V had called to ask me where I was ten minutes after I sent him the information on Judy. I was on my way down from the building I was in. Qiang had already left minutes prior, leaving me to finish our shared bottle of real apple juice, a beverage that I was strongly considering procuring more of.

It was a wonder that rich people even drank expensive liquors when you could just have this instead.

[A lot less chemical volatiles present in this drink as well. Makes my job much easier.] Nanny manifested next to me in the empty elevator. [But speaking of volatile chemicals, I think I have some more suggestions for you on what to try next. I surfed the Net and have flagged several suppliers and producers with the necessary—]

D: Just… give me the weight. I don’t wanna know the specifics.

[Ah. Eight hundred grams.]

That was okay. I could choke down eight hundred grams.

[It includes more osmium.]

“THE FUCK IT DOES!”

Once the elevator opened, Nanny disappeared, and I walked out of the lobby, and into the street where a bunch of luxury cars were parked.

I called V.

David: I’m out. You said you’re here. Where are you?

V: Here. Where are you?

David: I said I’m outside.

V: On the sidewalk?

David: Yes?

V: Take the elevator. Go to the roof.

What?!

David: Wait… you don’t mean…

V: We’re riding a company AV, kid.

I walked quickly back towards the elevator, punched the button for the roof access, and under a minute later, I was on the roof.

And before me were rows of parked Rayfield Excaliburs. V leaned against one of them, hands in his pockets, legs crossed and his tie blowing with the wind. He tilted his chin up at me as I approached him.

“You know how to drive these too?” V asked as he walked up from the car. A moment later, the doors slid upwards, and he motioned for me to enter with a jerk of his head.

I slid right in and he followed a moment later. The partition to the driver’s seat was tinted black. For all I knew, we were driving on autopilot. “Why would I?” I asked him, furrowing my brows.

“Just assumed the Ryuzakis would have taught you, along with teaching you to drive that Caliburn of yours.”

I snorted. No one ever just wanted to give me my flowers for all that I had achieved. The entire Task Force seemed convinced that I was raised by one of the big corps to be their black op. I would have to use that to my advantage somehow.

“How much do these cost anyway?” I asked, looking around inside the spacious… cabin? Well, since it flew, it might as well be using plane terminology.

“There’s the initial cost you gotta worry about.” The machine began to rumble awake. The rumble reduced into a minor but persistent hum of machinery as the AV engines engaged. The car lifted off shortly after. “Then the licenses. Both for operating the vehicle, and for being able to fly in NC airspace in the first place. After that, you gotta worry about maintenance fees. Yearly? I’d say the cost would be a mill and a half just to use it.”

“That’s… cheaper than I expected,” I said.

“First year’s a lot steeper. That cost doesn’t even cover how much it costs to get the AV in the first place. Just how much it costs to use it. This model goes for two and a half mill on the open market. Pricier if you get ‘em from Rayfield—but if you buy it first-hand, you get a year of free maintenance and subsidized license fees.”

“So it’s four mill on the first year,” I said. Over ten thousand eddies a day. That all sounded like quite a hassle. And more than just being a hassle, it sounded conspicuous as all hell.

“Right—enough talk. The data on the BD techie.”

I handed him the shard. He slotted it in and leafed through the data. “Huh. Hmm. Alright. I’ve sent the data to my contacts at Orbital Air. They’ve been given instruction to be cooperative. Obviously, they don’t want to get on the bad side of almost half a dozen megacorps working together as one.”

I nodded. “Alright. But V, where exactly are you taking me?”

V laughed at me. “Oh, kid. Nobody ever taught you not to get into cars with strange men?”

I snorted. “Right, just tell me.”

“Nah, I’m serious. Don’t do that again. Easy way to get set up. Anyway, I’m taking you out to meet some edgerunners.”

I furrowed my brows at him. “Seriously? What for?”

“To hire ‘em, of course.”

Alright. Alright.

Some motherfuckers wanted to bite the hand that fed them.

“Aren’t they supposed to be… on his side?” I asked.

“Nah, these ones are out-of-towners,” V said. His eyes flashed blue for a moment and he hummed. “Orbital gave us the girl’s ID. Alexandra Newcomb.” He hummed quietly for a few minutes as he continued surfing the Net. “Huh. Shit.”

“What’s the problem?” I asked. Really, I was quite impressed with Judy’s prudence. A fake I.D. Pretty smart of her.

“Ran the stills of her face against every database ‘Saka’s got access to and came up empty.”

“Which means…”

V waited only half a beat to answer, looking at me in mild disappointment as he did. “It’s a fake I.D. Try to keep up.”

“Does ‘Saka have access to the city’s census or something?”

V chuckled at me, like I was telling him a joke.

Huh. Alright.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Well, there’s only so many places in this city you can get a fake I.D good enough to fool Orbital Air’s security screening,” V said. “Eventually, something will turn up. As long as we keep digging. Smith’s drafting up a list of places of interest as we speak, and cross-correlating them with places that an XBD-techie would conceivably have better access to than most.”

“Preem,” I said. “Now, about these edgerunners: why me?”

“You impressed the boss,” V said. “Good job.” He was flat-faced as he spoke. “This is your reward. You’re in the shit now. Happy?”

I looked at the floor of the cabin and nodded. Yes, I was very happy, actually. I looked back up at V. “What does your boss want me to do?”

“Chat them up with your roguish charm,” V said, shrugging as if to tell me that he didn’t have any good answers. “We’re dealing with some real assholes. Boss thinks you might be a better choice to dealing with them than your average nine-to-nine zombie in a suit.”

“Like you?” I chuckled.

“Ha hah,” he said flatly. “Don’t forget where I came from, kid. God knows the other corpos never let me.”

“You know what I think?” I asked him.

“Am I supposed to?” he scoffed.

“I think they’re just scared. So they sent us to do the dirty work that their soft asses could never do.”

V grinned and nodded excitedly. “Yeah, yeah they did! Because they’re too scared to go face-to-face with halfway-psychotic mercenaries. Pussies, right?”

I chuckled. “Yeah!”

“And you know what’s real fucking funny, David? They’ll keep sending us. Over and over and over until we fucking die. And then they find some other gutter trash to do that dirty work for them until they break. Rinse, repeat. Funny. Right?”

Damn. And here I thought we were on the same page. “I ain’t scared, you know. Plus, fortune favors the bold. No pain, no gain, and all that.”

“Jesus. You really are just a fuckin’ kid,” he took out a shard from his socket, and threw it at me with clear contempt. I caught it easily and slotted it in. “That’s who we’re meeting, by the way. Do your homework before we arrive. It’s a lot.”

A hundred and sixty pages. Definitely more than just ‘a lot’.

The Tsviets.

000

The ports were the Soviet Union’s only real turf in Night City.

Actually, it was the Consortium

that had turf here—NC’s branch of the Soviet Organitskaya, which had devoured most of eastern Europe’s various mafiyas in the decades after the Fourth Corporate War. But I’d learned in school that there wasn’t much daylight between the Soviet government and its various state-sponsored mafiyas: V’s shard had taught me that the distinction might as well not even exist.

The Port squatted on the coastal edge of southern Heywood, and it was a dangerous shithole even by NC’s standards: it had been a stomping ground for every kind of thug under the sun for years, an unending eyesore, a simmering cauldron of low-grade turf wars, where blood and eurodollars flowed as easily as water. And as far as CoIntel was concerned, the part of the Port we were headed to might as well be the Soviets’ own turf.

The Valentinos had the most boots on the ground in the Port, but they still acted like a labor union as much as a gang—they were devoted Catholics, with lines they wouldn’t cross. The Scavs and the Consortium, which were apparently inextricably linked, had no such limits. Sixth Street, Barghest, and the Tyger Claws all had interests in and around the port as well, while the Nomads played all sides, hauling cargo in and out. Because the Port was the beating heart of Night City’s black market smuggling rings, no matter the gang or corp, practically everyone that was anyone had at least some influence here.

“Listen close, kid,” V said, not taking his eyes off the city below, as we flew high over the Port in one of CoIntel’s AVs. “These people we’re about to meet? They’re the real deal. You get that?”

I nodded, vaguely curious what a foreign edgerunning team would be like. How would they compare to the Afterlife’s regulars, let alone my own crew? Wasn’t like I’d ever been outside of SoCal, excluding Tijuana.

“So you keep your head down,” V growled. “You do what I tell you. You don’t get clever, you don’t get chatty, and you definitely don’t try to impress ‘em. Understand?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I understand.”

V’s eyes flicked to me briefly. “No, kid, you don’t. Don’t ever think that. You’re thinking they’re going to be just like some other punkass NC crew. They’re not. They’ve killed more people than you’ve met in your whole life. Soldiers, mercs, edgerunners, doesn’t matter. To the Tsviets, a slaughter’s just another Tuesday.”

I grimaced. V was really riding my ass today. So annoying. “All right.”

“Now,” V said. “Pop quiz: who are these clowns?”

I recalled the information without any trouble, speaking quickly to assure V that I wasn’t just reading this crap from his shard. “They’re are one of the globe’s top crews. Bounty hunters, hunter-killers, specialized in killing other edgerunners. They also run a top-tier information warfare game. They’ve done black-ops work for Arasaka in various wars across the third world, whenever we needed to outsource our ‘conflict management solutions.’ Happy?”

“Don’t get mouthy,” V said. “I’m trying to keep you alive here.”

Foreign bounty hunters, coming after me. The world was rapidly shrinking. “They’re here for D’s bounty, right?”

“Yep,” V said. Then his expression darkened. “And worse, these guys are the type who like to get their actionable intel straight from the source. Which is where you come in.”

“Right,” I said. “So. what do you want me to do?”

“Only what you’re told. Nothing more. If I say sit, the chair becomes a part of your ass. If I say nod, you nod, your neck does nothing but go up and down. If I tell you to shut your mouth, you weld it shut with titanium. You get me?”

“…Yeah.” Have to play along. For as long as it takes, have to play along.

V smirked, grimly. “Good. Because if you fuck this up, it ain’t gonna be be Jenkins or Abernathy dealing with the fallout. It’ll be us. And I like breathing, not sure about you, Mr. Black Gorge Jumper.”

I chuckled a little, as the Arasaka AV descended lower, flew past rusted cranes and stacks of cargo containers tagged in half a dozen languages. Ahead, I saw a garishly crimson hammer and sickle, thirty feet across and lit up in neon.

The Consortium’s den, had to be.

As far as CoIntel was concerned, the Consortium was the USSR’s shadow branch of North American foreign policy, the long arm of the old Organitskaya that had burrowed deep into California during the 2020s. They had started as smugglers, pipeline men running everything from vodka and foreign cars to smart rifles stripped from Eastern European battlefields. Over decades, their Night City gangoons had hardened into an actual mafiya who could stare down the likes of Maelstrom or megacorp enforcers from Arasaka, Petrochem, even Militech, and still keep their turf.

The USSR was far from here, but its long shadow stretched even into Night City’s sprawl.

The Consortium’s building was a converted freight office, brick walls and layers of steel plating and undergirding. Men with shaved heads and too many tattoos loitered out front, most of them smoking from cheap vapes and carrying Russian-made assault rifles that looked older than Night City itself. Their grunt huscle, presumably.

“Got business inside,” V said, the moment we got out of the AV. No guns were raised yet, but all the attention from the guards in the yard that had been focused on the descending AV was now on him. His voice was calm despite the many eyes on him, but it carried an edge. “Meeting with your upstairs guests.”

“We expect Arasaka dog,” the big guard’s cold gaze flicked to me, before returning to V. “We not expect Arasaka bring лысый умственно отсталый щенок. Is problem.”

My optics translated that for me quickly. I blinked. That was the most patronizing way of someone saying ‘kid’s not on the list’ I’d ever heard in my life.

“He’s with me,” V said simply. “Message came down from on high. The Tsviets are looking to work with whichever megacorp has the most actionable intel on D. I’m here to deliver. Kid’s necessary.”

Another guard laughed harshly from the doorway. “Every hour some suit comes saying it has business with ‘guests.’ This morning we throw an Italian off pier.”

“Biotechnica’s been here?” V asked quickly. Too quickly, even I could tell.

The big guard grinned. “Da. But intel useless, attitude shit. Tsviets order was ‘throw out’.”

And these Bratva guards had taken that command literally, it seemed.

Shit attitude, huh? I wondered what a bunch of scav-lovers considered a shit attitude. Arasaka hadn’t ever prepared me for diplomacy with Russians, but I was guessing that it was the same as it was everywhere else: they just didn’t grovel hard enough.

“Don’t worry,” the guard continued. “Is just swim. You know how, no?” he laughed, pantomiming a dog paddle. “Not my problem. Come. I take you to guests.”

The man proceeded inside. V and I followed.

Inside, the air was thick with the scent of motor oil and ethanol. The vibe was completely, absolutely foreign—the walls were plastered with faded Soviet propaganda: steel-jawed workers holding rifles, heroic cosmonauts raising flags, faded red stars and hammers. A battered portrait of what I was pretty sure was Joseph fucking Stalin hung behind the counter.

The people were considerably less impressive: mostly heavily tatted Bratva muscle. I also noticed a few Scavs hanging around the bar, which reminded me that most of NC’s Scav leadership was ex-Consortium, something I’d noticed during the Scavpocalypse. Russian faces, names and tats coming up, again and again.

From what I’d learned from V’s shard, the Consortium—though most folks on the street preferred to call them the Bratva—had split apart ten or so years back, with those who left forming the core ranks of the scummiest of all of NC’s shit-tier scumfucker gangs. I’d have to remember that. How much daylight was there between the two gangs, anyway?

The Tsviets were up on the second floor. V led the way, and we were ushered in to some kind of reconverted office room turned smoking lounge by a pair of armed Bratva guards.

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V went in first. I stepped in cautiously after him.

“Arasaka!” one of the men, a borged out monster with eight eyes dotting the upper half of his face, and even the sides of his forehead, boomed.

I stared for a moment. What the fuck was with this guy. Not even Maelstrom, any that I’d seen, had so thoroughly borged themselves away from the human form.

He had eight eyes, each of them a different color, set in a sort of eight-pointed array that took up the entire upper half of his skull. He had a head of cables for hair, and was chewing on a cigar. He wore a black ballistic tech-suit, had a shoulder-mounted micromissile launcher array, and was festooned with all manner of weapons. Three buryas, a Satara on his back, and a Senkoh tech SMG on his right side.

He had no human legs. Instead, everything from the waist down was some kind of fucked up linear frame, all segmented black steel and six long, armored, jagged spidery limbs.

He was attached to the thing from the waist upwards like some kind of fucked up centaur, ‘standing’ at least four entire feet higher than me.

Two more extra limbs sprouted out of his upper back, though these ones actually had hands. And he was playing around with a long-handled hammer with both of those and his actual left hand. I recognized the paint on the metal: red and black stripes. Probably the same make as my scav bat. The… man? continued speaking in Russian. The translation came a moment later. “Sit, sit, and butter me up like the dickless parasites that you are.”

His compatriots, eight in all, all wearing similar black tech suits with colored accents, laughed.

One of the guys was a giant in a dark blue tech suit, with enormous robotic arms with a blue beard and piercing yellow tech eyes—definitely not Kiroshis. Some other product entirely. He looked like a near-complete borg, but one that was north of nine entire feet tall. Big fucker probably weighed over a thousand pounds—I could see the floor sagging under his feet.

One of the other guys didn’t have any eyes. Just dark shadows where his eyes would have been, and his entire lower face was metallic. Not shiny chrome, but industrial steel, all edges. It made him look robotic rather than augmented. He held a thoroughly modded black precision tech rifle loosely in his arms. He looked like a sniper, but a sniper without eyes. I didn’t understand what I was looking at with that one.

Another had an extra finger on each hand. It was a subtle difference, but one that I immediately noticed. He fit square into the Uncanny Valley. His hands were just more obvious about it. The rest of his face looked… wrong. It moved wrong. The composition of his facial features were slightly off, and when they were in motion, it gave you the sense that something was wrong. Either him, or your own perception of reality.

What kind of a fucking chip would even do that? Or maybe it wasn’t a chip. Maybe he was cyberpsychotic already, and this was just how it looked when you were that way, and still functioning. Maybe a Netrunner of some kind.

I spotted a few others hanging about, further down the hall, into the complex, but they would rather keep hidden. I Pinged the complex, and saw why.

They were armed, and pointing their guns through the wall.

At us.

I activated the Sandevistan immediately as well as my Cyberdeck, and got to work on breaching this Localnet. I wasn’t having this.

Nanny and I spent subjective minutes picking apart the building’s ICE, breaking through their network until finally—

[We’re in.]

I didn’t hesitate before I sent in a timed Weapon Glitch quickhack into every weapon in range of my Ping, except V’s.

Immediately, I got stopped dead by the ICE that I encountered. Really good ICE. Shit. If I could jack into the localnet with my link cable, I would have had more options, but even Weapon Glitch was too much at this point.

Shit.

So, what? Was I just going to sit here while these assholes had me in the palm of their hands?

Screw that. I could still make myself busy some other way. I couldn’t easily breach the foreign merc’s personal ICE, but the Bratva’s localnet was another story. Into the gangoon’s localnet I went.

While I was already inside, I quietly pilfered every Bratva document that looked halfway important: communication logs, private messages. And they had extensive net communications with the mercs and their fixer, a Mikhail Akulov who was currently staying at the Konpeki Plaza hotel. Interesting.

I rifled through some fun Bratva communiques from the fixer. Apparently, the Tsviets weren’t just here to hunt after me, but to establish a bigger turf presence for the USSR in NC, which would give the managing agency back home in Russia all kinds of advantages with its cred with the Politburo, apparently.

Interestingly, back in the USSR the Tsviets were in competition with an even bigger, even badder Soviet merc group known as the Stalkers, a group of Ukrainian guns for hire that spent most of their time around the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Getting a leg up over them was much of why they’d decided to come to Night City.

Once I finally deactivated the Sandevistan, only two seconds had passed. I hadn’t managed to hack the mercs themselves, but thanks to the incompetence of the local gangoons hosting them, I still had plenty to work with.

“Dickless parasite’s a new one,” V grinned. “But I’ll give you points for the novelty of hearing this shit in a different language. And from the place where all that anti-corp sentiment started, eh? Truly, I’m honored.”

The man laughed. But it was a challenging laugh. The kind that a bully would do before putting you down. “This place… real shithole. It’s a monument to all of humanity’s sins. It’s no different from hell in my eyes.”

Hell was having to look at his rainbow spider face for any longer than five minutes.

“But it’s not like the old country’s any better,” he chuckled. “But at least we have balls. At least we’re not all fairies and pretty boys who replace our dicks with longer plastic ones because we need to prove something. Do you wanna know something, suit-man?” I had the feeling he was going to say something fucking gross. “If you let chrome fuck your girl or boy, who is doing the fucking? Is it you? Or is it your company? What do they call it? What, Mr…” he looked around for help. The guy with the normal-but-fucked-up face helped him out.

“Mr. Study,” he said.

“Studd, Studd,” the big guy with the chromed blue metal jaw rumbled. “Not ‘Study’, that’s a different word in English.”

“Yes, yes,” the boss waved them off. “Tell me, suit-man. Are you Mr. Studd?”

“I’m V,” he said. “I’d say it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Raduga, but then I’d be fucking lying. Now, about the matter at hand.”

Raduga leaned forward and ashed his cigar straight on the table between us. “Business already? I was having fun talking.”

“We want you to come work for Arasaka,” V said.

Raduga clicked his tongue. “No butter. No biscuits. No tea. You think, just because you’re from Arasaka, you can forego all manners?”

It occurred to me now just how fucking risky it was, having this negotiation via translator. There was a reason that being a diplomat still required that one fluently understood the languages of every party present. This sort of set-up could very well lead to negotiations breaking down.

I wondered how I would spin either outcome in my favor. There was a virtue in keeping Raduga and his buddies closer than not. That way, I could predict them, and also manipulate them if need be.

“Ah, my apologies,” V said dryly. “I assumed since you chose to come here of all places, the ass end of the ports with only your scav buddies to keep you company, modern amenities would be lost on you.” Bold.

“Careful, suit-man,” Raduga said. “Last guy only got his suit wet. For you, I might get them to chain you up before they throw you into the sea.”

“You like to hear the intel straight from the horse’s mouth,” V continued, entirely unruffled. “In the interest of serving that principle, we’re here to give you whatever you need on D. All the data the Joint Task Force has already collected and processed, as well as some of our own insights.”

Raduga hunched forward, elbows on his knees, chin resting on his steepled hands. “Yes, your little… superhero problem.” He scoffed. “You Americans never cease to amuse me.”

V reached into his pocket to retrieve a metallic box no bigger than a pencil case, and held it up for everyone to see. “These are BDs that the superhero scrolled himself. The real-feel is so close to real that it might as well be an unedited virtu.” He threw it over, and Raduga caught it without looking before tossing it next to where he sat. “Now, you need any intel, just ask me.”

“Well,” Raduga growled. “I only have one question, suit-man. Just one. And you better… fucking… have an answer. Alright?”

V didn’t flinch.

“This D… is he a Mr. Studd?”

The room was so silent that you could hear a pin drop.

V was taking too long answering. Probably trying to figure out their game.

I already knew it: he was being childish. “Word on the street is D’s all natural,” I said, keeping a straight face. “And that he’s hung like a horse.”

Nanny manifested to stand between Raduga and I. And she looked at me wide-eyed, gaping. [No way this will work.]

Raduga’s eight eyes all focused on me. “…Is that so?” His muscles tensed. His neck veins and forehead veins began to bulge. He was tapping his spider-feet.

What—

“Tell me more.”

Christ.

I really shouldn’t have opened my mouth. I couldn’t tell if he was angry or murderous or even worse. And I didn’t know if I was brave enough to even find out what the last option entailed.

“He’s been with plenty of women,” I went on. “Only women,” I clarified. “All of them can attest to his skill in bed.”

V called me.

V: What. The. FUCK! Are you doing?!

David: No clue.

I hung up a second later.

“Formidable,” Raduga said, frowning and looking down on the floor. “And the streets know this?”

“Only rumors,” I said. “But he doesn’t go for joytoys. He’s an old-school romantic, it seems. Like the Valentinos.”

“Their connection isn’t confirmed yet,” V said quickly.

“I’ll fucking kill that smooth son of a bitch,” Raduga growled.

“Ideally, you should capture him,” V said.

Raduga sat back, and looked at V, now considerably less angry. “Then tell me what’s confirmed,” he said. “But not you—your puppy. The ballsy pretty boy you dragged along. I bet he’s a Mr. Studd,” he looked at me disdainfully. “Right? With a dragon setting. Ribbed and all fucked up. Disgusting,” he spat on the floor.

“You need to stop talking about my dick before I start getting the wrong idea,” I growled.

“And what’s that? What’s the wrong idea? Say it.”

V: Do not, do not fucking say it.

“That you’re a customer,” I said. “And you want what I’m selling.”

Silence once more.

V: You’ve killed us.

Raduga laughed.

His friends followed.

And they kept laughing for what felt like a minute straight.

Until finally, Raduga shook his head. “You’ve got balls, friend. No Mr. Studd can give you balls like that. I’m sorry I doubted you. You know!” he wagged his index finger at me. “I thought you were some freak pervert who had biowork done to look more like a teenager for whatever fucked up reason, but I think I was wrong. You really are just a kid. How old are you? Tell me.”

“His age is none of your concern,” V said.

“A snot-nosed kid with milk on his lips that hasn’t even dried yet,” Raduga went on. “And they put you to work capturing a mass-murdering terrorist, and talking to my kind. I’m beginning to think you’re the one in charge here.

”

“Not that it even matters,” I said. “We’ve wasted our time listening to you ramble like a psycho for the past five minutes, and all we have to show for it is bringing up a terrorist’s bedroom stats. If this is the best that the Tsviets have to offer, I think we’ll take our business elsewhere. To the Stalkers. I hear they don’t fill their clients’ ears about dick-talk nearly as much.”

Raduga’s eyes widened. “You have contacts with the Stalkers?”

“We’re Arasaka,” I said. “We have contacts with everyone.”

His compatriots finally quieted down, and Raduga sat up straight. “That’s not necessary. The Stalkers aren’t nearly as capable as we are, not when it comes to something like this.”

“And what’s that?” I asked, furrowing my brow. “How are you better than the Stalkers for this mission?”

V: Who the fuck are the Stalkers?

I took out a chip from my neck, encoded with some of the data I had gotten from this Localnet, and gave it to V.

Raduga snorted. “I won’t talk badly about those guys. They run a smooth operation. Reliable guns, well trained. But… they don’t fit the parameters of this mission. You want to hire some operatives to kill Rosalind Myers or Saburo Arasaka, you hire the Stalkers,” he said, gesturing contemptibly at the air. “They do quick work against meat targets. Even highly sensitive meat targets. But D is not meat. He’s not even that sensitive. We are tough. We are strong. And we are many. We will hunt D down with every bit of the finesse that the Stalkers can bring to bear, and we’ll hit him a hundred times harder than they possibly could. You don’t need those Angel-wannabes for this shit. There is no call for subtlety.”

Angels? I made a mental note to follow up on that at some point before responding.

“Then let’s not waste any time,” I said. “Arasaka will keep in contact with your band of brothers. We’ll wire you into every bit of relevant chatter from the Task Force, and you’ll come up with a plan of attack and run it past us. Your muscle combines with our intelligence. How does that sound?”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t even sound like a challenge, really. What are we waiting for? We can have D out and dead by tonight. Go to that bar of his, shoot up the owners, and wait around for him to come.”

I looked at V, who shook his head vehemently. “Absolutely not. You hit the Afterlife, and they’ll only pull together more tightly. And you’re wrong, this op does call for subtlety. You hit anyone else but D, and we’ll have a fucking war on our hands. And you don’t get paid, comrade.”

“Fine,” he groaned. “What do we do now? We wait?”

I hummed in thought. “Your… hosts are on the outs with D,” I said. “He did shoot up a bunch of their friends a few days ago. I’m wondering if they might be of help gathering information. Straight from the Afterlife.”

“What do you have in mind?”

I shrugged. “D declared war on the scavs. If the Bratva approached the Afterlife with the intent of making peace, and they’re open to talk, we could play that angle for a while until it’s time to strike. We might get a guarantee of D showing up at some point if we play our cards right.”

Raduga laughed. “And what if they kill whoever we send, little boy? What then?”

“What do they say in Russia? Less mouths to feed. More vodka and potatoes to go around.” I hope he knew how little I gave a shit about some Russian mobsters dying.

Raduga laughed. “I understand why they sent you now. You’re an evil little brat, aren’t you?”

You have no fucking idea.

V stood up and straightened his jacket. “I suppose we’re done here, then.”

I stood up right after.

Raduga and his men did the same. V and Raduga walked up to one another, and shook hands.

I followed after him and did the same.

The man’s grip was tight. Not to an overly painful extent, not yet at least. He was squeezing strongly enough to shatter the bones of an average person, though. I could easily tell from how much his grip stung.

We shook hands, and I didn’t betray an ounce of discomfort at that.

Finally, we were out.

V didn’t speak a word to me until we were out of the complex, and inside the Arasaka AV once more.

Once we were in the air and on our way, he sighed. “Kid.”

“Sorry about the freestyling,” I said. “That could have gone pear-shaped.”

V snorted. “Luckily, you managed to match his wavelength of crazy. Fucking cyberpsycho can’t hold a coherent conversation to save his life.”

Nanny manifested next to V and grinned at me knowingly. [Maybe it’s because we have more in common with him than not?]

Oh god. That… was a rather dubious benefit of having skirted the edge of cyberpsychosis. At least I got something out of it. I was better able to communicate with insane people.

“And that thing about the Stalkers,” V said. “How the fuck did you know about them?”

“I Breached the Localnet,” I said. “Took a while, but when I finally did, I saw some internal memos talking about those guys.”

“You Breached without jacking in?” V asked. “The hell is your deal, kid? Was this Ryuzaki’s training or do they teach all their young to be top Netrunners back in your family’s corp?”

I thought about some bullshit, and shrugged. “Nah, that Localnet was running on a Medved modem. Old model, too. I just happened to have a backdoor key. Got lucky is all.”

“You get lucky a lot,” V said, narrowing his eyes at me.

I shrugged. “You’re right. It’s not luck. It’s hustle. I get lucky because I’m always working, and making the most of every opportunity handed to me.”

“I’m not saying I’m not impressed,” V said, “But you might wanna consider modesty for a change. Which kinda leads me to something else. You’re gonna take it the wrong way, but I’ll ask you not to. Just hear me out.”

I leaned forward, listening intently to what he was about to say. “Go ahead.”

“I’m gonna make you an offer. Take it or leave it. You’ve got two options as I see it. Option number one: I tell Jenkins everything you pulled today. Tell him you swung this deal with the Tsviets. Give him a detailed report of what you can do.”

“Alright?” I said.

“Option number two: I take credit. I tell Jenkins you were useful enough to keep around. You still get to stick around on an internship basis, and do work for me and all that good stuff. And… the CFO will still hear about how you chipped in and all. He might not get to hear that you’re a lot more badass than you actually are, but he won’t be disappointed.”

“Ah,” I said with a slight frown. That was… a rather tempting offer, actually. There was no use attracting too much attention. Working under V kept me flexible enough for my purposes.

“For your information, Jenkins had no qualms about putting you in danger today,” V continued. “He knew there was a risk that you’d get hurt. He couldn’t have cared less. And he never will. He’s not that type of guy. You impress him now, he’ll keep heaping on burden after burden until you start to buckle.” To say nothing about what Masaru would do.

Jin had told it to me best.

“Word to the wise—impressing the old man’s a double-edged sword. His reliance on you could prove burdensome.”

Option two was a good option. V was obviously doing this for me because the credit would help him out as well.

“You’re trying to make sure I don’t get fucked over by someone on the inside,” I said. “I get it. Thanks for the offer. But… what about you? Ain’t you worried about that, too?”

V chuckled, shaking his head. “I’m in the shit, kid. Both legs, knees deep. You still have a chance to keep a healthy distance,” he gave me a curious look. “Where do you wanna go when you graduate. ‘Saka finance? It’s a good place for you. Cushy. Most dirt you’ll ever get to see or dish out is going after deadbeat debtors, and they ain’t exactly the sort of people that CoIntel deal with; or have in their ranks to begin with. Trust me, you don’t want, nor need CoIntel baggage.”

[Funny how you’ve always viewed yourself as uniquely capable of this line of work, and yet you’ve worked so hard to steer yourself the other way. Only to end up here again.]

I appreciated the close brush with this department. Gave me all the information I needed to tell me that my decision to not pursue a career here was for the best after all.

“R&D,” I said. “Not Finance.”

“That’s even better,” V said. “No fights in R&D. Well. Less fights.”

“Option two, V,” I said. “But on one condition: you have me working this as closely as you are. I want to be on the front row of this shit.”

V looked at me incredulously. Then, he just asked me one question. “Why?”

“Cuz I’ve been helpful already,” I said quickly, bullshitting on the spot. “I’ve been contributing. Doing real work. And I wanna keep doing that for as long as possible. Who knows? Maybe I’ll be the one to actually catch D in the end?”

“You hear what happened to Varian Freeman?”

I shook my head. “No, what happened?”

“He saw D yesterday. And D recognized him by name. Probably read it off the registration on his ride, but… kid, I suggest you slow down a little. Take a beat, and ask yourself if this shit is really worth dying for. You’ve got a good set-up already. You’re with the CFO’s family. They ain’t gonna toss you on your ass just cuz you can’t nab this terrorist.”

I nodded. “Alright. Maybe I’ll try to slow down on the field work, but I still wanna be kept in the loop. Just in case I have something else to contribute.”

V snorted. “You know I wouldn’t cut you completely loose just to keep you safe. You’re too useful. Don’t worry, kid. I’ll keep you apprised.”

“Fine. Deal,” I said, giving him my hand. He took it, and we shook on it.