There was one last thing that he had to deal with before the fighting tonight would occur. Namely, one last meeting in order to secure the help of someone who was supposed to help sales for the events to come. Those sales figures would be useful here, because more money meant more funding for Pacifica and side projects therein.

The Zenith was an ambitious project. Before anything above ground could be built, they were going to get the entire underground finished. That meant daming off the sub-bay section from the ocean, and then digging thousands of feet straight down to start making the 'roots' of the arcology. Before they could do that efficiently, the entire above ground city district was going to be bulldozed.

Everything above sea level in Pacifica, except the one permanent building and the temporary building for housing everyone in the meantime, would be demolished and drilled. Giving the workers a completely clean slate to work with from the bottom up to build. It wasn't going to be touching the actual shoreline, due to worries over a potential aquifer below, but it was slightly into the Badlands, overlapping with the existing Pacifica about 90%.

When complete, it would be the single largest construction on this half of North America, capable of housing all of Night City and a few million more. It would be capable of feeding twice that number with just its internal farms and roof-level district sized 'wildlife park'. That park would become the single largest spot of green in any urban environment in the world, and capable of making the whole thing an oxygen-positive building. That was without the projected specifications for the gene-modded plant and animal life that Biotechnica was going to explain in detail in his next meeting with them. It would actually need to vent oxygen into the atmosphere to prevent oxygen poisoning, after all was said and done.

According to the specifications that was. Personally, neither Uriel or Adam would have been spending nearly as much money on making it environmentally friendly, mostly because that was a global level thing. It didn't matter how green America was, if China, Africa, Russia, etc. kept pumping pollution into the environment.

That worked in every direction, you could swap the names around as much as you wanted to. It didn't matter how much Africa recycled if India was still dumping everything into their river. It didn't matter how much Australia limited their carbon output if Great Britain was still causing acid rain over the entirety of northern Europe.

It didn't matter how much one state cared about the environment, because unless all of them did, nothing was going to be fixed. Caring about the environment was something that cost more money than not, so of course, very few factions did. Thus, nothing was going to be fixed in the long run. In the end, it wasn't something that either of them were going to bother with beyond the local level.

Organic food was a luxury item, so getting the conditions for it to grow better was a good way to make money, which was a good way to build industry, which was a good way to stay alive. All of that boiled down to Uriel having to have a conversation that he didn't see the point of with something he didn't care about. Which was most people outside of Adam, these days.

Thinking about it, wasn't that almost schizophrenia? Meh, he didn't care enough to find out. It hasn't been a problem, so it wouldn't make it a problem. He opened the door and stepped through to see the man he had to talk to for his aid.

Grey hair on dark skin, a dark gray beard, a cybernetic throat, a bunch of golden jewelry, sleeve tattoos, and a sleeveless leather jacket. Kerry Eurodyne. Neither Adam or Uriel had any idea why the fuck he wanted to talk to Adam. Uriel didn't particularly want to spend any processing power on trying to figure it out either, he just wanted to get this over with.

He walked over to the other chair, and slowly sat down in it, just to make sure it wouldn't break under his weight. The Gemini wasn't as heavy as Adam's other frames, but it was still enough to be legally morbidly obese if he was the height of an average man, right around four-hundred and sixty pounds last he checked. It would snap smaller chairs, even if it was far lighter than the Dragoon, Oni, and especially the DaiOni.

It was heavier than the old Samson, but that was because the Samson didn't have CCPL. A Samson with CCPL would be around… seven hundred pounds? Not as bad as a theoretical Dragoon with CCPL, which would hit the nine-hundred pound mark. As it turns out, having your frame built out of titanium and ACPA myomer made it far heavier than plasteel and standard myomer. The Oni was only as light as it was thanks to being made out of the new Endosteel, and that was pricey enough to just buy a standard ACPA.

Adam was heavy, it came with the territory of being a stupidly durable and stupidly strong killborg.

Now seated, he looked to the musician on the other side of the table and stared blankly. The musician stared back for a long moment, before starting to talk.

"You've… been making music all this time." He began. This wasn't technically true, but the story it sold was better for Adam overall, so Uriel deflected the question with a question.

"Is that a question?" He growled out in an irritated tone.

The musician narrowed his eyes in irritation. "No, I suppose it wasn't…" There was a lull in the conversation, strangled in the crib. Alas he won't miss it.

The musician broke the staredown and looked over to the side. After a moment more, he tried talking again. "You've been making music for years, and you only started releasing it after a leak. What's the motivation there?"

Uriel narrowed his optics, wasn't that pretty fucking obvious? "Do you have any idea how expensive turning this landfill into a functioning place is? The songs make money, I need money to fund this place."

The Filipino turned to glare at him, but in a considering sort of way. "So you're making the music for eddies?"

Uriel snorted. "I made music so I wouldn't have to listen to the dogshit they play on the radio. I hate modern music, nothing but synth and mumble-rap, none of it worth hearing. Making money was an unexpected bonus."

The glare lessened a tad. "So, you're releasing it for the eddies, but you made it for you…?"

Uriel nodded, bored with the conversation. The musician with the dumb looking fade continued. "Making music for years without releasing it… You didn't want people to know your story?"

Uriel outright scoffed at this. "Why the fuck would I care about a bunch of gibbering meatbags and what they think of me?"

"You can sing till you're blue in the face, if no one hears you then it's just another prison." The Meatmusician attempted to counter.

Uriel all but snarled in reply. "It's this bullshit I can't wrap my head around, why the fuck do meatbags care so much about other meatbags listening to them? It's a bunch of worthless opinions from a bunch of worthless people. Social interaction is almost always a waste of my fucking time."

The musician stared at him for a long moment, digesting the rant, mulling it over.

"You… don't care about what others think of you at all, do you?"

"Never have. Anything else or are we done?"

The musician started off to the side for a moment, furrowed his brows, and took a deep breath. After releasing it, he turned back to lock eyes with Uriel.

"Johnny Silverhand… What were his last moments like?"

Uriel furrowed his own brow. "The… cheerleader who came with Blackhand back in '23?"

The musician glared at him outright. "Don't call him that. Just tell me."

Uriel glared back and turned his head to the wall, pausing to access Adam's blackbox of the event. After a moment to review the files, he started talking.

"He was in a room with the rest of Militech Team Alpha, the distraction for Blackhand's team. It was him, Bartmoss' groupie, the cougar, the nukeborg, and the muckracker. I came through the door with a backup squad behind me and started blasting. I was taking my time with it, they didn't have a single weapon that could scratch my armor."

Uriel narrowed his optics and leaned back.

"Then the cheerleader pops out of cover, and yells "Hey steelhead, let's rock and roll!" before shooting me."

"I don't know what the fuck he thought he was accomplishing. He shot me with a gun that wouldn't crack one of my optics in the DaiOni. I stared at him for a second, before lifting my chain-shotgun and cutting him in half with a burst of fire. He was dead before he hit the ground."

Uriel shook his head.

"Shooting anything else would have been more effective. I got tackled by the nukeborg, tore him in half, and left to the roof. The cougar and bartomoss' groupie killed my backup while I was distracted, and left as I was ripping the nukeborg out of his frame."

"That's it."

The musician stared at him, searching for something. Uriel stared back, unimpressed. The musician broke the stare and looked down, blinking and rubbing his eyes once.

"...Yeah, that sounds like him."

There were a few long seconds in which Uriel waited for the musician to continue. This was beginning to drag out in a very annoying way. He could try comforting the musician, to make this go by faster, but it would be absolutely out of character for Adam. So instead he glared and waited.

After quite a number of awkward seconds, the musician spoke again.

"Yeah, that's all I wanted to ask about. Go ahead and go, I'll do your commentary or whatever it is for the fights."

Uriel stood and began to walk out of the room, glad to be finally fucking down with this.

"Wait." He stopped at the door, stared directly in front of him, and took a deep fake breath in irritation, waiting for the follow-up.

"...If you want to make eddies, write a love song. They'll go wild for that."

Uriel grunted in acknowledgement, and walked out the door, closing it behind him.

Jesus that was annoying.

One last thing for today.

—

The big guy had stood up about halfway through the evening and walked over to the table. The conversation died down as he approached, he glared down at them for a moment, before glaring at the flatvid screen and changing the channel. It switched over to the current live feed of the arena, his Gemini and two others standing in the center of it.

It was still crazy that he could do that, just have the brainpower required to control a completely different body at the same time as being somewhere else. She felt like there was something he wasn't telling them there, but that was fair. The big guy had already done a bunch for them, she wasn't about to badger him into revealing all his secrets.

Either he told them or didn't, she didn't think he would try to screw them over at this point, he didn't really have a reason to. If he wanted them gone, he would tell them to fuck off. If he wanted them dead, he would just kill them. He didn't need to trick them to do that. It was a strange thing to find comfort in, the idea that someone was trustworthy because they could kill you at any moment and there wasn't a way for you to stop them.

This is why she didn't like thinking, it made her brainmeats hurt. She was more of an 'action' type of gal.

"You all are going to watch this, then you are going to review what they did right and wrong. Brat, you will talk last." The big guy rumbled out. Davey was better at this fighting stuff, he had more practice than the rest of them, so that made sense. It felt a little annoying for that to be pointed out though. She liked to imagine that she could pull her weight in a fight, and compared to most people she could. Not Davey though, and certainly not Big Guy.

Davey was a step above the rest of them. He was too fast and hit too hard for the rest of them to keep up.

Big Guy was an absolute unit in a fight. The dude could fight an army of gangers and win. He might be able to fight an actual army and win. She didn't know, she never saw him fight one by himself before. It was hard to be faster than the guy with the best sandy in the world, and it was hard to hit harder than a guy who could throw trucks around. Both of those combined?

It was difficult to wrap her head around. The idea that a single person was allowed to be so strong. It almost seemed to be against the rules of the universe somehow. It was even harder to imagine a guy who could go toe-to-toe with Big Guy with less chrome and not outright die.

Every now and then, Big Guy mentioned Blackhand. She eventually noticed something about that whenever he did.

Big Guy liked to give things nicknames. Brat was Davey, Girl was Lucy, Blueberry (ugh) was her, Bowlcut (heh) was Tanaka, Woman was Gloria… It went on and on. He almost never used someone's name if he could avoid it.

Blackhand was different. Big Guy always made sure to use his name explicitly at first, and only then call him things like 'asshole' and 'that fucker'. Those were insults, but they weren't nicknames like everyone else had.

To Adam Smasher, Blackhand's name could only be Blackhand.

She wasn't sure what that actually meant.

The girl that Big Guy had brought home earlier stepped into the room, stomping on mechanical limbs identical to his own. Rebecca narrowed her eyes suspiciously at the woman as she walked over to pick up his bench, and then place it down behind him. He glared at her for a moment, before turning back to the screen and sitting down.

She stood behind him silently.

Rebecca didn't know who this person was. All Big Guy had told them was that her name was Spares and that she came over from Japan to help him on Saburo Arasaka's orders. The only time she speaks is when directly prompted to, and so far she's done nothing but chores. Cleaning the rooms, running weapons maintenance, things like that.

The creepiest part was when she just stood in the corner of the kitchen, staring at Lucy and Gloria as they cooked. She was a tall, creepy girl. It would have been less unnerving if she talked more, or at all.

Meh, it wasn't fair to judge, she supposed. Big Guy didn't talk unless he had to, and didn't do anything except sit on his bench if he wasn't working, so at least she was more productive. They really did seem similar, almost like they were related…

…Spares…

…Smasher…

…Was she his daughter?!

"Blueberry, watch." He growled at her, and her eyes snapped to the screen immediately. Yeah, that sounded like a very good idea, she should probably do that. She resolved to be nice to the tall, creepy borggirl in the house, just in case.