TWO_YEARS_LATER
YEAR: 2078
WELLSPRINGS
There was the tender sound of a metal hinge springing open, followed by the flicking of an igniter. The pulse of flame glowed red for a split-second before it finally cooled to a soft yellow. A cigarette was pushed into the fire and it began to warm to a magma color, tentacles of smoke expelling from the now-ignited end. [1]
The American lighter was then flipped back closed, the small illumination returning the interior of the Mizutani coupe to a semi-burnished state. The driver, their face encased in shadow, smoked for a few minutes—the window was cracked open, allowing the exhaust to be sucked out into the tarnished air of the city. A few extra million particles would not result in any change to the air quality whatsoever.
The Mizutani was parked within a half-finished garage, on the third floor. The concrete barriers had not been set—if the parking brake would disengage, the car would just roll off the side and smash itself to pieces on the ground below, the driver with it.
From this vantage point, the driver could see the morass of elevated highways as they tangled in the downtown area to the north, a Gordian knot that utterly defied comprehensible navigation. Cold neon lights blaring on the sides of buildings lit the ground under the tires and slid off the polished hood and glass of the coupe. The colors of the animated graphics caught silver eyes from the driver, which were unblinking as she sat calmly within her seat, waiting as the world passed her by.
The driver finished her cigarette and flicked the remainder out the window, trailing a scattering of sparks. She reached down to the center console, where she had left a gray polycarbonate-fiber half-mask. She lifted the mask up and placed it over her nose and mouth, allowing just the grim edge from her eyes to shine. There was a series of clicks as the mask locked into place. Serrated vents on either side of the mask glowed with a vibrant burnt orange color with each syllable whenever she spoke, allowing others to see when she was talking.
She waited for fifteen minutes longer when she finally spotted movement in the rearview mirror of the coupe. Slowly, she reached for the heavybarreled pistol that she kept holstered in her jacket. The scattering lights from the advertisements pushed aside the shadows and revealed a rather odd figure heading her way: a young female, mid-twenties, wearing a lime green gas jacket, a purple mini-skirt, and oversized combat boots. A bandolier with shotgun shells had been slung over a shoulder; the weapon that used the shells was hanging upon her back, a customized model with a barrel magazine. They also wore some kind of tiara that looked like cat ears. Very strange, the driver thought.
The skimpy woman walked over to the passenger side of the Mizutani and leaned over. "Are you Fiona?" she asked. Now that she was this close, it was easy to tell that she was wearing a tiara with stylized cat ears. This was certainly unexpected and it just confused the hell out of the driver from the rather childlike wardrobe. It was not anything that she would even think of going out in, let alone wearing at all.
The driver nodded, still not letting go of her pistol. "What the hell do I call you?"
The woman in the mini-skirt smirked. "Mouse."
"Mouse?"
"That's right."
Fiona looked the woman's wardrobe up and down one more time. This is going to be a long night. But she finally reached over with her free hand and tapped the door lock controls. An invitation.
Mouse took the hint and clambered inside with a smile. She had to position her shotgun between her legs so that she could fit within the cramped interior.
"I have to ask," Fiona said as she slowly took her hand off her weapon, "what's with the getup, exactly?"
"What?" Mouse straightened the sleeves of her jacket. "Not a fan?"
"Is there a reference I'm missing or something? Because it looks like you're attempting cosplay."
"No reference," the skirted mercenary cheekily grinned. "Just part of the official uniform. It catches a lot of people off guard—you're just the latest example of that."
Blankly, Fiona minutely shook her head back and forth.
"Danger Gal," Mouse continued. "Tactical PI firm. Rogue didn't mention this?"
Rogue had not mentioned a lot of things that had been a part of this job, come to think of it. But it was not like Rogue had been in a position to tell Fiona much of anything—this contract had been something of a joint effort between two separate parties, from what she had been told. The client, whoever they were, was contracting with Rogue, and by extension Fiona, to execute the job to the letter using information garnered by a third party that had operated independently from Rogue. Apparently, Danger Gal was that third party.
Quickly, while Mouse was explaining, Fiona brought up another window in her HUD and looked up Danger Gal before the costumed merc could tell her. It was a curious company, one that had been active for more than five decades in which its licensed detectives were paid exorbitant fees to investigate cases for celebrities, billionaires, and politicians. They had a good reputation too, as they had been in the headlines for helping to solve several extortion cases, a rogue trader hacking scandal, and several cold cases across the country, just to list only their most recent achievements. Danger Gal had offices in New York, Miami, Montreal, Los Angeles, DC, Rome, Zurich, and several more across the globe. They had a presence.
And apparently, according to the Net handle, cat outfits were indeed part of the uniform. Tactical suits with cat ears. Fiona was still finding it to be a bizarre combination.
"She mentioned that you had details of the job," Fiona said, sotto tone, "not the firm you were affiliated with. So. Show me."
"Not one to mince words, eh? Finally. Mercs who just talk about themselves all the time are just so boring, you know? Here, hold on a sec." From a jacket pocket, Mouse came up with a foldable holo-display pad, with a trailing wire. She hooked this wire via the car's 12V cigarette lighter outlet and a square screen hovered in midair upon the center console, separating the two mercs.
The smirking image of a man—late twenties to early thirties—was superimposed on the holoscreen. He had his hair gelled in a pompadour. A gold earring glinted on the right side of his face. He had a pointed goatee that looked immaculately aligned. His face was rather reminiscent of a rat's. Fiona immediate took a disliking to him.
"Look familiar?" Mouse gestured.
"Not one bit," Fiona shook her head.
"Not into celeb culture, are you?"
Mouse might have well been asking if Fiona was an expert deep-sea researcher. She had no cause to join in the billions of simpletons who fawned over some cy-singer in a boy band or the host of one of the many human gladiatorial games that were beamed over the airwaves. Having a childhood wiped from her memory had just soured her on anyone who had become obscenely wealthy that prioritized some aspect of fakery. Film, music, theater, they were all just distractions. Culture though they were, it held no currency for her.
"Well," Mouse pointed to the screen, "that is Kiel Graves, the most famous paparazzi in the world. Basically the tabloids' number one guy when they want to get pics underneath whatever artificial veneer a celeb has setup for themselves."
Fiona just slowly blinked, certain that she had misheard. "I'm sorry, it's gotten to the point now where even paparazzi are celebrities in their own right?"
"You'd be surprised. Graves does a lot of networking over the Net, which has resulted in him building up quite a fanbase. He has a whole retinue of huscle—such an entourage frequently makes headlines by trashing any establishment that houses them. Ex-Animals and the like. They love partying like rockerboys, let me tell you."
"I know the type. Don't really care for them."
"Of course you don't—there is something that you and I have that are called standards, you know?" Fiona found it funny that Mouse could make such a distinction without any irony, but the younger merc was back on her original tack. "Anyway, Kiel Graves is only famous is because he's the best at what he does—in terms of the paparazzi sphere—and at marketing himself and his antics. He's built up quite a media empire by selling BDs of him chasing other celebs down the highway while on his superbike, or of him sneaking around a mansion in the hopes of getting a picture of an actress in the shower. A Graves scroll costs quite a premium in the BD market, even the bootlegs."
"Sounds like an exemplary member of society," Fiona drawled, earning a chuckle from Mouse. She tapped her fingers upon the steering wheel again, momentarily lost in thought. "So, the client that hired both of us has a vendetta on this guy, I'm assuming. What's the end goal here? A bag and grab job?"
"Oh, nothing of the sort," Mouse wheedled. "The client just wants Graves dead. No gotchas or other elaboration. Just straight-up flatlined."
Harsh, but not entirely unexpected. Fiona had been on jobs where she suspected that her clients were merely overreacting by having her go in and kill whomever they had marked. She rarely asked, but sometimes she came up with fantasies that she had been contracted to kill these people for the pettiest of reasons, such as someone stiffing them on a tip, stealing their favorite parking spot, or talking out loud in a movie theater. They didn't help her constitution much, but at least they were entertaining enough to satisfy the context she so desired.
She looked out the window, watched the orange glimmer of the sodium streetlamps. Saw the shifting lanes of cars carried down the overpasses and the magnificent spotlamps that speared the clouded sky as they waved back and forth.
Fiona reached for the door handle in preparation, but turned back to Mouse. Avoid any and all distractions, she could hear Ramses saying in her head, but Ramses was not here. This was her show to run.
"I'm curious," she said to her fellow merc, already envisioning Ramses sighing in disappointment in her mind's eye, "a person in Graves' occupation has probably pissed people off for years. How is it that only now is someone putting out a kill order on him?"
Mouse just turned her palms up and shrugged, the reason clearly not something she was losing sleep over.
"You probably don't know just how many paparazzi are getting killed every day. You know the vast majority of them die within three months of the job. The clients can afford to pay for the discretion of mercs. Some of these pros, though, they have the ability to make everything look like an accident. A sideswipe of a paparazzi's bike on the highway. An errant step out into the street—'The light was green, I swear!'—would be an easy thing to explain to the NCPD. Or maybe a well-disguised drive-by or car bomb, which are very popular due to the fact that the physical evidence gets incinerated if done exactly right."
"But Graves has steered clear of trouble until now?"
The Danger Gal merc considered a beat. "There's been an unspoken order on the street that Graves was allowed to get away scot-free. He's been a useful patsy for the corporate interests in drumming up publicity or bad press, whatever the market wants."
Fiona's eyes remained expectant upon Mouse, her body half-turned again in the car.
"About a month ago," Mouse continued, "the 30th Sultan of Brunei was in Night City for a trade meeting with the heads of the top three corps. When the Sultan travels, he doesn't travel light. He brought sixty members of his family and more than thrice that in guards. Occupied nearly the entirety of the downtown InterContinental Hotel for the duration of a week."
"High roller," Fiona commented.
"A devoutly Muslim high roller," Mouse raised a finger. "That'll be important later. But now, enter Kiel Graves. The prodigal pap-extraordinaire. With the head of one of the most well-guarded countries in the world within driving distance, and having a destructive urge to always be pushing boundaries, our protagonist of the story has a brilliant idea: to photograph the media-shy Sultan and his family, and to sell the images on the Net for beaucoup eddies."
"How much will that net?"
"For a full set, probably around 200K."
"Huh. We're in the wrong line of work," Fiona dryly joked.
Mouse adjusted herself in her chair and tried to cross a leg, but the shotgun that she had wedged between her legs was making that impossible. "So, while the Sultan is out on business, Mr. Graves sneaks into the InterContinental, breaks into the Sultan's suite, and leaves behind some cameras in hidden places. That old classic. That night, when the Sultan returns to his suite, he and his wife think they are secure in a place of privacy—because that is what the hotel promised them, so why would they think they're lying? You can imagine what the two of them got up to… and what the cameras captured."
"Ah," Fiona lifted her chin. "Graves got a bit more than he bargained for."
"Now, here's the problem," Mouse knocked her knuckles together. "The cameras were discovered after the Sultan had left—their possession was traced back to Graves. As I said that the Sultan is a deeply religious Muslim, the fact that he and his wife were recorded having sex is breaking a major tenet. There is corporate interest to ensure that Graves does not distribute the images or videos to anyone. The loss of a potential customer like the Sultan of Brunei could do a number on the market."
"So the Sultan doesn't know?"
"And our client would prefer for it to remain that way. They just want Graves dead and the footage recovered—not destroyed."
Fiona made mental notes of her tasks, nodding absentmindedly. The fact that the footage was not marked for destruction indicated that her client saw interest in keeping it around. Potential blackmail material, obviously.
"Filmer dead, film recovered. Got it. Anything else that I should be aware about?"
"Why yes," Mouse said as she looked up towards the roof of the car for a quick second as she accessed her chronometer. "My records show that Graves called the Dark Matter club about an hour ago, wanting some… exotic company."
Fiona caught the meaning. "A joytoy."
"A premium model. She's due to meet him over at 1994 Palms View Plaza, a block away. Tough for her, though. I've heard Graves can be… a lot."
"I don't follow."
Mouse made an exaggerated grimace, as though everyone in the city already knew what she was about to divulge. "I'll spare you the gory details, as it won't help either of us. Let's just say, he derives sexual pleasure through violence. You could probably fill an entire hospital ward with the number of joytoys that he's assaulted over the years. Too many for one to claim there's no correlation."
Bastard. Fiona's hands were clenching just out of sight. Her eyes were shards of iron, dead set ahead. "Should have led with that, Mouse. That'll make killing him even easier."
"Duly noted, but there may be some redemption in your future. If my tracker is correct, the joytoy's ETA to Graves is… seven minutes from now. If you hurry, you might be able to catch her and derive some advantage from the situation, if you know what I'm saying." [2]
Fiona just stared at Mouse for a beat, then she was yanking open the sedan door, simultaneously hitting the latch to the trunk as she jumped out. She quickly opened the trunk lid, grabbed her katana—Errata—that she kept bolted onto the roof there and slotted it upon her back. Now that she was free of the car, the long tail of her trench coat was allowed to billow behind her. She was wearing a black combat vest underneath the coat and a gray tactical turtleneck that weasled up from her collar. They would offer warmth from the unusually cold night.
Then she was running, leaving Mouse with the Mizutani. The car mattered little to Fiona as it didn't belong to either her or Ramses. She wheeled down the concrete steps at the corner of the garage, the bulbs mounted upon the walls flickering weakly.
She made it to ground level and hurried across the street after waiting to allow a rusting garbage truck to pass. Tires from the light traffic made hissing sounds across damp pavement, which steamed in the night.
Checking her map, Fiona put a pin on 1994 Palms View Plaza, which was in sight on the opposite corner. She looked up where Dark Matter was, found that it was located on the same street an entire neighborhood away and plotted an intercept course. She slowed to a fast walk, her eyes scanning the pedestrians that she passed. None stood out, not in the way a joytoy did.
She tried her best to appear casual and shoved her hands into her pockets. The same gait she had seen in Ramses. Her clothes were all bolstered by his recommendation, too. He had not forced her how to behave, how to appear. She merely solicited his advice for such matters, and he was usually right. No sense in going against the grain.
The mask that was fastened around her mouth gave the air a metallic tinge. Not that it was fresh to begin with, but it was handy in filtering out some of the cancer-causing toxins that blew in from across the Pacific from the Middle East. Tumor rates were increasing across the city again—this usually happened in five-year cycles when the winds were right. It was an El Nino year, maybe that had something to do with the recent health epidemic.
But far beyond the protection the mask gave to her respiratory system was peace of mind that no one would have to look upon her deformed face if she could help it.
The Extremaduran's acid attack had damaged her tissues severely. They had nearly been dissolved from being in prolonged contact with whatever compound he had chosen to assault her with. The night of the attack, she never got a chance to look at herself. Ramses had whisked her to the hospital where they had swaddled her jaw in bandages. For three days, she ate and drank with a straw while plastic surgeons attended to her. The worst of the damage had been mended, so they had said, but in their eyes, Fiona knew that they could never fully repair her. She would never look the way she had once, so she had vowed to never look at herself again.
When she had approached the next block, the closest oncoming pedestrian caught her eye. Stilettos, fishnet leggings, a matching red and black striped skirt/jacket combination. Her face was flawless, perfectly applied with makeup that accentuated angular cheekbones. Her arms were the only part of her body that were cybernetic, which were silver and glittered with inset jewels.
Joytoy.
There was an alley that was within range. Fiona considered shoving the joytoy into it. They needed to talk, after all. But she reconsidered—this could be done without violence and without scaring the hell out of this girl. There was always another way.
Fiona waited until the joytoy passed her by, the other woman's head lifted high, not paying any attention to the merc. But Fiona counted to three before she slowly turned on a heel and was facing the joytoy's departing back. There was no one else on the street. Even the muted glow from headlights had completely departed the area.
"He's going to hurt you, you know," she called after the joytoy.
The joytoy paused, then turned, her heel scraping the worn pavement below. The glowing neon on the side of the road bathed the girl's body in a dark crimson, throwing the rest of her features into a shadowy relief.
"What did you say?" she asked. She had a breathy voice, the kind that could only have been instilled through hours of subliminal training.
Fiona began to walk forward, trying not to alarm the girl. "You're going to see Kiel Graves, aren't you?"
The joytoy reached into her pocket. She brought out a taser, but did not depress the button to ignite it. "What's it to you?"
"Nothing," Fiona kept walking, the presence of the weapon a non-factor. "I just want to help."
"Help?" the joytoy unleashed a surprised laugh. She began to raise the taser. "You competition?"
"I am not in that line of business," Fiona growled, perhaps a bit too harshly for she saw the joytoy's face quiver with concern. She took a breath, returning her voice to normal. "You know the reputation Graves has? You think you're going to get out of there without a mark on your face?"
It was plain as day that the joytoy was of two minds of this encounter. She may have gone through the ritual of convincing herself to take this job beforehand, only for Fiona to throw a wrench into all that prep work by questioning such a decision. The younger woman shifted her weight from foot to foot, looking everywhere except towards the merc.
"The damage… can be repaired."
"Not all damage," Fiona said, her half-mask glowing like it was a furnace grill, barely holding back a rampaging flame.
"Why do you even care at all?"
"Because I know about the people he's been hurting. Why should you be his next thing to conquer? Let me go in your stead. You can walk away, unscathed."
"I… I need this…" the joytoy whispered, the taser hanging limply from a hand. "He's paying me a lot."
"I'll cover it," Fiona offered immediately. "Plus tip." While she knew that not all joytoys were glorified indentured servants, as some of them had taken up such an occupation by choice, she pitied anyone who lacked complete control of their body. She knew better than all of them—a body should only be under the command of one brain. No one else should be available to her mind, her thoughts. Even if the escorts thought otherwise, she knew they had a shit deal. Besides, the money would be a drop in the bucket compared to the payday she would receive from this.
The joytoy's eyes sparkled. "The whole tab?"
"Absolutely. I just need something from you."
"What?"
"A copy of your Dark Matter ID." When the joytoy's face suddenly became suspicious, Fiona continued, "Graves is going to check whether I'm with the club and if he doesn't find anything that proves who I claim I am, that's just going to make my job harder. Copying your ID won't set you back. You can set it to a timed token that expires in an hour. I don't care. I'll only need it for that long."
The joytoy's eyes shifted. She had been at this game long enough to not look a gift horse in the mouth, Fiona noted. Her experience had kept her alive this long. Perhaps her insight would serve her well tonight.
After another beat, the girl slid the taser back into her coat pocket. Fiona had rummaged around in her own jacket and had come out with her pack of cigarettes. She offered the pack to the joytoy. A peace offering. The girl took one of the offered cigarettes and Fiona lit it with her lighter. Warm light blossomed between the two, though it reflected dully off of Fiona's optics in iron glints.
"You're a merc, aren't you?" The cherry of the cigarette glowed as the joytoy inhaled. "Who hired you?"
"Can't say. You'd be better off not knowing, anyway."
Accepting this, the joytoy nodded absentmindedly. As she smoked, her eyes then flashed white for a moment and Fiona saw a small APK packet pop into her inbox. She copied the file to her near-field transmitter.
"What are you going to do when you see Graves?" the girl asked after breathing out a thin stream of smoke.
Fiona eyed her destination just down the road, a stiff breeze exposing more of her silver eyes in the dead night.
"I'll just make sure he doesn't hurt anyone ever again."
When Fiona finally approached the haven that Graves had locked himself away in, she had already allowed several minutes to pass for the joytoy to put some distance between herself and this place. No telling what was going to occur inside these walls and it would be better if more innocents gave the block a wide berth.
She made a slow circuit of the perimeter of the building beforehand, which appeared to be an old factory that had been converted into a lofty studio. She noted the four-meter-high walls that surrounded the zone, which were punctuated by security camera poles that lorded over the entire area. There was a loading dock in the back—a sliding gate was situated here to allow large box trucks passage. She marked every detail on her mini-map before she headed back around to the main entrance.
Two machinegun turrets flanked the double-door entrance once she passed by the opening in the walls. They did not lock onto her as they had been set on passive. Fiona headed up to the door and pressed the intercom button. She did not have to wait long for a reply.
"Yes?" Gruff voice, scratchy from the cheap intercom speaker.
"Dark Matter," Fiona curtly responded.
A grunt from the other end. "All right. Someone will meet you inside."
The door buzzed and Fiona yanked it open. The hallway beyond was long dark, with purple UV lights gently wafting like an aurora in the sky. Laminated prints behind glass frames mounted the walls, which featured people Fiona assumed were celebrities, in various serendipitous moments of their life. Many of them had that deer-in-the-headlights expression, having assumed that they would be safe beyond the eye of a camera, at least until Graves had come along and thoroughly nixed that notion. She noted that many of the pictures were depicting women in rather revealing outfits—there were no images of men anywhere.
At the end of the hall, four well-dressed young men, muscular and strapping, headed her way to meet her. They were decked in a variety of hip and sleek clothing, well-tanned, and many of them boasted jewelry in the form of rings, gold necklaces. Trace cybernetics were embedded in the flesh of the neck for one of them. Another of the group was even wearing sunglasses indoors.
"Which one of you is Graves?" Fiona asked as the men came within range.
"He'll be here in a moment," the leader of the entourage said. He had this upper-crust tone to his voice that drove Fiona the wrong way. Like he was someone who had always managed to get what he wanted in life. He gestured with a hand. "Need to see your credentials."
Fiona flatly blinked. Her eyes then flashed as she initiated the handshake link. The man's own eyes pulsed as he received the data. His lips pursed as he reviewed the information and he nodded.
Something was amiss, though, as the man at the head of the pack made a small gesture with his head and suddenly the group of four had Fiona completely surrounded. Flanking me. She noted the position of each of the men, but kept her eyes trained on the one standing right in front of her, the one who had been talking this whole time.
The entourage leader smirked as he looked Fiona up and down, leering at her with a Cheshire cat grin. "They let you go out looking like that?" he asked, no doubt noticing that Fiona looked nothing like a joytoy with her half-mask and her trench coat, not to mention the katana hanging conspicuously at her back.
She didn't take the bait. "I'm on the clock," she deflected. "Graves is going to be unhappy that you're cutting into his time. Night's still young. There are others after him, you know."
"Oh, I do," the man nodded with mock sympathy. A low chorus of chuckles echoed across the group with Fiona in the center and she shuddered from the sound. "I do, indeed. But you're not like the other joytoys that Mr. Graves has ordered. None that I've ordered, come to think of it."
"There aren't many like me around," Fiona mustered through a clenched jaw.
The cluster of men around her seemed to tighten. She could feel the heat radiating from their bodies. The heat of sex and violence. Old memories of her in that freezer, her body subject to the whims of men without her able to do a damn thing about it, flashed in the corner of her mind.
"A bit of a problem, however," the man said as he reached out a hand and reached towards Fiona's unflinching face. He then twirled a finger in her hair, curling it.
"What problem might that be?"
"Mr. Graves… he always orders blondes."
Fiona's eyes narrowed, her breathing never escalating. Her heartbeat was ice-cold and she remembered her hatred.
"That is a problem," she agreed, "because I'm here."
The leader of the entourage didn't catch the double meaning, because his smile turned even more cruel.
"Who sent you?" he whispered. "What do you want with Mr. Graves?"
"I'm afraid that's between me and him. He hired me, after all."
"Cut the shit, you whore. He'd never hire you if he was blind." He raised a finger, as if he had suddenly been struck by a devious idea. "You know what? I think we need to test if you're truly good enough for Mr. Graves. You say he ordered you, yeah? Then prove it."
You don't want that, asshole. "How?"
The UV lights enhanced the stains in the man's teeth as he held his grin. "An audition. For all four of us."
More grunting laughter from the men. Deep and throaty, breath rasping from ingesting too many anabolic steroids. Testosterone surging in their veins, overriding all other urges. Their sweaty faces turned pig-like in the thin light, the off-blue hue causing an unnatural glow in their cybernetic optics.
The man, to prove his point, placed his hand upon Fiona's neck. His slick palm met her skin there—her flesh was cold against his comparatively burning appendage. But all throughout the assault, she never flinched away. Never blinked in fear. She just stood there, taking it.
"You'll need to get in line," she hissed, rage flashing in her ceaseless eyes. "After Graves."
"Bitch, you're never going to get a chance to see Mr. Graves at all tonight."
"You never know," Fiona shrugged, "this part is always easier when I'm invited inside."
Then, right when she finished her sentence, Fiona's program, which had been boring through the ICE of the studio's security system for the last three minutes, hit the root access level. She had been totally surrounded and no one had ever caught on that she was rummaging through their systems from the get-go. Without hesitation, she honed in on the electrical systems, found the power transfer switch, and manually disengaged it.
The last thing that she saw before the lights went out was the head huscle's expression, which had slipped into a puzzled state, which Fiona had decided was probably his most natural state of being. It would have almost been comical had she not been so serious.
With a bang, everything flipped to black.
Fiona was already reaching for her sword by then, her optics in infrared mode.
In the darkness, metal slashed.
Liquid could be heard splashing to the ground, followed by thicker sounds of wet clumps exuding through ragged openings. The chorus of bone and cartilage being ripped apart made an unnerving soundtrack. There were several gurgling sounds in the shadows from someone dying, followed by weak moans, and then nothing.
The mountain range of white powder looked like a long floating island upon the flat mirror. Microscopic grains, atomically precise, dotted the reflective surface. A small metal tube edged to the end of the line of synthcoke. There was a sharp inhalation and Kiel Graves threw his head back as he sat in his plush leather chair, rubbing his nose and spluttering a wet cough. His eyes were rimmed red and his skin was pale, plastered with sweat.
"Oh… Jesus Christ…" he moaned to himself. He wet a finger, scooped up the coke that he had missed, and began rubbing it along his gumline in his mouth. There was a slight tingle where the powder absorbed into the tissues. This was the good shit. Not the sort of scop that one could find over in Watson, to be used as tea sweetener. This was high-roller shit. The kind that Arasaka would use to sprinkle over their sushi in their penthouses. Chemically pure, worth every eddie.
The office he sat in was a mess. Trash was scattered all over the floor, some of it piled in the corner. The desk in front of him was stained with old coffee and tobacco, along with the sheddings of marijuana. An array of video screens was at his back, showcasing the security footage of the studio at all times. Techno music by Tinnitus was playing from his custom B&O sound system in the corner. A jittering beat, like electricity sliding over wet muscle. It only rushed adrenaline in his brain, mixing quite nicely with his high.
He reached into his desk and got out another vial of synthcoke. It was going to be a long night and he wanted to party all through it. He had different types of coke for all occasions. High burn for rapid-onset action. Mid-tier to retain enough lucidness when performing. And slow-cookers for keeping his levels simmering, creating a pulsating need to re-up, an almost vibrant pain.
Graves tuned his comms to one of the security men that guarded his door. The silent type who knew not to ask questions. "Yo, has that joytoy from Dark Matter made her way over here yet?"
"She arrived just a couple of minutes ago, Mr. Graves. Antony and the others are in the middle of screening her."
He turned in his chair and looked up to find the screen that was displaying the scene in question. And… yes, just as mentioned. Antony and three others were in the middle of surrounding a more diminutive woman between all of them. The usual intimidation tactic, Graves was pleased to see. It never failed in unnerving the women who came through those doors. And Graves liked it when they were nervous. He could only get hard when they were scared.
"Good. When they're finished, tell them I want to see her right—"
He was thrown into blackness in the next second. One moment, light. The other, completely sightless. Off in the distance, there was the whine of the air conditioning unit winding down. The blank glass screens of the security feeds crackled with static electricity and there was an uncomfortable grinding sound that had begun to emanate from the vents. [3]
"What the hell?" Graves spat, but his comm link was dead. He slowly got to his feet and, like a blind man, held his arms out as he groped his way over to the security desk. "Breakers!" he roared to anyone who was within earshot. "Someone get the fucking breakers! And get the miniguns online! Someone answer me, for fuck's sake!"
No one called out, though there were a few odd sounds from behind the closed door that led to the hallway. Graves couldn't afford to worry about that now, as he was a sitting duck in all of this blackness.
He found the security desk and knelt so that he could crawl underneath it for a moment. The studio had a secondary breaker panel installed here, but Graves had piled up boxes in front of it, never thinking that he would have to access it at all. After much grunting and maneuvering away the offending packages, he finally located the handle to the hatch and flipped it open. Running a hand down the various switches, he decided to flip the one that was the largest and located near the top. That had to be the master switch.
Graves' efforts were rewarded by the emergency lights flickering on weakly. The chorus of hard drives spinning up became apparent, everything coming back online. Something in the distance roaring, like the grinding of gears.
He backed on out from underneath the desk and stood up. He looked at the array of screens, which were flickering back on, one by one.
The paparazzi's eyes found the one screen in the corner. The one where he had seen his men begin to have their fun with the joytoy. They were still there, but they were no longer standing. They were no longer each in one piece, as a matter of fact.
A bead of sweat drizzled down Graves' nose as he slowly pushed his face forward in shock. The screen was grayscale, but it was easy for him to see that the floor and walls were soaked in blood. "Oh, shit," he murmured. Two of his men, Antony included, had been beheaded. Severed limbs draped the floor, cut from clean strokes. One of his entourage was sitting up against the wall, tongue lolling out of a slackened jaw, his intestines spilling out from a ragged cut in his belly.
And the girl was no longer on the screen.
The rest of the cameras were starting to darken again, but now they were registering the words LOST SIGNAL repeated endlessly, as if they were taunting him. Someone was destroying his cameras. The clatter of automatic riflefire was now apparent elsewhere in the compound, a deep chugging noise that seemed to vibrate the walls. Getting closer.
Graves looked to the desk, where he had stashed his pistol. Quickly, he opened the drawer and grabbed it. It was just a dinky .22 that he used for S&M purposes. He never thought he would have to actually use the damn thing.
Some great force then slammed against the door to the hall, like the arrival of a demigod. Graves jumped and spun, fingers shaking as the screens behind him began to fizzle with angry static. He levelled the pistol with an uncertain hand.
"Oh, shit."
Fiona strolled down the halls as if they belonged to her. [4] She passed by cracked candelabra and peeling wallpaper in this cigarette smoke-infused hellhole, the iron glow of crooked lamps wafting over her. With her right hand, she held Errata, which was dripping a faint trail of blood that its glowing razor edge had spilled in the past minute. In her other, she held a compact submachinegun with an extended magazine. She shot or sliced at anyone that dared cross her path. At range, she even levelled the occasional quickhack. With her upgraded optics, she had the ability to see thermal outlines as well as map wireframe icons where her targets were by using subsonic pulses. No one could touch her.
She had access to the security system now in totality. All base parties had been shut out—she could see everything.
As she passed by a darkened room, she fired almost indiscriminately into the blackness. It was not random—the whitened glow from the huscle hunkering in the corner had been lit up bright as day in her infrared vision. There was a shout, followed by the thud of a body dropping.
The slide to her submachinegun then locked open. Empty. Without a free hand to slot in another magazine, she just dropped it to the floor. Let it lie there.
She stepped over the bodies of the men that she had killed—no women were among the lot, unsurprisingly. The sound of blood sloshing around her boots, the carpet soaked. Her breath echoing into her half-mask. The hall up ahead was adorned with pillars of light, as if they were adorning a kingly resident past the steel double-doors that were emblazoned with Kiel Graves' initials, with a crown positioned above them. Seemed that Graves did not have a self-esteem issue.
Heading in that direction, Fiona was about to kick the door in, when her proximity sensor trilled a warning. She whirled, sword whipping a steel gray line in a flat arc, but two titanium-fiber-laced hands attached to arms the size of a gorilla caught the blade mid-strike, sparks grinding from where the edge of the sword met the reinforced palms. From the darkness, a massive human being, laced with cybernetics and doped to the gills, leered at her. Tubes that pumped anabolic steroids bulged the flesh at their neck. Their eyes were nearly black, with small yellow pinpricks that looked like distant coals burning in their sockets. They were shirtless, veins ridging over their chest like a tangle of vines.
Fiona tried to jerk her weapon out from the last of the entourage's grip. The man snarled, spraying Fiona's face with spittle. His grasp on Errata was too great—she could not extract it by force.
She reached down and grabbed a 9mm pistol that she had holstered at her hip. The netrunner could only get out one round, the report whanging loudly in the enclosed space, before the massive man knocked it out of her grip with a contemptuous backhand. The bullet had only penetrated an inch into his reinforced abdomen, trickling a pathetic amount of blood.
His hand still swinging wildly, he delivered a blow to Fiona's face that sent her flying, her hands finally tearing away from her sword. She slammed to the ground and rolled until she was on her stomach, her hands brushing a discarded fast-food wrapper and a crumpled receipt. Her hair wild around her eyes, she looked up. The enforcer had carelessly tossed Errata to the side, his hands now reaching toward her as he looked to twist her head from her shoulders with his raw strength alone. She was still recovering from being thrown, her brain running in slow-motion.
Fiona was still figuring out what to do when everything was decided for her.
The red hieroglyphics began to appear in their ghostly scroll at the edges of her vision. She smelled mercury. And there was that distant laughter, raw and inhuman, like a digital scrape.
She closed her eyes. Oh, god, not again…
The disruptive energy left her body with the force of a shotgun. She could hear the crackling of the man's cyberware exploding and the sizzling of his burning flesh. He began to scream, a higher pitch than she would have expected, but that quickly faded once the flames had enveloped his entire head and burned away his vocal cords.
There was a massive thud and Fiona opened her eyes. The man was lying on his back, the flesh of his head having blackened and peeled away to expose his wire-laced skull. She got to her feet with a groan and bent down to retrieve her katana. She spared one last look at the dead man, a pit in her stomach filled with freezing liquid, chilling her to the bone.
Her face felt wet near her eyes. She brought up a gloved hand and the fingertips came away shining with a dark liquid. She had been bleeding from her tear ducts.
Fiona groaned, uncertainty clawing at her from the inside. The night had been going so well, too. And now this had to happen. Again. Third time in two months. And never any correlation with the other circumstances, too, except when she was in a time of great stress.
Now her stomach gave a twist, a sickness waiting in the wings. Breathing was getting difficult. She doubled over for a moment to gain her air back, heaving in and out. In and out.
Why? Why is this happening to me? How am I doing this?
Killing someone from this virtual disease, this catastrophic rot that roasted a man from the inside out, always felt to Fiona like someone was plunging a hand into her gut and rummaging around, trying to find things to rip out. For the past two years she had routinely examined herself, trying to find out any indication to the source of this ability. This… affliction. But everything was all for naught—neither her or the multitude of ripperdocs that had looked at her could spot anything wrong with her cyberware or any programs within her deck that was the source of these intense series of attacks.
Her chrome was not the issue. It was just her.
Recovering after a spell, she straightened back up with a rasp, the blood drying around her heated eyes. She stormed towards the double doors, raised a foot, and broke the lock with a brutal kick. The doors whipped open and she surged inside.
Graves was standing in front of a desk, brandishing a pathetically small pistol in his hand. He was in the process of aiming towards her center-of-mass, but she hacked the pistol before he could pull the trigger and engaged an auto-reload followed by a hammer ignition half a second too early. The .22 bullet exploded in the chamber of the pistol, sending fine shards everywhere like a miniature grenade. Sparks and micro-shrapnel sliced and seared at Graves and he yelled, dropping the weapon. Fresh blood dripped from his mangled right hand, which had absorbed most of the explosion. Strips of dripping meat dangled from his appendage. He backpedaled, his heels hitting the edge of the desk and he wheeled his arms as he fell into a sitting position upon it, looking scrawny and timid as Fiona approached.
"Who are you?" he cried out.
Fiona didn't answer. She was not paid to talk to her victims. She didn't want to talk to them. They were not worth the words.
That didn't seem to be acceptable to Graves. "Goddamn it, who are you?!"
His limbs were quivering all over the place. Fear that the drugs could not cool.
Fiona stepped underneath an overhead light, long shadows lengthening her face, making her look like a specter. The blood that had oozed from her eyes had made long streaks down her cheeks to the top of her half-mask, nearly harlequin in nature. Her grey eyes, nestled in darkness, found this sniveling little man, and she tried to wonder what she would be expecting of herself if she hadn't insisted on Graves' dossier to start with.
"P-Please," Graves now had his hands clasped together, as if in strict prayer. "W-We can work this out. I've got eddies. Footage. My own personal collection. Help yourself, it's yours! Just let—"
The netrunner was half-paying attention even though her unblinking eyes were watching his every move. Begging. They all begged. They all thought they didn't deserve it even though they did. They were trapped in delusions of their own making. It was rare when she came across a target who truly believed his punishment was just. Then again, the self-aware typically would not have let themselves get involved in such situations.
She let herself stare off to the side, lost in contemplation, but still monitoring Graves in case he tried anything. She could ignore his words—there was nothing that he could say that she wanted to hear. Instead, she tried absorbing the room she was in. Noting how the shadows seemed to lurk in the corner. The tacky awards that glittered on the broad steel desk and on the credenzas near the door—meaningless memorabilia from unmemorable institutions that prioritized glitz and gossip over anything of import.
It was a shock to the system when she switched viewing modes and saw beyond what the UV light was hiding. Strewn up along the walls, previously hidden in the darkness, was a collage of photographs. Women in various stages of undress populated each one. Some of the subjects, if she could call them that, were lucid, while others looked to be passed out. A few even had some kind of liquid splattered upon their bodies. Not one among them looked like they were happy.
Fiona could see in their eyes what the dead lens had captured: a hope-shattering, destructive, despair. The fear was so palpable it radiated off the walls from their collective debasement and how they trembled from the shame and the agony that pummeled them, if the bruises and cuts on some of the women could be interpreted.
Each and every woman in the tableau of nudity was a trophy to this deranged man she was now before. Graves' hand even intruded into a couple of shots—the tattoos on the fingers were an exact match.
And if her rage was not bubbling over already, it did when Fiona noticed that some of the women in the photos looked rather young. Unquestionably too young.
He had violated their bodies as if they were his playthings. His pets.
She whirled back to face him, flames practically shooting from her eyes. She began to stomp towards the paparazzi.
Graves noticed the change in temperature and held up his hands, pleading. "Wait, waitwaitwait! It's not what you think! Artistic expression, that's what it was! They were modeling—I have the receipts. I was paying them for the photos, not for anything else! You think—you think I was doing something untoward with them? Wait just a second! I have the receipts right here—"
Fiona did not let him babble for long. She took one final long stride, gripped Errata with a firm hand, and gave a mighty swing.
There was no resistance as the sharpened blade passed through Graves' neck.
The paparazzi's head flew from his shoulders, bounced off the desk, and rolled out of sight. At the same time, the tips of his fingers had popped off as if under pressure and scattered upon the floor since they had been held up at neck-height when Fiona had made her blow. A violent arch of blood rose from the stump, like it was a tentacular appendage trying desperately to retrieve the head and place it back from where it had been removed. But gravity acted upon the long spout and it drenched the front of Graves' body as it splattered back down. The stump bubbled and simmered like a cauldron before the body finally lost balance and toppled sideways to the ground, leaking all over the carpet.
AFTERLIFE
It took Fiona an hour to navigate through the city with the current level of traffic. By the time she had parked, gotten past Bronson the bouncer, and entered the cadaverous abyss that was Afterlife, the place was in full swing.
Claire was tending bar, cracking the top off a bottle of sake as she served it to three Japanese men in slick black suits. The clink of glasses added a percussive layer to the throbbing underbeat of the synthesizer music that pumped in from the ancient speakers. [5] Voices in eleven different languages could be discerned in snippets, Fiona's auto-translator having a hell of a time trying to keep up with every word.
She headed parallel to the bar counter. One half-toasted expatriate noticed her and raised his glass, an invitation for company. She denied him with just a hard glare, thankful for the privacy that her half-mask provided.
Ryo was sitting at the end of the counter, a bottle of beer in hand as she leaned back, just listening to the fray around her. She looked up and saw Fiona, a smile coming to her face. She waved the merc down.
"You just get here?" she said after she hopped off her stool and gave Fiona a hug in greeting. Fiona returned the gesture, though the hug was considerably more hesitant and lighter. Body language was never Fiona's strong suit.
"Had to finish up with work," Fiona shrugged.
Ryo picked at Fiona's coat, which she now noticed was dotted with dried blood.
"I'll say," the slender woman said. "But, since you're here now, I take it that everything went well?"
If you count there being one less child rapist on the streets tonight, then yes. "I'll be able to sleep soundly tonight, if that's what you're asking."
Patting Fiona's shoulder affectionately, the still-smiling Ryo took a quick drink from her bottle and gave the room a small recon. "Got time to sit and talk for a bit?"
That didn't sound like a bad idea to Fiona, but there were still several things on her itinerary that she needed to accomplish, the endpoint for her next item being just feet away from her right now. She could not help but feel a little guilty, however. Over the past couple of years, she had gone on several jobs with Ryo, all of them successful, and earned quite a bit of cash and rep in the process. "In a few, maybe. I gotta close out my biz," she said, jerking her head in the direction of the booth at the far end of the club.
Ryo nodded, understanding. "Don't let me keep you. Hey, when you're done, make sure to see me. I found another bootleg that I think you ought to see."
"I've picked up a couple myself while in Dogtown," Fiona said as she started to walk away. "I'll swap with you when I have time."
"And let me know when you come across another duo job. It's always easy when it's the two of us out there in the city!"
Fiona did not disagree and left Ryo with a parting wave.
Rogue was sitting alone in her usual booth, cross-legged, absentmindedly watching some of the newsfeeds on the screen that was positioned over the table. Fiona drifted through the crowd until she had caught Rogue's eye. The fixer had been expecting her, anyway.
"You wanted to see me, Rogue?" Fiona asked. The message she had received from the fixer had been brief. The actual contract had been closed while she had been en route to Afterlife, the payment already in her account after she had sent over the footage of the Sultan's private life, destroying Graves' hard drives soon after. Fiona had established a good working relationship with Rogue over the past year and a half after demonstrating that she had the aptitude for such a line of work. Whenever Rogue came calling with a job, she always prioritized it above everything else, because that was what one did when the city's top fixer entrusted you with a contract. If Rogue thought you were worthy of the effort, you needed to damn well ensure you stayed in her good graces.
"I was going over the footage you sent me," Rogue said as Fiona sat upon a tangential edge of the U-shaped couch. The elder woman uncrossed her legs and straightened up. She was most likely the sharpest person in the bar right now. Fiona had never seen her get drunk or high before. It was as if she had a rapidfire metabolism that could synthesize any substance in an instant, breaking them down to their base molecules before they could take action. "Not the explicit stuff, obviously—I don't want to see some fat, bearded man's cock on my feeds. The forensic after-action, I mean. Good work, there. The client wanted to make a statement. I'd say you gave them one to proclaim by decapitating that vicious little fuck."
"They're satisfied, I hope?"
Rogue brought her hands together and leaned forward slightly. Her long whip of black-gray hair dangled forth like a fox's tail. "There's been a development. Called you over here for a reason. They wanted me to arrange a meet. Seems they had some interest in you."
Fiona's eyes narrowed, the background noise decrescendoing to a dull simmer in her ears. "I don't talk to clients, Rogue. Remember?"
"Of course. You learned from the best, that much is obvious. Still, they were insistent in having me ask, not to mention they were willing to be here tonight to meet you in person."
The netrunner swept her gaze across the crowded bar. Was this a setup? Apart from Ryo, who took cursory glances at her every so often, there was not anyone in this place that was making a point to study her specifically. It didn't stop Fiona from feeling like a laser sight dot was somehow centered square on her forehead by a sniper hidden in the rafters, her extremities taking on a chill.
"They're here?" she growled.
"The next room over," Rogue said as she reached for her drink and knocked back a hefty swallow, studying the merc sitting near her.
"What do they want to talk about?"
"Seeing as you did their job to the letter, I doubt it's anything bad. If you want specifics, I'm no help. They didn't tell me shit." The fixer set her glass down and she gave a grimace as the alcohol burned her throat. "I'm not forcing you to make a decision, though. Stay, leave, I don't care. It's your choice, your rep, kid."
Fiona seriously considered making a beeline for the exit. There was a rush in her pulse, like she had taken a huff of nitrous or an octagon of clarity. This was far outside of her baseline already. She didn't even want to know that clients were trying to reach out to her, and every fixer knew this. They were supposed to be the barrier between them and the origin of the sordid request. If Rogue was breaching protocol like this, then this client, whoever they were, was not just some average Mr. Who off the street. But she already knew that—they had the funds to hire both her and Danger Gal to do two halves of the same job.
In a way, it would be that curiosity that would forever damn her.
She got up from the booth and headed towards the private rooms. Afterlife was not a dive bar—it was known for throwing out people who attempted to fornicate in the rooms, so Fiona was not at all concerned about her safety in that respect. In a way, she was almost flattered that someone was going to all this trouble just to meet her, but she was fully prepared to offer them nothing but disappointment once she had heard this client out.
Only one of the rooms was occupied, but the door was unlocked. Fiona engaged the door and stepped inside, only to freeze once she saw what was inhabiting the area.
The DaiOni exoskeleton was nearly completely silent as it rose to greet its guest. At three-and-a-half meters, its angular head, which was a composite of armor plating surrounding a cycling crimson optic, nearly scraped the ceiling. Powerful arms that could rip a man in two hung at its sides. Clawed feet scratched at the ground below, the soles large enough to eclipse the head of a human. Tubes that pumped fluid and oxygen grouped like vines around the exoskeleton's cowling. Scratched two-tone black and yellow paint, the color of a cracked dawn under a curtain of clouds, seared at the thing's construction. A large grenade launcher was mounted to its left shoulder. On its back, a high-caliber machinegun that had been converted into a rifle large enough for the exo to carry.
It was a killing machine.
"There you are," the DaiOni purred, a female voice, Estonian in origin, snarling through the vocabulator. "I've been waiting for you."
Once the surprise and shock had died down, there was nothing left but blithe acceptance waiting for Fiona. A scan with her optics confirmed what she had instinctively known in that split-second of horror.
"Rzhevsky," she nearly sighed. The name hovered over the DaiOni, which was displaying a bevy of statistics about the exoskeleton that she would have to read later.
"Ah, no doubt Ramses has informed you of me already," Rzhevsky said. "Perhaps it was overdue that the two of us finally meet."
Indeed, for Ramses had explained to Fiona over a year ago about Rzhevsky's existence. The sack of meat that lived within the DaiOni was Michiko Arasaka's enforcer—her own Adam Smasher, to put it bluntly. Though such a comparison meant very little ever since Smasher had met his end back in Arasaka tower by that one mercenary whose name the city was not liable to forget anytime soon. The way that Ramses talked of Michiko, and by extension Rzhevsky, it was clear that he did not hold them in too high of an opinion by way of their station in life. They were corporate to the core and Ramses made a deliberate point to shun everything corporate unless under extreme circumstances.
Thus it was her nature to emit that same distaste towards corpos and their zaibatsus that swallowed up cities and countries wholesale. She didn't need to think about how she should react—the logic that she had been told made a certain kind of sense to her.
The air in the room felt stale against her eyeballs. Fiona lifted her chin.
"Are you speaking for anyone other than yourself?"
Rzhevsky laughed. An ugly sound. "Why else would I be here? You think I would come to a—how do you say—shithole like this by choice?"
Fiona had no answer. Spend a lot of time in one place, no matter how grungy, and an attachment forms with or without effort.
The netrunner widened her stance and folded her hands behind her back. Her fingers brushed the sheath where she kept Errata and she momentarily had the idea of whipping the blade out, imagining the metal catching the electric glint from the television screen in a searing blue line.
A thought came to her and she quickly linked into cyberspace. Her avatar became a bolt of lightning, screaming through the net, picking out nodes of information from the superhighways that rose from the digital sea in response to her specialized query. A profile began to materialize in the form of knowledge, her brain parsing the raw data out into something far more tangible.
"Then," Fiona said, her brain thrumming with energy, "if I were to connect the dots, I would wager that the employment of Danger Gal is also linked back to you, correct? And by extension your handler: Michiko Arasaka." Her eyes scanned back and forth, her mind buzzing. "I suppose it's fair to guess that Michiko doesn't just contract out to Danger Gal, does she? Oh, she would certainly make use of the firm's services liberally, seeing as she owns it. Or am I wrong?"
A rumbling grunt emitted from Rzhevsky. "Very clever, mercenary. Not many have managed to figure out that linkage. How were you able to?"
Sources and citations blossomed in Fiona's HUD—the after-action report from her data pull. "Her college major is a matter of public record. Stanford University. Criminology. Not hard to see where the trail leads."
The answer meant little to Rzhevsky as she made a point of swiveling her head to the side, the quietest of servos whirring from the motion.
"Sit," the DaiOni hissed. "What I have to say may be of some interest to you."
It sounded like Rzhevsky was prideful of the fact that she was the voice of authority in this situation. Fiona did not like that the disdain from the cyborg was so obvious, but she had no choice but to bite her tongue in this situation. Glaring at the DaiOni all the while, she complied, but took her time in the action to indicate that she was sitting because it was of her own volition and not from anyone's request.
"Onto the matter at hand," Rzhevsky said as she positioned herself in the corner, the glare from the screens projecting an azure glow upon her armor. "Why Michiko has harbored some interest in you, I have no idea, but you've apparently had, shall we say, an admirer for some time now."
"Oh?" Fiona arched an eyebrow. "She's been keeping tabs on me? Then how come she won't meet me in person?"
Rzhevsky just stared at Fiona and the netrunner realized only too late that she had unintentionally insulted the cyborg by implying that Michiko's lackey was a clear totem rung lower than what her interest allowed.
"Let's just say that she prefers to exercise a modicum of caution for the occasion," Rzhevsky said, though this time with a more sinister undertone. Barely contained rage was evident, even through the vocabulator.
"Yet, I don't know her. We've never met, let alone spoken to one another."
"She wishes to bridge that gap. In due course."
Fiona forced herself to breathe deeply. Something was amiss here, she just couldn't figure out what. "An Arasaka actually wants to meet me. Why?"
The DaiOni's arms spread ever so slightly, the motion of a shrug apparent. "Let's just say that there is an opportunity for you, here."
If her HUD had the ability to warn her of veiled meanings within context clues, her entire view would be filled with flashing symbols right about now.
"You mean a job. An Arasaka contract."
"The color of their eddies remains the same. The clientele is the only true difference."
The netrunner felt her face grow hot. "I don't take corpo jobs."
This was true—she had made a habit of steering clear of any operation that had corporate influence behind it. Not discounting Ramses' disdain towards such jobs, the corporations had a habit of doling out assignments that were dangerous and overall, less conducive to survival, mostly because they never gave out anything but big jobs. Jobs that brought mercs up against literal armies, even. Jobs that required weeks of prep-work to accomplish, with multiple steps needing to be completed to ensure a successful mission. Only someone who was psychotic would make a habit of taking corpo jobs on the regular.
"Your patron does," Rzhevsky pointed out.
"He has an established relationship with you," Fiona defended. "One that he never wanted in the first place, let's make that clear."
But Rzhevsky did not seem to be all that interested in the conversation as she waved a hand and straightened as tall as the room could allow. It seemed to Fiona that the cyborg was trying to convey the fact that she was considerably more talented and armed than Fiona would ever be, like she viewed the younger woman as nothing but an amateur. The sack of meat piloting that DaiOni was very assured of their own abilities, which was something that, to Fiona's annoyance, she was still very much not in control of.
"To be honest," Rzhevsky said, "I don't really care what your answer is. I was only asked to convey the message. Yes, there is an opportunity for you to have a contract. Yes, it is being sponsored by a member of the Arasaka family. Yes, the payout is substantial." The cyborg's solemn optic cycled. "If you have any more questions, that's contingent on you accepting the job."
"Well, thank you for… conveying those facts to me," Fiona shot back with no small amount of sarcasm, dipping her head in an imitation of a bow. She then stood from the couch. "You can convey this back to your boss, then: my answer is no. I appreciate the offer, but Michiko Arasaka doesn't know how I operate."
She turned to leave, but not before Rzhevsky had the final say.
"Michiko thought you'd refuse at first. I was authorized to provide you with a sweetener upon successful completion of the job."
Fiona had the door open by this point. It would be such a simple effort to just turn the corner and… leave.
Yet, she turned around, all the same.
"A sweetener," she grimaced, less of a question than a statement.
Rzhevsky hunkered forward, no doubt pleased that she had garnered the netrunner's interest. "Michiko Arasaka has recently come into something that you might find of interest: a missing piece of the puzzle to the search you've been conducting. Eighty megabytes in a stainless-steel shard."
"And how does Michiko know what I'm looking for?" Fiona asked, but realized that asking such a thing was an exercise in stupidity. All knowledge in the world was at Arasaka's fingertips. All they had to do was raise a finger and they could have it served to them on a silver platter. They could know everything about everyone, if they had the interest.
What could be on that shard, though? Something from her past—it had to be. A clue to who she really was, perhaps.
"Degree in criminology, remember? Finding things out is more than a hobby for her. And now she happens to know one bit of information that will put you on the right path of your search."
"You still haven't said what that is."
Rzhevsky let the moment linger a little bit longer, obviously enjoying herself.
"NetWatch, merc. She knows the name of the man who signed off on your indenture at NetWatch. The very same man who threw you into a freezer for the better part of your life. His ID. His location. Everything about him."
The cyborg noted how Fiona's body language froze up completely, her eyes widening.
A laugh wormed from the DaiOni. "Revenge certainly is a powerful motivator, isn't it?"
A/N: I managed to get this chapter out right before my little vacation, so the next one will be delayed a few days for sure until I return.
I also want to take this opportunity to thank VictorioMWolff-Haddock for adding Concrete Bushidō to the list of fanfic recs on Cyberpunk's TVTropes page. That was a very kind gesture and I hope that the totality of the fic will further enforce that decision to place it there.
Playlist:
[1] The Lighter
"Sightings"
Christopher Drake
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
[2] Dark Matter I (Street Level / Joytoy)
"To the City I - Alpha"
woob
Return to the City (Original Soundtrack)
[3] Dark Matter II (Synthcoke / Blackout)
"To the City II - Unexpected"
woob
Return to the City (Original Soundtrack)
[4] Dark Matter III (Errata / Decapitate)
"To the City III – Take Me With You"
woob
Return to the City (Original Soundtrack)
[5] Afterlife 2.0 (Source Music)
"Dystopia"
ALEX
Magnatron 2.0
THE CAST (so far):
MAIN_CAST:
Ramses: Night City merc. Solo. Unknown age. Unknown origin. Adept in: precision weapons, infiltration, assassination.
Fiona (JP422-7C): Netrunner, formerly in the employ of NetWatch. Early twenties. Unconfirmed origin.
SUPPORTING_CAST:
Michiko Arasaka: Corpo. Head of Hato faction of Arasaka and member of the corporation's board of directors. 68 years old.
Rzhevsky: Unknown age. Estonian origin. Housed in DaiOni cybernetic conversion. Personal bodyguard of Michiko Arasaka.
Wakako Okada: Fixer in Japantown. A former mercenary. Known for her brusque manner and high (sometimes unreasonable) expectations with the contracts she holds.
The Extremaduran: Assassin. Hails from Europe. Under NetWatch employ. No Night City identification. DECEASED.
Rogue Amendiares: The so-called Queen of the Afterlife and former partner of Johnny Silverhand. Night City's best fixer, highly sought after by mercs due to her lucrative payouts and all-biz attitude.
Ryo: Merc. Former Tyger Claw. An avid collector of BDs from the Edgerunner crew and a friend to Fiona.
Tobin: BARGHEST commando. Based in Dogtown under the command of Kurt Hansen. Moonlights as a merc during rare opportunities of shore leave.
Kross: Ex-Malestrom turned merc. Retired from the gang but quickly got bored of life without the action. Went independent for the juice, not the cash.