A/N - Thanks for reading! The first couple of chapters are fairly familiar walkthroughs of the early missions with a personal touch. This story is meant to combine several small, unexplained plots from the game into something bigger and (most importantly) complete. While I hate possibly boring someone with dialogue and details you might already know, the overall story is incomplete without them. Chapter 3 will feature additional content not seen in the missions and expands further from there, so I hope you'll be willing to stick with the story and enjoy the coming chapters!

Chapter 2

I took a breath and really hoped that Johnny was wrong about the Peralezes intentions. "So," I began, trying to appear casual as I looked at them, "whaddaya got for me?"

Jefferson quietly looked up to Elizabeth, who then turned to Carter in the driver's seat.

"Carter, let's go," she instructed quickly, then looked back at Jefferson.

He smiled, then gestured to her. "Elizabeth?"

She then looked to me and sat comfortably as the car lurched forward. "Well, as you're probably aware, Mayor Lucius Rhyne recently passed."

Jefferson added, "We want to know how, why, and whatever else is pertinent."

I quietly breathed out a sigh of relief. They wanted me for an actual job, and not for something grotesque or stupid.

"It was all over the news," I replied.

"Pfft, of course it was," she scoffed. "Media feasted on it for weeks. Pieces like that are their lifeblood.

I shrugged. "Right. Think they missed somethin'?"

"We have reason to believe they did, yes," she nodded.

"Far as I remember, someone tried to zero Rhyne a few days before his death," I recalled.

She frowned dubiously. "The NCPD sees no link. They're saying it was a random cyberpsycho attack."

"And claimin' the mayor died of natural causes…" I hummed.

She nodded. "Causes unrelated to the attack. It's in the official reports. Rhyne died at home due to a 'cardioimplant malfunction.'"

I could see where their train of thought was headed. "These suspicions of yours… wouldn't have anything to do with the upcoming election, would they?"

"'Course they would," he replied. "If Lucius Rhyne was murdered, we want to know… NEED to know."

I quickly glanced out Jefferson's window to keep track of where we were, then asked, "What makes you think the cops got it wrong? Got any evidence?"

She continued, "Shortly before Rhyne passed, he made cuts in the NCPD budget. Perhaps he got on someone's bad side that way."

"In any case, we have the cyberpsycho attack on a BD," he revealed.

"Our chief of security scanned it but didn't find anything out of the ordinary, so to speak," she added. "We need a braindance editor, a real one. It's raw footage."

I wondered why they would trust a merc over their own chief of security, but I kept listening as he explained further.

"The braindance – it has to be back where it belongs today, or a lot of people will be in a lot of trouble. If you agree to help, you can see it right now."

I raised an eyebrow. "Where'd you get the scroll?"

"Rhyne was making a public appearance," he clarified. "BD scrolling's standard procedure for events like that. Following the attack, the NCPD impounded the footage as evidence."

"We had to pull many strings to extract it," she assured me.

I quickly looked around the car again as we stopped at a red light, knowing all-too-well that I was toeing a thin legal line by interacting with NCPD evidence. I guess that's why they needed an edgerunner like me. Still, the scenario didn't make sense if it was just a setup. Between that and their concerned looks, I decided to at least look at the BD. "Alright. See what I can do."

He smiled as he reached into his pocket for the shard containing the BD. "Excellent. We'd be happy with any find that would clarify things, alleviate lingering doubts."

I unfolded my BD wreath and slotted the shard, then started up the BD as the car started moving again. I was greeted with the sight of a hefty guy in a suit glaring back at me, or I guess, whomever was scrolling this thing. I was surprised to see Johnny walking around curiously in the braindance.

"Well, whadda we got here?" he asked before taking a drag of a cigarette.

I was taken aback. "Question is, what're you doin' here?"

"My brain too, isn't it?" he countered before disappearing.

He had a fair point. I continued my first playthrough of the braindance, starting with the guy scrolling being scolded and reminded to focus on the mayor. The room was the press conference room at the NCPD building that I had seen a few times on the news. A quick glance to the left showed Mayor Rhyne and Deputy Mayor Holt standing and talking as Rhyne went over his speech. The man scrolling the BD suddenly turned away and headed to the rear of the room. Through the doorway, I could then see a security checkpoint for one of the building entrances, which had a state-of-the-art weapons scanner. The scroller then looked back into the press room in time to see Holt and a guard heading out of the room through one of the front exits.

When the view turned back to security, a man was walking quickly and intently through the checkpoint. He was wearing a thick brown overcoat, tight jeans, a red tank top, and brown boots. The checkpoint sounded an alarm as he went through, though he only seemed mildly annoyed when the security guard at the checkpoint stopped him. Without a word, the man coming through waved a small badge over the scanner's sensor, which silenced the alarm. The man then continued towards the scroller.

"Slow your roll," the scroller demanded, extending his hand out into my view and against the other man's chest.

"River Ward, NCPD," he replied and held up a small, round detective's badge.

The scroller looked back to one of the guards. "Police. Let 'im in?" he asked over his comms.

"Let 'im wait," the guard commanded.

"It's important," Ward urged. "Gotta speak to the mayor's chief of security."

"Preem. Do it after the conference," the scroller replied.

Ward ducked over into the press room towards Rhyne, but neither he nor the scroller saw someone else walk through the checkpoint without the alarm going off. The scroller looked into the room to go after Ward, but then a blade sliced through his torso from behind. The scroller collapsed to the floor as someone came out like a blur from behind him brandishing a shining pair of Mantis Blades – implanted, long, mechanically-powered swords that retracted to be carried in a person's forearms. The upgrade required a complete replacement of the wearer's arms, but they were formidable weapons. As the figure darted into the press room across the side wall, a deep gunshot rang out as blood burst in a cloud from the figure's shoulder. Another two gunshots knocked the figure against the wall and down into a mangled mess on the floor, while Ward crossed the room to keep the figure in the crosshairs of his smoking Overture revolver. When the figure stopped moving, Ward then approached the scroller, though it looked like it was too late.

Once I reached the end of the recording, I rewound to the beginning and switched over to editing mode. I started by confirming the identities of Mayor Rhyne and Deputy Mayor Holt, then tried listening in on their conversation.

"Second conference in three days," Holt noted. "No idea what this blitz is for."

"That's why I'm mayor and you're not," Rhyne mocked dominantly. "Now's when we need the visibility."

"You're spreading yourself too thin," Holt continued.

Rhyne paced and waved him off. "I'll rest tonight. My room at the Red Queen's Race is ready?"

Holt nodded. "Yes, of course."

"Good. Now go," Rhyne ordered. "Gotta practice."

I was curious about the Red Queen's Race and asked Johnny about it, but all he gave were sarcastic quips. I then checked the timestamps of Rhyne as he left, which was only seconds before the attack. That raised a red flag for me, but Johnny chalked it up as the psycho seizing his chance. I then went back and checked the security terminal, which crashed just before Ward arrived. I kept my eyes on the checkpoint as the intruder passed through, and then my Kiroshi's ID-ed him as Péter Horváth. My eyes widened as his cyberware showed up as top-of-the-line and quite recently installed.

"Coulda chromed half the city with what he was packin'," I mumbled to myself and Johnny.

His setup truly put mine to shame. He had legendary-quality Mantis Blades, combat upgrades, and titanium legs with Reinforced Tendons that almost made my mouth water. Reinforced Tendons were expensive as hell, and I had been saving to afford them. They would jet out compressed air to make the user get a second jump from mid-air. I would've been able to leap across entire streets without breaking stride if I had those. At best, I had smart-link implants, my Kiroshi optics, my Synaptic Accelerator, and my favorite implant in the world – my Sandevistan implant. It wasn't the best in town, but it allowed me to think and move fast enough to dodge bullets and cut through a small group of enemies in a snap. If this guy had one and knew how to use it with his implants, this BD would actually have been of the mayor's murder and not of one of his grunts.

I quickly switched over to the BD's audio editing to listen for anything coming from Horváth, and I got a recording of some humming. He was humming some kind of tune, or at least a couple of notes back and forth, but he sounded surprisingly intense about it. The humming abruptly stopped as Horváth shot his Mantis Blades out from his arms and stabbed through the scroller, then made a run for Rhyne.

I switched back to visual editing and watched to the end again. Ward's arrival was interestingly timed. He seemed to know something was about to happen. He also seemed quick and accurate with his gun, which was good in this case. His left eye had been swapped out for an optical implant, and his right hand was completely chrome. I wondered if his implants had something to do with his accuracy.

I had enough to report back to the Peralezes, so I dropped out of the braindance and collected myself. I sat alone in their parked car, and I looked out my window to see both Peralezes standing outside of a parked silver-and-red luxury AV about 50 meters from me. I had no idea how long we'd been parked or where we were, so I checked my GPS and it looked like we were still in Heywood near the water treatment facility. Jefferson nodded to me as I got out of the car and slipped off the BD wreath.

"So, any thoughts?" he asked as he took a puff from a cigarette. "Did you, uh, see anything suspicious, anything at all? Or are we paranoid?"

I nodded and handed him the BD shard. "Whole thing stinks worse than Coronodo Bay in July," I replied casually.

He hummed and took another drag. "Huh… So, suspicions confirmed. Any questions at this point?"

I had quite a few. "Red Queen's Race – what is it?" I began.

"Got me," he shrugged. "Never heard it, sorry."

"Tell me about Holt," I continued.

He nodded. "Rhyne's deputy. And his bulldog, so to speak. Running in Rhyne's place now."

"The conference, why was it held?"

"For no particular reason," he chuckled. "Rhyne liked the sound of his voice and seeing himself on TV… Heh… Yeah, that sort of thing. As far as I recall, the drop in Night City's violent crime rate was the excuse for this one. Rhyne came out to tout it."

I blinked and felt like I had just been slapped in the face. The number of guns still in my trunk that I had picked up from my subcontracts failed to resemble any kind of drop in crime rates. "Sorry – drop?" I asked.

He smirked agreeingly at my disbelief. "Rhyne reclassified Pacifica as an 'independent district.' Stats for that part of town stopped counting."

I rolled my eyes. "Huh. Clever. The cop who saved Rhyne, Ward – know anything about 'im?"

"Detective River Ward," he corrected. "Good guy. We worked a few cases together. You wanna talk to 'im, I'll put you in touch."

I nodded. "Mayor's huscle – they NCPD?"

"No," he replied spitefully. "All hand-picked by Holt and on a corp's payroll. But there are ex-cops among them."

I checked my mental list of notes from the BD and remembered the security checkpoint. "Anyone else besides Rhyne's detail have access to the terminal?"

He thought about it for a moment. "Hmm… NCPD. That's it."

I nodded again. "Sheesh. Ward had great timing. He either has crazy good luck or had a source. He got good info. I'm gonna need some of each."

"Well said," Elizabeth agreed.

Jefferson's eyes glowed blue as he transferred Ward's contact details to me. "Sending you his detes. If you need anything else, let us know. We'll help." He then dropped his cigarette and stamped it out with his foot, then joined Elizabeth as they slipped into the AV.

The AV lifted off, and I felt the wind of the engines as they flew off. Part of me wondered if I'd ever have one, but I remembered that the three or four months I had left would never get me inside one of those. I called up first car, the Hella I360, and had it start driving itself to me, then I flipped through my contacts and called River Ward.

After a couple of rings, the voice and visual came up. He looked exactly as he did in the BD, and he crossed his arms as he studied me through the holo. "This is Ward. Who'm I talkin' to?" he asked.

Something about his voice caught me off guard, but I didn't need to be distracted. I kept focused on the task at hand. "Name's V. Lookin' into the death of one Lucius Rhyne."

He looked skeptically at me. "Wonder why… You're not a cop."

I didn't want to sound rude, but I didn't want to waste time. "Listen, I know you tried to warn Rhyne about the cyberpsycho."

He continued staring at me, then nodded curiously. "What else do you know?"

I knew better than to just hand out information. He was a detective, and he'd try to the milk detes from me so he could do the work himself. I decided to give him a little streetkid attitude back. "Eh, that you'd best meet with me."

He seemed amused. "Alright. I'm headed to Chubby Buffalo's."

I nodded. "I'll be there stat."

My I360 arrived just outside the parking lot. It was the basic black sedan I bought with Jackie, and it was a tough car that could take a few shots. It wasn't much to look at and it certainly was no Caliburn, but it had my stash of guns that I kept for my missions as well as the ones I collected from completed gigs. I had a feeling that wherever I was about to go with this cop, I'd need more than just the small pistol I brought with me to meet the Peralezes. I dropped my coat into the trunk and strapped on my shoulder straps designed by the Valentinos. Jackie had them specially made for me with a slot to hold my katana, since I often used a blade for stealth missions. Most Valentinos strictly stuck to guns or baseball bats. The straps also had interchangeable holsters on each side, one of which I filled with my trusty "Dying Night," a specialized Lexington automatic pistol that I outfitted with a scope for quick headshots. I didn't bother with anything heavier, yet.

Chubby Buffalo's was a small diner on the other side of Heywood overlooking the river. As it was 9:30 AM, my stomach had finally calmed down enough that I was hungry again, and I figured that Ward was going out for breakfast before starting his rounds. But I wasn't really the sit-down meal type while on the job, so I scarfed down a burrito from a vending machine on the drive over there. I spotted a few cars in the lot and some patrons hanging out outside, but none of them appeared to be him, so I parked and walked inside. It had the typical diner layout with a long, 1950's retro-style bar with stools, a checkered floor, red booths, and stainless-steel tables. The paint was a little worn-down as usual for the city, and there were some TVs showing news and sports. Out of about a dozen patrons inside, I scanned around and landed on Detective River Ward sitting with another man who ID-ed as Detective Harold Han. It looked like they were just finishing their breakfast when I approached the table.

Han flashed me a dismissive look. "Someone here to see you, looks like," he mumbled to Ward.

"Hm," Ward hummed nonchalantly before looking up. "Wonder what about…"

We locked eyes for a moment, and I expected more condescension from him like from his partner, but he seemed oddly untroubled for a police officer. He seemed curious and open, not jaded like most of the cops I'd dealt with, which made me worry that he was either a rookie detective or on some good drugs.

"You River Ward?" I asked, despite having already scanned him.

"In the flesh," he nodded. "V, right? My partner, Detective Han," he gestured over to the other man.

"OK. Thanks for agreeing to meet," replied, beginning to feel uncomfortable with the two of them just staring at me.

Han shook his head and looked at Ward. "You really intend to work with a merc?" he asked with unveiled disdain in his voice.

Ward shrugged. "Don't know what I intend just yet. For now, gonna see if I hear anything new about Rhyne's death." He gave me an expectant look like I had better start talking, but Han scoffed.

"You back on that? Boss already told you to drop it. Don't make him say it again. You know he hates to say things twice," he chided exhaustedly, clearly this not being the first time they had this conversation. "And if you couldn't give a rat's fat ass about any of that, heed my advice, as your friend – Just let the case go."

Ward shrugged him off again. "See me doin' anything? Just sittin' here, sippin' coffee, listenin' to gossip."

Han began to slide out of the booth and stand. "Fine. Do what you want. I'm not about to be a part of this," he grunted frustratedly. "Gotta go get my little girl anyway. And you two at least find a quieter corner. Wouldn't want to be overheard."

He shot me a dirty glance as he briskly walked away. I was now even more curious about this impetuous-seeming cop still sitting in the booth. He gestured to the now empty seat.

"OK, talk."

As I sat down into the booth, I couldn't help but chuckle. "I see Detective Han's not a fan of edgerunners."

He gave a knowing smirk. "Don't take it personally. Detective Han's not a fan of anybody, 'cept his daughter."

I nodded understandingly, but then caught myself enjoying the near-smile on his face. I felt my mouth go a little dry as I studied Ward for a moment. He was as ruggedly handsome as I thought he was in the BD, slightly better in-person, though I tried to keep focused on the fact that I only needed him for my mission. I noticed that he had a single earring hanging from his right ear, and a necklace with three feathers and a single stone in the center. I liked the look of them, but they also told me that this guy didn't do much close-quarter combat as both of those were easy to grab to cause pain or gain control. I was no martial arts master, but Vik and Jackie taught me how to fight both clean and dirty.

"You wanted to talk?" Ward prodded.

I leaned forward. "Before the attack, you wanted to talk to Rhyne's huscle, get some info to them. What was it?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Let me ask you a question first. Why do you got your nose in this? Who hired you?"

I suppressed my smart-ass instinct to say, 'That was two questions,' and instead decided that him meeting me merited some truth. "Liz Peralez hired me. And her husband, Jefferson."

"The presumed future mayor?" he huffed as he sat back and shook his head. "Heh, guess I could've seen that comin'…" He looked around suspiciously at the diner's other patrons, then back to me with a more serious look. "Know what? Han was right. Acoustics are a little too good in here. Got my car outside."

I agreed and nodded. "OK, sure."

We both stood and quietly exited the diner, and I followed him out to his dark red Thorton truck as a bit of rain started drizzling down. The truck was in decent shape, though not as luxurious as to smell like he was on corporate payroll, which I took as a good sign. As we sat next to each other in the front seats, I thought for a moment that he was checking me out, but then his focused look returned, and he put the truck into gear.

"Some of the boys from the precinct saw Horváth around Arroyo shooting up dumpsters, hollering how he's got a meet with the mayor," he began. "Brought 'im in. They took him downtown, but then he got 'lost' before they could get his statement."

I tried not to sound too doubtful. "So, you saw him as a potential threat, decided to warn the mayor? Just like that, 'cause… ya got a good heart?"

He narrowed his eyes at me as he drove. "You make it sound like that's somethin' to be ashamed of."

I gave a slightly surprised smile. "Ashamed – nah. Just not somethin' you see every day. You said he 'got lost.' How's that happen? What's it mean?"

"It means someone didn't want him counting roaches in a cell that day," he intimated. "And before you ask me, no… I got no idea who. My turn. Why's Peralez looking at this now? Why does he want it done unofficial, on the hush-hush?"

I scoffed. "Why else? As I see it, Peralez is out to smear Holt. Politics 101."

"So, he thinks Holt's involved?"

"Don't you?" I asked. "He left literally seconds before the attack. Even if he's not, a murdered mayor isn't great optics for his deputy. My turn again. Red Queen's Race – heard anything about it? Know what it is?"

"Maybe I have, maybe I do," he vaguely replied. "It got anything to do with Rhyne?"

"The guy was headed there the day he died," I explained. I couldn't help but notice that he seemed a bit irritated that I knew as much as I did.

"All I've heard, it's some fancy-ass club. No idea where to even look for it. My CI might know, so I'll reach out. In the meantime, we'll go talk to the woman Horváth worked for," he suggested.

I raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Sorry – 'We?'"

He shook his head. "Can't shake this case. Something's up. Just look at how quickly it was closed. This way, you can get your job done while I find evidence that gets my chief to re-open the case. Win-win." He pressed his foot harder on the gas, not giving me an opportunity to decline.

Johnny's voice suddenly startled me. "Go with him, V."

My eyes widened as his image appeared in the back seat. "Are you fuckin' with me? Johnny Silverhand suggesting that I cooperate with the NCPD?"

He pulled down his sunglasses to glare at me and flicked out his cigarette. "Yes. The sooner you're done with this case, the faster you can cut ties with the Peralezes. Politicians are worse to have on you than cops. He may be naïve, but he's got intel you need and knows how to keep it to himself, so stay on him."

I felt around my head to make sure I wasn't still wearing my BD wreath. A Night City where both a hot cop has a good heart and Johnny Silverhand cooperates with the law was too strange to exist outside of a Kabuki bootleg. With seemingly no other options and no sign that I was stuck in a bad BD, I settled into the seat riding along with a cop.