Sleep did not come to him easily.

Every time David closed his eyes, nightmarish visions of his mother lying bleeding and broken on the street replayed in his head, telling him to run away over and over again before being shot and slaughtered like a rabid animal. He tossed and turned, trying to drive the hellish scenes from his head, but no matter what he did, he couldn't escape the haunting illusions of his mom's dying moments. It was as if her death had been permanently branded into his mind.

He lay there for what felt like hours, but sleep still eluded him. Eventually, no longer able to stand it, he threw off the blankets covering him and dragged himself out of bed.

Fuck. I need a distraction.

Dragging himself over to the small kitchenette, he opened the upper cabinet and reached inside, digging around the top shelf until he found what he was looking for: a large, rectangular glass bottle. He slid it out of the cupboard slowly, careful not to drop it, then snagged a glass from the lower shelf and headed back over to the couch, setting them both on the table in front of him as he sat down.

Gloria had only ever pulled out her prized tequila bottle for two reasons: to celebrate or to forget. Working a job with long hours where one dealt with fresh corpses on a daily basis was undoubtedly terrible on one's psyche, and the alcohol helped her get more sleep, so even if David worried for her at times, he never mentioned it to her. She needed all the rest she could get.

To the best of his knowledge, though, she had only ever brought it out to celebrate with it twice: the first being the first raise she had ever received at her job, and the second was when he received his acceptance letter from Arasaka Academy. Gloria had actually let him try a sip of it then, but he had immediately coughed it back up due to how unexpectedly strong the burn of the alcohol was. She had teased him about it the rest of the day.

David laughed melancholically. He supposed he didn't have much to celebrate, either.

Yanking out the rubber stopper and pouring what was probably a way too generous amount, he set the bottle down with a loud clack and took a large swig of the alcohol, finding that he actually liked the taste. The distinctive burning sensation was still there, certainly, but it wasn't nearly as bad as he remembered it being. He was able to more distinctly notice and appreciate the spice, honey and citrus notes rolling across his tongue as he drank.

Pretty preem. I can see why mom liked this stuff.

Before he knew it, he had already drained his glass and was in the process of pouring himself another. He doubted he would stop until he blacked out, but if that was the only way he could get some sleep, then so be it.

Here's to you, mom. You deserved better.

He raised the glass into the air, then downed it.

Nearly forty-five minutes later, David was no closer to inebriation than when he started. He had drunk over half of the remaining bottle, and while he wasn't sure how many shots that was supposed to be, he was confident that he should've been laid out cold by that amount. His mother would have been close to blacking out after five or six pours over ice, if he remembered correctly, but he barely felt any different, even now. If he wanted to be able to sleep tonight, he'd have to come up with another solution.

He glanced over to the bathroom. He didn't feel the need to use the toilet, which was a little surprising, considering how much tequila he had downed, but he figured a nice, hot shower might help clear his head.

Stripping down as he entered the bathroom, David cranked the faucet handle until scorching-hot water was pouring out of the showerhead, then stepped under the water. It burned as it splashed off his skin, feeling like a thousand tiny needles poking him, quickly turning his skin red and raw as it ran down his body. It was far hotter than he was used to, but after a minute or so under the blistering heat, he found himself appreciating the water's sting. It kept him grounded; reminded him that he was still alive. He was still unsure how—he distinctively remembered getting shot in the chest, after all—but he knew he wasn't in a clear enough headspace to try and solve that mystery, so David shoved his questions to the back of his mind, and instead ritualistically cleaned himself off, focusing only on the scalding water.

After he had rinsed all the soap off of his body, he turned off the faucet and stepped out of the shower, pulling his towel off of the bar and haphazardly drying himself off, dragging it carelessly across his body. As he ran the towel down his legs, though, he realized that the skin on his arms and legs had already healed over completely. The raw, salmon-pink scalds from the shower were entirely gone; his skin already returned to its normal hue. He hadn't even recognized exactly when the pain had stopped.

That's…weird.

David stepped up to the mirror and wiped the condensation off of the glass, checking himself over, trying to see if he was still scalded anywhere else. To his surprise, there was nothing; no raw, pink skin, no blisters, no visible damage of any sort. Even his upper back, which had taken the brunt of the hot water, looked perfectly smooth and uninjured. If he hadn't physically felt how painfully hot the shower was, just from looking at himself, he would have never guessed he had been burned at all.

That was far from the only oddity he noticed, however. He took a step back to get a better view of his entire body, just to make sure he wasn't imagining things, but sure enough, he was a few inches taller than he used to be—and in far better shape, as well.

David had always been a fairly short and scrawny, even after puberty. According to his mom, his father had always been quite tall, but years of poverty and poor nutrition had likely stunted his growth. A lifetime of running from bullies and gangsters had conditioned him well, acclimating him to an athletic lifestyle by necessity, but he had still always been moderately underweight. Now, though, he looked like one of those Olympic swimmers or gymnasts in those old history videos that Arasaka had showed him in school. Limber, defined muscles tensed and rippled across his body as he twisted and turned in the mirror, checking himself over from every angle. Not a single ounce of fat could be found across his entire body. He could still hardly call himself massive, especially compared to some of the bouncers, guards and chrome-junkies he had seen wandering Santo's streets, but his transformation was still nothing short of mind-boggling. His physique had gone from that of a poor, malnourished street rat who had been forced to skip one too many meals to a professional athlete at the very peak of his potential.

David gripped the sides of the sink with his hands, resting his forehead on the mirror's cold surface.

This shouldn't be possible. Growing over three inches in a day? Gaining like, thirty or forty pounds of muscle? Fucking…what, super-healing?

"What the fuck is happening to me?" he breathed out in disbelief, letting out a shaky, almost terrified laugh.

He eventually left the bathroom, swallowing down his fear and confusion, and headed back to the table to take another swig of the tequila, straight out the bottle, this time. He swirled the bottle around gently just to have something to occupy his hands and distract him from his destructive thoughts, spiraling further and further downward with each passing minute. He appreciated the taste pulling his attention back away from his sudden, insane transformation, but it was a short reprieve, and he doubted that drinking a nearly full bottle of eighty-proof alcohol was a good idea, so he decided he should probably call it quits. Setting the bottle back down, he resealed it with the stopper and took his glass to the kitchen, washing it out in the sink.

As David scrubbed the glass clean, his eyes were drawn to the way the newfound muscles on his forearms tensed and flexed every time he twisted his hands. It felt like he was in a braindance, watching someone else's life through their perspective. He had never had anything remotely like this kind of physique before, and he had certainly never tried to achieve anything like it—his only form of exercise was running, and he barely ate enough to sustain himself as it was. Having muscles just appear out of nowhere was beyond shocking, and had he not seen his own face in the mirror, he would have thought that the doctors at the meat wagon had chromed him to hell and back with synth-muscle, or simply implanted his brain into someone else's body.

This is fuckin' nuts. Do these things even work? They're definitely real, but are they just, like, for show? Did the doctors inject me with 'roids or muscle reinforcers or something?

Well, he supposed he wasn't going to be falling asleep anytime soon, so he might as well test them out.

Lowering himself to the ground, David started pumping out a quick set of push-ups, and he could immediately feel the difference. He was rather light before, so he could get through quite a few push-ups before he began to feel the burn in his arms and chest, but now they felt absolutely effortless. He felt like he could go through a thousand reps without even breaking a sweat.

Holy shit, this is crazy. What else can I do, now?

He held the position, keeping himself rock-steady, then lifted his left arm and placed it behind his back, beginning to perform them one-handed. To his surprise, they were just as easy as the two-handed version. He even began switching arms with each repetition, pushing himself upward with one hand and catching himself with the other before his chest hit the ground. After a couple of slow reps to acclimate himself to the exercise, he was soon smoothly swapping between arms with every rep, keeping his movements as smooth and fluid as if he were performing a set of normal push-ups.

Alright, there's no way I should be able to do this—not without some serious chrome chipped.

Deciding to really test his limits, David kept one hand firmly on the ground and swung both legs up into the air, trying to keep them purely vertical, his other arm still held behind his back. He expected to fall onto his back immediately, but to his surprise, he was able to keep his balance almost effortlessly, as if he had been practicing handstands all his life. He could instinctually feel exactly where his center of balance was, so even when he started to put his body to the test—bending his legs into various positions, twisting his torso around and even jumping from one arm to the other—not once did he ever falter or fall. His muscles were clearly not just for show; David was pretty sure that even the Olympic gymnasts would have some trouble pulling off some of the stunts he was performing.

Springing off of his arm, he landed gracefully in a crouch, silent as a prowling cat. With his extra weight and height, David had been sure that he would've messed up the landing somehow, but it was like his body already knew what to do; as if his new muscles came with their own muscle memory, as well. He might've thought they were cybernetics could he not feel the blood and sinew beneath the skin when he checked his wrists. He was pretty sure he hadn't had synth-muscles implanted, either, since the doctor had told him that they hadn't operated on him at all—and even if he was lying, there was no way that they had the time to replace his entire muscular system with synthetic ones.

David glanced down, taking another look at his body. He hadn't even broken a sweat, even after performing some of the most difficult exercises he could think of. Most chrome-junkies couldn't pull off half the shit he just did, and he wasn't even winded yet. Whatever his limits were, he was obviously nowhere close to finding them.

Heading back to the living room, he sat down on the edge of the long, segmented couch, staring up aimlessly at the endless newsfeeds and advertisement reels playing on the holoscreens above the table. He scraped his fingernails across the cheap cushion absentmindedly as he tried to come up with more ways to test his newfound strength, but nothing really came to mind. All of his ideas were either too dangerous to attempt or too complicated or inconvenient to bother.

He leaned back, sighing wearily, grabbing the top of the backrest behind his head and pulling forward to stretch his arms and back a bit, but after only a second or so, he started to hear a distinct cracking noise, and he could feel the couch's frame start to bend and splinter in his grasp. David immediately let go, wide-eyed and alarmed, and quickly turned around to make sure he hadn't accidentally broken his own furniture.

Fuck. Please tell me I didn't just break the couch.

He hadn't, luckily, but upon closer inspection, David noticed a slight bend in the frame that he was confident wasn't there before. It didn't seem to be compromising the couch's structure, but he wasn't exactly an expert on couches. The fact that he could bend the frame with only his hands was surprising enough as it was, though he wasn't sure what the frame was made of. Some sort of fibrous polymer? Not something that could normally be bent so easily, to be sure. He thought of trying to bend the frame back into place, but he was worried he'd end up just breaking the frame altogether. It didn't really feel all that flexible.

He blinked, stepping back and taking a second look at the couch.

Wait. Could I, like, pick this whole thing up?

His first instinct was to immediately dismiss the idea as stupid, but with the feats he had just performed, he didn't want to rule anything out. Besides, even if he couldn't, it wouldn't hurt to try. The segments were heavy enough that it normally took two people to lift one, but if he was strong enough to perform a one-handed handstand, then it didn't sound completely out of the realm of possibility.

Only one way to find out, I guess.

Standing up and taking position behind the back of the couch, he grabbed the bottom of the frame with one hand and the top with the other, making sure his grip was secure at both ends. David inhaled, bent his legs, counted down from three in his head, then heaved mightily, driving upward with his legs as he tried to lift the couch with his arms and back.

Only his vice-like grip kept the couch segment from flying upwards and crashing into the ceiling.

Holy shit!

The upholstery swung upwards with such force that David had to take a step backwards just to keep hold of it. It was…pretty light, if he was being honest. Far less heavy than he ever remembered it being, back when he had to move one of the segments to reach a braindance chip that had fallen between the cushions. He had literally been forced to drag the piece of furniture across the floor just to move it, and even that had taken basically all of his strength. His body was sore for days, after that. Now, though, he could easily hold the couch aloft single-handedly.

Experiencing his newfound strength was a heady feeling. The difference was palpable; he could feel the adrenaline beginning to pump through his body as he began to shoulder-press the couch with his right arm.

This is fuckin' crazy, man. Is this why chrome-junkies mod themselves out?

If so, David wholeheartedly understood. He had never even dreamed he'd be able to do anything like this before.

He gently set the couch back down, being especially careful not to drop it—he didn't want to damage it even further—before sitting down in the spot his mother had slept just last night. He was never sure why, but she always seemed to prefer sleeping on the couch over her own bed. She would regularly curl up into the corner of the sectional and pass out in her work uniform, only bothering to take off her work boots before she was out like a light. It was always a pain trying to wake her up when she slept here.

But when he closed his eyes, he could almost feel the residual warmth she had left behind.

…I need to get to sleep.

David refused to cry again. He had already cried enough for one night.

He lay down, grabbing his mother's shredded high-visibility jacket off the table, and turned his back to the table, draping the jacket over himself like makeshift blanket. It wasn't particularly comfortable, especially not with how frayed and torn the jacket was, but at the moment, it just felt right. It was as if he could feel the ghost of his mother's embrace comforting him as he pulled her jacket over his body, protecting him from the frigid night sky.

Night City was cold, but David was warm enough for tonight.

He drifted off to sleep soon after.


He dreamt of blood and violence.

He was deep in the jungles of South America, automatic rifle in hand, pushing through the deep underbrush as quietly as he could. The rest of his squad was already in position, waiting for him to give the signal. He pushed forward, stopping just before the brush cleared and taking cover behind a tree, surveying their target through his rifle's sights. The Night Corp plutonium plant loomed tall above him, even at a distance, steam eternally puffing out of its gargantuan chimney. Seven heavily armed guards stood alert at various positions, from what he could see, and from what recon had informed him, there were at least five more surrounding the perimeter of the facility. Likely a dozen more inside, not counting civilians.

"I'm in position," he ground out with a deep, gravelly voice that didn't remotely sound like his own, adjusting the holographic sight on his rifle. He brought it up to his eye, the reflex optics in his head calculating the exact trajectory necessary to ricochet the bullets off the reinforced barrier surrounding the complex to hit the weak spots in the guards' armor. If his shots weren't lethal, they'd alert the compound, and then his squad would be in serious trouble. The one in the sniper's nest was also an issue; he would need to be dealt with quickly after. His squad could clean up the rest.

"Everyone, weapons hot," his squad leader ordered, voice tinged with a thick Jamaican accent. He flicked the safety off, and his hands became unnaturally still as the cybernetics in his arms adjusted the muzzle of his firearm to point at precisely the angle he needed it to. "Firing in five…four…three…two—"

On "two," his squad all pulled the trigger at once. He fired two shots, ricocheting the rounds off the outer wall and into the back of the guards' necks. The other soldiers all fell in tandem as he did; only the man in the sniper's nest remained alive.

He snapped his gun up to the last remaining soldier, aiming his crosshairs at center mass and letting his cybernetics line up his shot the rest of the way. The man had ducked behind cover, but his smart optics had already predicted that he would. He pulled the trigger once again, and a small stream of blood splashed over the railing, confirming his kill.

"All hostiles down," he reported.

"Move in. Keep your comms on; Rhoden already took down their network. Seventeen more hostiles inside. Move in, zero them all, plant the plastique and get out. You have thirty minutes."

He grinned viciously. "You heard the man," he rallied his squad. "Let's move."

The scene shifted. He was sneaking into a tower in Taiwan, slipping past Kang Tao guards like a thief in the night, his optical camo obscuring him from their sight entirely. The company had just moved their headquarters to China, and since they had to transfer all of their data locally, the logistical nightmare of moving to a new headquarters was the perfect opportunity for someone to slip in and steal some incredibly valuable information.

Unfortunately, Kang Tao also knew that.

Ghosting through the bleak hallways and avoiding the guards, whose patterns he had to memorize beforehand, he eventually found what he was looking for: a large, imposing metal doorway locked and secured using state-of-the-art cybersecurity. The guards were still on patrol, so he only had about four minutes to break in and get out before they returned. It wasn't ideal, but it would have to be enough.

He sliced through the rivet holding the biometric lock's outer casing with his monowire, careful not to leave any marks on the shell itself. His intrusion would be discovered eventually, but that was no reason to be sloppy. The longer it took for them to learn of his intrusion, the less likely it'd be that they would learn who was behind it, and the more time he had to escape the country. Pulling the casing off the console, he quickly slid the shard his netrunner had given him into the maintenance slot, letting the daemon within do its job, bypassing the security and unlocking the door without alerting the system at large, then slipped the reinforced cover back over the lock.

He was in.

Activating his optical camo yet again, he opened the door just barely wide enough to allow him to slip into the room, then closed it behind him soundlessly. His target was staring up at the large, flickering screens that lined the far wall, resting his arms on the back of a plush office chair. Two computer techs sat at a large metal desk in front of the screens, typing away on their keyboards, while a netrunner was plugged into a deep-dive chair next to them—all of them focused on whatever operation they were currently running. No guards were stationed in the room, likely because Kang Tao executives didn't trust their guards not to backstab them and sell off any information they had gleaned for a lump sum. He personally thought it was a little stupid, but it was no skin off his back. If they wanted to make his job easier, he wasn't going to complain.

Double-checking for any security cameras, he snuck forward quietly, inching as close to his target as he dared, stopping only when he could see the shard he was supposed to swipe in the man's neck. He only had one shot at this; if he failed, he would be mercilessly tortured until he had spilled every secret he had ever known, then executed. Kang Tao counterintelligence agents were considered to be the most efficient, ruthless and successful spies on the planet, which meant that crossing them was one of the riskiest assignments one could ever undertake.

He exhaled, steadying himself. Deftly casting his monowire forward, he managed to slip the monofilament into the port and catch the lip of the shard without detection. He adjusted his arm slowly, positioning his wrist just so, then pulled, removing the shard from his neck and catching it like a magician palming a card at a poker table. He held his breath, his optical camouflage still active, praying his target didn't notice anything.

The man didn't so much as twitch.

He quickly slipped out of the room, retrieved his daemon from the security console, carefully replaced the casing, then vanished into the night.

The scene shifted yet again. He stood upon a dirt embankment outside a dilapidated mining town in South Africa, next to one of his squad mates as the both of them stared silently out at the small, run-down village from the top of the incline. He had tried making conversation with his partner earlier, but the man took his job way too seriously, especially for a gig as low risk as this. The mine was certainly profitable, housing rare metals that were used to make high-end cyberware, but it was small enough that no major corporation would bother to sink any serious amount of resources into an open hostile takeover. Too little profit to be made. They were only really here to keep the locals in line.

His boredom was instantly shattered by the echoes of gunfire breaking out all across the village.

He and his partner quickly dove behind the other side of the bank as soon as they heard the first volley. Their comms were in chaos; no one had any idea as to who was attacking them yet, or from where. No one had spotted anything, so they were either dealing with invisible mercenaries or some sort of armed rebellion. He dared to take a peek over the embankment, but he couldn't get a very clear picture. He could see his comrades rushing through the streets below, trying to hunt down their attackers, but were having no luck finding them. A few of his squad members were lying dead.

"What the fuck are they doing down there?" he hissed to himself, his voice smoky and distinctly female. Ducking back down, he flipped a switch on his vocoder and held down the PTT button on his radio, hoping to get a better grasp of the situation.

"November, sitrep! I saw at least three of ours dead down there!" he yelled into his radio; his voice suddenly far deeper.

"Hostile fire from multiple assailants! Numbers and positions unknown; I think they're using optical camo!" one of the soldiers shouted back, their voice coming through slightly distorted.

"Do none of you have thermal vis?!"

He didn't wait for a response, instead popping his head back up over the embankment, unslinging and shouldering his rifle and activating his thermal implants. The world became awash with a vastly oversaturated array of greens, blues and yellows. She could see a few of her squad members trying to shoot at where they believed their assailants were hiding, while others simply took cover and tried to avoid becoming collateral. Each of them had a tracking chip in them to avoid friendly fire, just in case a situation like this happened. And there were quite a few soldiers sneaking around without them.

He grinned, lining up his reticle with one of those solders, who was currently in the process of sneaking around the backside of a nearby building, then pulled the trigger.

Within the span of forty-five seconds, five hostiles fell. Their enemies were all blatantly reliant on their optical camo, which quickly proved to be their downfall as he picked off each one of them, one by one. Only then did they start panicking and ducking for cover themselves, but by then, the rest of her squad had activated their own thermals and had begun to fight back in earnest.

With no targets left in sight, he lowered his rifle, glancing over at the silent soldier next to him. "No thermals, hu—?"

The man tackled him, knocking his gun out of his hands as the turncoat brought his combat knife to bear. He grabbed the traitor's wrist as the man tried to drive the blade into his throat, but the man was stronger than him, and the knife slowly crept closer and closer to his neck.

He let go of the man's wrist one of his hands, allowing the knife to dip even closer to his neck, before five long, steel talons unfolded from out of the back of his hand, slicing the glove he was wearing to ribbons. Before the tip of the knife could touch his throat, he stabbed his claws into the wrist of the man atop him and twisted, tearing through muscle and tendon alike, causing the man to drop the knife off to the side somewhere and scream in pain. Seeing his opportunity, he then ripped his claws out of the man's wrist, used his other hand to yank on his now-defunct arm, pulling the traitor's head closer to him, then jabbed his claws into the man's throat, listening to him gurgle and sputter as he choked and died.

Shoving the turncoat's corpse off of his body, he allowed his bloodied claws to retract and took a deep breath, regaining his bearings. The gunfire below sounded like it was dying down, which was good, but it also meant that he couldn't lie here much longer. He had to regroup with the rest of his company ASAP.

After all, where there was one traitor, there were often more.

David awoke violently, his head snapping up to greet the bright sunlight shining through his window.

"…The fuck?"


Going through his mother's belongings had sucked.

Everything he picked brought back another memory of her, each little reminder tinged with happiness, anguish and nostalgia all blended together in a horribly muddled cocktail of emotions. He had to force himself to keep his feelings tamped down as he went through her belongings one by one, lest he break down and start crying all over again. There was too much work to be done; he didn't have time to sit around and reminisce.

Luckily, his mother had relatively few personal belongings. A somewhat bleak upside to living in poverty, he supposed.

Once David had sorted her things, he finally started to dig through her electronics, hoping to find some sort of starting point as to what she stole and who she had pissed off so egregiously. Gloria had definitely been up to some shady business, as evidenced by the offshore bank account he had found, filled with a surprisingly sizeable amount of money, as well as the secondary encryption system in her neural phone that had been keyed to her bio-signature. It had taken him a few tries to gain access to it, but it eventually gave way and unlocked for him. He wasn't all too familiar with digital encryption, but given he was Gloria's son, the phone probably had just finally read the right sequence in his DNA to fool itself into thinking he was his mother.

Alright, let's see what we've got, here….

Gloria kept only a scant few contacts in her encrypted folder, it seemed, and the conversations she'd had with each of them were all vague enough that he might not have guessed she was doing anything illegal, had they not been behind a biosignature-locked encryption lock—and even then, there was precious little inside it that was actually useful to him. An old message log with a man by the name of Charles that assisted in "package retrieval," another contact listed as Reyes, who apparently gave her advice on specific scores and when to go for them, and a couple others she had apparently once talked to, but whose logs had been lost to time, presumably overwritten by the server when it needed to make more space for new logs. Nothing particularly helpful.

Finally, he found something potentially useful: a recent conversation with a contact by the name of Maine. She had asked him if he knew anyone willing to buy some experimental research material. Given both the vagueness of their conversation and the fact that Gloria didn't seem to exactly know what it was she actually had, he didn't know anyone that would be interested off the top of his head. However, he followed up by promising he would look around for someone willing to test it and find out what it was so that she could eventually find a buyer for it.

He checked the date of the call. Four days ago.

None of the other call logs told him anything particularly useful, other than that Maine was apparently a buyer of…whatever she normally sold. They never spoke about their transactions with any significant detail, so he had no clue how to actually find the man, and the neural ID was encrypted end-to-end, so he couldn't just call up the guy and ask what else he knew.

David sighed, unplugging the phone from his shard slot and stuffing it down the side of his couch cushion. As much as he wanted to just crush the thing and be rid of the evidence altogether, the call logs could still end up being useful to him at some point, so it was best if he kept it around.

He glanced out the window, staring out at the city thoughtfully as an idea slowly began to take shape in his mind. The phone may have been a dead end, but their incursion had left behind a lot of evidence—evidence that might still be there, since it had been less than a day since it had happened. If he could make it back over to the crash site in time, it was possible that he could follow the evidence disposal crew, which in turn could lead him right back to whoever ordered the hit in the first place.

The only problem was that if he was caught, he'd probably be shot on sight. He needed a way to scope out the scene without being spotted. He wasn't particularly keen on taking a bullet to the chest two days in a row.

"Scope out," huh…? Well, I guess a rifle scope would work. Those are pretty expensive, though, aren't they?

He glanced back at the small holoscreen showing his mother's secondary bank account, currently holding approximately five months' rent. Obviously, he would need to budget that out for food and other bills, but he had enough of a financial cushion that he could splurge on something like a good scope and not have to worry about taking on any kind of debt. His mother had warned him never to go into financial debt for any reason; people who dug themselves into debt apparently never escaped it.

Debt…ah, right, the school.

As much as he hated breaking his promise to his mother, there was just no point returning to the academy anymore. With the outstanding debt she owed the school, he would have to clear out both of Gloria's bank accounts just to settle it, and then he wouldn't have enough left over to pay his rent or even buy food for himself. Even if he did somehow manage to scrape by and survive, there was no way he'd be able to earn enough scratch to pay for his enrollment next semester, so there was no longer a reason for him to go back. The corporate path was closed off to him, now; perhaps forever.

His only goal now was to figure out who had killed his mother.

Well, guess I better get to it. Don't have time to waste.

He stood up, bracing his hands on his thighs as he did. Shrugging off his mother's tattered jacket, he made to straighten out his shirt, but immediately realized that he wasn't wearing one at all.

David blinked.

Am I…?

He glanced downward.

Yep. Still naked.

Sighing, he headed over to the small dresser built into the apartment wall and opened it, rifling through the folded stacks of hand-me-downs and other donated clothes, hoping that at least one set in the pile would still fit him.

From what he could see, though, it didn't seem likely.

He supposed he'd just have to make do.


Buying a scope was easier than David thought it would be. He supposed he didn't really know what to expect, having never bought a gun before, but he thought there would be more of a process to buying one, since it was a rifle accessory. To his surprise, though, he was able to simply walk into the central Santo Domingo weapons shop, ask for the best scope they had and walk out with his purchase only a few minutes later, his wallet a few thousand EDs lighter.

Nearly two months' rent, gone in a single purchase.

Gonna have to figure out how to scrape up some more cash soon.

After arriving at the closest juncture to the crash site, David strode carefully through the winding alleyways of Arroyo, searching the area for tall, abandoned buildings with large, but relatively clear sightlines, being especially careful not to stray too close to the scene of the crime itself. If those soldiers were still there, they probably were still on the lookout for him, so he was better off keeping his distance—even if that that meant giving the guys that killed his mom more time to clean up the evidence.

He eventually found a fairly tall building a bit further north of the crash site. The main doors were locked, and the garage doors looked to be rusted shut, but after a quick sweep around the building, he found a busted side door that he could use to slip inside. Squeezing in took a little bit of effort, but once inside, he pulled out a small flashlight and quickly set about surveying the building. The place certainly smelled abandoned; the lower floors were covered in dirt, dust and a rather large amount of dark, long-dried stains that he probably didn't want to ponder the nature of any further than strictly necessary. The stairs at the far end led all the way to the top of the building, which suggested roof access, but some of the internal I-beams were covered in rust, which did worry him a bit. However, the building was still intact, so he doubted his presence on the roof would cause it to collapse or anything.

Heading up the long flight of metal stairs and pushing open the roof access door, he adjusted his mother's hi-vis jacket, threading what still remained of the zipper's teeth together by hand to cover his form-fitting, almost too-tight shirt before perching on the roof's edge. As backwards as it may have sounded, he figured that during the daytime, the bright yellow of his EMS jacket would reflect the sun's rays and blend in with the garish yellows and whites painted on the various surrounding buildings far better than his black long-sleeved shirt or his charcoal-grey cargo pants. The dark silhouette of a man in broad daylight would be very noticeable, but the reflection of the sun off of his jacket would blind anyone that happened to look up in his direction, allowing him to avoid detection entirely.

Hopefully.

Opening up the hard plastic case and taking out the scope, David held it up to his eye and stared out at the buildings across the highway bridge connecting Santo Domingo and Corpo Plaza. He fiddled with the knobs for a minute, adjusting the zoom and focus until he was satisfied. There weren't as many features as he thought there would be on a scope this expensive, but the zoom range was incredible, and the glass was incredibly high-quality, so for his purposes, it was more than worth the price. The crosshairs weren't absolutely ideal, but they weren't bad, by any stretch, so he had no complaints. It would suit his purposes just fine.

Once he had everything tuned to his liking, he stepped up to the edge of the roof and took a knee, steadying his arms on the ledge and peered through the scope, staring down at the street where his mother was murdered.

Whoever had ordered the hit apparently didn't want to leave any evidence lying around, because they cleaned up quick. Both his mother's car and the armored vehicle were missing, and the blood and gore had already been washed away. The only evidence that there was even an incident in the first place was the cracked and broken asphalt where they had initially impacted after being flung off of the bridge, and the damage done to said bridge. And even then, both of them were already undergoing repairs. Construction crews had cordoned off both areas and were making shockingly good process repairing the damaged streets, re-layering the broken asphalt and filling the gaps in the shattered concrete with wet cement.

There's no way anyone would bother tryin' to fix a busted road the day after it broke. Not in Santo, at least.

A construction company repairing major highway damage the day after it happened was understandable, since those were valuable to the corporations, but he severely doubted that a random side street in Arroyo would receive the same treatment as a vital, district-connecting highway bridge. The corpos would only ever bother with repairs in Santo Domingo's industrial district if they planned to build a new factory for whatever shiny new project their research and development teams came up with, and from what he could see, the construction workers didn't bring nearly enough equipment to start a construction project on that scale.

Those old spy shows were right. Trying to cover up your evidence just leaves more evidence.

The police were nowhere to be found, either. The standard procedure for public, high-profile crime was to block off the area for at least forty-eight hours while the investigation took place, according to his mother—even if the cases were often abandoned soon after. If there was no NCPD presence here whatsoever, less than twenty-four hours after the crime had been committed, then either the police were in on it, or they had been paid a significant amount to look the other way and pretend it didn't happen. Neither possibility was a good thing, and both suggested that one of the corporations was probably behind it all.

He studied the construction workers, just in case one of them might've been a corporate plant, but nothing about any of them looked odd. They looked like locals, mostly unarmed and chipped with little visible cyberware. Some looked completely organic. None of them looked particularly alert; most of them were just doing their jobs. A couple of the employees were slacking off near the back, doing their best to avoid the project manager's notice as they lazed about and chatted. All normal people, just trying to earn a living.

Whoever killed mom is probably long gone by now.

Sighing, David set the scope back in the case and closed it. He sat down, leaning back and stretching his arms as he stared up aimlessly at the sky. Clearly, a near twenty-four-hour head start was far more significant than he realized. He felt like the investigation had only just begun, but the trail had already gone cold. There was nothing else to be found here; he needed to start looking for leads elsewhere.

The only other pieces of evidence he knew of were the missing armored vehicle and that symbol that the soldiers wore on their shoulder. Finding one of those was the key to picking up the trail again.

His first instinct was to hunt around Arroyo for the vehicle, hoping they had parked it in one of the abandoned factories, but he doubted he would find it here. Whoever owned the APC had nearly an entire day to hide it; given that much time, they had probably transported it back to whatever secret facility they kept their black ops gear in and safely secured, hidden away from the corporate counterintelligence divisions that were undoubtedly also trying to track it down. Unless David could cause enough of scene to warrant its reappearance, the vehicle would probably stay hidden away for a long time.

That only leaves the soldiers.

He knew precious little about how the corporations' militaries were structured, since they guarded their military secrets more jealously than dragons, but the division he was hunting for wore their emblem on their uniforms, so they were identifiable, and therefore traceable. All he needed to do is either find where they usually operated, or attempt to trace their movements and establish a pattern through past sightings, whether via security footage or eyewitnesses. Easier said than done, to be certain, but it wasn't impossible.

If they have an emblem, then they have history. I can probably buy the information, but that's probably gonna cost me a lot. For now, I'm most likely better off trying to find them myself.

David stared out at the massive skyscrapers looming over Corpo Plaza, narrowing his eyes at the gleaming, sun-bathed towers as he drummed his fingers on his knee.

Well, I gotta start somewhere.


He probably should've guessed that the Plaza would be a bust.

David had wandered and watched for about three hours, blending in with the crowds as he surveyed the various megacorporation towers and their security teams, as well as who was entering and exiting each entranceway of their buildings. Each skyscraper had various alternate entrances hidden away, and while they were certainly better guarded than the main entrance, none of the individuals using them looked like military personnel. If he had to guess, most of them were either counterintelligence or important executives. Thus, while he had learned a bit about the activity of the various corporations, none of it was useful to him. The people he was hunting for were most likely either inactive, laying low after their last appearance, or they were based elsewhere, and he had no way to know which was the case without running around screaming about screaming about how he had the sample they were looking for. But given what they had done to his mother, he had no doubt they would simply flatline him where he stood and sweep it under the rug as a something along the lines of a cyberpsycho incident.

Whatever that sample was, it was apparently incredibly important.

Too bad it's gone.

No closer to his goal than when he started, he ultimately decided to call it a day. He doubted he'd learn anything useful by sticking around any longer. At this point, it was more likely he would end up getting caught by corporate security than learning anything potentially useful. So, with nothing more to gain, David threw in the towel, bought an NCART ticket back to Santo and stepped into the cabin, taking hold of the handrail as he stared out the window.

He had caught himself staring out at the skyline a lot, lately. He wasn't really sure why. Night City's skyline hadn't meaningfully changed since David had been born, an eternal bastion of technological progress and corporate dominance. It was all he knew, though; he had never been outside the city before. The only other horizons he had ever seen had been in braindances and TV shows.

Maybe I should just…I don't know. Leave. Find somewhere else. Different views and all that. Change of pace. Might be nice.

He couldn't. He knew that. Not while the people who killed his mother were still out roaming the streets. They had slaughtered an innocent woman just to retrieve a laboratory sample, and they would do a lot worse if they were allowed to continue unchecked. Someone had to stop them—even if it meant putting every last one of them in the ground, permanently.

He didn't see anyone else volunteering.

Something tugged on the back of his neck, trying to yank him backwards. David's hand snapped up at speeds he didn't know he could move at, catching the offending line in his grip and twisting, wrapping the cord around his arm to use as leverage. He spun around to face whoever was trying to grab his attention as he pulled them towards him, ending up face to face with a stranger he vaguely recognized.

He found himself staring down a very attractive woman. David had seen her once or twice before on his route to and from school. Her hair was striking, fashioned into a bob cut with stylized bangs that were colored with a shimmering with a pastel gradient that ran from root to tip, sparkling like a candied rainbow. Her sharp orange eyeshadow accentuated her bright, multicolored eyes, currently wide with surprise, and her lipstick looked like it was intentionally designed to distract others from the weapons she undoubtedly kept concealed. The same could be said about her choice of clothing. Her build was lithe but defined, in line with what he might have expected of the Tyger Claws' venerated kunoichi.

She was beautiful, in the same manner that a coiled viper was beautiful. Deadly, but purposeful, like a dancer with a dagger, weaving her way through scores of foes without so much as a scratch in return. Even at a glance, he could tell she was probably the most dangerous woman he had ever seen.

He had also just wrapped a length of her monowire around his forearm. Twice.

…Yeah, that's not good.

"Uh, hi," he began, hoping he could still somehow salvage this. "Can I help you?"