Night City was a confusing place to Chief Enforcer Augustus Gonzalez.

It was simultaneously a shithole and one of the most striking cities he had ever laid witness to. And he had been all over the world. Given his affluent station, he had been able to afford quite the remarkable world tour after graduating high school. That gap year had taken him all over—to London, New York, Paris. He’d seen Arasaka’s Tokyo headquarters, toured the NetWatch data farm in London, and walked through the terraformed countryside of Tuscany, maintained in this… dream-like picture of arcadian beauty by none other than Biotechnica.

His company’s parent company worked wonders with life where so many other megacorps stuck stubbornly to machines and coldness.

Night City was striking. Perhaps it was that contrast that made it so.

One thing was a certainty, however. He wasn’t afraid of it. Not these… ‘edgerunning’ mercenaries, or the assortment of degenerate gangsters.

With his entourage behind him, he walked out of ‘The Afterlife’, the heartland of this ‘edgerunning’ movement, having received a tip that this was the place to go if he needed to find an uppity Night City merc.

He had brought twenty men with him. Not his best guys, though.

Those guys were sweeping the city, earning their keep as his Sentinels—all cybernetically enhanced and trained for years to be among the best enforcers in Tijuana.

He received a call from one of them. His favorite guy, even—a real fucking cartel stereotype. Juan ‘El Chupacabra’ Madero.

Chupi: The Maelstrom don’t wanna chat about our target.

The Maelstrom. One of their leads. Turns out, this fucking fool, D, was not just going around, kicking every beehive in reach. He actively recorded himself doing it, and then went around and sold it for a fucking pittance. Those braindances had cost fifty Eurodollars, and in them, dozens had been murdered.

Life was hilariously cheap in this city that seemed to have been tailor-made to produce the most human suffering at every hour.

Striking. This city was just striking.

Augustus: What did they say?

Chupi: Metal lyrics, mostly, as they threw themselves ineffectually at me. Dying, of course, because they were also high. Have you heard of glitter? This seems to be a drug that only exists in this city.

Augustus: Is it good?

Chupi: It is essentially the sort of drug you do because you hate life and you want to shorten it as much as possible.

That described quite a few drugs, but…

Chupi: Whatever you’re imagining, it’s worse. I tried some, and it also just kind of sucked.

Augustus frowned. Was this guy high?

Chupi: Boss, the tagline is, fucking, ‘death is inevitable’, HAHAH. Can’t make this shit up. I got some samples—maybe the boys in the lab will like it?

Death is inevitable.

Eh. A lot of poor fucks in Tijuana wanted to die. It’d probably sell like hot cakes depending on how expensive it was to produce.

As Augustus walked down the street, passing by an alleyway, he heard a whisper from inside the alleyway and stopped. His men started pawing at their sides while he narrowed his eyes at the character who leaned his back against the wall. He was wearing a black leather trench coat, had on sunglasses even in the dark, and this retro flat-top haircut. “You wanted data, didn’t ya?” the guy said. “You need data? I’m your man.” He walked up to them. “Name’s Calloway. I heard tell that you were looking for someone.”

Perfect.

Augustus had decided to walk around instead of getting into his car, specifically so that one of those desperate fucks inside that shitty retro diner would take him up on his offer for information. Predictably, they did. The establishment hadn’t liked his show of force—arriving with so many men—but individuals bent to eduardos. Money made the world go round.

Augustus looked around the street, both for belligerents in case this was a trap, and for an eatery or a café that they could go to. He found one rather quickly, and turned back to this Calloway. “Walk and talk,” Augustus commanded, before proceeding ahead towards the café. Calloway followed after quickly.

Augustus: Caught another lead. Check with the other Sentinels, and I swear to fucking god, Chupi, you keep taking random drugs on the clock and I will skin you alive.

And he would. What a fucking amateur.

His most competent, his most frightening operative, sure, but in terms of discipline, he had roughly none.

But he was fun at parties. Made it difficult for Augustus to see him objectively because of that.

“It’s D, right?” Calloway said.

“What do you know about him?”

“Shit, everything.”

“His name?”

“Nobody does—guy’s like, this, superhero. He made this BD series about how he inherited the mission of some superhero who got killed by Raffen Shiv. It’s fake as shit, though, but it’s pretty solid.”

He’d seen that BD. It did seem rather fanciful. That, and all the other fucking things he did. Like, splitting a bullet in half, only to get shot twice.

…That one was kind of funny.

But the point was, he was an idiot. A scarily effective idiot, but an idiot nonetheless. And because of his trespasses against Green Farm, he needed to be put down.

And made an example for these other Night City fucking animals never to cross the border again.

“But I know who he hangs with. I know his friends. I know quite a bit, actually. Question is: will you make it worth my while?”

Augustus debated for a moment whether to shove this piece of shit inside a car, torture him for an hour, and get the information that way, or to just pay the man and have them part ways quickly.

It depended on his answer. “How much do you dare to ask?” Augustus grinned genially.

Calloway’s eyes widened and he stepped back. “Uh…” He grit his teeth. “Ten k, how ‘bout it? That’s small potatoes, ain’t it?”

Guy was shitting bricks.

He was right, though. Augustus’ cut-off for just torturing the guy had been fifty k. Ten was low.

“Five,” Augustus said. “And you tell me everything and walk away.”

“Fuck, fine.”

000

After Augustus’ men had finished clearing the café of people, he sat opposite to Calloway on a table. “D’s this hotshot piece of shit that just arrived in the scene. Sports a Sandy. Probably a QianT Warp Dancer, or maybe a Militech Falcon. Thing is, it’s good. Not that Dynalar SCOP either.”

Augustus nodded.

“He hangs out with Maine’s crew,” he reached for his chip socket on his neck and ejected a chip from it, before handing it to Augustus. “Maine Williams. Falco. Pilar. And a couple of street-whores hanging about them that don’t need mentioning, plus D.”

“And no name for D,” Augustus muttered dryly. “Because he’s a… superhero. Like Superman.”

“Some say the D stands for death,” Calloway said. “He does wear that skull-mask around. But my amigo, let me tell you, that’s nothing compared to what you really wanna know—where to find those fucks. You know, Maine and them.”

Augustus kept his expression carefully neutral, but he was celebrating inside. Jackpot. “Oh?”

Calloway grinned. “They ain’t know yet, but ol’ Cal knows everything. I know Maine’s friends’ friends. And I know two of his safe-houses. And I know that if a guy like him ain’t runnin’ around like Faraday’s favorite fucking lapdog, he’s chilling with his chooms, doing whatever. Just there for you to fuck him in the ass.”

“Is D with him?” Augustus asked, hoping that this degenerate fuck wasn’t just trying to manipulate him into killing one of his long-time rivals.

“It’s all there in the damn data!” Calloway shook his head, pointing at the chip. “Falco drives for Maine, and Falco and D rode the Badlands Derby together—seen it with my own eyes. Them and their whores sprayed beer all over me,” he growled. “Anyway, I know two places. The backrooms of a gym in Watson called ‘Box Bout It Gym’, or a warehouse in Rancho Coronado owned by an old fuck by the name of Aldo. Addresses are in the chip.”

Augustus couldn’t help himself.

He tipped the guy the remaining five thousand of the ten thousand he had initially asked for, stood up, and walked away.

He’d take his usual approach. Go in fast and hard. Shoot the place up and torture the survivors for information.

Easy.

He wouldn’t even need Chupi for this. Four guys, plus a couple of whores?

Eh. He could take them alone if he had to. But it would be a nice opportunity to blood some of his fresher meat, a few of his rookies.

Onwards... to this gym, then.

000

The Critical Progress was getting too high. I had been using the Sandy for tens of minutes at a time now, at the highest setting, just to keep up with the Tōge Oni.

The pit-stop had been an absolute nightmare. I hadn’t just been outstripped by Hiroto’s crew.

I had been crushed.

Three seconds lost.

Three seconds, and five hundred meters. That asshole had coasted by on his very own unique advantage to get ahead. His money advantage. I didn’t dwell for too long on that annoyance. After all, I’d be one hell of a hypocrite to rage against him for that reason alone.

I had expected some deviation from his pit-crew’s usual routine, but this much was insane.

Though, at the very least, they hadn’t quite managed to fully cool him down. No, that wasn’t possible given the brief amounts of time we were given during these stops. The standard package was a refueling and a change in tires.

I reached the Black Gorge three seconds behind him.

As I jumped, I considered my next route.

[David, think about this.]

No.

I hit the wall, the same exact way that Hiroto did, bumping by front upwards. Then, when one of my rear wheels skirted the death drop of one of the many pits that pockmarked this stretch of the road, I revved my back wheels, re-orienting my car so that it could more easily slide through the narrow stretch of road, barely a foot wide. Once my airborne rear-wheel finally touched the road, I made sure to wait patiently, patiently, for the car to tilt forwards.

Then, when it finally tilted downwards enough, just enough, I revved my rear wheels, driving as hard as I could through the bends in the underground tunnel, chasing after Hiroto like a man possessed.

To my elation, I finally reached him.

I checked out the top-left part of my windshield, and saw my engine temp.

Engine Temp: 86.9°C.

Small price to pay to be on the front again. I hadn’t been conscious of it, but I could almost swear that I had been in a pack of other racers for a hot second.

[You were.]

Dammit.

D: How far back was I?

[Third and fourth took you over for a moment.]

Hiroto and his goddamned tech advantage. Such things shouldn’t even be allowed! What the fuck?

How was any unaffiliated racer supposed to win?

[They’re not supposed—]

D: Shut up, SHUT UP! I know!

Brokies were meant to lose. Old news. Goddammit.

I slid back into Hiroto’s slip-stream. He immediately started swerving. Another headache.

D: What’s his engine temp?

[Given that his car’s got the best racing stats possible… 109.2°C. Lowest estimate.]

Not bad. But not good, either. He was still well below acceptable upper limits of catastrophic engine failure, or even normal engine failure.

[Still, every moment spent saving our resources will add up!]

Oh, now it’s your turn to be fucking optimistic. Thanks.

[Your human brain is so susceptible to setbacks! It’s so funny!]

I could feel the mirth through our link, and I couldn’t help but crack a grin at that. She was right: the setback had put me in a somewhat foul mood.

But I was okay now. As okay as I could be given—

Hiroto swerved slightly to the left. I had to keep up to hold onto his rear. Dammit. He probably knew now that I wasn’t able to react as quickly as before. Bastard.

No, no, this was good, too. A little. This could work for me, as long as I kept my eyes on the goal.

It wasn’t as though I was totally out of Sandy uses. I could use it during high-stakes situations, as long as I used it sparingly: seconds at a time as opposed to minutes.

And seconds would be all that I needed, as long as I made sure to use those seconds exactly at the right time.

The cliffs.

Guess I’ll just kill you, Hiroto.

We drifted together up the corkscrew, in lockstep. At least, the closest I could get to doing so. I was coasting by purely on what Falco had taught me, but it wasn’t enough. From the get-go, I had known that it wouldn’t be enough!

My Sandevistan was my only true edge in this race.

My only true shot at a win…

I could sense Hiroto’s cackle just barely as his car wobbled, as though to tell me that he had just sussed me out. He had seen my weakness, and now he was having fun again. Dammit!

As we darted out of the tunnel at the same time, to see the sun halfway down the horizon of the west coast ahead of us, I could only continue clenching my jaws, could only continue driving as well as I could.

As we exited the tunnel, all I could see was Hiroto getting out ahead of me by far, dozens of meters. The setting sun felt like it heralded the setting of all my dreams, or at the very least, the end of my prospects of success for this particular endeavour, this race.

I saw a flash of Lucy in my mind’s eye.

Her teasing grin. Her pastel hair, styled into a spectrum of pink, to blue, to green, to yellow and then a redder pink. The vast majority of the time I’d known her, she had worn this… reluctant, but surly expression. Like she had been forcing herself to not like me.

But all that I could remember, all that I felt was most notable to me, was that grin of hers. That cute little up-turn of each corner of her lips, and the warmth of her eyes.

I drove more confidently now, remembering concretely what I was here for, what I had been trying so hard for.

[You’re welcome.]

Even the very fact that Nanny had likely summoned this memory didn’t impede me any. Not at all.

000

Hiroto’s heart was beating against his ribcage like a jackhammer.

He couldn’t decide whether to even grin or frown in horror at what was happening, so he defaulted to his usual expression of just grinning. After all, this was it, right here. A challenge.

And boy, what a challenge it was.

David, you don’t play fair at all! Damn, hah!

Beaten on lap one. Hiroto couldn’t believe it. He actually couldn’t. He had to look at the leaderboard several times to believe it. But it was there, in black and white. David had taken the number one spot for lap one, and he was only slightly trailing behind on lap two, having perfectly copied Hiroto’s maneuver through the hole pit.

Excellent. Pull up, David. Show off those weapon systems! Overheat your engine! Give me a fucking hug!

Hiroto disabled three of the four visual-stim screens on his eyes. The extra stimulation was no longer needed, not at all! He kept his favorite, the soft material being pressed through sieves, and left all the others behind. That screen was the least distracting, and the most satisfying as well. A perfect balance.

He’d admit to himself that he had been taken by surprise by David’s boldness. At a certain point, he had even been too distracted to race, too focused on what he would lose if he didn’t win.

This was a position that he wasn’t used to.

Although, he’d already established his reputation all across the country as an expert racer by the time he was sixteen, he had only gotten into racing the Nightmare Rally to pay for his mother’s treatment after she fell ill some time ago. Biotechnica had hounded him for years for a sponsorship since then, having somehow caught wind of his mother’s condition, but he made do just fine on the money he could scrounge up from his stellar performances.

Until now, when the prognosis was the most bleak, he had turned down every sponsorship deal from every corp. Only when they could give him something more than just money, which he could easily earn from always, always winning, did he finally bend.

Before then, however, it hadn’t been all doom and gloom. Sure, becoming number one, and earning a more-than-steady income had taken him nine months racing on this track. But the journey to improvement had been fun!

And it had been enough.

For four long years, it had been enough.

And not just for her.

For him as well. This was his calling, his reason of being. The only thing he was truly good at. The one thing that made him special.

But more importantly, the one thing that made his life feel like it was worth living.

Climbing up the ranks hadn’t been unpleasant. Not one bit. It hadn’t been a slog, or even difficult.

Well, he couldn’t accurately judge how difficult it had been in retrospect. Only how hard he had worked. And he had worked hard. Given it his all. Not enough to hate the exercise. At some point, it had seemed like the harder he worked, the more fun all of this became.

Maintaining this sheer dominance for all these years had been a rush at first, on the first year at least. Over time, it had become… boring.

When was the last time he had truly felt this way? This… energized? This alive?

Night City wasn’t a city of life. He had known that since he was old enough to even think really. Death was all around him. All around everyone that lived in this hell-city.

Therefore, it was what gave you life that mattered, when it came to living here. Nothing else mattered. Not connections, not even food. Just… that feeling.

And he was feeling it all now.

A third-placer was finally pulling ahead. Hiroto let out a giggle of delight. “Who the fuck are you?!” he whispered giddily. More meat! Hahahah, more meat! For me?! For me!

000

“Ah, hell yeah! That’s my boy right there!” Varian slammed the arm-rest on his chair with both hands. “See? I told y’all

he could do it! I told y’all!”

Alessandro groaned as he continued watching the race with bated breath. Somebody put a muzzle on this Militech mutt.

Masaki just chuckled. “Don’t Militech give you any decent cyberoptics, Varian? Can’t you see that your boy is about to turn into an actual ball of fire?”

Varian’s eyes widened as the female newscaster, Lin, was stunned into silence, while Giraud just shook his head and growled lowly. “He’s dead. This man is dead.” The old legend looked solemn as a grave as he spoke.

“What the fuck?!” Varian stood up in shock. “What the fuck is he doing?”

Alessandro cracked a delighted grin at that.

000

Yes, yes, yes! More meat. And it was named Daniel Bolt. What a hilarious name! Did he give that name to himself?

Hiroto hadn’t kept a bead on any of the other racers, because they had been lagging so far behind, but this Bolt must have pulled ahead hard enough to give his engine an intense amount of heat.

Hiroto’s eyes widened as he saw a vision of an explosion.

Oh… hell yeah.

He blocked David’s march forward as he, too, immediately clocked Bolt’s quite-literally explosive arrival. Nah, this one would be David’s problem. And Hiroto would force it to be so.

Hiroto wasn’t one to use weapons on his car, because that killed the tension, all the time. His use of the stage, and other contestants was just… way better!

A part of him was appreciative, too, of David’s own lack of weapon-based strategies. All he did with those guns of his was… use them as weight for better traction.

David desperately tried to get out of the way, and Hiroto furrowed his eyebrows in a moment. A loss of control… did your Sandevistan run out or something?

At this point, the fact that he had one was beyond doubt. A Kerenzikov wouldn’t have given him that steering control. It would have given him an additional layer of reaction speed, but not the ability to just completely humiliate Hiroto at the end of that first lap—or really, even keep up in Hiroto’s own shadow for this long.

So, what the hell was it? A Warp Dancer? A Falcon? Zetatech? He knew that Arasaka didn’t really produce Sandies. A Dynalar just couldn’t be right.

David finally did something drastic, swinging away entirely, turning to the point that it would likely give Hiroto at least a ten-second head-start.

Hiroto did in fact look that gift horse in the mouth, for he knew exactly what it meant. You’re gonna Blue Shell me, you stupid bastard? HahahahaHAHA!

Hiroto made a hard turn as well, letting this Bolt asshole drive up ahead. Hiroto slowed down strategically, trying to stay ahead of David while giving Bolt his space to blow up.

But… David was staying too close to Bolt!

Playing chicken!

Hiroto laughed. Whoever moves first is a rotten egg!

Hiroto’s eyes darted to David’s car, and Bolt’s car, back and forth, back and forth. Bolt didn’t slow down. Foolishly, he tried to outspeed Hiroto and David, leave them in the dust, heating his engine up even more.

What was the plan here exactly, though? Had the guy lost his mind or something? Or maybe he was just caught in the sway of it all, intoxicated by the speeds he was travelling? Hiroto had seen it before—lived it before, even. Thankfully, he never quite ran off the edge.

David might.

Hiroto grinned. He could see the black smoke now coming from the hood, and the electric sparks. Catastrophic failure was imminent.

Both Hiroto and David backed away at damn-near the exact same time, letting Bolt blow his car up a few dozen meters ahead. The two of them immediately slipped around Bolt’s staggering wreck of a car on fire, and Hiroto saw the cliff edge approach them. There were two sharp turns where they’d have to drift down the edge, and Hiroto was still following a good line. He’d get ahead in the next turn, and then he’d trick David into running head-first off the cliff by subtly guiding his movements while Hiroto maintained the lead.

000

The elevator hummed like the inside of a coffin.

Jin’s heart pounded like a jackhammer beneath his haori. His palms were slick, but he didn’t dare wipe them. He had wiped them twice already—and any more would be too obvious on his pricy threads. And if there had ever been a time in his life where he could less afford to look perfect, it was right here and now.

Jin psyched himself, trying to find something of a center. Holy shit, he had rarely felt so out of kilter in his life.

Just as the glass elevator was reaching the top floor—

It stopped moving. The elevator had just stopped. Jin hadn’t even known that could happen here.

Then came a call. From his father.

Old Pops: Did you plan for this?

Of course I fuckin’ didn’t. How could I have possibly figured that gonk had THIS kind of hidden talent—

No, what the fuck, fuck me, I gotta take credit for this. I gotta take all the credit in the fucking WORLD for—

He ended up freezing—took too long to reply. Still, he had to answer his old man with nothing less than straight, perfect honesty. Because bad, bad things happened to sons of Masaru Ryuzaki who ever thought lying to their old man was a good idea.

Jin: No.

The call ended instantly.

Unsurprisingly, the elevator resumed its ascent. And ten seconds later, the doors to the top floor of the North Oak Country Club opened.

Jin had never been here before, ever. Despite his fear of the conversation that was surely coming, he took a moment to appreciate this place for the study in contrasts that it was. Light and dark, marble and onyx, American immensity and Japanese understateness, obsidian and jade, darkened wall to wall windows that also doubled as wall to wall display screens. All combined and converted into a private viewing lounge offering perfect, unfiltered surveillance feeds of the entire race.

Panoramic glass wrapped the chamber, offering a penthouse view of Night City’s distant glitter and the cliff-edge roads where David had just seized the lead. The ambient lighting was low, the ceilings high. Waitstaff moved like ghosts. There were no chairs—only strategic perches of polished obsidian and shaped glass, as if even furniture here had to qualify for a seat.

There was a light music up here, classical Mozart. The music of timeless wealth: wealth and power, insulated from broader society, its opinions, its consequences.

Masaru Ryuzaki turned from the wide window overlooking the race—where many other bigwigs had also gathered—and lifted a champagne flute.

The man looked like a perfectly average salaryman. Neatly side-parted hair, glasses, a thin, long face, and a sharp black suit. The man looked slim, his physical constitution reminiscent of an office-worker, but that said nothing about what he really was underneath that suit.

“My son,” he said aloud, from across the room of polished obsidian. “Let me be the first to congratulate you.”

Every head turned. Not toward Masaru—but toward him.

What the fuck. Jin’s throat dried up. He stood spine straight, arms at his side, trying not to sweat through his shirt. By a lifetime of practice, his face remained expressionless, the default mask of the corporate elite—but inside, his heart jackhammered. He was starting to realize who all the bigwigs in the room were.

“My son, Jin Ryuzaki” Masaru continued, voice smooth, oblivious to Jin’s internal panic and elation, “has perfectly enacted my plans: for over a year now, he has managed David Martinez, secretly, without fail. And now we have a singular weapon: a racer trained under my aegis, raised up to represent my name—and by extension, raised up to represent Arasaka itself.”

What the fuck, Jin thought.

No, what was happening was obvious. No matter how unthinkable it was.

David's performance had been beyond miraculous, almost unthinkable, just about downright impossible. And now, Jin Ryuzaki's name was on David's car, for all the world to see. Meaning Masaru Ryuzaki's name was on it. And in a place like this, that mattered.

Because many of the titans of Night City were here. Much of the northern hemisphere’s pantheon of corporate gods, assembled.

Jin’s old man stood before the largest window, dressed in an obsidian suit with blood-red lining. His frame was lean, tall, severe. Near him was Yorinobu Arasaka, the main branch’s heir-apparent himself, face unreadable beneath his impassive expression, bomber sunglasses he chose to wear even indoors, and sunken features. And near him stood Camilla Night, Night Corp's ghost queen, CEO of possibly the city’s most secretive company. And near them was Lucius Rhyne, mayor of Night City, chortling as he joked with a man Jin was pretty sure was Lars Muhammad, CEO of Petrochem, who himself was nursing an unlit cigar, slapping the mayor on the back like they were old friends.

Ruomei’s mother, Xiaohan Ling of Kang Tao sat alone, her eyes flashing gold, no doubt on a call with someone—but still alert and aware of her surroundings in the room.

Giovanni de Prima, Alessandro’s father, the regional CEO of Biotechnica, had his arms folded and eyes narrowed, staring at Jin along with most of the rest—including Rhyse Galore, the regional Zetatech director and board member. She wasn’t as much of an Exotic feline as her daughter, but was still rocking a jaguar’s ears and a tail that to Jin was a far more tasteful display of Biotechnica’s prowess. Her tail twitched in disdain as she stared at him.

There was one name conspicuously absent: Militech. Of course they weren’t invited. For all that the megacorps pretended to get along in Night City, despite all their peacetime posturing at participating in the upkeep of the city, at the end of the day, Militech was the city’s true enemy. Of course they wouldn’t be invited to one of the city’s true nerve centers

Jin stepped out, his shoes silent against the polished stone. The butler didn’t announce him. He didn’t need to.

After a too-long moment of hesitation, Jin bowed to the assembled titans of Night City.

Masaru turned to the room. "My son has taken point on this long-standing matter of my household," he said smoothly. “None of my other dearly departed children were in a position to manage this matter—to raise up the next generation. My singular weapon—a racer trained within our household, held in reserve, hidden in plain sight as a student of Arasaka Academy. A young man, unknown to the racing world, but bred to carry the Ryuzaki name—and, by extension, Arasaka itself."

The lie landed like a bomb, clearing the room of all else. Even the side muttering from the assembled bigwigs stopped. They all looked at him, weighing, judging, measuring.

Jin bowed again, deeper this time. He willed himself not to stammer. "Thank you. I merely executed on my father’s aims. Any directive set before me shall be done."

“Directive?” Lucius Rhyne barked a laugh. "Son, if you keep pulling rabbits like this out of your ass, I might just need to recommend you as a director! What an unbelievable upset!”

"To say this is going viral is an understatement,” Camilla Night murmured, eyes unreadable, her Kiroshi implants flashing gold as she was receiving information over a call. "Nine point four hundred million eurodollars in advertising revenue in under thirty minutes.”

“And advertising is less than ten percent of what we might expect from later BD sales, merchandizing, deals, oh yes,” the mayor chortled. “Oh yes, this is a good day.”

"That boy," Xiaohan Ling said, tapping her fingers, looking at Jin. "Not even a trace of racing-affiliated records. Nothing through a school or a talent agency, not even a driver’s license for a car, but a motorbike. Just a name on a car, and a boy registered to your corporate academy. How?"

"Proprietary training," Jin lied smoothly. "Much of it off-ledger. His training regime was… experimental."

"And effective," Masaru added smoothly.

"You didn’t even assign him a pit crew," Rhyse Galore said, tone clipped. Her feline ears twitched, eyes narrowing. "Militech’s junior driver burned out trying get to third place, and yet your thing keeps up with Hiroto Nakamura, jumps the Gorge and makes it look easy.”

"No pit crew?" Lars Muhammad chuckled. "That’s a power move. We don’t need help to beat you."

Giovanni de Prima did not laugh.

"He could have killed my son’s racer," de Prima growled. "If your driver misjudged even a tenth of a second, he would have cratered into the Black Gorge and taken Nakamura with him."

“And?” Masaru turned to face him. "He didn’t."

Yorinobu Arasaka stepped forward. His expression was cool, but not unkind. "This boy," he said, indicating the screen, "he is not Japanese."

"No," Masaru admitted.

"Yet you, Ryuzaki, took him as a vassal.”

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

His father called him again.

Old Pops: Is David Martinez your vassal?

Jin: No.

Masaru cut off the call, and in the same moment, nodded to Saburo Arasaka’s heir.

"Correct,” Masaru told the assembled corporate leaders. “He has been my son’s vassal for some time.”

Yorinobu Arasaka studied the stream of the continued race for a moment, turned to Jin. "Make sure your risk doesn’t become our disgrace."

Jin bowed so low his head nearly hit the floor.

Behind him, Camilla Night chuckled. "Gods above. You lot are acting like this is already settled."

"Isn't it?" Lucius Rhyne asked, gesturing toward the screens. "Look at the numbers. We’re in lap two, and he’s still neck and neck with the Tōge Oni and is probably running with thirty Cs less engine temperature. That matters in a long-haul race like this. The kid might actually win this whole thing."

“Does it even matter?” Lars Muhammad said. “It’s just one race.”

“Uh,” Jin stammered. “We are planning on winning, sir.” We better be. Do NOT fuck this up, David, holy fuck!

Lars Muhammad turned to him, smiled indulgently. “Listen, kid. This is your fifteen minutes of fame. And yet, people can only care about so many things. In a world where every person has mankind’s collective history and culture at their fingertips, there is no currency more valuable than the people’s attention. Folks only have so much time and attention to spare in their lives, before focusing on something else. Clout matters far more than victory or defeat. And right now? You’ve got all the clout. Fifteen minutes can become an eternity, if you strike while the iron is hot. Take it as a lesson from this old man—don’t waste this chance.”

Attention as the world’s most valuable currency? Jin nodded respectfully to Lars Muhammad, despite feeling like his internal organs were coiled springs. That was an interesting tidbit there, one that he had completely neglected to take advantage of. "Thank you for the advice, sir."

Fame.

Fame was profitable. The media would be all over David in the coming days, win or lose. And Jin would make sure to soak up all that excess value that came from that fame, one way or the other.

Masaru Ryuzaki gave a low, soft grunt at that. It would have sounded to most people like an approving hum. Jin knew what that tone really meant, coming from his father. It meant: you said the exact right thing. Don’t fuck it up now.

The conversation drifted onward, with Camilla Night continuing to talk to some distant third party via call, Yorinobu turning back to the window’s displays of the race, and Giovanni de Prima’s and Rhyse Galor’s sour glares still fixed on Jin. The heat of it practically burned through his collar.

And just like that, Jin knew it was time to leave.

He gave one final bow, excused himself quietly, and made his way to the elevator with precise, practiced steps. Not too quick. Not too slow. Don’t look like you’re running. Don’t look like you’re stalling. Just go.

000

Jin waited exactly one second after the doors of the executive viewing room closed behind him before sagging against the elevator’s wall. He let out the breath he’d been holding.

His heart was still thumping in his ears. His pulse trembled in the fingertips he kept tightly balled at his sides. The elevator hummed as it descended, soft and smooth, while Jin’s mind whirled far too fast to register anything.

He was still reeling from what had just happened upstairs.

He had just been congratulated by Yorinobu Arasaka. Been toasted by Lucius Rhyne. Had Camilla Night praise his vision. Shaken hands with Lars Muhammed. And most of all, his father had lied through his teeth the entire time about Jin’s role in all of it.

Bullshit. All of it. Jin had only been friends with David for two weeks. Two. Weeks.

And now the entire city thought he had been grooming a future champion for years.

He had never felt so terrified and overjoyed in his life.

The elevator started descending.

He broke every conceivable protocol, and called his old man. The line clicked open before it even rang once.

Jin: Father. What the hell is going on?

There was no response, at first.

Old Pops: Do not call me like this again unless it is a true emergency.

Normally, Jin would have quailed to be upbraided by his father. But he had no time for that, not now.

Jin: Is this some kind of joke? You just told half the board I’ve been managing David for years. I just met him a few weeks ago!

This time, there was an even longer pause before his father replied.

Old Pops: In time, you understand the scale of this opportunity, boy. But there is context you are ignorant of. So I will explain—briefly. Listen carefully.

Old Pops: Hiroto Nakamura does not work for Alessandro de Prima.

Jin blinked. What the fuck.

Jin: What the fuck?

Old Pops: Language, boy. What you’ve seen up to now is only public branding, stage dressing. A mask, for the Biotechnica boy’s benefit. Nothing more. Nakamura is Giovanni de Prima’s asset. Biotechnica’s true play.

Jin’s mouth went dry.

Old Pops: Hiroto Nakamura, this whelp of a… ‘Tōge Oni’, has been unhireable for years. Nakamura is an idiot savant, who cares for nothing but racing. Every attempt made by every company to secure him for their own exclusive services failed. Until very recently. Something changed. Somehow, Giovanni struck a deal.

Jin: So… why would Giovanni give the credit to Alessandro?

Old Pops: To polish his boy’s profile. So that when Giovanni retires, which will be soon, his son inherits a throne prepared for him by apparent merit. Nakamura’s victories become Alessandro’s legacy. Neatly packaged. A fabricated genius prince, who hired the unhireable, brought a world-class monster racer under his belt.

Jin stared blankly at his own reflection in the elevator’s gold-trimmed paneling. And then, Jin grinned viciously when he added two and two together. A nepotistic inheritance play! Fuck! Yes!

Jin: And now David’s ruining all of it.

Old Pops: Yes.

Old Pops: Listen closely, boy. Biotechnica is not as internally unified as it may seem from the outside. There have been internal conflicts within the company, significant enough to have impact upon the company’s seniormost executives. What these conflicts were regarding, I cannot say—Arasaka’s spies couldn’t get at the records of internal projects this sensitive.

Old Pops: What we on the board believe is that, several years ago, Biotechnica’s senior leadership commissioned experiments so controversial within the company’s ranks that they resulted in a low-grade civil war within Biotechnica leadership ranks. Whatever the nature of this inner conflict, it was serious enough that numerous regional directors disappeared, were eventually confirmed dead years later, hundreds of employees never seen again at all. Giovanni only barely won his confirmation from the board eight years ago. And now, he wants his son to soon take his position. All the conclusions we can speculate at naturally flow from this knowledge.

Jin: Wow.

Old Pops: I tell you this, son, so that you can understand the stakes for which we play. For without context, one cannot understand the games of power. And you’ve demonstrated, today, that you may indeed be worthy of someday holding power.

The elevator dinged. The doors slid open, but Jin didn’t step out. He just… basked in those words, for a moment, like a lizard in the sun.

Jin: What are your orders now, father?

Old Pops: You will fully onboard David Martinez. Bring him into the Ryuzaki fold. Officially, and without fail. Do you understand?

Jin’s mouth went dry.

Jin: By any means necessary?

Masaru didn’t answer.

The call cut off.

Jin stood alone in the elevator, staring into the darkness beyond the hall, heart still pounding. Above him, a war for Night City’s future was being played out with grins, contracts, secret wars, and a teenage boy who had no idea what he’d just become.

He straightened his jacket, exhaled, and stepped back onto the floor. There was work to do.

000

I read confidence from Hiroto’s car. Confidence, and a manic amount of determination to beat me. Daniel Bolt’s suicide explosion hadn’t worked. But the next part would.

He wanted to throw me off the cliff, I could tell. That was exactly my plan.

…Had been my plan.

My intent was to kill him, but… that had changed, now.

Not because of some attachment I now had to the guy.

It was simple. He was getting caught up in it all, now. In the sway of things. He wanted to win, and would do anything to make that happen.

I had sacrificed the goal of winning the game for something similar, but not equal: beating him. Beating the man himself, Hiroto Nakamura.

And to do that right… I had to remember the most important lesson Falco had taught me. He had done so on the day we first met, on that ill-fated CHOOH2 heist.

Keep your cool.

Deep breaths in. Slowly out.

Don’t just think about survival. Think about what comes next.

Seventy-five million eddies. My first true step into the sort of wealth and power that might propel me to the height of the corp world.

With my consent, Nanny slowed my heartbeat down. I let go of my stress, my anxiety, and my anger. Nanny helped, doing the precise work while I supplied the orders to take control of my temper.

Figuratively, I stepped outside of my own body, and became a puppeteer of my own meat.

Finally, I eased up on the Sandy. The world became faster, my reaction speed plummeted, and the game was on, now.

The line algo consistently returned a reading of franticness in Hiroto. His engine temp had spiked ever since our game of chicken against Daniel Bolt’s coffin on wheels, and now my model was consistently predicting him. Our games had shaken him into a state of predictability. In order to keep having him on this track, on this mindset that made him easy to read, I had to play along with this assassination attempt of his.

Once we approached the cliff and our movements fell into a script that might as well have been mailed to me the day before, I waited… waited… waited…

He tried to initiate contact.

I let him.

He wanted to send me spinning and careening over the edge.

I turned that spin into a three-hundred and sixty-degree drift, managing to cut a corner dramatically faster than him, earning myself a lead by two entire lengths.

000

Falco cracked an excited grin, both hands balled into fists as he watched that maneuver. For a moment, Falco had feared the worst, that David had fallen into the same berserk state that clearly afflicted Hiroto.

For a moment, he had been convinced that David would follow his bloodlust and try to take Hiroto out, only for the top-racer to pull a reversal and send him

to a fiery death.

Instead, the damn kid had kept his cool.

The rest of the crew were in various states of jubilation. Maine was belly laughing while standing, Dorio’s grin was ecstatic as she stared at the projected screen without blinking, Pilar was letting out a non-stop stream of happy curses while Rebecca cocked her pink and green shotgun, firing periodically at the ceiling without any regard for the mess she was making.

Even Kiwi had given up her pretense of coolness, and now she was just as sucked into it all.

Things were looking good for the kid. Though, there was only one niggling voice in his head that he couldn’t banish no matter what.

Should have placed a bet on the damn kid. What a waste.

000

I was in a trance as I drove.

Lap two was mine.

Critical Progress had leaped to 90%. That was where lap 3 started.

Just the fact that it had taken this long before I had started hitting my limits was a surprise in and of itself. The work Nanny had done to me had made me a near-perfect fit for the Sandevistan. My tolerance to it made the build-up of damage almost negligible in short bursts. Unfortunately for me, this race hadn’t been short by any means.

Over an hour had been spent driving circuits around the Country Club and the badlands. An hour spent dilating time, putting my body through strain, forcing Nanny to regenerate the damages. Even that had been upgraded measurably. My Critical Progress could reverse visibly if I gave myself even a minute to rest, a minute without any Sandy use at all.

I turned it off during the stretches of track that didn’t require much skill and finesse. But I cranked it up for every turn, in order to keep my lead with Hiroto. My engine temp was rising, but Hiroto’s determination to overtake me—as opposed to use me as a shield against drag—was working against him. If he had done what I had done to him, he could have equalized our resources, or even gotten me to deplete mine, before making a mad dash at the final stretch.

Once again, the drift tower was in view. The flashiest part of the race, but not nearly the hardest.

That honor would go to a series of simple twists and turns after the tunnel exit, in which Hiroto had the upper hand, because he was a genius when it came to turning.

We soared through the skies in-between both towers, myself half a length ahead, his hood mere inches from my rear.

My heart beat ninety times a minute. My muscles were relaxed. My mind was cold.

Nanny communicated with me subverbally, throwing hundreds of ideas at me at any given time without weighing them down with words. Ninety two percent crit. Verging on ninety-three. I had been meaning to scale back my Sandy usage, but Hiroto wouldn’t let me. He was catching onto the game. Cooling down.

When we were back on the road, he stuck to my rear, with nigh perfect precision, cooling down in my slipstream and letting me build up heat while he took a reprieve. This went counter to how he played.

Worrisome, but ultimately not enough for me to change my plans.

Ninety four percent. And still sixty-five kilometers left on this race.

Distantly, I could feel the stress mounting. I could feel it like a magnetic force, trying to rip my consciousness back into my body, reassociating me, putting me in the thick of all the feelings.

Not a good place to be, not now.

My palms started sweating.

Nanny, I commanded.

My sweat pores closed.

Ninety five percent.

Hiroto’s algorithmic model in my HUD exploded. Five or six lines ahead of the track, snaking around my car from where he drove behind me, became ten, twenty. He complexified before my very eyes, causing me to go deeper into the Sandevistan.

Causing the Critical Progress bar to tick up another percent.

Four more, and I would be facing a cascading error of imperfect cell replication. Nanny’s memory banks would be overwhelmed, and her processing power would be far outstripped by the rate at which my body broke down.

I was staring down death itself, and I had to ignore the chilling sensation of it all.

I had to let go of my worries.

This race… was it really worth my life?

No.

I scaled back the power of my Sandevistan. Time resumed at a blistering pace, and I could feel all five hundred and fifty-nine kilometers per hour that I had pushed the Murkmobile too.

Things got harder, but that was fine.

This race wasn’t worth my life.

But I would win regardless.

If I didn’t, then I’d have other opportunities besides making my fortune from gambling.

I knew that with the utmost certainty.

This place, this… this monument to sin. I would not owe it anything. The tunnel leading under the waterway on the final leg of the race approached. I’d let the water wash me clean of all greed, all wrath…

All pride.

Until only the goal remained.

The goal, and how I would reach it alive, and with the people I loved the most in the world.

000

Hiroto had lost his read on David.

Nothing made sense anymore. The kid had been so eager to tussle, so willing to give it his all, and now he just… he played it safe. He had switched everything up. His car was racking up heat, but it seemed like none of it could actually reach the driver inside.

What the hell is your game, David? You chickening out?

Hiroto dove down the underwater tunnel. The bright blue waters surrounding their car, encompassing the tunnel’s glass walls, felt akin to dunking his head in water.

Cool down.

Think.

Hiroto closed his eyes, driving purely on instinct and the memory of the track. One false twitch would send him crashing into the glass walls, and likely into the water, thus spoiling the race for everyone behind him. But he knew himself better than that.

He opened his eyes and felt his heart beat slowing by a beat with every second. He thought back to the words he had told him before the race.

Race for something you would do anything for.

Clearly that was… just a bad joke, in the end.

There was no way that David loved money more than Hiroto loved his own mother. That was wrong.

But it wasn’t the possible loss of his mother that made him want to try harder. It was more than that.

This race had transcended the realm of fun entirely, and had become something else, something deeper. Something more intrinsic. Hiroto needed to win, because that was who he now was.

But even if he put his identity—or even his very life—on the line, that didn’t… matter. Not in the sense that it didn’t matter to him. It just didn’t matter in general.

Then… what does?

The moment struck him like a hammer to the head, and he remembered.

000

The afternoon sun setting over the coast, just barely visible through the derelict buildings in Heywood, still managed to scorch Hiroto’s skin. Both he and Isei were two brief silhouettes, fifteen years old both, weaving through Heywood’s back alleys and streets, sneakers slapping against wet pavement. The smell of fried synth-meat and burning plastic clung to the air like smog, mercifully blotting out the less pleasant smells of chems being smoked and the baseline odor of urine that hung around this part of the city.

They’d just left Yasuda’s Auto Den, a hole-in-the-wall garage on the far side of Pacifica’s corpse where mods were sold under the counter and debts were settled with blood. Isei had spent the last half-hour geeking out over some racing BDs, going on about how some gonks were installing reflex boosters meant for mercs so that they could race better, and wasn’t that just preem, Hiro?

Hiroto wasn’t listening. Not really. Isei’s words were just background noise drowned out by the pulse of traffic from the overpass above, engines growling like wolves in the dark. Hiroto’s hands were buried in his jacket pockets, fingernails biting into the threadbare lining, because his mind was fixed on rent. On his mom’s sunken eyes, how she worked herself to a nub just for him. On the fact that if he didn’t pick up another shift at the tire shop, they’d be eating kibble again for dinner.

“Bro, you hearing me?” Isei’s laugh was a sharp crack against the hum of distant sirens. “These gonks are pulling twelve-G turns on fucking STOCK axles! Shit’s insane! Like, you mod a Zetatech deck into a Thorton, give it a neural throttle, and bam! Ghost car! The typa shit that’ll let you step on the gas with a fucking thought! You know what I’d do if I had that setup? Bruh—I’d fly. Straight through Japantown at two hunnit klicks, like—”

“Yeah,” Hiroto muttered, eyes on the slick road ahead. “Sounds nova.”

They were cutting across Belfort Street, the bad part, where gangs bled territory over scraps of trade routes. Hiroto clocked three Valentinos leaning against a SCSM vending machine with bats in their hands, the kind of guys who’d smile while gutting you. He kept his eyes down, pace even, hoping Isei would shut up long enough for them to pass unnoticed.

Isei didn’t. Not that it mattered. He was a big guy. Six foot tall, even at the age of fifteen. He’d earned enough doing odd jobs to afford enough Juice and bulk up quickly in order to at least look more like a threat than he actually was. Enough to dissuade most gonks from picking fights with him out of nowhere, even though he himself didn’t know how to fight.

In Hiroto’s opinion, he’d be better off investing in a gun, like himself. Isei thought those were bad luck, though.

Isei slapped Hiroto’s shoulder. He stopped and whirled on his feet, looking at him in surprise. “What, choom?”

“What’s got you so down?”

Hiroto sighed. “Nothing.”

Isei chuckled. “It’s the opposite, ain’t it?”

“What?”

“Heh,” Isei walked on ahead, shaking his head and folding his arms like he was some sage master who was having fun at the expense of his dim disciple. Hiroto resented the implication of their roles. Isei was the gonk in their partnership. “The opposite of what you said: nothing. What is that?”

Hiroto furrowed his eyebrows. “Everything?”

Isei spun on his heels, clicked his tongue, winked and pointed at Hiroto, in a way that he obviously thought was more charming than it actually was. In reality, he looked like a total poser. Hiroto tried not to show his disgust. “Everything. Everything’s got you down. Your problem? You weren’t fast enough. You didn’t get ahead of these problems.”

Hiroto felt a growl bubble up deep inside. They were both racing fans, but Isei tended to take things too far. He treated it like something else, something damn-near magical. No, straight up magical, given the stuff he’d heard him say about the legends racing the craziest tracks in the country: The Indy 500, Daytona, the Nightmare Rally. He looked up to those people like they were gods given flesh.

And he spoke about them like one day it would be their turn to be those gods. “What’s your plan, Isei?” Hiroto asked. “To get a car and just bail on everyone? Is that what it means to be fast enough? Isn’t that just running away?”

Isei grinned. “The thing is… it's all about not being affected. You’re not slow in body. The part of you that is slow.” Isei walked up to him and poked him on his chest. His beefy finger had the effect of actually pushing Hiroto away a step. “Is your heart. The world fucking blows, man. But here’s the bitter truth: it’ll never stop blowing. No matter how much you pray. Prayer ain’t worth a shit anyway. You wanna change something, go for the thing you can change. You. Get fast, get ahead, and get the fuck out of my face, you whiny bitch,” Isei laughed.

Hiroto balled his fists and opened his mouth.

And then something small, something tiny, tore through Isei’s face, savaging it in the process. It was like a piece of the universe decided that it was time to bend at exactly that point that his best friend in the world occupied.

He turned away, towards the streets, to behold high-speed carnage. A car came whizzing by. A custom Rayfield Aerondight, jet black with white and red oni masks plastered on the CrystalCoat, whizzed through the street. The executive hypercar was in and out within a second tops before a wasp’s nest’s worth of Kusanagi Mizuchi followed—modded Yaiba ridden by neon-colored Tyger Claws dragging with them crowbars that scraped the asphalt, sending up showers of sparks that covered the streets like an elaborate pyrotechnical show.

Akuma-ō. The famed Tyger Claw racer inside the iconic Aerondight.

And his friends following behind him, in their ugly bikes.

They were gone like they had never even appeared. A few of the Valentinos in the streets had jumped into their own cars, taking off after them at the clear provocation. In moments, the street became entirely deserted. It was only Hiroto, and Isei’s bleeding form.

Hiroto dove to his knees next to Isei, unable to formulate words. Isei’s savage face seemed to grin. “Fast,” he coughed. “Fast… Hiroto,” he whispered. Hiroto took his hand. “Do it… do it all…” Hiroto understood the meaning of his words instantly. All the things they had talked about, fantasized over.

It was on him now.

Then, Isei’s head lolled to the side.

No ceremony, no drama. Just death. And a street that had already moved on from this latest tragedy. No one was even in sight. The gangoons had taken off after the Tygers, and everyone else had just evacuated.

All that was left was just another kid caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. The world kept spinning. The setting sun kept shining. The air kept smelling of a variety of things, and now it smelled of blood as well. And that, too, would pass.

Hiroto did not shed tears for Isei that day.

No. He had been too fast for the feelings to catch him.

000

How could he have forgotten?

Fun was never the point. Feeling alive was not the goal!

Those were incidental consequences to the lifestyle that he led. A lifestyle led by the rightest form of action possible: the action that let you move on. Action, in totality.

To be fast, and in doing so, transcend the very concept of suffering.

Hiroto could lose this race, and it would be bearable. His life would move on. And he would bond with others in time if his mother was to finally die. It would hurt only for as long as he wasn’t fast enough.

But he would prove his speed.

Right here.

Right now.

By winning regardless.

Either way, he was grateful. Grateful for everything that Isei had taught him. Grateful for his mom’s continued living, despite all the years she had spent living under the specter of an incurable illness.

Grateful that he was still able to do this simple thing that he loved so much: racing.

He let out a grin, and an unrestrained, but quiet chuckle.

I wonder, David… did you come to this realization before me?

Is this why you stopped taking risks?

Hiroto didn’t begrudge that. And he wouldn’t take advantage of that, either. He would continue racing, knowing there were many more races left for him in this life.

And he hoped that David would continue alongside him, hand in hand.

000

“And they have just burst out of sector one-eighty seven, and are burning rubber towards the finish line! They are one minute and—and this is truly something to write home about—one minute and forty-eight seconds ahead of the third-placer Kang Tao racer from Hong Kong, Yitong! Only sixty seconds left on this race, by our estimates! Who will win? Who will lose?”

“Two masters of this craft, both young as can be,” Giraud said, “One who burst into the scene with a vengeance and climbed to the top of the leaderboard in only nine months, and a complete unknown on his first televised, first KNOWN race against other high-profile racers. A prodigy of the ages, versus a ghost of races!”

Lucy was at the edge of her seat. Everyone in Aldo’s wrecked warehouse had shut the fuck up for this. No one even so much as breathed.

“Oh, what’s this? The Mountain Pass Demon is trying to make a play for first! Will he go left? Will he go right? Will Martinez let him?”

000

Rogue was grinning ear to ear as she watched. The giant screen on the corner had attracted a group of mercenaries. One group had brought in their ailing compatriot from a gig gone slightly wrong—the objective had been secured, but their friend had been tagged. He was on the table bleeding out, but all his friends were staring at the screen. Hell, even he decided it was more worth his while to bend his neck up to look at the screen than to continue dying quietly.

Claire was staring at the screen as well. “Holy shit. This nobody is about to do it!”

Go on, then, kid. Win me my bet. Don’t let that fucker get ahead of you. Don’t forget where you came from.

Show us your greed, boy. Show me what you’re made of!

000

“Hiroto Nakamura slipped ahead! Thirty seconds left! Will David Martinez be able to take back his place? Will he be able to win this, in spite of coming from nowhere? Will he be able to dethrone the reigning champion?”

Lola Martinez waited with baited breath as she watched the race from the media room inside Granny’s newly bought manor. All the core family had come quickly once they had heard that David himself was competing. Granny herself was at the centermost couch. Tio Alex, Tia Selina, and Tia Maria had come as well, along with all her other cousins. They had dropped everything to come and watch, and though there had been some grumbling at the start, complaints that David hadn’t told them beforehand that he was doing this, they had quickly stopped complaining once they had gotten engrossed in the races.

They had missed the start, sure, but that hadn’t mattered one bit. The entire race had been an amazing spectacle from start to finish.

And now she was getting to watch her own personal hero, her inspiration, win.

Nakamura was not going to win, Lola knew deeply within her bones. No. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. David wouldn’t let him.

Kill that bastard, cousin. Kill them all!

Her fingernails opened up wounds on her palms as she pressed, but she didn’t pay her pain any mind.

Instead, she allowed it to center her, to bring her back into the moment so she could relish it, and take pride in where she had come from, in who she was related to.

A hero.

000

The El Coyote Cojo bar was alight with furor as they watched the final moments of the race.

Some Hispanic kid from Arroyo had apparently taken the lead in the Nightmare Rally, not that Jackie was much of a watcher of such stuff. But he couldn’t help but enjoy the vibe for what it was.

One of us, was the line that people kept dropping around him. And truth be told, Jackie couldn’t help but agree. This kid… he was one of them.

Well, insomuch as he was Hispanic, and hailed from Arroyo. Whatever sick experiments the corps did to him that allowed him to perform this well was beyond his knowledge, and likely comprehensive.

Jackie knew that this David Martinez was not really of the people. Not anymore, at least. It would have been a sweet fantasy to behold for sure, that this boy was a kid from Arroyo that had just strolled up to the North Oak Country Club to show his stuff, but reality was not often that fanciful.

Jackie took a deep drink of his tequila, and continued watching.

For despite himself, despite his doubts, he just couldn’t help but root for this fucking kid!

Come on, for fuck’s sakes! Don’t get our hopes up just to fuck the dog this close to the finish line, fuck!

000

In the final few seconds, I erased every ounce of whatever bullshit zen state I had concocted.

It was bullshit, and I had known it from the start.

After all, the devil had spoken to me. He had looked at me, eye to eye, and told me that I was only meant for one place.

Saving my soul was off the books.

I was here to fucking win.

The finish line approached like an oncoming band of light, surrounded by a thousand cameras and flying drones, blinding in its finality. There was no space anymore in me for my ghosts—my dreams, ambitions, regrets—all I could do now was scream, dive back into accelerated time for the roaring apex of these final moments.

My engine was overheating now, despite all my careful management. My tires had gone too long without being replaced, shrieking now, their last seconds before implosion. I could feel every scrap of road feedback through my wheel, every shift in drag. It was like I could almost feel how Hiroto's car was just, just ahead of me. Inches ahead.

And for me to win, he had to get gone.

My hands clenched. My body screamed. My Sandevistan was burning now, deep in my spine. Nanny's voice was a war chant in my skull, numbers scrolling so fast they were incomprehensible.

Ninety-seven percent. Ninety-eight.

Every second lasted a lifetime. Every motion had a hundred decisions going into it.

This was where the last few percent of crit progress would be used. The absolute last juice that my Sandy had to give. As much as possible, all saved for these final moments.

“GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

I flicked the back of Hiroto’s car, touched it just a bit, but enough to blast past him, and towards the finish line.

I didn’t care if I had sent him careening into a wall, thus killing him.

I didn’t care.

No… I just… didn’t allow myself to care.

And yet, I couldn’t stop myself from limiting our touch, from preventing him from going into a catastrophic accident.

And I also couldn’t stop myself from watching from my rear-view HUD, to see how he was doing. To see him righting himself, behind me at least, at the nick of time to prevent a crash into a wall.

I took heart in his continued survival, despite it all.

And with my soul light as a feather, I crossed.

I crossed the finish line.

The checkered black and white band of light line blazed beneath my wheels. The world broke open into light.

[KA-FUCKING-CHING!]

I threw my head back and laughed. Laughed so hard I choked on it. I had done it.

Without a pit crew, without a management agency, without… anything. Just me. Me and the fire in my fucking veins.

I had won the Nightmare Rally.

Nanny shrieked her triumph right alongside me, her avatar bursting into reality in a flare of confetti and neon, bouncing beside me like a sugar-jacked imp. She shook me. I could feel her contact, and the way she jerked me about as I slowed the car down along the long road ahead into a specially made tunnel.

+€$75,123,456

I furrowed my brows at the fake HUD notification that Nanny had thrown up. “Those last six digits can’t be right.”

That did bring up an important topic, though.

How the fuck was I supposed to get this money? What would the taxes look like? Shit.

[Good news is, you can afford the best lawyers to do all that thinking for you.]

I finally pulled my car up to a red carpet where an ocean of press were waiting, snapping photos of my car. I got out of my car to get blitzed by an ocean of flash photography that irritated me. God, that was annoying.

Wait. Am I famous now?

…Shit.

Just before I walked down the carpet—to wherever it would take me, probably the next step of this circus show—Hiroto pulled up as well, and ran out of his car, towards me.

I stood at the ready, glaring him down as he finally stopped before me, all masked up, and shoulders bobbing.

He was panting. He removed the helmet, holding it in his arm, and revealed that he was also completely drenched in sweat. He looked at me weirdly. “You… you’re not… tired?” he breathed.

My guard loosened. He was clearly in no condition to fight anyone, least of all me. I had to be at least half again his weight by now, owing to my recent upgrades.

Nanny had taken care of even the lower-order physical concerns, like fatigue, even as she had worked to heal me from my Sandevistan uses.

Except for that angry red 99% pulsing in my HUD annoyingly, I was pretty much at peak capacity.

I just wouldn’t have the option to use the Sandevistan in a pinch for the next… hour or so, really. Maybe in fifteen minutes. But that was fifteen minutes in which my fortune could turn in an instant. Night City was a jealous bitch, and I had just become a fat mark.

Shit. Nanny, those mods better have prepped me for this.

Also, “What do you want?” I asked Hiroto.

He finally caught his breath, and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. Then… he grinned. “Thank you!”

Huh? Was he some kind of masochist?

“That was crazy!” he said. “I didn’t know I could get pushed that hard in the Nightmare Rally!”

I nodded slowly, trying to suss him out for hidden motives. “You’re looking real nova for someone that just lost.”

“Ah,” he grinned bashfully. “Yeah…” His grin slowly fell, and I narrowed my eyes at him. Had the reality of his situation just dawned on him?

D: Nanny, turn up my perception.

This time, it was a gradual change. Nanny hadn’t thrown me into the deep end. Instead, she had just cranked my senses up a notch, allowing me to catch more clues.

It seemed like Hiroto was being entirely earnest.

Hiroto finally drew himself up and nodded. “Sorry about the, uh, cliff thing. I got a little overexcited, hahah.”

I raised an eyebrow. “It’s alright. Sorry about the touch at the end.”

“Nah—you held back nicely. Not that you even had a reason to. Thanks for that. I’m… Honestly, I’m only fucking alive because of that mercy.”

Why had I spared him anyway?

I tried not to think too hard about whatever reasons I might have had. They didn’t matter anyway.

I gave him my hand.

He looked at it, eyes wide.

Then, he took it. We shook hands. “Good luck,” I told him. “With… everything.”

He nodded. “Enjoy your cash, dude.”

I nodded. “I will.”

“And,” he said. “Let’s race once more, someday.”

I grinned at him. “Not… not this thing again, though. This was a true nightmare.”

“Only the most lethal fucking GT track on planet Earth!”

I blinked. “Holy shit, really?”

“Really really!”

Why didn’t I learn about that during my research?

[Your research wasn’t about figuring out the track’s mortality rate, of which you had a worrying lack of concern about, given what you ended up learning about the track—the gorge jump and the various other hazards. You just wanted to program a win algorithm. One that you could maintain perfect adherence to using the Sandy.]

I blinked. Huh.

Meh.

To be fair, it wasn’t the track that had stood a chance of killing me.

It was beating Hiroto. That guy was insane.

I had to speed up my thoughts and reactions by a thousand, for most of this race, just to beat him.

I had spent actual days in that fucking car. Days.

It was only just now catching up to me.

This was the first time I was standing on my feet in one month and some days.

All I had known… for so long… was that fucking car.

In a sense, I had interacted with Hiroto for subjectively longer than I had ever done with Lucy.

“Good game,” I said. “You… really brought everything out of me.”

Hiroto’s eyes widened. “Heh?!”

I blinked. “What?”

“You seem so… collected! Aren’t you tired?”

[You very much are,] Nanny said, [but you’re just not showing it. I call it the AuraReflex and I do think it could sell for quite a bit if we find some way to bottle it. Essentially, the gist is, no matter how exhausted you are, by simply overriding your body’s various autonomic functions, you can appear perfectly healthy, as long as you don’t exceed certain energy levels. In your case, try not to move faster than ten kilometers an hour. I will not be able to stop you from collapsing.]

Ah.

I was dead fucking tired.

I shook my head to Hiroto, though, grinning widely.

He looked awe-struck, and just nodded slowly, in failed comprehension of what I was.

Built fucking different.

“You did push me, though,” I said. “I’m… sorry about your situation. I really am. I… wish I could help.”

Why, though?

Was it just proximity? The fact that I had known him for weeks now? Racing him? Playing his favorite game, and seeing his measure through and through?

It would be hard to forget this guy.

I wondered if I even could, really.

He let go of my hand and shrugged, looking slightly… embarrassed. “Congratulations, my man. Go,” he gestured down the carpet, grinning brightly.

I gave him a nod, and went.

[Just turned on your agent—oh, Jin’s calling.] The moment Nanny mentioned it, I saw it. Just as I turned around, I accepted the call.

Jin: Come up to the lounge ASAP. I’ve got a bottle of champagne equal to your former net-worth waiting for your ass… winner! Hahahahah, fuck-fuck yeeeeah!

His jubilation turned into a sustained howl that just truly annoyed the shit out of me.

David: I’m on my way. Jesus, chill choom.

Jin: Chill? Bitch why? I’m fucking rolling!

I shook my head.

Actually, a drink and maybe a chat with Fei-Fei seemed perfect right about now.

I gave Hiroto a final nod of goodbye and continued through the corridor of photographers.

David: Also, walk me through this whole procedure. You putting my ass on a podium or something? Can’t I just get my money and delta?

Jin: I’ll pretend you didn’t say the last part.

Ah, fuck. Whatever. Just a little more and I’d be on my way home to Lucy.

000

Nanny had exaggerated my physical health, for show.

I was grateful for that. Appearing weak in public was a death sentence, especially after winning the way I did. I’d read somewhere that certain animals tended to hide their injuries and ignore their pain for the same reason: to avoid the notice of opportunistic parties.

Nanny had held me together for long enough—letting me go through the press, receive quick congratulations from the venue, turn down demands for a protracted media appearance—until finally, I reached a private bathroom: one toilet, sink and mirror. I locked the doors behind me, breached into the hallway cameras to make sure my back was clear, and let it all fall apart.

Holy shit, Nanny. Holy fucking shit.

My entire body felt numb. And I knew that it wasn’t just numbness. Nanny was inhibiting my pain at the moment. Skirting this close to imperfect cell replication had truly screwed me. It wasn’t as though the difference between 99% and 100% was night and day. Ninety-nine percent was still dire. All the number did assure me of, however, was that I would survive this.

Nanny couldn’t stop me from sweating bullets, or even get me to breathe clearly and deeply. Every push and pull of my diaphragm was a fight.

Holy fucking shit.

We were at 95% now, and I was still in a horrible state. “How much longer?” I wheezed.

[Ten minutes.]

Enough time to pretend to take a shit at least. That was good.

I stumbled up to the sink and washed my face with cold water, feeling a refreshing sting as I did. The water didn’t taste too bad, either. Was this drinkable? [Yes. Drink.]

Fucking country club. Even the toilet tap water was drinkable here. I took long gulps from the stream on the tap, and calmed my nerves for what was to come.

More interactions with Jin’s playmates. A headfirst jump into a pit of snakes.

“Will I be ready for a fight in ten minutes?” I asked.

[Depends.]

Not against credible threats, she meant. Shit.

[David, rest is the only true remedy.]

D: That, and rebar?

[That would help.]

I looked at the tap faucet. No.

[Separating the iron from the stainless steel would have taken far too much energy to be worthwhile anyhow.]

What the fuck had my life come to?

000

Jin’s afterparty was truly the stuff of nightmares.

Six other corpos were in the lounge, glaring daggers at him or otherwise trying their best to hide their disdain as he shouted and sprayed champagne everywhere. The label was speckled with actual diamonds, and was suitably named Goût de Diamants. I didn’t exactly know if diamonds even had a taste, but this didn’t taste bad.

While I tried my best to feel any sort of party vibe, I couldn’t take my eyes off of the disgruntled corpos. Varian sat, arms folded, cowboy boots on a nearby table, and he looked like he was contemplating my murder. He probably was.

Masaki gave an insincere grin that was only directed at Jin, smoking a cigarette calmly. Occasionally, I’d see flashes of hot rage bubble up beneath his cultivated mask of false cheer, but it was nothing that gave me the impression that he would attack at the drop of a hat.

Leon was the exact opposite. His lips were pulled back, revealing all his sharpened teeth in a snarl that was directed at both Jin and I. Kitty was just shaking her head, looking clearly unamused by the whole show.

Ling Ruomei had split her ire three ways: between Jin, myself, and the only other non-belligerent corpo in attendance, Fei.

Fei didn’t really care for the champagne shower thing, and she also did hate Jin’s guts, but she stuck closer to us than to them, and I appreciated that.

Now, Alessandro…

Honestly, you’d have to be blind and deaf not to sense it coming, but…

[He’ll attack.]

Ugh. What a fucking headache.

Then if I beat his ass until he shat blood, I’d be the bad guy.

Alessandro looked like a volcano in human form, on the verge of eruption. His neck and forehead bulged with veins, and his face was hot red. He gnashed his teeth, looking like a tweaker only another hit of the meth pipe away from ODing. And his fingers kept itching for his side, where he concealed a heavy gun. On-the-fly calculations based on how he moved and how much I estimated his own strength to be gave me the impression that it was powerful stuff. Definitely not a Burya, but… something reasonably powerful. Not that it mattered. I wasn’t exactly bulletproof to even a peashooter like the Lexington.

He hadn’t always been like that, though. From the start, he had only given me a bad vibe—a reason to pay more attention to him specifically. Over time, that suspicion of mine had been vindicated as he looked like he was building himself up for an attack.

It was any second now. It felt like I just had to take my eyes off of him for a second before he made a go for it.

While Jin certainly saw some sense in what he was doing, riling everyone up by parading his winner in front of them and celebrating unabashedly, I couldn’t fathom what the upsides of this even was. If you had a problem with someone, you should just kill them.

This was just tempting fate. Maybe that was what this dick was really addicted to.

Jin handed me the champagne bottle. “Go on!” He shouted. “Chug it all down!”

I tried checking the web for a price on this thing—

Holy shit.

This thing, was far and away the most expensive single object I had ever manipulated. That included the fucking Caliburn.

In fact, this was ten times as expensive.

[Can’t put a price on an experience, can you?]

I snorted disdainfully. So that was what this thing was—an experience.

Well, it was ten times the worth of my Caliburn, but I never paid for the latter. And I hadn’t paid for this drink, either.

That made the real value zero. I’d treat it accordingly.

I up-ended it into my mouth and took deep, unsophisticated gulps, one after the other. Sparkling wine was sparkling wine. Sure, this tasted different, but it wasn’t something I’d ever waste that much money on.

True to my expectations, Alessandro decided there and then to make his move.

Turned out, his gun was a Malorian Overture. Very powerful. And probably more reasonable as an anti-borg measure than a fucking Burya, come to think of it. I should perhaps think about using that instead.

…Nah. No one could separate me from my beefy soviet boy.

I continued drinking until the champagne bottle was empty. Alessandro didn’t mean to kill me right off the bat, that much was clear. He wanted me cowering. Finally, once I was done, I paid him the attention that he was craving so much.

“You think I won’t blow a hole through your gutter rat brain, you fuck?!” He roared. “You orphan piece of shit,” he said in Italian. “I’ll make you regret the day your whore mom ever spread your legs for your dad!”

I tilted my head at him, looking at him in disgust. “That’s… rude as hell, dude.”

That seemed to stop him in his tracks. “Wha… what? Do you have any idea what’s going to happen to you? You think anyone will even bat a fucking eye once I’m done with you?”

“Done doing what?” I asked. “You just saw me pilot a death trap on wheels, pulling Gs that would literally make you shit your guts out if you were in the car, and you think… you think you’re gonna kill me. With a gun. Just a gun.” Did I really look that sweet to him?

He started itching the trigger finger. Alright, then. Let’s hear what sound those preem-tier Biotechnica bones would make once they snapped.

[Don’t kill him. He’s well-connected—]

Nanny was interrupted by the sight of a beautiful, pale arm pointed palm-first at Alessandro’s head, only to unfold mechanically to reveal a barrel that seemed to gather light within its cavernous depths. I followed the arm up to its owner, and saw… Fei-Fei.

A Projectile Launch System.

Fei-Fei had chipped in a fucking PLS. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Alessandro glared at Fei-Fei, his gun still pointed at my skull. “You… bitch!” he growled.

“Uh-huh. And this bitch will kill you where you stand if you don’t wise up,” Fei-Fei spoke softly. Her arm-gun was still charging.

I shot a glance at Jin, who was just watching all this unfold… in amusement. He had no doubt that the situation would resolve itself. Everything was just some goddamned game to him.

After a few seconds of hemming and hawing, Alessandro finally holstered his weapon and stomped out from the room.

Fei’s arm cannon finally folded back into her arm, and in moments, it looked as though her arm was just flesh and blood. Shit.

She gave me a sly grin. “Surprise!” She splayed her fingers.

I grinned slightly, though I couldn’t help my brows from furrowing. “Pretty big surprise, Fei.”

She shrugged. “Came in handy, didn’t it? Hah, get it?” She shook her hand at me.

What? I gave a fond sigh. “That… that was terrible.” I shook my head. “You should feel bad.”

“Come on,” she tilted her head at me. “You gotta hand it to me, it was a good pun.” She was still doing it.

“Fei,” I said, trying to inject an ounce of seriousness into the conversation.

Then she abruptly turned away from me and addressed the rest of the room. “I’m all partied out now from having saved my family’s dying empire from its untimely demise. I shall take my leave now,” she curtsied in Ling Ruomei’s direction. The vampiresque woman’s carefully crafted facade cracked a bit. Fei then turned to me. “I’m headed to my room.” She sent me the directions and then walked off.

Alright then. Talk later.

After she left, I turned to Jin, and looked at him in aggrievement. The implications of Alessandro’s attack, and the fact that I was now squarely in the middle of a game of chess between several megacorp heirs was only now beginning to dawn on me. I came into this thinking I was just going to be an invisible pawn, but now I was an entity that others would see fit to remove. “So, what… you gonna foot the bill for my personal security now?”

“The fuck?!” he laughed at me. “Bitch, do it yourself! You got the scratch!”

I rubbed my head. “I didn’t know I was gonna make mortal enemies getting into this. That’s fucking annoying, Jin.”

“You shouldn’t have showed off, then,” he said.

What a fucking psychopath.

“Yo, cholo,” Varian cupped his mouth and yelled after me. “Good game.” He got up off his seat and walked over to me. “Didn’t think you were worth a geriatric joytoy when I first laid eyes on you, but I was wrong,” he shrugged. “Happens. That being said, why don’t you and I talk shop—personal security is on the table, too, since your boy over there keeps playing too much.” Wait, what?

A recruitment pitch?

Actually, thank you. That right there… that was leverage. I looked at Jin. “You know, you really should be treating me better.”

Jin laughed. “What, you’re gonna run off to Militech now, before my very eyes? What happened to our brotherhood?”

“Who says that Militech is your only other option?” Ling Ruomei stood up and approached me. Her red eyes were locked on mine, almost hungrily, but I knew that hunger had nothing to do with attraction. She had the cast of a predator. “Why not throw your lot behind Kang Tao? We would treat you far better than this psychotic child emperor possibly could. I see you’re even sweet on that girl Fei. You’re already half a step into joining the fold as it is.”

Now she wanted to pretend like her relationship with Fei-Fei was anything other than toxic?

Jin groaned. “Screw this bullshit, David. Come on, let’s get you set up with the lawyers already. You know, for your payout,” he winked at me.

Wait, was that why he was so lukewarm about fighting over me at the moment? Since he knew that money really couldn’t sway me?

Either way, something told me that I had well and truly stepped over a threshold from which there was no coming back.

I gave Varian and Ling Ruomei appreciative nods. “Thank you for your offers. I will take my time considering them.”

“Hahahah!” Jin laughed. “Hear that? Get fucked, both of you.”

Varian clicked his tongue. “Your life.”

I received a call from Ling Ruomei.

Ling Ruomei: Ten million as a starting bonus, for a standard fifty-year contract.

Yep, it was making sense now. This was within Jin’s calculations.

Ten million wasn’t enough by a long-shot. Certainly not to jump ship and sign a contract that would have me working well into the next century. But even if the offer had been more generous, I wouldn’t have budged. Not with the way she had treated Fei-Fei.

She’d made things personal.

David: No.

Ling Ruomei’s perfect features rippled for a moment in disappointment. Finally, she gave me a demure nod. “Very well.”

Jin tilted his head towards the exit. “Let’s delta already.”

I took sure steps out, following Jin’s back.