Concrete Bushidō

by Rob Sears

There are no clean getaways in Night City. That's what Ramses Vogel tells himself before every job. Calm and methodical, he is the perfect merc, unbothered by emotion, in no way prone to error. But all that will be altered, when Ramses makes a fateful decision that betrays every one of his instincts, to save the life of a stranger, changing his own in the process.

13. Chapter 13: Lapse of Judgment

CITY_CENTER

The construction lift creaked and rattled as it climbed onward and upward. [1] Fiona stood within the gridded metal box, her eyes situated towards the ground, hands in the pockets of her coat, while the skyscrapers of downtown fell away from her through the window behind her. The arched angles of yellow-and-gray cranes in the background all collected to form a spindly forest aloft over the concrete ground.

It took a minute and a half for the lift to reach the thirty-fifth floor. Unlike a traditional elevator, the doors did not open automatically. A light in the corner of the cramped box simply blinked green. On and off. Fiona flipped the latch to the lift and shoved the sliding door aside with a hand. There was a scraping noise as the door was pushed upon ill-oiled rails. Good thing Fiona had no designs on being silent right about now.

The building was half-finished, still in the throes of manufacture. A thin layer of dust coated the roughened gray ground, which crunched as Fiona walked over it. The supporting pillars had not been painted yet, the discolored bricks the color of basalt. The sounds of rush hour traffic could be heard thanks to the wind hurtling through the building, launching the noises up to her level. A breeze whisked through the open floor, in through one end and out the other. Fiona buttoned up her jacket to seal herself away from the cold, noting the pressure of the katana against her back shifting.

Construction sites were the perfect places for wetwork. Little in the way of security systems or guards, plus less pedestrians around to potentially fuck things up. They were terrific for scoping out areas of operation that concerned her contracts, not to mention that they were more than handy as a sniper's nest from time to time. Fiona had grown to have a strong preference for sites like these during her tenure as a merc, on advice from the best in the business.

Hands still in her pockets, she passed by a line of saw horses that were arranged against the half-finished wall. Stacks of plywood were a frequent sight. Loose orange cables that connected to yellow electric light tripods threatened to trip her as they made a tangle upon the floor. At the far end, silhouetted against the light of the coming morning, she could see a scissor lift.

She passed through a section where the walls were nothing but sheets of plywood in between steel beams. To the north, standing stark still in a chiaroscuro frame, as if her eyes still needed to adjust to the dark, was a solitary figure garbed in similar tactical gear. At the figure's feet, a sniper rifle on a tripod stand had been mounted near the edge of the floor, the barrel pointed out across the avenue towards the high-rise on the other end of the street. By the size of the barrel, it looked to be chambered in .338 Lapua Magnum rounds—those had a range of 1,500 meters in ideal conditions. A serious bullet for a serious merc.

The helmet of the figure's head angled in her direction as she approached. The optics gleamed—a slash of vermillion light searing through the blackness like a comet locked in place.

"It's me," Fiona said by way of greeting. She walked up and stood next to Ramses, who did not shift at all upon her arrival. It took everything Fiona had to not stare up at him, knowing that she could not be able to hide the forlornness from her eyes.

It was hard to be near him and not feel safe. From all the stress and anger that she accumulated while out on the streets, coming back to Ramses had the effect of all that burning away. Like being in a sauna, all her muscles relaxing. Such a feeling was underrated, especially in this city.

Ramses gave a murmuring nose that could have been mistaken for a mechanical groan from far below. With the wind whipping at him, he crossed his arms. "Contract closed successfully, I take it?"

There was a lot that Fiona wanted to divulge right now, especially regarding her conversation with Rzhevsky, but she did not want to jump into it just yet. She wanted this moment to linger just a little longer before the conversation would invariably flip back to her own indecisive mind, which was already fogged over with several warring storm fronts. If only there was a switch in her brain that could cause her to just… stop. Stop with the worrying. Stop with the focus on all the what-ifs. There was only so much agony a person could take.

She flicked her eyes upon the man several times in quick succession. She was having trouble judging how long each length of eye contact would be deemed appropriate. That maddening feeling that had started months back was playing up again, making her nervous.

"Rogue paid me in full," she acknowledged, hoping that Ramses would recognize the unsaid portion of her statement. She then eyed the mounted sniper rifle at Ramses' feet. "Haven't closed yours yet, I take it?"

Ramses nodded. He then gestured towards the building across the street, some nine hundred meters away. "Thirty-second floor. Southeast corner. See it?"

Fiona used her optics to zoom in. Pretty new building, judging by the lack of scarring from acid rain. Where Ramses had been indicating, she just saw glass windows masking a darkened expanse. There was a balcony with white umbrellas and half-full pottery trenches that were comprised of more brown soil than greenery.

"I see the location," she said, "but not anything of note."

"Not yet," Ramses said. "At least, according to the contract. Client expects the targets to arrive at the condo, in that location," he pointed across the way, "within the hour. Man and a woman. Instructions are to flatline them both in a manner that is… 'less than subtle.' Their words." He checked his digital chronometer, mainly to assuage his impatience.

"Could just plant C4 in the condo," Fiona jokingly suggested. "How's that for less than subtle?"

Ramses levelled a look at her, indicating slight exasperation. "I think they want the bodies to be somewhat identifiable at the end of all this."

Fiona raised her eyebrows as she caught his stare. "You knew I wasn't serious."

"Your delivery still needs work."

She shifted her head in acceptance as she resumed staring out towards the high-rise. The wind slashed at her, threatening to cut through her coat. At least her face was warm from the half-mask that covered her mouth. Her firered hair was whipping everywhere, though, and at several point she had to brush several rogue strands from her eyes.

"You know," Ramses said after a few more minutes, his voice cutting through the gale with ease that she nearly jumped off the edge from being startled, "you can talk to me about whatever is on your mind."

How the hell could he read her that easily? Even with more than ninety-percent of her body completely covered or masked, he still could know the fire and fury that raged within her head as though as he was glancing at an open book. Was her body language really that bad when she was around him? Did he truly know why?

For that matter, did she?

There was a part of her that wanted to tell him about what had happened during the job, not after. When that blitz of raw energy had escaped from her like a restless phantom, scorching her target from the inside out, panic had momentarily boiled within her, only to fade when the realization came that she had been unharmed during the assault. But it was of little reassurance—the attacks were getting more frequent these days. They were happening once a week when before she would be lucky to go a month without them occurring.

Was it a countdown to her destruction? A pattern to these ravaging infernos in their digital nonspaces? Fiona had not been able to figure it out. Nor had the three other ripperdocs that she had visited in secret. They had scanned every part of her body, down to her atoms. There was no sign of any degradation—she was a 100% fully-functional human. The parts that were still organic, at least. It was certainly not cyberpsychosis—Fiona had sparingly added chrome to her body over the years, only on an as-needed basis. She was nowhere close to the chrome threshold where her brain patterns would be affected and her own self-identity would fade away.

No, whatever this was, it was her disease to bear. Her job to contain. Ramses had no idea how often this was happening to her and, up until now, she wanted to keep it that way.

Fiona sighed as she adjusted the collar of her tactical undershirt. She peered over the edge of the concrete floor, looking at the glowing canyon below and the dismal trail of headlights casting their pale and abstract shadows upon the buildings before the sun would fully rise and eradicate them all.

"There was… a caveat to this latest job," she admitted.

Ramses did not say anything. He merely shifted his head so that he was slightly looking at her, but still angled in on the area of operation. One eye on biz. One eye on everything else.

"I was approached by Rzhevsky when I stopped by Afterlife earlier today," she said, watching Ramses for any reaction, even though he gave none. She knew that the name rang true with him, as he had been the one who had told her about the cyborg in the first place. "She wanted to offer me an 'opportunity' to do a job."

"For Arasaka," Ramses finished the incomplete meaning.

"Yes."

Ramses was silent for several long seconds, his head dipping down as he appeared to mull over the proposition.

He then glanced back toward her. "What did you tell Rzhevsky?"

Fiona sighed, considering how gung-ho she had been about denying such an opportunity, only for her convictions to crumble away once the revelation of a very troubling topic had been unveiled in the stuffy and stifling atmosphere. "I said I'd think about it."

"Hmm."

It was the absence of any definite decision that caused Fiona's blood to run hot. Finally, she whirled upon him, her arms flung out. "Is that it? Is that all you have to say?"

Calmly, Ramses stared at Fiona as if he were admonishing an unruly child and the younger merc immediately felt her ears burn under his judging glare, but she held herself firm, willing to stay the course.

"What do you want me to say?" he asked, voice controlled. He was always in control.

"Just… tell me what I need to hear! That Arasaka can't be trusted! That I shouldn't take jobs from corps! Just… something!"

She was tired of having the world in shades of gray. It was far easier to make do when everything was reduced to a binary ruleset. No gotchas, no loopholes. Just zero and one. Good and evil. After all, good code did only what it was programmed to perform. No more, no less.

"One corpo job will not mean that you are automatically made a corpo," Ramses reminded her. "There can be advantages, under certain conditions, in which having a corpo in your debt could prove to be valuable. The MegaCorps are the church and state for their employees. Naked artificial power—it's all a smokescreen. A carrot to dangle in front of the corpos who believe they're currying favor with their bosses, as well as their boss's boss. And on and on it goes. We can still be above it all. The one thing you need to find out for yourself is how deep does your involvement run and if you truly want to be a part of whatever plan the corporation has in mind."

Why did he have to be so cynical all the damn time? The collective hatred for a corp and its employees was engrained into the DNA of Night City's populace. The corps were the ones who had screwed up the environment, the quality of life, inflation, politics, damn near everything. They were responsible for the billions and billions of lives that were now in poverty and why places like Night City had come to be the way they were. The last several global wars, for example, had not been caused by some national ideology butting up against another. They were squabbles over resources: oil, shipping lanes, data bitrate. To some mercs, their entire existence was to stick it to the corps and prove that they held little regency over those they considered their subject, with mixed results. Others, like Ramses, seemed to content to walk within eroded lanes that had been etched long before, knowing that his path had been tread by those that had found success in life.

"You hate taking jobs from corpos," Fiona reminded him.

"I avoid them as best as I can," Ramses said. "Sometimes they can be… persuasive. Unfortunately."

His voice hid something. Caged in a shadow of its own that even its owner did not want to bring to light.

"Persuasive?" Fiona pressed.

"In the form of eddies. That, or maybe the item you want most that the street cannot obtain. Money means nothing to them and they are quite willing to throw it out—they tend to get quite bored of their mundane lives even with all the money in the world. Sometimes, they also offer prototype tech as incentives, which can give mercs quite the edge while out on the street. Everyone has their price and it's all a game to the corpos in figuring out what that might be."

Fiona could scarcely believe Ramses was saying such things. This was not what she had wanted. She had hoped that he would have immediately steered her away from making the one choice she did not want to make.

But the armored merc was glancing back towards the glass of the high-rise, finding them to still be dark, and then returned to looking at Fiona, who was blankly staring off into space.

"They offered you something else, didn't they?" he asked.

Thinly, Fiona nodded. The wind roaring in her ears. The glimmer of morning sunlight off the distant glass spires.

"What?"

"A datashard," Fiona's voice was hollow, as if it was being emitted from a distance. "It has the name of the man who made me into a netrunner."

"At NetWatch?"

"Yes."

Ramses crossed his arms, now understanding. "So, you thought I'd be able to persuade you otherwise?"

"What do you mean? I wasn't going to take the job—"

"No," Ramses shook his head. "You were. And it is quite the price tag that Arasaka has associated to you. Which begs the question—" a foot slid upon the dusty ground and Fiona soon felt small as the merc's larger frame nearly eclipsed her as his shoulders were now square with hers, "—why haven't you taken it?"

She did not know how to answer him at first. She had gone over several scenarios in her head about voicing her most private feelings but when it came to admitting the truth to him in a time like this, there was no air left in her lungs to offer a defense.

After a while, she finally swallowed, staring back at Ramses' helmet, knowing he could see everything that was going on in her mind, even the scarred flesh that her half-mask protected from sight. "I've been searching for any clue to my past for two years," she said. "The Net has given me nothing but dead ends. If there's anything that can say where I came from, it's either trapped behind the Blackwall, or stored off-site in an airgapped data silo somewhere in the city. Arasaka could find it in two minutes."

"They could do more than I ever could, that's true," Ramses coldly agreed. "Is it the certainness of closure that's giving you pause?"

"N-No, it's…" Fiona ran a hand through her dark red hair, her fingers curved as if she meant to tear out a chunk of her scalp in anguish. She gave a rueful sigh and nearly sat down in defeat. "I don't know."

Ramses then placed his hand on Fiona's shoulder, the touch causing her head to whip up and look straight at him. The gesture was firm, almost paternal. His hand so close that the light played off the scratches that had scarred his gauntlets. She fought to control her breathing, but was grateful for the calming presence. A reminder of her own being.

"Remember what I told you all those years ago," he said, his vocabulator softening his words. "It is not my job to define what path you walk. I can give you all the advice I know, but in the end, the choice is yours. If you know what you want, then you should be willing to do anything to take it."

Frustrated, Fiona hung her head. "I knew you were going to say something like that."

"Then why ask, if I'm so predictable?"

She raised her head up, her gray optics filled with reflected sunlight. She gently took his wrist with a hand while she placed her own palm into his. Their fingers nearly interlacing. His hidden warmth, buried beneath Kevlar and microcrystal layering.

"Because," she chuckled in defeat, "I needed to hear it."

Ramses' chin lifted, as though he was about to say something further, when something caught his eye to the left. Fiona followed the direction where he was looking.

The level of the high-rise across the way was now lit from within, exposing a grand hallway that was decorated with abstract paintings of varying sizes. The hallway connected the rest of the condo to the front door, which was where a handsome man with a strong, tanned face and graying hair, dressed in a very expensive suit, was hanging up his coat in a nearby closet, while a woman in a white dress was slipping off her heels behind him, her brown curls slipping past her shoulder.

Without a word, Ramses slid from Fiona's grip, bent down, and picked up the sniper rifle from where he had placed it on the ground. He folded up the barrel stand, checked that there was a bullet loaded in the chamber, and flicked the safety off.

Fiona backed up a few steps to give Ramses space. Best to give him as little distractions as possible while he was working.

The rifle had a smart scope that interlinked to Ramses' helmet. He would not even need to shoulder the weapon—the zoomed-in view would simply be projected within his digital display, the reticle always honed in on target. All that was needed was a steady hand and a gentle squeeze of the trigger so that body movement would not alter the course of the bullets.

Ramses knelt, lifting the rifle into a steadfast position. He was reading constant weather reports by the minute, checking the wind. If a sudden gust played up, that could mean the difference between a hit or a miss. And locales by the sea tended to have constant swings in air pressure. The advantage was not in his favor. Though, at least no one would be able to tell where his shots would originate from—the echo would fragment and repeat itself from the angular buildings and, given the angle of the sun against the high-rise, his muzzle flashes would be invisible from his position.

Fiona watched him. There was always something that she could learn from the merc. The poise. The patience. The ability to adapt to any situation, not necessarily improvising but overcoming.

She overlooked the scene with a dispassionate air. Watching the man and the woman hang up their clothes through her zoomed-in optics, smiling at each other all the while, their hands occasionally flitting across their partner's clothes. Teasing. A tete-a-tete of their own language.

It was hard to watch all of this and not fantasize about the lives the two victims were living, though she would never reveal her misgivings aloud under any circumstances. Were these people career criminals who had finally crossed the wrong mark? A politician whose reforms were proving unsavory with the criminal underbelly? Or were they truly innocent of everything except being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Their jackets and coats now stowed, the couple were now walking down the hall, arm in arm. From the way they were looking at the other, holding themselves close, they were very much in love. A forbidden love, perhaps? Who was to say that the two of them were married, and that they were in the midst of carrying out some ill-advised affair? In some way, Fiona envied them. They put on an air of carefree idleness, that they could take some solace in the fact that they could just shut out the rest of the city and only focus on each other—

The rifle boomed and Fiona jumped slightly, her eyes slowly blinking as she took a deep breath out of instinct. When she opened her eyes, she was looking at the high-rise again, noting that one of the glass windows had a whitened spiderweb imprinted upon it. Beyond, a stain in the shape of an octopus had become emblazoned against one of the paintings hanging on the far wall. Below the painting, as if contorted in some invocation, the man lay on the ground, an arm draped over his head, not moving.

There was a thick sound of metal cycling as Ramses reloaded the bolt-action rifle. The spent brass casing clinked on the ground and rolled against Fiona's foot. She looked down at the where the casing was still smoking and then lifted her head back up, staring at the AO again. The woman in the high-rise was still standing, turning around in a daze, as though she was sleepwalking. She then seemed to notice the body of the man next to her. Her hands clasped against her mouth, muffling her scream. She then bent down to attend to her husband, lover, whatever.

There was another loud report and another blotch, lower than the first one, announced itself on the wall. Now the woman was lying next to the man, her white dress stained beyond repair, another bullet hole fragmenting the window so that the view beyond would forever lack cohesion.

"Pretty good," she found herself saying, unable to tear her eyes from the bodies, for some reason.

Ramses was already disassembling the weapon so that he could sling the stripped-down stock over his shoulder. "Too much time in between shots," he said. "I'll need to add more weight to reduce the recoil." He stood back up and gestured towards the elevator. "Exfil back to home base?"

"I'll join you until we reach ground level," Fiona got in lock-step with the merc, the victims in the other building slowing fading from her memory. "There's one thing that I need to attend to before I get back."

---

STREETLEVEL

After walking a couple of blocks away from the construction site, the choir of sirens already beginning to permeate the air somewhere off in the distance, Fiona made the call. The morning smelled of refuse that wafted in from the river. Another block or so and she would be among the street vendors, strips of pseudo-meat blackening over a fire at their stalls.

The call was picked up on the second ring. Rzhevsky had no avatar, just the logo of a snarling, one-eyed minotaur with distinct tribal influences.

"Quicker than I thought," the cyborg purred, her voice like a respirator coughing through a long pipe.

Fiona ignored the comment, the lights from a bus streaming upon her as it headed past her. "I want to know what the details of the job are. Locations. Persons of interest. Everything."

"All that is contingent upon your acceptance."

"That's the deal, then?"

"That's it."

The suspended highway rumbled above her, the concrete supports rattling. Fiona momentarily looked over her shoulder, spotting the blackened hulk of a burned-out car in a dead and empty lot, a stack of worn tires leaning over next to it, the rubber stripped and cracked.

"Fine," she all but whispered. "I'll do it."

There was a crackle of feedback from the other end. "Michiko will be satisfied with your answer."

"The details. And now. Right now."

"Not right now," Rzhevsky said, and Fiona was about to snarl in outrage before the creature on the other end of the line continued. "Not over the phone. This can only be handled face-to-face. It can be arranged ASAP, if you'd like."

"I'd rather not wait," Fiona growled.

"Then sit tight. Send your location. A car will be by to pick you up shortly. See you soon, tE^$int ll*#t."

Rzhevsky had said something in Estonian, but Fiona's translator was slow to decipher it and the sound and its translation ended up being nothing but a sequence of meaningless garbage in her HUD.

---

RINZ-VIM_BUILDING
CORPO_PLAZA

The car that Rzhevsky had mentioned turned out to be a boxy 4x4 Chevillon Emperor—the corporate model, with bulletproof glass, matte black paint, and undercarriage red neon lighting. Inside, the Arasaka logo had been embroidered on the seats, stitched into the floors, and was hidden in the most innocuous of corners. Large enough to comfortably carry nine people, Fiona felt like she was the sole person on a boat in the middle of an ocean, as the Emperor seemed to emit a force field that pushed traffic away as it surged down the roads, not needing to thread any needles as it headed towards the middle of the city.

The Emperor swerved into the massive roundabout at Corpo Plaza, stuck to the outside lane for a bit, and then abruptly turned off towards an underground parking lot at the base of a massive skyscraper shaped like an ice pick. The windows darkened once they were in the garage—Fiona's reflection against the truck's windows was now more immediately apparent, like a ghost itching to fight out of its prison.

Pulling up right next to a bay of elevators, the locks unlatched and the massive door automatically swung open, allowing Fiona to exit. From the fact that they were in an area where only luxury cars could be seen situated in the other parking spots, this was the valet section of the lot. Japanese men and women in polarized eyewear and dark suits took up positions all around the level. Though the Arasaka guards looked organic, Fiona suspected that the fancy clothes were hiding a lot more chrome than they were letting on.

She headed towards the bay—one of the elevators was already open, waiting for her. She stepped inside and before she could do anything, the doors closed and she was whisked up several stories. The elevator had not even given her the opportunity to push a button.

Nerves were jittering at her again. It felt like she was on the express ride to some high judgment. Slowly, Fiona took in a breath. Her eyes scanned the elevator, looking for hidden cameras. Aside from the obvious one in the corner, there were no other lenses spying on her.

She felt the elevator slow. The netrunner composed herself just as the doors slid open. [2]

Rzhevsky was standing in her way, the hulking cyborg emitting a mechanical thrum as her crimson lens cycled upon seeing Fiona. Titanic armor reflective underneath the light fixtures, fluid or gas hissing through the hoses that snaked underneath the gaps in the thick plating. Ventilation in the thighs bleeding redhot air—those DaiOnis took a lot of power to run, enough to run a small apartment complex. She eyed the clawed hands of the cyborg. If they ever so happened to grasp her skull and squeeze, her brain would be liquefied underneath such an iron grip once her head had cracked open like an egg.

Breath stilled in Fiona's lungs. She almost reached for her sword out of habit until Rzhevsky straightened and said, "Let's not keep Michiko waiting," before she lumbered down the hall.

Hesitation weighing down every step, Fiona followed the hulking and heavily armed-and-armored automaton down the hall, which Fiona soon realized was a path that ringed in the triangular shape of the building's circumference. The wall to her right was nothing but pristine glass, bulletproof as well. She could see down to the level below, which looked to be a club of sorts—wedges of multicolored light sliced across the dark pit, the scant flashes revealing tables, a white-neon-lit bar filled with bottles of every shape and size, a dance floor, and revelers wreathed in the comfort of shadows. No doubt music was blaring at high volumes in the club, which was mostly imperceptible past the glass apart from the highs of an electric guitar and the thudding of electric drum pads, due to the number of people that she could see moving in time to some unknown rhythm. Several LED screens projected abstract imagery that doused the room in color, visualized patterns morphing and evolving in time to the music, interrupted every so often by an ad logo that ghosted on the screen for about five seconds at a time.

A corpo bar for corpo parasites. The exclusivity and prestigiousness of such a location would automatically disqualify any Johnny-come-lately from off the street from being able to enter, obviously.

"Better keep walking, curb-dweller," Rzhevsky noted Fiona's gawking towards the bar below. "Try as you might, you won't ever call this your world."

"Not that I wanted to in the first place," Fiona huffed. So, Rzhevsky was going to be like that, then? "Can I ask a question?"

Rzhevsky grunted, clearly not in the mood for insipid inquiries. "What?"

"That DaiOni… does it actually, you know… shoot bullets?"

Her moment of cheekiness was short lived, for Rzhevsky stopped in place, made a long, growling sigh, and looked over her shoulder with a terrifying grinding noise. The DaiOni appeared as if it were about to whip into a combat stance, no firearms required.

"Keep that up," the cyborg warned, "and you'll find out for sure whether you can cry with Kiroshis."

Turning around before Fiona could muster another comeback, Rzhevsky approached a series of wide double-doors, flanked by more Arasaka guards. She had to hunch down in order to make it through.

The guards stopped Fiona from entering, however, and asked for her weapons. Glaring at them all the while, she complied, handing her blades, sidearms, and rifle to the guards, one weapon at a time. She was feeling more and more naked with every armament she surrendered. After a quick scan, the guards stepped aside, allowing her to proceed after the cyborg.

The room beyond looked like what she imagined an upscale hotel room would be furnished like. Soft lighting from pill-shaped lamps. French leather couches the color of auburn, flecked with gold. A cathode music amplifier in the corner, near where a private bar counter was located, glowing minutely. The sun was a soft conflagration through the tinted windows, the color of coffee. Shadows of helicopters and aerodynes noiselessly dotted the airscape through the blinds like sunspots.

Michiko Arasaka was seated upon one of the couches, not bothering to stand once Fiona had entered. Her features looked cut by a diamond scalpel—some of the best cosmetic cybernetics on the planet had been installed onto that face. Her clothes were all designer, no labels—a fur-collared jacket, unzipped, that revealed a mare plain of cleavage, and iridescent pants that brimmed with light like fish scales. She was twiddling a clear stick in a martini glass, her corona-blue eyes automatically locking onto the netrunner.

This was a woman who lets nothing slip by her, Fiona reckoned. She was going to have to be careful.

With a gloved hand, Michiko flipped back an unruly strand of her magnificent plume of blue hair that dared to slip past her shoulder. With the same hand, she gestured to the couch across from her. "Would you like a drink? They can make you anything you want here. Even something as simple as a gin and tonic here can be life-changing."

As Rzhevsky stomped off to eclipse one of the windows and take up a position observing the scene, Fiona took the corpo up on her offer and sat down, unconsciously reaching behind her to position her sword. Her hand felt nothing but air—she had forgotten she had given up Errata to the guards just outside. Electricity was starting to worm through her veins. Unarmed and unarmored. Had she set herself up for an ambush? Her cyberdeck could only do so much, if she were to suddenly be locked into a fight with the guards and Rzhevsky, and she did not want to count upon her little malfunction to take up the bulk of the work since she could not control its usage.

She returned Michiko's stare and shook her head. "Not in the mood," she said. She had no desire to take off her half-mask in front of an Arasaka. It was also barely nine in the morning, but it seemed like time made no difference to a corpo's drinking habits. Install the right mods to the liver and one could process an entire keg of whisky in a single sitting without incurring permanent damage.

Michiko set her glass down on the black coffee table between them. She rested her elbow upon the nearby armrest and let her arm dangle lazily. Her eyes never left Fiona. Studying her. Seeing the parts that the netrunner herself didn't know. Her mouth curled upward from being in possession of such knowledge.

"Am I allowed to congratulate you on a job well done?" Michiko smirked. "Or do you also share the same habit of rebuffing such praise as your mentor?"

Fiona just stared at the corpo, slowly blinking, knowing that every word out of her own mouth would be a weapon that could be used against her in this place.

Michiko broke eye contact first, as though as Fiona was boring her already. Her eyes were brimming with a slow fire, as if her retinas were holograms. "Don't get me wrong, I hold Ramses in high respect. He did a couple jobs for me once, long ago. Reliable sort, him. You know, I've been trying to hire him again? Though, with little success, admittedly."

"So you thought you could get to him through me, is that it?" Fiona lifted her chin.

"Christ, no," Michiko said. She crossed a leg, showing off what was an unmistakably expensive boot draped in alligator skin. Fiona had half a mind to ask if the skin was real. "I'm dogged, but even I have my limits. No, if Ramses wishes to dissociate himself from me, I can respect his privacy. One has to be on the lookout for fresh talent in this city. More where he came from. Attachment to one such person could be… fatal, in a way."

Fiona did not miss that Michiko's eyes shifted subtly over to Rzhevsky as she said that line, but the cyborg gave no indication of being on the brunt end of the comment.

She also wanted to make a correction to Michiko's statement that no one else in the city could possibly hope to match Ramses, but she knew that the line was just a ploy to get a reaction out of her, so she did not take the bait. "So, the hit on Graves, that was just an audition?" Fiona's heartbeat slowed to a narcotic thud.

"Passed with flying colors, by the way."

"You could've just pulled my profile."

"I like checking if one's skills have remained current."

This was getting nowhere and Fiona's nerves were being hackled. She impatiently drummed her fingers upon the leather of the couch and glanced upward at the slowly revolving chandelier above her, which was a series of periwinkle glass rhomboids orbiting a cube-like glowing orb.

"Rzhevsky said that you had some info that I would find interesting? That it would serve as payment after I do a certain job for you?"

Michiko took a look towards the windows that viewed down towards the club, where the spotlamps were dancing in their totem-like swordfights.

"NetWatch had their own profile on you. They had profiles on all the netrunners in their employ, hired or indentured."

"How detailed is my profile?" Fiona asked.

Michiko reached for her glass again. Took a sip. "Scant. But there are a few interesting tidbits."

Sensation was slipping away from Fiona. She took in a slow breath, imagining the cold ice of cyberspace caressing her brain, her comfort area.

"Prove to me that you actually have it," she whispered.

"I can do better than that," Michiko said, and her eyes soon blazed with data as she accessed the info in her deck that she had on tap. "Birth certificate. You were born March 17th, 2056, right here in Night City. First name, Fiona. Last name, Merrick. Blood type, AB+. Mother and father were…" The corpo's sly smile returned and she lifted her chin. "Well, no sense in spoiling the surprise just yet. But I'd be intrigued if you had managed to get that far on your own."

It felt like magma was cascading down the openings in her skull, dripping down her spine. The key to who she was, locked in the head of an Arasaka. If only she could leap over this table, smash Michiko's head open, and retrieve the secrets that spilled out. Rzhevsky might have something to say about that however, and the viciousness of her fantasy was enough to make her freeze out of sheer terror and confusion.

My name. It's all there. Everything.

Calming in an instant, she took a breath. "Will this be one of those situations in which I get drip-fed info only after I perform more work for you? I get something today, but you withhold something else for tomorrow—that kind of thing?"

A hand came to Michiko's chin, faintly obscuring her knowing smile. "Someone tried that little stunt on you before, haven't they?"

As a matter of fact, someone had. It was not an uncommon scam to befall mercs new to the whole game, and Fiona was no different in getting exposed to such tricks.

There had been a fixer at Afterlife who had recently moved to the city and he was trying to earn a name for himself. Through dogged determination, he had set himself up with some high-roller clients, so he had said, and managed to do so without stepping on anyone's toes as far as territory was concerned. Fiona had taken a job from him which saw her running roughshod through a Scav hideout on the outskirts of the city, partly for her own enjoyment, and partly because she wanted the chance to become associated with a fixer early in their career. Getting in on the ground floor that way was how many mercs managed to get gigantic scores by acting as a known quantity to these fixers—Fiona saw this as a chance to pay off massively in dividends once they made it big together. If they made it big. Sometimes, the business relationships could suffice as payment enough.

Unfortunately, the fixer had bitten off more than he could chew when he revealed to Fiona, after she had returned from completing the job, that he had insufficient funds to settle up his account. Where had the funds from his supposed high-roller clients had gone? Who knows, but the fact of the matter was that the fixer could not pay Fiona right at that moment. She might have left it at that by just walking away, taking the hit to her precious time, but instead the fixer had the bright idea to try and convince her to take more jobs for him and earn more credit until he was a bit more liquid. Fiona was not dumb enough to fall for something like that, and since the fixer had started to annoy her at this point, she had drawn her sidearm and shot him in the foot, right there in Afterlife. A lot of people bought her drinks that night, having overheard the entire heated conversation.

"Thinking about trying it?" Fiona pressed, her eyes intently focused.

Michiko's smile seemed to deepen and her eyes turned snake-like for a moment. After a while, she then said, "If I made a habit of trying to screw over every associate I crossed paths with, my reputation would not be as good as it is."

"Maybe in certain circles," Fiona drawled. "The Arasaka name isn't widely appreciated by many in this town."

"Nor in this country," the corpo acknowledged, picking at a speck of invisible dust upon her tiger-pattern skirt. "There was a time where I tried to keep myself separate from my family's dealings. But eventually, I came to the realization that I could not fight the bonds of blood. I could never divest myself from the actions of the Arasaka Corporation whenever they invariably found themselves on the newsfeeds. It was the name that people always associated me with, no matter what I said or did. And one day, I stopped trying to run away from that connection. Felt that, if the world saw me for something I wasn't, then I might as well play the part."

Fiona met the glowing blue eyes. Held that gaze, as if she was trying to peer at that person who had been so desperate to escape her past until fate had finally caught up to her. How different had Michiko been then?

"And so," Fiona said, "what part would you have me play for this contract?"

Michiko uncrossed her legs and smoothed her skirt. "I trust that you have the ability to be discreet? Dissemination of names and corporate entities is not to be discussed outside of this room."

Fiona nodded, though she felt a pang of annoyance that her professionalism could be questioned so cavalierly. "I can keep a secret."

"Good," Michiko said. She leaned back on the couch, her hands folded on her lap. "There won't be any written details to accompany this job. Briefing is all going to be verbal for the time being."

"Fine. I have a good memory."

The look on the corpo's face screamed I'll bet, but Michiko proceeded without any change in tone. "What do you know of the company TorcWing?"

Fiona's eyes flashed as she accessed the Net, her crimson thread scouring through glowing silos of energy and data within the cyberspace expanse. "Third-party logistics company. Specializes in interplanetary shipping to the moon and the outer colonies. Owns fifteen orbital shuttles that take off from three different launch bases around the world: Night City, Cabo Verde, and Hokkaido."

"They're seen as one of the most trusted suppliers from here to Freeside. Though good reviews on a shipping company are just as much useful as reading a Net review for a titty bar: they're all pretty much crap, held together by bad decisions and even worse software."

"So what's your interest in them?"

Michiko returned her arm back to the armrest of the couch. "Through a little effort in the corporate espionage game, Arasaka has learned that TorcWing has just been approached by Militech to start the process of being acquired. Not a hostile takeover, but as a legitimate acquisition. Big bonuses to the top TorcWing staff for their cooperative efforts. Cue the champagne, that sort of thing."

Mere mention of Militech raised Fiona's suspicions. Arasaka and Militech were like oil and water, considering their history together. The two megacorporations had a fierce rivalry between one another in their effort to obtain the biggest global market cap share, which sometimes had materialized into full-scale conflict between one another. Today, Militech was the primary supplier for NUSA's military and was a part of the Big-Five corporations ranking—number four, just behind EBM. They detested that Arasaka was number one in the ranking, but that was only one of the grievances they held for the Japanese corp. But with the president of NUSA, as well as several members of the Pentagon, being current or past members of Militech leadership or its board of directors, it was not a far stretch to say that Militech had total control over America's policies, in addition to some of the separate free states.

Already, Fiona was guessing that she was about to be thrown in the middle of a pissing match between the two corporations. That was just a situation that was one degree shy of boiling over. Wasn't this what Ramses had warned her about? She felt like she needed to get out of here, but blind desperation to the knowledge that Michiko had on her rooted her to her seat.

"I take it you weren't invited to the closing party, then?" Fiona quipped.

It looked like Michiko was disappointed in Fiona for her little jab, but the expression lasted only a moment. "The arms race between Arasaka and Militech for launch routes into orbit has been shaping up into a cold war of its own. Obviously, there is only so much prime real estate on this planet that offers decent locations to send rockets up, and Militech is looking to make a play for more launch pads to take under control, hence TorcWing's acquisition. The more shipments a corp can send up and away from Earth, the faster development can proceed… elsewhere."

"Doesn't sound like Arasaka is all that interested in making a play for TorcWing themselves," Fiona noted. "Or does that interest not extend to the rest of the Arasaka board?"

"Arasaka is only interested in scaling accordingly with our own capacity for space travel," Michiko said evenly, her tone indicating to Fiona that Michiko may have in fact broached such a topic up to her board of directors only to be shot down before so much as a factsheet could be whipped out. "TorcWing doesn't fit into our plans, but Militech is apparently willing to make such accommodations. To the point where I have heard that TorcWing is unveiling to Militech, as part of their negotiations, proprietary technology that will give them an edge to heat up this little cold war."

"Proprietary technology," Fiona repeated. "Such as?"

"That, I can't say," Michiko said. "But it's the crux of why I asked you here today." She stood from the couch, retrieved her glass, and walked past Rzhevsky to look out the poster windows down to the circular plaza below, the mid-morning sun blazing crystal reflections among the morass of buildings.

Fiona also stood, but stayed where she was until Michiko turned back around.

"The contract I'm extending to you," Michiko slowly began to step forward, the remnants of the liquid in her glass slowly tipping and turning, "will have you travel to San Jose, where TorcWing's main fabrication site is located. You will only have one objective: locate the proprietary technology and transport it back to Arasaka. The finer details will be relayed to you once you are en route to what remains of Silicon Valley, including the that of the tech that you will be required to klep. I've noticed you doing that with your eyebrows. You have reservations?"

Indeed, for Fiona was arching her eyebrow so high, albeit unconsciously, that it was a wonder her facial muscles had not ripped from the strain. Now she was sure she was getting thrust into a corporate pissing match.

"You are aware that this is nearly identical to how the Fourth Corporate War started?" she asked, but Michiko merely laughed and waved a hand with perfectly lacquered nails.

"There won't be any escalation this time around. Why do you think I'm hiring out independents? There's nothing to link you to Arasaka. Even if there was, we could easily fabricate dummy ident modules."

That did not assuage Fiona much. She had taken an interest in learning about world history in the past couple of years, especially the major events that had happened in the past century. The Fourth Corporate War, like the three before it, was the last in a series of world conflicts in which the battles were not undertaken by nations, but by rival firms. The last one had started and ended in the 2020s, when CINO—Corporation Internationale Nauticale et Oceanique—a French shipbuilding corporation took the proactive measure of taking over the remaining assets of IHAG—Internationale Handelsmarine Aktiengesellschaft—which was a German shipping company that had just filed for bankruptcy. A rival American firm, OTEC—Ocean Technology & Energy Corporation—also began preparing to buy out what was left of IHAG, desperate for a headline to boost their own stock price. IHAG's proprietary tech in bioware was their nictitating membrane, which provided enhancements to the human eye by allowing them to see through sand, water, and anything that might prove an irritant. The tech was worth millions on the market and both CINO and OTEC were eager to get it onto their own portfolio.

The two megacorps went to great lengths to prevent the other from acquiring IHAG, from hacking financial exchanges in order to devalue the other's stock, to sending in strike teams to intercept and detain lawyers from the different corporations from participating in negotiations. All the while, the firm Eurobank was working behind the scenes, manipulating both companies by financing their efforts, egging them both on, with the plan to swoop in once their blind efforts would negatively affect their stock prices so badly where they could be bought for a fraction of a percentage. It was a mess, and the economy was already paying the price since the two biggest ocean-based shipping companies were now tied up fighting one another instead of doing their jobs: shipping goods. Across the globe, a goods shortage began to manifest.

Enter Arasaka and Militech. The conflict between CINO and OTEC had gone on for years without much change. In an effort to bolster their sides with the forces of even larger megacorps, OTEC hired Militech to assist, while CINO hired Arasaka. The conflict only grew hotter now that the two bitter rivals had been added to the fray, with Eurocorp in the shadows, panicking that it had lost complete control over the situation, not foreseeing this escalation, and the first shots were fired soon after.

The intensified war became a proving ground for every new dirty trick that the megacorps had in their arsenal. Arasaka was actively using Soulkiller 2.5 on its Militech captives, after interrogating them for information. Militech, in turn, released a bioplague in Busan, which resulted in the Korean government needing to quarantine the city. By the end of 2022, Hong Kong and Rio de Janeiro had been levelled, and the war was not showing any signs of slowing down. To make matters worse, Bartmoss had released the DataKrash onto the Net at this time, beginning the process of forever destroying or sealing away what would become the Old Net. Trillions of dollars of data was lost. Thousands of companies folded overnight. The Eurodollar tanked, as did every other global currency.

The war finally wound down when the Night City Holocaust had otherwise destroyed and irradiated the Corporate Center area when a nuclear device had been detonated atop Arasaka Tower thanks to the efforts of Morgan Blackhand and Johnny Silverhand, an op that had the backing of Militech. Twelve thousand Arasaka employees died as a result of the bombing and the damage to the infrastructure killed thousands more in the surrounding blast radius. Officially, Arasaka had been blamed for keeping a nuclear device in the tower and were expelled from operating in the United States for decades. Militech was nationalized and took control over what was to become NUSA. The truth would eventually come to light years later, but by then, Militech had become so entrenched into NUSA politics that it would rise above any allegations that came their way.

"Shall we get to discussing your price?" Michiko asked, tapping a finger upon her glass.

But Fiona was in no mood to negotiate. "You already know what's it's going to be. All the files you have on my internment at NetWatch."

"Of course, of course."

"Plus any coverage for expenses."

"Done," Michiko said without missing a beat.

Fiona sensed an opening. "Job like this will have a better chance of success if you send more than one person. San Jose is a tricky area. Were you thinking of sending just me?"

"No," Michiko said, before she extended a hand towards the cyborg that flanked her. "Rzhevsky will be taking point for the mission. You will be ensuring its success, that's all."

There was a whirring sound as movement rippled through the mechanical creature. Rzhevsky straightened in pride, or perhaps in smug arrogance, knowing that her and Fiona were currently slated to spend some quality time together.

Fiona eyed the cyborg in disgust. Not that she didn't trust Rzhevsky, because she certainly did not, but putting her life in the hands of an Arasaka enforcer was the last thing that she needed for a job like this. But she sensed this was not going to be an aspect that she was going to negotiate her way out of. Rzhevsky was Michiko's bodyguard, therefore she had the corpo's complete trust. Fiona was the outsider here, the one who currently did not have that relationship.

Rzhevsky noted Fiona's acid look. "That divulgence not to your liking, netrunner?"

"Not exactly independent, are you? If TorcWing finds out that Arasaka sent you—"

But Rzhevsky laughed, the enormous metal frame rippling with a startling speed. "You mean interrogate? Me? They couldn't rip me out of this armor if they tried. I have so much Black ICE installed on this thing that they'd have to divert enough power to fuel the DFW metroplex just to crack it."

Fiona made a point to sear her eyes back onto Michiko. "I have one more condition."

Michiko had walked back to the bar to refill her drink by now. She had popped the cap off of a bottle of gin, but made no effort to pour it just yet.

"Go on."

"I want a team to join me on this job. Rzhevsky can come too, but I'd have far greater assurance to your intentions by allowing me to include people I can trust on this."

The gin gurgling as it splashed into a cup filled with ice, Michiko was shaking her head. "I told you, specifics of the job cannot leave this room."

"And if was to be unspecific with the details?" Fiona arched an eyebrow again.

Now Michiko cracked a smile. "And you're sure you can enlist a crew with such a lack of detail?"

"If they hear me talk about the job, along with its challenges, they'll accept it," Fiona promised. "I'll have to mention that Arasaka is the one heading up the whole thing, that's unavoidable. But I can sell the job without needing to mention TorcWing, or Militech, or any knowledge of the acquisition. However, I'm hoping that they will be let in on the big picture once we're en route to the job?"

For a moment, no one spoke. Michiko was stirring a spoon in her drink, mixing whatever she had poured in along with the gin. Then, she took the spoon out, delicately placed it upon a coaster made of real wood, and took a sip of her drink without wincing. Fiona could smell the fumes the drink was spiraling off from here, an acrid tang like methylene.

The corpo and the netrunner placed each other in their view, understanding their position. But they did not let their guard down for a moment, for they knew that the other was just as dangerous as themselves. Twisted and spat out by the city in their own special way, they had evolved to its processes and code. Fate had simply happened to place them on the same level in this place and time.

"How many were you thinking of recruiting?" Michiko finally asked.

"One at the min," Fiona said. "Max of five."

Michiko took another sip, looked at a jeweled chronometer that adorned her wrist, and tossed the contents of her drink down a nearby sink. "No more than four," she said, already in motion towards the door, heading towards whatever biz she could use as a convenient means to depart the room.

All that was left in the room was the strange emptiness that was within Fiona, along with the broiling and contained rage that was Rzhevsky.

"She likes you," she heard the cyborg hiss at her back. "Don't get too cocky, though. She loses interest in her new playthings quick."

"Will that include you at some point?" Fiona growled as she looked over her shoulder. It was a bad idea to antagonize the DaiOni, but she was in a weird mood, feeling strangely detached.

"Well after you're gone," Rzhevsky growled. "Make no mistake, meatbag, your carcass will rot in some trash pile very soon in the future. And I'll still be here. Say what you want, it won't make a bit of difference. You're temporary. But I'm permanent."

---

CHARTER_HILL

Ramses had not returned home by the time Fiona had arrived back at their condo. She was not worried—Ramses was far busier than she was and no doubt he was taking care of multiple jobs at once by being in constant communication with his fixers. She estimated that it would be another hour or two until he came back, and he would spend most of the day cooped up inside since he tended to do most of his biz at night for tactical superiority.

The bulletproof door sliding aside, Fiona walked into the armory, a vacuum brimming in her ears as she entered the temperfoam-spiked enclave. Right off the bat, she spotted some of the empty weapon slots—a series of pins supporting nothing bolted right into the wall—that corresponded to the armaments that Ramses had taken for his last job. She shrugged off her own weapons, which she had gotten back from Michiko's bodyguards after being shown the way to the elevators, and set them on a nearby table to be cleaned. She made sure to remove the magazine and to lock the slides open, setting them upon a stand mounted atop the counter with the grip facing upward at a forty-five-degree angle.

Fiona did not feel like cleaning her firearms just yet. She had gone the entire night without sleep and she just wanted a rest. There would be plenty of time to take care of her weapons between now and the next job.

At the very least, she removed Errata from the sheath at her back, and placed it upon the nearby counter. With a little bit of oil and a cloth, she passed the fabric over the flat of the blade, removing the splatters and stains she had accumulated from her little jaunt over at Graves' place. She leaned down and looked over the blade of the katana—the folded titanium had not so much as a nick in it. Superior craftsmanship, to sat the least. In the two years since she had the sword, it had never needed to be sharpened.

She hung the sword upon its slot on the wall, stowing the empty sheath in a nearby locker afterward. After exiting and locking the door to the armory, she headed to her corner of the apartment. She had commandeered practically the entire living area a couple of years ago, or rather, Ramses had allowed her to take it over. She had purchased a bed which had shoved aside the sparse sofa that had originally been the sole item populating the room, the lone piece of furniture that she had recuperated upon when she had first been brought here. The bed, an industrial metal-frame with an adaptable mattress, had been pushed into the corner where the wall and the window met, allowing Fiona to curl up upon it at night and watch the city pulse and undulate before her for hours.

Some days she wondered why Ramses had not asked her to move out just yet. She made enough money so that she could set herself up at a comparable place in the same neighborhood. For someone who purported to be very independent, it seemed that he was having a hard time letting go of her. Not to mention that he had a hard time trying to make conversation about anything other than work these days. Now, why was that?

In the kitchen, she set aside her half-mask and chowed down a nutrient bar without bothering to read the label of the flavor. They all tasted the same, anyway. She crinkled up the wrapper and chucked it into the nearby waste chute. No one else was here to look upon her maimed face. She calmly reapplied her mask with a wan sigh.

Sleep would come in the next hour or so, but Fiona was still awake enough where she did not feel that she needed to turn in just yet.

Over on the bed, her BD wreath was lying where she had left it. Fiona approached the bed, undressed until she was in a tanktop and her underwear, and lay down upon the mattress. Ryo had given her a new shard the other day—another scroll from their mutual favorite artist had just popped up on the streets and Fiona had been gifted a copy. Picking up the wreath, she withdrew the chip that was in there already, tossing it upon the covers, and pushed in the new shard with a thumb. Flicking the power switch, she shoved the wreath over her head, lay back down on the bed, and stared intently into the sequence of dancing lights that began to rush her vision as if she were the lead singer on stage at a Soyuz-rock concert and her entire form was being lit up from the white glare of a million flashbulbs.

The glare faded to black, though static pops of feedback continued to crackle before her. It was just her neural pathways getting attuned to the resonance of the wreath. Standard loading period, no cause for alarm. Like being nestled along a router as pinpricks of data, off aboard the superhighway of the Net. Break through the ice to see the undercurrent that flowed through the ether of the world. Cities that were not cities, fortresses of light and code.

Then an image whisked into view, as though Fiona was seated aboard a roller coaster that had shot out of a tunnel. A mote of light, suddenly huge in her view. [3]

She was staring at a grimy floor of off-white tile. Black stains matted the corners of the room. The sounds of someone vomiting in a stall could be heard, followed by a toilet flushing.

The perspective of the BD shifted and Fiona was staring at Rebecca's reflection in a cracked and graffiti-covered mirror. A thin light fixture behind a metal grating flickered weakly over the reflective surface.

Rebecca was wearing her usual getup of the oversized black gas jacket and thick combat boots. She was wearing no pants, as per usual, her white skin looking like it was devoid of blood, and the large jacket fell down below her waist, only allowing a view of her upper thighs.

This was one of the few times that Rebecca had allowed her face to be caught on one of her BDs. Fiona paused the scroll so that she could study the woman. They looked to be about the same age, but there was a self-assuredness to her posture that betrayed her experience of having years on the street. Her pink-and-yellow ringed cyberoptics appeared almost insect-like, but Fiona could tell there was a well of sadness held behind the gleaming cyberware, as though as the aggressive getup was all a front to prevent anyone from knowing Rebecca's true "self."

Fiona un-paused the BD and watched as Rebecca waved to the mirror, forever blind to the audience she would have. Her eyes momentarily flashed with digital snow, indicating the BD's recording effect, but the sensory change quickly passed and her eyes returned to normal.

The BD then abruptly switched, without warning, into a darkened rave where blazing lights in lambent colors sparkled the room, a throbbing techno-beat infiltrating through the connection and slithering into Fiona's veins. They were in a club, hundreds of bodies in the vicinity all draped in grayscale, their features blurred as if a filter had been applied to them, even though that was just a consequence of the club's lighting. Holograms churned and danced in the space between the dancers and the ceiling—angels' wings, fire-breathing dragons, explosions of igniting plasma, along with the occasional advertisement.

Rebecca's arms were raised high into the air as she blindly danced to the beat, though she was so short that her fingertips were barely raised above the scalps of the other inhabitants. The other dancers were barely giving her much room to maneuver, for so many were crammed in such a small space, but Rebecca was not afraid to use her elbows and hips to give herself some breathing room as she occasionally body-checked anyone who intruded into her personal bubble. She was laughing, laughing. Singing along to the song, which Fiona did not recognize. Having the time of her life.

That was what marked Rebecca's BDs from anyone else's. They showed her in the moment, raw and unfiltered. Whereas the big BD studios would spend weeks painstakingly curating a scroll until the editing flowed so naturally it could be mistaken for a real memory, Rebecca was content just to show nothing but herself. To have the sequence, choppy it may be, move from scene to scene, diluting none of the emotional effect.

In the darkness, Fiona heard the sound of a bottle smashing. Then the noises of a scuffle. The perspective shifted again to show Rebecca's oversized cyberhands parting the crowd before her, eager to leap in on the action.

Another cut. Rebecca was punching someone in the face—too dark to make out their features. A strobe light caught a whip of blood roping from someone's mouth. The cyber-knuckles could imitate the barest sensation of flesh being pulverized, but the feeling only manifested as a fuzzy tickle on Fiona's own hand.

The next shift. A full-blown brawl in the club. Rebecca was stomping on some guy's head, possibly the same one from the earlier clip, the floor splattered with blood from his cracked skull. Pale green hair seared into her vision, torn askew from their ponytails. Fiona could see a man in a familiar plastic yellow jacket sitting on the ground, being helped up by a woman with ghostly hair that was meticulously angular and neat. A trickle of red ran from the corner of the man's mouth and he wiped his chin contemptuously with the back of a hand. David—Fiona remembered the name. The target of Rebecca's assault must have done something to the young man, unintentionally earning Rebecca's wrath in the process.

In the real world, Fiona's body was turning slick with sweat. The BD was initiating her adrenaline reactors, making her veins stand out and causing her breathing to turn deep.

Static obscured the next cut. A blue cyberhand reaching behind the bar for a half-empty bottle of whisky. The arm whipped to the side, catching the side of a chromed-up merc's head. Shattered glass blazed around the hapless man's orange cyberoptics. The husky scent of spilled whisky mingled with stale cigarette smoke. Fiona could hear 'oohs' emit from the crowd. Far off in the back, some mega-fan was screaming, hyping up the melee.

And then, just as soon as it began, the club was suddenly torn away, replaced by a dark private room that had as much warmth to it as a storage locker. The room was lit by long strips of dim red lighting that gave off the appearance that the entire place had been doused in blood. A nearby placard read "No-Tell Motel," which explained the overall cheapness to the décor.

The view from Rebecca's eyes showed her sitting upright on the floor, her back to the wall, legs slightly spread out. Her jacket was all the way open, allowing an unobstructed view to her bra, her ashen stomach wreathed with pink tattoos, all the way down to her underwear.

There was a pressure on her shoulder. Rebecca—taking Fiona with her—glanced to the left. David's head was resting there as he dozed, his entire body slumped in exhaustion. A quick glance to the bed—the woman whom Fiona had seen helping David back to his feet in the bar had claimed the entire mattress to herself, snoozing peacefully.

Rebecca returned to looking at the young man who was slumped against her. Then she looked down at herself, a cybernetic finger tracing an invisible line through her sternum, momentarily scraping against her bra. With the same hand, she reached up as if she intended to touch David's forehead, but at the last minute she froze in place, as though there was a force field preventing her from touching him.

The hand shook in midair for a few seconds before Rebecca finally placed it down back to her side. She sighed loudly in the room and closed her eyes.

Everything faded back to black after that.

A popup asking if Fiona would like to play the clip again rose up in her vision. Instead, she jacked out of the clip, waited until her vision returned her to the condo, and pulled the wreath off her head.

Almost carelessly, she tossed the wreath to the foot of the bed like a frisbee, and sat up in the bed. She held her head in her hands for a moment, her fingertips smearing the sweat that sheened across her face.

Raw and in the moment, most definitely. Fiona was beginning to think that Rebecca and her were kindred spirits, in a way. All of the ex-Edgerunner's prior recordings were starting to make more sense now that the context had revealed itself, bit by bit over multiple different clips. They were all interconnected by the barest threads, but it was now obvious that they were the internal musings, a manifesto, for a relationship that had been and would forever be one-sided.

She swung her legs over the bed, bare feet placed onto the floor. A towel was crumpled on the ground within reach. She grabbed for it and wiped her brow, the comedown from the BD still registering in her system, even as the door chimed and Ramses entered.

The merc walked in with his usual heavy pace. Fiona's heart seemed to constrict, as though he emitted a gravity that could crush objects within range. His helmeted head rotated. Saw her there on the bed in her partially-undressed state.

"You've been here a while," he said by way of greeting, noting her clothes puddled on the floor next to the bed.

Fiona stood, stretching her back until she could hear it pop. "I would've thought you'd be here before I was."

"Had to take some calls," which was Ramses' way of saying that he wasn't interested in talking about himself right now. "How did the meeting go?"

"The meeting," Fiona said slowly, recalling, as if memory was nothing but mercury oozing through anodized tubes in her mind. Memories of faces—Michiko's and the complex geometry of Rzhevsky's construction—slowly took form like they had been lodged within slow-melting ice. "It went… fine."

Ramses shucked off the sniper rifle that had been hanging from a strap at his back. He set it upon the kitchen counter noisily. "So? Will you be taking the job?"

I have no choice.

"I need to know the truth," she said instead.

Ramses continued to remove his weapons and equipment, setting them neatly on the counter instead of looking at her. "I certainly hope that you find what you're looking for," he said.

Fiona momentarily frowned. Is that it? Is that all he's going to say to me? "Yeah, me too."

"Just remember what I told you about Arasaka. Don't even think you can trust them for a moment. Be on your guard every waking moment."

The fact that Ramses was talking to her like a child was only causing Fiona's consternation to grow. Annoyed, she moved until she was on the opposite side of the counter, where Ramses was busy disassembling his pistol.

"They're letting me pick a team for the job," she said as she rested her arms upon the cold stone, her hands clasped together. "You could come with me."

But Ramses just shook his head. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"Why not?" Fiona pressed, a sensation underneath her skull buzzing, itching to get free. "It's a tough job, Ramses. I'll have to go to NorCal for the job on my own otherwise, and you're the best merc in the city—"

His hands finally stopped moving and his helmet lifted, his optics finally squaring her in his sights. It was strange, but to Fiona, it was as if he was actually seeing her as someone worthy of his attention. As if she was an equal.

"I promised myself that I would never give Michiko Arasaka the impression that I would ever be at her beck and call," he said. "That was the risk that I took those years ago, by performing jobs for her. Once a corpo gets their hooks into you, they don't come out easily. She had been under the impression for a long while that I was freely available to her, when in fact I remained every bit as independent when I first met her. I don't want her to think that of you, Fiona. If a corpo thinks they have the advantage, they will pursue it longer than any reasonable human would."

Fiona chewed her the inside of her cheek, her forehead heating up. "So you're saying 'no' because you think this somehow indebts you to Michiko? It's my job, Ramses. This is my life we're talking about. You know that Michiko was able to tell me my last name back there? Merrick. One word. All it took was one word for her to prove that she had found more than you or I ever did in the past two years. If anything, you're the one who should've borne that responsibility, seeing as the only reason I'm here now is because of you!"

She knew she had fucked up the second she had levelled the accusation. Ramses was like stone, carefully selecting his next words. He then walked around the counter until he was at Fiona's side, staring down at her. Were he not familiar to her, the blackened gargoyle sight of his armored form would frighten her. In some way, that was precisely the effect she was feeling right now.

"And now you're saying that I have a debt of my own to pay off for pulling you free? Is this something that you plan to hang over my head for the foreseeable future?"

The blood that shot through her neck turned a degree above freezing. "That wasn't—I didn't—I would never assume—"

"What is this really about, Fiona?"

It was his tone. His fucking tone. That mixture of indifference and coldness all condensed into that artificial voice that seeped from his helmet.

Just… so cavalier.

How could he truly understand what he had done to her? What he was doing now?

"You don't know…" she moaned miserably, shaking her head and staring at the man as if he were a stranger. "You don't—even—fucking—KNOW!"

She swept her arm across the counter in a temporary loss of sanity and control, catching a glass that had been perched on the edge, knocking it off, and causing it to smash into a million pieces on the tile with a tremendous sound. [4] The industrial glassware sprayed across the ground in a sheet of fragmented sand, gleaming from the holo-advertisements outside the window, reflecting with color.

Ramses just looked at the destruction of his property in a manner of curiosity, almost as if he was unsurprised at such an outburst. He then swept his gaze back to her face.

"Do you think I haven't noticed?" he asked, the very question cutting her to ribbons and nearly making tears spring to her eyes. "And do you even think the circumstances make it right? That what you feel is even real?"

Limbs shaking, Fiona reached for the armored hand of the merc, clenching it fiercely. He offered no resistance. "I know what is real," she hissed through clenched teeth, her face becoming contorted in desperation.

She squeezed his hand.

"This is real."

She then brought his hand to her cheek, the cold metal brushing the skin above her half-mask.

"This is also real."

Ramses had surrendered his limb to her whim, but there was a new jolt of stiffness that ran through his body when Fiona forced his hand to rest upon her clothed breast. She pressed his palm against her tank top, making him feel the soft flesh beneath the fabric. No one had ever touched her like this before and yet, the desire was there. Natural and intoxicating.

"What isn't real about this?" the netrunner whispered.

The mercenary seemed too stunned to even speak. For the first time, Fiona had gotten him at a complete loss for words. He had not even taken his hand from her breast just yet.

But he soon regained control of his wits and took his hand away, even though Fiona's fingers were grasping at his appendage, a silent plea to stay. There was a mixture of embarrassment that seemed to inhabit his body, as though he had been marked from touching her in such a manner. Fiona didn't care—he had seen her naked before. What was there to be afraid of?

"What this is…" he said, carefully enunciating every syllable with quiet precision, "…is not what you think it is."

It felt as if Fiona's heart had been ripped in two. "Don't you want this?" she all but begged. "Don't you want me?"

"It doesn't matter what I want," he clarified. "Because I know I am not the right person for you."

"I don't care," she said, resting her forehead against his chest. Her fists uselessly beating at him. "I don't care."

Yet he was ever calm. "You're looking at me through a rose-tinted lens, Fiona. You're judging me based on only one arguably decent decision that I have made in my life. There is nothing in me that corresponds to a future you envision. I may have enabled you to have an actual life, but that does not mean you have an obligation to anything beyond what we are now."

She just wished he could speak plainly. He was always blunt, never one to mince words. But this subject, he was expertly tap-dancing around it all. Uncharacteristic. There were some things in this world that Ramses Vogel, mercenary of Night City, was afraid of, she was finding out.

There was something else there, she could sense. Fear or self-hatred, or something that was unquantifiable. But she had neither the skill nor the knowledge to draw that truth out from Ramses. He guarded his feelings in a cloak of shadows, buried so deep that even he did not know where the grave was. Everything was all inward, except the persona he chose to utilize for fixer and friend both. He left no room for anything else.

He really was the perfect mercenary.

"What if you're wrong? What if this can be something more?"

Ramses' response was as immediate as it was curt. "Just because I saved you doesn't mean you need to think I had any ulterior motive in doing so. I didn't bring you here so that you could be my output. I gave you a life. There's nothing else that I should have to give."

But she kept trying. "If I gave you an ultimatum… if I forced you to say if you could ever… care about me—"

He interrupted with a firm shake of his head. "You won't."

She nearly did so right then and there, just to prove him wrong. But she could feel the tears coming on again and she squeezed her eyes shut so that they would not spill. "Then why?! You gave me everything because of one decision you made by yourself! Why can't I have this one thing?" She clung to him, wishing that she could hack inside his head, peel away the layers of code until she could find that inescapable truth. She buried his face against his chest in defeat. "Why can't I have you?"

The question cycled through her head on repeat like a bad processor. A numbing feeling, like a narcotic, spread throughout all of her limbs, making her listless. She just stood there, bare feet on the cold and glass-coated floor, all lobes of her brain afire from her self-imposed helplessness. A savage burn that, inexplicably, hurt even more than when she had been attacked by the Extremaduran years ago. A sensation like molten metal coursing down her esophagus made itself known, pooling into her stomach and burning a hole there so the acid could drain out. The rest of her body ran cold. Back inside that ice bath, almost. Where she should have been left, perhaps. Her body would not have hurt as much otherwise.

But then Ramses brought his arms around her, not saying a word, pressing his body, angular frame and all, against her, until she had nowhere to go except through him. She let herself become encapsulated by the merc, for she knew this was not a signal of absolution.

It was his way of being compassionate, steeling her for the choice they would have to make together. A minute or a year from now, it made no difference. Ramses had chosen his path a long time ago. Fiona was just playing catch-up. This was when she would finally have to face reality and dissociate her fantasies from what was the truth.

Eventually, though locked in their tragic hug for the moment, they would need to let go.

---

A/N: I've been mustering through a virus just to get this last part out. Editing took forever, though this wasn't helped by the fact that this is the longest chapter of the story thus far in terms of word count. Whoops?

Playlist:

[1] Morning Scaffolding
"Dawn Over Emilia"
Daniel Pemberton
Ferrari (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

[2] The Lion's Den
"Stahl Arms"
Lorn
Killzone: Shadowfall (Original Video Game Soundtrack)

[3] Rebecca's Rave [Source Music]
"Snake Eyes"
Cyberoptics
Sunset Bay / Snake Eyes

[4] Learning to (Love) Let Go
"Main Theme"
Craig Armstrong
In Time (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

THE CAST (so far):

MAIN_CAST:

Ramses: Night City merc. Solo. Unknown age. Unknown origin. Adept in: precision weapons, infiltration, assassination.
Fiona Merrick (JP422-7C): Netrunner, formerly in the employ of NetWatch, now an independent merc. 22 years old. 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.