One-hundred thousand eddies.
The number kept turning itself over and over in Victor's head.
One-hundred thousand eddies.
An easy gig might net him fifteen-hundred. Basic, simple work that he did to pay the bills and buy some kibble or prepak afterwards. Moving packages from one side of a district to another, beating up (but not killing) some rival gangers to make a statement, dominating a game of stickball to settle things between beaverbrats. Fifteen-hundred would pay his bills for a day, buy him something to eat, and leave him a few bucks left over to get some smash from a vending machine, or check out the arena brawls.
Great fun, that arena was. There was an occasional death, sure, but they all knew that going in, and barely anyone cared. The way most people saw it, it was fully within your rights to have death matches with like-minded people. You usually had to be pretty fucked up or desperate to do that, but there was nothing wrong with deciding to.
Most people were pretty fucked up these days. No point in worrying about it.
His workhorse gigs, the kinda things that he tried to do whenever they came up, net him a couple thousand. Around five-thousand was about what he considered an average gig. They paid his bills for days afterwards, meaning anything he did in the meantime was pure profit, the real money makers. Deliveries across Night City, trips out to the badlands back when the wraiths were still a thing (good riddance, but the extra cash was missed), killing someone who decided to really piss off someone higher up, that sorta thing.
It was a bit dubious to kill people, so he tried to avoid doing those, but if he was running out of cash then he would without regret. Dying due to starving to death wasn't going to make you a legend, so if it came down to some stranger and himself, he knew what he would pick every time. Of course, this didn't apply to everyone, raiding scav dens was just a moral obligation.
It took a long time for those jobs to come back, so things had gotten a bit hairy there for a bit. Thankfully scav groups started returning a few weeks ago, and his wallet was a bit heavier from taking them out. Still, having his input smugly buy food for him was starting to get on his nerves (although it was really easy to turn the tables on her privately, Val was cute like that).
The really good gigs earned him at least ten-thousand. Five digits. He had only had a handful of gigs like that, and they were incredible for getting ahead of all the finances. Stealing an exec's car, Recusing a beaverbrat from a smaller gang, making a huge distraction for the security so that the client can break in somewhere else. These were the big shot gigs, the ones that made eddies hand over fist. They were also the ones that had the biggest chance of him ending up in a ditch somewhere, if he wasn't careful.
These gigs were the kinda thing that he had to be careful about. You couldn't just accept any one of these, you had to make sure…
Pft.
Heh.
He makes himself laugh.
You don't become a legend by being afraid of a little risk. You become a legend by chasing every opportunity life gives you like a cyberhound. You become a legend by going in and winning, or dying in the process of doing something great.
A true man doesn't die even when he's killed.
Needless to say, he's taken every last high-paying gig he's ever been offered.
And this was the single highest paying gig he's ever even heard of.
One-hundred thousand eddies.
One-fucking-hundred thousand.
Not just total, each.
Each.
There were nineteen people here. Even assuming he didn't pay the 'Saka crew, or his own crew, that left nine. Nine-hundred thousand eddies. That was most of the way to a million. A million was what CEOs and shit were supposed to make in a few paychecks. The highest echelon of wealth in the world. The highest ivory towers and distant spirals away from the real world.
Adam Smasher was a merc (technically, right?) and he had enough liquid to drop almost a million (or more) on a single gig. That's the difference between the top and the rest of them, huh?
He couldn't wait to get there. This paycheck alone was going to take him a long way up the ladder. He could pay off Vik, get some more chrome to help out on jobs, and snowball this all the way up to the top.
A short, strangled cough of laughter came from the girl at his side in the car, he looked over and nudged her inquisitively. Val waved off his question and then explained in her slightly sadistic way. In the front seat, Jackie was idly chatting with that Abbey chick about motorcycles or something.
"You remember the one in the Arasaka team with the heavy flak?" He nodded in confirmation and she continued. "His name is Shirou, he's one of the up-and-coming talents in our security sector, hired after the… it doesn't matter." She cut herself off and thought for a moment. She did this sometimes, trying to parse down info to the things he would actually care about.
They were very different people in the end. She was a corporate gal, he was a streetkid. They knew and cared about very different things. She was into that social power thing, he was into a good time. A good time like her. He reached over and kissed her on the forehead, to which she shook off with a face tinted red. He grinned and she growled in embarrassment before continuing.
"Right, Shirou. He tries to hide it, but he doesn't really get along with others in Arasaka. He's perfectly polite, he just doesn't… get the culture?" She tried, and he nodded to show he got it. "Right so he…" she dissolved into chuckles again, before starting over. "He just sent me a message, we talk in the break room sometimes, he just sent me a message-"
She laughed again and forwarded the message to him. He read it out and broke out into chuckles himself.
[Can we swap teams? These people are crazy.]
"Feel bad for the guy, if even half the stories you told me are true." He nudged her again, to which she vigorously nodded, eyes sparkling in amusement. Her face immediately blanked with a voice came over all of their internal agents.
[We are approaching the warehouse, ready for potential hostiles.]
It sounded sorta like the strommers he's brawled against in the past (and recently he supposed, gonks deciding to raid his home turf in Watson), but… bigger? Nah, not really bigger, stronger then?
It wasn't that either. It was more in a way he couldn't really describe. Gave him a jump the first time he heard it. Which made sense considering it was coming from a guy who was a bit taller than the smallest buildings, and strong enough to toss trucks around.
While that was really preem, it also required him to be mostly metal. Victor wasn't really in the mood to replace his johnson with smooth chrome, if you get what he means. Plus, he had heard some bad things about the new V3 Mr. Studd, and he didn't know any real competitors in that field. His dick worked perfectly fine as is, thank you very much.
Up ahead, the line of cars pulled off to the side of a road still covered in corpses, even as medical trucks came by to scrape the poor bastards off the asphate to identify them. There were a whole lot of bodies in Watson now, the estimated death toll was in the thousands right now.
They were starting to call this 'the Deadly Decade' in the news, the most disasters to hit Night City in a row since it was founded.
Jackie pulled the rover over, and they got out of the jeep to move forwards and group up with the rest of the teams. It was a bit odd to be working with so many other people, but they were going to be off doing other things, not directly with him, so it wasn't too strange. Right now they were all grouped together just in case there was an army in that warehouse, and to find any evidence of which truck might be the real one. Should only take them a few minutes, and the trucks were more than an hour or two away from their destination when they checked a few minutes ago.
"Plan of attack?" The jacked dude from one of the other crews spoke up, dude was like seven feet of muscle, he couldn't see any chrome on the guy at all.
"Surround the building and make sure nothing gets out. You all have three minutes." The Legendkiller growled out. There was a brief pause before the Arasaka team practically bolted to cover an angle. It took a moment more for the rest of them to realize they should move out.
[...178, 177, 176, 175…] Smasher growled over the comm as they moved.
Soon enough, all angles of the warehouse were covered and guns pointed at them. Over the comms, Smasher growled down the last few seconds of preparation.
[...5, 4, 3, 2…]
An eleven-foot giant of chrome disappeared from where they had parked. A hundred feet away and around a corner, the wall of the factory exploded. He raised an arm up to shield his face from the wave of dust and rubble that burst forth, and lowered it after a moment to get a look at the warehouse.
It was like someone took a truck-sized sledgehammer and slammed it down on one edge of the building, a chunk of the roof had collapsed down, and a cylinder-shaped opening had formed. It kinda looked like a narrow canyon, the kind formed by the occasional earthquake they get around here. Of course, this canyon was vertical and took a chunk out of a building instead of the ground.
He was glad he didn't have to pay for that. As preem as that was, he'd be dodging headhunters from the construction companies for years after doing something like that. Kicking in a door was really more than enough for him. He supposed being eleven feet tall came with some drawbacks, like not being able to fit in most buildings.
He glanced over to where they had parked again, seeing the four other borg bodies ready to shoot at anything that came towards them. Why didn't he just send a smaller body in? They could actually fit in doors. While busy debating the efficacy of breaking a wall down, a message came over the line again.
[Internals cleared, any runners?]
A chorus of 'negative's and 'nope's and similar responses called out.
[Move in to search the interior.]
"A bit anticlimactic so far, huh?" Jackie spoke as they rose up from their positions behind one of the many concrete barriers that helped stop cars from running people on the sidewalk over. He nodded in confirmation and got up himself before noticing that… What's her name? Abbey? Wasn't getting up. She was staring at that warehouse and tail wagging. That meant she was... Focused? He didn't know much about dogs.
He tapped her on the shoulder, shaking her from daze. She quickly shook herself and rose, hefting that monster of a rifle as she did. She wiped her mouth a bit before marching forwards in a serious manner.
He followed, a bit bemused, and stepped over the holes in the road and the occasional pool of body fluids. His boots were good, but no use in making them stand up to more than they had too.
"Get anything Val?" He asked, to which she replied.
"No, there's nothing I can connect to on the inside, only a few scrambled cameras on the outside."
"Makes sense, Strommer territory." Jackie replied.
"Former Strommer territory you mean." Victor pointed out.
"Heh, true enough. Don't think there's gonna be a Maelstrom after this settles down." Jackie laughed as they entered the hole in the wall, following the buff-guy's team in.
The inside of the warehouse looked like it was used to work on cars before this, which made sense. Tall interiors, a balcony or two to help mount things on top of bigger trucks, rows of decent equipment lining the edges. Of course, the most striking thing was the giant metal man in the center, currently scanning around and little horns swiveling as he looked.
He glanced over to see Abbey doing her best to copy the horns swiveling with her ears. Maybe it was an enhanced hearing thing? He only met up with her for this gig, so he didn't know any of the fiddly details with her yet.
The other teams had already spread out to search around the interior. Namely, their focus was on the elevator that looked unsafe for a normal person's weight, let alone Smasher's bulk in any of his bodies.
The others seemed pretty shocked that he could do that, but was it really that surprising? He didn't know much about the guy, but there were chooms out there with skin that let them turn invisible. Being able to move five bodies around was basically just fancier drones in the end, dude probably had some tech that let him do it. It's not like it was magic or something.
They looked like they were waiting for something but…?
Smasher reached over and grabbed the elevator, before pulling back. The flimsy metal platform was ripped away from its place in the wall, revealing a standard looking shaft. He placed the thing over to the side, and a few of them looked down for a moment.
Without needing a word, that cop-borg's hand shot off and grabbed one of the metal pillars that connected to the balcony above, then, using the line that connected the hand to his arm, he began to climb down rapidly.
Now that, that right there was useful. He could think of plenty of times where he just needed to grab something far away. That was a man's chrome, having multiple bodies was nice, but it wasn't a grapple hand. He turned to lock eyes with Jackie, who looked similarly appreciative of the demonstrated cybernetic.
He might ask Vik if he had some of those in stock.
[There is an unconscious subject, male, caucasian, brown hair, mustache. Matches profile of subject 'Falco'. I will attempt to wake and restrain him.] The mechanical but bombastic voice of the copborg came over the line. After a moment, he spoke again. [Subject is not responding. I shall bring him up.]
[Check the surroundings for tunnels first.] Samsher ordered.
After a moment more, the copborg replied. [There is a crude tunnel leading into the nearby sewer system. It was hidden behind a plate of sheet metal and an engine block.]
Smasher audibly snarled at that. Everyone local at once realized what that meant.
"Kid could be anywhere in Night City right now." Victor spoke, frown on his face. That was a problem that twenty people, no matter how good, couldn't solve. Night City was massive, and the sewers were sprawling. There were tunnels down there that no one remembered anymore, and they connected to all kinds of unexpected places.
"I shall inform Yorinobu-sama of this development." The 'Saka ninja woman spoke up, and Smasher nodded in frustration.
"So… Davey's not in any of the trucks?" The blue girl who had mox tats spoke up, concerned.
"This could be a double-bluff. There's no way to be sure. We have to chase the trucks regardless." The corpo-kid with the blue bowlcut shook his head.
"Our part remains unchanged." The mountain of muscles spoke out definitively. "We can do nothing here except leave it to others for now. The other locations must be ruled out first."
A burst of sound alerted them to a grapple impacting the roof of the warehouse, a hand clenched onto one of the beams above. It withdrew quickly, eventually revealing the form of the copborg and a man held by the waist in his other arm.
The unconscious guy was pulled out, and laid on the floor. The red-haired woman and the ninja-woman moved over to examine his body. The rest stayed back, guns ready to shoot just in case.
"So uhh, why isn't he waking up? He doesn't look hurt." Jackie questioned at a distance.
The two women, getting into a rhythm of checking him over, eventually checked the back of his neck. He wasn't sure what they found, but the redhead nodded at a white-haired girl.
"Lucy, eject his chips." The apparently named Lucy nodded, before her eyes glowed. Into the waiting hand of the ninja-woman, a chip shot out of the unconscious guy's neck.
The ninja-woman raised it, inspecting it closely, before silently handing it off to the older guy in a light 'saka bodysuit next to her. He raised it up, pulling out a small computer and slotting in the chip.
The screen glowed for a moment, before he nodded and ejected it again, handing it back to the ninja-woman. "A zombie chip." He declared grimly.
That drew some rather furious hisses, but it meant nothing to him. He raised a brow, but Abbey cut him off by asking. "...What's a zombie chip?"
"Evil." was the immediate reply from the copborg. "A doll chip that hides itself from internal sensors. Once it's in, you can't tell it's there."
He blinked.
Oh. Yeah that was pretty fucked up wasn't it? He made a note to put a bullet in the head of the guy who did this if he could. The glare of the redheaded woman slowly dissipated, replaced by her previous grim expression.
Smasher growled out, staring at the unconscious man furiously. Zombie chips touched a nerve there or something?
The unconscious guy slowly came to, blinking a few times, groaning, and eventually shooting up in panic and anger.
"W-Where the fuck-!" He was stopped by the sight of so many people around him, before pulling back and pinching his nose to stave off a headache. "G-gah… the… fuck?"
"Where's the brat." Smasher was immediate as he was unmerciful, booming above the just conscious man with the probable headache.
The man shook his head and looked up, a furious look on his face.
"Vincent, has to be. Who else would pull this kinda shit."
The redhead reeled back, looking quite shocked and confused. Smasher paused, and spoke the next line a bit strangely. "Vincent?"
The man on the ground replied.
"Vincent Martinez. David's father."
Ah shit. This was going to be one of those gigs huh?