BR
Chapter 4
The gig that killed Jack was a fucking drug robbery gone bad. A client got Wakako to find two gonks dumb enough to stumble into a Maelstrom den and stuff a couple of bags full of Black Lace. Strangely enough, that turned out to be the easy part. Gang HQ was an abandoned building in Northside. We waited until we had the cloak of midnight on us, took a Delamain cab to a block outside the location and then crept up to the building on foot.
The Maelstrom boss had made a deal with a Tyger Claws den mother but hadn't followed through with delivering the goods. We were supposed to get what was owed to the Claws- plus a dozen or more extra bricks- whatever we could carry- and deposit the bags in a secure location. So we took the fire escape up to the roof and stealthed our way down to the office. Maelstrom we're trigger happy and blood thirsty, but their reliance on drugs kept them distracted. We took down five of 'em without making a sound, just by sneaking up behind them and squeezing their pressure points. We got into the office without trouble. Drugs weren't even locked up, just stacked haphazard all around the place in boxes and on desktops.
Jackie saw it all and released a string of Spanish expletives. "If I was a tweaker," he told me, "I think I'd die and go to heaven right now." Dunno if a statement like that in retrospect is foreshadowing or not.
Anyways, there was no issue filling our backpacks and no issue getting back to the roof either. We squeezed out the fire exit and breathed in the fresh Night City air. It has started to drizzle. We pulled the hoods up on our coats. And then that's when it all went bad. I guess we hadn't accounted for a switch off in guards, but that's definitely what had happened. My guess is that when they saw the unconscious gangers face down on the ground, they sounded an alarm. As a result, a handful of them met us there on the roof, a collection of red-eyed cyber junkies, not a single hand empty of a weapon. Bullets started zigzagging this way and that- some from their guns, some from ours. One particularly heinous ganggoon came at me with a switchblade and I caught the sharp edge along the side of my jaw. Jack blew his head off with a close range shot to his forehead, and then we booked it to the fire escape. A fuck ton of adrenaline got us off that roof. I was peering through blood and rainwater and my sneakers slipped on the rusted metal and I tore the muscles in my shoulder when I lost my footing and nearly fell three stories to the street below.
When the soles of my books slapped the pavement, I realized something was seriously wrong with my leg. I dig out a coupla Bounce Back stims and we injected them direct into our bloodstreams as we ran. Pain radiated all through me, different points of my body serving as headquarters for excruciating agony. But neither of us slowed down until we were in the cab and on our way to the drop point. Jack fell into his seat and I practically piled in on top of him. He caught me and then released a wet, hacking cough, blood spraying out of his mouth and all over the car seat.
He apologized in the following silence as I came to terms with the severity of what had happened to us on that roof. He looked at me, his eyebrows furrowed and he touched my cheek. I couldn't see outta one eye. "Shit Chica," he wheezed, "you're cut up pretty bad." He coughed again, this time into his own fist.
"I'm more worried about you," I said. "Did you get shot Jack?"
"Yeah," he said, as calm as always. "But it's no big deal." He put one hand on the front of his shirt and pulled up the fabric to reveal his bare abdomen. The darkness, the rain- it had disguised the injury at first maybe, but there was no denying it then. Oncoming headlights passing us on the street temporarily lit up the backseat of the Delamaine and I saw his wound for what it really was- fatal. "See?" He insisted. "Just bleedin' a little.."
The cab came to a halt right where I'd told it to. A couple of mask wearing Claws came up to the car and I shoved out the bags before they could ask any questions. By the time we were driving again, Jackie was already on his way out.
It didn't take him long to die. The effects of the stim he'd taken wore off and shock set in. I promised him I'd take his body back to Vic- he didn't want Mama Wells or his girlfriend to see him like that. When the cab made its final stop, he was already dead in my lap.
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