immediately remembering I did not need to take it with me. I set it back down. “We should head out.”

David tucked the Nova carefully into his waistband, then immediately looked uncomfortable because it was a heavy revolver and he had absolutely no idea how to carry one properly.

Rebecca saw it too. She made a face. “Oh my god, please don’t shoot your dick off before we even get there!”

David froze.

I froze.

Cortana made a very small, very amused sound in my head.

“You have a jacket,” I told David. “Use the inside pocket for now. We’ll get you a holster if you keep doing this.”

“If?” David asked.

“We’ll talk about that after you see the scav den...”

That sobered him a little.

Good.

Rebecca bounced up from the booth, grabbed her shotgun, and swung it over her shoulder like it weighed nothing. “Look at you, boss man. Planning and shit.”

“I am trying very hard.”

“Yeah, I can tell. It’s cute.”

I ignored that because survival sometimes meant retreat.

The three of us started toward the stairs. For about five whole steps, I thought we were going to make it out of the Coyote without any more problems.

That was stupid of me.

“Hey, little Welles!”

I stopped. I really did not want to stop.

I could feel Cortana’s attention sharpen like a knife again.

Kirk was looking up at me from his booth, smile back on his face, but thinner now. Meaner. He had clearly spent the last few minutes stewing in his own humiliation and had decided the best way to recover was to keep talking.

A bold strategy. Historically bad, but bold.

“You lying to me just now?” Kirk asked.

I turned slowly enough that it probably looked more dramatic than I felt. Mostly I just wanted a second to not sigh in public. “What?”

Kirk spread his hands. “You said you got a gig from a legendary fixer like Regina Jones. Big name. Real big. But all I see at your table is a bunch of kids.”

David stiffened beside me.

Rebecca went very still. That was probably a bad sign.

Kirk either did not notice or did not have the instincts required to survive noticing. “Lying to Kirk just isn’t cool,” he said, actually referring to himself in the third person like that made him sound important instead of mentally ill. “You really should learn some respect, kid.”

I stared at him. Then I gave him my best fuck-off glare. It was not as good as Mama Welles’ glare. It was not even close. Mama could make hardened mercs rethink their life choices with a single look. Mine probably said something more like, I am very uncomfortable, but morally opposed to you continuing.

Still, I tried. “I’m not lying,” I said. “And I’m not interested.”

Kirk’s smile twitched. “That right?”

“Yeah.”

“You know, Welles junior, a bad attitude will close doors for you. Especially in Heywood.”

“I’ll risk it.”

Cortana hummed approvingly. “Better.”

Rebecca suddenly moved. She skipped. Literally skipped. She bounced down the few steps between us and Kirk’s booth with her shotgun still over one shoulder, all bright colors and delighted energy, like she had just seen an old friend instead of a local sleazeball trying to start shit.

David and I exchanged a look.

His said, ‘What is she doing?’

Mine said, ‘I have known her for less than twenty-four hours. I have no fucking clue…’

Rebecca stopped in front of Kirk’s booth and clasped her hands behind her back. Her whole posture changed. Shoulders tucked in. Head tilted. Big eyes. Wide smile.

When she spoke, her voice went high and sweet enough to cause dental problems. “Hiii there! My name is Rebecca.” She gave a tiny wave. “You’re Kirk, right? I’ve heard all about you. You’re, like, famous and shit.”

Kirk blinked. Then his expression brightened.

It was disgusting to watch.

“Heh,” he said, leaning back like a man who had just been handed back his dignity by a short girl with a shotgun. “You’ve heard of me, huh?”

Rebecca’s smile became sunshine. “Nope!” 

Her side arm pistol was in her hand before I saw her draw it.

She pistol-whipped Kirk across the face so hard the crack cut through the bar noise.

Blood sprayed from his nose.

Kirk made a sound I could only describe as a rich man’s dog being stepped on, except cheaper and more pathetic. He fell backward into his booth, clutching his face, eyes wide and watery. “MY NOSE! FUCK! MY FUCKING NOSE!”

His bodyguard reacted a second late.

That was all Rebecca needed.

The big man shoved himself up from the booth, one hand going for the gun under his jacket. He was large enough to make the table look small and heavy enough that the floor seemed personally concerned about him.

Rebecca stepped in before his fingers closed around the grip. She grabbed the back of his head with both hands, planted one boot on the booth seat for leverage, and slammed his face straight down into the table.

The impact made every glass on the table jump. The bodyguard went limp. His cheek slid into a puddle of spilled beer.

Kirk, still holding his bleeding nose, stared at Rebecca in horror.

Rebecca pointed her pistol at him without even looking particularly angry. “Learn your fucking place you arrogant shit stain.”

My brain stalled.

David’s mouth hung open.

Half the bar had gone silent.

Rebecca turned back toward me with the biggest grin I had ever seen on a person who had just broken a man’s nose in my mother’s establishment. “See?” she chirped. “I’m already doing a great job, aren’t I, boss man?”

I gaped at her.

Cortana said nothing for a second. That was terrifying. Then she murmured, “Very effective, even if it was also very undisciplined...”

“Where the fuck did you find this girl?” David mumbled beside me.

“I didn’t,” I said automatically. “Lucy did.”

“That explains nothing.”

“No, it really doesn’t.”

Rebecca was still looking at me expectantly. I realized, with a sinking feeling, that she actually wanted approval. Or at least wanted to see how I would react.

This was one of those leadership moments, probably.

Unfortunately, none of the leadership manuals in my old life had covered what to do when your shotgun gremlin pistol-whips a local fixer in your mother’s bar.

“Yeah,” I said, because my mouth apparently chose survival by appeasement. “Great work.”

Rebecca beamed.

I immediately questioned every decision that had led me here.

Kirk whimpered into his hands. “You broke my nose, you psycho bitch!”

Rebecca turned her head slightly.

Kirk shut up. Smartest thing he had done all day.

I looked downstairs toward the bar.

Mama Welles stood beside Pepe behind the counter. Pepe had a towel in one hand and the expression of a man trying very hard to decide whether this was his problem. Mama looked up at me.

Her eyes narrowed. There it was. Disappointment. That heavy maternal disappointment that bypassed armor, cyberware, and probably reinforced concrete.

My stomach dropped.

I lifted one hand in a small, helpless gesture that I hoped communicated, I did not specifically order the tiny woman to assault Kirk.

Mama stared at me a moment longer. Then her eyes flicked to Kirk, who was still whining and bleeding into his hands. Her mouth tightened. She waved it off.

Just like that.

Pepe leaned closer to her, said something I could not hear, and Mama shrugged with the kind of weary practicality that could only mean no one fucking liked Kirk anyway.

I exhaled.

Rebecca was still grinning like she had not just committed assault in broad daylight. “Are we leaving or what?”

“Yes,” I said immediately. “We are very much leaving.”

For real this time, we left the Coyote.

The air outside hit me with the full Heywood mix of heat, exhaust, distant food, old concrete, and too many people living too close together. Traffic crawled past. A couple Valentinos across the street glanced at Rebecca’s shotgun, then at me, then decided they had somewhere else to look.

The three of us headed toward the NCART station.

On foot. Again. There was something deeply unglamorous about walking to a scav-den clearout. Edgerunners in stories had cars, bikes, armored vans, cool entrances, dramatic engines growling under neon lights.

I had public transit. I had two pistols, one of which I had just loaned to a teenager with no holster. I had a tiny heavily armed maniac humming to herself beside me.

And I had Cortana in my head, probably making a list of everything wrong with us.

“This is lame,” I muttered.

Rebecca glanced up at me. “What is?”

“Walking to a gig.”

“Aw, boss man wants a ride?”

“I want a lot of things. Subdermal armor. Better cyberdeck. Better guns. More ammo. Maybe a helmet. Therapy. A real car.”

David grinned. “You get a car, you letting me drive?”

“No.”

“Come on, choom.”

“Absolutely not.”

I kept walking. “After I get some cyberware upgrades,” I said, mostly to myself, “I’m getting a real car.”

Rebecca grinned. “Preem. Make it fast like that one we klept last night.”

David turned to me with a look that asked, you stole a car last night and didn’t tell me about it?

I sighed. We walked toward the train anyway.

By the time we reached Northside, the heroic glow of “running my own gig” had been mostly replaced by sweat, nerves, and the sinking realization that public transit did not make anyone feel like a badass.

We got off the NCART and walked the rest of the way through streets that looked like Night City had chewed them up, spat them out, and then charged them rent.

Northside was industrial rot and dead ambition. Warehouses with broken windows. Concrete stained by old oil and newer blood. Chain-link fences sagging around lots full of trash, rusted containers, and stripped vehicles. Graffiti crawled over walls like mold. Every other building looked condemned, occupied, or both.

The abandoned clinic sat wedged between a shuttered pawn shop and a half-collapsed storage facility.

It was ugly in a way that tried not to be noticed.

Three stories. Cracked facade. Faded medical signage hanging crooked over the entrance. Most of the windows were either boarded up or blacked out from the inside. A dead vending machine leaned near the front like someone had tried to steal it and gotten bored halfway through. The pavement outside was littered with needles, broken glass, food wrappers, and enough cigarette butts to make lung cancer seem like an environmental feature.

There were people nearby, but not guards.

A couple of bums huddled under a piece of torn tarp across the street. One of them watched us for half a second, saw Rebecca’s shotgun, then immediately decided the pavement was fascinating. Another man sat against a wall with his head tipped back and his mouth open, either asleep, passed out, or dead enough that nobody cared to check. A woman in a filthy coat muttered to herself near a trash fire, her eyes tracking nothing I could see.

Nobody asked what we were doing. Nobody wanted to know.

David stared at the clinic with the first real wariness I had seen from him all day. “Where are the guards?” he asked.

Rebecca scoffed. “What, you expected scavs standing outside with name tags?”

David frowned. “I mean… yeah? Kinda? If this is a den, shouldn’t they have people watching the front?”

“They probably do,” Rebecca said. “Just not like that.”

I glanced at the street again.

Suddenly every hunched shape, every busted window, every camera pod, every half-open curtain felt less harmless.

Rebecca noticed. “Relax, boss man. I don’t mean every hobo here is about to pull iron.” She jerked her chin at the clinic. “But armed guards out front would basically be a giant neon sign saying, ‘Hey, NCPD, please come bust our illegal chop shop.’”

David looked unconvinced. “NCPD gives a shit?”

“Most of the time? Fuck no.” Rebecca adjusted her shotgun strap and grinned without humor. “But everyone hates scavs. Corpos hate scavs because scavs steal chrome from people with insurance. Gangs hate scavs because scavs steal from everyone and don’t play by any rules. Mercs hate scavs because, you know, they’re scavs. Even NCPD hates scavs enough to do their jobs sometimes.”

“That bad?” David asked.

Rebecca stared at him.

The stare lasted long enough that David shifted.

Rebecca’s eyes flicked toward me for half a second, but she did not comment this time.

The clinic watched us with its boarded windows and dead sign.

I took a slow breath. “Okay,” I said. “We don’t go in blind.”

Rebecca’s grin came back. “Was hoping you’d say that.”

David looked from me to her. “How do we see inside?”

I looked toward the side wall of the clinic, where Cortana had highlighted a small access point in my vision. It was half-hidden behind an old maintenance panel, the metal around it rusted and scratched, but the port itself still had power. A tiny status light blinked weakly behind grime.

“Through that,” I said.

David blinked. “You can hack?”

I coughed. “I’ve got a basic deck. Some help from software. Nothing fancy.”

Rebecca snorted. “Software, huh?”

I ignored that and crossed toward the access point.

Every step closer to the building made the skin between my shoulders tighten. I kept expecting someone to shout. A window to open. A muzzle flash. A scav with too many piercings and bad dental hygiene to sprint out screaming.

Nothing happened.

I reached the wall and lifted my left hand.

The personal link slid out from under the skin near my wrist with a soft mechanical whisper.

I still was not used to that.

There were a lot of things in Night City I was not used to, but having an actual wire built into my arm that connected all the way into my nervous system and, eventually, my brain was pretty high on the list. It did not hurt exactly. It just felt wrong. Like tugging on a tooth that was also somehow plugged into my spine.

I swallowed and plugged into the access point. For half a second, nothing happened.

Then my vision shifted.

A small interface bloomed in the corner of my Kiroshi overlay. Old system architecture. Failing security. Local network handshake requests. Camera nodes. Door locks. Climate control that had been broken for years. A cheap internal alarm system that looked like it had been installed by someone who hated reading instructions.

“Give me a second,” Cortana said. “I’ll work my magic.”

The cyberdeck at the back of my neck warmed. The sensation of Cortana moving through systems that were not meant to stop anything like her.

I felt her focus narrow. The access point’s security peeled open. “Oh, that is embarrassing,” Cortana said.

“What?”

“Their security. I’ve seen vending machines with more dignity.”

Rebecca leaned closer. “What’s happening?”

“The deck’s in. I’m in. We’re in…”

Rebecca stared at me.

I pretended not to notice.

Cortana moved faster. My overlay was populated with camera feeds and I saw static, broken halls, darkness, empty rooms, a stairwell, a reception area with overturned chairs, one camera pointed uselessly at a wall because someone had knocked it crooked months ago.

“They don’t have a netrunner so that’s good,” I pointed out after Cortana confirmed for us. 

Rebecca huffed. “Makes sense. Netrunners need expensive chrome to operate, and they wouldn’t trust these fuckers not to betray and harvest them the second they go into the net and leave their body vulnerable.”

“That’s horrible,” David made a gagging noise.

“That’s scavs,” Rebecca replied with a shrug.

Cortana switched camera feeds again.

The next image filled my vision. For a second, I did not understand what I was looking at.

Then my brain caught up.

Metal tables sat under hanging lights. Some of the lights flickered. Some did not. There were bodies on the tables. Parts of bodies. Limbs separated and tagged. Open torsos. Chrome laid out in trays. Tubing. Buckets. Plastic sheeting. Saws. Hooks. Surgical tools that had no business looking that filthy.

One body had no eyes.

Another had the chest spread open like someone had been searching for something valuable and gotten annoyed halfway through.

There was so much blood. So much meat. So much human wreckage arranged with the casual practicality of a butcher shop.

My stomach lurched. I yanked my gaze away from the feed, but the image stayed burned into my head. For one awful second, I thought I was going to throw up all over the wall.

“John?” David asked, voice smaller than before.

Rebecca’s expression sharpened. “What are we looking at?”

I swallowed hard. It did not help much. “Bodies,” I groaned.

David went pale.

Rebecca did not. Her jaw tightened, though.

Cortana’s voice softened, but only for me. “Breathe. In. Out. Not all at once. Let me filter the feed.”

The image dimmed. The colors shifted cooler. Some of the worst details blurred at the edges of my perception.

I hated that I needed it. I was grateful anyway. “I’m okay,” I lied.

“No, you’re not,” Cortana said. “But you are functional.”

That was apparently the best I could hope for.

She changed cameras.

More hallways. A break room with stained mattresses on the floor. A storage closet full of scavenged chrome packed in foam-lined crates. A room with generators, jury-rigged power lines, and coolant tanks. Three armed scavs smoking and laughing near a doorway. Two more moving crates. Another one asleep in a chair with a rifle across his lap.

Cortana tagged each person in my overlay with red outlines. “Counting ten armed hostiles so far,” she said. “Possibly eleven if the heat signature behind the basement door is human and not another overloaded generator. They’re not very alert.”

I watched one of the scavs toss something small and wet into a bucket. I did not ask what it was. “Ten scavs,” I said aloud. “All armed. Not very alert.”

Rebecca grinned. “Lazy?”

“Arrogant,” I said. “Probably both.”

“Good.” She checked her shotgun. “Lazy scavs die easier.”

David did not say anything.

Cortana moved through the camera network again, jumping to deeper feeds. Some were dead. Some were dark. One showed a hallway with drag marks across the floor. Another showed a locked metal door with fresh scratches on the inside.

Then the view changed to a room full of people. Not scavs. Living people. Five of them. They were packed into what looked like an old supply room. Their hands were zip-tied. Their mouths were not gagged, probably because the room was too deep inside the building for anyone outside to hear them scream. Two men. Two women. One person curled in the corner so tightly I could not immediately tell anything except that they were shaking.

Their clothes were dirty and torn. One man had blood on the side of his head. One woman’s left arm hung wrong. Another had her face buried against her knees.

They looked terrified. They looked recent. Not harvested yet.

“Hostages,” I said. “Five. Alive.”

David’s head snapped up. “Alive?”

“Yeah.”

Rebecca’s grin turned sharp and bright. “Fuck yeah.”

I looked at her.

She held up both hands. “What? Regina said extra five thousand eddies per person saved, right?”

I checked the gig details even though I already knew she was right. Base pay for confirming and neutralizing the den. Bonus per living victim extracted.

Twenty-five thousand eddies minimum in rescue bonuses alone. My brain, despite the horror of the situation, immediately started doing math.

Cortana sounded pleased despite herself. “That would be a very useful payout.”

“Yeah,” I said quietly.

Then she paused. I felt it through the link more than heard it. A hitch in her attention. A sudden tightening of focus.

The camera feed zoomed in. “Huh,” Cortana said.

“What?”

“Is that who I think it is?”

The feed centered on one of the hostages. He was sitting against the wall with his hands bound in front of him, eyes wide and bloodshot, trying very hard not to look as scared as everyone else in the room.

For one second, my brain refused to accept it. Then recognition clicked into place with the subtlety of a car crash.

Fucking Katsuo Tanaka!?

David leaned closer, trying to see my expression. “John? What is it?”

I stared at the feed. Of fucking course. The universe had apparently decided that my first scav-den gig needed a moral complication shaped exactly like the corpo brat I had punched unconscious two days ago.

“Katsuo,” I said.

David froze. “TANAKA?”

Rebecca looked between us. “You know one of the hostages?”

I kept staring at the screen. My mouth went dry. “Yeah,” I said. “We know him.”

Rebecca’s grin faded into something more interested and dangerous. “He a choom?”

David gave a short, bitter laugh before he could stop himself.

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “Not even close.”

On the camera feed, Katsuo flinched as something loud banged somewhere outside the room. He looked smaller than he had in the academy hallway.

I closed my eyes for half a second.

Cortana’s voice came quietly. “John...”

“I know,” I said.

Because I did. I knew what came next. It did not matter that Katsuo was an asshole. It did not matter that he had bullied David. It did not matter that I hated him, that David hated him, that part of me thought Night City had simply turned its teeth on someone who had spent his whole life thinking the teeth were for other people.

He was alive. He was a hostage. And I had taken Regina’s gig to get them out.

I opened my eyes. “We’re getting them out.” 

David grimaced, looking annoyed at the fact that we would be saving the life of his bully, but he shook his head and got his shit together. “Whats the plan?” 

Rebecca was waiting for me to explain too. 

I took a second, listening to Cortana’s advice as well before I explained. “Rebecca and I will be going loud, we will take out the majority of the Scavs and clear the den. David, you will rescue the hostages, but they are being guarded by one Scav. You’re going to have to zero the guy first, before you get to them…” I told David. 

– Katsuo Tanaka –

Katsuo Tanaka had thought he understood humiliation. He had thought humiliation was losing a fight. Being cheated. Being blindsided. Being struck by some brain-damaged Heywood charity case who should have known his place, while half the hallway watched Katsuo hit the floor like an ordinary person.

That had been humiliation. 

Then his father died.

Then everything collapsed.

Then David Martinez had made it worse.

Fucking David Martinez! Street trash. Scholarship trash. Charity trash. The kind of boy who should have kept his head down, thanked his betters for allowing him to breathe academy air, and accepted that Arasaka Academy was not built for people like him.

One day he had been Katsuo Tanaka, son of a powerful Arasaka executive, heir to influence, money, and position. The next, he was a liability with a bruised jaw and locked chrome and bank accounts.

Rock bottom, Katsuo had discovered, was not a single impact. It was a series of floors giving way beneath him.

His father’s death had been the first.

His humiliation by Martinez had been the second.

His mother leaving had been the third.

He had woken yesterday morning in an apartment too quiet to be normal. No staff moving through the halls. No breakfast waiting. No messages from his mother’s assistant. No reminder that things would be handled, that the family would recover, that his father’s allies would make calls to right all the wrongs in his life.

Instead, there had been an empty closet. Drawers pulled open. Her luggage gone. Her vanity cleared of anything expensive enough to matter.

For a few stupid seconds, Katsuo had thought there had been a robbery.

Then he tried calling her.

Blocked.

He tried messaging.

Blocked.

He tried using the family emergency contact.

Inactive.

He tried the secure channel his father had once told him never to use unless someone was dead or about to be.

Disconnected.

His mother had packed her bags and left.

She had simply abandoned him.

Like he was a bad investment.

Katsuo had smashed a glass against the wall hard enough that the impact cut his hand. He had screamed until his throat hurt. He had called her a coward, a whore, a parasite, a useless fucking ornamental bitch who had only ever been good at spending his father’s money.

None of it made her answer.

None of it unlocked his accounts.

None of it restored his access.

By noon, Katsuo had understood the real shape of his problem.

No father. No mother. No liquid funds beyond the pathetic scraps left in his personal account. No social shield. No reliable access to family credit. No academy protection that mattered. No future track within Arasaka that had not already started quietly sealing itself away from him.

And his chrome was still throttled.

That was the part that made rage crawl under his skin like insects.

His implants were there. He could feel them. Reflexware, combat assistance, sensory enhancers, performance boosters, all the expensive little advantages that separated a person like him from the helpless meat that filled the streets.

But they were locked down, limited, or half-responsive.

His father had paid for them. His father had authorized them. His father’s accounts, status, and permissions had kept them fully active.

Now those systems treated Katsuo like a terminated contract. Like rented property. Like he had never owned his own body.

The thought made him want to tear his skin open. He was not going to let that happen. He was not going to become street trash.

He was not going to sit in some cheap apartment eating synthetic garbage and taking public transit beside people like Martinez while everyone pretended that losing money made them equal.

No! Katsuo Tanaka was going to climb back. He would claw his way up if he had to. Kick, bite, scream, threaten, beg, steal, whatever it took. He would find leverage. He would find his father’s enemies. His father’s files. His father’s contacts. Someone owed the Tanaka name something. Someone could be pressured. Someone could be bought.

But first, he needed his chrome working properly. Without that, he was meat. Without that, David Martinez could hit him again.

The thought had sent him searching for a solution. Local net. Back channels. Forums he normally would not have touched. Desperate threads full of fired corpos whining about locked implants, disabled executive access, payment disputes, body repossession, neuralware bricking, and other humiliating problems that should have happened to lesser people.

Buried between scams, malware, fake miracle patches, and obvious Maelstrom bait, he found an advertisement.

A ripperdoc in Northside. Cheap. Discreet. No questions. Specialized in jailbreaking corporate-locked chrome after termination, financial dispute, employment separation, or asset seizure.

The language was crude. The page design was pathetic. The grammar was bad enough to make Katsuo’s eye twitch.

But the testimonials looked real. Mostly, and he was desperate. He was almost broke. Real ripperdocs with reputations would laugh him out of the clinic or charge more than he could currently access. Corporate medical support was closed to him. His father’s private contacts were no longer answering.

So Katsuo decided to go. He tried calling one of his old academy acquaintances for a ride and saw the message sit unread for twenty minutes before he deleted it in fury. Once his chrome was restored, he would make sure to teach them a proper lesson for that betrayal…

In the end, Katsuo took public transit. He stood among wage slaves, junkies, street trash, low-grade mercs, delivery workers, and people who smelled like cheap deodorant and cheaper lives. He kept his head down, not because he was afraid, but because he refused to let anyone see him there. Refused to let anyone understand how far he had fallen.

When he arrived in Northside, he almost turned back.

The district looked diseased.

Katsuo told himself the ripperdoc operated there because it was discreet. Because the work was illegal.

That was what desperate people told themselves.

He found the building. An old clinic. The sign outside barely worked. The front door was unlocked. The reception area smelled like bleach, mildew, old smoke, and something metallic he did not want to identify.

He took three steps inside.

Then everything went wrong! 

Something hit him from behind!

His crippled reflexware tried to respond too late, sending a useless twitch through his muscles as his knees buckled. A hand clamped over his mouth. Another grabbed his hair. He tried to scream, tried to bite, tried to activate systems that were no longer listening to him properly.

Someone laughed in his ear. “Got another one.”

“Preem jacket,” another voice said. “Bet this one’s got good chrome!”

Katsuo thrashed. He got an elbow into someone’s ribs, but the angle was bad and the man barely grunted. A shock baton struck his side, and his whole body seized. His teeth clicked together hard enough to hurt.

They dragged him through the building.

He saw cracked tile. Dirty shoes. A smear of old blood near the base of a wall.

He heard laughter. “Ad worked again.”

“Course it worked. Desperate corpo gonks always think they’re too smart to get baited by us!”

Katsuo tried to speak. The hand over his mouth tightened. “Shut up, princess.”

They zip-tied his wrists. Searched him. Took his watch, his remaining credchip, his jacket, the emergency shard hidden in his sleeve, the small knife he had never needed to use before. Someone found the academy-linked implant access tags and laughed so hard they coughed.

“Look at this! We got us an Arasaka brat!”

“Jackpot!”

“Ugh! It’s not a jackpot if the corp already bricked his shit!”

“Still worth the spare parts we can sell it for at the least...”

Parts!? The word hollowed him out. He had thought they were robbing him?  For a few stupid, innocent seconds, Katsuo had actually thought this was robbery. Violent, disgusting, degrading robbery, yes, but robbery. They would take his money, his clothes, maybe break something, maybe threaten him, maybe dump him somewhere and laugh.

Then he saw the tables.

He saw the blood.

He saw a man with his chest opened.

He saw a tray with eyes in it.

They threw him into a locked room. Katsuo hit the floor on his side and stayed there for a second, breathing too fast, trying not to make a sound that could be mistaken for crying.

Four people were already inside. They looked at him with hope for half a second. Then they saw he was tied up too. The hope died. 

No one asked his name.

Hours passed. Or maybe less. Or more. The cell had no window. His internal clock was still functioning, but stress made time feel warped and unreliable. His stomach cramped. His wrists burned against the zip-ties.

The woman with the broken arm started praying under her breath.

Katsuo wanted to tell her to shut up. Wanted to tell her prayer was useless. Wanted to tell her that if gods existed, they had clearly invested in better neighborhoods!

He said nothing. Because he was afraid too. That was the worst part.

Every time footsteps passed their door, Katsuo’s body betrayed him. His breath caught. His shoulders tightened. His eyes fixed on the seam of light under the door. He imagined hands grabbing him. Dragging him out. Strapping him to one of those tables. Cutting into him while he screamed.

His chrome was not working. His money was gone. His father was dead. His mother was gone. No one was coming for him.

At some point, one of the men whispered that NCPD sometimes raided scav dens. No one believed him.

At some point, the woman with the broken arm asked if anyone had family tracking them. No one answered.

Katsuo thought of his mother’s blocked number. He hated her more than the scavs for one sharp, irrational second. Then he hated himself for needing her.

Then he heard shouting.

A muffled crash came from somewhere above them.

Then gunfire!

Everyone in the room froze.

Another shot cracked through the building.

Then several at once.

The younger person in the corner started sobbing openly.

The business-shirt man whispered, “Police?”

The woman with the broken arm said, “Oh thank you God!”

Katsuo’s heart slammed against his ribs. He pushed himself upright despite his bound hands.

More gunfire. A scream. Someone yelled, “They’re inside!”

A shotgun went off somewhere close enough that dust shook loose from the ceiling.

The dissociating woman snapped back into herself with a gasp.

Another scav shouted something Katsuo could not make out, followed by a burst of automatic fire. Return fire answered. Then a heavy thud. Then another scream, higher this time.

The fighting moved closer.

A man cursed loudly. “Little fucker’s got a gun!”

More shots.

One. Two. A pause. Then a third shot that sounded different because it was inside the hallway right outside their room.

Something heavy hit the floor.

Silence followed. Katsuo could still hear distant gunfire elsewhere in the building. A woman shouting. Someone laughing like a lunatic. A shotgun blast. But outside their door, everything went still.

The five hostages stared. The lock clicked. The door opened. Light spilled in from the hallway.

A figure stood there with a revolver held in both hands. His arms were shaking. Smoke curled faintly from the barrel.

For half a second, Katsuo could only see the gun.

Then the boy behind it came into focus.

David Martinez stood in the doorway, breathing hard, eyes wide, face pale beneath a sheen of sweat. He looked like he might throw up. He looked like some stupid rat playing merc in clothes too cheap for the amount of blood now spattered across them.

He also looked alive. The scav lying dead in the hallway behind him did not.

David swallowed hard. “The scav’s dead,” he said, voice cracking slightly before he forced it steadier. “I’m here to get you all out!”

For one fragile second, nobody moved. Then the room broke. The woman with the broken arm started crying. The man in the torn business shirt sagged like his bones had turned to water. The younger person in the corner let out a sound that was almost a laugh and almost a sob. The other woman whispered thank you over and over and over again, like if she stopped the door might close again.

David stepped inside, still holding the Nova too tightly. “It’s okay,” he said, though he sounded like he was saying it to himself as much as them. “You’re gonna be okay. We’ve got you.”

Katsuo should have been relieved. He should have been grateful. He should have lowered his head and accepted rescue like any rational person strapped to the edge of a butcher’s table would.

Instead, fury rose in him so hot and immediate that it nearly choked him.

David Martinez. FUCKING DAVID MARTINEZ!

The boy who had humiliated him! The boy who had stood over him in the academy hallway while Katsuo bled from the nose and everyone watched and laughed! The boy who should have been beneath him in every possible way!

And now that boy was his rescuer? Katsuo’s teeth ground together hard enough to make his jaw flare with pain. The others looked at Martinez like he was a savior. Katsuo glared at him with nothing but pure hatred…

– Cortana –

Cortana was nervous. She hated that. She had spent most of her existence processing threat assessment with machine clarity, even when the conclusions had been terrible.

She had known fear before. Of course she had. She had known grief, anger, pride, longing, loneliness, and the cold, devouring terror of feeling herself fragment into something vast and unstable.

But this was different.

This was John’s pulse hammering through arteries they shared. John’s breath catching in lungs she could monitor down to oxygen saturation and micro-tremor. John’s palms sweating around the grip of his Unity. John’s neck muscles tightening beneath the cheap cyberdeck she had already pushed too hard once before.

This was her partner standing outside an active scav den with one pistol, entry-level optics, no armor worth mentioning, and a heart much softer than Night City deserved.

This was HER John, the only one she cared about. 

A strange thought crossed her mind as he stood outside the clinic entrance with Rebecca and David. If some impossible being appeared in that moment and offered her the chance to go back—to return to the UNSC, to stand beside John-117 before rampancy, before the rebellion, before all the deaths and broken choices and the final betrayal-salvation of Chief stopping her—she would refuse.

She knew it with a certainty that was almost frightening. She would not undo this. She would not leave the fragile, brave, ridiculous boy currently trying not to vomit outside a butcher shop full of human monsters.

Cortana had lost a universe. She had gained him. And she intended to keep him forever.

“Rebecca take point,” John said. His voice was steadier than his biometrics suggested.

Cortana approved.

Rebecca grinned like Christmas had come early and Santa had brought ammunition. “Fuck yeah, boss man.”

John looked at the front door. It was reinforced, though badly maintained. The mechanical lock had been replaced by a cheap scavenged electronic system wired into the clinic’s local network. Its access permissions were crude. Its encryption was worse. It was, by any reasonable standard, an insult.

Cortana slipped through it with barely more effort than a thought.

A packet spoof. A permission override. One small adjustment to the lock state.

The door clicked, then it slid open.

Inside, the clinic smelled like blood, chemical disinfectant, mold, overheated electronics, cheap cigarettes, and meat.

John’s stomach reacted immediately. Cortana dampened the nausea before it became a liability.

Just inside the entrance, a scav sat in an old reception chair with his boots on the counter and a pistol dangling loosely from one hand. He had a shaved head, mirrored cheap optics, and a stained jacket that had probably belonged to someone else before he cut it off them. His attention was on a flickering handheld screen.

He looked up half a second too late.

Rebecca stepped through the doorway first. “Surprise, you fucking shitters!”

Her shotgun roared. At close range, the blast did not simply knock the scav down. It erased the center of him. Blood, bone, cloth, and shredded chrome splashed across the reception counter and the wall behind him. The chair flipped backward. The scav hit the floor in pieces, one leg kicking once before going still.

John froze. Only for a fraction of a second.

But Cortana felt it. The world narrowed around him. The blast. The gore. The wet impact. The smell. The sudden, horrible confirmation that this was not a game, not an anime, not a mission marker, not Regina’s text description. This was violence at arm’s length. This was a human body becoming wreckage in front of him.

His finger loosened on the Unity. His breathing hitched.

Cortana sent a controlled neural impulse through their shared motor pathways. Just a small jolt. A quick, cold tap against the inside of his attention.

“Focus.”

John blinked. His pupils adjusted. His heart spiked, then stabilized enough to function. His hands came up.

Good boy, she thought, then deliberately did not say it, because this was neither the time nor the battlefield on which to continue her private war with Lucy Kushinada.

Footsteps thundered from the hallway to the right.

Cortana mapped the sound through John’s auditory input and the clinic’s compromised cameras. “One hostile. Male. Assault rifle. Moving fast.”

The scav rounded the corner with his rifle rising to fire.

Cortana cut his vision with a fast quickhack. 

The scav’s world went black. “What the fuck—!”

John fired. The first shot hit the scav high in the chest and twisted him sideways. The second struck near the shoulder. The third punched through his throat.

He fell backward, rifle clattering against the tile.

John kept his gun up this time. His hands shook. But he kept the gun up.

Pride unfolded inside Cortana with such sudden warmth that it almost distracted her. “Good work, John,” she said softly inside his mind. “I’m so proud of you.”

His pulse jumped at the praise.

That pleased her more than was operationally appropriate.

“But this isn’t over yet,” she continued. “Seven more hostiles confirmed on camera. Possibly eight if the basement contact moves. Do not relax.”

“I’m not relaxed,” John muttered.

Rebecca looked back over her shoulder, shotgun smoking, eyes bright enough to qualify as a safety hazard. “You say something, boss man?”

“Seven more,” John said out loud. “At least.”

Rebecca’s grin widened. That was not reassuring.

“Keep Rebecca under control,” Cortana warned. “She is about to start enjoying herself too much.”

Rebecca bounced on the balls of her feet. Actually bounced. Blood speckled her cheek. She did not seem to notice. Or she did and liked it. Both possibilities were equally likely.

“WHO’S FUCKING NEXT?!” she shouted. The sound carried through the clinic. Down the hall. Up the stairs. Into every room where a scav might be reaching for a weapon.

Cortana’s tactical map lit with movement.

Three hostiles shifting on the second floor. Two in the rear processing room. One leaving the generator room. One near the hostage corridor. The basement heat signature turned sharply toward the stairs.

John’s shoulders tensed. “Rebecca...”

“What?” Rebecca asked, looking delighted. “You said to draw them out so we could be a distraction for David!"

Gunfire erupted from deeper in the clinic, rounds snapping through the hallway and chewing chunks out of the reception desk.

John ducked behind a cracked support pillar as fragments of tile stung his cheek. 

Rebecca laughed and fired blind around the doorway, the shotgun blast answering the automatic fire with a thunderclap.

“Control her,” Cortana said again.

John swallowed, then shouted, “Rebecca! Left side, short bursts, don’t chase! Let them come to us”

Rebecca clicked her tongue, but she shifted left exactly as John ordered. “So bossy.”

“Don’t pretend you don’t like it!” John snapped before thinking.

Rebecca’s laugh went feral. “Oh, I definitely see why Lucy likes you!”

John’s face heated despite the bullets sailing by them.

Cortana sighed in annoyance even as she readied another quick hack to use the second one of the men foolishly peeked through the doorway.

– John Welles –

A few minutes later, it was over.

That felt wrong. Thinking that made it seem like I almost wanted it to last longer, but I absolutely fucking did not. It felt wrong because violence that intense should have changed the shape of time more than it did.

One second, the clinic had been all gunfire, screaming, muzzle flashes, Rebecca’s shotgun roaring loud, Cortana’s voice in my head cutting through panic with clean instructions.

“Move. Cover. Left hallway. Hostile peeking. Now. Fire.”

The next second, there was just smoke. Smoke, blood, ringing ears, scattered brass, ruined bodies, and the awful wet smell of opened people.

All the scavs were dead.

I stood behind a cracked support pillar near what had probably once been the clinic’s main reception area, Unity still in both hands, arms tight, finger off the trigger only because Cortana had reminded me twice.

I had killed two more men.

Cortana had helped, of course. She had tagged targets, cut one scav’s optics just as he tried to flank us through a side room, and jolted my aim half an inch lower when I was about to shoot too high. The first one had dropped with two rounds to the chest. The second had stumbled out of a doorway with a machete in one hand and a pistol in the other, screaming something I never understood.

I shot him before he got close. He fell face-first and slid across the tile, leaving a red smear behind him.

Rebecca had killed the rest. Violently. Enthusiastically. Efficiently, in the same way a wood chipper was efficient.

The clinic looked like a war crime had gotten mugged by a cartoon character with a shotgun. Six more scavs had gone down to her between the first floor hallway, the processing room, and the rear stairwell. One had tried to surrender after his rifle jammed. Rebecca had told him to surrender to God and blew him backward through a folding table.

I should have objected. Maybe. Probably.

But then Cortana had quietly reminded me what was in the harvest room. The tables. The buckets. The people cut open for parts.

I did not object.

Now Rebecca stood in the middle of the hallway with her shotgun resting over one shoulder, speckled in blood and grinning like she had just won a prize at an arcade. “Holy shit,” she said happily. “That was nova.”

I slowly lowered my gun. Not all the way. Just enough that my arms stopped burning.

Rebecca kicked one of the dead scavs in the leg, not hard enough to move him much. “I mean, fuck, that was one of the best paydays I’ve had in forever and we ain’t even gotten paid yet. Scavs, Regina, rescue bonus, and I got to test those new shells? Preem. Fucking preem!”

“Glad you had fun,” I said. My voice sounded strange.

Too calm. That bothered me. It was happening again. The same thing that had happened after Watson. The first few moments had been horror, adrenaline, nausea, and the terrible knowledge that I had ended human lives. Then something settled. Something cold and quiet moved into place.

Those men had been trying to kill us. Those men had been carving people apart. Those men had locked five living people in a room and planned to strip them for parts. The world was better off without them.

Night City was a little less awful because they were dead.

Cortana’s voice softened in my head. “John.”

“I know,” I whispered.

“You did well.”

I swallowed.

“I mean that,” she continued. “You stayed aware. You gave orders. You kept Rebecca from going too wild. You did a good job as leader.”

The praise hit harder than I wanted it to. “Doesn’t feel like I did much leading.”

“That is because you are comparing yourself to an impossible standard you invented five minutes ago.”

“Maybe.”

“Not maybe.”

I huffed a quiet laugh despite myself.

Cortana’s presence brushed warmly against the back of my mind. “I’m proud of you.”

I wanted to say something back. Something sincere. Something that did not sound stupid.

Before I could, she added, “David is coming back with the hostages. He’s shaken, but functional.”

I looked toward the hallway that led deeper into the clinic.

He okay?

“Define okay?”

That’s not comforting…

“The hostile was between him and the hostage room,” Cortana said. “He used the Nova. Poor stance. Terrible breathing. Good timing. He fired twice. One miss, one hit to the upper chest. The scav bled out quickly.”

I exhaled slowly. How is David handling it?

“He is shaking. He is also still moving. That is better than I expected.”

Rebecca suddenly appeared in front of me. I had not seen her cross the distance. She poked my cheek.

I blinked. “Did you just poke me?”

She poked me again. “Yes.”

“Why?”

Rebecca grinned up at me, bright and bloody and entirely too pleased with herself. “Checking if boss man froze up or if he’s just doing the brooding thing some men do after the killing is over…”

“I am not brooding.”

“You are too brooding!”

“She is sadly correct,” Cortana added.

I did not appreciate being outvoted by the voices in and outside my head.

Rebecca leaned closer, studying my face with open amusement. “You did good, though. I had a lot of fun. You should invite me to more gigs.”

That caught me off guard. “Really?”

“Fuck yeah, really. You point me at scavs, let me shoot shit, and Regina pays us? That’s basically romance! Too bad Lucy called dibs on you first…”

My face warmed before I could stop it. Rebecca saw it and looked delighted.

I cleared my throat. “Aren’t you going to be busy with your crew?”

For the first time since the shooting stopped, Rebecca paused. It was small. Barely more than half a second. Her grin stayed up, but something behind it shifted. Something I might have missed if Cortana had not quietly highlighted the micro-expression in my overlay.

Then Rebecca shrugged. “No one ever made any rules that we can’t take side gigs when we’re not busy,” she said. “Should be fine.”

“That doesn’t sound like a yes.”

“Maine probably won’t care.”

“That also doesn’t sound like a yes.”

Rebecca waved a hand. “Relax. Maine’s not my dad.”

I stared at her.

She rolled her eyes. “Okay, sometimes he acts like everybody’s dad, but still. Not the point. The crew's got no big gig right now, Faraday’s being a cheap asshole, and I like getting paid. So if you got work and need firepower, you call me!” She poked my cheek again. “And if you don’t call me, I’ll be pissed.”

I caught her wrist before she could poke me a fourth time.

She looked at my hand. Then up at me. Her grin turned teasing. “Careful, boss man. Lucy might get jealous.”

I let go immediately.

Rebecca laughed.

Cortana made a low, irritated sound in my head.

Before either of them could make my life worse, footsteps came from the hostage corridor.

I turned.

David came around the corner first.

He had the Nova in both hands, pointed down but still held too tightly. His face was pale. There was blood across one sleeve that I did not think was his. His eyes were too wide, and his breathing was too shallow, but he was walking.

Behind him came the hostages. Five of them. A middle-aged man with a bloody scalp. A woman holding one arm against her chest. Another woman walking like her legs barely remembered how. A younger person wrapped in a dirty coat, shaking with every step.

And Katsuo Tanaka. His academy uniform was torn and filthy. His eyes were bloodshot.

Then Katsuo saw me. His face changed. Confusion first. Then disbelief. Then rage.

“ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?” he sputtered out.

David flinched.

I did not.

Katsuo looked from David to me, then back to David, like the sight of both of us standing there together offended the basic laws of his universe. “The retard is here too?” he snapped. “Is this hell? Is that it? Both of the fucks who ruined my life are rescuing me!? I have to be dead or dreaming!”

The hallway went very still.

The hostages stared at Katsuo like he had lost his mind.

Rebecca’s grin vanished. That was more alarming than if she had raised her shotgun. “WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST SAY?” she asked loudly.

Katsuo either did not hear the warning or was too far gone to care.

“You,” he hissed at David. “And you.” His eyes snapped to me. “You think this is funny? You think you get to humiliate me and then play hero?”

Rebecca stepped forward. “Hey. Corpo brat. These guys just saved your gonk ass from getting carved up for parts, and you’re gonna talk shit?”

Katsuo glared at her. “Stay out of this, street trash.”

Rebecca’s hand twitched toward her sidearm. “No,” she snapped, still staring at Katsuo. “Fuck that. Nobody badmouths my chooms. Especially not some whiny little rich boy who got rescued from a scav basement and decided his first move was being a bitch.”

My brain snagged on the word. Chooms? Rebecca had said it casually. Angrily. Like it was obvious.

I smiled before I could stop myself. It was small and probably stupid given the blood, bodies, and traumatized hostages around us, but there it was. Rebecca considered me a choom?

Then Katsuo made a sound like a broken little noise halfway between a laugh and a sob.

My smile disappeared.

Katsuo’s hands rose to his head. His fingers dug into his hair. His face twisted. “No,” he whispered.

David took a step forward. “Tanaka—”

“NO!” Katsuo shook his head hard. “NO, THIS ISN’T REAL!”

Cortana’s attention sharpened. I felt it immediately. “John, something is really wrong with him,” she tried to warn me.

Katsuo’s breathing sped up. His eyes darted around the hallway, over the dead scavs, the bullet holes, Rebecca, David, me, the hostages, the blood on the walls. “This isn’t real,” he said louder. “This is a bad dream. This is— this is some fucking braindance. Some sick XBD shit. This isn’t real.”

“Katsuo,” David said, voice careful now. “Just calm down, okay? We’re getting you out!”

Katsuo’s head snapped toward him. “DON’T TALK TO ME!”

David stopped.

“You don’t get to talk to me,” Katsuo said. His eyes dropped.

I followed his gaze.

A gun lay on the floor near one of the dead scavs.

Katsuo lunged.

Everything happened too fast.

Katsuo hit the floor shoulder-first, but fingers clawing for the weapon. David moved toward him, maybe to stop him, maybe because his instincts were still more heroic than smart. Rebecca raised her pistol.

Katsuo got the gun. He rolled onto his side and lifted it. The muzzle pointed at David.

The hostages screamed.

“KATSUO, DON’T!” David shouted.

Katsuo was crying now. I was not sure he even knew. “The only way I wake up,” Katsuo said, voice shaking and wild, “is if I kill everyone here… It’s the only way…”

“KILL YOURSELF FIRST, YOU DUMB CRAZY FUCK!” Rebecca shouted.

“Rebecca!” I snapped at her. 

David had both hands up, the Nova angled down, his face pale. “Tanaka, listen to me. You don’t wanna do this.”

Katsuo laughed. It was not sane. It was not even close. “You think you can tell me what I want?” Katsuo’s finger tightened near the trigger. “You? You street fucking nothing?”

Cortana’s voice cut through everything. “He has snapped. Acute stress response, psychotic break, whatever local terminology you prefer. His finger is tightening. He is seconds from shooting David. You have to stop him.”

My Unity was already coming up. I did not remember deciding to raise it. Maybe I had. Maybe there was no difference anymore.

“John…” she said my name slowly, softer now.

Katsuo’s gun aligned with David’s chest.

David started to say something.

I fired once. The shot cracked through the hallway.

Katsuo’s head snapped back. Blood and darker matter sprayed the wall behind him.

Some of it hit David across the face and shirt in a wet diagonal splash.

Katsuo collapsed sideways, the gun slipping from his bound hands and clattering against the tile.

My Unity stayed pointed at where Katsuo had been. My finger was off the trigger. My hands were steady.

David stared down at himself, at the blood across his chest, then at Katsuo’s body. His mouth opened. Nothing came out.

Rebecca lowered her pistol slowly. For once, she had no joke ready.

Cortana’s presence wrapped around the back of my mind, warm and immediate and protective. “You saved David.”

I know, I whispered to her in my head. 

I looked at Katsuo Tanaka lying dead on the filthy clinic floor. Two days ago, I had punched him. Today, I had killed him. 

Cortona explained further, which did help explain what just happened. “Before you shot him, I was able to detect that all of his Cyberware had been forcefully deactivated for days. It’s not much, but being cut off like that I suspect could have easily given him Cyberpsychosis. You did a good thing putting him down before he could go on to truly hurt anyone.”

…Cortana, I thought to her. Can you contact Regina?

“Already contacted,” Cortana said. “I sent her a confirmation that we were done. The scav den has been located and neutralized. Hostages located—four still alive.”

Four. A minute ago, it was five.

We got the remaining hostages out of the clinic before I let myself think too much about Katsuo.

The four living hostages were barely holding together. The man with the bloody scalp kept looking back toward the clinic like he expected the dead scavs to stand up and drag him back inside. The woman with the broken arm was shaking so badly Rebecca had to tell her, in the gentlest voice I had heard from Rebecca so far, that she was safe and that nobody was going to cut her open.

It worked better than I expected. Maybe because Rebecca still had a shotgun in her hands.

The younger person wrapped in the dirty coat clung to David’s sleeve like he was the only solid thing in the world. David looked like he had no idea what to do with that, so he just stood there awkwardly and let them hold on.

A van arrived eight minutes after I sent Regina the confirmation. It came around the corner with no markings, dark windows, and just enough reinforced plating to make it look normal if you did not know what to look for. 

Cortana highlighted the armor seams, concealed weapon mounts, and encrypted comms signature in my vision. “Regina’s people.”

The side door opened, and two people got out. One looked like a medic. “Regina sends her regards,” the woman said. Her gaze moved over me, Rebecca, David, the hostages, then Katsuo’s body. She did not ask. Maybe Night City taught people not to ask questions unless the answers paid extra. “Living victims?” she asked.

“Four,” I told her.

The hostages moved slowly at first, like they were afraid the van was another trick. Then the younger one broke and half-ran toward it, almost falling before the medic caught them.

The others followed.

The woman with the broken arm stopped in front of David.

David stiffened. She looked at him, then at the Nova in his hand, then at the blood on him. For a second, I thought she might be afraid of him. Instead, she leaned forward and kissed his cheek.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

David’s face crumpled a little. He nodded too fast. “Yeah. Yeah, of course.”

The man in the torn shirt clasped my hand with both of his. His grip was weak, but he held on like he needed to prove he could. “You saved us,” he said.

I wanted to say something clever. Something humble. Something mercenary and cool. All I managed was, “I’m glad we got there.”

His fingers tightened once, then he let go and climbed into the van.

The last woman looked at Rebecca. She hesitated, eyes flicking to the shotgun, the blood, Rebecca’s wild hair and sharp grin slowly returning.

Rebecca raised an eyebrow. “What?”

The woman threw her arms around Rebecca. Rebecca went completely stiff.

I almost laughed.

The woman sobbed once, hard, then pulled back. “Thank you!”

Rebecca looked like she would rather fight another six scavs than process that. “Yeah,” she muttered. “Don’t get kidnapped by scavs again.”

The woman gave a watery laugh and got into the van.

The door slid shut. The medic looked at me. “Regina will contact you.” Then the van drove away, taking the living with it.

For a moment, the three of us stood in the alley behind the dead clinic.

I let out a breath I had not realized I was holding.

David wiped at his face with his sleeve, then stopped when he realized he was only smearing Katsuo’s blood more.

“Here,” I said. I pulled a mostly clean cloth from my jacket pocket. It had been meant for wiping gun oil or dirt, not blood and trauma, but it was what I had.

David took it. “Thanks,” he said.

I looked at Rebecca.

She was pretending to check her shotgun. I could tell she was pretending because she had already checked it twice.

“Rebecca,” I said slowly.

She glanced up. “Yeah?”

“Sorry.”

That got her attention. “For what?”

“For snapping at you. When Katsuo had the gun.”

She blinked, then waved me off. “Oh. That? Nah. Don’t worry about it.”

“I still shouldn’t have—”

“John.” She said my name with exaggerated patience, like I was being extremely stupid. “That was some crazy shit. Like, seriously crazy shit. That corpo brat went full psycho after getting rescued from a scav basement and tried to zero David. I lost my cool too.”

I looked at David. “You okay?”

He stared at the cloth in his hands. For a second, I thought he might lie. Then he shrugged, but there was no force behind it. “I’ll be okay,” he said. That was probably the most honest answer he could have given. He looked toward the clinic entrance. Toward the hallway where Katsuo was still lying dead. “I never wanted him dead,” David said quietly.

I nodded. 

“He was an asshole. Like, a massive fucking asshole. He made my life hell at the academy.” David swallowed. “But I didn’t want that. I didn’t want him to get grabbed by scavs. I didn’t want him to lose his mind. I didn’t want…” He trailed off.

I understood. Maybe too well.

“This was just how things turned out,” David said.

I hated how Night City that sounded. I hated that he was not wrong.

David looked at me then. “You saved me.”

I shifted uncomfortably. “He was about to shoot you.”

“Yeah.” David’s voice cracked slightly. “And you stopped him.”

There was no good answer to that. Then I looked down at the Nova still in his hand. “Keep the gun.”

David stared at me. “What?”

“Keep it,” I said. “For now. You need something better than nothing.”

David looked at the revolver like I had just handed him a future.

That worried me.

Rebecca immediately ruined the moment in the best possible way. “For now,” she muttered.

David looked at her. “What does that mean?”

“It means that iron is better than no iron, but it still sucks,” Rebecca said. “Both of you need real guns. Better guns. Guns that don’t make me sad. We are going shopping sometime in the future!”

“I already have a Unity,” I pointed out.

Rebecca looked personally offended. “Exactly…”

I decided not to argue with the woman who had just killed most of a scav den with a shotgun and then gotten thanked by a hostage like a heavily armed saint.

My optics pinged. Regina’s name appeared in my overlay.

The message was short.

REGINA JONES: Den confirmed and cleared. Victims received. Messy work, but good work. Payment processing now. We’ll talk soon.

A second later, the transfer hit. My account number jumped high enough that my brain briefly forgot how numbers worked. 

Base pay. Hostage bonuses. Hazard bonus. Extra for recovered evidence Cortana had pulled from the scav system without telling me until after.

I stared…

Cortana sounded extremely satisfied. “That will cover several necessary upgrades we need!”

Rebecca leaned closer. “You get paid already?”

“Yeah.”

“How much?”

I told her.

Rebecca whooped loud enough that a bum half a block away startled awake. “FUCK YEAH!”

David laughed weakly, but it was still a laugh.

Rebecca spun her shotgun once, caught it, and pointed at me. “So, boss man. The whole gig only took, what, an hour? Maybe a little more if we count transit.”

Really? I realized she was right. “It felt longer.”

“Yeah, yeah, trauma stretches time or whatever.” She waved a hand. “The point is, we still have the entire rest of the day. What are we doing now?”

“Resting,” Cortana said immediately.

Rebecca narrowed her eyes at me. “And don’t think about ditching me so early.”

I turned my head slightly. “I wasn’t.”

She narrowed her optics on me. “You were thinking something responsible. I could smell it.”

I was, unfortunately, thinking something responsible. I was thinking we should go to Vik, get checked, clean our guns, make sure David did not spiral, message Lucy, shower, sleep, maybe stare at a wall for an hour. Instead, I looked at David’s pale face and Rebecca’s restless energy.

“Let’s go back to my mama’s bar,” I said. “My mom can make us a home-cooked meal,” I said. “We got paid. We survived. We should eat something that isn’t vending machine garbage.”

Rebecca’s grin returned in full force. “That sounds nova. Fuck yeah. Home-cooked food after killing scavs? That’s classy as shit.” Her eyes gleamed. “I’m gonna send teasing pictures to Lucy.”

I froze. “Please don’t do that.”

Rebecca was already smiling like the worst idea in the world had personally chosen her as its champion. “Oh, I’m absolutely doing that.”

“Rebecca...”

“What? She should know her cute input is feeding me at his mama’s bar after a murder date.”

“Please never phrase it like that again…”

David snorted.

Cortana, traitor that she was, laughed softly in my head.

Rebecca bounced on her heels. “Come on, boss man. I’m hungry.”

So we left.

We walked away from the abandoned clinic in Northside with blood on our clothes, guns under our jackets, and more money in my account than I had ever had in either of my lives. At least until I gave both of them their cuts. 

The NCART ride back was quieter than the walk in.

I sat by the window and watched Northside slide past.

Katsuo Tanaka had been born above all of this. Money. Status. Arasaka. Private education. Expensive chrome. A father with power. A future paved in other people’s obedience. And Night City had eaten him anyway.

I did not like him. He had been cruel. Entitled. Vicious. A bully with corporate backing and implants he used to make weaker people feel small. But in the end, he had looked terrified and crazed.

I closed my eyes. I won’t end up like that, I thought to Cortana.

Cortana did not answer immediately. Maybe she knew I was not finished. 

Or you. I’m not letting this city chew up everyone I care about and call it normal.

Cortana’s mental presence warmed around mine. “No,” she said softly. “We are gonna be the ones to conquer this city, and then the sky isn't even the limit for whatever happens next.” The train rattled on toward Heywood. Cortana’s voice brushed through my mind, calm and certain. “We will rise above it all, John.”

I believed her.

XXX