Chipping In! 32 (Patreon)

Chapter 32:

– John Welles –

A machete hissed through the space where my head had been.

I ducked beneath the merc’s arm, close enough to smell stale sweat, blood, and the chemical bite of whatever combat stimulant was boiling through his system. Time seemed to stretch around me. I saw the surprise widening his pupils, the muscles bunching in his forearm, and the way his weight had committed to the swing and left his forward knee exposed.

Cortana painted the joint with a pulsing red outline.

I pivoted and drove the heel of my boot into the side of his knee.

The joint snapped with a crack that cut through the gunfire raging elsewhere in the district. His leg folded sideways beneath him, and he collapsed with a scream as the machete clattered from his hand. The merc clutched his ruined knee and glared up at me through pain-glazed eyes. “You fucking freak! I’ll fucking kill—” he howled.

I backhanded him.

The blow still lifted him off his feet and launched him across the alley. He struck the concrete wall hard enough to crack the stained plaster, then dropped beside a pile of ruptured trash bags. His head lolled forward. I had no idea whether that snapped his neck or not.

A long, breathy moan rolled through the inside of my skull. “Ohhh, John,” Cortana moaned.

My foot caught on a piece of broken pavement, and I stumbled before catching myself. What the fuck, Cortana? 

A wave of arousal and smug satisfaction spilled through our shared mind. “That was so hot,” Cortana purred. “Watching you crush all those guys with the body I built for you…”

A shadow moved behind me.

Cortana’s warning flashed across my vision half a second before a metal bat whistled toward the back of my head. My body reacted before the thought had fully formed. I dropped into a crouch, and the bat passed through my hair before smashing into the wall with a metallic clang.

The merc who had swung it staggered as the impact rebounded through his arms.

Rebecca’s Carnage thundered.

The blast hit him squarely in the chest. His torso collapsed around the impact before the center of it erupted. Armor, bone, and meat burst from his back in a wet red cloud. What remained of him flew several feet and struck the pavement with a massive hole punched through his chest.

For one frozen moment, I could see the alley through him.

Then he folded in on himself.

Rebecca stood behind the smoking barrel of her shotgun, her eyes wide and her grin wider. Blood flecked her cheeks, and she looked happier than anyone had a right to look while surrounded by bodies and burning garbage.

Then again, this was Rebecca.

I glanced from the dead merc to Rebecca and tried to recover what remained of my dignity. “I had him,” I said.

Rebecca braced the Carnage against one narrow shoulder and gave me a pitying look. “Sure you did,” she replied.

I was distracted… 

Warm amusement rippled through our shared nervous system. 

A scrape of metal farther down the alley pulled my attention away from both of them.

Marcus stood near the opposite entrance, where he had spent most of the fight retreating while sending his people at us in twos and threes. Bodies lay between us—some shredded by Rebecca’s grenades, others twisted around ruined implants or broken limbs. Smoke rolled along the alley walls, carrying the stink of scorched plastic, blood, and ruptured intestines.

Marcus had hardly gotten any of it on him. He had stayed behind his crew through the entire fight, shouting orders and threats while they died for him. Every time we advanced, he found another man to put between himself and us.

Now he had run out of men.

His Unity pistol moved between Rebecca and me. The barrel shook so badly that Cortana’s projected firing line jittered across both our bodies.

Marcus retreated until his back nearly struck the wall behind him. “Stay back! Both of you stay the fuck back!” he shouted.

Rebecca’s manic grin sharpened as she took one casual step toward him. “Or what?” she asked.

Marcus thrust the pistol toward her, though the shaking in his hand only worsened. “I’ll shoot!” he warned.

Rebecca glanced around at the men who had already tried that. “You and everybody else, choom,” she replied.

Marcus wrapped his other hand around the pistol grip and fought to steady it. “I mean it!” he insisted.

Rebecca shifted her shotgun against her shoulder and stared down its barrel at him. “So did everybody else,” she said.

Marcus looked at the mangled remains of his crew. Whatever stimulant had been keeping him aggressive was losing its fight against terror.

His lips trembled as he looked between us. “You’re fucking monsters,” he whispered.

That almost made me laugh. I gestured toward the dead mercenaries scattered throughout the alley. “You brought ten men in here to kill us,” I reminded him.

Marcus shook his head violently, as though he could reject the evidence surrounding him. “That wasn’t how this was supposed to go!” he protested.

I took a slow step forward. “No?” I asked.

Marcus pressed himself against the wall and stared at the bodies between us. “No! This was supposed to be easy! We were supposed to hit Maine’s crew from behind. Strip their chrome, have some fun with the women before we finish them, and then collect our eddies. That was the fucking job!” he babbled.

The amusement vanished from Rebecca’s face. Her manic grin collapsed into something colder and uglier. Her eyes fixed on Marcus with sudden, absolute hatred. Rebecca lowered the barrel of her Carnage toward his stomach. “...Have some fun?” she asked.

Marcus seemed to realize what he had admitted. His mouth worked soundlessly before he found his voice. “I didn’t mean—” he stammered.

My teeth ground together.

Rebecca settled the shotgun firmly against her shoulder. “Let’s see how much fun you have with your guts on the pavement,” she growled.

She pulled the trigger.

The shotgun clicked empty.

Rebecca stared at the useless weapon as betrayal spread across her face. “Ah, dammit,” she cursed.

Marcus fired.

I crossed the distance between Rebecca and me before the first muzzle flash disappeared. One arm hooked beneath her knees, the other wrapped around her back, and I lifted her into another princess carry as bullets tore through the space where she had been standing.

Rebecca looped an arm around my neck and squealed directly into my ear. “YES! AGAIN!” she cheered.

Cortana recoiled inside my head as offended jealousy flooded our shared nervous system. “Oh, for fuck’s sake! That is the second one!” Cortana hissed.

I kicked away from another projected line of fire. “Busy!” I snapped silently.

Cortana flooded my optics with targeting information and predictive vectors. “I noticed!” Cortana shot back.

Marcus swung the pistol after us and kept pulling the trigger.

I wasn’t faster than his bullets. Nothing about the augmentation let me watch a round leave the barrel and casually step aside. I didn’t need to be.

I was faster than Marcus.

Cortana tracked the movement of his wrist, the angle of his shoulders, the tension building in his trigger finger, and every minute correction of the pistol’s barrel. Lines of predicted fire flashed across my vision before each shot.

A glowing trajectory appeared to my left. “Right,” Cortana ordered.

I kicked off the pavement.

A bullet struck the wall behind my left shoulder.

A second trajectory cut through the space above us. “Down,” Cortana ordered.

I dropped low without loosening my hold on Rebecca. Two rounds passed overhead and punched sparks from a rusted fire escape.

Rebecca laughed against my chest as I accelerated out of Marcus’s line of fire. “Holy shit, you’re quick now!” she exclaimed.

I ducked behind the burned-out shell of a car and looked down at the woman in my arms. “Could you reload?” I asked.

Rebecca glanced toward the weapon she had left lying in the middle of the alley. “My shotgun’s on the ground,” she replied.

I looked at the Carnage sitting several meters behind us. “Of course it is,” I muttered.

Cortana appeared beside the wrecked car with her hands planted on her hips. “This would be considerably easier if you put her down,” Cortana grumbled.

I tightened my arm around Rebecca as another bullet punched through the car’s shattered rear window. And let him shoot her? 

Cortana flicked a new firing path across my vision. “I didn’t say you should let him shoot her. I’m merely observing that she has received two princess carries, and I have received none,” Cortana replied.

I twisted sideways and sprinted beneath the glowing trajectory. ‘You don’t weigh anything,’ I thought back.

Cortana manifested directly in my path, forcing me to run through her projected body. “I can simulate weight,” Cortana reminded me.

I planted one foot against the alley wall and launched myself sideways as Marcus fired again. This isn’t the time! I retorted.

Cortana vanished before reappearing beside me with an indignant glare. “There is never going to be a better time to establish an equitable princess-carry policy,” Cortana argued.

Marcus kept firing as quickly as his finger could work. His discipline disintegrated with every miss. The pistol bucked wildly in his hand, shots striking walls, pavement, dumpsters, and the unconscious merc I had thrown across the alley.

Cortana counted the rounds inside my head while I followed the paths she projected through the smoke. Seven. Eight. Nine.

I sprang behind the carcass of the burned-out car as the tenth round passed over us and shattered a window.

The eleventh struck the pavement near my heel.

I stepped out before Marcus could adjust, and the twelfth passed harmlessly behind me.

The Unity’s slide locked back.

Marcus pulled the trigger again.

Click.

He stared at the empty weapon as the last of the color drained from his face. “Fuck,” he whispered.

Rebecca smiled up at him from my arms and nodded toward her abandoned Carnage. “Now let's kill him slowly…” she suggested.

Marcus hurled the empty pistol at us, turned, and ran. His boots slipped through the blood coating the alley, but he recovered and sprinted toward the far exit. Marcus threw a terrified glance over his shoulder. “I didn’t sign up for this shit! Faraday lied to us! You hear me? Faraday fucking lied!” he screamed.

I shifted Rebecca’s weight and prepared to chase him.

A line of red light flashed across the alley.

It passed through Marcus’s neck so cleanly that he managed another two steps before his head separated from his shoulders.

His body pitched forward and skidded across the pavement. His head struck the alley wall, rebounded, and rolled to a stop beside an overflowing drain. The expression on his face remained fixed in wide-eyed disbelief.

Lucy stepped through the drifting smoke behind him.

Her monowire burned crimson between her fingers, glistening where Marcus’s blood evaporated from it. She retracted the wire with a flick of her wrist and continued toward us with a calm strut.

David followed several paces behind her with my Satara in his hands. Fresh blood covered one side of his face and Gloria’s yellow jacket, but he was upright, alert, and apparently uninjured.

Relief hit me hard.

David was alive.

Lucy was alive.

Rebecca was still in my arms and seemed determined to remain there indefinitely.

Rebecca looked from Marcus’s severed head to Lucy and released an offended huff. “Kill-stealing bitch,” she complained.

Lucy glanced pointedly at the empty shotgun on the pavement. “Then don’t let them run away from you so easily,” she replied.

Rebecca tightened her arm around my neck and scowled at her. “I was busy!” she protested.

Lucy’s gaze moved slowly over Rebecca’s position in my arms. “Being carried?” she asked. Lucy’s eyes moved from Rebecca’s arms around my neck to the arm I had beneath her knees. One pale eyebrow rose.

Rebecca snuggled closer against my chest and smiled triumphantly at Lucy. “This is princess carry number two for your information,” she announced.

Lucy’s eyes narrowed.

I gulped.

Cortana made a noise in my head that sounded remarkably similar to a growl. She appeared directly in front of me and pointed imperiously at the pavement. “Put her down,” Cortana ordered.

For once, Lucy and Cortana were in complete agreement.

…I might have put Rebecca down a little too quickly.

In my defense, Lucy and Cortana glared at me at exactly the same time.

Rebecca dropped the last foot to the pavement. Her boots slipped out from beneath her. “Eep!” she squeaked. She landed squarely on her ass. For a second, she sat amid the blood, spent casings, and scattered pieces of Marcus’s crew, staring up at me in betrayed disbelief. Rebecca’s lower lip pushed into an exaggerated pout. “What the fuck, John?” she demanded.

I winced as I looked down at her. “Sorry,” I said.

Rebecca slapped one palm against the pavement. “You dropped me!” she complained. Rebecca climbed to her feet and rubbed her backside. “You’ve got some serious performance problems if that’s how you handle a girl after carrying her around, choom,” she complained.

“I was under pressure,” I explained.

Rebecca cocked her head. “From what?” she asked.

I pointed at Lucy.

Lucy’s glare shifted from Rebecca to me.

I immediately lowered my hand. “Never mind,” I muttered.

Rebecca followed the aborted gesture and rounded on Lucy. “And what’s your problem? You jealous I got a princess carry?” she challenged. “TWO OF THEM.”

Lucy drew herself upright and gave Rebecca a cool, measured look. “Princess carries are reserved for outputs,” she declared.

Rebecca planted both hands on her hips. “That sounds like a rule you just invented,” she accused.

Lucy glanced at me before reluctantly conceding a fraction of ground. “Sometimes friends qualify too, but the quota for friends should be one per day at most,” she added, sounding reluctant.

Rebecca froze.

Lucy seemed to realize her mistake one second too late.

Rebecca’s eyes widened until they looked ready to pop out of her head. “I FUCKING KNEW IT!” she shrieked.

She launched herself at Lucy.

Lucy had carved apart professional mercenaries without looking at them. She had decapitated Marcus before he had realized she was anywhere nearby. She was completely unprepared for Rebecca hugging her.

Rebecca’s arms locked around Lucy’s waist and lifted her halfway off the pavement. Lucy stiffened, her eyes going wide as Rebecca swung her from side to side.

Rebecca buried her face against Lucy’s chest. “I knew we were kickass chooms now! I knew I’d wear you down! You finally admitted we’re friends!” she shouted.

Lucy struggled to wedge an arm between them. “I said friends sometimes qualify,” she corrected.

Rebecca squeezed her more tightly. “You said I was your friend!” she insisted.

Lucy tried to pry Rebecca’s hands apart. “That is not what I said,” she denied.

Rebecca rocked them both triumphantly from side to side. “Too late! I heard it, John heard it, David heard it, and the whole fucking alley heard it,” she declared.

Lucy’s expression flattened into a promise of future violence. “Rebecca,” she warned.

Rebecca kicked her feet happily through the air. “Best chooms forever!” she proclaimed.

Lucy’s monowire port flickered ominously. “Put me down,” she ordered.

Rebecca wrapped herself even more tightly around her. “Nope,” she chirped.

Rebecca either failed to notice the glow from Lucy’s wrist or considered potential dismemberment an acceptable price for victory.

I decided not to get involved.

David came to stand beside me, still holding the Satara. Blood covered one side of his face and stained the bright yellow collar of Gloria’s jacket. Cortana immediately scanned him before I could ask. Her assessment swept across my vision. David had no penetrating wounds or fractures, his cardiac rhythm and neural load remained within acceptable limits, and the blood covering him belonged to someone else.

He was all right.

David watched Rebecca enthusiastically squeeze the life out of an increasingly murderous Lucy. Then he slowly turned his head toward me.

The look on his face asked, What the fuck is going on?

I gave him the only answer I had.

My mouth tightened into a grimace as I met his eyes. Don’t ask. My life is weird, I tried to communicate.

Somehow, he understood.

David nodded once and wisely turned his attention elsewhere.

He reversed the Satara and offered it to me by the grip, its twin barrels smeared with blood and fragments of something I chose not to examine too closely. Heat shimmered above its charging assembly.

David reluctantly extended the shotgun another inch. “Here,” he said. His fingers remained curled around the grip.

I reached for it.

He didn’t release it.

I pulled gently.

David tightened his hold.

I raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you planning to give it back?” I asked.

David stared stubbornly at the weapon. “Yeah…” he answered with one word. 

I gave the shotgun another careful tug. “Because this feels a lot like you’re trying to keep it,” I observed.

David braced his other hand against the stock. “I’m giving it back,” he insisted.

I stopped pulling and looked pointedly at his white-knuckled fingers. “Then let go,” I told him.

David gazed down at the Satara with naked longing. “This thing punched through a guy’s skull like it wasn’t even there,” he said.

I tightened my grip on the weapon. “I know. That’s why I like it,” I replied.

David’s eyes moved appreciatively along the shotgun’s charging assembly. “The recoil barely moved me with the Sandy active,” he explained.

I glanced at the fresh blood covering his face. “That’s concerning on several levels,” I said.

David gave the Satara one final admiring look. “And it charges so fast!” he added.

I fixed him with my best attempt at an authoritative stare. “David,” I warned. “Let it go, man.”

He finally loosened his grip.

I snatched the Satara before he could change his mind and settled it across my shoulder with a grin.

David watched the weapon leave his hands as though I had taken away his favorite pet.

I adjusted the shotgun comfortably against my shoulder. “If you like it that much, you’ll just have to keep being a preem edgerunner until you can buy your own,” I told him.

David’s face turned red. “Come on, man,” he protested.

I widened my eyes with false innocence. “What?” I asked.

David dragged one bloodstained hand down his face. “Are you ever going to forget I said that?” he asked.

I laughed as the memory returned. “Hell no!” I answered.

David groaned and looked away.

I nudged his shoulder with mine. “That was our first gig together,” I reminded him.

David pulled the collar of Gloria’s jacket higher. “You don’t have to keep telling the story,” he muttered.

I ignored his attempt to hide. “I was supposed to quietly recover a stolen car for Regina, and you walked straight up to the joyriders, announced that we were ‘preem edgerunners,’ and got into a fistfight with some dumb street kids,” I recounted.

David dropped the collar and glared at me. “They had a gun!” he protested.

I shifted the Satara on my shoulder. “One of them had a gun, which didn’t even fire. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t loaded,” I corrected. 

It was loaded. It didn’t fire because Cortana quickhacked it, but David didn’t need to know that part.

Cortana stepped between us in my vision and adopted the eager expression of someone offering a thoughtful gift. “If you would like, I can construct a flawless sensory reconstruction of the incident from your memories,” she offered to me. “It’ll be like having a braindance to always remember the memory of your first gig.”

I tried to keep my expression neutral. Not wanting David to know the air was talking to me.

David eyed me suspiciously. “Why are you smiling like that?” he asked.

I forced the corners of my mouth downward. “Nothing,” I answered.

Cortana began circling David’s oblivious form. “We could even create multiple viewing angles,” she suggested.

I considered the possibilities. “...Tempting,” I admitted out loud.

David’s suspicion deepened. “What’s tempting?” he demanded.

I turned my attention toward the far end of the alley. “...Still nothing,” I assured him.

Cortana raised one finger as another idea occurred to her. “Perhaps we should wait until he does something exceptionally gonk. The threat will carry greater weight if we unveil the reconstruction at a moment of maximum vulnerability,” she proposed.

I kept my gaze away from David. Maybe if he ever does some gonk shit again and I need to show his mother, I thought back.

Cortana went very still as she considered that possibility. “Weaponizing Gloria Martinez would be cruel, effective, and almost certainly bloodless. I approve,” she decided.

Behind us, Lucy finally managed to peel Rebecca away from herself. It took considerably more effort than her expression suggested she believed should have been necessary.

Rebecca kept one hand wrapped around Lucy’s arm. “Say it again!” 

Lucy pried at Rebecca’s fingers. “No,” she refused.

Rebecca leaned her head against Lucy’s shoulder. “Call me your choom!”

Lucy shoved at the side of Rebecca’s face. “Nooooooooo. Now let me go.” she repeated.

Rebecca allowed herself to be pushed away approximately three inches. “Best choom?” she suggested.

Lucy finally ripped her arm free. “...Absolutely not,” she answered. Lucy twisted away and shoved Rebecca toward her abandoned Carnage.

Lucy was being a bit tsundere. I’m pretty sure she actually liked Rebecca a lot more at this point than in canon. In canon they barely ever even hung out outside of gigs.

Rebecca skipped backward, laughing as she bent to retrieve it.

I turned toward Lucy.

The humor drained out of me as I looked her over properly. Blood marked her face, a shallow cut ran along the shoulder of her jacket, and several new tears showed near her waist. None of the blood appeared to be hers, but my body refused to relax until Cortana completed another scan.

Cortana’s assessment confirmed a superficial abrasion on Lucy’s left shoulder, with no ballistic trauma or meaningful blood loss.

Lucy was alive. She was mostly unhurt. She stood in front of me wearing that familiar guarded expression she used whenever something had frightened her more than she wanted anyone to know.

I stepped closer.

Her eyes flicked toward the blood on my clothes, then moved across my face, chest, and arms as she conducted an examination of her own. Some of the tension left her shoulders when she found nothing serious.

I smiled at her. “I’m glad you’re okay,” I told her.

Lucy’s expression softened immediately.

The mercenaries, the blood, and Rebecca loudly attempting to reload a shotgun behind us seemed to recede for a moment. Lucy reached up and placed one hand against my cheek, her thumb brushing beneath my eye.

Lucy held my gaze. “I told you I could handle myself,” she reminded me.

I covered her hand with mine. 

Lucy studied my face more closely.  Her gaze traveled over me one more time. “You’re okay too?” she asked.

I nodded toward the blue figure only I could see. “Cortana says I am,” I answered quietly so only she could hear me.

Cortana appeared beside Lucy and swept a critical gaze over me. “Physically he is. His habit of carrying other women remains a serious neurological defect,” she clarified.

I ignored that.

Lucy’s thumb traced my cheek again. “Good,” she whispered.

Then she pulled me down and kissed me.

It was brief, hard, and full of all the fear she would never admit she had felt. I wrapped one arm around her waist and held her until she broke the kiss.

Behind us, Rebecca pumped a fresh shell into the Carnage…

– Faraday –

Faraday wasn’t a paranoid man by nature.

All right, that wasn’t true.

Faraday was paranoid as fuck.

A man did not survive as a fixer in Night City by trusting people, accepting coincidences, or assuming a plan would proceed as promised. Trust was an invitation to betrayal. Coincidences were usually somebody else’s plan. Promises lasted exactly as long as the person making them believed breaking one would cost more than keeping it.

That was why Faraday had hired three separate mercenary crews through different intermediaries. It was why none of those crews knew about the others. It was why his command center was an armored surveillance bus disguised as a municipal utility vehicle, parked several blocks from the warehouse behind a valid city-services transponder and enough forged maintenance orders to survive a routine inspection.

It was why he had dead-man contingencies nested inside other dead-man contingencies, each ready to release a different collection of secrets if his biomonitor stopped transmitting.

All of that might have been excessive for the supposedly simple task of killing one mercenary crew.

It had also kept him alive this long.

Faraday sat surrounded by pale displays and shifting camera feeds, one hand resting against the arm of his chair while the other moved through the surveillance network. Images from streets, rooftops, alleys, storefronts, and traffic cameras covered the interior of the bus. Some occupied physical monitors built into the command console. Others floated across his optics in translucent layers that shifted whenever his attention moved.

At least, they had.

Every camera surrounding the warehouse itself had gone dark.

Faraday selected one of the dead feeds.

A frozen image expanded across his vision: a service road, a stained brick wall, and the blurred outline of an armed man running toward the warehouse. The timestamp remained fixed at fifteen minutes and thirty-seven seconds ago.

Then the image dissolved into static.

NETWORK NODE UNAVAILABLE.

“Piece of shit!” Faraday muttered. He dismissed the feed and opened another.

Static.

A third returned nothing but a black screen and a spinning connection icon.

Faraday pulled up the local power grid. An entire cluster of transformers and municipal relays around the warehouse showed a cascading failure. The affected region overlapped almost perfectly with the cameras he had lost.

One of those fucking dumbass mercenary crews must have hit a transformer.

He had hired them to shoot Maine and anyone standing near him. That should not have required an advanced technical education. Point the guns at the correct people, pull the triggers until those people stopped moving, and avoid destroying the infrastructure Faraday needed to confirm the job was finished.

Apparently, even those instructions had exceeded somebody’s intellectual capacity.

Another burst of automatic gunfire rattled through the district.

The armored hull reduced it to a muffled series of pops, but the intensity was unmistakable. A heavier weapon joined the shooting a moment later, each report carrying enough force to vibrate faintly through the floor beneath Faraday’s shoes. Somewhere closer to the warehouse, an explosion rolled between the buildings and made several surviving camera feeds tremble.

Faraday glanced toward the acoustic display.

Gunfire had been erupting throughout the area for more than fifteen minutes. Hundreds of shots. Multiple explosions. At least three separate concentrations of sustained combat.

The mercenaries had found Maine’s crew.

That much was obvious.

What Faraday could not determine was whether they had managed to kill them.

The cameras farther from the warehouse provided fragments rather than answers. Muzzle flashes reflected in windows. Armed figures crossed distant intersections before vanishing behind buildings. Smoke obscured several streets. One feed showed two bodies sprawled beside a wrecked vehicle, but neither wore anything Faraday recognized. Another caught a group retreating through an alley before the camera abruptly turned toward a blank wall.

No faces. No reliable identifications. No confirmation of Maine’s death.

Faraday checked his messages again.

Nothing. Not one of the mercenary leaders had contacted him in more than fifteen minutes.

He had expected casualties. He had designed the operation to produce them. When three armed crews entered the same battlespace without knowing about one another, confusion was inevitable. Some of Faraday’s mercenaries would mistake each other for Maine’s people. They would exchange fire, weaken one another, and leave fewer survivors demanding payment afterward.

That was a feature, not a flaw.

But fifteen minutes of complete silence was becoming difficult to dismiss.

Faraday’s fingers tapped against the armrest.

Perhaps Maine had been more dangerous than expected.

Perhaps the first crew had realized Faraday lied and warned the others.

Perhaps Kiwi had lost her nerve.

Perhaps Arasaka had inserted another team without informing him and was now cleaning up every loose end, including Faraday himself.

His eyes moved toward the vehicle-status display.

The engine remained hot. Armor integrity was complete. The false transponder continued identifying the bus as municipal property. He could pull away from the curb, disappear into traffic, and trigger every contingency from somewhere safer.

The smart decision might be to leave.

Maine’s crew could finish dying without him. Any surviving mercenaries could submit evidence afterward if they expected payment. If the operation had failed completely, Faraday would sacrifice three disposable crews and one compromised informant. Inconvenient losses, but survivable ones.

His fingers moved toward the command that would disengage the parking lock.

His agent chimed.

Faraday froze.

A message opened across his optics.

KIWI: KUSHINADA IS DOWN. WHERE DO YOU WANT HER?

Faraday read the words twice.

The tension in his shoulders loosened by a fraction.

So Kiwi had done it.

He did not answer immediately. Relief was no excuse for carelessness, and Kiwi had spent years learning how he operated. She knew what he wanted to hear. She knew the value Arasaka had placed on Lucy Kushinada, and she knew that delivering the girl was the only reason Faraday intended to let her survive the warehouse operation.

For the moment.

Faraday ran the message through his authentication software. The encryption matched Kiwi’s established keys. The routing history passed through the private channels she normally used. No warning appeared.

That proved the message came from her agent.

It did not prove she was still the person controlling it.

Faraday composed a response.

FARADAY: IS MAINE DEAD?

Kiwi answered eleven seconds later.

KIWI: DON’T KNOW. SHOOTING STARTED RIGHT AFTER I DROPPED LUCY. I RAN.

Faraday leaned back and considered the answer.

She did not embellish it. She did not claim to have watched Maine fall, counted every body, or confirmed the deaths of people she could not possibly have remained near without risking her own life. She admitted that she had fled as soon as the shooting began.

That sounded like Kiwi.

Self-preservation had always been her most reliable instinct.

If she had claimed certainty about Maine, Faraday would have become suspicious. She was a netrunner, not a frontline fighter. Her part of the operation had been to disable Lucy, open the crew’s systems at the right moment, and escape while the mercenaries closed in. Remaining in the middle of the firefight to conduct a casualty assessment would have contradicted everything Faraday understood about her.

Ignorance made the report more believable.

Faraday’s thumb hovered over his map.

He had prepared three potential exchange points. Two were disposable locations intended to expose anyone following Kiwi. The third was his current position, chosen only if the operation became too chaotic for a longer transfer.

Under ordinary circumstances, he would never have revealed the command vehicle’s location to her.

These were no longer ordinary circumstances.

The cameras were down. The mercenaries had stopped answering. Every additional minute increased the chance that an NCPD patrol, scavenging gang, or curious corpo security team would approach the fighting. Lucy was worth considerably more alive than everyone else involved was worth dead.

Faraday selected the third marker and transmitted it through an encrypted one-use route.

FARADAY: BRING HER HERE. ALONE.

A location pin followed the message.

Kiwi acknowledged it immediately.

Faraday watched the transmission close, then opened the external cameras surrounding his bus. The street remained empty. Advertisements flickered across the windows of a closed pharmacy. Trash moved through the gutter beneath the evening wind. No pedestrians lingered near the municipal vehicle, and none of the passing traffic slowed.

He retrieved the pistol secured beneath his console and checked its magazine. Full.

Kiwi would bring Lucy through the rear access door. Faraday would confirm that Kushinada was alive, restrained, and in a condition Arasaka would accept. Then, the moment Kiwi turned away, he would put a bullet through the back of her head.

Quick. Clean. Final.

Another message struck his agent before he returned the pistol to its magnetic holster.

Faraday’s eyes narrowed.

This one came from Marcus.

The message contained none of Kiwi’s professional restraint.

MARCUS: YOU LYING FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT. HALF MY MEN ARE DEAD. MAINE’S DOWN, AND YOU’RE PAYING DOUBLE WHAT YOU PROMISED OR I’LL COME COLLECT IT OUT OF YOUR FUCKING SKULL!!!

Faraday stared at the profanity filling his optics.

Then he released a long breath.

Relief spread through him so abruptly that it almost felt pleasurable.

Maine was dead.

Marcus would not be demanding additional payment for killing him if Maine were still tearing through the district. The losses explained the silence, the uncontrolled gunfire, and the destruction of the local power grid. Half of Marcus’s crew had died, but enough remained for their leader to send threats and negotiate over the corpses.

Messy, but successful.

Faraday reread the message and felt his relief sour into irritation.

DOUBLE…? THE AUDACITY! 

The insolent little animal had survived one difficult fight and already imagined that gave him leverage. Marcus had accepted the original price. His inability to preserve his own crew was hardly Faraday’s responsibility.

Still, Faraday was in a… generous mood. He supposed…

Arasaka’s payment for Lucy would dwarf the additional expense. Maine’s death removed an increasingly troublesome embarrassment. Kiwi would soon be another sealed loose end, and the few surviving mercenaries would be too busy celebrating to understand how thoroughly Faraday had manipulated them.

Marcus might even prove useful. His crew had been reduced by half, which meant fewer shares of every future payment and more pressure to replace the dead. Faraday could offer them another contract before anyone else did. Then another. He would feed Marcus just enough money to make him dependent, isolate him from better fixers, and ensure that every job left the crew owing more than it earned.

Marcus believed he had made a demand.

Faraday saw a hook waiting to be set.

He sent a brief response.

FARADAY: AGREED. PAYMENT AFTER CONFIRMATION…

Marcus did not answer.

Faraday assumed the surviving mercenaries were busy stripping Maine’s corpse.

He returned the pistol beneath the console but left the magnetic retention lock disengaged. His fingers would find the grip easily when Kiwi arrived.

All that remained was the delivery.

Kiwi would come believing she had earned her survival. She would carry an unconscious Lucy through the rear door, perhaps already imagining where she would disappear after receiving her payment.

Faraday almost admired the optimism.

Lucy would wake in Arasaka custody. Kiwi would never wake again. Marcus and his surviving idiots would become Faraday’s next obedient pack of animals. Maine’s crew would be reduced to bodies and salvage scattered across a powerless warehouse district.

Every complication had resolved itself.

Faraday smiled as he settled back into his chair.

A WARNING FLASHED ACROSS FARADAY’S VISION!

A jagged red symbol expanded over the center of his optics, obscuring the location pin he had just transmitted to Kiwi. Lines of unfamiliar diagnostic text unfolded beneath it, forcing every other message and surveillance feed into the background.

NETWATCH SENTINEL FAILSAFE

NONHUMAN COGNITIVE ACTIVITY DETECTED

CONNECTED NETWORK INTEGRITY COMPROMISED

Faraday stared at it. For one long second, he had no idea what the hell he was looking at.

The symbol did not belong to any of his usual security programs. It was not part of the armored vehicle’s software, the municipal surveillance architecture, or any of the counterintrusion daemons he had installed around his command network. He had never seen the warning before. He did not remember purchasing anything with that name.

He tried to dismiss it.

The warning vanished for less than half a second before forcing itself back into the center of his vision.

ACTIVE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE INTERFERENCE DETECTED

Something cold moved through Faraday’s stomach.

Then he remembered. “...Fuck,” he whispered.

Years ago, Faraday had helped fulfill a contract for NetWatch. He had been one participant among several, none of them told more than they needed to know about the operation. NetWatch had received whatever it wanted, erased most of the evidence, and offered Faraday a substantial payment for his contribution.

He had refused the eddies.

Money disappeared. It was spent, stolen, frozen, or rendered inaccessible by whichever corporation decided a man’s accounts no longer belonged to him. Information and protection lasted longer.

Faraday had asked NetWatch for a failsafe.

Nothing capable of breaching the Blackwall or fighting one of the intelligences prowling behind it. NetWatch would never have allowed technology like that outside its direct control. He had asked for something simpler: a warning system capable of recognizing the presence of autonomous artificial intelligence inside any network to which he connected himself.

The NetWatch technician who installed it had described the program as a smoke alarm.

It could not prevent an AI from entering a network, force it out, trace its source, or protect him if the intelligence turned its attention toward his neural implants. All it could do was study the behavior of the network around him and warn when the patterns stopped resembling the actions of human netrunners, conventional daemons, or ordinary automated software.

Faraday had considered that enough.

He remembered checking the failsafe obsessively for the first several months. Every time he entered a corporate network, opened a questionable shard, or connected to an unfamiliar piece of hardware, part of him had waited for the warning.

It had never appeared.

Years passed. The software remained silent through hundreds of connections, dozens of intrusions, and more compromised networks than Faraday could remember. He stopped checking it. Eventually, he forgot the failsafe existed at all.

Until now.

Faraday’s gaze snapped toward the connection timer in the corner of his optics. He had been jacked into the surveillance network for one hour, seventeen minutes, and forty-three seconds!

The number continued climbing.

Faraday stopped breathing.

The failsafe should have recognized an artificial intelligence almost immediately. That was what NetWatch had designed it to do. The software had been built by people who spent their lives studying the entities beyond the Blackwall, hunting rogue constructs, and distinguishing autonomous thought from the billions of automated processes moving through the Net!

Whatever had entered Faraday’s network had avoided that detection for more than an hour.

It had operated around some of the finest AI-recognition software NetWatch possessed and come within a hair of remaining completely invisible.

That meant it was very intelligent. And anything smart enough to hide from NetWatch for that long was dangerous enough to make the back of Faraday’s neck go cold.

“What the fuck is going on?” he whispered.

The warning remained fixed across his vision.

Faraday looked at the wall of camera feeds surrounding him.

The empty street outside the bus.

The dead cameras around the warehouse.

The frozen image of an armed man running through a service road.

The municipal power map showing a cascading transformer failure.

The distant flashes of gunfire.

Every piece of information suddenly looked different.

One of the mercenary crews had not destroyed a transformer.

The cameras had gone down because someone wanted Faraday blind!

His gaze returned to the power-grid diagnostic. He had accepted it as independent confirmation of an accident, but the diagnostic had reached him through the same compromised network as everything else. The transformer failure might never have happened. The AI could have falsified the telemetry as easily as it had interfered with the cameras.

Faraday opened a live traffic feed two blocks from his position.

An empty intersection filled his optics. A plastic bag drifted across the pavement beneath a malfunctioning streetlight. No vehicles moved through the junction. No armed mercenaries appeared. Nothing looked threatening.

He could not trust it.

THE STREET MIGHT BE EMPTY. THE STREET MIGHT BE FILLED WITH MAINE’S ENTIRE FUCKING CREW!

Faraday could have stared directly at them and never known the difference.

The gunfire was real. The explosions vibrating through the armored hull were real. People were killing one another outside.

Everything else might have been manufactured for him.

His mind accelerated, paranoia pulling apart the past fifteen minutes and reassembling every detail into a new and much uglier picture.

Kiwi’s message opened across his optics.

KUSHINADA IS DOWN. WHERE DO YOU WANT HER?

She had asked for his location.

Faraday had given it to her.

His next message appeared beneath it.

IS MAINE DEAD?

Then Kiwi’s response.

DON’T KNOW. SHOOTING STARTED RIGHT AFTER I DROPPED LUCY. I RAN.

Faraday’s jaw tightened until his teeth hurt.

He had congratulated himself for recognizing the authenticity in Kiwi’s incomplete answer. He had reasoned that claiming ignorance suited her cautious nature. He had believed that admitting she ran made the message more credible.

What if that was exactly why she had written it?

Kiwi knew how he thought. She knew how suspicious he was and how instinctively he distrusted convenient certainty. She had given him an answer designed to survive his paranoia—enough information to satisfy him, enough uncertainty to make him believe she was telling the truth.

“No,” Faraday muttered.

Kiwi had betrayed him.

The realization carried none of the doubt that had accompanied his earlier suspicions. If an AI had taken control of the battlefield network, and Kiwi was asking where to deliver Lucy through that same network, then she was part of it. She had used his own expectations against him and persuaded him to disclose the one location he had carefully concealed from everyone involved in the operation.

Faraday’s anger arrived hot enough to momentarily overcome his fear.

After everything he had done for her!

The jobs. The information. The opportunities. The years he had allowed her to profit from Maine’s crew while pretending to be loyal to them.

He had believed Kiwi understood their arrangement. She gave him information, and he allowed her to remain useful. It was simple. Predictable. Safe.

His gaze moved to Marcus’s message.

YOU LYING FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT. HALF MY MEN ARE DEAD. MAINE’S DOWN, AND YOU’RE PAYING DOUBLE WHAT YOU PROMISED OR I’LL COME COLLECT IT OUT OF YOUR FUCKING SKULL.

A perfect message. Too perfect.

It had arrived seconds after Faraday revealed his location to Kiwi. It contained exactly what he needed to hear: confirmation that Maine had been killed, a believable explanation for the mercenaries’ silence, and enough anger to disguise the convenience of its timing.

Faraday had authenticated Marcus’s agent.

That meant nothing anymore.

Not with an AI inside the network.

It could have stolen Marcus’s encryption keys. It could have seized his agent, forged his identity, or manipulated the authentication software Faraday had used to verify the message. The profanity, the demand for more money, and the threat against Faraday might all have been selected because they sounded exactly like something Marcus would send.

Faraday had even agreed to double the payment.

He felt suddenly, violently humiliated.

Someone had constructed a performance around him. The dead cameras, Kiwi’s frightened retreat, Marcus’s furious demand, the apparent confirmation of Maine’s death—it had all been theater, each piece designed for an audience of one.

The AI had shown him the lies he most wanted to believe.

Faraday’s gaze returned to Kiwi’s location pin.

Was it Lucy? The thought struck him with enough force to push every other possibility aside.

Lucy Kushinada was a netrunner. Faraday knew that much. He also knew Arasaka wanted her alive badly enough to offer an obscene amount of money while refusing to explain why. They had not asked for her cyberdeck, her files, or proof of death. They wanted the woman herself delivered intact enough for interrogation.

Was this the reason? Had Kushinada captured or controlled an artificial intelligence? Had she recovered something from beyond the Blackwall? Was it hiding inside her cyberware, moving through any network she entered and obeying her commands?

Faraday had assumed Arasaka wanted Lucy because she possessed damaging information. Corporate secrets. Evidence of an illegal program. Names, locations, access codes—something valuable but comprehensible.

An AI capable of deceiving NetWatch detection software for more than an hour would be worth far more!

It would also explain why Kiwi had protected Lucy so carefully. She had concealed the girl’s history, understated her abilities, and kept Faraday from understanding how valuable she truly was. Kiwi had never been preserving a fellow crew member out of sentiment.

She had been protecting an asset. Or a weapon.

Faraday looked again at the external camera showing the empty street.

The image no longer reassured him.

How long had the AI been inside his systems?

Could it see through the vehicle’s cameras?

Could it hear him through the microphones?

Could it open the doors?

Could it interfere with his dead-man contingencies?

Could it reach his implants through the direct connection at the base of his skull?

The NetWatch warning provided no answers. It continued occupying the center of his vision, telling him only that something nonhuman had entered the network and had nearly succeeded in remaining hidden.

Faraday’s pulse began hammering against his ribs.

He had given Kiwi his exact coordinates.

If the street outside was another false image, she might already be here.

Lucy might already be here.

Maine might still be alive.

The entire crew could be standing outside the bus while Faraday watched a carefully generated picture of an empty road.

His eyes snapped toward the vehicle controls.

“AUTOPILOT!” Faraday shouted. “DISENGAGE THE PARKING LOCK AND GET US OUT OF HERE!” He slammed one hand against the console. “DRIVE!” he screamed. “DRIVE NOW!”

– John Welles –

Rebecca fed another shell into the Carnage. “Locked and fully fucking loaded to deal with Faraday!”

A wet, rattling breath came from somewhere behind Lucy.

I looked past her shoulder.

The merc I had backhanded into the wall lay slumped among the ruptured trash bags, his broken leg folded beneath him. Blood had spread across his shirt where one of Marcus’s wild shots had caught him. His head hung forward, but his chest still moved. Barely.

A diagnostic outline appeared around him. Still alive.

Farther down the alley, another body twitched beside a dumpster.

My stomach tightened.

These were people breathing who knew our faces, knew Lucy had been here, and knew how thoroughly we had dismantled Faraday’s trap.

Marcus had told us what they intended to do. His surviving men had heard the same offer and come along willingly.

Any of them who crawled out of this alley could sell what they had seen to Faraday, Arasaka, or whoever offered enough eddies.

I shifted the Satara into the crook of my left arm and reached for my pistol.

Lucy’s eyes followed my hand. For a second, neither of us said anything. Then her gaze moved to the wounded merc against the wall. She looked back at me and gave a small, understanding nod.

I drew the Unity.

The merc raised his head as I approached. His eyes tried to focus on me. Something moved behind them—recognition, perhaps, or the first dull realization that the fight had ended and he was still here.

I cringed.

Then I put a bullet through his head.

The shot cracked between the alley walls. His body jerked against the trash bags, and his chin dropped onto his chest.

I moved to the next intact body.

That man might already have been dead. Blood had pooled beneath his face, and one arm lay twisted at an angle an arm was never supposed to reach.

I shot him anyway.

I worked my way through the alley, checking every body Rebecca’s grenades and shotgun had left sufficiently whole to matter. The ones reduced to scattered pieces required nothing further.

The others received a bullet.

By the time I finished, the Unity’s grip felt strangely small in my hand.

I stood amid the smoke and bodies for a moment, then pushed the pistol back into its holster.

Cortana appeared beside me. Her expression had lost the gleeful excitement she wore during the fight. She studied my face, then reached up and brushed her fingers along my jaw. “I’m proud of you,” she said quietly.

I looked at her.

Cortana’s thumb moved over my cheek as she held my gaze. “This was necessary, John,” she added.

She leaned close and kissed me.

Warmth settled against my skin, soft and convincing enough that I almost turned into it before remembering where we were.

Lucy waited near the burned-out car with Rebecca and David. When I returned, she touched my forearm without speaking.

David looked sick. His mouth had tightened into a thin line, and the color had drained from his face beneath the drying blood. He stared past me at the bodies, then lowered his eyes to the pavement.

He swallowed. Whatever he might have wanted to say stayed behind his teeth. He understood why we could not leave surviving enemy witnesses here. That did not make watching it any easier.

I adjusted the Satara against my shoulder and glanced toward the mouth of the alley. “Come on. Let’s find the others,” I said.

Rebecca glanced once around the alley, then braced the reloaded Carnage against her shoulder. Lucy fell into step beside me. David followed close behind.

Nobody looked back.

The district had become quieter, though it was still a long way from quiet.

Sporadic gunshots echoed from farther streets. Somewhere beyond the buildings, a car alarm wailed through the smoke. Broken glass glittered beneath our boots, and the pavement carried a trail of spent casings, abandoned magazines, and dark splashes that I tried not to examine too closely.

Cortana placed friendly markers across my optics.

A couple of blocks later, we reached the warehouse. 

The entire operation had revolved around that building. Faraday had hired three separate mercenary crews, arranged overlapping fields of fire, compromised half the district’s cameras, and constructed an elaborate plan to slaughter Maine’s people inside it.

None of us had ever gone in.

The big loading doors remained closed.

I stared at them for a second before a quiet laugh escaped me. “That’s kind of funny,” I muttered.

Lucy followed my gaze toward the closed loading doors and lifted one pale eyebrow. “What is?” she asked.

I gestured toward the untouched warehouse with the Satara. “He went to all this trouble setting up a warehouse massacre, and nobody actually entered the warehouse,” I explained.

Rebecca inspected the building as if personally judging its failure to entertain her, then snorted. “Should’ve picked a place with better service,” she said.

Maine stood beneath the loading canopy beside Dorio, his enormous frame hunched slightly while she examined his side.

Kiwi waited a few feet away.

Pilar lingered near a chain-link fence with his arms folded, looking as though he wanted to become part of it.

I looked properly at Maine.

Blood darkened his upper arm where a stretch of newly exposed flesh interrupted the remaining chrome. Another wet patch marked his side beneath the edge of his armor. He had taken at least a couple of rounds in places that, a week earlier, might have been covered by thick metal.

Cortana’s scan swept over him. His pulse remained strong. The wounds were ugly, but she detected no immediate threat to his life.

Maine himself seemed more annoyed than injured.

Dorio disagreed.

The beautiful, muscular woman had one hand planted firmly against his arm while the other worked around the wound at his side. Blood smeared her fingers. Concern tightened her face as she checked the damaged flesh, her broad shoulders angled toward him as if she could keep anything else from reaching him by standing close enough.

Maine flinched when she pressed near the bullet wound.

Dorio looked up sharply, and Maine immediately straightened beneath her scrutiny. “I’m fine,” he said.

Dorio kept her hand beside the wound and gave him an unimpressed stare. “You just flinched,” she said. “You never flinch at anything…”

Maine glanced down at her blood-smeared fingers and tightened his jaw. “You’re poking a hole in me,” he complained.

Dorio moved her thumb along the edge of the injury and examined the fresh blood. “I’m checking the hole in you,” she replied.

Maine looked toward the rest of us, apparently realizing he had acquired an audience. “It’s a small hole,” he insisted.

Dorio slowly raised her eyes to his face. “Maine,” she warned.

Maine’s scowl deepened as he tried to recover some of his dignity. “I said I’m fine,” he muttered.

I was not sure I had ever seen Maine embarrassed before. He had faced gunfire, possessed corpses, and an AI attempting to climb inside his skull with considerably less discomfort than he seemed to feel while his output fussed over him in front of the crew.

Rebecca’s grin returned as she watched Dorio continue inspecting him. “Aww, big guy got a boo-boo,” she cooed.

Maine turned his head and gave her a look.

“Hehehe… Sorry…” Rebecca immediately pointed at Pilar to redirect his attention. “Anyway, what the fuck’s wrong with him?” she asked.

Pilar had been staring at the pavement. At the sound of her voice, he jerked his head up and unfolded his arms so abruptly that one elbow struck the fence. “Nothing,” he said.

Rebecca looked him over.

Then she looked at Kiwi.

Kiwi’s uncovered mouth twitched.

Pilar turned his face away from her.

Rebecca’s eyes brightened as she understood what she was seeing. “Oh, shit. Did Kiwi save your gonk ass!?” she asked.

Pilar’s shoulders stiffened as he stared at his sister. “What? No!” he denied.

Rebecca cocked her head and let her disbelief settle visibly across her face. “...No?” she repeated. “Are you sure, cuz I know you can’t fight for jack shit. You’re our tech guy for a reason…”

Pilar glanced toward Kiwi, saw her watching him, and looked away again. “That’s not what happened…” he insisted.

Kiwi remained silent.

Pilar seemed to find her silence considerably more threatening than an argument. He lifted his chin and tried to arrange his face into something dignified. “In fact, I saved her!” he declared.

Rebecca stared at him.

Pilar spread his arms as though preparing to describe a battle large enough to require visual aids. “There were, like, twenty guys,” he said.

Rebecca tilted her head another fraction. “...Twenty? That’s what you are going with, bro?” 

Pilar nodded with rapidly growing confidence. “Yeah. Twenty. Maybe more,” he answered. “You know how it is when you’re dropping bodies left and right like a badass…”

I glanced at Kiwi.

She looked at me. The smallest movement at the corner of her mouth was enough. 

Yeah, he was full of shit obviously.

Pilar planted one foot forward and began illustrating the fictional battle with his hands. “They had her pinned down, right? So I came in, took them out, and saved her. All by myself,” he recounted.

Rebecca released an ugly snort, full of every year she had spent listening to her brother describe himself as the most impressive person in any room.

Pilar’s expression soured as he glared at her. “You weren’t there,” he muttered.

Rebecca shifted the Carnage against her shoulder and grinned at him. “No, but I heard you screaming over comms,” she replied.

Pilar raised one finger as if correcting a serious tactical misunderstanding. “That was tactical communication!” he insisted. “That’s all that was.”

Rebecca narrowed her eyes thoughtfully, pretending to reconsider what she had heard.  Rebecca flicked her gaze down his body and then back to his face. “Were you communicating with your asshole?” she asked. “Cuz it sounded like you shit yourself?”

Maine made a low sound that might have been a laugh before Dorio’s hand found another tender spot and changed it into a grunt.

I looked back toward Kiwi.

She was already moving.

For a moment, I thought she intended to tell Rebecca to leave Pilar alone or quietly correct his version of events.

Instead, she stopped directly in front of me.

I straightened as she stepped into my personal space. “Kiwi? Do you need something?” I asked.

Her arms slipped around me.

I froze.

She stepped fully into the embrace before I quite understood what was happening, pressing her body warmly against mine. The soft weight of her breasts settled against my chest through our clothes. Her hands rested across my back, and her cheek brushed close to mine.

For one completely useless second, my brain supplied nothing except: Kiwi is hugging me.

My arms hovered awkwardly at my sides. Then I remembered I had arms and carefully put one around her.

Very carefully.

I was still learning how much strength belonged in ordinary human contact.

Kiwi leaned closer to my ear, her breath warm against my skin. “Thank you,” she whispered. There was no sarcasm in it. Her voice was low and a little rough, carrying enough sincerity to make my chest tighten.

My gaze moved over her shoulder.

Maine was still arguing with Dorio about whether he needed treatment. Pilar was alive and inventing increasingly impressive details about his own bravery. Rebecca stood beside Lucy with the Carnage resting against her shoulder.

All of them were here.

Kiwi had come to me believing her own choices were about to get these people killed. She had given Faraday the information he used to manipulate them, and then she had finally chosen to stop helping him.

She had trusted me with the truth. Now the people she thought she might lose were standing a few feet away, wounded and irritated and making stupid jokes.

I understood why she could not say any of that out loud.

I returned the hug with a little more confidence. “You’re welcome,” I said quietly.

Her fingers tightened briefly against my back.

Cortana appeared at my right shoulder, folded her arms beneath her breasts, and glared at Kiwi with offended disbelief. “Oh, come on. Another one?” she whined.

I resisted the urge to look at her.

Cortana’s lower lip pushed forward as she watched Kiwi remain pressed against me. “This is becoming ridiculous,” she complained.

Kiwi, entirely unaware that a jealous blue AI was staring at her from less than a foot away, remained close for another moment.

Lucy was also watching us.

I braced myself.

After the princess-carry argument, I expected another narrowed stare or a pointed reminder about which forms of affection were supposedly reserved for outputs.

Instead, Lucy looked baffled. Her eyes moved from Kiwi’s arms around me to Kiwi’s face, then back again. Lucy stared at her mentor as though she had just witnessed a fundamental law of the universe fail. “...I’ve never seen her hug anyone,” she muttered. She sounded more confused than jealous.

Kiwi held me for another few seconds before finally stepping back.

The moment her arms left me, the vulnerability disappeared from her face. Her shoulders straightened, and the familiar guarded intelligence returned to her eyes. If I had not still felt the memory of her body against mine, I might have convinced myself the hug never happened.

David shifted his weight and glanced from the bodies scattered along the surrounding streets to the warehouse none of us had actually entered. “So… what happens now? Is the gig over?” he asked.

The exhaustion in his voice made me look at him more closely.

He was still standing, but the energy that had carried him through the fight was beginning to collapse. His shoulders sagged beneath Gloria’s yellow jacket. Dried blood pulled at the skin along one side of his face, and a faint tremor moved through his hands whenever he thought nobody was watching. The Sandevistan might let him move faster than almost anyone alive, but it did not make the rest of him immune to adrenaline, neural fatigue, or the realization that he had spent the last several minutes killing people.

Cortana’s diagnostics still showed stable neural activity and an acceptable cardiac rhythm.

Acceptable did not mean rested.

I met David’s tired eyes and gave him an encouraging smile. “We’re not completely finished, but you did really well. You followed the plan, kept your head, watched Lucy’s back, and made it here in one piece. Thank you for helping us,” I told him.

David blinked at me as if he had not expected the praise.

Lucy stepped up beside me and looked David over with quiet approval. “That machine gunner never saw you coming. You were a badass with that Sandy,” she said.

David rubbed the back of his neck as color immediately spread across his face. “I—yeah. It worked out,” he said.

Lucy’s mouth curved into a faint smile as she studied his embarrassment. “It worked out because you used it well,” she replied.

David somehow turned even redder.

Maine pushed himself away from the wall before Dorio could stop him and looked directly at David. “You’re all right, kid. And we’re beyond square for you klepping my Sandy at this point. You earned your keep today,” he said.

The remaining fatigue vanished from David’s expression as he stared at Maine. “Seriously?” he asked.

Maine’s eyes narrowed as he shifted his wounded arm. “Don’t make me take it back,” he warned.

David straightened so quickly that the movement almost made him sway. “No. I mean—thanks. You won’t regret it,” he promised.

Maine glanced toward David’s back, where the military implant followed the line of his spine beneath Gloria’s jacket. “I already regretted it when you had that bargain-bin ripper replace your fucking spine in a room that probably hadn’t been cleaned since the Fourth Corporate War,” he said.

Rebecca covered her mouth with one hand and failed to hide a snicker.

David’s face fell for half a second.

Maine gave him a heavy nod that restored every bit of the teenager’s attention. “But you showed up when it mattered. That counts for something,” he added.

David looked as if Maine had just personally declared him a Night City legend.

Less than ten minutes earlier, he had watched me put bullets into wounded mercenaries and looked ready to vomit. Now he had received praise from Lucy, Maine, and me, and he was practically glowing inside Gloria’s bloodstained jacket.

I released a quiet sigh as I watched David’s mood rise into the stratosphere.

Teenagers.

Warm breath suddenly touched my ear as Cortana leaned close to me. “Like you’re any better,” she whispered.

The sensation was completely artificial. No air had moved. Cortana had simply created the pressure and warmth directly inside our shared sensory cortex.

My body did not care about the distinction.

A shiver ran down my spine.

Cortana appeared beside me with her lips hovering near my ear and a smug smile spreading across her face. “You would still be blushing if Maine called you a badass,” she added.

I kept my expression neutral and resisted the impulse to turn toward her. ‘That’s different,’ I thought back.

Cortana arched one eyebrow as she waited for my justification. “How?” she asked.

I squared my shoulders and tried to project a dignity nobody else knew was under attack. ‘I’m mature,’ I insisted silently.

Cortana pursed her lips and blew another stream of simulated breath against my ear.

My shoulder jerked toward the sensation.

Lucy glanced at me.

I tried to pretend nothing had happened.

Cortana’s smile widened as she watched me struggle. “Very mature,” she said.

Kiwi stepped away from the group and let her professional detachment settle completely back into place. “We still have Faraday,” she reminded us.

The warmth left the moment.

Maine’s expression hardened. Dorio removed her hands from his wounds and reached for her weapon. Rebecca’s grip tightened around the Carnage.

David’s new smile faded as he remembered that the man responsible for all of this was still alive.

I met Kiwi’s eyes and gave her a small nod.

This part of the plan was something we had kept from most of the crew.

They knew Faraday intended to kill them. They knew Kiwi and Lucy had compromised one of his safehouses and uncovered the three mercenary teams he hired. They knew he had positioned himself somewhere away from the warehouse so he could watch everyone die without risking his own skin.

They did not know Kiwi had spent years feeding him information.

They could not know that she possessed a direct communication channel to him or that she had offered to exploit the trust created by her betrayal.

Kiwi raised one hand and brought several translucent interfaces to life around her. Data reflected across her optics as she slowly turned toward the warehouse. “Give me a minute,” she said.

Pilar folded his arms and frowned at the shifting windows. “Thought you already had his network,” he said.

Kiwi glanced at him without interrupting the performance. “I have pieces of it,” she replied.

Pilar opened his mouth, then remembered that she had just saved his life and became intensely interested in something across the street.

I reached into my jacket and touched the stolen agent in my pocket. I had taken it from Marcus before leaving the alley. Blood still coated one corner of the device, but its security credentials remained intact.

The agent vibrated once beneath my fingertips.

Cortana appeared in front of me with a message floating between her hands. “I reconstructed Marcus’s writing style from his recent communications. Limited vocabulary, inconsistent punctuation, excessive profanity, and a tendency to make threats he lacks the courage to carry out,” she explained.

I studied the forged message and tried not to smile. ‘Sounds like him,’ I replied silently. ‘Only knew him for a few minutes but he gave off serious asshole vibes…’

Cortana turned the message toward me with a satisfied flourish. “I thought so,” she said.

MARCUS: YOU LYING FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT. HALF MY MEN ARE DEAD. MAINE’S DOWN, AND YOU’RE PAYING DOUBLE WHAT YOU PROMISED OR I’LL COME COLLECT IT OUT OF YOUR FUCKING SKULL!

I reread the threat while Cortana waited for my approval. ‘You think that’s angry enough?’ I asked.

Cortana glanced toward the bodies visible at the end of the street. “Marcus continued making threats after watching nearly his entire crew die. If anything, I showed admirable restraint,” she replied.

I pressed my fingers against the stolen agent through my jacket. ‘Send it,’ I told her silently.

Cortana smiled.

The agent vibrated again.

The forged message disappeared into the same network as Kiwi’s.

All we could do now was wait.

Kiwi continued her performance. She brought up a map of the district, expanded several blocks, and traced the connections between compromised traffic cameras and municipal relays. Most of the work looked convincing enough to me, though I knew just enough about netrunning to understand that it meant almost nothing.

Dorio used the pause to wrap a pressure bandage around Maine’s upper arm.

Maine scowled at the bandage as Dorio tightened it. “I don’t need that,” he grumbled.

Dorio kept one hand beneath his arm and checked the pressure with the other. “You’re STILL bleeding,” she said.

Maine gestured toward the rest of his enormous body. “I’ve got more blood than most people. I’m bigger. I should be fine.” he replied.

Dorio gave him a flat look as she secured the end of the bandage. “That isn’t how blood works…” she told him.

Maine looked toward Falco’s distant marker as though considering whether he could escape his own girlfriend without making the wound worse.

Rebecca wandered over to Pilar and looked him up and down. “So, twenty guys?” she asked.

Pilar released a long, suffering sigh. “Are you still on that?” he asked.

Rebecca adopted an expression of exaggerated professional interest. “Just trying to understand the tactical situation,” she replied.

Pilar lifted his chin and attempted to regain some dignity. “You wouldn’t understand my tactics,” he said.

Rebecca leaned closer and grinned at him. “Was screaming Kiwi’s name part of them?” she asked.

Pilar waved one hand dismissively. “I called for netrunner support,” he corrected her.

Rebecca planted the stock of her Carnage against the pavement. “You yelled, ‘Kiwi, get these fuckers off me!’” she reminded him.

Pilar spread his arms as though the distinction should have been obvious. “They were interfering with my position!” he explained.

Rebecca tilted her head and pretended to consider his defense. “Your position behind a car?” she asked.

Pilar pointed toward the street where the fighting had occurred. “...It was defensible cover,” he insisted.

Rebecca’s grin sharpened. “You were hiding like a bitch, I bet,” she said.

Pilar drew himself upright. “I was drawing them into a trap!” he declared.

Rebecca glanced toward Kiwi and raised her voice. “Did he draw them into a trap?” she asked. “Or was he just hiding?”

Kiwi continued manipulating her false search windows without looking at either sibling. “...He drew them toward himself with his gonk screaming,” she answered. 

Rebecca barked out a laugh.

Pilar muttered something about nobody appreciating professional battlefield control.

Kiwi waited a full two minutes and seventeen seconds before allowing her expression to change.

Kiwi stopped moving through her false displays and focused on the location marker. “I found him,” she announced.

Every conversation stopped.

Kiwi expanded her map and marked a position several blocks from the warehouse. “It’s an armored vehicle disguised as a municipal utility transport. That’s his command center,” she said.

Maine pushed away from Dorio. The movement pulled at the wound in his side, and he released a pained grunt before straightening to his full height.

Dorio planted one hand against Maine’s chest before he could take a second step. “You’re not charging anywhere,” she warned. 

Maine gently moved her hand aside and set his jaw. Maine looked toward the marker Kiwi had placed on the map. “...I can bleed in the van,” he replied. 

Dorio stared at him flatly. He didn’t budge and she sighed in reluctance. 

Maine adjusted his wounded arm and fixed his attention on Faraday’s position. “Let’s go kill that traitorous fucking fixer,” he said.

Rebecca clenched one fist and raised GUTS over her head with the other. “FUCK YEAH! I WANT TO BLOW HIS DICK OFF!” she shouted.

Pilar looked at the enormous bore of her shotgun. “Pretty sure that’ll blow off more than his dick,” he told her. “I still don’t get how you can fire that without it knocking you on your ass…”

Rebecca lowered the Carnage onto her shoulder and gave him a cheerful grin. “That’s a bonus,” she replied.

SUDDENLY, A BOLT OF SHOCK TORE THROUGH MY MIND!

It did not belong to me.

I gasped anyways…

Cortana’s projected avatar froze in the middle of the street. Her eyes widened, and every trace of smug amusement vanished from her face. For an instant, I felt the full shape of her reaction through our shared nervous system: disbelief, alarm, wounded pride, and a sudden spike of fear!

I focused inward on her. ‘Cortana?’ I called silently. ‘What happened!? What was that feeling!?’

She did not answer. Her attention had gone somewhere else. I felt it spreading through the network, racing across connections she had already compromised and checking one route after another.

I pushed my concern through our connection as her silence stretched. ‘Cortana, what’s wrong?’ I asked silently.

Cortana stared through layers of information only she could see. “I don’t know,” she whispered.

I concentrated on the shock and confusion spilling through our shared mind.

Cortana’s expression tightened as she reached deeper into Faraday’s network. “I think… John, I think I fucked up,” she admitted.

A map opened across my vision. Faraday’s location marker shifted. At first, it moved only a few feet. Then it accelerated along the street.

Cortana surrounded it with a flashing red outline.

Cortana’s eyes moved rapidly as she reviewed every security layer she had bypassed. “I don’t know how he detected me. I didn’t trigger any of his security daemons. I didn’t miss a scan. There was no active counterintrusion protocol anywhere in his network,” she said.

The marker turned onto another road and continued gathering speed.

Cortana swept through the remaining connections as they began closing around her. “But something changed. He knows his network is compromised. His vehicle just started, and he’s severing every external connection he can reach,” she continued.

The armored command vehicle accelerated again.

Cortana fixed her attention on the rapidly moving marker. “He’s fleeing,” she said.

I stared at the route appearing across my optics as the implications struck me. “Oh shit!” I said out loud.

Everyone looked at me.

Lucy’s attention snapped toward my face. Kiwi’s hands went still above her projected map.

Maine turned his entire body toward me. “WHAT?” he demanded.

I pointed toward the location marker only Kiwi and I could currently see. “Faraday’s onto us! His vehicle just started moving. He’s trying to drive away!” I told them.

For one second, the entire group froze.

Then everyone began shouting.

Kiwi dismissed her false displays and pulled up Faraday’s moving signal. “How the fuck did he know?” she demanded.

Maine curled one enormous hand into a fist. “SON OF A BITCH!” he roared.

Dorio grabbed Maine’s arm as he started forward. Pilar unleashed a stream of inventive profanity. David looked between us as though waiting for someone to tell him which direction he needed to run.

Rebecca’s eyes lit up. “Well, shit. Guess it’s time for a good old-fashioned fucking car chase!” she declared. “Let’s run the fucker down!” she shouted. “And I still call shotgun in John’s preem ride!” she added.

Cortana projected a route across my optics. Faraday’s armored vehicle moved through the streets ahead of us, gaining speed with every second.

Maine, Dorio, and Pilar broke toward Falco’s position. Maine’s wounded stride was uneven, but he refused Dorio’s attempt to slow him.

I turned toward where I had parked my Quadra Cthulhu.

Rebecca was already running towards my car as well.

Lucy and Kiwi followed, with David close behind them. It would be a tight squeeze, but they should all fit. 

“I won't be able to track him much longer. He’s leaving the area. We need to hurry!”

I felt the guilt beneath Cortana’s determination and pushed reassurance through our connection. ‘We’ll figure out how he found you later,’ I told her silently.

Cortana looked at me, and some of the tension inside our shared mind loosened. “Agreed,” she replied.

There was no fucking way I was letting Faraday get away.

XXX