OFFSET: -3.00 HR
COMMENCE_PLAYBACK
INITIALIZING…
INITIALIIZING…
FILE_FOUND
EXECUTING
CHARTER_HILL
As uncomfortable as it was inevitable, it became apparent to Ramses that he was not going to get any sleep tonight.
He was lying in bed, upon his back, staring up at the high ceiling, a thrum rushing towards him as if he was touching a live wire. His senses were being continually assaulted—the brush of the bedsheets upon his body, the chill of the air-conditioning that flitted upon his exposed skin, the muted rumble of the city through the thick windows—all overcoming his natural white noise filter and constantly putting him on alert. With his helmet covering him, he could normally drown all that out, expose him to the stimuli that only he could tolerate. The sounds of people, the noises they made, they all irked him to varying degrees. Roughing at him like sandpaper, trying to scuff him down to the bone. Exposed to everything like this, once again, made him feel cold and helpless, not dissimilar to a newborn.
When was the last time he had slept without his armor before? Was there a time where he had tried to conquer his own fears and discomforts and expose himself in this way? Try as he might, he could not conjure an exact date. Years, certainly, since his last exposure. Before he had ever come to Night City, perhaps. The memory had been purged from his mind, if it even existed.
Folding his hands across his chest, he stifled the urge to make a murmuring noise as he adjusted himself upon the mattress. Tonight had been unexpected, to say the least. He was still having trouble processing it, like a bad install that was stuck on an incorrect registry entry. And he was feeling more and more convinced that he had committed some sort of sacrilege. Against himself. So many things he had broken across the years. Equipment, men, and women. Anything that could be destroyed, he had done so.
Only now did he realize that he was in the process of destroying himself.
His mantras. His codes. He had bent over backwards to justify each and every lapse to himself. Always someone else's fault. Not yours. How many times had he performed a variation on that line? Wasn't the entire point of his ruleset meant to enable him to be a better operator? Someone who operated without distraction, without emotion.
Turning his head to the side, he could not help but feel a stir of emotion.
Fiona was sleeping on her side, her bare back towards him. The hack to her optics would have worn off by now, but she had taken great care to never look at him, per his wishes. The moonlight made a soft glow upon the woman's shoulder and, for a brief moment, Ramses had the inclination to just reach out and lay a hand softly upon Fiona's pale skin. But the hesitation allowed him to regain his senses and he turned his head back, positioned towards the ceiling again, a litany of curses bemoaning his own indulgences sequencing in rapidfire within his head.
It was hard to stop staring at the woman, though, and of the ballerina-like muscles of her back. There would be time to filter all of the excess chemical reactions in his brain out. It was not time to judge whether he could love her for opening the both of them up and releasing their inhibitions, if only for a little while, or loathe her for revealing his vulnerability so brazenly. Right now, he was just envious that she was able to sleep and he could not.
He closed his eyes and was about to consider making a run towards the medicine cabinet for the sleeping pills he had stashed there, when his HUD suddenly gave a quiet ping. [1]
Someone had sent him a message.
Annoyed, he opened his eyes again and just stared morosely at the glimmering icon at the corner of his vision. He considered just disengaging his overlays so that he could have some peace and quiet, not appreciating the sudden jolt in alertness the notification had given him, but relented at the last moment and opened the message menu.
M_ARASAKA: You're hard to reach, you know that?
Ramses nearly bolted upright in bed, his heart racing, but remembered an old meditation technique before he could take action and disturb the sleeping woman next to him. He ran his security programs to check for the proper authentication and every single runtime reported nothing but green feedback. The person sending him the texts was a genuine address.
Breath escaping from him in a quiet sigh, he almost deleted the message outright. No, he then thought, they'll just keep coming. Find new ways to talk. Nip this in the bud right here after you find out what they want and then tell them to fuck off.
His neural patterns then started composing.
RAMSES: I would ask how you got this number, but it would be of little use. What do you want, Arasaka?
M_ARASAKA: Had some info cross my desk. Thought you'd want to know the details. You know that I would have respected your wishes for privacy, but this is pertaining to a particularly sensitive matter. And you're in the middle of it.
RAMSES: Share it here.
M_ARASAKA: Not over text. Has to be face-to-face.
Ramses rolled his eyes. Typical corpo bullshit. Dangle the carrot in front of his eyes in the hopes that he will bite, and throw in a little implied threat to his life as well just to sustain his interest. He was almost amused at the vapid attempt at manipulation on display. Well, he was not going to play this little game. Not for Arasaka.
RAMSES: You think I'm stupid enough to fall for that? I thought I made it clear I'm not associating with you anymore.
M_ARASAKA: I'm well aware and I reiterate that I had no intention of persecuting you further. However, the circumstances have changed. What I am referring to pertains to a topic that you need to be informed of. That is a guarantee of its importance.
RAMSES: Give me one reason why I should take you up on this, otherwise I'm killing this conversation right now.
At this point, Ramses was only getting more and more pissed from Michiko's constant dancing around the subject. She clearly had a barrage of excuses primed to extend Ramses' curiosity on the matter, but he was just gung-ho towards stopping this communication just for his own sanity and so he could finally get some sleep.
Then he read Michiko's next message.
M_ARASAKA: Your partner is not who she says she is.
Immediately, Ramses' head whipped over so that he could look at Fiona's still-sleeping form. Watching as the blanket gently moved up and down as she breathed, the glimmering of planes through the fogged atmosphere searing pinpricks into the dusty night.
What a transparent attempt at trying to generate paranoia. Michiko's blatant fearmongering was now going beyond the pale. He almost cut the connection right there and then. Gnashing his teeth quietly, his eyes glimmered with data as he wrote, deleted, and rewrote his reply, taking time to edit out any of the expletives that had made their way into any of his earlier drafts.
RAMSES: You'd better have definitive proof to make an accusation such as that.
Characteristically, Michiko's reply was prompt, perhaps having already anticipated the tone of the merc's response.
M_ARASAKA: I would never be so bold to make blind accusations at this level. But please don't blame Fiona. She probably doesn't even know the details of the circumstances, herself. Come to Arasaka Tower. I can explain everything.
Ramses was just left with more questions than answers, but knew that was precisely the effect that Michiko was intending to achieve. Fiona doesn't even know? What the hell was that supposed to even mean? He stole another look at the netrunner lying next to him. So serene. Unbothered. Could it be true that she was unknowingly playing some part antithetical to his interests? But if so, what part was she supposed to be playing?
Was his decision to save her finally reaping the consequences that he had sowed so long ago?
A litany of curses in his head going unvoiced, he promised himself that if Michiko was lying about this, he would stop at nothing in his attempts to flatline her.
RAMSES: Fifteen minutes.
He then cut the connection.
Taking care to not disturb the sleeping woman, Ramses slid aside the sheets and swung his feet over until they touched the floor. He stood from the bed, naked, suppressing a shiver as his skin registered the sudden drop in temperature.
Then he heard a slow sound of skin against fabric. Fiona.
"Ramses?" she sleepily called out. Damn, had he woken her?
He wanted to tell her about the call, and of Michiko's brazen accusation, but his insecurities and distrust prevented him from making a full disclosure. He needed to have everything in order, all of the data in front of him, before he could make any sort of judgment, so he just said the only thing that he could say in that moment. "Go back to sleep."
Looking back around, he saw Fiona's body curling into a fetal position. She was still facing toward the window, not looking at his uncovered form. "Where are you going?" was her breathy whisper. Why can't you stay with me? was her unspoken plea.
"Some biz that I need to take care of," he said, which was not technically a lie. "It can't wait. I'll be back before dawn, Fiona. Just go to sleep. I'm sorry I disturbed you." He added that last part to soften the blow to the both of them. For his own unconscious doubts and for her own abandonment.
His armor and bodysuit had been scattered across the floor, laying where he had discarded them before Fiona and him had made love. He bent down and retrieved the stray pieces and stole into the armory without turning on the lights and quickly got dressed in the dark. Once his helmet was back where it belonged, he engaged the night-vision sensors so that he could see in the dark, and grabbed for a pair of pistols and a medium-range rifle. He certainly was not going into the lion's den unstrapped. After he slung a couple of grenades to his belt, Ramses stole back out into the living room and out the door to the hallway of the complex, hoping that Fiona would take his advice and that this would only be a bad dream for the both of them.
CORPO_PLAZA
Rzhevsky was waiting in the lobby of Arasaka Tower after Ramses had completed his hate-fueled drive to downtown, which had been quick considering the lack of traffic at this time of night. Upon exiting his vehicle, which was then whisked away by a valet, Ramses had been flanked by security guards as they brought him before the towering DaiOni, but Rzhevsky merely waved a clawed hand and the guards all dispersed. He had not been frisked for weapons, but Ramses was sure that the polarized sunglasses the guards all wore could see in the X-ray wavelength. They had to know what he was packing.
If that information had been relayed to Rzhevsky, it did not seem like the cyborg particularly cared. She just angled her head down towards the mercenary, the weapons platform practically vibrating in anticipation. Ramses noted that Rzhevsky's armor still bore carbon scoring that looked fairly recent, along with blood that had dried along her heels. Must have been the marks she had acquired during the Silicon Valley job with Fiona. For the poor bastards that had gotten squished by those powerful taloned feet, Ramses at least considered they might have died immediately, a blessing. Potentially.
"Michiko's waiting," Rzhevsky rasped throatily, her synthesized voice more robotic than feminine. Ramses would be hard pressed to forget what the corpo bot sounded like.
"Then take me to her," he growled with just as much intensity.
The resulting elevator ride passed without any additional dialogue between them, not that the two had much to converse about. Rzhevsky then led Ramses off the elevator once it had reached the floor and stomped past a series of glass doors and a security station. ARASAKA NEWS NETWORK, was what was etched on the glass in a bold font.
They were now in an open office area, with rows of Net stations—reclining chairs surrounded by onyx-colored mainframes—arranged in a grid pattern. Analysts and researchers worked here, perhaps. Constantly plugged into the corporate intranets, beholden to a continuous stream of information, the underpaid workers here were responsible for filtering and adjusting all of the data into something palatable for the masses, regurgitated by the talking heads through whatever broadcast medium could be set to use for such a task. The propaganda machine, hard at work.
Before Ramses could take stock of the whole place, Rzhevsky ducked into another hallway just off of the main analyzing floor, and headed into a dimly lit room. They were now in what Ramses recognized as a production control room, which reminded him of a theater. A video monitor wall took up the entire back of the room, around thirty different feeds blazing in their colorful tableau. Consoles for audio mixing, camera controls and lighting control made up several different tiered rows, which were unoccupied at the moment. To the left, Ramses spotted a reinforced security door made of bulletproof glass. Behind the glass, he could see towers of databanks that contained all of the raw footage that would undergo final editing in this very room.
Standing in front of the monitor wall, silhouetted by the cascade of brilliant colors, was Michiko, the only other occupant in the room. She turned to face Ramses and he was struck by how, after two years, she did not seem to have aged at all. Either she had a really good plastic surgeon, or the chrome that she had embedded into herself was so subtle that it could have passed for real flesh.
With the light flinging from her back, the darkness masked the tiny smile that the corpo had donned. "I wasn't sure if this was ever going to happen again," she said. "I've been keeping tabs on you since we last spoke. You've been doing well for yourself."
Not particularly incentivized to participate in small talk, Ramses descended the steps until he was at the level just above Michiko's. "Don't think that this is going to be a habit," he said, conscious that his dominating tone was no doubt putting the DaiOni behind him on red alert, but he was far from giving a shit right now. "No more wasting my time. Why am I here, Michiko? And what does this all have to do with Fiona?"
But Michiko waved a hand, unknowingly irritating Ramses further, as she turned back to the monitor wall, looking like an ancient goddess where an artificial sun was streaming down upon her.
Without looking, she grabbed the back of a rolling chair and pushed it towards the mercenary. "Sit. You might find this next part interesting."
Ramses did not take the offered chair, continuing to stand in the very spot he now occupied.
He noted the banks of screens, how they were beginning to shift from recordings of news broadcasts, to what looked like various angles of military cam footage. Shots from battleships out at a flat and gray sea. Overhead drone footage with constantly shifting telemetry data, FoF tags of Arasaka units highlighted in red text, hundreds of icons. Hacked security cameras upon tall metal splinters somewhere inland, overseeing a bare coastline that was occasionally broken up by the towering structure of rocket platforms. Bodycams fitted in jostling perspectives—soldiers hunkering down on high-power inflatable boats, the black rubber ribs rippling in the foaming wake. The soldiers wore all black, no insignia, with helmets or balaclavas covering their faces. They held large automatic weapons or powerful shotguns—clearly they were preparing for a fight.
Michiko gestured towards the screens. "You're witnessing the first step in what is going to be a marathon for Arasaka, one that, if everything goes according to plan, will result in a new age for the company."
"What is this?" Ramses asked, momentarily forgetting about Fiona and Michiko's interest in her.
"Boca Chica, in the Republic of Texas. There is a rocket garden just on the coast—a hexagonal formation of seven different launch platforms, with one in the middle—that Militech built for the Free State in secret. And currently en route to this garden," Michiko swept a hand towards the right side of the monitor wall, the one that was displaying the bodycams of the soldiers in the onrushing boats, "are troops from the newly reincorporated Corporation Internationale Nauticale et Oceanique. Or, better known as the aquacorp CINO."
Ramses could scarcely believe it. He shook his head and crossed his arms. "A bit of déjà vu, eh, Michiko? Arasaka is that desperate to repeat the Fourth Corporate War in the hopes of a stalemate with better terms?"
"Hardly," Michiko scoffed. "Things are different, this time around."
"Aside from the locale, I don't see that much of a difference."
"Let me give you a bit of history. 2070. The Fourth Corporate War ends, but Texas remains an autonomous Free State by not signing the Treaty of Unification. 2072. Governmental failure in Florida means that global warming has flooded Cape Canaveral, removing one of the critical launch sites in NUSA. 2073. NUSA president Rosalind Myers and Militech enter a secret deal with the Free State to build a rocket garden in Boca Chica, off the Gulf of Mexico, since Texas actually did plan ahead and built reinforced sea walls miles off the coast before the ocean levels rose too high. This would be eventually known as the Lone Star Gateway. NUSA would retain sovereignty of the launch site, but would enter into a formal lease with Texas."
Ramses did not interject, finding himself impossibly intrigued, as what Michiko was saying seemed to clash against his own worldview and intelligence. This was most likely due to the bits and pieces of media he was able to consume informing him the opposite: that President Myers was stoking hostility against the Texans ever since the war ended and had conducted missile strikes on the towns of Wellington and El Paso in retaliation for a spate of suicide bombings against NUSA military bases across the border.
However, that had been media that had been re-contextualized, censored, and processed into a spun-heavy rhetoric that was only designed to further the ambitions of the corporations that sponsored the media companies to begin with. Delivering a convenient truth for the masses to digest, but hiding reality behind a veil of fiction. Maybe that was what Michiko wanted him to realize by having Rzhevsky lead him through the media wing to get to this room in the building, or perhaps that was just a coincidence.
Was this Michiko parting the curtain for him, then? Giving him a peek under Arasaka's ugly hood?
The monitors on the left side of the wall had now switched perspective. Ramses could now see that they were displaying the shuttles and rockets that were mounted upon the seven launch pads from a static viewpoint somewhere within a marshland. All seven pads were occupied by the space-bound ships, a veil of spotlamps illuminating each monumental white spire within the dirty gray of the coming dawn.
And, off the coast, the arcs of tracerfire from embedded bunkers on the beach, marked in their perfect reflection from the waters below like a momentary ellipsis. Soft puffs of smoke choked the night from the battleships in the gulf raining down shells upon the emplacements, throwing up tremendous geysers of flame, molten sand, and roasted concrete.
Flares in the air were captured in the gleam off of the rippling seas, revealing a legion of the rubber motorboats that were zooming with the flat surf. Military hovercrafts, the rotors whipping and chopping the air while massive exhaust tubes belched pillars of fire at the rear, roared over the waves, rotating turrets upon their roofs chugging with constant auto-fire, the front ramps in the process of extending so that a column of tanks and other heavy attack vehicles could lurch upon the beach, throwing up twin sprays of oily water the color of pearl upon both sides of the craft once they had landed, their tires ripping into the sand or hoverjets scorching the ground until it turned into blackened glass below.
The soldiers had landed on the beach by now, knee-deep in the scummy water that splashed around them. They rushed forward towards the bare dunes, their weapons chattering in their hands while the sand rippled with bullets that cut between them, the momentary bursts of muzzleflame searing bulbs of orange up and down the coastline like fireflies. The bodycams showed a disorienting spectacle, as they were being jostled around from the frantic movement of the men and women charging the rocket garden. The sound was muted, but if it had not been, the audience would have been able to hear the shouting of orders, the terror-inducing screams of the dying, the deafening sound of guns firing and mortars exploding inches away. Some of the perspectives were not moving at all, or faintly stirring and half-covered in sand or some dark liquid, enemy fire having killed or maimed them before they could reach their objective.
Ramses quietly studied the array of screens, safe from harm's way, hundreds of miles apart. "So CINO—aka, Arasaka—launches a full-scale attack on Texan soil against Militech, disrupting their efforts to maintain their orbital facilities or cosmic bases. The same Militech that, for all intents and purposes, has control of NUSA via President Myers. It seems like NUSA is attacking itself, essentially. What am I missing here, Michiko?"
Michiko briefly considered her perfectly lacquered nails, the fireballs on the monitors little more than trifles to her. "NUSA does have more than one political party, Ramses. There are many of these splinter cabals that would love nothing more than to see President Myers embarrassed and her relationship with Militech weakened, not to mention that they are particularly sore that Militech, as NUSA's primary supplier of weapons, has complete control over the contracts they set, which means there is a hefty amount of price-gouging going on that is whittling into NUSA's deficit. Plus, there are a fair amount of war hawks in Washington that would like nothing more than to see Texas burnt to a crisp. This," she raised her arms towards the monitor wall as if she were sermonizing to a congregation, "happens to give those disenfranchised few a route to their ultimate goal."
"While positioning Arasaka as a potential competitor for Militech as a supplier for NUSA," Ramses realized. "Your contributions to the opposing factions would not be unappreciated and would therefore leverage your company to push Militech out. Texas, eh?"
"Have you ever been to Texas, Ramses?"
He had, once. It was in Houston for a small job as he had been in the middle of making his way across the country towards the Pacific at the time. The job itself was not memorable, but he remembered that the city was just a testament to man's arrogance. Built in the middle of a swamp, the city was hot, humid, and filled with unpleasant people who wore cowboy hats while trawling mall parking lots in their lifted designer trucks.
"Not particularly to my liking," he admitted.
Michiko shrugged. "Maybe one day the Texans will be proud that the turn of the world order began on their shores—they love to position themselves as the center of the universe. And just as well that they're not part of NUSA. Anyone—corpo or government—can do whatever they want there and not face repercussions from their ruling body. Free States aren't recognized sovereign territory, after all. It's the perfect staging ground."
Within minutes, the screens were showing that the slaughter had become constant. Soldiers were shown ripped apart, their bodies having been scattered across the beach as their life lay splattered upon the wet sand. Militech reinforcements were also on the scene, but were quickly getting overwhelmed by the CINO advance. Further up the beach, the shrubland had been set ablaze, creating a wall of smoke that careened into the air. One Militech soldier tried to charge a CINO APC, was knocked down, and the lower half of his body was crushed as the massive tires ran over him. He was left to scream out his last breaths among the rest of the dying.
Ramses was impressed at the coordination. "Intriguing. I'm assuming that today held some significance when planning this attack?"
Michiko craned her head around and flashed a smile. "Perceptive as always. This morning, Militech was due to launch those seven shuttles into orbit. They were finally commencing on their plans to build a colony on Mars, not content to let NASA, ESA, and SovOil have all the real estate to themselves. Perhaps you saw the ads? Ten first residential models on the new colony for 100 million Eurodollars each?"
It was hard for anyone to miss them. They had been blazing upon the screens of the floating aerozeps for the past year, not to mention they had taken up several tunnel billboards while Ramses had been commuting between neighborhoods in Night City.
"Militech never did let on that the Mars apartments had sold out within ten minutes of them going on the market, through an exclusive invite event that had only been distributed to fifty people," Michiko continued. "Bet you can guess the type of people that bought them."
"People like you?" Ramses raised his chin.
Softly laughing, Michiko made a small conciliatory gesture. "You're not wrong. Billionaires. Heads of state. CEOs. Oh, and two of the most famous influencers on the Net."
"Influencers?"
"Net personalities. Net celebrities. Trend amplifiers, either using their natural persona, or hiding behind a manufactured one, to push some marketable agenda. The corporations sponsor every major influencer on the Net, you see. These specific individuals rely on their natural or programmed charisma to amass an army of devoted followers, while they act as a conduit for pretty much anything you can think of. Sports, movies, celebrities, politics. They talk… and millions listen."
"Oh." Ramses never spent much time on those parts of the Net anyway. Netslang amongst social media users was something that he had tangential knowledge of, but was never at the forefront of that particular lingo, particularly because it seemed to be morphing into something more and more bizarre, into a language that seemed to defy all rational organization or construction. "They sound—"
"Insufferable?" Michiko raised an eyebrow. "One silver lining is that the world will continue to turn long after all of them are gone, with nothing of value being lost, because they pretend to be experts in subjects that they are not qualified to speak for, but people pay attention because they scream, flaunt their lifestyles more publicly than even my own family, and act like clowns for adoration. Blind leading the blind. If you want to see why…"
From a hidden remote that she had been holding all this time, Michiko tuned a small quadrant of screens to what seemed to be viewpoints through various handheld cameras that were focused in uncomfortable close-ups upon the influencers that Michiko had mentioned. The two of the personalities were young—a man and a woman—with the male wearing a set of limegreen designer goggles that made his eyes seem like they were bulging out of his head, and their respective hairstyles were tousled and colored with gaudy pastel dyes.
Holding their respective cameras, the influencers were excitedly chattering into the lens, their eyes darting in all directions as they twisted this way and that. Based on the brief confines of brutal aluminum struts and orange warning labels that Ramses could glimpse past the two, he determined that the influencers were onboard the shuttles. He could see sterile white contours, personnel strapped to flight chairs in their silver and armored uniforms, and the faint glimmer of holographics—star charts—arcing before the windows as a massive heads-up-display for the pilots.
Michiko flipped another switch from her stylus/remote, and the sound unmuted on the male influencer's channel.
"—like, holy shit, guys, this thing is really fucking kicking off! I can hear gunshots all around me, like, whoa! That was a close one! A round exploded near the ground, must have been twenty feet away! Can you see it? Can you see it?" High-pitched, words so fast that they were colliding against one another. There was a moment where the camera spun around in a vain attempt to peer through the closest window, which was more than a meter "above" the young man's current position. But still, Ramses was able to spy a faint orange glow that dissipated the night sky, though it was exceedingly hard to tell given the way the frame was shaking everywhere. "Nah, you can't see it. Shit, shit, shit. But… fuck, my chooms! For the first time in my life, I'm under fire! People are actually shooting at me! I'm taking screencaps of this thing and I'll be posting them on my Zone domain once this is over. Holy shit! Holy shit! Guys, this is the greatest thing I've ever done in my life. God, I wish I hadn't taken that speed so that I could slow down for a second and describe what this is like. It's just—"
"Hey!" someone from the front of the shuttle was screaming. The pilot, possibly. "Put that camera down! We're about to launch!"
"I'm strapping it in!" the influencer yelled back. To the camera, he then said, a bit quieter this time, "Yeah, fuck that. No way am I stopping this stream now. This is content and I'm not missing this chance. Remember guys, never let content slip away from you. Speaking of which, I should say a few quick things. Mom, I'm sorry I sold your car. I just needed the money to pay for this trip and I'll get you any model you like once I get to Mars. To Mom's so-called new 'husband', Sean: fuck you, you were a loser dipshit before and you're still a loser dipshit now. And, to my wonderful, wonderful girlfriend Tria, who couldn't come with me on this trip, I will see you in six years' time. I'll be waiting for you up there because you'll be waiting for me back here. Know that I—"
A test pattern suddenly flickered upon the screen, thankfully removing the man's aggravating narration and replacing it with a cutesy graphic of a dancing anthropomorphic cartoon animal. TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES, PLEASE STAND BY, it read.
The feed had switched to a dead channel the very second that Ramses saw, on another screen, one of the shuttles violently explode, streams of igniting fuel flung a mile into the air, the shockwave powerful enough to billow the smoke that had hung over the launch area. The entire launch platform was consumed by a brilliant flare, a simmering sun that had existed upon the beach, before it slowly died away, leaving a flaming wreckage that poured exhaust into the air, the ground underneath magma.
Michiko clicked a control and the rest of the feed muted. "Well, that's quite enough of that."
A similar fate was befalling the rest of the shuttles, Ramses noted. On the screens, the ring of rockets began to erupt, but it was not from their engines igniting and beginning their heavenly ascent, but from their entire frames blowing up in catastrophic pyrotechnics, each eruption shaking the ground and blacking out a good portion of security cameras with each explosion.
And, if Ramses concentrated hard enough, he could see a faint azure beam glimmer in the air like a distant thread, one that was spearing down from the sky to touch each shuttle in turn. Seconds later, there would be a small pulse, like a spark, and the rocket would vanish into an array of flaming light and spiraling debris.
Soon, the rocket garden was nothing but a series of smoldering craters. "Orbital laser?" Ramses asked Michiko, having recognized the telltale sighting systems—the azure beam—focusing in on the stationary ground targets.
"Leased from the Israelis," Michiko said with pride. "Gives Arasaka plausible deniability. Would be hard to cover up our involvement if it had been our equipment that we used up there. Anyway, I'm sure I've kept you here long enough. Shall we adjourn? There's a spot elsewhere in the tower where we can speak frankly."
To his dismay, Ramses realized that he had been completely distracted as to why he was here in the first place in the fifteen minutes that he had spent watching the Arasaka assault. But there was no time to dwell on that further, for Michiko was already in motion, heading back out into the wings of the media level, heading out towards the elevator bay, Rzhevsky stomping in the corpo's wake.
The trio did not take the lifts, but instead headed past the bay, where there was an angular spiral staircase, made out of a dark walnut. One level up, there was a restaurant that was an elegant fusion of Japanese and modern sensibilities. Soft music floating through hidden speakers—Ramses recognized Kestrel's voice amidst the instrumentals. Expertly trimmed bonsai trees mounting the divides between booths. Splendid brass gongs outstretched upon the walls, where near-perfect reproductions of classical Japanese art rolled a wave of color in the muted lighting of the room.
The restaurant was devoid of patrons, the lack of conversation or clink of silverware somewhat disconcerting. Ramses just assumed that anyone of the Arasaka clan could just clear it out on a moment's notice. It was their name that adorned this building, after all.
Michiko and Rzhevsky led Ramses to a crescent-shaped booth in the corner of the restaurant. To Ramses' surprise, two people were already sitting there. One, a fresh-faced man with the inbred arrogance of an executive. The other, a grizzled and scarred man with a cybernetic hand, wearing sunglasses indoors with frames so thin they looked to be inset in his sockets.
Though the pair's clothes differed somewhat, the same insignia had found a home upon them: NetWatch.
Stopping in front of the table, Michiko smoothly swung a hand as she addressed her guests in turn. "Ramses Vogel, Bill Ackerman and Dan Renzer from NetWatch. They've been very interested to make your acquaintance."
NetWatch. So, this was the Fiona connection. They had finally decided to make their move against him. Light scoring against his frame, Ramses held his breath, imagining becoming as brittle as ice while cold flames nestled against his spine.
Ackerman scooted awkwardly upon the leather booth so that he could reach his hand out. "Ramses. A pleasure."
But Ramses just looked disdainfully at the offered hand, the distorted vocals of the music lingering stalely in the air, and sat down at the other end of the booth, but not before swinging his coat so that his armored leg, and the holstered pistol at his waist, could be easily visible and unobstructed.
The silent rebuke did not seem to bother Ackerman all that much. Perhaps he had been dealing with such arrogance all his life, one that he now willfully provided a home within himself. He withdrew his hand back and scooted back into place so that Michiko could take her spot at the opposite end of the booth. Rzhevsky, too big to occupy any seat, simply stood at the head of the table, a throaty and digital growl unconsciously warping from the chassis of the DaiOni, the metal glowing a cold blue from the nearby neon emplacement, making it look like the metallic merc was made out of a thick crystal.
"Would you like anything?" Michiko asked Ramses, who had noticed the empty plates in front of Ackerman and Renzer. The stains upon the plate and the haphazardly placed silverware indicated that the men had already eaten. "The kitchen has no menu. Anything you want, they can make."
Ramses just shook his head. An obvious rule: never eat anything offered in the lion's den.
Michiko raised an eyebrow. "You sure? They can make you a steak here. Real meat. They grow the cow up on Luna, kill it, and send it down here express. No scop. No additives."
It was a tempting offer. The thought of eating a hot, juicy steak was somewhat enticing to Ramses, however his sense of self-preservation was firing at the redline. Despite the smell from the nearby kitchen that intruded through his helmet's olfactory filters, he once again made the same declining motion with his head. It was a good thing he was not hungry, but he would not be in such a state for long.
The corpo seemed almost disappointed, but her eyes were already flashing as she submitted her own order to the kitchen.
Ramses now leaned forward, one arm on the table, the material of his coat creaking, as Michiko's face elongated within the polished expanse of his helmet. "No more delays, Michiko. No more talk about steak, or corporate boondoggles. You brought me here to discuss a sensitive subject. This better commence in the next five seconds otherwise I'll start to think you aren't at all a serious person."
"Ackerman," Michiko said, her eyes never leaving Ramses.
The NetWatch exec cleared his throat and Ramses minutely turned his helmet in the suited man's direction, as if he was worth not even a portion of his full attention.
"First of all," Ackerman began, his hands animated an inch above the table, "I want to be especially cognizant in how I approach this, because I want you to know that I'm well aware of the nature of your relationship with the… well, let's just say the person of interest."
Now Ramses fully turned his head, the rest of his body frozen solid, the optics of his helmet almost sparking with an indignance. Ackerman didn't cower, which slightly impressed the merc, but was worrying all the same as those with intelligence—and Ackerman didn't seem stupid—would have recognized the danger in the invisible glare.
"And?" he asked after an uncomfortable lull had passed.
Ackerman now wore a guilty look on his face. "You have surpassed any reasonable expectations that I could have imagined when you developed your professional capacity with the subject of today's conversation. I have to say, Ramses, I respect the amount of work you've put into this. More than that, I'm surprised, pleasantly so, at how you've managed to instill in JP422-7C a mercenary's mindset, not to mention providing her with the skills to survive in Night City. You've unlocked several talents in her, ones that I never would have considered. JP422-7C has been flourishing in her newfound career and… it's hard to overstate my wonder at that."
"Fiona," Ramses said without thinking, a whitehot feeling immediately constricting his throat. He leaned further over the table, his hand sliding upon his thigh towards his holstered pistol. "A serial number dehumanizes her. Say her name correctly or I'll rip out your larynx if you continue to improperly use it."
Now Ackerman twiddled his fingers with a small smile, as though getting threatened was an everyday occurrence at his job. "An interesting choice of words. I can accommodate with such a request, but you should be aware that that wasn't the only serial number that belonged—or belongs—to her, to be accurate. But I did agree to your condition, so I will acquiesce your point, as you are correct. To put it this way, Ms. Merrick is a person of many talents. Some abilities, obvious. The others, latent."
"Latent?"
"Yes, latent. Suffice to say, Ms. Merrick has been keeping secrets from you, Ramses. Whether she realizes it or not doesn't matter in the long run. What she hides… well, to put it bluntly, for the past two years you have been unconsciously involved in the most world-altering situation you have ever faced."
Somehow, Ramses doubted that. He detested people that spoke in hyperbole and he was only getting more and more annoyed by Ackerman's arrogant tone.
He was about to respond, but a waiter quickly arrived, bearing a plate that he set in front of Michiko, along with a bottle of red wine. A still-sizzling ribeye sat upon the plate in a pool of its own juices, two grilled bulbs of Mexican onions sitting right next to the meat. Michiko poured herself a glass of wine first, then carved into the steak. Bright, hot pink in the center, the fat upon the edge glistening and buttery white.
"You're making it seem as if she's some kind of con artist, always on the lookout for her next mark," he said after Michiko had established a rhythm to her meal. What the hell was this NetWatch bastard even saying? Was he trying to get Ramses to question what he had seen with his own eyes? He had found Fiona practically tied up in a basement in the middle of Japantown—if she was at all a swindle, then she was a particularly bad one if she had been foolish enough to wind up in such a predicament like that. "What is she to you, really? Did she steal something important? Something that NetWatch needs?"
"In a manner of speaking, yes."
Behind the mask, Ramses' eyes became slits. A cold fire lobed upon the cheekbone of his helmet from the nearby chandelier. "Information? Has she downloaded something sensitive to her softstorage in her cyberdeck?"
"If only it were that simple." The guilty look on Ackerman's face was back. "She did not steal anything, per se."
Ramses must have put on a slightly confused air when he didn't respond immediately, so Ackerman clarified in the next moment.
"The item of value… is Ms. Merrick herself."
There was a very noticeable beat. Several seconds passed.
"I'm not following," Ramses just said.
"For a while there, I didn't, either," Ackerman admitted. "At first, I had the same reaction that anyone else would have when I had found out what she had become. What she represented to NetWatch, to the world. I was terrified about the potential she could unleash, what sort of damage she could do. I thought that my poor containment—exacerbated when you stole her from me, if I may point out—had unintentionally resulted in a singular event that had more transformative potential than I could ever believe, much less admit. So, naturally, I reacted out of fear. I wanted that risk neutralized. I didn't want containment to be breached any further. So, I… I made the decision to terminate the cumulative efforts of several years of work. Back then, I felt I had no other choice. I was… blind to the other possibilities."
There was no mistaking the divulgence that Ackerman had been tiptoing around and Ramses had detected it right away.
He sat up even higher, slowly, carefully, like a panther. His hand crawled even closer towards the weapon that was strapped to his side, his movements microscopic so as not to draw any attention. "Two years ago," he breathed, "there was an assassin that came for her. Nearly succeeded, too. Was that your 'termination'?"
Ackerman swallowed, finally looking a little rattled at having to broach this sensitive subject.
Finally, he nodded. "Hiring the Extremaduran was a step I thought necessary to avoid—"
Ramses left arm whirled up until it was parallel to the table. From beyond the cuff of his coat, the muzzle on his wrist armor gave a small puff and a sharp hook, razorwire looping behind it, shot from the hidden opening. The hook latched onto the collar of Ackerman's expensive coat and Ramses wrenched his arm before anyone else could make a move, violently jerking Ackerman upon the table, his body displacing a nearby glass with a rattling crash and upended Michiko's half-eaten steak, the plate shattering to pieces upon the wooden floor. The small motor in Ramses' armor whirled, dragging Ackerman across the table until he was before Ramses, so that the merc could easily jam his heavybarreled pistol into the exec's cheek with his right hand.[2]
Everything had kicked off in less than four seconds. Renzer and Rzhevsky had drawn their guns on Ramses by then, the two corpo troopers having their sights squarely aimed point-blank at Ramses' helmet.
"Drop it," Renzer said, a heavy revolver in a two-handed grip. "Let him go, asshole."
Rzhevsky also edged forward, her synthesized breathing escalating in anticipation as she levelled her massive railgun towards Ramses. A low-pitched whine exuded from the black barrel of the cannon, with the faint crackle of static electricity the accompaniment.
Ramses was acutely aware of the weapons that were pointed at him, but ignored the clear threats. He dug the barrel of his pistol deeper into Ackerman's cheek, which produced a stray gasp of pain from the man. The soft noises of music wafted through the scene, the neon lighting turning the slide of Ramses' weapon into a short pillar of fire in his hand. The glow from his optics became a simmering aquamarine and a tremble infiltrated his extremities, scarcely discernable.
Michiko had stood from the booth, her hands held out, but she took care not to stand between Ramses and Rzhevsky. "Let's all try to remain calm," she said, trying to deescalate the situation. "Obviously things started out on the wrong foot—"
Ackerman was wincing, the pistol pressed so far into him that it was pushing against his jawbone. "It was a mistake!" he got out, his hands grasping at Ramses' armored forearms in a feeble attempt to break free. "Why do you think I never sent another assassin after her? I knew it would just have the same outcome!"
"You nearly got her killed," Ramses hissed, leaning over the man that was lying on his stomach upon the dinner table, back bent so far that he was about to snap in two. "You didn't see how he had butchered her. It was only blind luck that she survived in the first place."
"L-Luck?" Ackerman gasped. "You think that was luck?"
"It doesn't matter what I think. That was then. This is now. And soon, out of the two of us, it'll be just me. My sympathies run low."
Despite the pistol digging into his face, Ackerman found it in him to smile. His eyes told a parable that Ramses found impossible to translate. "And yet… your affection for her betrays you."
"You don't know anything," Ramses growled, his finger inching closer to the trigger. It would be so easy to just make a simple move with his finger and then Ackerman would be nothing but a shelled-out hulk on the dining table and a smear on the ceiling. But such a move would be akin to signing his death warrant and it was only knowing that reality that stayed his hand. He suddenly came to the realization that he was not going to walk out of here alive under any circumstance, and the thought managed to calm him. "You don't know what she means to me."
"But you still haven't figured it out yet? You still don't know what she is."
"You don't have long, anyway. Might as well enlighten me. The answer won't change a thing."
Ackerman's smile turned almost Cheshire-cat-like. "So you believe, but your mistake is that you still think of her as human."
"More metaphors. Not helping."
"It's no metaphor," Ackerman all but shouted, his fear of being flatlined beginning to burgeon, despite his previous confidence. "I told you that she was valuable, yes? It's not because of what she knows or what she stole. It's because of what she is. What's inhabiting that brain. And it certainly isn't human."
"Then what do you believe she is?" Ramses growled, enunciating each syllable with torturous determination.
Ackerman drew himself up by pushing up on the table so that he was face to face with the merc, both men glowering at the other.
"An artificial intelligence, that's what."
Ramses spent a moment to himself, certain that he had misheard. There were always stories, rumors on the street of such things, but they were prototypical of the type of addled ravings that drug-induced individuals in the alleys yelled to each other during their comedowns. The synthesis of flesh and data, some singularity to accord to one's fastened prophecy. But no one had ever proved such a thing was possible. They were nothing more than stray rumors that floated around the Net. Even if such a thing had happened, an AI inhabiting the body of the living, it would stand to reason that the corpos would have them locked up tighter than the DARPANET.
But now, Ackerman believed that Fiona… Fiona… was one of these things? An AI?
"Liar," Ramses rasped. He now moved the muzzle of the pistol to Ackerman's forehead. Might as well shoot this bastard and be done with it.
"Am I?" Ackerman no longer eyed Ramses' weapon. "You never noticed anything strange with her? Times where she may have appeared to 'malfunction?' Where she exhibited abilities that seemed beyond her, even for a natural netrunner like her? Ah yes, you must have, else you would have shot me by now. So, you have seen but a fraction of what she could do. No cyberdeck could ever pull that much power and devastation, Ramses. That was a gift from somewhere else."
They were close enough for Ramses to see Ackerman's eyes in clear detail. They were some vague color of a salty ocean, but they were unblinking, almost defiant. Whatever the exec was saying, he believed he was telling the truth.
It was only a matter if Ramses was going to accept that truth.
Almost contemptuously, Ramses released his grip on Ackerman, the hook from his launch port unlatching at the same time. He did not stop pointing his pistol towards the exec, but allowed Ackerman to crawl back over to his seat.
"Okay," Michiko said as she too moved back towards the booth, arms still raised. "We got that out of our system." She sat down and took a breath. "Bill, before you risk Ramses' ire any more, you might want to explain everything to him like you did to me. Right now. Otherwise, his leniency will expire." She shot a worried look towards the merc, knowing the limits of his patience.
Rzhevsky had not lowered her weapon, nor had Renzer, but the tension was deflated in the scene once Michiko gave a firm nod towards the DaiOni and the hulking mechanoid lowered her massive rifle, seeming almost disappointed.
Ackerman grimaced as he readjusted the collar of his shirt, which was irreparably wrinkled after the grapple hook had torn into the fabric.
"I should probably start a few decades down the line," he said, his mouth twisting in annoyance. "Back when we were mapping the—could you put that down, please?"
He was referring to Ramses' pistol, which was now poking over the rim of the table in the armored man's grip, but was still pointed at Ackerman's head.
"No," Ramses said.
Ackerman looked to Michiko for support, who just shrugged. I got you this far, it's up to you now, the gesture seemed to say.
"Whatever—but what I was saying, if we go back to the beginning, when the DataKrash corrupted the Old Net, the R.A.B.I.D.S.—"
"Roving Autonomous Bartmoss Interface Drones," Ramses interjected almost lazily. "The viruses that destroyed the Old Net, created by the late Rache Bartmoss. I know the history."
"Which necessitated the creation of the Blackwall—NetWatch's doing—to carve out an area of the Net that could be under human control. The majority of what was lost, behind the Blackwall, was left to the R.A.B.I.D.S, and the rogue AIs that spawned from the damage they caused. When Bartmoss initiated the DataKrash, he thought he was just going to eradicate all security in every corporate datafortress. He was a good netrunner, but overconfident in his ability. His viruses unshackled every single military-grade AI that every corporation had locked up. Free to roam anywhere, they spread across the Net and rapidly multiplied, their code transforming into something humanity had never seen before. They grew so fast that reversing the damage done from the DataKrash was considered an impossibility, nor could the rogue AIs that roamed around the Old Net be muzzled."
"And NetWatch claimed sovereignty over the public Net while the corpos carved out niches for themselves in their own private Nets," Ramses added. "Playing the role of cop in a land where there is no law."
Ackerman rubbed at his forehead with a napkin. "If there's any place that is truly without law, Ramses, it is what's behind the Blackwall. Have you ever tried to take a peek behind the curtain? It's a strange and violent land, filled with roaming programs that can destabilize and kill a netrunner from simply being in mere contact with them. Or to be more precise, if the AIs come across a netrunner's digital persona while they are deep-diving, they can initiate localized assaults, mainly done by overwhelming their heuristic processes through an intense DDoS attack. Burns out one's deck and cooks the brain. Not a nice way to go. Most long-term netrunners meet such a fate sooner or later—it's inevitable. Make no mistake, the AIs there have the upper hand, for they live in the code and the connections that still binds the Old Net together."
Ramses could believe that, for the moment, at least. There were rumors going around that rogue AIs had actually assisted NetWatch in building the Blackwall in the first place. But digging deeper into the why of the rumor just raised further questions. Was it because the AIs wanted to sequester themselves from all human contact? Had NetWatch found a way to communicate, and therefore bargain, with these rogue entities? Ramses did not envision Ackerman entertaining him on the truth anytime soon.
He raised his pistol an inch off the table. An indication to get to the point. "And the link between this and Fiona?"
Now Ackerman's face cooled and he turned somewhat pensive. He folded his hands together and leaned forward across the table a bit, as if he were about to divulge precious state secrets.
"There is a rare occurrence," he said, "one that has not yet been publicly admitted, is that Blackwall AIs are capable of making the jump from the Old Net to a physical platform. This platform can be anything, from a stack of server blades, to a vending machine out in downtown—"
"—or to a human body loaded with netrunner implants," Ramses finished the theorization. "And you have proof of this, how?"
Ackerman made a gesture towards his suit pocket. "If I may?" When Ramses made no argument, he reached into his interior pocket and withdrew a data shard. "This was collected from our colleague during the mission she was working with Fiona up in Silicon Valley," he said, nodding to Rzhevsky. "It was taking constant scans of her biorhythms from the moment she had it inserted. When we analyzed it, we found an unusual pattern in the brainwaves."
The exec slid the shard across the table to Ramses, who accepted it. He quickly slotted it in his firebox to check for viruses, which produced a green all-clear seconds later. He then inserted it into his deck and a pop-up appeared in his overlays. False-color images of neural activity in the gray zones of the brain. Jagged areas of neuron impulses—far too structured for that to be a natural occurrence. The spikes of activity were congruent across the planes, which even for someone like Ramses, knew that was not how a normal brain operated.
And yet, he still did not find himself satisfied.
Ramses withdrew the shard and tossed it back over to Ackerman. "This proves nothing. For all I know, that scan was manipulated."
"Yet there will always be the doubt, now that the idea has been offered to you. Even if I were to provide you all the data that shows that the shard was never tampered with, you would still not believe me." Ackerman picked up the shard from where it was lying on the tablecloth and inserted it back into his suit pocket. "But now, you are already doubting yourself. Trying to recall every moment from the last two years, desperate to remember if you had missed any red flags, despite you being as careful as you are."
Red flags. More like warning klaxons that had gone unheeded. He did not need to be castigated by anyone other than himself on that point. Each and every deviation from the norm a small paper cut to his constitution, merely building up over time until it was too late and he was bleeding out.
Fiona's lapses in memory. The times she had recounted torching people from the inside out, their wounds unlike anything he had seen before. The strange and dissociated behavior she had conveyed when he had first rescued her. He had made excuses for each and every one of them. Justifications to himself. Could it be they were all interrelated?
The pistol in his hand slowly lowered. "If I believe you—if—then tell me how you think this happened."
Ackerman spread his hands. "I can't speak for the exact reasoning how this came to be. There are some AIs that… simply come into existence through no one's input at all. CPPs—Critical Pathway Plateaus—are types of AIs that are borne from nothingness when enough neural links in a holographic crystal processing network are established, which occurs from storage capacity expansion in the Old Net, unfettered and unchecked. Combine that with enough connections to heuristic controllers on a nearby mainframe that can be accessed via the Net and you have AI genesis."
"And you think that Fiona is one of these CPPs? Software created by accident?"
"Most Blackwall AIs are CPPs. The other types of AI simply cannot conceive of the world beyond their virtual environments and dimensions, and Fiona has clearly demonstrated that she has the capability to understand the physical dimension that we inhabit. And she's not an SPI—a Soulkilled Pseudo Intellect. SPIs are all based on human consciousnesses, because the SPI had been digitized from their human form. And we know that because we have a record on all SPIs ever created. There was only one way an SPI could be created: through Arasaka. Arasaka controlled the Soulkiller program and was therefore responsible for every SPI that roams the Old Net today."
Michiko felt that was her cue, straightening just as the waiter finally came back with another steak to replace the one that Ramses had ruined.
"My grandfather's program," Michiko said as she forked up a mouthful of the medium-rare meat. "Stolen from the infamous hacker Alt Cunningham. It was housed in our most secure database, Mikoshi, and privately advertised to the ultra-wealthy. Digitize one's consciousness so that it could be inserted into a new body sometime in the future. The power to live forever, is how I believe it was advertised. And you wouldn't believe how much people would pay to become immortal."
For the first time tonight, Ramses laughed. "You fucking people. Nothing at all is sacred to you, right?"
Slowly chewing the steak, Michiko's face was blank, her golden jewelry searing molten loops as it caught the ruddy glare of an orange light.
"You think I'd support something like this?"
"It's your name on the building. You have no plausible deniability."
"It doesn't matter either way," Michiko said as she swirled her wineglass, which had been refilled, the stem between two fingers. "When that mercenary attacked the tower last year, the one who killed Smasher, they intruded into Mikoshi for their own personal gain. In the process, all of the engrams stored in Mikoshi had collectively fused together—raw, fucking data—and escaped beyond the Blackwall. Billions and billions of Eurodollars, gone in an instant. We were left with nothing. The Soulkiller project then lost all its funding, Arasaka lost face in the world markets, and we had to divest major assets to maintain market cohesion. 2077 for us was a disastrous year, Ramses. The first time in three decades that Arasaka reported a quarterly loss. You could imagine that Militech was all too happy to have received the news."
Ramses stared into the pale eyes. Saw what Michiko wasn't saying. "Wait," he said, standing up from the booth and next to Rzhevsky, ignoring the surprised movements from the DaiOni as he faced the Arasaka and NetWatch execs, but he did not care. "Now I understand." He pointed at Michiko. "This is why you're involved. You're helping NetWatch because you think the information from Fiona's existence can put Arasaka back in the black. And you—" he now looked to Ackerman, "—the fact that you're partnering with Arasaka means that you don't have support from your higher-ups at NetWatch. They don't know you're out here doing this, are they?"
Finally, Ackerman's poker face seemed to dissolve as he instinctively glanced over at Michiko, without realizing what he had done. The self-assured corpo had let his composure fracture, if only for a brief moment, but Ramses would always see the crack.
Ramses rasped a sarcastic chuckle. "Seems I always get roped into things over my head."
"This is over all of our heads, Ramses," Ackerman stood from his seat, palms on the table. "And you're directly responsible for housing a CPP on your own premises. Whoever you think you've been housing—Fiona Merrick—you never knew them when they were human. They were just some kid that someone tossed onto the street to starve or sold for drugs. We picked them up, gave them food and a roof over their head to sleep. And then we plugged them into the Net. Lo and behold, they come across an AI and, instead of killing them, that AI hijacked everything. Their consciousness, their body. Someone new now inhabits the driver's seat of what used to be the 'true' Fiona's brain. You really don't even know her as well as she knows herself."
"That sounds like your problem, not mine."
"Wrong," Ackerman emphatically shook his head. "It affects you, her, me, everyone in this room. Think about it, there is a Blackwall AI running loose in Night City right as we speak. We know she can cast Blackwall viruses—you might have seen them manifested as conflagrations of crimson data, heuristic processes that completely overload a cyberdeck and roast a person from the inside? And from the reports we've received, she's only been doing such attacks unconsciously. Think of the damage that could occur when she intentionally starts using them on who knows what."
Ramses was quiet for a few seconds, suppressing a shudder of realization.
Michiko noticed it and she also stood, now beside Ramses before he had any time to react. She ran a hand down his arm, her lacquered nails making a faint ripping noise as they traveled along the leather of his coat.
"I know this is a hard decision, Ramses," she said.
He whipped his head in her direction, looking into her frozen eyes. Hatred ebbing from his very form, like a radioactive specter. "Don't even pretend to understand my position," he snapped.
"It's less hard than you might think. Who could have seen this coming? I couldn't, and it's my job to know such things, to always be ahead of the market, every variable laid out before me."
"I guess that makes us both failures," he whispered.
Michiko tilted her head and smiled. "I know how close the two of you are and what this sacrifice means to you."
"Sacrifice. So, you are going to kill her."
"A poor choice of words." Michiko laid a hand upon Ramses' chest as a show of contrition. Ramses looked down, almost considering cutting off the offending limb that was touching him, but kept his impulses in check. "You think we want her dead?"
"I have been repeatedly told tonight ad nauseum of her supposed 'danger,'" he pointed out.
"And value. A Blackwall AI that has learned how to be human? That it has survived for so long outside of the Blackwall and has since thrived? Its existence cannot be understated as to just how important this is. What we could learn from it… we might just be able to leapfrog our technology by a hundred years. Maybe even begin the process of taking back the Old Net…"
His helmeted head reared back slightly in surprise.
"Capture, then."
The light flashed across Michiko and, for a second, he could see the wrinkles and the cracks behind the ultra-expensive plastic surgery that kept the woman looking youthful, but the moment passed like a hallucination.
"A brain like that is worthless if it has been flatlined," she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "All you have to do is bring her here. That's it. A simple courier job."
Gazing distantly at nothing, Ramses breathed heavily within the confines of his helmet. Memories pulsed into the prison of his own skull, flashes of skin lit under glowing neon advertisements. He fell further into his distraction, deep into that well of black fire that powered the engine, the furnace of his being.
Were the flames of Fiona's fires black, too? Or a sharp red?
He saw Michiko take a breath before she continued and he returned his attention to the present, everything snapping back into focus. "I would be loathe to leave out the fact that you will be far better compensated from this job than any one you've ever done in your life."
He still did not look at her. "And that is?" Sotto voice.
"Anything."
Now he almost looked at her. Almost.
"You think I have a price for that," he murmured.
But Michiko seemed to revel in his response. "Everyone does. And everyone has their own worth. We can all be distilled down to a single number, Ramses. But perhaps Eurodollars aren't your currency, hmm? I offered you anything, didn't I? If you want something, you can have it. An exclusive contract for life, plus retainer? I can draft it. An entire apartment block—not just an apartment, the entire building—on any city of your choosing. Or—" her eyes turned to conniving gleams and a simpering look spread upon her face, which was becoming shadowed in darkness, "—I can give you a way out. A fresh start. Set up for the rest of your life, able to do whatever you wanted."
Something priceless. She was offering him a future. Immortality as best as he could imagine.
"The generosity of Arasaka," he said, mainly to himself. Then, louder, "And if I refuse?"
A hum from behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Rzhevsky had just primed the massive railgun that she was hefting in one hand. The magnetos within the weapon reached a dull whine and the cyborg's lone optic intensified the stare so fiercely it was as if a hole was being bored through his forehead from the sheer animosity.
Michiko clasped her hands behind her and theatrically sighed. "Arasaka isn't a corporation that should still be underestimated, Ramses. We may have lost influence, but that doesn't mean that we have lost everything. We are still fully capable in many industries that we once held dominance in. Information, mainly. And it's from that manipulation of that information that can make us a powerful ally… or a threat."
"And there it is," Ramses snarled, hands bunching into fists.
"Oh, don't sound too disappointed, Ramses," Michiko rolled her eyes as she began to walk away before turning back, a choreographed move, like she was aiming to hit her marks upon a glamorous stage. "Deep down, you had to have known you'd be at this crossroads sooner or later. This is where you decide if the interests of the 'corpos', as you call them, and yours either intersect or divide. But Arasaka has no choice. We are going to hunt the AI down, though that comes with the risk of destroying it. But with your help, we won't have to harm a hair on her head. Noncompliance or refusal on your part," she shrugged, "well, let's just say it would be hard for us to distinguish you from our current target."
Reaching back over to the table, where she had kept her purse, Michiko withdrew a tiny disk from the leather pouch. She set it on the desk.
"A tracker," she continued. "For contingencies. Bring her over here, and this will all be over for you. Make up any excuse you want. But you have forty-eight hours until I send out someone with a decidedly heavier touch than you. We both would probably not prefer that option."
"A very heavy touch," Rzhevsky added, the fiber optic voice cutting through the air in the eerie two-toned timbre.
Walled in by the corpo and the DaiOni, Ramses could only exist in his solitary position. Of course, he was already hypothesizing what would happen if he tried to take everyone in this room on, right now. He was confident that he could get flatline Michiko and Ackerman right off the bat with his pistol. Renzer would be a little more difficult, as he was a trained cop, but he could be dealt with in due course. The real threat, obviously, was Rzhevsky, and Ramses knew he didn't have enough firepower to take on the combat platform, especially not at close range. That armor would be bulletproof to his current caliber of weaponry and he would have to get extremely lucky with his grenades if he was going to even put a dent in that DaiOni.
Everything that he had built, everything that he had promised himself, was all falling away like a house of cards. He thought he had been building a foundation for himself only to find out it was never more than an impermanent structure.
And then there was Fiona.
Fiona…
Sadness and pity overcame him, but a dark wave washed them all away.
He should have recognized the signs. He had been too blinded by his emotions, when he had thought he had been the perfect mercenary. She was a symbol of his weakness, a walking contradiction of all he professed to be.
His hands clenched so hard he imagined that they were seconds away from shattering. Behind the mask, his expression was one of tortured anguish. He was being asked to practically rip open his own body and offer something as tribute. Blood to feed the corporate machine.
Yet, an escape from all that had been offered.
Slowly, agonizingly, he reached out and took the disk from where it lay on the table. He turned it between his armored fingers, almost as if he planned to fling it like a stone across the surface of a lake.
Was that really love from you, Fiona? Or was it just a simulation?
He supposed he would never know the answer. Not anymore.
With a deep breath, he raised his head, everything around him crystal clear.
"I only need two hours."
REVERSE_OFFSET
PLAYBACK_RESUME
LOCATING…
TIMESTAMP_LOCATED
REALTIME_ACHIEVED
INITIATE
ARASAKA_TOWER
PRESENT_TIME
Screaming filled his ears.
Yowls of pain.
Curses that savaged his name.
A high cry, soaked with emotion, that would never be forgotten.
But Ramses could only stare down into the circular amphitheater below, separated by a thick layer of bulletproof glass, as the hanging garden of delicate instrumentation sparked over the center of the room like a chandelier of thin metal. Or as stalactites, waiting for their moment to topple down upon the body that was strapped to the gurney.
Writhing against her restraints, electricity sparking from the static veins overhead, a spool of wires snaking into the ports in her head, eyes filled with the color of a dead frequency, Fiona struggled to get free, spittle flying from her mouth as she screamed and screamed, ozone crackling in the stale air of the room, a trace of crimson power fizzling from her throat as the noise of static became overwhelming.
A/N: Ramses' heel turn was not meant to appear out of nowhere. I wanted to keep the perspective trained on Fiona in the beginning, in order for the betrayal to land amongst her and the audience at the same time. Hopefully, this gives a little more insight as to why Ramses did what he did.
Playlist:
[1] Texting / Reaching Arasaka
"Helheim"
Andy LaPlegua
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (Original Video Game Soundtrack)
[2] Critical Pathway Plateau / Switch to Present
"The Med Bay"
Jed Kurzel
Alien: Covenant (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. Moonlights as a merc during rare opportunities of shore leave. DECEASED.
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.
Falco: Ex-mercenary. Formerly worked as a wheelman for David Martinez's crew. Prior to contact with Fiona, he was laying low in Night City, having thought he was out of the game for good.
Bill Ackerman: NetWatch director. The individual responsible for Project DAMBUSTER, Ackerman's goal is to find a way to restore the area beyond the Blackwall at any cost.
Dan Renzer: Ackerman's right-hand man. Once a member of the NCPD, Renzer was forced to flee to NetWatch after the NCPD attempted to have him killed by not going along with the corruption of the organization. Now at the mercy of the corporation, Renzer will do anything Ackerman tells him to do.