Making this gig into a game had been a good call on Nanny’s end.

It helped keep me engaged. Helped stop me from hesitating or taking a moment to wonder just how worth it all this was. Whether or not I was in the wrong for taking these lives, for spending them for my cause, a cause that I foresaw would help way more than the measly eight hundred security personnel that worked here.

It was easier to not think about that.

Easier to just get the job done, to look ahead to a clear path.

I had shot my way into an elevator.

A hundred and eighteen.

Found myself at the top floor of the building to a battalion of soldiers pouring lead into said elevator chamber while I was still in it.

I had to use the Sandevistan, cut a hole through the elevator with my sword, jump into the inner walls of the shaft, scale the shaft until I was at the top of the elevator, safe from the bullets, where I then cut another hole through the wall and into the floor.

After I was done, the counter was up to a hundred and forty-three.

I didn’t sweat the details. I knew they were a distraction.

Misguided empathy was always a distraction.

Pacificism was one of the great lies of the learned.

A philosophy of passivity and non-action that put your own moral conscience and esteem at a greater weight than the very lives of your fellow man.

There wasn’t a more cowardly way to live in my book.

As I cut my way through the executive floor, I couldn’t help but resent myself.

Not… for making these choices.

But for the fact that this… this game was so easy that I even had the mental wherewithal to consider these non-critical things. I had way too much time on my hands. And it was working against me.

Finally, I had reached it.

The boss floor.

In a very literal sense at that. The boss’ office. The Chief Executive Officer of Green Farm quailed before me, crouched and shivering, a wet-spot in his crotch that, coupled with the mild scent of urine in the air, told me exactly how scared he was. The guy was in his fifties, but he looked like he was in his twenties. He looked like a young adult man, even though he wasn’t.

“Please, please, please. Don’t kill me! Please!”

I shook my head. “I only need information. Augustus Gonzalez.”

He looked up at me in horror. “The—my security manager?”

“The same one.”

“He—he’s in Night City!”

No fucking way. “I will kill you.”

“I swear! I swear! I’m telling the truth! He’s in Night City!”

What the fuck?! What, was he taking a week’s rest in the Med Center or something? The fuck was this, amateur hour?

Jesus Christ.

“Call him,” I said.

His eyes turned golden, and then all of a sudden, the color disappeared, returning his irises into the same boring brown as before. “Wait! He’s not answering!”

“Is he dead or alive?”

“He’s alive, he’s alive! But—he’s not answering!”

Goddammit. Alright. Alright.

I’d burn this place to the ground, and give Auggie every reason to come back and search for me.

Then I’d kill him.

“Please, let me live! Please!” The CEO clasped his hands before my eyes and kneeled. His name was Cristobal Zambrano, but honestly, I only recognized him as ‘CEO’. He was of an entirely other species from regular humans. He didn’t deserve the distinction of a name.

I shook my head. “You’re going to die, Cristobal. Right here.”

He wept as he spoke, snot running down his nostrils, and over his lips. “Please! I have children!”

[He has children, D!]

“You and every poor fuck that works under you.”

“Do you know what we do in Green Farm?! We make food! We make food for the city of Tijuana! We—“

“You don’t make shit,” I spat. “You don’t make shit. You tell people to make food. You manage. You don’t even make decisions that impact the firm directly. You’ve got consultation firms for that. All you do is make arbitrary decisions, hire some assholes to corroborate you and jerk you off at the same fucking time, and then your value goes up. That’s all you fucking care about. The real Green Farm, the real workers making food and actually making their presence worthwhile for this city, aren’t in this fucking building. They’re out in the fields, out in their hydroponics towers, working on their drones, working maintenance. Working. Do you even know what the fuck that means, you corpo shitsmear?”

“Son—”

“I’m not your fucking son, you piece of shit meat,” I growled. “Don’t think I don’t know about your cartel connects.”

“Wait—!”

“Yeeeah! That’s fuckin’ right! I know your sins. I know you aren’t worth shit. You profit off of the drug trade. You give with your right hand and you take with the left. You think I was born yesterday? You think I came here for, what, ideological reasons? I came here cuz your cartel fucked with my family. Fucked with me. Tried to kill my chooms. My fucking girlfriend, motherfucker! Those sins are on your head.” I said as I aimed my tech shotgun at his head.

Cristobal shook his head. “Please, young man, please. I’m different, I swear on the father, the son, and the holy spir—“

Time to see what this Rostovic tech shottie could do.

BOOM.

The scattershot erased his skull from existence, as well as a chunk of the desk behind him, sending a shower of blood and gore all over his glass-walled corner-office. A narrow cone of blood painting the floor, the walls and the ceiling was all that was left of that pretty’d up dome of his.

“Hah!” I laughed, looking at the shotgun.

Talk about fucking decisive. Yeah, this… this was definitely going into my arsenal.

Couldn’t wait to see what it would do to a room full of scavs. I really might achieve the coveted penta-kill with this thing.

Nanny manifested next to his bleeding form, eyes narrowed. Then she looked up at me. [Was that good of you, David?]

I tilted my head. The fuck did she just ask?

[Was that good of you?]

I blinked. “Excuse me?” Was she screening me for psychosis, now? She of all people could never care about this sort of thing: the morality of murder. The question wasn’t for her benefit, but for mine.

[I understand that you want to make the world a better place, but how exactly did that execution fit into that ambition of yours?]

Despite my knowing the purpose of her line of questioning, I still couldn’t shake how unserious it sounded. I could almost swear that she was trying to make a joke or something. I had to ask, just to make sure. “Nanny, are you doing a bit right now?”

[No, I am evaluating you for cyberpsychosis.] Poorly.

I holstered my gun.

Then I skipped over Cristobal’s corpse and sat on his desk. And I faced Nanny. “I’m not skezzing out.”

She tilted her head at me and gestured at the corpse, with an unconvinced expression. [You just shot a man that—]

“An asshole.”

[He didn’t seem like an asshole.]

“It’s impossible for him not to be,” I said. “I mean—come on. He’s a fucking CEO of a megacorp’s subsidiary. Regional manager, sure, but he’s still the top boss here. And that makes him an asshole.”

[Explain,] Nanny tapped her foot on the ground.

“He has power,” I said. “And he gets to make more edds than everybody else, despite his role being mostly administrative. Sure, he gets to call the shots, but does that really fucking mean that everyone else should have to work like slaves while he gets to enjoy fucking one month vacations a year? Everyone else having to budget even for life-saving meds while he gets to spend his pocket cash on coke or whatever? I don’t even care if he’s lived a sober life all his life—and I can 100% guarantee that he fucking hasn’t. Look at him. The bastard’s fifty-six, and he looks like he’s in his early 20s.” I would dig for information on him later, but right now, I couldn’t imagine him as anything but a scum-fuck that had turned his act around in his final moments, all for a crumb of mercy.

A crumb of mercy which he wouldn’t find on me.

“And let’s face it. He’s had to make some fucked up decisions. Had to keep his company competitive in an environment where competitiveness means sacrificing everything, and that means sacrificing fucking everything for value. Every ‘budget cut’ he’s approved has been somebody else’s hospital bill, eviction, or funeral. He’s insulated by the structure. That’s how corpos work—the cruelty is diffused, so no one feels guilty. It’s cowardice plain and simple, all for a single bottomline: shareholder value.” I couldn’t stress this enough, but, “Fuck him.”

Nanny crossed her arms. [So he deserves to die for playing his role?]

Without a shadow of a doubt. But also…

“He deserves to die because his role exists,” I said. “If you don’t cut the head off, the body keeps moving. Green Farm doesn’t stop exploiting people or supporting the cartels if I leave the CEO alive. I’m not doing this because it’s fun—I’m doing it because you can’t reform a machine while it’s still running. People gotta die. There’s no other way any of this will work.” Not like we could rely on the law for justice, either. The law belonged to the rich and powerful.

The law belonged to the gangs and the cartels as much as it belonged to the megacorps.

But not the people. Never the people. The law could never protect them.

Only I could.

Her eyes narrowed a fraction, scanning me like I was another data set. [You realize that by your logic, most of the planet is fair game.]

Was that supposed to scare me?

What was the difference between murdering one man, and ten?

Ten or a hundred? A hundred or a thousand?

There was none. Not for me. The first time I killed, it was easy. It was self-defense. And it felt like the most natural thing in the world to do.

People died. That’s what they did. It made no difference morally if I was the one to bring about that death.

All that mattered was that the death contributed to something.

And Cristobal’s death absolutely would. As well as the deaths of all those who served under him.

“Most of the planet is fair game,” I said. “That’s what this path of mine means. I might be able to fill a river with blood by the time my job is done. By the time I’ve reached my goal.”

I closed my eyes, and saw mom’s face. She looked at me neutrally.

This is the way it’s gotta be. For things to change.

Sorry.

I opened my eyes and pushed myself off the desk, stepping over much of the gore that once used to be Cristobal’s head. “And also,” I added, looking angrily at her. “You’re the one that turned this massacre into a fucking video game, Nanny. Maybe it’s you I should screen for cyberpsychosis?”

She didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then: [Fair.] She nodded.

“Good,” I said. “Now help me loot this place before the others get here. We got stacks of eddies just waiting. Private accounts worth tens of millions at the lowest.”

I looked down at Cristobal’s corpse, and grinned ear to ear.

That… that felt fucking good.

Onwards, one day, to Saburo fucking Arasaka.

In the corner of my vision, I caught sight of something bulging out of Cristobal’s pocket.

I rifled through it until I retrieved it.

A key fob.

For a highly prestigious car brand.

My mouth split into a grin.

000

A fleet of over ninety cars tore through Tijuana’s dark streets

Ahead drove a Chevillon Emperor, yellow, black and modded into an urban tank.

On the way, a smoking corp building with a front gate blown wide open, likely from a nearby truck that was now a blackened skeleton of its former self. A kamikaze strike.

David’s work, no doubt.

Though he’d done well, Maine knew that things wouldn’t just be free n’ easy for them. There were still a bunch of corp security guards roaming around in the aftermath of whatever explosion had rocked them.

Maine grinned at the sight. “Becs! Pilar! Out the window, right now! Kill on sight!”

He followed suit as well, sticking his upper body out the Emperor’s window and taking potshots. His excitement, contrary to his expectations, didn’t work against him as he aimed his gun and shot.

A headshot from fifty yards away blew a security guard’s head into a fine red mist. He adjusted his aim and fired once again. He measured the timing with his optics. Two hundred and fifty milliseconds was all it took for him to successfully readjust his aim and then judge that his target was locked on.

He fired. Another headshot.

Maine bared his teeth and let out a brief chuckle. He aimed again, and fired again. And he struck another head again.

Heheh!

Pilar and Becs were raining hellfire on their own targets, using automatic rifles to spray them indiscriminately.

As they approached the entrance, Maine roared, “Exit the cars!”

He threw himself out, tucked and rolled to a safe stop before looking around quickly and surveying his surroundings. Pilar, Rebecca, Dorio, and Kiwi were all out. Lucy was still in the car, as Falco made a beeline for the largest group of security guards, intent on running them over. Maine immediately created a group call for the entire crew, including D.

Maine: Kiwi! Give us a fucking heading!

Kiwi immediately ran towards a doorway. The rest followed her without hesitation as she narrated what they would find at the end of the trail she was blazing.

Kiwi: Holy shit, Maine. Tech weapons up the wazoo, here. Stockpile of Sataras, M-179 Achilles’, Buryas, QianT implants, Militech implants, Basilisks, Behemoths… wait holy fuck-fuck, a Manticore AV.

An AV?!

Maine: We’re snatchin’ that AV, Kiwi. Just lead the fucking way.

Kiwi: Roger roger.

Maine grinned. Paydays on paydays in this bitch! Fuck yeah!

It didn’t take long for the fleet of solos to follow right behind them, covering their rear and giving his crew a free entrance into the bowels of this corp HQ. Pilar and Rebecca were ahead of him, firing on the opposition with automatic rifles, shooting around Kiwi, who just kept running like the wind as she led the way. Maine let out a laugh of delight at the ease of their advance. D had softened these sweet-ass Mexicans.

Kiwi made a turn. When Maine made the same turn, he caught sight of a group of security guards suddenly combusting. Becca and Pilar killed them while Kiwi’s overheat hacked worked its magic on them.

And on it went.

Maine turned his head to see Lucy just barely catching up to them. “Luce! How’s Falco doing?!” Maine roared.

“He’s parked nearby! The Emperor’s safe, too! The other Edgerunners are covering him.”

Rebecca cackled. “While we go after the real treasure!”

Kiwi stopped at a fortified door. Immediately as they caught up to her, the group turned around to catch the stragglers.

They fell immediately as his crew fired on them.

Maine: D! What’s your sitrep?!

D: Killed the CEO.

Maine: Huh?!

Dorio: Shit.

Rebecca: HAHAHAHAHA—

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Pilar: Fuck me right in the starfish, holy shit!

D: Light work. I’ll meet up with you guys in a few minutes. Tryna cop some of the boss’ rides. But if you need me, I’ll be right down in a sec.

Dorio: Nah. Do what you gotta do. We’re chilling.

Just then, a group of other security guards ran down the hallway, and everyone opened fire on them, slaughtering them within two seconds.

Dead. Easy, too. These fuckers didn’t last a second against his people. Their reflexes weren’t up to par, and they were clearly fucking lagging behind on intel, too. D had fucked their shit up.

“Turn the fuck around!” Kiwi roared. “The door’s opening.”

Maine did exactly that.

Kiwi continued: “And we’ve got unfriendlies on the other side. Only seven, but… they’re chromed the fuck up. They’re not normal. Let’s split up and handle them separately.”

Only seven?

Maine thought back to his days as a NUSA spec-ops.

He laughed.

Only seven true opponents then.

The door finally opened. He scanned the interior of the room, and saw them. Seven borged up assholes. Six of them were on the main floor, while the seventh was on the mezzanine floor of this expansive lobby. They wore full-body armor, probably the good shit too. On top of what had to be subderm underneath, they had several layers of protection from small arms fire.

Unfortunately for them, his Crusher wasn’t the only thing he had brought to the party.

Maine activated his Sandevistan as the others ducked for cover behind a row of concrete planters.

Immediately, he detected three other opponents activating similar implants, moving at the same pace as him as he raised his gun and fired.

One narrowly dodged. He stepped aside from the path of one asshole’s gun, and fired again.

He reached for his back as well, retrieving his modified L-69 Zhuo. The Kang Tao smart-shotgun roared as he fired. The homing bullets flew towards all three of his opponents at the same time, tagging each and every one. Unfortunately, though the rounds penetrated clean through the outer armor, they stopped on subderm. He laughed inwardly, and held the smart-shotgun as a cudgel, intent on striking one of the assholes right in the head.

They were too slow to avoid it as he crashed his shotgun into the man’s face, caving it in instantly. He grabbed the man by his collar, raising his corpse as a meat shield with his off-hand as he threw the shotgun away and retrieved his Crusher pistol, firing one round, then two, at one of the remaining Sandevistan users.

He dodged the first shot, and took the second right in the chest. Maine fired his gun once more. It made a horrific noise as it released its last bullet, having jammed or broken during his rapid-fire shooting spree.

But that third round did finally hit his quarry in the head.

Leaving the last of the three Sandevistan users for him to tackle with his bare fucking hands.

The Green Farm huscle opened fire at him with a Burya.

He stepped left.

Then right.

Then left. And left again as the bastard fired the last round of his four-round tech revolver.

Maine let go of his meat shield and rushed him with just his bare hands.

He managed to get a hold of the last bastard. Both arms.

Then… he pulled.

The Sandevistan deactivated, but it didn’t fucking matter one fucking bit.

He pulled. “You feel that shit, hombre?” Maine cackled. “Your servo-linked brachial actuator tearing. And that little chrome piston rig the ripperdoc bolted into your humerus. Feel that crunch, motherfucker?! That’s your carbon-weave tendons shreddin’ out one by one. And if you’re even able to focus through that agony, you’ll feel your Realskinn ripping! HAHAHAHAH!”

He screamed.

Maine matched the volume of that scream with his laughter.

He pushed hard on the last bit, managing to rip both arms off at the same fucking time!

He didn’t waste any time leaving the bastard in agony. Once he dropped on the floor, he stomped, crushing his head underneath his boot.

“Ahhhh!” he gasped as he soaked in the glory of that pitiful kill. Strong opponent, give me a fucking break, Maine thought as he grinned ear to ear.

He looked down at the practically beheaded bastard and grinned. “My fault, bitch!”

He looked to the side to find that his crew were keeping the rest of the company of borgs occupied. And ahead of him, a hallway of reinforcements drew in.

Not nearly as beefy as these guys.

Maine bent over, and picked up the man whose arms he had ripped off by the leg, and pitched him into the hallway, bowling over the guards.

Then he simply ran straight through.

Their peashooters only left scratches on him.

And he mowed straight through them, painting his body red in the process.

Nothing would stop him. Not today.

000

Lucy spent all of five seconds watching Maine dispatch three borgs, and then proceed on ahead like they didn’t have a problem right here, and cursed. The gonk was power-tripping, leaving the others to pick up the slack.

Then again, he had evened the odds severely. From seven to four guards, and they themselves were five.

Pilar and Rebecca began ganging up on one, taking potshots at the same target from behind their cover. Meanwhile, Dorio got close and personal with two gonks while Kiwi provided quickhacking support from a distance.

That left her to deal with the asshole up the mezzanine floor.

He was taking aim with a precision rifle. At Dorio.

Lucy slung her monowire around his gun and pulled it away from him, letting it fall on the ground.

Then she slung her wire up to the railing and pulled herself up to the floor.

He was already taking aim with his gun, but she had primed her Weapon Glitch quickhack for this moment. The trigger jammed, and refused to give.

He reacted instantly, throwing the gun at her so fast that it was all she could do to move away and not get murdered by the near-sonic projectile.

And he was already on the move.

Lucy: David! Access key to the net!

Corpo Cunt: On it.

Immediately, she shoved her way through the door that D had opened, into the facility’s localnet. The facility’s security systems.

A turret jutted out of a nearby wall.

And Lucy made a mistake.

Her eyes had darted towards the turret.

And this reflex-boosted monster of a cyborg immediately turned his head the same direction, stopped dead, and dove out of the way, dodging the fire.

She could have killed him right then and there if she had been smarter about it. Instead, he turned around altogether and ran towards the turret. It tried to track him, but his side-steps were too quick. Was that—was that a Sandevistan, too?

In a flash, the man ripped the turret off from the wall, and threw it into the fray below. And just as quickly as his insane burst of speed had started, it had ended. He’d used up his Sandy.

Now’s my chance. She drew her Unity pistol, already pre-loaded with a mag full of explosive rounds, and fired.

The bullet struck the man on his forearm, and exploded. Lucy saw nothing but a plume of black smoke, but she could make out the man’s IFF—his red outline—in her HUD. He was flying backwards, but his arm stubbornly remained attached to his body. Damaged, probably, but stubbornly attached nonetheless

She snorted. Not for long. She unspooled her monowire to their maximum length, ran a current through it using her cyberware, and swung her hand widely.

The monowire twisted around the railing of the mezzanine floor, and the fixtures on the wall next to it, forming an invisible spider’s web of monomolecular death.

Without a moment to spare as the man got to his feet, crouched low, and took off in a massively quick sprint. Either he was still using a Sandevistan, or those were heavy-duty leg implants.

Either way—

The man separated into eight disks of metal and flesh as he split his way through the wall of wires.

All Lucy had to do was step aside from the splash of blood and gore that flew her way. She breathed out in relief and approached the railing to look at the situation from below.

Just as she did, she witnessed Dorio uppercut the last security guard remaining—burning like a bonfire and letting out arcs of electricity. Kiwi’s work, no doubt.

The punch sent the man into the air.

Pilar and Rebecca were ready. “DUCK HUNT!” They screamed in unison as they fired a pair of shotguns at the bastard.

Then again.

And again.

They juggled him for three rounds each before running out of ammunition.

The siblings high-fived and cackled as the misshapen corpse fell behind them. Dorio looked around. “Anyone seen Lucy?”

Lucy jumped off the mezzanine, holding onto the monowire to slow her fall. Then she retracted it all back into her wrist. “Finished with mine. Where the hell did Maine go?”

Dorio’s expression grew fiery. “Shit! Let’s catch up to him!” She took off in a sprint that no one could follow.

“Fucking Maine,” Lucy growled as she followed Dorio down the hall. The hallway had practically been painted red. “Of all the times to go on a power-trip, is right now really the best time?”

Lucy had to run carefully around the ripped apart bodies of security guards and fleeing corpos, but the plus-side to all the carnage was that at least they knew where to follow him. “He’s not going the wrong way,” Kiwi commented. “Small fucking mercies. For a second there, I thought he cracked or something.”

Lucy couldn’t deny having felt the same. She knew how good her chrome software work had been with David—David’s work, actually. She knew how good his work had been. But she also knew its limitations. It couldn’t reverse neural or psychological damage. Only prevent it from advancing.

Finally, they arrived at the facility’s hangar bay. Maine was busy in the distance, laughing in front of an enormous Militech Basilisk hover tank. Between the rest and him were an ocean of bodies. Bodies everywhere.

Could that all have been him? Lucy spied turrets on the ceilings, all of them out and pointed at the ground.

This was David’s work.

Once they reached him, Maine turned to them and clapped his hands. “Right! Let’s fuckin’ get to boostin’! Lucy, Kiwi, get your asses ready! I want one of these,” he pointed at the hovertank, “Two of those,” on the wall were two AV drones. Wyverns according to her scans. “But people. If we don’t go home with that motherfucker right there,” he pointed at—

Oh no. He couldn’t be serious.

“—I will throatfuck a Burya and pull the trigger!” Maine roared.

The scans were clear, and she recognized its iconic look from every fucking newscast and screamsheet that ever reported on a cyberpsycho on the loose, or some other clusterfuck that necessitated the arrival of Max-fucking-Tac.

The Militech Manticore. Militarized AV. A ten-seat monstrosity with armored plating and more guns than you could shake a stick at.

Then it turned on.

“FUCK!” Maine roared as he brought out his shotgun. Everyone else did much the same as the AV hovered upwards, and slid through the air towards them, door facing them.

“Take fucking cover!” Dorio screamed. “The moment that door opens—“

D: Chill, chooms!

The crew froze.

D: Just do what Maine said, aight? We grab the tank, grab more of those Wyverns, and by the time the rest of the Afterlife are here—

The heavy doors slid open, revealing D, standing there, shoes covered in blood. “We’ll be long gone,” he said.

000

Just like I had predicted, our little crusade ended in an abject success. The edgerunners behind us grabbed everything not bolted to the floor, wreaked havoc, and by the time Tijuana’s Militech outpost began to muster, they had left behind an utter wreck of a building—all on fire.

And we ended up making out with more weapons, vehicles and tech than we even knew what to do with.

Except, take it all to GSS’s headquarters, with granny’s permission. The compound was a practically empty parking lot, building, and garage as well that granny had bought from a company that had outright failed in the wake of the cartel’s fall.

Abuela, Selina and Alex stood before us in the parking lot, staring in absolute disbelief at our bounty. “Grandson,” Abuela began. “What the fuck?”

“Surprise,” I said. “You’re not using this garage anyway, so I just thought we might as well help ourselves.”

“Wait, what?! We’re ditching this stuff here?!” Pilar cried.

Abuela walked forward and inspected the winnings. “Two Militech AVs. Two hovertanks. Two. Dozen. Trucks.” Turned out that you didn’t actually need to boost anything if you had the access codes already. We easily got to avoid the ordeal of having to break through Militech ICE walls due to that, allowing us to make off with… quite a few things of value. Behind our two Manticores and Basilisks, we dragged with us a conga-line of auto-piloted Behemoths—enormous trucks that could drive entire platoons—and Hellhounds—the type that were used as police cruisers in NC.

Two of the former. Twenty-three of the latter.

“Not everything,” I looked at Pilar. “Just the Manticores and the Basilisks. Until we figure out how to smuggle them into NC. Or—use them for something,” I said with a shrug. “I don’t know.”

“But we’re taking all the Wyverns!” Pilar said, referring to the small combat drones. “The Wyverns are small. We’ll hide ‘em easy!”

“Kiwi,” Maine called. “What’s the sitch on the evac?”

“All the other mercs are long gone,” Kiwi said. “Militech was on their asses all the way to the border, apparently. They gave up eventually, but—the streets are hot. We might wanna lay low for a couple of hours.”

Maine laughed. “Aight then! How’s about we have one last aftergig party, then?!”

Falco chuckled, shaking his head. “Heh. Sure!”

“Got nothin’ else to do,” Kiwi said.

“Yo, D,” Lucy called from deeper inside the garage. I grinned as I followed after her, squeezing past the hovertanks to find Lucy sitting up against the hood of my brand-spanking new Aerondight.

Before I had even rendezvous’d with the crew, I had sent the Aerondight ahead of the other cars and into the garage on auto-pilot.

“Hey there, pretty lady,” I sauntered up to her. “You like my car?”

Lucy burst out laughing. “You fucking gonk! Admit it—you get hard for these Rayfields.”

“For boosting them? Fuck yeah,” I laughed. “Man, you should have seen the look on that motherfucker’s face—the one who owned this piece of shit.”

Lucy snorted. “Piece of shit, you say. Don’t lie to yourself, D.”

I grinned slightly. “Fine.”

“Crazy to consider, though—just yesterday, that asshole tried to kill us out of nowhere. Now you own his car.”

Wait.

That… wasn’t right.

I took off my mask and gave her a somber look. “This car belonged to the CEO of Green Farm. The guy I was after… Augustus Gonzalez. He’s… still in Night City.”

“Ah,” she said.

“Lucy, I’m sorry,” I said. “You told me to kill him—I promised I would. But he’s still alive, still able to—“

Lucy frowned at me. “Waitwait—told you to kill him? When did I do that?”

“Huh? What do you mean? It was just yesterday. After I met up with you at Aldo’s. You told me to kill them all.”

Lucy got off from the car and walked up to me. “David, I told you that I was glad to see you.”

“When you pulled me down by my sleeve—“

“I told you I was glad you were alright,” Lucy interrupted. “David, you don’t have to worry. I don’t think that fucker is coming after us anymore. We burned his shitcorp to the ground. He’s finished. And if he comes after us, we’ll be ready. Remember: they took us by surprise, but we still almost finished them off without your help. I really don’t care what happens to the last guy. You shouldn’t either.”

I blinked and looked down at the ground.

[I remember what she said, why is she lying?]

D: Why would she lie?

We were dancing around the subject, the both of us. We both knew that.

Because the answer… was too terrifying to even consider.

I looked Lucy in the eyes and asked her again. “Did you or did you not tell me to kill them all?”

Lucy met my gaze unerringly. “I did not.”

I dragged my hand over my hair. “I believe you.”

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“You were tired,” Lucy said. “Blood was high. Whatever it is you thought you heard—“

“I think I need to take a break or something,” I said.

Lucy nodded slowly. “No shit. Gonk.”

I chuckled incredulously at her reaction.

[This one… this one is on my account. It is becoming increasingly clear, now, that beyond ninety percent to critical levels of imperfect cell replication, I become increasingly unable to hold back the tide of psychosis. David. Heed this.]

D: Loud and fucking clear, Nanny.

I clenched my jaw and nodded to myself.

D: No more skirting the edge.

“Fuck Gonzalez or whoever,” I said. “I’m done. With all of this. Let’s just—“

“D! Lucy!” Maine’s roar came from outside. “Get your asses out! We’re partyin’ with the family!”

Lucy grabbed my wrist and pulled me along with a giggle.

000

“We only arrived a minute behind D’s crew,” Crispin ‘Squama’ Weyland reported to Rogue while they sat inside a booth in the Afterlife.

Currently, it was closed for business. Otherwise, the entire place would have been at capacity, consisting of hundreds of edgerunners all celebrating the score of their lifetime.

Rogue watched the faces of the people she had sent to follow D to Tijuana. Claire Russell, the bartender, had played driver while her huscle, Emmerick Bronson the bouncer, and Squama the bodyguard, had put in the work of harvesting Green Farm’s physical assets as much as they could.

All the while, the last of the quartet, her Netrunner Nix, had dug into the digital assets and retrieved what he could in the wake of D’s own plundering.

Predictably, it wasn’t much, given the scale of their job. A megacorporation’s score could number tens of millions at the lowest. Perhaps even a hundred million or more.

Nix had made off with five million in data and real currency.

Squama continued the report. “A minute behind, and we lost the AVs. We lost the hovertanks. The Militech war-machines, most of ‘em gone. We got ourselves a handful of Hellhounds, one transport vehicle: that is, the Behemoth. We stuffed that one full of flying combat drones and a couple of clankers: three Robot R Mark Two. And sure: weapons. Tech shotguns and precision rifles. Green Farm bought damn-near every part of their arsenal from Militech, for all the good it did ‘em in the end.”

Rogue nodded. “All of that sounds like a cool three million. Especially the robots. Word on the grapevine is that the new police commissioner, Jerry Fawlter, has been buying up contracts for more of those. He’s being waitlisted, though: the newly privatized NCPD ain’t exactly the cream of the crop in terms of corp clients. I’m sure he’ll jump at the chance to buy from us.”

A score of eight million.

Damn.

“Any word from D yet?” Nix asked. “He didn’t follow the rest.”

Squama grunted. “He’s stashing the war machines somewhere close by. It was trouble getting our loot past the NC border, boss. We had to hire some Nomads to help get us through. All of us did, actually.”

Rogue would have to make a point of getting into contact with Panam Palmer then. She could get her people to help give D a hand smuggling his stuff through.

Rogue stepped back mentally from tallying her winnings, and instead tried to look at the bigger picture.

This haul would change the merc community in NC for years to come. Possibly forever. They all now had enough firepower to rival any megacorp’s security division. That was an insane enough notion on its own, that a group of unaffiliated guns for hire could muster such a level of force at will.

But that was only one half of the equation.

The other was D. Wealth and success bought loyalty.

Loyalty created structure. Organization.

While the vast majority of the edgerunners that had participated in the raid would likely have made off with more than enough money to retire and live out boring lives somewhere far away from the city, the reality was a lot more complex.

Or really, quite simple. The people of Night City, especially their hired guns, were… averse to stability. It just wasn’t in their blood.

Edgerunners chased thrill. D could offer that thrill, and also make it worth their while at the same time.

Naturally, there would be an uptick of cyberpsychosis due to how much money these people had, money that they could use to chip in to their heart’s content.

This would really only help D’s case. Those on the edge were far more inclined towards fighting and fighting until they died—or did something rather heinous before dying.

Rogue’s question now was just one thing: which side of the fence should she be on? Unlike the vast majority of solos, or even fixers, Rogue did appreciate stability. She enjoyed being close to the life, but after the car crash that resulted in her having to retire, she had been forced into passivity. Get full chapters from novel·fiɾe·net

And while it would be all too easy to fall into that magical fantasy that D was the answer to her every desire for Night City, as well as her own personal ambition, she could easily recognize just how south things would go if she kept supporting D as he built himself a larger and larger pedestal.

His fall wouldn’t just be an average fall of the standard NC legends. It would have the potential of reshaping the city, and very likely not for the better.

That was the worst case scenario, at least.

But… was there even any stopping the momentum he had already built up? Even if Rogue didn’t get on top of the situation, there was no stopping it now. The edgerunners had been armed to their teeth, and the least stable of them would be itching to use that ordnance.

And it was so much ordnance.

For better or for worse, this city would change.

And Rogue didn’t see herself turning away from that change.

She considered the savings that she had accrued over the years from clever investing and calculated gambles. An annoyingly substantial portion of those savings could be directly attributed to D, now.

She owed a fifth of her money to him. It was an exhausting position to be in, for her ego at least.

But she had enough money now, to repair her old injuries, to start over anew.

She would need a better body for the days to come.

Suddenly, she received a call. From Reyes.

Mu: Not in the mood for an aftergig party, eh?

Mu, like every other fixer worth a damn, had sent his own people to follow D into Mexico. Like her, he had come into a lot of wealth.

Nix’s conservative calculations was that D and his gang had taken roughly eighty percent of all the value available, leaving only twenty percent to the rest, most of which had been divvied up between the Afterlife fixers, while only a fraction of the remaining fraction had gone to the freelancers.

Rogue: Some of us are too sensible to party in the wake of a megacorporation’s fall.

Mu: Ultimately, that was to your disadvantage.

Mu turned on the ‘camera’. His cyberoptics showed a video feed of a mob of edgerunners, drinks in hand, screaming expletives at a tied-up and beaten-up person on the ground. The guy had a blond flat-top haircut and wore a tattered leather coat, and he was bound in metal chains.

“This guy is called Calloway,” Mu said. “And he called the cops. Wanted to talk about D and his crew.”

Goddammit. Rats, already.

Mu raised his pistol and shot Calloway in the head.

“Nova,” Rogue said. The people surrounding Mu erupted into raucous cheers. “And make sure everyone knows what happens if you try to snitch. I’m putting up a bounty. Anyone that tries to talk about D with the badges gets killed. Spread the word, Mu.”

“Always.”

Rogue hung up, and addressed his employees. “An investigation is bound to start after this bloodfest. The main priority, for now, is running interference. And waiting for D to show his face again.”

“And when he does?” Squama asked.

“Then we bring this bitch under control,” Rogue said.

The birth of a new gang. Rogue couldn’t help but smirk at the banality of the idea. Over eight decades, she had lived in this city. And not once had she ever considered becoming a gangster. She supposed there was a season for everything.