Chapter Fifty Seven
September 16th, 2077
Night City, Northern California
The Chapel, Coast View
V was not accustomed to biting off more than she could handle.
Night City had every psycho in existence hiding in practically every crevice imaginable, but none could hold a candle to the most famous Merc in Night City.
Hitmen, Gangoons, Cyberpsychos, you name the enemy, V had taken them all down the same way.
Either with a bullet or a knife.
But these Voodoo Boys were different.
More…Fanatical than she was used to dealing with.
"RARGHHH!" V ducked beneath a pair of Mantis Blades aimed at her head. The electrified wrist blades dug into the meat of her cover, leaving its owner exposed to violent retribution.
"Eat this fucker!" A serrated blade pierced her assailant's jaw, tearing bone and flesh until finally wrapping itself in his frontal cortex. V didn't hesitate to kick the dead man to the side and dump his corpse with the rest of his deceased comrades.
The Voodoo Boys were supposed to be one of the smaller gangs in Night City.
Both NCPD and Mercenary Netrunners assumed that the Voodoo Boys maintained a little over three hundred members, but as V cut down a teenager who flashed her an innocent smile not two hours earlier, that assumption died out along with a piece of her soul.
The Voodoo Boys drew their strength from the local Haitian community, and she could pick out distinct differences in pitch from her pursuers.
Already V had to contend with small bands of edge runners and gunmen heading her off as she tried to make her escape through the metro tunnels.
In hindsight, telling Brigitte to go fuck herself after finding out the entire situation with the biochip was orchestrated by the Voodoo Boys wasn't the smartest idea, but V had her reasons.
Evelyn. Jackie. The Voodoo Boys orchestrated the entire Konpeki Plaza incident, and Evelyn's death became the main catalyst to V's reckless defiance.
The Voodoo Boys used her up like a goddamn toy, then fried her brain when she became a loose end, and if that wasn't enough, they manipulated her into using Johnny as a platform to smash through the 'Blackwall' that separated rogue AI's from the Net.
So V unceremoniously announced to a room full of Voodoo Boys that they could go fuck themselves, followed shortly after by a one-fingered salute that made Johnny exceptionally proud.
Brigitte's unamused posture was quickly replaced by anguish when V lashed out a brutal roundhouse kick to her abdomen. The typical scream of outrage from the surrounding Voodoo Boys was quickly followed by a traditional exchange of bullets and insults.
V figured she could handle these edge runners herself, and she brought down a dozen or so Voodoo Boys before Placide, and his so-called Vanyans decided to show up.
These guys were a step up from the regular Voodoo Boys V was throwing down with, equipped in state-of-the-art cybernetics that would have put a Tyger Claw Bloodhound to shame. She was forced to break contact or risk either getting diced up by one of the Vanyans or pulverized by Placide's modified Tactician.
V beat a hasty retreat down the decommissioned metro tunnels that led further into Pacifica, probably the last place she should be heading towards. She managed to get a somewhat stable call for assistance before the tunnels jammed up her signal, but she wasn't concerned.
It was only a matter of time before Cyrus got a fix on her location, but until then, it was up to V to make these fuckers work for it.
"Find the Ranyon!" A voice echoed down the narrow corridors. "And bring me her head!"
Lovely.
V rolled to her feet, ignoring the persistent shouting, and quietly squeezed into a decrepit metro train with moss hanging off its sides.
The city council abandoned these tunnels, and the rest of Pacifica when financing for the project dried up. V prayed that she wasn't about to discover a new species of giant rats or accidentally unleash a biological contagion upon Night City.
She needed to get out of these tunnels ASAP before the entire city, hell, the entire world, paid for the Voodoo Boy's arrogance.
She threw open the final set of doors and jumped back onto the rundown tracks. A convoy of pissed-off Voodoo Boys were keeping pace, and she needed a break in the tunnel network to at least split her pursuers.
Fortunately, this metro section separated into two distinct paths running perpendicular to one another. V's first instinct was to take the winding path leading out of Pacifica, but the Voodoo Boys would undoubtedly send most of their men in that direction. She wasn't foolish enough to think that she knew these tunnels better than the edge runners.
"Just need to get to the surface," V murmured under her breath. "See how these gonks like fighting in the dark."
"You've been hanging around, Cyrus, too much," Johnny spoke up as V sprinted past a decommissioned dirt hauler. "And I mean that in the worst way possible."
"I thought you were warming up to him?" The Rocker oy snorted derisively.
"About as much as Water tolerating oil." She let out a huff of irritation but kept her thoughts to herself.
For whatever good that did.
V sprinted another four hundred meters down the tracks before her body started begging for oxygen. Between the intense skirmishes with the Voodoo Boys and the subsequent disengagement, she's covered nearly four kilometers of winding metro tunnels in little more than twelve minutes.
It was an inhuman pace, and even though the commotion that crept up behind V was subsiding, it did little to soothe her nerves. Lengthy bouts of silence were interrupted by booming thuds and hushed voices as her pursuers fought through the same slogs that previously hindered her.
"Shit!" V ducked to her left just as a pair of flashlights shined into the tunnel from a service corridor to her right.
"Tunnel is clear." A voice with a thick Creole accent spoke up. "Why are we hunting this Ranyon?"
"Placide wants her head, and that is enough for me." The Voodoo Boys partner retorted, and V picked up on incoherent shuffling of firearms transferring arms. "I'm going to call him. See where the rest of the Vanyans are located."
"Oke."
V quietly pressed herself against the wall mere inches from the shining torches and activated her Kiroshi optics. Her cyberware examined nearby radio frequencies and managed to decipher the Voodoo Boys communication network.
"Do you have the Mercenary?" V would recognize that thick Creole accent anywhere.
"Negative." The edge runner replied. "We've cleared out the Imperial Mall service tunnels and are heading towards the metro leading to the west wind district."
"Good. Augustin is leading his men up the northern tunnels. Tamara and her Vanyons will link up with you soon. The Mercenary cannot reach the surface lest the 'Dyab' finds us wanting." When Placide said the word 'Dyab,' his tone noticeably dropped, and if V's Creole was up to speed, that term meant Devil.
The Voodoo Boys intended to grab her without Cyrus suspecting their involvement. They were fuckwits who could not comprehend that he was the least of their worries.
Chamber was the one who played the part of an all-seeing eye. Cyrus was nothing more than a blade with no regard for restraint or mercy.
And whether they knew it or not, the Voodoo Boys had now earned the Headhunter's full attention.
"You think your boy got the message?" Johnny's smooth voice echoed in the darkness.
"You think he didn't." She retorted with a raised eyebrow that drew a chortle of amusement from the Rockerboy. Johnny was a lot easier to be around now that the danger of his consciousness overtaking hers was temporarily staved off.
V no longer considered him a threat to her continued existence, and their relationship subsequently improved. This venture into Pacifica also had the unintentional effect of reintroducing Johnny to his former flame Alt, and that was a bag of crazy that she couldn't begin to comprehend.
She had her questions, but now was hardly the time to start answering them, especially with a hundred or more enraged Voodoo Boys on her tail.
V firmly rapped her knuckles against the tunnel wall, calling the interest of the two Voodoo Boys loitering in the service corridor, and like moths to the flame they took the bait.
"Did you hear that?"
"How could I not." V stilled her heartbeat and tightly held her serrated dagger in a reverse grip. She fell to a low crouch as the pair of edge runners exchanged uncertain looks before the closest waved his companion onward. "Come on, let's check it out. Maybe the Ranyon broke her neck while running from Tamara's men."
"Wouldn't be the first time the Vanyon scared someone to death."
The Voodoo Boys crept slowly but steadily towards the metro tunnel, and despite their laid-back mannerisms, they did not ramble into the underground with reckless abandon. V kept an ear out for their subtle footsteps, patiently waiting for them to close the gap before she crashed into them.
V palmed an F-GX sticky grenade and slid her fingers over the adhesive material that was momentarily disabled. The shining lights grew closer in proximity, and she could feel her heart beating in between her ears.
Cyrus wasn't the only hunter in Night City.
"Placide. We are entering the metro tunnel now. Antoine and I are-ARGH!" V's serrated blade slashed into the Voodoo Boy's stomach, cutting through flesh and forcing the edge runner to stumble back into this comrade. The gangoon didn't have time to react to the violent slash at his abdomen because his panicked eyes fell firmly upon the adhesive grenade stuck to his torso.
"Boom." A kick from V forced both Voodoo Boys backward, leaving the two edge runners to try to extract the sticky bomb from the stricken man's stomach.
"Get it off! Get it off! Get it off!" The mutilated edge runner's colleague, Antoine, tried to pull the grenade off his comrade, but it only served to drag him into a sure death.
*BOOM!*
Shrapnel tore into flesh and bone with reckless abandon, the first to suffer was Antoine, his hands turning into mincemeat before the heated fragments crashed into the rest of his body. A swift death superseded any lingering pain as multiple puncture wounds pierced through Antoine's skull.
His companion was completely pulverized. The mutilated Voodoo Boy had the upper half of his body completely torn off, and any remaining flesh was little more than riddled meat.
V waited for the final specks of shrapnel and debris to settle before peering her head into the service corridor. The mutilated corpses went completely ignored, and she stepped over her fresh kills in favor of reaching the service ladder that led to the surface.
"Antoine, do you copy!?" Placide's rough accent broke onto the local comms channel. "Rosan!? Damn it all! Vanyons converge on their location!"
"Shit!" V was halfway to the service ladder when a trio of torches shined down the corridor.
"There she is!" She narrowly ducked a flurry of gunfire and returned accurate fire from her drawn Unity. The distance between V and the Voodoo Boys was small enough to risk a direct assault.
The Merc shit forward like a rocket, her enhanced cybernetics working overtime to push her muscles to their human limits. A single squeeze fired off a round that smacked into the leftmost Voodoo Boys cranium, killing him instantly.
V slammed into the lead gangoon, sending him stumbling back enough to smack into his remaining companion's firearm. She dug her dagger into the leader's collarbone and sighted her Unity upon the disarmed Voodoo Boy.
With two strokes of the trigger, a pair of ballistic rounds exploded through his upper chest and lower jaw, killing the gangoon before he could bring his retrieved Copperhead to bear.
In the same instance, she pulled her dagger from the mounted Voodoo Boys chest and brought its serrated point directly upon his left eye.
"ARGHH!" Blood squirted out of his ravaged retina, and all manner of composure was snuffed out as the Voodoo Boy fought to push the Merc off his sternum. V added her bodyweight upon her latest victim, and with a forceful exert, the dagger slashed through his eye socket and cut into the lower parts of his brain.
The Merc didn't wait for the sudden loss of resistance, extracting her serrated blade and wrapping her hand around the service ladder that lured her forward.
*BANG!*
"Shit!" A trio of ballistic rounds cracked around V, and instinct alone kept her from freezing up. The Merc rolled away from the exposed service ladder and took cover behind a set of walls keeping her obscured from the constant barrage of gunfire.
"Placide, this is Tamara." V holstered her dagger in favor of drawing another Unity. She needed the extra firepower to keep the Vanyon's from pushing down the corridor. "We've located the Mercenary! She's in the abandoned metro tunnels leading to West Wind. We have her cornered at a service tunnel leading to the surface."
"Fuck you!" The Merc leaned forward, pointing both pistols downrange and reigning a flurry of concentrated fire upon her pursuers. Her eyes could only perceive the red-eyed masks belonging to the Vanyon's through the muzzle flashes.
"Augustin is rallying to your position. Keep her in place!" V scowled at the exposed service ladder, it practically beckoned her to the safety of the surface, but the significant risk of death kept her anchored in place.
It wasn't the only option at her disposal. The service corridor continued into an adjacent metro tunnel, but she did not know if it ended with salvation or damnation.
"Sudden death or delayed ruin…." V murmured to herself as bullets chipped at her cover. Her survival depended upon buying enough time to give Cyrus a chance to pull her out of the fire. "…Mama didn't raise a stupid Nomad."
The Merc exchanged another volley of gunfire with her pursuers before retreating down the corridor with all haste. Her running steps kicked up water and dirt before hot lead joined in her wake.
"After her!"
The Vanyans chased their prey with increased tenacity, exchanging shorts bursts of gunfire before continuing the pursuit.
They would have their prize, no matter what the cost.
It was their final, fatal miscalculation.
Night City, Northern California
Batty's Hotel, Coast View
A dozen-plus kilometers away, Brigitte anxiously waited within her headquarters at Batty's Hotel. Placide assured the Voodoo Boy Leader that the relic would be acquired, but she couldn't shake the sudden wave of dread crawling up her spine.
Demons are often seen as inherently evil in every culture of humanity, and by pursuing the Mercenary, Brigitte could feel a malevolent gazing upon the whole of Pacifica. She could not escape the notion that her efforts were bringing on the apocalypse, and she knew exactly who was spearheading that armageddon.
Maman Brigitte's anxiety came to a sudden halt when her connection to Pacifica's telecommunications experienced a brute force intrusion cutting through their cyber defense. She was hooked into a Netrunner station along with several of her subordinates to locate V via the district's CCTV system. However, something else was present inside the system.
"Maman?" One of her Netrunner Specialists, Esther, spoke in an even tone that betrayed her inner turmoil. "Do you feel that?"
"Yes." Those feelings of dread turned into a pulsing beat of pure terror as a wave of darkness encompassed Maman's entire network. Something was tearing down their entire network with such ease that it threw the Netrunners into sheer panic as they desperately tried to repair the damage.
Brigitte moved to assist her Netrunners when a series of letters began to scrawl themselves into the sky of their digital world.
No words could properly divulge the Haitian native's fear as she read their intruder's statement.
YOU HAVE MADE A CRITICAL MISTAKE. MAY YOUR GODS HAVE MERCY ON YOUR SOULS.
*BOOM!* A colossal explosion rocked the building, and the main power generators feeding electricity into Pacifica came to a sudden halt. Darkness fell, and only the low-hanging moon shined a lowlight upon the entire district.
Brigitte and her Netrunners were forcibly extracted from their stations in time to see the backup generators kick in. One of her technicians monitored their mainline communication system when she disconnected her interface plug and stormed over.
"Baptiste, get me Placide. I need to know what's going on." The Comms technician scrambled to establish a connection to her second in command, but another voice broke onto the communication channels before he could finish.
"Maman…..the….is gone." Brigitte recognized the voice as one of her Chief Lieutenants guarding the Chapel.
"Clean up that transmission." Baptiste struggled to understand the jumbled communication, but he eventually improved its signal. "Pierre, what's going on out there?"
"The Chapel…" A fitting cough interrupted the Voodoo Boys' words. "… It's gone!"
Brigitte didn't offer a verbal response. Her legs immediately began pushing her towards the observation windows overlooking her home, and the plume of smoke rising in the distance was obscured by the gathering crowd of Voodoo Boys staring at the smoldering ruins below.
The Pacifica Serenity Bible Church, a place of worship that bound the Haitian community together, became the first casualty of Cypher's campaign of retribution.
And it wouldn't be the last.
Night City, Northern California
The Chapel, Coast View
The Voodoo Boys.
An enigmatic gang that started out as a terrorist organization engulfed by ceremonial magic, fueling their bizarre tastes in non-synthetic narcotics. Over the last few decades, their power and organization underwent drastic changes in every known aspect of their ruling.
Refugees from the devastated lands of Haiti and the Dominican Republic poured into Night City, seeking shelter within its towering limits. The Voodoo Boys were swiftly reorganized into guardians of the Haitian community while also expanding their criminal enterprise.
The former terrorist group began delving into the world of netrunning, and their previous obsessions became superseded by a pure desire to unravel the secrets of the Blackwall.
Chamber educated Cyrus on the massive firewall protecting cyberspace from the machinations of rogue AI. The Blackwall wouldn't have been necessary were it not for Rache Bartmoss unleashing a Datakrash virus and infecting a majority of cyberspace in the process.
The Voodoo Boys were previously on Cyrus' list of prospective insurgents to bring down, but their isolationist policies ranked them low on his threat index. That predetermined status was immediately elevated when they decided to hunt V.
In a world filled to the brim with world-ending decisions, the Voodoo Boys' damnation would come about because they went after the wrong woman.
"Numbers?" Cyrus inquired as he stepped into the smoking remains of the Voodoo Boys Chapel.
"These guys prefer quality over quantity," Chamber informed. "Their gang at its peak only reached about eight hundred souls, but nowadays their official member count sits around four hundred. I'm still deciphering whether or not they have a higher concentration of Bloodhounds compared to the other gangs, but I'll have a detailed report soon."
"Good." The sounds of anxious civilians scrambling for safety were still present but were soon replaced by the groans of the dead or dying. Several Voodoo Boys guarding the Chapel were thrown from their feet by the concussive blast and buried under the rubble. Almost the entire contingent of guards were completely incapacitated, and more than a few were spotting severed limbs courtesy of the explosion of the collapsing building.
Blood-soaked debris crunched beneath his boots, and the crimson liquid pooled along the soles of his feet. The anguished groans went ignored as Cyrus spied a staircase descending into the underground section of the Chapel.
V's last transmission came from beneath the Chapels foundation, and he prayed for the sake of every Voodoo Boy alive they hadn't made a grievous mistake.
Nothing would keep Cyrus from finding V.
Nothing.
"Someone help me!" Cyrus found a wounded Voodoo Boy trapped underneath a chunk of rubble but otherwise, he was completely unspoiled. His calls for assistance were quickly replaced by shrieks of terror when the Spartan leaned his foot against the debris, keeping him in place.
"Where's the Merc?" The Spartan leaned a portion of his eight upon the rubble, eliciting a cry of anguish as concrete ground against flesh. "Quickly now, I'm getting bored."
"We lost her in the tunnel." The Voodoo Boy bit out. "She killed ten of our men before scampering off like the coward she i-ARGHH!"
Cyrus pressed his boot further into the rubble, unwilling to let the gangoon finish his sentence. "How long ago was this?"
"About an hour ago." The pressure subsided, and the Voodoo Boy opened his eyes to find his tormentor striding into the lower levels. "You won't find her before Placide does!"
Cyrus did not respond verbally to the captive gangoon, drawing several proximity charges from his waist and planting them along his path. He didn't want any Voodoo Boys coming up on his six while exploring the underground sections of their chape. Chamber possessed outdated schematics from both the Night City servers and the Voodoo Boy telecommunications network, so exploring these tunnels would be a lengthy endeavor.
Cyrus had the patience, and he trusted V to delay these gangoons long enough for him to sniff out her trail. The Spartan delved into the winding path of narrow corridors and torn-down walls before spotting a well-maintained maglev train parked at an underground transportation hub.
"This abandoned metro station has seen quite the upgrade." Chamber surmised as Cyrus explored the Voodoo Boys hideout that would have his Vulture and Micro screaming with jealously. He had half a mind to call in his Bloodhounds to nick some of this geat. "I think the Voodoo Boys were using this place as a foundation to an excursion into the Net, but I'm not entirely sure why."
"Look into that mystery later." Cyrus eyed the motion tracker and half a dozen red dots converging on his position. "We have company."
The darkened corridors were blanketed in heavy silence, and the seven-foot-tall Spartan disappeared from sight in the blink of an eye. The Vanyans were eagerly stalking the Headhunter and were mere moments from engaging him from all directions when he suddenly fell from view.
"Where is he?" The Vanyan Pack leader, Jean called out while swinging his Ajax at the slightest hint of movement.
"I don't know!" One by one, his subordinates affirmed his own worries, and Jean silently cursed this misfortune under his breath. A Vanyan named Gonzalo suddenly seized up ramrod straight and clawed at his own throat in terror.
"Gonzalo, what the fuck are you-!" Jean's voice caught as his cybernetic eyes traced shimmering humanoid form standing mere feet from his choking companion. "There he's there!"
Cyrus threw the struggling Vanyan to the side, sending him crashing into a Netrunner station and sending both man and machine tumbling in on themselves. Jean acted first, firing off several bursts from his Ajax while boosting himself away from the Spartan.
The Vanyan activated his cyberdeck and launched a series of daemons meant to cripple Cyrus's cybernetic, but Chamber headed off these worms before they could even attempt to execute their directives.
Cyrus kicked off the ground and demagnetized the Copperhead from his back maglocks. A single squeeze of the trigger sent one Vanyan scrambling for cover but not before a ballistic round pierced his kneecap. "Fuck I'm hit!"
The wounding of one of their own snapped the Vanyans from their disorganized stupor, advancing on the Spartan as he rolled off the concrete floor. A brief exchange of gunfire resulted in a Vanyan getting the top of the skull blown clean off and another suffering a grievous wound to the lower ribs.
Jean and the rest of the Vanyans barely managed to squeeze off several retaliatory rounds, but they impacted harmlessly against Cyrus's shields. This didn't deter the Spartan from staying out in the open, and with mere moments he had melted back into the shadows and well out of sight of the Voodoo Boy elites.
"Damn it!" Jean shook the frustrations from his mind and recalled his surviving Vanyans to his side. "Circle up!"
Seven of his surviving comrades formed a protective circle with their backs to one another. Their hearts thumped against their eardrums, and the Vanyans tried their damndest to calm their beating nerves.
Placide had warned them of the Headhunter's capabilities, and his legend only seemed to grow with each victory against Night City's cabal of syndicates and Megacorporations. The Vanyans refused to be another tale to his already storied legend, but fate and circumstance would ensure they were nothing more than a footnote in history.
"Can you see him!" One of the Vanyans called out, but Jean couldn't pick out the subtle shimmer.
"No!" The Pack leader answered. "Keep looking!"
The Vanyan failed to realize that a Headhunter was capable of hiding in plain sight, and in this case, Jean also neglected to follow the one rule of thumb in combat.
Always check your six.
A Kukri was quietly unsheathed from its holster, and if Jean had paid more attention to his surroundings, then maybe he could have prevented the blade from being sunk into the back of his neck.
But alas, his final thoughts would be consumed by the images of Cypher butchering his men until nothing but fresh corpses remained.
The Spartan struck first blood, and the Voodoo Boys were forced to contend with the one person in the entirety of Night City that cared not for their vicious reputation.
For his was far more terrifying.
All my current fics were in need of an update and this was the perfect time to do it because I hate April 1st for this site. Too many fics do meme chapters and it is annoying as hell but take heed for I will never fall to those hijinks.
This isn't a complete return because I am in the final stages of my projects and I am so close to finishing off all the hard shit for school.
So keep an eye out for more chapters in the next two weeks.