While my back was against the floor of her living room, Lucy stood on my upraised feet, trying to balance on them while I’d subtly shift her footing. She was doing an admirable job keeping on. “That’s you on a pair of roller-skates in the badlands. And this would be you, driving a Caliburn at five hundred klicks an hour through the—“

“No!” Lucy laughed.

“The Nightmare Rally!”

Then I started wiggling my feet. She performed a most hilarious dance as she tried to maintain balance on top of my legs.

Once she finally did fall, I made sure to angle her so that she would at least fall onto me body-first. I hugged her as she laughed in delight. Her trilling laughter was entirely unrestrained, and her goofy expression was a sight to fucking behold. “You’re a dick, D.”

I chuckled. “What do you think the D stands for?”

“Don’t go there,” she said, “You won’t like that.”

On second thought… “Yeah, you’re right.”

She kept giggling into my chest.

The moment sent this… surge of something through me. I disconnected from the moment, almost as if by some kind of defense mechanism.

This was good.

It wasn’t… murdering scavs for hours on end, but it was good.

What if… I just focused on this instead? What did Lucy think about all this, anyway? In retrospect, it all seemed a little too insane.

“Hey,” I said to her. “If you… want me to… slow down on the, uh, murder-spree…”

“Let me come with.”

My grin widened wildly. “Uh, okay. I mean, I have… a lot of mods, now. My intensity is kinda high.”

“Is it, now? Why don’t you show me how an expert does it, then?”

I grinned. “Why don’t you chip in some subderm and I’ll—“

Her smile fell and I stopped talking. “Wait,” I said. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s just… yeah.”

She rolled off my body and lied next to me instead. I took her hand and squeezed it. “What is it, then?”

“I… wanna tell you. But… later. Not now. Don’t wanna kill the vibe.”

“Kill the vibe. I don’t give a shit. Just tell me.”

She giggled. “My vibe, then. Don’t wanna kill my vibe.”

“Oh,” I nodded. “Up to you. Tell me whenever you’re ready. But just know: I’ll always be ready to hear. Always.”

She kissed me. I enjoyed the moment, and I tried my best not to let her unshared burdens sour my mood. Something about her holding back on me felt… it felt bad.

A little… humiliating, in fact. Like I wasn’t worthy to carry what she was carrying. Like there was something about me she felt was lacking.

I didn’t like the feeling, but I also didn’t want to rush her. I had to tell myself that it was about her, not me. That she did trust me.

I would love to help her. And it did genuinely hurt that she wouldn’t let me.

Since she didn’t want to share her feelings, my mind automatically sent up the next consideration on the queue: solutions.

Right, so she wasn’t one to chip in. That was fine. Then I’d get her a nice suit that covered all her skin and protected her from bullet fire. A proper Netrunner suit, too. Not just the leotard she usually wore, but something that might also cool her down during dives. I couldn’t imagine why she didn’t own some of those, yet. Or even a proper Netrunner chair.

Didn’t matter. I’d get that sorted, soon. All of it.

“David,” she said, scratching her hair. “Do cigs bother you?”

“I… don’t like the smell, not gonna lie,” I told her. “But… I don’t care, either.”

She pulled a box of cigarettes from her pocket. Then she threw it into the kitchen sink. “Schwoop,” she whooped. “There. All gone.”

“Luce, you don’t have to—”

“I want to,” she said.

“No, that’s—”

“Listen, if I ever get this huge-ass urge, I’ll just go outside and smoke some place else. Shit, maybe I’ll put on some perfume, too. But I sure as fuck won’t stink up our new place with a smell that you don’t like.” She took my hand and squeezed it gently.

“Thank you,” I grinned. “How was breakfast in that motel?”

“Didn’t eat there,” she groaned. “Food looked like shit anyway.”

“Fair. You hungry?”

She nodded.

“Let’s eat somewhere fancy.”

“David,” she giggled.

“We’ll get you some new threads, too, before going. Something shiny as shit. If you want. I don’t care.”

She just laughed. “…Nah. I’m thinking… the place with that stew…”

“Abdi’s?”

“Yeah.”

000

Maine typed on a display-screen on the wall next to him in the gun-range. The target far ahead of him receded another twenty yards. All the way to eighty, now.

Dorio stood behind him, grinning. “You’re on fire, babe!”

He was.

His accuracy was… unlike anything he’d ever experienced before. Even back in the military, he hadn’t been this cold, this controlled.

He’d chromed up all the way to this point because he had chased this feeling: the feeling of being a machine.

Machines were accurate. They were precise.

They were unyielding. Hard.

The software work on his chrome had finally put that dream, and the reality of his situation, into perspective.

Before, he had thought that he had been machine-like. He thought he’d been precise, accurate, unyielding.

Only now did he realize the truth.

He’d been a tiny piece of meat attached to a monstrous amalgamation of steel that his gray could barely even control.

And the distinction had always been there, always present in his mind: the split between his meat and his chrome. He’d tried to ignore it, tried to rationalize it away, tried to tough through it.

David had saved him from that feeling.

And over time, quite naturally even, he had finally found that feeling he was chasing. Perfect control. Perfect precision. Power.

And the sense that this was him now. All of it, from his PLS to his newly chipped Sandy—everything was a natural part of him.

He no longer had to fight his machine body.

He shot his Lexington towards the target. Came off three inches from the center. He adjusted his course. Bullseye. Bullseye.

Bullseyes until the mag emptied.

Maine couldn’t help but giggle boyishly as his gun finally clicked. ‘Where the fuck do I even go from here?’

“Holy shit, Maine!”

“I know!” Maine laughed. Holy shit.

He’d been around town, tying up loose ends, helping the chooms he could help, having a chat with Kiwi that made him… feel things.

He still didn’t know whether to just continue rejoicing in all the luck he’d been showered with, or to feel… scared for what was to come.

Right after David and Lucy had left, he and Dorio had tried to level with Kiwi about their recent windfall, and how clearly left out she was.

Maine would share his winnings with Dorio, of course. Rebecca would take care of Pilar. Lucy was a no-brainer, and he’d already spied David walking off with Falco, and Falco returning to the fold quite happy, so Maine considered that guy a done deal.

That conversation they’d had with Kiwi still felt like… the end of an era.

000

“Why the long face, Kiwi?” Dorio asked as she threw her arm around the masked woman, as they followed her to the spot where they’d parked their rides.

“Just considering my future employment options,” Kiwi said.

“That so?” Maine asked, looking up at the blue sky. “You really think we’re just gonna drop everything now?”

“You would if you had any brains left in that chrome dome,” Kiwi said. Maine laughed. She was… right.

“Well,” Maine said, giving Dorio a look that basically said ‘give it to her’.

“Even if we are retiring, Ki,” Dorio began, “We’d hate to leave you behind in this cumdump of a city after everything we’ve been through.”

“No,” Kiwi immediately said. “I don’t wanna owe you. And frankly, I don’t think the amount is worth being indebted to you, either.”

“One and a half mill?” Maine suggested.

Kiwi’s eyes widened. Changed her tune real quick with that one. Though it made Maine wonder, how little did she think he was gonna pay her? “What’s your angle?”

“I have the cash,” Maine shrugged. “And you’ve been loyal for so long. We’re chooms, ain’t we?” The fuck other reason needed there to be?

Dorio hugged her tighter with one arm. “Just take it,” she grinned widely, eyes closed as she did.

“If I do, you know you’ll never see me again,” Kiwi said.

Dorio took her arm off her neck and gave her a look of hurt. Maine… didn’t expect any differently, really.

“Why’re you so eager to ghost?” Dorio asked.

“Because this job is for fucking crazy people,” Kiwi’s digitized voice hummed as she raised it. “And, I think I’ve had enough NDEs to last me a lifetime.”

“You can always just quit without ghosting, you know?” Dorio said.

“I could, but…” Kiwi put a hand on her forehead. Her eyes wavered for a moment. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just acting out cuz I’m grateful or some shit, I don’t know. I’ll leave that shit to my shrink to figure out.”

“You don’t gotta come, tonight,” Maine said. “But if you wanna, just know there’ll always be a seat for you.”

“Even for an untalented hack like me?”

Maine felt a flare of irritation at D for… all that mess. Kid was good, but he didn’t have to rub it in like that. “Especially for a washed-up has-been like you,” Maine grinned. “You’re in good company, anyway. Look around. It’s D’s city, now.”

Kiwi laughed. “Can’t believe you’d even say that.” Even Dorio looked at him askance. “Alright, then. I’ll come. Then I’ll… stop going on gigs, cuz what’d be the point?”

Maine nodded. That was understandable.

000

“Still think it’s D’s city?” Dorio asked, wrapping her arm around his waist. “From where I’m standing, you’ve still got more to give.”

That was true. He knew that with every bone in his body.

Before, every time he hit a limit, he’d chrome up. Then he’d hit new limits, and he’d do it again and again.

He’d have to rethink that approach. Rethink… everything.

His place in this city, in this world.

But D… Maine grinned fondly. “D…” he didn’t know what to say, really.

“Come on,” Dorio said, comfortingly. “Don’t stress about the kid.”

“It’s not stress,” Maine laughed. “It’s somethin’ more. When I heard him talk about how shitty this city was, how determined he was to do somethin’ about it all, I realized something.”

Something… slightly embarrassing.

“What’d you realize?”

Maine reloaded his gun. Dorio gave him some space, and he aimed it around the target, intent on cutting a circular hole around it. All twenty rounds struck true, cutting a jagged hole around the target.

He put the gun on the counter and looked at Dorio with a neutral expression. “I ain’t him.”

“What? You ain’t D?” Dorio raised an eyebrow.

“I ain’t the one,” Maine corrected. Then he cracked a grin. “But the weird thing, the fucked up thing is: I don’t give a shit. I finally get what Pilar told us. The potential he saw in D. And I’m starting to see it, and I’m not gonna lie, I wanna support him. I don’t care if that makes me look weak or whatever. I wanna see where that kid goes.”

Dorio folded her arms and grinned incredulously at him. “Holy shit.”

“Holy shit is right.”

Dorio narrowed her eyes at him. “So what is your next move, then?”

Maine felt like he was in the military again, but instead of taking orders from the NUSA, resenting every minute of it, he now truly felt like—not simply a soldier, but the kind of soldier.

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

The kind that believed.

“I’ll await my orders,” Maine grinned. “And I won’t die until I see that kid at the fucking top, where he belongs. What do you say, Dorio?”

Dorio gave him her arm. He grabbed it, and pulled her close. “Let’s see where this train leads,” she said.

000

Lucy wasn’t in the mood to go into the city for our date, and honestly, neither was I. I was still quite raw from my time back home—back in Arroyo—this morning, cleaning up the trash.

There was just so much trash to clean, and the enormity of the task ahead was a mental baggage that I would… rather unpack another day.

Instead, I took my bike out to Abdi’s to order there. Before leaving, I called Reyes, to deliver the virtus, and maybe have a quick chat, as well, to see if he knew anything about what Rogue wanted.

He responded that he was already taking out the new BD techie, and that they’d swing over to Abdi’s.

The two sarong-wearing guys out front gave me a nod and I went in. Without my guitar case. That was still strapped to my bike. I was entirely unarmed, and I kind of trusted this place. They knew me, too, which was nice.

Reyes was inside, having lunch—a pot of beef suqaar and a plate of crepe-like flatbread—with… wait.

Judy?

“D, my man!” Reyes raised his hand. “The Shobo thing is all over the fucking news! What the hell did you do, you leatherface motherfucker?!” he threw his head back and laughed.

Judy turned to look at me with an expression of shock. “You!” she stood up and whirled to face me. “You sent your fixer to sucker me back in? Are you obsessed or something?”

What the hell was going on? I looked at Reyes. “Yo, capitan. How rare are BD techies anyway in this city? You couldn’t find anyone else but her?”

Reyes raised an eyebrow. “You two have history?”

“We did biz,” I said. “And she wanted out. Cuz I’m too hardcore or some shit.”

“Fuck you, it’s cuz you threatened me.”

“Alright, alright,” Reyes said. “Both of you, sit. Let’s squash this right here.”

I sighed, and did as I was told, sitting opposite to Reyes. Judy sat next to me. She kinda stunk of alcohol. Was she drunk already? Kind of early for that.

“D,” Reyes said. “Why’d you threaten her?”

“Was in a tough spot. Got someone breathing down my neck, and I was forced to… expose a vulnerability.”

“Your identity?” Reyes asked.

“Don’t pry,” I shook my head slightly.

Reyes raised his hands. “Certainly won’t. I’ll treat that information as top-secret, need-to-know. Won’t even search for it. On my word. So, what’d you tell her?”

“Basically, told her I’d… find her if she blabbed. Which, yeah.”

Reyes looked at Judy in disappointment. “D’s a good boy, you know. You’d have to give him a good reason to get him after you. You don’t need to be scared of him.”

“Can I—can I fucking talk, now? It’s not just that. It’s… it’s the BDs. This guy’s brain is… it’s weird.”

“Rude,” I muttered.

[True.]

…Yeah.

“It’s fine,” Reyes said. “People like that shit. I think, you two just got off on the wrong foot. Listen, Judy—my boy is a community man. He’s a hero. He’s taking out gigs for practically nothing to protect people that cannot protect themselves. He killed Jotaro Shobo.”

Judy shrugged. “Alright, that was… kinda preem,” she muttered so quietly that it almost sounded like a whisper.

I nodded. “I think you might like the BD, too.”

Judy laughed dryly. “Yeah? Guess we’ll fuckin’ see.”

“Also,” I said, “I feel like I paid preem edds only for you to end up ditching me down the road, and that wasn’t really nice.”

Judy sighed, but nodded. “Yeah. Yeah.”

Talking to her right now, I realized… what did she actually know about me, beyond the mass-murdering psychopath I appeared as in my BDs? “I feel like I haven’t shown you my best face, yet, and that was an enormous oversight on my part. If you wanna hang or something, try and fix the broken bridges, I’m down.”

Judy narrowed her eyes at me. “I, uh… just… FYI, I’m gay, so…”

Wait, what?

“And I have a girlfriend,” I told her. “I’m not coming onto you, here. Just trying to be professional.”

“My bad,” she said. “You Afterlife types ain’t exactly… professional.”

Couldn’t say how true that was, myself. Maine and the others were plenty professional.

“D is probably the most professional merc I have ever

had the pleasure of working with,” Reyes said. “He’s strange as hell, but he gets the job done, and when he does it, he does it well. So… you cool?”

Judy nodded. “Guess I was kinda sorta wrong about you.”

“Not that I helped my case at all,” I said.

“Alright,” Reyes clapped his hands. “The virtu.”

Ah. I took out a ziploc bag from my pocket containing ten chips, each of them numbered. “The first nine are from all the scavs I killed this morning. I wanna call it Scavageddon, but if you guys have better names, that’s fine, too. Nabbed almost a hundred and thirty before MaxTac started crawling around everywhere. That was a huge pain. They went to ground, too, but they’ll resurface soon. My plan is to keep hitting Arroyo over and over again until they just disappear. The tenth is the Jotaro Shobo job, and a Tyger Claw massacre. I wanna be there when you edit it, cuz that thing’s got some, uh, company secrets, if you catch my drift. But I trust you, Judy.”

Neither Reyes nor Judy said anything for… almost twenty seconds.

Judy just stared at the chips all the while, and Reyes tried his best to just eat quietly, without saying anything.

Finally, it was Judy who broke the silence. “You said one virtu a month, Reyes. One.”

Reyes just kept eating.

000

Lucy and I went to the moon again.

There we just… did things.

We raced with moon buggies that she had spawned in from her wreath, getting into catastrophic crashes each time, just for the hell of it. She turned the pain in the BD down to zero, which resulted in us getting… a little too fearless for our own good. Lots of ragdolling ensued.

We’d tried to ride on the rims of moon craters and… fall, most of the time.

Then we’d grab some guns and open fire on a spawned-in army of people in space suits charging towards us.

It got even weirder from there. Turns out she had mods to spawn in tentacled space aliens, and tech weapons that we could use to kill them.

She even spawned in a human resistance army, of which we were special operatives that needed to go into the thick of the mess in order to kill the queen alien, who was the core of the hivemind. If she died, the others would be disorganized, making them easy pickings for the human army.

The writing was… astoundingly good. My favorite guy was Commander Lee, who seemed like the archetypical action hero. The sort of guy that reminded me of Maine more than anyone else. A warrior commander who put his troops first and wasn’t afraid to die in the line of duty with them.

By the end of it all, we got herded inside into a moon-base to receive our commendations from Lee. He stuck medals to our chests and everything.

Then… credits started rolling in my HUD.

“Wait,” I said. “Lucy,” I nudged her. “What time is it?” Why’d I even ask her? I checked it for myself. The time appeared in my HUD after a second—seven fifty-five.

Rogue had said eight.

“Ah shit.”

I logged out from the BD, waking up in Lucy’s heart-shaped pink bed. She followed a second after. I took off the wreath and placed it on the nightstand. “I have a meeting with Rogue.”

Lucy’s eyes widened. “Holy shit! David, I’m so sorry—”

I laughed. “Don’t be! That shit was fucking fun!” I got off her bed. “Plus, now I know you’re the biggest fucking nerd on planet Earth—no wander you wanna go to the moon. You just wanna lose that title.”

“Fuck you!” she chuckled. “But D, you gotta hurry—”

“Why?” I asked. “She told me to wait like she doesn’t owe me three mill already. I don’t give a shit what she thinks.”

In fact…

I’d make a BD of this.

“David,” she narrowed her eyes at me. “What… what are you planning?”

000

The Afterlife was as busy as it ever got. They weren’t just a full house. Even the walkable space was starting to get cramped.

Everyone had turned up. All of Maine’s friends—except for Maine and his crew—had come to see the fabled solo that had saved so many lives with no expectation of payback, burning tens of thousands of eddies on pure strangers.

D.

He was rich enough to afford it, but Rogue knew that his act of charity just couldn’t compute in the minds of many of the mercs—even the ones whose lives he had saved.

There was an undercurrent of resentment mixed in with gratitude. Offense intermingling with awe. A few of them, the most corp-hating types among them, despised the idea that some rich fuck had thrown away their edds just to save their lives without even so much as following up on them.

And every single one of them wanted answers from their fixers. Data on who this D was, and where to find him.

To put him in his place.

There would be no violence without Rogue’s say-so, though. They could look, but they couldn’t touch.

She owed him that much, anyway.

Then again, that cheeky brat was being especially cheeky right now. Fifteen minutes late for a meeting he had been desperate to have just this morning. He must have ridden out the minute he woke up to get to the bottom of what had happened. She respected that diligence quite a bit. Even the impatience.

Then, suddenly, the lights went dark.

The music turned off.

Power cut?

She could hear the sound of every merc inside unholstering their weapons. She turned on infra-red on her optics and looked around.

The lights turned on.

The music didn’t.

It was quiet inside the Afterlife. More quiet than she could ever remember it being. Quiet, but for a faint… whistling.

The haunting melody was slow, and she couldn’t make out the song until…

The seventh note.

Never Fade Away.

Footsteps sounded from the entrance of the club. A body, shorter than many of the bigger cyborgs populating the room, pressed its way through the thick crowd of people. From where she stood, she could see a metallic bulb peaking upwards. The more people moved out of the way, the more she could see—the metallic bulb was the top of a bat.

She saw the white tech-mask containing an artistic rendition of a skull-face, one of those Mexican types they had in the Day of the Dead. She then saw his late mother’s EMT jacket, a black t-shirt underneath, a fake gold cross necklace inlaid with a ruby, and baggy blue pants.

David Martinez was at least five inches taller than she remembered his runty ass being, and he had filled out since the time they had met two months ago.

He had filled out physically, and his ego seemed to have inflated accordingly. Damn shame, that. She quite missed the cocky albeit respectful kid that had come to her, hat in hand, asking for a little info.

That boy was dead, now. Probably buried under the mountain of chrome he was no-doubt rocking.

He squeezed through the crowd without even flinching, without so much as looking at the incredulous glares.

He just… kept whistling Never Fade Away.

When he reached the bar, he took a seat on the bar-stool, opposite to her.

“Got caught up,” he said. “My bad.”

“Quite the entrance,” Rogue said, her expression a careful neutral. “You hacked my power.”

What the fuck was he doing?

She told him, told him that jerking her around was downright deadly.

Was he testing that?

“Thought the place needed a little more quiet,” D said. He bounced the bat on the floor, making a loud clinking sound as it did. “Let’s get to biz, Rogue,” he leaned over the counter. The semi-circle of angry mercs behind him were glaring daggers at him, and yet… they all kept a healthy distance of two feet away from him. “Who tried to shoot my chooms up?”

“All in good time,” Rogue said. “Tell me, first. You’re awful nonchalant for someone that walked into this place, balls swinging, turning off the music like you own this place.”

He paused the incessant bouncing of his metallic bat to regard her for a moment. “I am. What reason do I have to feel scared?” He looked around. “Of these guys?” He turned towards her again. “Nah… I don’t see it.”

“The fuck?!” someone shouted from inside the crowd.

“Might wanna consider slowing down,” Rogue said.

D heaved a long sigh, and shook his head. “Alright, then: let me put it simply for the grade-school dropouts in the back,” he continued raising his voice as he spoke, until finally, he was shouting. “There isn’t a single motherfucker among you who could hope to kill me.”

Behind him, eight people were pointing their guns at him. He didn’t so much as flinch.

“They talk about legends, here in the Afterlife,” D went on. “Mercs who died flashily enough for you to reward them with a cocktail of your own making. Count me out of that shit, Rogue. I’m not here to die for some retarded fucking knuckle-draggers to toast to my name.”

“Kill that motherfucker!”

The bar roared to life.

D just… sighed.

He stood up, turned around.

And in a flash, twelve people started spasming wildly as electric arcs spread all over their cyberware. They were down in a flash.

000

Fuck.

Fucking fuck.

Why were they so many?

My Ping told me there were about two hundred of these fuckers cramped inside this club. Two hundred borged up, ICEd up motherfuckers. From the moment I had stepped foot into this place, I had tried my best to breach as many systems as I could, as well as scanning the opposition, getting a measure of how threatening these people were.

I could count them as a threat only if I viewed them as a group. Individually, I’d have an easy time of it, even without the Sandy.

Together, they proved to be a whole other beast.

I had disabled all their guns, though. And I knew that guns wouldn’t fly, anyhow. Not with Rogue back there, calling the shots.

And so, I hefted my bat, cranked up my Sandevistan in slight shame, and started getting to work.

Skull. Chest. Chin. Knee. Leg.

Arm. Stomach.

I swung, and stepped around in a neat dance of evasion and pain, tagging everyone in reach. I made sure not to break many bones, or cyberware. Didn’t want them hating me. Just… down. And in pain.

A few of the ones with pain editors, I Quickhacked them to disable their cyberware. The ones that were too metallic to go down easily, I similarly Quickhacked. If they were meat, I hit them. If they were borged up, I disabled their systems.

After an objective thirty seconds, I had managed to tag forty, half of which were on the ground and not getting back up, and the other half were staggering away, trying to regroup or slip into the crowd of healthier combatants who still wanted a piece of me.

I cranked the Sandy up to its maximum, and did a round through the crowd, hitting everyone in the head lightly. Just a love-tap.

Then I returned to my original position. Some staggered. Some fell unconscious immediately. None died.

I was especially proud of the last part.

Not so proud that I had needed the Sandy for it. I tried not to look at how much more objective time I had left with the Sandy.

I re-entered the Afterlife’s system and blared the speakers to drown out the cries of agony. Then I reduced their volume again and raised my voice once again. “I’m not here to kill any of you. But if I was, then none of you would have stood a fucking chance. I brought this,” I hefted the bat, “Because I was being kind,” I threw the scav-bat at the head of a cyborg who was getting up and looking at me wrong. The thick part of the bat bounced off his head and ricocheted back into my hand. He fell over on a thankfully bare part of the floor, where he wouldn’t crush anyone to death.

I turned back to Rogue then. And I sat down politely behind the bar. “So that’s the score.”

Rogue… looked at me neutrally. For several long seconds until—

She began to clap.

Slowly. Five times. Then she stopped, and put her hands on the counter, leaning closer to me. “Good show,” she said. “You gonna sell that in one of your little BDs?”

I tried not to let the embarrassment show. “I’m not here to record BDs. I’m here for info. The shooters from yesterday. I’ve waited patiently. Haven’t jerked you around… all that much. Just give me what I came for.”

Rogue nodded. “You know, you were a lot more agreeable when you first came in here.”

“I needed something from you.”

“And now that you got it, respect goes out the window?”

I snorted. “You might be her age, but you’re not my mother.”

Rogue laughed. “Please. I’m at least twice as old as your mom before she died.”

Way to rub in all that info she had. Fuck.

That was the number one reason why I couldn’t make an enemy out of her. And it wasn’t like all this was that unforgivable. Mercs got hurt all the fucking time. They’d walk it off.

Also… “No shit,” I leaned closer. “You must have seen some shit, huh?”

She laughed. “Oh yes.”

“Ever seen someone like me?” I asked.

She grinned. “I’ve seen worse.”

“Who.”

“Smasher.”

Huh. “Love to hear that story, provided I didn’t just burn every bridge with you just now.”

“Only a couple. Good job keeping it non-lethal.” She looked over my shoulder, and I did the same. Most of the mercs were leaving. I sent out a Ping and found that they were congregating in the street right outside.

Not that it mattered. I’d evade them, and my bike wasn’t parked around here, anyway. “Anyway, first thing first.”

“Augustus Gonzalez,” Rogue began. “Green Farm security manager.”

My eyes widened.

Gonzalez.

Tijuana.

Wait… “Green Farm?”

“Fucked with the wrong hombres, didn’t you?” Rogue said.

“The hombres fucked with the wrong me.” Wait.

What?

Hm. ‘The wrong hombres fucked with me’? The wrong hombres, wrong me?

God, these lines weren’t working.

“What?” Rogue asked.

“They screwed up,” I said. “Had a run-in with the Tijuana Cartel a few weeks ago. Smoked them all.”

“That was you?” Rogue asked.

“Why do you think they’re after me? Green Farm owns the cartel. I fucked with their biz.”

Was it that fucking guy, Lorenzo Ladron? He had only intuited that I had come from Night City. I should have taken that threat more seriously. Should have tracked down and killed that finance guy when I had the chance. Shit.

Also, “You said Gonzalez?” I asked.

The same fucks who betrayed my family and basically tortured them for years using some shitty collections gang?

The same gang that I ended up slaughtering in a fucking half-hour?

Guess I’d forgotten to go after Alfredo’s accursed fucking spawn, and gotten rid of a threat to myself and my family forever.

“Ringading a bell?” Rogue asked.

I nodded. “Yes, it does.”

“Word to the wise, kid—you could stand to make fewer enemies if you can’t even keep track anymore.”

I snorted. “Thanks for the concern, Rogue. But the truth is, there’s another lesson in this. Be thorough. Double shot of tequila, please.” I had found that alcohol did help me in the charisma department. Marginally. Then again, with Nanny’s recent upgrades, “Make it a quadruple.”

“Fill the whole lowball?” Rogue chuckled.

I was going to have to edit much of this conversation anyway. “Public speaking ain’t really my forte, and I sense that I might need those chucklefucks outside for what’s to come.”

“And what’s that?”

“A stand.”

Rogue raised her eyebrows. “Alright.” She grabbed a glass of tequila from the highest shelf, a polished and perfectly crystalline lowball glass, and poured me a deep measure. Then she slid the glass to me.

I slid my mask up and drank the whole thing in three big gulps. “Pleasure doing biz, Rogue,” I said, taking the bat that was leaning against the counter and standing up. I shot her a thousand edds and walked out of the Afterlife.

Outside, I found a crowd of mercs gathered, some riding their trucks, others just standing there menacingly with their guns.

“The people who shed our blood last night,” I began, not mincing any words before getting into it all. “Were fuckers from Tijuana. Out-of-town bitches that couldn’t stand the heat for a single fucking moment before dying. All of them almost. Except one motherfucker. Just one. The only motherfucker that ever managed to get away from me.” The only one I hadn’t let get away from me, that was. And that really, fucking, annoyed me. “Green Farm, some shitcorp from the sticks, thought they could come to our town and fuck with us. You wanna keep trying your asses against me, wait in fucking line. I’m headed to Mexico to finish biz. First, the guy I missed. Then, everyone else.”

One merc stepped forward with a glare. “Why’d you save me?! Why’d you pay Trauma to fucking save me? You think you own me now, you corp plant bitch?”

Corp plant? Why did everyone fucking assume I was a corp plant?

“A friend of Maine is a friend of mine,” I told him. “I saved your lives because of basic fucking hospitality. You came to our place and got hurt. Therefore, we had a responsibility. I don’t expect you to understand what honor means, but that’s how I roll.”

“How you roll?” He laughed. “You fucking—”

Then he got punched out by someone else in the crowd, hard enough to launch him into the wall of the Afterlife, where he slid down, utterly insensate.

It was one of the bigger motherfuckers that I had put down. His arms were huge and long, and he looked like a monster. “Tijuana,” he said. “When do we ride out?”

Thank fuck.

“An hour. We hit ‘em hard. We hit ‘em fast. And we get the fuck out before Militech shows up.” I surveyed the crowd and gave them a nod. “Let’s show these fuckers what our city’s made of.” I looked around. “Who else?”

A black man stepped forward and raised his hand. An Asian woman did the same. Several others came out from the crowd, inching towards me, until the entire crowd closed in on me.

“We’ll meet in Aldo’s!” I shouted. “One hour. Be there, or get left behind.”

I activated the Sandevistan, and disappeared before their very eyes. I ran through the backalleys of Watson until I found it. MY bike, and my guitar case, all unharmed. I put the bat inside the case and called my chooms, all of them.

Maine: Well? How’d it go?

D: They’re in.

Dorio: …How many?

D: All of them.

Pilar: Shit, choom! The fuck did you do? You paying them?

D: Revenge is a decent payment.

Rebecca: You’re fucking kidding!

Maine: They meetin’ us at Aldo’s, too?

D: Yep. Let’s fucking end this, guys.