Unknown
The world burned. The air turned into fire and sound.
He was reduced to a crawling thing on the corner of a disintegrating world.
A time passed.
He pushed up. He dragged himself out of the pool of red.
He was back here. He took uneasy steps out of the sanguine sea.
He righted himself and looked down at his body. Meat and Metal.
The thing was sitting in front of the pool and waiting for him. It's tail flicked back and forth.
He stomped past it. He started the maze again.
—
Lucyna Kushinada
She was beginning to be entirely too fed up with everything to stay paranoid.
She huffed to herself as she did another sweep of the local net to make sure nothing was sneaking up, and then checked her tripwire programs to doubly make sure. Both of these were operating off a cyberdeck that she was completely separated from, as to prevent anything from following the line back and killing her while she was asleep.
She didn't intend to dive into anything again until she got entirely new ICE and personalized it to her satisfaction. At least three layers. Maybe four. Until then, she was going to keep everything at at least one or two degrees of separation from herself. She got cocky, and if the asshole hadn't been just fucking with them, she would've died. That wasn't something she could afford to do again.
She exhaled, letting the smoke out of her lungs and into the air around her. It was barely better than the smell of garbage all around Night City, but it was still better. She heard a disgruntled and deliberate cough behind her, and shrank in on herself a little to ignore it. A few moments later a hand snatched her cigarette out of her mouth.
She jumped to try and snatch it back, but she couldn't quite get to it in time before it was held high above her head. She growled at Gloria, who was looking disapprovingly down at her seated form.
"Smoking is bad for you chica." Gloria stated as she leaned down a bit herself. Her red hair tied up in a ponytail and her new white lab coat over her shoulders.
"They're my lungs, I get to give them cancer if I want." She refuted hopping up slightly to snatch at it again, falling short once more. Gloria instead pulled out a pack from her coat pocket and held it out for her. It was a pack of nicotine gum.
Lucy grumbled as she took the pack, opening it up and popping a stick of the cigarette replacement into her mouth. She couldn't even smoke in secret anymore, Gloria was hounding her like Maxtac over her chosen vice. She can just buy new lungs later if it got that bad, it's not like they couldn't afford it anymore. This was bullshit.
Meatbeast rubbed against her leg, reminding her to reach down and scratch it a few times. It purred before flopping over and deciding to sleep on the ground. This was unusual, as normally it was sleeping on top of Smasher.
Smasher was, underneath all that milspec chrome, genocidal intent, terrifying voice, and other generally intimidating features, apparently just as much of a metalheaded gonk as David was. She had gotten explicit confirmation with this upon staring at David after Gloria explained what a circadian half-cycler was. Her gonk looked downright considering of the fucking thing.
Oh yes David, get approximately 2 hours of sleep overall every night for decades, that's not bound to drive you crazy, oh no no no~
She loved him, but he turned his brain off the moment he heard of new ways to put metal in his body. So maybe an implant that turned part of his brain off all the time wouldn't actually change much. No wonder he and Smasher got along so well. She had made that comparison awhile ago, but she had since looked at her internal logs, cringed at how melodramatic they were, and deleted most of them. She would die of embarrassment if anyone ever read any of those. She took out her frustration on the stick of gum, chewing vigorously and furiously.
"Anything so far?" Gloria suddenly asked, looking through the window and out towards the wider world. Lucy shook her head and responded in a manner that was halfway between dry and on-edge. "Nothing so far."
Yesterday night, during Spare's shift, a group of people came by, deployed a spider drone, and blew up the gate that led from this drydock into the wider ocean. Spares apparently didn't do anything to stop it, because they were just outside the area that she was told to guard. She had since been corrected on proper guard procedures.
She had also since been corrected on ever calling the NCPD for anything, as they showed up with a fullborg that shouted about justice at their helm to sniff around the place for about an hour. Eventually they left again, but she had no doubt they had their own tripwires set up in case something came back. That might be helpful if they were attacked, but the NCPD were a bunch of 'shoot everyone, ask questions later' nutbags so it'll probably be more harm than good.
Although Lucy didn't have much room to talk herself about proper security, she didn't have tripwire programs up along that area back then. Now she had at least one in every camera and system within five hundred feet. The real issue was the water that poured in.
It took an hour or two, but eventually the water had completely filled the drydock. None of them had any real way to watch underwater right now, so Lucy simply did her best by angling all the cameras she could afford over there, and getting her AIdol to watch that region specifically. The image of her gun being plugged into a cyberdeck projecting the image of a stereotypical Japanese office lady typing on a computer was a slightly amusing one. (And cute, but saying that aloud would get the thing to be annoyingly smug for a while).
So they had one massive potential weakspot open underwater, and a whole bunch of tripwire programs that might potentially be disabled long before she became aware of them going down, an unknown group making probing actions, the NCPD on alert for this region, and their current scariest killborg unconscious because he was apparently a massive gonk.
Did she miss anything?
It wasn't paranoia if they were actually out to get you, but she was getting pretty fucking tired of being paranoid all the time recently. Paranoia burnout? She wasn't sure what it was yet.
It was early in the morning, Spares was asleep, Becca was asleep, David was asleep. The only ones awake right now were herself, the cat (debatably, judging from its little snores), and the woman currently stopping her from smoking wonderful, addictive deathsticks. She let her glare turn to the nervous looking woman and chewed louder, expressing her disapproval without words.
Gloria cuffed her on the back of the head without looking. Her recoil caused the cat to wake up, slowly blink, and walk away.
She turned back towards the screen and stared, chewing more thoughtfully. Her brows furrowed, her lips pulled down into a frown.
The worst part was that they were forced to be reactive. Reactive with far less protection than normal. They didn't have any information on what might be coming after them, no contacts they could really rely upon for more information (that one guy, Wallace, might turn on them now they weren't 'Saka), they couldn't send someone out to scout without risking being picked off…
Stuck on a boat until something happened. It wracked her nerves like nothing else.
Of course, seemingly just to spite her, one of her tripwires went off immediately after having that thought. There was probably a god in the net, and it was laughing at her.
Immediately, she opened her quick-hack interface to buy her time to think. She didn't know this a few months ago, and her old cyberdecks didn't have this feature, but older style sandevistans were apparently integrated features in most corporate internal cyberdecks. Speeding up the thought process but not actual movement (which wasn't required for quick-hacks anyways). So no wonder corporate netrunners were able to wipe the floor with streetrunners, they had so much more time to plan their programs out.
Yet another unfair advantage, but one she was more than happy to take for herself. She was apparently 'running at a disadvantage for most of her life, go figure.
First thing's first, she checked which camera had its tripwire sprung, and then didn't connect directly to it. She instead connected to another camera that covered the same region, and connected her optics to it instead. While she was doing this, a pre-set dummy program activated to make it seem like she was observing the tripped camera.
That proved to be the correct choice, as the dummy program promptly turned into digital scrap as something tore it apart. She narrowed her optics as she got a good look at the local netspace.
That was a Sabertooth, an anti-program Daemon. So they knew she wasn't actually dead from the fact that 'she' was destroyed by it. Clever bastards. She turned her gaze down to meatspace. Her features scrunched in worry and consideration.
That was at least 10 big guys in heavy armor and carrying big guns, followed by a group of less armored guys, and then at least one netrunner supporting them. A distinctly bad situation, she needed to take care of the netrunner first.
She pulled back from the distant camera, and tapped a key on the cyberdeck in front of her. This would send everyone a message that would wake them up. They were currently being attacked. Then another keystroke activated a program that would constantly rez Dragons. The anti-program Dragons weren't exactly the most offensive daemons, but they were uniquely sturdy and robust against anti-program effects in ways most other programs weren't. This cyberdeck could handle three dragons and one automated re-rezzer. It would be the best she could do right now.
This would hopefully lock up the enemy 'runner long enough for her to go support the counter-offense.
She pulled back from netrunning and pushed herself up from her chair, just in time to see David burst into the room with two shotguns raised and ready. He locked eyes with her and nodded, before silently jerking his head to signal a roll out. He gave a reassuring smile at Gloria immediately after.
No need for words at this point, they had been on enough jobs together. She moved, before being stopped by Gloria's hand on her arm.
They locked eyes. Gloria's brows were furrowed. Lucy gave a firm nod, and left the room.
Gloria was the last line of defense in case everything went sour, her job was to wake the big lug up if the inner alarms went off. She would be staying onboard and waiting for that scenario. Hopefully, she wouldn't be doing anything at all this entire time.
She sped up and got next to David, who slowed just enough to match pace with her. Watching David run was always a pleasant experience (it was the legs), but trying to keep up with his unfair pace was not. It was bad enough in his old body, let alone the supertech one that the asshole put him in. Now he was entirely too fast, that supersandy made it even worse.
Everyone else faces potential downgrades for leaving Arasaka (which was well worth the tradeoff, in her opinion), and David gets the mother of all birthday gifts. It was disgruntling.
Good, but disgruntling.
"What's it look like, Lucy?" He wasted no time in asking her, even as he slowed to a brisk walk to match her jog.
"At least ten hostiles in heavy armor, backed by at least twenty hostiles in less heavy armor, and at least one netunner. Netrunner is dealing with my daemons right now, and they were ready for me with some of their own."
"Weaponry?"
"Heavy guns and grenades, the kind Smasher might lug around on quick and easy gigs."
"Can't afford to take a hit then." Gonk, you should be thinking that for all guns, not just the big ones.
They linked up with Rebecca and Spares next to the stairs, and proceeded downwards as David relayed the current plan of attack. Spares was carrying one of Smasher's HMGs (why did he have so many of those things? Who collects 30 of the exact same model of gun and puts them on display? That's psychotic), and Rebecca had a big railgun currently in both hands, disproportionate with her relatively small frame.
"Spares, you're with me on the front. We're gonna focus fire on the meatboys first, get as many guns off their side as quickly as possible, remember to keep moving. Becca, you're gonna be sniping the heavy armors. Make sure to stay away from the main action. Armor is gonna be tough for the rest of us to deal with. Lucy keep the netrunners off us, keep us up to date on the field, and when you find the time pick off targets on the flanks. If you see an armor, go for the gun."
He paused for a moment, and turned his gaze to each of them in turn, receiving a trio of firm nods to show that they understood the overall plan of attack. He nodded back, and raised a finger.
"Link radios and move out."
A moment later, their communications were linked. Another moment and David and Spares were already almost a city block away and racing towards the assumed attackers. Becca sighed before jogging through the fortifications to reach the roof near the last wall. Lucy linked her vision to the cameras again, and checked on the net-battle.
One of the dragons was in the process of re-rezzing, the other two were still holding strong against swords and saberteeth. She frowned and raised her battledeck, swiping a finger across its interface and rezzing her Killer.
The image of a Samurai clad in heavy black armor and wielding two swords appeared in the net next to her, another few programs were rezzed to reinforce it further, and finally she let the Daemon loose so she could focus on the meatspace again.
The Killer raced forwards and cut into a sabertooth. Her dragons took advantage and tore into it further, ripping the daemon apart.
Nodding, she slung her monowire forwards to wrap around a jutting streetlight, and swung off the edge of the Ebunike. Her feet trailed water for a moment, before commanding her monowire to retract. It cut grooves into the metal pole as she hit the concrete running.
She opened her quick-hack interface again. The world slowed to a crawl as she linked up with the forwards cameras and began to provide overwatch.
In a distant alley, she saw a small group of hostiles move like normal, even under the effect of her increased perception speed. A slight shiver raced down her spine at that, speedware was always intimidating.
What was far more welcome was David and Spares crashing down, a blur even within the slowed perception of time, and quickly began to cause bloodstains.
They missed one. She uploaded an Overheat. He began to burn to death.
A small malicious smile grew on her face.
It was only fair to enjoy killing people trying to kill you, wasn't it?
In the distance, the sound of Rebecca's massive sniper barked. On one of the cameras, an attacker moving across the street lost his head and collapsed.
—
6th Street
Morton took a drag as he stared at the screen within the armored truck. Next to him, his overwatch was barking orders and callouts about the current locations of the defenders. He used his lips to move the cigar to the other side of his mouth and frowned in contemplation.
He activated his sandevistan, giving him time to think.
They had lost 6 men in the first two minutes after the net-battle began. He focused on what the linked biomonitor readouts told him. Four instances of fatal damage spread across the upper torso and arms. One instance of fatal damage from overheating cybernetics. One instance of overwhelmingly fatal damage to the head. So they had lost four men to an unknown attacker in close range, one to an unknown netrunner, and one to a sniper. Smasher could account for two of those by himself, but not all three. The locations didn't line up.
The netrunner kill didn't line up either, why only take out a single unit? They had seen what he had done to Pacifica. Dogtown stopped existing after Smasher had burned just about everyone in it all at once. Just killing one when he could get everyone wasn't in his M.O., nor was summoning daemons like the netfight was telling him.
They weren't fighting Smasher right now. He might not actually be at the Ebunike, despite their sources assuring him that he was. If he wasn't there, then who were they fighting? If it were those kids he picked up, then why were they here without him? If he was present, then why wasn't he fighting himself? To test his kids?
His sandevistan expired, and he began to bark orders. "Order ground squads to group up and form defensive lines. Roof squads are to triangulate sniper and relay targeting information to the AV. Amphibious squad is to locate the netrunner first and eliminate both them and their setup once they get onboard."
As a well-oiled machine, his second in command began to shout the appropriate orders through the channels, and the tactical map began to reflect their sudden shift in directions.
Alright Smasher… why aren't you fighting right now?