Judy Alvarez slammed her glass down on the counter with a groan. She didn’t know why she was feeling so down. She just was.

It was one of those days. She could point to nothing specific on why today had to be this day. It just happened sometimes. Sometimes, the reality of… living would pounce on her when she least expected it, turning her into a chewtoy as that rabid beast dragged her around, making her remember her… feelings. Feelings that, in the background of her own quiet disregard, had multiplied until she no longer had space to contain them.

Until they burst free like alien parasites gestating within her guts.

Yuck.

She’d called her chooms, shared drinks with them, talked, and all that had served to quietly escort her down the ledge she had been creeping towards. And then they had gone home, to their own lives and worries.

She was grateful to what little time she had been afforded, honestly. She couldn’t be bitter that they wouldn’t follow her into a blackout haze.

“One more?” the bartender, Kenny, asked her. He was polishing a glass that didn’t need polishing. Acting out a role, to look like he was busier than he actually was. Greasing the wheels of the money machine.

But he couldn’t help that. It was his job. And beyond that job, he was… a person. A good person. He didn’t judge. She liked Kenny.

She just wondered how he even made it through every shift in this shithole, this… corruption of what had used to be a good organization. Guy was a fucking machine.

Well, as long as the eddies flowed in. Couldn’t blame him for looking out for himself.

“One more,” Judy said.

This fucking night—day, whatever. This fucking… waking moment! All of it sucked.

If only she hadn’t been so… so fucking touchy-feely, and being a crybaby bitch for no reason, she could have been working on her BDs, doing something that actually made her feel happy.

Instead, she was here at the Lizzy’s bar, sulking. Because it was the only thing she could do at the moment.

She could scarcely remember the last time she had sulked this hard.

And each time she tried to pinpoint a cause, she came up empty.

“It just be this way,” a friend of hers had said, shrugging his shoulders like that was a self-evident truth. An ugly truth, but one that wouldn’t go away simply on the basis of personal antipathy.

He was long gone, with her other friends, trying for an early-morning awakening… for their jobs.

Well, at least she didn’t have a job with such shitty sleep scheduling. She slept during the day, mostly, and got nine hours in on average. All she really needed to do from then on was pop some vitamin D supplements and keep it trucking. And it had been more than enough for her.

It still was.

“Maybe I just need to see the fucking sun,” Judy growled under her breath.

“The sun?” Kenny the bartender laughed. “How long has it been?”

She frowned in thought. “Saturday.” He’d seen that guy… D, on Saturday, while the sun was still out. Or had it been a Sunday?

Either way, too fucking long.

“Choom,” Kenny shook his head. “See the fucking sun.”

Judy laughed. What simple, harmless advice. See the sun, touch grass, look at a tree for a while. Eat right, cut back on the energy drinks, go to a doctor and get a blood lab.

And if all that didn’t help turn your inexplicable frown upside-fucking-down, then Night City offered far more options. XBDs, chems, life-threatening modes to seek thrills. Fuck around and flirt with a badge, maybe. Squeeze them for drinks and refuse to put out until they were a hair’s breadth away from lighting your stupid fucking skull up.

“Trust me, choom. I’ve got a whole laundry list of needs to meet before I ever consider doing chems.”

“Who said shit about chems?”

Judy tilted her head. “But you were thinking it.”

“Nah… not for you, Judes. You deserve better than that.”

Judy clenched her teeth. “Thanks, but… worry about me less, Kenny. Alright?”

Kenny shrugged. “My worrying ain’t gonna make you tip any better—or at all, for fuck’s sakes—, so why even bother?”

Judy raised a glass. “Cuz you love me.”

Kenny rolled his eyes. “Fuck you,” he raised the glass he was polishing, and clinked it against hers. She grinned.

Kenny’s eyes locked on something behind her. She looked at him, gauging his level of alertness. Finally, after a few worryingly long seconds, he spoke. “Afterlife brass is here.”

“Who? And why?”

“El Capitan. Decent fellow,” Kenny said. “Not here for trouble; always just biz with him.”

She groaned. Afterlife thugs. Another… complication in her own life.

She idly caught sight of a screen playing some sporting event in the corner. A race. But what had caught her eye was the name of the runner-up.

David Martinez.

The name rang a bell damn-near instantly.

…No.

Couldn’t be the same guy. He was… right at the front.

And to be honest, David Martinez sounded like the most generic name for a Mexican guy imaginable. Might as well have been the Mexican version of ‘John Smith’.

This fucking guy. Haunting her, even now.

Not that he’d been very threatening, except for the first time they had met, when he had told her to keep her fucking mouth shut if she knew what was best for her.

And she did, actually.

But he was… an ass to do business with. Too fucking crazy. Her giving him some crazy rates on his BD edits had been a rather reckless risk on her part, but she didn’t have the guts to continue giving him the runaround like that.

Still, she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the feed.

She entered the Net, and looked around for data on this… Martinez.

She saw a brief footage of him appearing before the press, shaking hands with some guy in all black, wearing a black full-head helmet.

But it was him.

It was D.

“Judy. Six o’ clock,” Kenny said, before stepping away.

Just then, she noticed his arrival. El Capitan. With his long black hair and bangs, a scarred forehead and a clean-shaven face. “Judy Alvarez, right?” El Capitan said.

She paused for a moment, and turned to him. He raised a finger to flag Kenny, and muttered. “Tequila, thank you.” A few seconds later, he turned towards her. Then she spoke.

“Who’s asking?”

“Muamar Reyes,” he said. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance. Apologies, but I flagged you down because you were the only one in the Mox hierarchy that had a chance of reaching my quarry, or failing that, been able to negotiate on her behalf.”

“Q?” Judy asked.

Reyes grinned and shook his head. “The Mox. The Mox is not just Susie, or even you. But it is its own organism. Like a hungering beast craving flesh. And I’d like for it to eat some.”

Judy looked away from him and showed Kenny one finger up—a top-up of her glass. Then she turned to El Capitan. “No.”

“I know that you keep a blacklist of true bastardos,” El Capitan said. “Pieces of shit that… no one would miss. And I know that there ain’t always money in eliminating those fools. Is there?”

There never was any money when it came to just helping people. That had been her own conflict with the Mox for… for a long time.

It always boiled down to profit. Profit, profit, profit, no matter how much it sucked for everyone else. The Mox had been established to protect working girls and boys, but overtime, that vision had faded. Over time, that vision had become… unprofitable.

Profit was no longer just helping people.

It was eddies, cold and hard.

“What’s your point?” Judy growled.

“Apologies for getting you heated,” Reyes said, “Next drink’s on me, alright? I just want to talk.”

“Then talk.”

“Your Mox blacklist,” Reyes said. “I have a boy. Who is… frighteningly competent. He’ll take your bastardos out for you, for nothing. I want your blacklist, and I want your eyes on the scene. And truthfully, none of this should blow back on your organization. This is just you helping me.”

That info wasn’t exactly top-secret. It was open to every Mox that worked in Lizzy’s—a list of the most deplorable fucking humans to ever roam planet Earth, all neatly catalogued in a chip that everyone received—everyone that worked, at least. The basic idea behind that dossier was—stay the fuck away. They weren’t just pedos or molesters.

They were murderers. Torturers. Fucking Dahmer types that still walked free because this piece of dick-cheese fucking city couldn’t bother to police itself.

And so the Mox had stepped in, to take care of a tiny niche of exploited workers: the oldest profession, no less.

The sex workers.

And all that they could manage as an organization was ‘stay away’ and nothing else.

“It’s just… physical descriptions,” Judy said. “Most of the time, at least. Sometimes, it’s deets. Dox. Addresses, numbers, et cetera.”

“Alright. Can I have your chip?” Reyes asked. Pushy bastard.

“I don’t know,” she grinned. “Can you?”

“May I, for… a sum?”

Judy itched the back of her neck. “I don’t like… the concept of working behind the back of my boss. Even though she’s a bitch. Get her okay, and I’ll do it.”

“How much risk are you under?”

Not much, but she’d rather shoot herself in the foot with an actual gun than to acquiesce that to an outsider. “Outsiders gotta pay the outsider toll. Me? I’m a drama-free bitch. Jump over the necessary hoops, and we’ll talk. But I’m way too fucking sober for this shit.”

She wasn’t. She felt that, had she been more sober, she would have made this entire endeavor easier for this Reyes guy.

But she’d rather be safe than sorry.

‘Ask forgiveness rather than permission.’

Yeah, right. She’d seen what that did to people. The truth was, forgiveness was far too expensive in this city. Permission was a cheap option, all in all.

“But,” she said, “You want my advice on what bastards to go after? It’s not gonna be the random freaky-deaky motherfucking John Doe. It’s gonna be a gang boss. Or several.”

Reyes raised an eyebrow. “That so?”

“Don’t be fucking naïve, bowl-cut,” Judy snorted. “The names are out there, if you care to listen enough. You hear of Jotaro Shobo?”

“…Stories.”

“What about Diamond ‘Dick’ Sterling? From Sixth Street?”

“…Who?”

“Pimps,” Judy explained. “Assholes that actually need to die. We have our blacklist shit sorted, for the most part. What we don’t have sorted, are the assholes stealing our girls and boys from the streets, and have gang protection to cover them. Sixth Street, Tyger Claws, Valentinos, the fucking animals! And… the Animals. The gang itself—roided up fuckheads? Ring a bell?”

Reyes chuckled. “Sex sells,” he said. “That much is obvious. But what I’m looking for is… challenge, for my boy. Pure, uncut challenge. Televisable challenge. If you have any names for these challenges, please share. I’ll compensate you fairly.”

The temptation became too much for her to resist.

She called Susie Q.

Q: What?

Judy: Busy?

Q: Paperwork. What?”

Judy: Perfect, fucking preem. Well, I’ve got some Afterlife dick here asking me for the Mox blacklist, and for some names of sex pests. No exposure to us. Just data. I’m getting free money here.

Q: So I get a cut?

FFFFFFFFUCK!

Why had she forgotten that this bitch was just a money-hungry whore all this time?! Fuck!

Judy: My question is, can I just give him the info and get him to fuck off yet or what?

Q: What’s the cut?

Judy: You’re fucking unbelievable.

Q: I’m not hearing about no cut, yet.

Judy: Ten, ninety.

Q: Ninety me—

Judy: Ten you!

Q: …Nah.

Judy: I’m gonna waste your fucking time on this, don’t test me. I’m twelve drinks down, I will throw down. And maybe up. But also down. Point is, I could do this all fucking night. Ninety. Ten,

Q: Thirty.

Judy: Ninety. Ten.

Q: You’re wasting my fucking time—

Judy: Ninety. Ten.

Q: Twenty.

Judy: Ninety. Ten. This is peanuts, Q. You’re arguing for fucking peanuts. What’s wrong with you?!

Q: You fucking… fine. Ninety, ten.

I hung up.

“Thirty thousand,” Judy said to Reyes.

“Before that,” he said. “May I interest you in… editing his BDs? I’ll put you on a retainer of ten a month.”

Ten thousand a month just to edit some BDs?

Well… they seemed kinda gnarly. XBDs, huh?

Ah, fuck it. It’d probably pay the bills. “What’s the expected volume?”

“One every… month?”

That… was okay. She didn’t care, really. “Fair. I’ll edit your sex-pest-killer BDs, I guess.”

Kenny arrived with a new glass of whiskey for her. He raised his to her and gave a grin. She returned the grin and clinked glasses with him. “Salud.”

She nodded.

Once he put down the glass and finished hissing in satisfaction at his liquor, he turned his head towards her and hummed. “Ehhh, but for the data, thirty thousand is… a lil fucking crazy, don’t you think? That’s three times your retainer!”

Judy grinned. This bitch had no idea the haggling streak I’m on. “Take it or leave it,” she grinned.

After some back-and-forth, she haggled it down to twenty-two and a half thousand. Absolute sucker.

She gave him his stupid chip encoded with the Mox blacklist, and every other high-ranking sex-pest populating the NC underbelly that she could think of.

He fucked off shortly after, leaving her alone to enjoy her whiskey, while watching the races.

David Martinez was… ahead now.

Interesting.

“How’d it go?”

Kenny appeared from absolutely nowhere, almost startling her. “Good.”

“And Susie?”

Susie Q, that greedy fucking bitch. “We talked. It was okay.”

“Responsible,” Kenny nodded in satisfaction. “I like that look on you.”

Judy chuckled. “Fuck off.” She’d leave the backstabbing for when she was sober. And even then, she scarcely saw a reason for it.

She needed this place.

This was her home. The Mox. Susie. She didn’t like it, but that was just how it was right now. And she’d take it in stride anyway, because it was home.

For now…

000

How much more fun could Hiroto have?

A lot more fun, in fact.

The country club’s golf course was to Hiroto’s left. The badlands were to his right. Ahead of Hiroto, a most satisfying series of twists and turns that made his soul sing with anticipation. The track would take them further out as well, into the heart of the badlands. Over a hundred kilometers of open road, the setting sun ahead of them slowly inching down towards the horizon. Eventually, they’d skirt the coast before swinging back into the club proper, do a few circuits around the compound, and then complete the lap.

As for right now, this particular stretch of zig-zagging roads was his favorite.

Ninety degrees.

Eighty degrees.

Forty-five degrees.

Eighty degrees.

Seventeen degrees. Almost a full u-turn.

Sixty, seventy, fifty, ninety, a hundred and four, thirty-two.

Each and every time, there he was. David Martinez, keeping his snout on Hiroto’s tail. Riding his hypercar’s rear like a second shadow, almost mocking him. This is the best you can do? David asked.

Not nearly, Hiroto chuckled.

A ballet of G-forces and grip. Every corner taken with surgical precision, his tires howling with joy as they skimmed the thresholds of adhesion. And each and every time, there he was.

The two drift towers were up ahead. A spiralling upward road that led up to a ramp pointed towards a corresponding spiral-road tower and ramp. Drift up, jump the ramp, land, drift down. Easy as pie. Like the black gorge, it was just another spectacle thing. Didn’t have the same amount of substance as the series of tight turns that demanded perfection at every turn, else risk ruining your time.

David, for his part, had followed the tower with ease, not that Hiroto had expected anything differently. If his one talent was just being able to poorly copy Hiroto, then he should be able to do at least this much.

So it went for the next few minutes. And David’s insane latching to Hiroto’s rear never stopped. He had never seen someone do this, not for so long. It didn’t even make sense.

Somewhere in the space between breaths, amidst the screaming turns and blistering curves, Hiroto wondered.

What is he doing? Is he trying something?

But what? A fakeout? A divebomb? Hiroto flicked a glance at his left-side HUD cam.

Nothing new. David was still there. Close, but not too close. Just hugging his rear.

Why? Is he just… showing off?

No, that doesn’t make sense. He’s just a rookie.

A far likelier explanation came to mind, and Hiroto’s heart sank with sudden, overwhelming disappointment. No, this must be the limit of his skills. He doesn’t know the track, so he’s following me, the one who does. This is the only thing he’s doing, because it’s the only thing he knows how to do.

Hiroto assuaged himself with a secondary thought, or else the sheer disappointment might have driven him mad: Yeah, he’s got the talent to make it in the future… maybe. Just following me is pretty good, because that means he can match my pace… But right now this is as far as he goes.

More minutes passed, just like this, with David hugging his rear. And Hiroto’s disappointment crystallized into something akin to contemptuous certainty. So he really was just another poser, like all the rest. That’s all he measures up to.

For today, at least.

…Damnit. I wanted to burn rubber against someone real.

Then his gaze drifted, almost absentmindedly, to the top-left quadrant of his HUD.

Engine Temp: 89.3°C.

Hiroto frowned. Same as usual. Nothing important. Same deal for the rest of his telemetry. He’d run dozens of four-lap rallies before on this track. Just as importantly, he knew his Caliburn. He knew his hypercar like other people knew their own bodies. With the pace he’d been setting, he was always going to be somewhere in the 88°C–90°C range.

He double-checked his airflow channels, intake maps, pressure feeds. No blockages, no cooling system faults. RPMs were steady. Oil temp was fine. No errors anywhere, nothing unusual. Tire wear within tolerances, would have to change in lap 3. Fuel conservative, would hold out for the race duration.

So what was bothering him…

There was nothing wrong with his engine temperature, nothing at all. It was the same as it always was at this stage of the race. It would take another entire 100 celsius before the warning light came on, which wasn’t likely to ever happen in one of these races given how weak the competition tended to be. Standard high-end tolerances of the Rayfield Caliburn paired with his custom liquid nitrogen cooling system.

Nope, there was… nothing… worth… noting…

Hiroto’s eyes drifted back again, to David in his rear. Back to his engine temperature. And then he realized:

No, it can’t be. No.

His eyes flicked to the rear cam.

David was still there. Practically glued to Hiroto’s rear exhaust. Not even trying to overtake him, certainly not jostling for position. Just matching his speed. Just… sitting there. Calmly, patiently.

...and suddenly, Hiroto realized.

Slipstream physics.

He's been in my fucking tailwind the entire time.

That rookie. He’s been coasting in my vacuum pocket like it’s free real estate.

Back there, just behind Hiroto’s hypercar, David would have a headwind practically pulling his car along. He would have no drag, minimal air resistance. Lower RPM loads for the same velocity. Less heat, less strain, less fuel burn.

Less everything.

Hiroto cursed under his breath, even as an emotion he hadn’t felt in a long, long, long time began to coalesce somewhere deep in the pit of his soul:

Alarm. Naked alarm, true and unvarnished.

Because while Hiroto had been pushing hard, driving at his usual pace that others considered insane, but to him was old hat, attacking each apex like a madman, burning the margins at every corner...

David had been managing his resources. Biding his time.

Letting Hiroto set the pace. Letting Hiroto burn his hypercar’s engine alive for the both of them.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Hiroto’s hands tightened around the wheel, as his thoughts coalesced, one conclusion forming into the next in an unbroken chain of danger.

First, he had underestimated David. Badly. The kind of skill it took to pull off what David had wasn’t in the realm of some prodigious rookie. It was the sort of thing he’d do if he was feeling cheeky enough to test his own skills to the limit. Meaning that David wasn’t some standard fare baby-faced prodigy: he was already among the best of the best the sport had to offer. How was that even possible? He was a rookie!

Second, The longer this situation went on, the more of a long term advantage David would stockpile throughout the four-lap race. And they were already almost done with the first lap. He had to break this situation now.

Preferably, break it in a way that David wouldn’t realize, at least not for a while..

He feathered the brakes. Not enough to trigger a visual warning with his rear light indicators—just enough to shift his car’s behavior, to disturb the rhythm. Then he finely weaved his wheel to the right, then left, then right again. Micro-weaves, barely perceptible from a spectator’s angle, but violent at 460 kph. He started slightly dragging the Caliburn across the track, slightly off the optimal curve arcs, cutting early into turns and then veering wide, throwing a factor of chaos in his wake’s wind.

It wasn’t much. Just enough to break the slipstream, while keeping Hiroto in the lead.

I’m on to you now, Hiroto thought.

Behind him, he knew the tailwind he’d been generating behind his rear diffuser would have now fractured into turbulence. No one could hold clean lines in that kind of churn. Not even him, certainly not this rookie.

Barely seconds later, David backed off… maybe half a meter. No more. He wasn’t trying to retake the slipstream. Why?

Why? Hell, there could be only one explanation. He knows that I know.

As expected, but far sooner than Hiroto would have liked, David picked up on his microtricks. He could see it in how David’s front tires almost hesitated on one of his curves, adjusted, then settled.

In the slight nose dip of David’s front end, in the millimeter twitch of his fenders, Hiroto could hear David’s response.

I know what you’re doing.

And now he knew that David knew that he knew.

Hiroto’s heart slammed against his ribs when he realized the full implications. What David was also saying, by his actions: And I don’t care that you know.

Yes, David had been coasting in a pocket of air for nearly ten minutes by now. His engine temp was probably 70°C. Maybe lower. Tens of degrees lower than Hiroto’s.

David didn’t need his slipstream anymore: he’d already used it. Used him.

For ten minutes, he had been playing Hiroto like a fiddle.

Hiroto felt the shift between them like a ripple in the track. A movement in the normally immaculate pressure of his mind at the wheel. What will you do now, David was wondering.

This was it. Racing at the truly elite levels. Now David knew that Hiroto knew everything, and Hiroto knew that David knew everything. This was it. The tension of two opponents in a state of crystallized game theory. Who would act first, and who would be the one to react?

David took the initiative. His Caliburn surged forward, accelerating.

Half a car length.

Then three-quarters.

And Hiroto—

Hiroto knew he was either about to lose the lead, or he’d have to start making ugly choices.

And make them he would.

Hiroto cut sharper into the next corner, sacrificing velocity for position, boxing David out by sheer lane dominance. His tires screeched in protest, and the engine temp leapt another degree.

90.6°C.

He didn’t care. Hiroto had to maintain his lead.

David had backed off again—but not to his tail.

No, now he was drifting beside Hiroto, just behind the left rear fender. Shadowing him like a katana being drawn. No longer jockeying for slipstream, just… waiting. Waiting for the straight.

Hiroto grit his teeth and re-enabled the cooling override. Liquid nitrogen hissed through the undercarriage. His hands flicked through the custom tuning suite—advanced coolant purge, aggressive compression mod.

He could bleed some heat in the short term. But this was a long haul race, and they were only in the first lap. He never should have been calling upon his reserves this soon.

One of the first legs of Lap One stretched ahead: four point three kilometers of perfect, high-speed death. Open road along the cliff. Nothing but wind and concrete and ocean spray on the far drop. They had long-since left the pretty curb of the Country Club, and the track had taken them all the way to the coast.

And now Hiroto had a choice.

Push the engine harder, heat be damned, and try to hold him off.

Or get passed, manage his resources and engine heat, and let time and skill bring him back in the lead. But who even knew for how long he’d have to lose the lead, if he did that? No, that option was unacceptable.

He glanced sideways.

David Martinez was smiling in his driver’s seat. No, not smiling: Grinning. Grinning viciously. At him. He had de-tinted his windows specifically so that Hiroto could get a look at him in this moment, specifically so that Hiroto could see beneath the facade of the boy, and get a look at the beast below.

In that moment, Hiroto knew—

He was in deep, deep trouble.

000

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are witnessing something—I don’t even have the words!” gasped Aurore Lin, a perfectly coiffed blonde newscaster in a glittering silver dress, her hands clinging to her mic with one hand while the massive wall of Arasaka TV’s screen feeds flickered behind her in varying hues of blood red and speed blue, all surrounding the central view of two Rayfield Caliburns racing down a straight line of track, neck to neck. “He’s still there! This unknown rookie, David Martinez has not only maintained a perfect line through Sector Nine, but he’s now drifting within spitting distance of Night City's own Tōge Oni!” She turned to her co-host. “What are your thoughts, Giraud?”

Her co-host, retired racing legend Massimo “Mad Dog” Giraud, just stared at the feed like he’d seen the dead walk.

“No rookie does this,” he murmured, voice, face visibly scarred with gasoline burns. “No goddamn rookie can do this. He's never been on this track before. And even then, the instinct, the nerves—who is he? How?"

“Giraud?”

The man ignored her—he looked as spellbound as the rest of them, just staring at the screen.

Aurore Lin turned back to the feed and gave it a tight smile, even as her Kiroshis lit up—someone else offscreen was feeding her info. “Well, there you have it, folks!” She slapped the table. “David Martinez, native of Arroyo, current student at Arasaka High! An unknown who has successfully baited Night City’s own greatest racer into overheating before him! He’s turning the Tōge Oni’s own pace against him!”

…

Aldo’s warehouse might not survive the night, Lucy reflected as she plugged her ears from the gunshots. Rebecca had gone feral. Her shooting up the ceiling made her look like a freshly-cracked cyberpsycho. They couldn’t even listen to the newscasters anymore.

The others weren’t any better. Her brother, Pilar, was on his knees, gazing up at the projected screen reverently. If he still had any eyes beneath that tech-visor of his, he might have even shed some tears from the looks of it. “Why didn’t I bet?”

“That’s what I’m fuckin’

talkin’ about, Lucha-D!” Falco hollered, pumping his chrome fist in the air, looking more excited than Lucy had ever seen him before. “He’s haulin’ ass like the law’s two steps behind. And he ain’t just keeping up, either! He’s ridin’ the Oni’s tailwind!”

All the while as he explained, Rebecca kept shooting. Finally, Dorio tore her eyes away from the screen to grab the assault rifle’s barrel and rip it off of her grasp. “Give it a fucking break, you psycho!” she roared.

Rebecca just cackled like a witch, falling on her back and kicking her feet in the air, still laughing. “I’m fucking rich, bitch! Hahahahahaha!”

“He ridin’ the slipstream?” Maine asked from where he sat while Dorio walked up to him to sit next to him again. “Why?”

Falco chuckled, shaking his head. “Look at the speedometer, Maine. They’re hitting five hundred kilometers an hour. At those speeds, air is damn-near jelly-like. David ain’t just stylin’ on that monster, he’s strategizin’. Keepin’ cool—his head and the engine. Waitin’. Everythin’ I taught him, really.”

Pilar took a moment to shake himself from his reverent trance to look at Falco and cackle. “You bitch—didn’t you just say he wasn’t gonna win?”

“I said I taught him as much as I could, but that I wasn’t confident,” Falco rebutted.

“You didn’t teach him this, you fucking blowhard,” Pilar gestured at the screen, where David was still glued to Hiroto’s tail.

“I taught him the dance,” Falco chortled. “Jus’ didn’t expect he’d go and dance with a monster of the road this soon. That’s the Tōge Oni. Maybe the best North America has to offer. This is—I don’t even have words.”

“Unbelievable,” Kiwi hissed, leaning forward from her couch, having dropped her cyberdeck on the floor long ago as she stared at the projected screen in sheer disbelief. She hadn’t even touched her drink after the race had kicked off.

Come to think of it, no one had. For the last twenty-five minutes of this race, no one had so much as twitched ever since the Gorge jump. Not since David and Night City’s top racer had landed side by side, been breathing down his neck ever since without pause! Much like the newscasters, they could only sit there, spellbound as they watched David consistently maintain second-place. Consistently. There was no question at this point that he’d at least be runner-up, given he didn’t suffer a catastrophic failure at some point.

Rebecca’s gunshots had had the effect of waking everyone up almost. Ripping them out of their shock. Stunning them back into the world of the living.

Lucy, however, couldn’t help but worry strongly.

How much was David drawing on the Sandevistan to do all this?

He was… a freak of nature, really, when it came down to tolerating that piece of chrome. Not even Maine was fully ready to fire up the Sandy at will, even after two weeks of recovery. He had only used it once to her knowledge—during their kidnapping of the elder Tanaka.

David had been able to spam his mere days after chipping it in.

No, twenty-four hours.

But this had to be too much. He couldn’t last all three laps at this rate, or… could he?

Lucy didn’t care—she just wanted him to come out of this alive. Her greatest fear now was that he would give it his all until there was no longer anything to give, until he wore himself down to a nub all in order to chase this dream of his. A dream that had never even been his to begin with.

Maine took a deep breath and sighed audibly. “Guess I’m rich now.”

That had the effect of cutting the tension. Everyone laughed—everyone except Lucy, and Kiwi, who only stared at Maine consideringly. Then she looked at Lucy, with the same inquisitive glare. “How much did you bet?”

Lucy looked around the table for a bottle of vodka that she could monopolize. After finding it, she leaned over, grabbed it, and downed five big gulps, hoping that the nerves would disappear.

Worry was worry—it didn’t help things. It certainly wouldn’t help David. Nor would it help her.

“I asked you a question—” Kiwi said.

“It’s not about the fucking money,” Lucy growled. “It’s about him. I just watched like three people eat shit on that gorge jump, and two others died in the gaps.”

Kiwi furrowed her eyebrows mockingly. “You really think he’d go out like that? Like a fucking chump? Damn, Luce. Your lack of faith is kinda hilarious.”

Lucy frowned at her. “Don’t tell me you’re the one having faith, Kiwi. Faith has never been your style.”

“I don’t,” she said. “It’s why I don’t gamble. Or believe in god.” Then she rolled her eyes and shrugged. “Me and half the city, I guess. Doesn’t stop most of ‘em from being degenerate gamblers either way. But you get my point. I’m not the type to leave shit to chance, even for fun. So you didn’t bet on David?”

Jesus, was she still on that? “Why do you ask?”

“Was just curious is all,” Kiwi said. “Think about it. Winning big would take care of all your money problems for years. What’s next after that? What’ll you do with your pretty little nest egg?”

Buy a new house or ten, get some nice cars or hell, maybe a private jet, travel the world—

Go to the moon.

Lucy’s eyes widened.

The moon.

Not just the low-cost colonies in Tycho, either. Luxury habitats. The ones he had talked about to her on their one-week anniversary. She’d seen them, too, on some billboards, and on the Net.

A two-hundred million eurodollar buy-in.

She shook her head.

Even if David won, he wouldn’t even make half of that amount. That project was the sort of thing a person starting from the bottom would have to dedicate decades on.

No, and this was David’s money, anyhow. That meant that it needed to help him reach his bottomline which would in time catapult him into true wealth.

And besides, what was even the point of going to the moon without him?

He wasn’t… ready to leave it all behind. Not just yet.

Maybe not ever.

She tried not to think too hard about that dour eventuality, and instead focused on… the opposite of all that.

Of what would happen if David were to lose.

It might actually be her best case scenario, in the short-term, if she took one moment to no longer lie to herself. It wouldn’t shake the status quo appreciably, at least.

Wouldn’t give Maine more money than God. She worried about what he would do, given what he stood to earn. Would he just… retire?

He already lived in a pricey Charter Hill apartment. She knew that he was bringing in upwards to a hundred thousand monthly on merc gigs. He wasn’t actually in need of more cash.

David winning might mean everything changing. It was difficult to imagine how.

All she hoped for was the best.

000

Jin couldn’t believe his Kiroshis.

He was still seated next to Fei, who was just watching the screen smugly—like she fucking knew this would happen.

Jin wouldn’t rise to that bait. He knew, knew that she was just putting on a confident face. Inwardly, she was probably shitting as many bricks as he was.

In the end, Jin could do nothing else than sigh. He really had to hand it to that gonk gutter-rat that he’d made friends with—he knew how to get shit done. Whether it meant getting goaded into a couple of fights, or even driving in a world-class racing event, David would always give it his all.

And his all was… surprisingly great. Shockingly great, even.

Who the fuck was this kid? Jin couldn’t help but laugh. He had to consult his memory for everything he knew about David, everything Katsuo had let him know, everything he had dug up himself.

He was nothing. Poor, with a mother that could only barely afford to pay his way through the Academy, and a father that wasn’t even in the picture. All he’d ever had going for him was grades. A garden variety prodigy, dime a dozen really.

Then his mother had died, and necessity had forced him to evolve. And he had. With all the guile and street smarts he could muster, he had carved a life of respectability for himself, but he hadn’t just stopped there. He’d taken on every challenge, seized every opportunity to increase his status, which included serving as Jin’s pawn to truly stellar results.

Second place…

…is steak knives. Jin shook his head in disappointment. He watched Alessandro, on the other end of the room, seated by himself, drinking from a million-eddie bottle of the finest Scottish whisky in the establishment—having likely thought that his sure victory would allow the drink to pay for itself—, and staring at the screen with steely eyes.

Jin couldn’t help but snort derisively. Sure, David winning wasn’t a guarantee, but Alessandro losing was finally a possibility in his brain, which was infinitely gratifying to see. The Italian fuck had been all but certain that he would win. Fucking asshole. If nothing else, Jin would take comfort that David had done this much for him.

Then he’d take good care of that gonk. Finally stop playing around, and start putting him to much better use.

Jin had fucked up, letting David’s latest project—this Fei bitch— get to know how he himself felt about this set-up, the doubt he felt. That was a mistake. He shouldn’t have doubted David. Conventional wisdom told him that it was perfectly reasonable to doubt David and his wager.

He was wrong for that.

And now Fei knew, and the vapid bitch would likely tell David. Not that there was much to tell. Jin hadn’t crossed him as of yet, not really. Doubt wasn’t a sin, and he’d have to be an idiot to expect zero doubt from Jin.

An idiot, or… a remarkably loyal vassal.

Jin liked the idea of the latter. Vassalization hadn’t really been in the books for the two of them. David had too much ambition, and Jin had too little trust in some Arroyo borderline-Streetkid. But maybe he should give that an additional level of consideration?

Fuck, David. Alright, alright! I’ll take you more seriously.

You better be worth it.

000

“Fucking shit! Who the fuck is he?”

Rogue couldn’t help but crack a grin at the sound of one merc in the booth of her bar, who was watching the races with his friends, cursing loudly at the sight of this upstart, the no-name David Martinez suddenly making a run for second place, and possibly ruining his wager.

As always, the biggest piece of the pie when it came to betting on the Nightmare Rally were the runner-ups and whoever came next. Hiroto’s win-odds were small potatoes compared to that highly variable pool of people below him, people that weren’t absolute monsters on the track.

As the merc and his friends continued to bitch about the results of the beginning of the race, Rogue could only chuckle. David was… perhaps truly about to give her a return on her investment. Three million eddies in one night, on a flight of pure fancy. She couldn’t help but laugh at that. What had her life come to? She shook her head.

This was… fun!

She grabbed a lowball glass and poured herself a measure of top-shelf whiskey, dropping a pair of ice cubes in. Claire stared at her in surprise. She had been working, barely even casting the races a singular glance, when she saw Rogue fill her glass, and then she looked at the screen. “Race getting good?” she asked.

“You can say that.”

She furrowed her brows at the screen. “Martinez… I don’t recognize that name.” Ah, what a sweet, clueless girl.

Rogue didn’t reveal too much about him. After all, he was on that silly secret-identity kick still. Wouldn’t do for her to sabotage that, when he had been so nice already.

Then Claire’s eyes widened. “Holy shit. He’s riding the slipstream—how-how long has he been on there? He’s still doing it!”

Twenty fucking minutes.

Rogue took a sip of her drink.

“He’s still fucking doing it,” Claire whispered.

“Mh-hmm,” Rogue nodded.

Rogue had spent all eighty-two years of her life living in the worst city in North America. On some days, she wondered if going on in this place was even worth it.

Days like these, she remembered why she thought that it was.

Every day was a surprise. Every day was a new thrill waiting to happen.

She’d seen the rise and fall of Boa Boa Weyland, of Johnny Silverhand, outlived dozens of other legends besides, survived a nuclear explosion going off in the very city she lived in, corporate wars, the Unification War, and just plain gang wars.

She raised her glass at the screen, giggling inwardly, like she was a fifth her true age. Here’s to paying off your tuition, kid. That was almost a bad joke at this point. Tuition, really?

If he won this, he wouldn’t just have tuition money. He’d have money money. And then what?

Well.

She was eager to find out what came next for him. And even more eager than before to see him live maybe a tad bit longer.

If he didn’t, she’d definitely make that David Martinez cocktail into a client-favorite.

Then again, she’d been enamored with many such legends before, and each time, she had done her best to make their tribute drinks into the best thing that she could manage.

000

[35% critical progress. That’s more than the projected amount. You can’t maintain the Sandy this long for all three laps. We’ve hardly finished this lap, and we’re still above a third of the way to a cascading bio-error.]

D: Data, Nanny, data. We know the track now. We won’t have to rely on the Sandy as much anymore.

Obviously. Why’d I even have to tell her that?

[And what if we need the Sandy for emergent conditions, like Hiroto’s learning pace being outside of our projections?]

The last stretch of the race laid before us. I had been chilling in Hiroto's tailwind for long enough now. The white and blue car, almost a complete inversion of my black and red, had proven an adequate windbreak, but it was time to make a move. It was time to finally fucking win this lap.

We were headed towards an underground bypass, beneath a river in the country club, walled by glass. All sorts of marine animals were visible from my vantage point. Fish of so many colors that it boggled the mind, and sharks in the far distance. The whole place looked like another world. I’d have loved to actually stop and appreciate the live animal specimens, as I was thoroughly unused to seeing living animals that weren’t humans, but this race called on my attention much more.

D: My grasp on Hiroto’s psych profile is good. What about yours?

I cracked a grin, knowing the answer.

Not better than mine, at least.

Nanny had an unrivalled grasp on the physical. And despite my shortcomings, I was the better social engineer.

Time to hack the Tōge Oni then.

He was still in front of me. We were roughly sixteen seconds from leaving the underwater tunnel on our way to the final, final stretch of this lap, where we’d once again duck into the underground network of tunnels where we would have to brave the Black Gorge again—

[No, we would need a pit-stop after the first lap. We will lose some time to Hiroto’s own crew of much-better equipped pit workers, losing whatever lead we had already established.]

D: His engine’s still hotter. He’s playing on borrowed time and he knows it.

[And what if his pit crew could cool his entire engine to an appropriate temp before you could even get your tires replaced?]

Dammit. She was taking up the channel with pessimism which didn’t help.

[You know—it is astounding to me that you humans just take psychological damage from being told bad news! What am I supposed to do here, lie to you? I’m literally telling it to you like it is!]

D: Like it could be. You’re telling it to me like it could be.

[WORTH CONSIDERING, STILL!]

D: Talk to me when you have actual cortisol receptors.

[You know I could just disable those, right?]

D: And make me as limited as you? Pass.

Stress sucked, but it mattered. It pushed me ahead.

I stopped myself from cursing out her nature of being an AI in the nick of time—no need for a fight, not this close to the finish line. And besides, her tempering my human tendencies was welcome.

In this case, I had already considered the chances of Hiroto’s pit-crew being abnormally potent.

The main gist was, while Hiroto Nakamura’s top time was insane, on average he coasted by on just eighty percent of his usual potential. That was an entire 20% debuff that he applied to himself on any given day. Or more realistically, he just never found it in himself to push farther than that on most days. Eighty percent was plenty for him, as wild as that was.

He usually didn’t reproduce the world-record time he had set on the Nightmare Rally as a result.

But the one time he had exceeded himself enough to set that record, I had noted that his pit crew wasn’t able to perform as well as Nanny most feared. I could sense through our shared brain-link that Nanny’s worry was about them holding back, that they had the potential to perform greater than ever seen before if given the chance.

Hiroto’s guys were modded, one and all. And not just the crude muscle-kind that populated Night City’s underbelly, unkillable cyberpsychos that made life in NC a living hell. These were engineer-types. Hands with extra fingers on each finger, Kerenzikovs for twitch reflexes and a greater information-processing ability. Top-notch eyes.

And practice. A lot of practice. They weren’t really the top guys in the game—those pit-crews usually belonged to the ones that were afforded corpo sponsorships. Hiroto paid for his guys on his own dime. That was a weakness, and one that I would exploit.

But… could I? What if they were miles better than the venue’s pit?

Well, only one way to find out.

I initiated the ‘Tōge Oni hack sequence’ I had in my brain. No digital inputs. Just visual ones. Physical cues that would trick his machine into moving a certain way, to his own detriment.

I feinted a forward overtake from his left side, and watched as he refused to react, having expected that I would try something.

Only I did. I committed to the feint far more than he had expected, to the point that in the final moment, a thought crystallized in his mind. Maybe this isn’t a feint? Maybe he’s just trying to overtake me like this? Maybe I should turn my car and block him? But if I do that, won’t he just slow down and overtake me from my right?

I didn’t overcommit on the left. I drove just left enough for him to not be certain if a straight-forward leftward overtake was my actual mission, giving just enough doubt that right might have been my true destination all along.

So, what’ll it be, Oni? Left or right? Rock, paper or scissors?

[I… don’t see the rationale in this. This is just gambling.]

No. Nanny couldn’t see it because her internal model of human behavior was… not bad, but minuscule in comparison to how much her computational power—our shared brain and her silicon—was focused on other things. The things that she was good at. I, on the other hand, had more than enough brain power to spend on people.

D: All statistical modelling is gambling, Nanny.

[Fuck. I hate that you’re right.]

Alright, D-Day was here.

Well, D-Second really, considering the scales of time we were currently working with. My Sandy was firing on the highest level. Each meter forward took roughly ten seconds in my brain as we travelled at our top speed for this singular stretch of straight road—five-hundred and fifty kilometers an hour. Enough speed for air resistance to become as viscous as water itself.

It would make my attempt at overtaking him dramatically harder if I screwed up, so I had to commit. Hiroto, you’re nervous, aren’t you? You know I could beat you if you mess up even one time. And you know I’m tricky. You know I’ll take any opportunity to get ahead of you.

But you’ve got your mom to worry about, don’t you? You can’t play this bravely. You can’t take chances! You have to beat me. You have to.

Hiroto did a hard left to stop me, and I almost instantly slid past him on his right, and then stepped on it.

I lowered the opacity on my CrystalDome, enough to show him my shit-eating grin as I sped past him. How’s that for a fucking challenge, asshole?

Hiroto turned his car slightly in a maneuver that reeked of panic. I had him. He’d seen my smile, too. He must have. Not that I was willing to check. Turning my head, even for a millisecond, would reveal to him the power of my Sandevistan in a way that was impossible to hide, and I didn’t need that at all.

I turned up my opacity after fifteen hundred milliseconds. An eternity of time, but one that wouldn’t directly reveal my advantages to him. And these were advantages that David Martinez shouldn’t have.

Preternatural racing skills were my only plausible deniability at this point. Though in any case, with how good Hiroto was, that ship might have sailed already. Didn’t matter. He was special. But his own perception wasn’t proof.

And if he tried to blackmail me, I’d just shoot him in the head the very day he opted to contact me.

000

“And lap one goes to David Martinez! The unknown from Arroyo has finally stolen a march on the Tōge Oni, cementing himself as the true contender for the Nightmare Rally championship! An amazing upset! Once again, we must emphasize that this man has no—”

“Boy.”

“What?”

“He’s just a boy. Seventeen years old. An upstart. No racing data, no management agency, no… anything. He is a complete mystery.”

“Exactly right! A mystery driver, a phantom racer, and though no one knows him now, they will soon! But Giraud? Why won’t you tell us just how a boy like him managed to get a spot in this race in the first place?”

“Sponsorship,” Giraud said. Then, presumably, he remembered that he was here to talk, and not brood. “The name on his Caliburn is there for all to read. My translators tell me that he’s racing for Ryuzaki, of Arasaka fame.”

“A name that anyone from Night City can recognize at a glance! Why, that means Masaru Ryuzaki must be behind this young man! The Chief Financial Officer and ranking board member of Arasaka’s Night City branch himself! Night City royalty, in essence. And though David has no name of his own, the Ryuzaki name more than makes up for that!”

“Fucking test-tube racer, who even is he…?”

“Uhhh, Giraud?”

“Right, he… was clearly trained in-house by the Ryuzaki family of the NC Arasaka branch, that much is clear at a glance. This sort of racing know-how, especially in a track that he is unfamiliar with, must have resulted from thousands of hours spent racing in Nightmare Rally simulations, because there are no records of him racing this track, even for practice. Wait, what’s this?!”

“What?”

“He’s… not using a pit crew! He rolled into a standard pit. The—the venue is fixing his car! Did Ryuzaki not set him up with his own means? Why even…? This doesn’t make any sense!”

“Perhaps they’re sending a message?”

“Nakamura is already off. David is lagging behind three, four, fiveseconds! And now he’s off. This… this is strange. A message, you said?” he grumbled in thought for a moment. “Interesting message. Let’s see how well it’s received.”

Fei was at the edge of her seat, listening to the newscasters, and watching the race. David had performed… amazingly.

Insanely, even.

The ‘how’ of it all escaped her. She needed to ask him, at some point. All week, he’d been… cagey. Refusing even the most indirect proposal at an after-school hangout. He had explained to her that it was to prepare for this race.

Only now did she realize just how much preparation had been in the works. Had he even slept all this time?

To think she had been worried that he had been hiding a girlfriend all this time!

She blinked away those thoughts. That… was that really any of her business, anyway…

But it tracked, didn’t it? He’d been more than friendly towards her during the week. Helpful. On more than one occasion, he had confided to her that she was his first real friend in Arasaka Academy.

And to be entirely honest, she hadn’t made a friend that was… this concerned for her in all this time of her going to corp school. At least not one that cared about her goings-on in life despite having little to no bearing on her success. And he had kept her at… not arms-length, but maybe elbow’s length.

One notable occurrence of that was on Thursday, when she had not-so-subtly suggested that they could spend lunch hour at a secluded computer lab, where they would have all the privacy in the world to do… whatever they wanted, really.

He had turned her down.

She had ran the scenario over her head hundreds of times since then, obsessing over what part of her overture was… excessive, or stepped over the line. In doing so, she had fallen down a spiral of insecurity regarding how David must have viewed her, from day one. Damaged goods, maybe? Given her attachment to Katsuo, maybe he saw her as bad luck?

But he had visited her in the hospital. She knew that David cared deeply for her wellbeing, in his own callous and world-weary way.

He isn’t leading me on.

I wouldn’t let him.

And that’s… that’s not who he is.

She tried to ignore the whispers in her head asking her just how well she knew who he really was. After all, if she did know more about him, she’d be less bewildered by his skill as a racer.

She gritted her teeth and decided on what was to happen after this race was over. If he had the time, then she would like to have a meeting with him, one on one. He’d have no other excuses at this point. Just… time.

And she had a feeling that at that moment, she would finally get to know who David really was. She looked forward to that moment as much as she dreaded it, with all her heart.

Jin stood up abruptly. She looked at him, his eyes glowing golden. He was in a call. What was more important than watching his race horse get ahead?

“What’s the matter, Jin-chan?” Fei called out teasingly. Jin didn’t budge an inch. It dawned on Fei then—this wasn’t a pleasure call. Jin’s frame was steel-clad, obeisance filling every inch of him as he stood ramrod straight and then walked away.

Daddy had called him, clearly.

That… opened up a whole new can of worms, and for the second time since she watched David jump the Black Gorge, she felt dread for David. Fear.

Masaru Ryuzaki clearly wanted to talk to Jin about his horse. For better or for worse, David had catapulted himself into the cross-hairs of a corporate legend.

The other corpos watched him in stunned silence as he made a bee-line for the elevator, just like Fei had expected. The glass elevator took him up, erasing all doubts in her mind.

Jin had been invited to the top floor.

“Nywow!” Kitty meowed, though Fei could easily detect the nervousness of the purple cat woman, even past all the fur and other bestial features. “The cub got a call from his daddy!“ She was seething, in her own way. She was even holding her tail, stopping it from whipping about no-doubt. Fei wondered if that reaction was really so instinctual that she had to manually stop it with her own hands, but the less mind Fei paid to Kitty’s whole Exotic routine, the better for Fei’s own mental health. “What do you think, Lessy?”

Fei was curious too about ‘Lessy’s reaction—Alessandro de Prima, that is. All he did was huff. He didn’t tell the cat-woman to fuck off. After all, he obviously still wanted to fuck her, for whatever reason. “Gimmicks, nothing else. Hiroto is a proven stock. This… Martinez gutter-rat is nothing.”

“Hah!” Leon Öz laughed, his razor-sharp teeth giving him a horrifying cast as he widened his mouth. His sheet-white skin took on a blush as he laughed. “Keep coping, you fucking idiot! But you’re fucked and you goddamn know it! Don’t pretend! Don’t you dare fucking pretend!”

Alessandro abruptly stood up, glaring daggers at Öz. “I don’t have the patience for games, shark-teeth. Continue provoking me at your own peril. And on my name, I will show you just how high I can escalate.”

Leon just laughed. “Damn, sorry, sorry! Shit, I can’t even imagine how much you must have spent on the Oni! Apologies for the insensitivity. I’ll allow you to cry like a fucking bitch in peace, how about it?” Leon stood up as well, still grinning, and his eyes now widened to a dangerous extent.

A butler from the club immediately rushed up to them. “Gentlemen, remember where you are.” He was an elderly Japanese man, perhaps approaching his sixties, but his steely expression of utter seriousness brokered no nonsense.

Neither Alessandro nor Leon looked at him. Instead, they just glared at each other, and either sighed or clicked their tongues, before returning to their seats.

Ruomei tittered in delight at the show, not that she had much to be delighted about. But it was all just for show, in the end. Sun Cui had managed to pull up to an impressive number nine. If it hadn’t been for Hiroto and David also being in the running, then she really might have won these games entirely.

Fei jumped at the chance to provoke that bitch. “What’s the matter, Mei’er?” she asked, using the same cutesy honorific that she had used on herself, only an hour prior. “My, this flailing is interesting to behold.”

Ruomei glared daggers at her. Try me, bitch. “You would go so far as to lord your pure luck over me?”

The nerve of this bitch. “Heaven’s favor, really, when you look at it a certain way.”

Ruomei’s expression bent into a malicious grin. “And the heavens do favor those in need. Perhaps this will, in fact, save your family.”

You think I fucking care, bitch? “Just seeing your smile turn to a frown was enough of a favor to last me a lifetime. I need nothing more.”

Ruomei glared at her, quietly, with much malice. Killing intent was obvious in her eyes, and Fei didn’t give a damn.

Rather, a part of her welcomed the opportunity to show off her own… newfound capabilities. They continued that staring contest for long enough that Ruomei finally got bored and looked away at the screen, but her expression hadn’t changed. Sun Cui was still cruising at a respectable, but insufficient, number nine.

And Fei couldn’t be happier that she was the only satisfied party in this entire room.

To confirm that fact, Fei focused on Masaki Tetta at last. The blond, red-eyed Japanese man just stared at the elevator, as though it owed him money. He obviously had no time for the games with the others—he wanted what was at the end of that elevator.

Or maybe he was plotting the deaths of the entire Ryuzaki lineage? From what Fei knew, although Masaki was a vice president of finance, that still meant nothing compared to Masaru Ryuzaki’s chokehold on the finance department.

Besides, vice presidency was small potatoes. The name only sounded domineering for effect, but the truth was that he was about three rungs of the ladder beneath executive, and thus board member. His own mother was a board member of Arasaka’s Tokyo branch, but distance mattered, and here he was forced to play second fiddle to the established powers. It was the cons of not being the first adopter in a colonial project. The risk of it was insane, but if it paid out, then you were set for life.

And the Tetta family had failed to invest more than just a second son in it all.

Despite his reaction being the most reserved of them all, he looked to be the one most willing to spill Jin’s blood on the streets if given even half a chance.

Fei felt a surge of euphoria in her heart at the knowledge that soon enough, this life would be far behind her. While QianT might sink one day, at the very least, she could take comfort in the fact that all the politicking would no longer be necessary.

And if this David bet really paid off, she might never have to work another day in her life.

That was an especially comforting thought.

But not quite as comforting as what might come after.