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.

15. Chapter 15: Lean for Taxi

NUS_101
EN_ROUTE_TO: SAN_JOSE

Whoever had designed the interior of the semi-trailer had not done so with comfort in mind. Long strips of LEDs taped to the ceiling seeped a sinister white hue on low that acted almost like a cloying fog. On both ends of the trailer, long aluminum benches without any cushioning had been installed for seating. A series of cabinets had been bolted onto the rightmost side, which was next to a small armory that collected a variety of weaponry both large and small, including an EMG-83 railgun that was longer than a motorcycle. Rzhevsky's weapon, obviously, given that it was so large that no normal human would be able to lift such a thing.

At the far end of the trailer, closest to the cab, a circular charging station had been setup there with twin battery pillars flanking the layout. Rzhevsky knelt upon the pad, a jungle of wires snaking from ports in her DaiOni, her singular optic throbbing a low magma color, as if she was on standby.

Fiona had barely taken an eye off of the cyborg throughout the entire ride, even as the trailer bumped and jostled as they drove north out of the city and into the wasteland. The netrunner was leaning back on the bench as far as she dared, hands crossed under her jacket, at least until her back invariably knotted up and she would have to shift positions to get comfortable again. Sitting next to the netrunner, Ryo was leaning on her shoulder as she dozed. Kross was standing near the trailer's exit, seemingly too fidgety to try and get some rest. Tobin, on the other hand, had claimed nearly an entire bench for himself as he lay down upon it on his back, managing to snore loudly, the sound carrying about the carriage even though he was in full BARGHEST armor.

The only one who seemed to be as wary as Fiona was Falco, who was sitting on the bench directly across her, Tobin's boots brushing his side. He leaned forward, hands clasped together, as he also looked towards the motionless DaiOni, memories of Arasaka Tower no doubt flashing through his head, recalling the airborne figure of Adam Smasher in mid-flight sailing towards him, guns blazing.

Invariably, his eyes would flick over to Fiona's, a novel's worth of thoughts and questions begging to be voiced. He was certainly wanting to ask Fiona just how much Rzhevsky could be trusted, given that she was another Arasaka 'bot like Smasher, but a cyborg like that undoubtedly had sensitive audio pickups. Anything they said in the trailer would no doubt catch Rzhevsky's attention and would be recorded. Fiona and Falco both knew the stakes at play, so they made do with tiny gestures of their heads and slow blinks whenever possible.

The unfortunate company notwithstanding, it did not escape Fiona's attention that this was probably the most overpowered group she had ever run with before. Four current or former gang members, herself, and an Arasaka DaiOni. A group like that could take on ninety-nine percent of the fixer-mandated jobs in Night City and complete them all in record time without any of them suffering so much as a splinter. The combat knowledge and tech experience between them all would enable them to take on the entirety of a corp megabuilding, she believed.

The constant bouncing of the trailer from overly sensitive springs as the truck surged down the highway prevented Fiona from getting any shut-eye. The truck was downshifting under the cover of darkness, snaking through the crumpled mountains and burned-out floodplains. The trailer also had no windows, so the only way of ascertaining their current location was by referencing the satmap via the trailer's Net connection. She watched the eighteen-wheeler travel across the map the whole way, constantly on witness as it took the winding roads through the Santa Luicia Range, up along the Salinas River, past the protein farms of Gilroy, and finally into the Santa Clara Valley. [1]

The entire trip took four hours total from the time they had left Night City. It was 3:30 in the morning by the time they pulled into San Jose from the south via the 101. Ryo had woken from her nap by then, twisting her body until her vertebrae cracked, eliciting a grateful groan.

They were passing by Communications Hill by the time Rzhevsky seemed to "wake" from her standby mode. With a hissing of servos, the DaiOni stood as far as the trailer would allow, the wires automatically popping from the cyborg's ports with pneumatic jets of air. Her presence automatically earned the attention of everyone in the trailer, their heads swinging towards hulking figure.

Rzhevsky uttered a singular grunt as she flexed her clawed hands, calibrating the neural sync between her brain and the electronic modules of the suit. Fiona wondered if Rzhevsky ever bothered to extract herself from that armor every once in a while. Somehow, she figured the answer would be that it had been years since Rzhevsky had breathed in unfiltered air, which had been a conscious choice by the armor's passenger.

Fiona stood from the bench, a hidden signal for everyone else to do so. Falco and Ryo came to her sides, Kross and Tobin hanging at her back. Everyone was gripping on something that was bolted down for balance, whether that was one of the benches, the cabinets, or an overhead strap, in case the trailer suddenly took a bump or a turn that would send them flying through the air.

"If you're going to brief us about the rest of the job," Fiona said to Rzhevsky, "then it's now or never."

The infernal machine rasped, "You have been waiting patiently. Open your maps and set your coordinates to 37.416/-122.044."

Fiona did as Rzhevsky suggested and her map honed in on an airfield at the southern edge of the bay. There were two massive hangars big enough to house aerozeps—Rzhevsky's coordinates were pinpointed upon the westerly one.

"TorcWing has a portion of their facility on the eastern edge of the airstrip, Moffet Field," Rzhevsky explained. "The proprietary tech is being housed in Hangar 2, according to my intel. That's where the klep will happen." Via the Net connection, the cyborg pinned a location to the east of the hangars. "Nearby is a servicing station and a yard for city vehicles—that's where this truck is headed. It isn't part of the TorcWing premises and the driver has spoofed the credentials to disguise this truck as a San Jose municipal vehicle. It will park in the yard with the rest of the semis, hidden, where we will disembark and begin the mission proper."

"Resistance numbers?" Kross piped up.

Rzhevsky tilted her head towards the ex-Maelstrom. "Depends on the timing. At 4:15, there's a shift change and that will allow us an opening to infiltrate the hangar and steal the tech, as the surrounding security will be absent from their usual posts at that time. However, we can still expect significant resistance from the TorcWing forces. They may have up to fifty contractors and at least that amount in security bots on the premises."

"Jesus," Tobin grumbled, shaking his head.

"But that's not the best part. Scroll down the map to the south until you see the next cluster of buildings."

Obeying the cyborg's instructions, Fiona honed her indicator above the specified point. "What's this supposed to be?" she asked.

"A NorCal militia posting," Rzhevsky replied, sounding almost gleeful about all this. Anticipation for the meat grinder, it seemed.

"A what now?" Falco started, certain that he had misheard.

"You'd best pay close attention, merc," Rzhevsky rasped, leaning forward so that she was eclipsing the light from the front of the trailer. "You're not in Night City anymore. This is NorCal and after the past several wars, they've been building up an army of their own. Enough to take on NUSA, perhaps. But all that is to come. For right now, they remain the greatest danger to this job. They have a significant presence within the airfield—attack helicopters, gunships, and fast-attack ground vehicles. If an alert is raised, they will have a rather quick response time, perhaps even quicker than TorcWing's."

If Fiona were to glance behind her, she would have noticed that the rest of her group were sharing looks among themselves, no doubt wondering what the hell they had signed up for.

Behind her half-mask, she glowered, eyes turning predatory. This was her burden to bear. She was the reason they were all here now. If she looked doubtful then that would have significant reverberations throughout the team. She had to remain steadfast.

"You're not endearing yourself—or Arasaka—to any of us," she growled to Rzhevsky. "You should've informed us of this at the start. The militia's presence changes things."

"Don't get all sanctimonious on me now just because you're afraid of a few underpaid adults cosplaying as soldiers. On the contrary," Rzhevsky knelt down again, though she still towered over Fiona by a good amount, "this is the part where you come in, netrunner."

Fiona stared the DaiOni down, despite her head being tilted upward. "Go on."

"The militia's communication relay is located within a building on the edge of their compound. There, you will have access to the militia's own subNet, where you will be able to disrupt their transmissions. The right person in that building could make all the difference, do you see?"

Nodding, Fiona said, "I would be able to jam their comms, is what you're saying. Not only that, I could hijack the security systems, enact cyberattacks of my own, and provide additional auxiliary support."

The truck rumbled, minutely jostling Rzhevsky out of place. The DaiOni's optics cycled once. Pleased.

"I expect you to get inventive," the cyborg said in an electronic whisper.

"I'll surpass those expectations," Fiona shot back in the same hushed tone.

The DaiOni's head twisted half a degree. Almost as if Rzhevsky was amused by Fiona's confidence.

Behind Fiona, Falco stepped forward and put a hand on the netrunner's shoulder. A gesture of solidarity.

"I'll come with her," he spoke to Rzhevsky.

Fiona turned her head. "Falco—"

"My mind is made up," he said, not breaking eye contact with the cyborg. "Unless there's a problem?"

It seemed that Rzhevsky was trying to think up a logical disagreement, but she eventually acquiesced with a silent roll of her massive shoulders and straightened up. She then looked over to Ryo, Kross, and Tobin, and pointed a powerful finger. "Then you lot will follow my lead. I'll perform the klep and you'll provide additional firepower."

Ryo glanced over to Fiona and mouthed "Fuck." Fiona made a small hand gesture, out of Rzhevsky's sight, a notice to remain calm.

From the trailer's intercom, a burst transmission from the driver. "Taking the Moffet Field exit now. Will be pulling into the yard shortly."

Rzhevsky's optic pulsed as she sent a confirmation message back to the truck's driver. The trailer then lurched slightly to the right, just as mentioned. Everyone had to shuffle their stance to prevent from toppling over. Only the DaiOni made no motion where she was standing.

Lifting a hand and extending a finger, Fiona watched as a pair of delicate forceps swung from the tip of Rzhevsky's pointer finger. With the more prehensile digits at her disposal, Rzhevsky reached into a drawer from the nearby cabinet and pulled out a tray. Several individual shards had been laid out upon a bed of black foam, gleaming like crystals that had just been pried from a crack in the earth. The DaiOni slid the tray in Fiona's direction.

"One last requirement," Rzhevsky said. "Install at your own pace."

Fiona eyed the shards with suspicion. The thin metal was encased in shiny black plastic. The light slid over their faces like plasma.

"What's on the shards?" Fiona asked.

"Close range trackers and biomonitoring software. Helps us keep track of one another."

"Yeah, right!" Kross burst out from the back of the trailer. "You think we're fuckin' stupid, Arasaka?"

Slowly, Rzhevsky rotated her body until she was hunching in the direction of the ex-Maelstrom. "I don't think you would want to continue that line of thought, merc."

But Kross was shaking his head in defiance. Boldness in the face of a creature with cybernetics that far surpassed his own. One lash of the DaiOni's arm and he would be a smear upon the side of the trailer, but Kross seemed indifferent to that fact. He shot out a hand in the direction of the shards, almost as if he were a showman displaying his latest ware. "Do you really expect us to take you at your word that those do what they say? Trackers and biomonitors, my ass. I bet you my whole take that those are loaded to the gills with so many viruses that they'll have us convulsing on the ground in five seconds flat if triggered."

Truthfully, Fiona was glad that Kross was saying such things, because the exact thoughts had crossed her mind as well. Taking Arasaka's money was one thing. Entrusting to use their equipment was starting to become a bridge too far.

But Rzhevsky was not going to bend. Instead, she rotated a hand, palm-up, and gestured to the tray that held the shards. "You are welcome to scan the contents for anything that I supposedly failed to mention. In fact, I insist. But in the end, you will be installing them. That is a condition of this job. A requirement. There will be no chances for any fuck-ups if I can help it."

Fiona stepped forward, a hand already in the process of rummaging through her pocket. "Fine. Let's just get this over with."

She had gotten her own firebox out—Ramses had commissioned one for her some months back—and inserted the chip into the 24mm slot. She then connected the firebox cable to the port at her wrist, the fiber-optic snaking out from her skin like an IV.

The scan now running, Fiona kept a separate window so that she could parse through the scrolling of the data. A few .exe files, just as Rzhevsky said, but so far the firebox was registering them as legitimate software that did not harbor any insidious programs. The ICE of the shard was malleable, parting to let her in to see the contents. It was like a transparent library, interlaced with levels of different hues of light. She had always had a gift for visualizing data. Some things just came naturally.

Through the firebox, she twisted and turned the programs over and over as though she could hold them in her actual hands. Within the careful prison of her making, she could manipulate code to her whim as though she had telekenisis, each linkage and line of the program's fibers undulating and separating before her. She had the software to dissect any algorithm from the Eurotheater to the Sovspace. Nothing would be able to elude her.

One minute later, the results of the scan came back. Green across the board. Pure as code could be, and as advertised.

The rest of the team, sans Rzhevsky, was watching Fiona intently.

Ryo gave a nudge forward. "So? How does it look?"

Fiona simply thumbed the catch to the firebox slot, punching the shard out from its perch. She then took the shard and, wasting no time with theatrics, slotted it into her own deck behind her left ear, tilting her head for a better angle.

The software's auto-installer engaged almost immediately.

VERSION 0.92 – ARASAKA SYNCRON
BIOS…INSTALLED
NET ARCHITECTURE…ONLINE
SERVER CONNECTION…CONNECTED

Eyes glimmering with internal shadows, a few blinks returned them back to normal. She momentarily rose as she took a breath and held it. Nothing felt different.

She reached for the tray and held the offered bed of shards out to the team, Rzhevsky brimming like a crouched predator behind her.

"Won't like it, but it won't kill you. That'll have to be enough."

---

SOUTH_BAY

The eighteen-wheeler had parked in a corner of the vehicle yard that was situated away from the main gate, away from any hotspots of activity. It would still be dark for a few more hours. Plenty of time to locate the tech, klep it, and get the hell out of the valley.

Upon descending from the trailer ramp, Fiona scanned her surroundings—flat parking lot, mainly filled with buses and other semi-trucks. The constant hum of the highways in the background. Blots of light pollution drowning out the stars here, just like Night City. To the southwest, she picked up on the TorcWing hangars immediately. They were 60 meters high and featured massive doors on either end that slid from side to side. Large enough to accommodate any dirigible aircraft that had been made since the beginning of time.

Everyone had put on masks before departing from the tractor trailer if they were not already helmeted. The Bay Area's air quality had deteriorated within the last decade to such a severe degree that breathing in the unfiltered air would cause a multitude of lung diseases within five years. Granted, being exposed to the air for a single night would not result in too much long-term damage, but no one wanted to take any chances.

Rzhevsky stalked forward, leading the way. It was incredible at how such a cybernetic creature so large could be so quiet—she walked with a careful gait reminiscent of a feline predator, clawed feet barely scratching the asphalt underneath, but Fiona could still hear it cracking. Head hunched down, hands clenching the massive railgun that had been liberated from the trailer. Fiona was just glad that they were on the same side for now.

Coming up to a razorwire fence, Rzhevsky first checked to see if the barrier was wired to any security systems. Finding none, she simply grasped two fistfuls of the wire after stowing her railgun for the moment and ripped a massive hole in the fencing as though it was made of paper. Someone behind Fiona whistled at the show of strength.

Stepping through the newly created entrance with ease, the team congregated on the other side of the fence.

Rzhevsky turned to Fiona and Falco. "We will take up a position so that we can enter the hangar immediately upon your confirmation that the security systems have been compromised in our favor."

"Fine," Fiona said as she screwed a silencer onto her pistol. She checked the weapon to see if a bullet was already chambered and slowly edged the slide back without making too much noise. "I'll let you know when it's done."

She expected Rzhevsky to make one final snide comment before she left, but was relieved when that never came. The cyborg was now concentrated fully on business, so any personal rivalries could wait until the priority objective was finished.

The cyborg slunk off into the darkness with Ryo, Kross, and Tobin in tow. Ryo spared one last look at Fiona before she too was swallowed up into the night.

Now it was just Fiona and Falco. The wheelman carried a submachinegun, also silenced, his revolver remaining holstered at his waist, as it was a tool that would be a bit too loud for the current occasion. They both crouch-walked along the perimeter of the fence, continuously scanning the area, looking for any guards that could spot them.

Very quickly, Fiona was able to get a visual on the buildings that Rzhevsky had pointed out for her on the map. The only issue was that a half-mile of nothing but flat concrete stretched out between them and the target. There were no obstacles that they could use as cover. Just tall streetlamps that blazed vibrant cones of orange light onto the scratched pavement. Any security camera would spot them coming well before they could even see the individual bricks on the building.

"I think it would have benefitted us if Rzhevsky had parked a bit closer," she grumbled aloud.

"Not a problem," Falco said behind her, moving back towards the hangar. "There's more than one way to remain invisible."

Upon a rectangular section of asphalt where dead and brown shrubs had burst through cracks in the surface, Falco had located a section where three airfield vans, white and otherwise featureless with no visible logos on the grills, had been parked. He moved up to the closest vehicle, palmed the door, and the locks quickly disengaged in response to Falco's proximity virus. A nifty program—even the alarms did not go off.

"Get in," he told Fiona as he opened the driver's door.

Fiona did as he said and was immediately met with the musty smell of burnt dust and cigarette smoke. The ashtrays in the center console were crusted with tar and amberized tobacco. As the engine started, the dashboard lit up with a pathetic flicker.

"This thing has seen some miles," Falco commented dryly, as though he were looking at the weather. He tapped the radio console with a finger, noting that the markings on the buttons had all been nearly worn away.

Placing her pistol on her lap, Fiona did not bother with the seat belt. She sat forward, trying not to dislodge the katana on her back. "So the plan is to… what, act casual?"

"Best way to approach a problem, darlin'," Falco said as he moved the gear stock into drive.

The trip over to the communications building was quick and uneventful. Falco kept the van at a steady 25 miles an hour the whole time, the man treating the excursion as if it were a regular grocery run. Across the airfield, they could see sparse lights from other vehicles traveling around the compound, but none of them were making a specific beeline in their direction. So far, their traversal was working as intended.

Falco parked the van just outside of the loading docks, rear-first in case they needed to make a quick getaway. They were near the open dumpsters, the pavement here at the same level of dire straits as it had been over by the hangars. Bits of asphalt crunched underneath the tires, worn away bit by bit from the elements that had damaged it over the years.

The side mirror caught the doors to the building square in its sights. "Got a security camera over the door," Falco stated in his soft drawl. "Think you could—?"

"Not a problem," Fiona said. They were close enough to the building that she could easily slip inside its network. She used a quick virus to punch her way through the flimsy layers of ICE—whatever the militia was using, it was not sophisticated enough to recognize intrusions that were more bespoke in nature. Fiona's program could easily mimic frequent users of the network by sniffing out bytes from packets left behind from past login attempts, quickly forming a conglomerate user that the network would not register as an unknown. Once inside, her program would morph into something more insidious, chewing away the security from the inside out. But to gain access to the whole system, a simple node like the security camera here would not be enough. She needed to find the centralized hub.

Her virus had worked its magic already. She implemented a command that would send the camera into an unresponsive state. It would now be transmitting a still frame instead of a live feed of the outside to whoever was monitoring the cameras.

They exited the van, not bothering to lock it back up. Fiona took point, ascending a small staircase made out of some concrete that had pebbles interlaced within the pour, now walking upon the outside dock level. The entrance they were after was next to the sliding bay door. Fiona tried the door and found it to be unlocked. Typical militia operations. Sloppy.

A corridor in disarray greeted them. Scuffed tile floor the color of pea soup, the cream walls peeling, grime embedded in the cracks where the folds in the foundations met. Blazing halogen lights created a distracting strobing effect—Fiona had to polarize her optics slightly to counter the annoying sensations.

She lifted her pistol and nodded to Falco behind her. "It's going to be NorCal militia in here going forward. If they're in our way, kill them. Otherwise, let them pass."

"Roger that," Falco said grimly, getting his submachinegun back out. "No time for cleanup?"

"No. We need to get this done ASAP. If that means carving our way through to get to the main security station, so be it."

They slowly walked down the hall, with Fiona preemptively hacking the camera systems as she went. Long shadows loped in the recesses of their eyes from the cold dead white light that filtered down from the ceiling. They held their weapons at their sides, hoping to appear as casual as possible, despite the fact that there were enemies all around them and that they certainly were not in militia uniform.

The map in the corner of Fiona's HUD had finished auto-downloading. It was registering that there was a security terminal on the second floor where all network lines seemed to converge. Good place as any for a security station.

There was a stairwell over in the corner of the building, according to the map. There was little use in picking their way from room to room, since speed was the end goal of this job. They moved through an intersection, taking their time to cover all the angles before moving on. Strangely, they had not come across anyone yet in the building. That did not mean it was deserted—on the contrary, it simply raised Fiona's suspicions more and more.

"It's too easy," she murmured to Falco as they crept forward at a torturously slow pace, past an array of particleboard that had various flyers and memos tacked onto it upon the wall.

"That's a relief," Falco muttered. "Thought I was the only one, for a moment."

"There's no one else around. Not sure if that's par for the course with NorCal militia, but I would have expected there to be a contingent of some kind, at least."

"Still don't think Arasaka's trying to lead you astray?"

Fiona bit the inside of her cheek in thought. Even though she had said as much to the contrary already, her mind kept coming back to that possibility that Michiko was sending her out on a suicide mission. Tale as old as time, Arasaka fucking over anyone it perceived as smaller than the corp or the family. But it made no sense, why would Arasaka go to so much trouble to eliminate her if that was truly the end goal, especially when Arasaka had had multiple opportunities—easier opportunities—to do so?

"Until I see any evidence that proves such a fact…" Fiona said, but wound up not finishing her sentence.

She surveyed the next corridor, the doorway to the stairwell now in sight. A flat gray rectangle with a pushbar to open the hinge. The lights over here were weaker, some of the bulbs having burnt out. Ancient technology, filaments. The fixtures must not have been replaced in decades.

They were about to push to open the door when Fiona heard Falco give a start behind her. [3]

She turned, pistol already extended in a clenched hand.

A bipedal Arasaka Robot R Mk. 2 stood at the far end of the corridor. Crude, industrial design with limbs blocky and imprecise. Skinny, rectangular head with multiple red diodes irregularly surrounding a lens the color of poisoned ice.

And it was carrying an automatic shotgun in its heavy hands.

Fiona did not have to guess if the robot had spotted them or not. Its head was already honing in on them, for they were standing in the middle of the hallway, clear as day. No way that anyone could possibly miss them.

To hammer that point further, an aggressive voice burst from the robot's vocabulator as it began to lift its massive weapon: "You are in a restricted—!"

Fiona's pistol coughed and a blister of sparks scraped into existence across the robot's neck, the armor-piercing round shredding cabling and vital hydraulics. The internal pressure surging to zero, the machine's head drooped at a severe angle.

The burst from Falco's submachine gun ripped through armor and bored through the sensitive electronics housed past the shielding in the robot's chest. A vibrant series of dancing flames in a charred orange color ignited as some of the bullets ricocheted off, but the robot had been rendered nonfunctional regardless. It crashed to its knees and toppled over in a stiff posture, creating a horrible calamity of noises as it came to a rest, its legs splayed out at awkward angles, the shotgun skidding down the hallway.

Fiona and Falco slowly looked at the other. That little exchange had been entirely counter to their stealthy approach. Anyone in the vicinity would have heard the nearby crash from the robot falling over, not to mention the silenced shots would have still been loud enough to draw suspicion.

"Double-time it?" she asked.

"My thoughts exactly," he said as they headed onward through the door.

The stairwell was stark in its bleakness and monochrome shades of gray. It was also occupied.

"Son of a—" a militia member in an ill-fitting olive outfit managed to get out as he stood at the upper landing, fumbling for his weapon and utterly failing, before Fiona's two shots drilled into his chest, one bullet piercing his heart. He toppled down the steps.

The sound of the silenced shots refused to depart the stout escalier. A constant ringing—had Fiona's cybernetics not reduced her hearing frequencies in preparation for a fight, she would have already received some ear damage.

There was a noise from the landing above and another mercenary appeared around the corner of the upper level. Falco's burst from his submachinegun cut through the air and caught the minuteman across the middle, a dark streak having smeared across the wall behind him. He crumpled and Fiona shot him in the back of the head as they ascended to the next story.

Before they opened the door to exit the stairwell, Fiona got a massive ping on her HUD. Quickly, she gestured to Falco as she hugged the wall next to the door. "Get back! Get back!"

Just as Falco got into position, another robot barged through the threshold, holding an assault rifle that looked like it was being held together by blue electrical tape. The robot, its field of view limited, stomped by where Fiona and Falco were standing flush against the wall, and began to tromp down the stairs.

Fiona quietly stole out from her position, locked onto the robot, and primed an overload.

Magnesium sparks flared from the machine and it stuttered in place as something within its chest cavity caught fire. Smoke curled from its collar and its optic flickered violently several times and burnt out with a fizzing sound. Finally, it lost all tension in its knee hydraulics and it tipped forward, down the stairs. Its head hit the middle landing hard and glass from its broken optic sprayed all over the ground, faint licks of flames emanating between gaps in its chest armor.

The hallway beyond was just as threadbare as the one they had just exited. Just as tight and cramped as the rest of the ones in the building.

They could hear shouting from other minutemen further in the building, along with the rushing of footsteps. Panic was ensuing—Fiona had gotten into enough of the local security systems to mask just their physical location. The militia was scrambling, trying to figure out where they were.

The security station was just a couple of turns ahead. Fiona gave a signal to Falco—only shoot when necessary. She could keep the both of them invisible to the militia, but that was not a guarantee if they decided to go guns blazing.

A new icon was now blazing in the upper left corner of Fiona's HUD. Rzhevsky.

"I suppose you wanted a challenge, is that it?" the cyborg's avatar growled. "There's a lot of activity over in your sector of the airfield. Having trouble?"

Fiona nearly snarled. There was no way that she was going to let Rzhevsky give her shit for this. "We've got this handled!"

"You've got it handled."

"Yes! We'll be at the security station in a minute. Don't jump the gun until I say it's clear."

"No promises if things continue to deteriorate," Rzhevsky said mildly before she cut the call.

The door that barred the way to the security station was locked by a keycard pad. Those devices always had limp security—Fiona could barge her way through with barely an effort. Once the device winked to green and unlatched for her, Fiona kicked the door, blasting it open, and charged in with her weapon held out, ready to dispense more lead.

A minuteman in a helmet that was a size too big for his head was situated by the door, his rifle already out and aimed in the direction of the intruders. He fired, but his aim was poor, and splinters from the wall nicked at Fiona's coat right as she jerked herself back in time to evade the rest of his shots. When she heard the familiar click, click of a trigger pulling on an empty chamber, she leaned back out and shot the man twice in the chest and once just under his jaw, blowing a thick spray of gore into the air behind him as his throat practically collapsed.

Before the body of the man she had just shot had fallen still upon the floor, Fiona spotted a reflection in the angled window of the security station. She whirled in the direction of the disturbance, several banks of consoles separating her from the technician that was cowering behind the nearby disk drive tower, the rows of choppers and other VTOL aircraft parked in stately rows out in the airfield just past the window.

"Wait!" the tech cried out, her shaking arms slowly rising past cover. "I'm unarmed! I'm not a threat!"

Fiona strengthened her stance, now holding her silenced pistol in a two-handed grip. She remained quiet, her eyes primed in their predatorial slits.

The tech stood, brown hair protruding messily from the short bun at the back of her head. Fiona scanned the woman and saw that she carried no weapon. She looked young. Far too young to make any good decisions for herself. She was shaking as she stared down the barrel of Fiona's weapon, multiple realities flashing through her head.

"Please…" she whispered, a river of snot running from her nose, her knees shaking horribly. For a militia member, she had not seen much action. Tears grew in the corners of her eyes and she tried to regroup herself. "I'll beg. I'll pay. If it… if it can do any good, I'll do it."

Fiona waited, the top half of her revealed expression stone.

"I have a son…" the tech continued. "He… I'm all he has. I'll give you anything you want. I can't leave him behind. I c-can't—"

Now walking towards the tech, her upper torso maintained perfectly still, Fiona kept her hands upon her pistol, the sights still trained upon the head of the woman.

Her cursor was highlighting the technician, her cyberdeck active and waiting for a command. But it was as if she could imagine some digital fuzz scraping at the corners of her vision. Coddling her. A red-tinged knife at her throat, almost. Darkcode swapped in the barrel of her deck, a brutal end chambered instead of the one she intended. She had not been able to stop such attacks before. Why would she expect to gain control now?

Fiona dipped the pistol a tad. "Your son," she rasped. "How old is he?"

"He's almost three—"

"Do you have a picture of him?"

"Y-Yes…?"

"Show me."

Slowly, the technician reached for a pocket in her jeans.

Swinging the butt of her pistol in a wide arc, Fiona's gun hit the technician right on the temple, the fierceness of the blow knocking her out before she could even blink. The woman crumpled to the ground, a miniature photo frame bouncing from her hand, which displayed a digital portrait of a young child in a striped shirt.

Being careful, Fiona checked the tech physically for any weapons, performing a brief pat-down, ultimately finding nothing. She made sure that the photo was tucked back into the woman's jeans, after applying two fingers to her neck and finding a steady pulse.

Falco was looking at her with a raised eyebrow as she stood. Fiona stared back at him expectantly. "What?"

"Nothing," Falco considered the unconscious tech. "Just a thought. David would've done the same thing."

Stowing her pistol in her holster, Fiona headed to the window, where her optic overlays were indicating that the largest concentration of Net traffic was situated within the console in the middle of the aisle. She pushed aside the cheap rolling chair, tapped the built-in keyboard to wake the monitor, and slowly took stock of the room, noting the glow from the rest of the screens that glimmered faint wafts of color about the security room. In the corner, a holo-screen displayed a map of the airfield. Through the window, Fiona had a good view of the entirety of Moffet Field, able to view the runway lengths, and the pads where the vertically-capable aircraft ascended from to perform their patrols about the bay.

The computer screen had flicked back on at this point. It was an old system, one that was behind by at least seven different version releases. At the very least, Fiona could interface with the input port—she plugged herself in and shuddered as her program smashed through the militia's flimsy ICE, a comet that blasted through layer after layer of firewalls, honing in towards the blinding core of the console. Root access.

Cyberspace hummed around her, almost as if the entire expanse was vibrating around the mote that represented her intrusion. The entirety of the console's data was a small pyramid of soft light. Not too much data flowed in and out of it, nor did it have too much in terms of raw computing power. Slow to react, easy to crack.

Her program punched through the final lattice of light and she was inside the pyramid, all of the files hers to manipulate.

On the console screen, the root menu popped up and started listing off the base's subroutines one after another, like they were slowly being printed out.

Fiona jacked out and began manipulating the keyboard, searching for the communications controls now that she had bypassed all security.

To Falco, she said, "You and David and Rebecca. The whole gang—you must have been on top of the world way back when. What happened?"

"You mean," Falco grunted in a soft laugh as he scanned the room with his submachinegun while Fiona was intruding through the system, "why did we end up going after Arasaka?"

Fiona turned her head, a progress bar now displaying on the monitor. "Yes."

Falco sighed. "Didn't have much of a choice. There was a fixer that we had relied on from time to time by the name of Faraday. He used to work for Militech, but for some reason decided to defect to Arasaka in exchange for a hefty payday. There were only two caveats that Arasaka gave to Faraday: klep some vital Militech cyber-suit, and then kidnap David's girl. A netrunner. One of the best I'd ever seen. There was…" he paused, and regret flickered upon his face for a moment, "…someone on the inside that Faraday had gotten to. Someone that was able to betray David's group without anyone ever suspecting."

"Someone you would never have guessed could have done such a thing," Fiona surmised.

Acceding that with a nod, Falco continued, "We were caught off guard. All of us. In the end, we didn't have much choice. We couldn't abandon David's girl to Arasaka. The girl—Lucy—once belonged to that corp. We couldn't let her go back."

"Almost as if you would fight anyone if they put themselves in the same position," Fiona said. "You against the world."

"If we could have kept it all going, we might have continued such a fight."

Fiona would have wanted to continue the conversation further, but her spike program had finally located the directory she had been searching for. Pulling up the command tab on the console screen, she honed in on a complex window that displayed the entirety of the militia's communication channels. There were a total of fifty separate frequencies that the base was currently utilizing. Fiona deactivated them all, but not before she randomized the frequencies so that, even if the system was brought back online, the militia would be spending hours trying to set the radios back to the way they had been.

She was already initiating the call with Rzhevsky. The cyborg picked up before the first dial tone could finish. "Yes?"

"Communications are scrambled. Go ahead and move in."

"Took you long enough, netrunner."

"I'll monitor you through the camera system, give you some—"

But Rzhevsky had cut the call, leaving Fiona hanging.

"Bitch!" Fiona spat.

"She's not exactly the hospitable type, is she?" Falco quipped, having heard the whole exchange.

"I doubt she ever was," Fiona said dryly.

She hit the switch to the cameras and was thrust into the grainy low-rez view of one of the multiple fixtures that had been mounted upon the side of the hangar. Fiona swung the camera around to where she knew that Rzhevsky and the others had been hunkering down and waiting for the all-clear.

The DaiOni was easy to pick out, even amongst the digital fog that was the camera's natural resolution. Rzhevsky was already stomping from behind a stack of ISO containers towards the hangar doors, with Ryo, Kross, and Tobin trying to keep up with the cyborg while providing separate fields of cover with their weapons.

Fiona jumped from camera to camera, tracking the progress of the squad as they tromped along the dimly lit pavement. From one placement, her thermals picked up the approach of a moving vehicle. A troop transport, filled to the brim with militiamen. No doubt it was patrolling the area, put on alert after everyone had noticed that their comms had suddenly gone haywire.

Rzhevsky and the rest were practically standing out in the open, several dozen meters between them and the nearest cover. They would be spotted in an instant once the transport made a turn around the corner.

Quickly, Fiona engaged the comms, fired a local pulse, and honed in on the transport's radio. The comm channels contained trace digital residue of past conversation stored in gray junk packets that drifted through the Net connections. Fiona compiled the voices that the channels had borne witness to, manifested a modular voiceset through generative machine-learning protocols, and installed it to her mask's vocabulator.

"Transport 185R," she said, her vocabulator projecting a raspy male voice that seemed to be static in inflections, almost in monotone. "Moffet Station calling Transport 185R. Information X-Ray back online. Confirm receipt, over."

"This is Transport 185R," the driver spoke into their radio. "Acknowledging receipt of information X-Ray. You guys finally got this piece of shit working again, huh?"

"Affirmative. Culprits are those OneWorld protestors again, tampering with the external antenna."

"The fucking hippie activitists? Why the hell didn't anyone say anything?"

"We have located the bogeys on scanners," Fiona ignored the question. "They're situated at the northwest of Hangar 1. Move in and smoke them out. We're diverting additional reinforcements to that location."

"Hangar 1? That's across the other side of the runway. How the hell did they get over there that quickly?"

"Transport 185R, need for you to confirm that you have received your orders," Fiona said, getting a bit annoyed that this was taking as long as it was.

There was a distinct pause before the driver radioed, "Acknowledged, comm tower. Proceeding to Hangar 1 now."

On the screen, the transport truck made a right turn towards the runway, long headlights scraping against the front of the hangar. Fiona breathed a sigh of relief. Rzhevsky would not know about this moment of coverage, but Fiona had already accepted that there would never be an opportunity for her to truly get a one-up over the cyborg and her pride.

A minute later and Rzhevsky had made it to the hangar doors, which were six segmented slabs four stories high with windows at the bottom that were mounted on industrial rails so they could slide open and closed. On the side of the concrete arch, the ancient signage was still being displayed, yet the paint was peeling and the siding itself scarred and stained.

BEWARE
The Propellers
Jet Blast & Intake

NO SMOKING
WITHIN 50 FT.
OF AIRCRAFT

Wasting no time, Rzhevsky jammed her clawed hands into one of the fiber-cement hangar doors and pulled. With a groan on disused rails, the entire door moved. The entire contraption, over 120 feet high, must have weighed thirty tons. Watching through the cameras, Fiona could not help but feel a slight tinge of dread. If she was not wary before of Rzhevsky, she certainly was now.

Within the neon forests of cyberspace, a taste suddenly filled Fiona's mouth. She could not place it, but it was as if she was tasting a color. Red, perhaps. Hard to say. The first thought that came to mind was red.

Within her link, her second self that maintained a presence in the world of razor lights, she looked around. The ice around her was flashing a violent pink color. Streams of programs slithered through the barrier above her, veins that only traveled in right angles underneath a skein of glass. Alarms and recon programs, spreading their tentacles to search for the individuals who were in the middle of opening the hangar doors.

She needed to break the connection. In cyberspace, she carried no weapon, but her talents could extend as a pure function of her own body.

EXTEND_PURPOSE

The command blinked in her eyes for a fraction of a second before it blipped away. That had not been from her. Fiona froze, uncertain if she had been seeing things. Another malfunction? Or was there a presence in the server with her?

Uncertain, she raised her "hand" up to where the ICE gathered. She reached until she felt a grip manifest at the tips of her fingers. She then clenched her hand into a fist and the ICE layer shattered, the server layer also scattered to the ether, broken connections sparking painfully like nerve endings exposed from a severed limb. That would take care of the militia's monitoring for this area. For how long she could keep this sector clear of rogue programs, Fiona was not sure. But this would help make a difference.

She opened a link to Ryo. "How's it looking down there?"

"All good so far," Ryo answered, watching Rzhevsky yank the hangar doors open. "Heard you got yourself into a bit of a situation."

"Nothing we couldn't handle. Now I'm trying to make sure the same doesn't happen to you."

"Appreciate it. Just watch your ass, okay?"

Fiona grinned under her half-mask. "Never stopped."

By now, Rzhevsky had managed to get the door open wide enough that the DaiOni was able to maneuver through the gap. Ryo and everyone else followed suit.

Flipping to the security system inside the hangar, it was hard for Fiona not to marvel at the void that was the interior. It was as if she was looking at the world's largest wind tunnel—one could shout their name and have it reverberate back without any degradation in sound quality. As a completely free-standing structure, there were no support columns to get in the way of viewing the opposite side of the building, which was the length of an entire stadium away. The rafters upon the ceiling looked to be over a hundred and fifty feet above the ground. Dropping from such a height would certainly be fatal.

Across the hangar floor, Fiona spotted a cadre of minutemen standing guard at irregular intervals, a couple of them engaged in idle chatter with each other, somehow not noticing the massive cyborg that had surged open the door at the far end and was now headed in their direction. But none of them were paying any attention, for their duties were to apparently be guarding the largest object that was occupying the hangar, as they all stood around it.

It was a plane, one with an unusual shape. A smooth profile, one that could cut through atmosphere like an ironcold blade through a carcass, wide enough to be considered a narrow-body aircraft even though the design was condensed enough to indicate its usage as a private aircraft. Variable-sweep canards were located at the front, right underneath the cockpit windows. There was no vertical tail as the rudders were on the triangular winglets located at the tips of the swooping wings. Aside from the TorcWing logos that adorned the sides of the airframe, there were no other graphics that took up residency upon the blazing white carbon fiber panels.

Fiona shifted her gaze to the rear of the jet. Two plasma engines had been situated at the back of the carbon fiber composite airframe in a pusher configuration—the fluted exhaust vents suggested it was capable of low-orbit spaceflight. They were narrower than any engine that Fiona had seen on a plane before, the design seeming more elegant than the brutal utilitarian construction favored by most spacecraft corporations.

The jet was practically a work of art. Fiona had never seen a piece of machinery so precise and exquisite—the aerodynes and zeppelins that rushed through the Night City skies were frequent sights, but never were they considered beautiful. This, though, this had intention behind every curve, every seam. This was something that could be both practical and a delight to the eyes.

At this point, Rzhevsky had gotten within range of the guards to the point where they had started to notice the cyborg. Someone shouted a warning and all of them started to move.

As the minutemen began to get into formation, Ryo trotted up alongside Rzhevsky, swapping her shotgun for an assault rifle. "Okay—you've got reactive armor, so you can take point and we'll fire out past you once they—"

But Rzhevsky lifted the right arm of her DaiOni before Ryo could finish her sentence and the mounted 12.7mm machinegun thundered, sounding like a hurricane in the wide expanse of the hangar. The first minuteman disappeared from the waist up in an explosion of blood, the heavy rounds practically disintegrating his body into chunks of meat. Still firing, Rzhevsky then swept her arm to the side and the machinegun rounds ripped through flesh and bone, practically cutting three more minutemen in half.

The surviving militia members either ran for cover or were already in the process of taking potshots at Rzhevsky, ignoring the other members of Fiona's team completely.

There were harsh pings as bullets simply deflected off of Rzhevsky's demon. If the cyborg was at all amused at the pathetic show of force, she did not otherwise reflect it verbally. Instead, she lifted her left arm, the EMG-83 railgun clenched in a hand, and fired. The blinding round seemed to puncture space and time, a white contrail searing a line across the hangar. The round had hit one minuteman in the side, ripping him open beyond his sternum and sending his guts flying, continued on and blew apart another minuteman as it hit him dead center, leaving just a pile of limbs behind, and finally cut a militia man's legs off at the knees until it punctured the wall of the hangar and sailed on out of sight, presumably ricocheting off into the night.

As Rzhevsky had been firing her railgun, a shoulder-mounted autocannon swung into place and tracked the surviving militia members. A few three round bursts punched from the barrel of the weapon and the part-time soldiers screamed, threw up their hands, and collapsed after vivid blasts of gore had sprayed from where the bullets had plowed into their backs.

No more guns fired. All hostiles had been eliminated.

Frozen on the hangar floor, Ryo stood slack-jawed at the casual and sudden display of violence. Kross and Tobin behind her were exhibiting similar reactions.

One of the minutemen that Rzhevsky had hit with her machinegun was still alive. The clawed platform stomped towards the man. Clenching a fist, a mono-sword shot through a slot in Rzhevsky's right wrist, extending nearly a meter long. Molecularly thin, the polished black face had an amber sheen to its design.

Before anyone could say anything, Rzhevsky closed the gap to the wounded man and swung her arm, loping the man's head off in a clean stroke. The dismembered head rolled along the ground, a trail of blood gushing from the stump.

"Oh, shit," Ryo said behind the cyborg.

But the cyborg was not done with dispensing death. Moaning was emitting from the corner of the hangar, where Rzhevsky's railgun round had been aimed. The man whose legs had been severed from the powerful round was crawling along the ground, trailing gore and a heavy blood path, his exposed muscle torn to shreds, the white knobs of bone poking through the wreckage. His stumps were partially cauterized from the heat of the round when it had torn through him, but he had still lost a lot of blood and was in the process of losing too much already.

The minuteman, his face pale from blood loss, looked up as he saw the monstrosity stomping his way. He held up a shaking hand. "P-Please," he gasped through numb lips. "Let me l-live. I'll-I'll do anything. A-Anything you want!"

Rzhevsky stopped, mockingly pretending to consider the offer.

Then she theatrically shook her heavy head. "I already have everything."

With that, she raised her clawed foot and brutally brought it down upon the minuteman's head. There was a sickening crunch, and blood and gore spurted out as the foot became flush with the floor, the head turned to paste underneath the savage metal.

Watching the entire skirmish on the screen, Fiona slowly recoiled away in horror. Facing off against that many armed individuals would have been a harrowing battle for her alone. Rzhevsky had taken them all out in less than ten seconds and she seemed bored while killing them. The cyborg could probably have killed them all with just her DaiOni's bare hands if she had so wanted—the only reason she had used a variety of her built-in weapons was to add a little variety to her killing.

And I've just been antagonizing her the whole while.

Through her cyberspace link, the entire ziggurat that was the militia mainframe suddenly lit up like a Christmas tree. Fiona's firewalls had been circumvented, not penetrated—a program had slipped in via another route. There were only so many pathways that Fiona could monitor. If enough computing power was put to the task, even her barriers could be overwhelmed.

Ryo was calling back in. "Uh, Fiona? I think we have a problem."

Fiona lifted her head. Slowly at first, then ramping up in a fierce crescendo, she could hear a stark alarm begin to warp across the airfield.

"Yeah, I hear it," she said. "Rzhevsky nixed our stealthy approach. No way I could mask that. Did she find the tech yet?"

"Not yet, there's only some kind of jet here, but I think that—"

"Fiona," Falco interrupted by tapping her shoulder. He was pointing to the screen.

On the security feed, Rzhevsky was seen heading up the ramp at the rear of the plane that led into the cabin. The plane was surprisingly wide enough to support an entire DaiOni construct. She could also see Ryo, Tobin, and Kross milling about the area through the feed, unsure of what to do.

Then, a couple of minutes later, the thermals were picking up heat signatures coming from the plane's engines. In seconds, there was a whine, followed by a bellow of igniting plasma that sounded like a sonic boom. Hot fire streamed from the exhaust vents of the engines before the apertures narrowed and the fire brightened into a brilliant stream of sapphire.

"The hell?" Falco reared his head. "Is she priming that thing for takeoff?"

"Fiona," Kross was now on the group call, "what the fuck is going on here?"

But Fiona was already backing away from the console, eyes wide, body stiff like she had just been doused with cold water.

"That's because the tech isn't on the jet," she said. "The jet is the tech."

Multiple schematics auto-downloaded into Fiona's deck as she spoke, still logged into the network. Patent numbers. Blueprints. Blacked-out files locked by ident code. The Prototype X-88, according to TorcWing's literature. Fastest jet of its kind.

And Rzhevsky was already preflighting the damn thing, intending on leaving all of them behind.

She was so stupid for trusting Rzhevsky! The Arasaka bot never intended on keeping her word the entire time. The netrunner almost didn't even care that she saw the cyborg massacre an entire squad without prejudice just a few moments ago. Right now, all she was seeing was red, a desire to get even gripping the fabric of her mind.

Coldly, she spoke into the line, "Defend the jet until it's ready to depart, then get on board. We'll come to you." To Falco, she whirled, eyes blazing. "Time to bombshell the AO. Free fire. All out. Let's get to that hangar." [4]

They left the security station behind, the silencers to their weapons removed. Not much sense in sneaking around when their positions had already been blown. Retracing their steps, they rushed down the hallways of the building and bounded down the steps, carefulness traded for speed.

On the first floor, a squad of minutemen had been in the process of pilfering their armory for heavy weapons. Rounding the corner, Fiona spotted one of them passing an anti-tank bazooka to another. Without thinking, she activated her deck and unleashed a contagion virus within the closest one, the program branching and splitting off, infecting everyone within close range as the artificial components lodged in their flesh automatically leaked their toxic chemicals into their bloodstreams, sickening them in an instant. The minutemen were afflicted at a frightening speed, with many of them bending over and vomiting while others just sagged against the wall, coughing their lungs out until blood flecked from their mouths.

Behind her, Falco primed a grenade and rolled it into the crowd. It detonated with a violent flash, consuming the militia members in a cloud of smoke and chaff. Fiona just had enough time to see a dark stain flash upon the wall before the smoke rolled in and obscured it. A helmet bounced through the dark exhaust, the goggles coated with blood.

Fiona shouldered the door to the building that led back to the van, the cold night air pinpricking around her exposed eyes. Across the runway to the west, she could see spotlamps sweeping back and forth, activated in response to the full alert placed on the base. To the north, at the horizon between the two massive hangars, a warm glow from the city of San Francisco past the dead saltplains of the bay.

Running to the van, Fiona grabbed for the door and got herself into the passenger seat just as Falco leaped aboard the driver's side. Turning the engine over and gunning it, the van spun its tires upon the dusty pavement before the rubber finally caught and it began rushing towards Hangar 2.

As they drove, Fiona used the time to check the magazine to her assault rifle. Full clip, no obstructions. She chambered a round with a thick sound of metal slamming home.

Falco glanced to the left out his window and did a double-take. "Aw, shit."

Craning her head, Fiona spotted what gotten Falco so worried. A column of armored militia vehicles was rushing over from the opposite end of the airfield. Seven vehicles in total—zooming in, Fiona could see troop carriers, armored APCs, and even a drone carrier. There was enough firepower in that column that could blow them all sky high if they didn't get the hell out of here right now.

Switching frequencies, Fiona got Ryo back on a call. "Ryo, we're en route to you, but it looks like we're going to have company at the hangar in a few minutes. Give me a sitrep?"

The call momentarily crackled with the sounds of gunfire. Something sparking and frying in the background.

When Ryo finally answered, she sounded harried. "Fiona, Rzhevsky is taxiing the plane to the hangar's edge right now, but we're under heavy fire. It might take a few minutes just to get to the end of the runway. You need to hurry."

"We're pressing. Be on you in a bit." She disconnected the call and looked at Falco. "This thing at its top speed yet?"

Falco shook his head. "No, I wanted to be careful—"

"Just gun the damn thing."

"Yes, ma'am."

The acceleration barely pressed Fiona's back into the cracked seat of the van, but it was a reassuring presence nonetheless. Spotlamps and data pulses rushed in her gray eyes as she glowered, her entire body tense, primed for a fight.

The hangar was now rushing by on their left. It took nearly half a minute for the van to traverse the entire length of the building. When Falco finally turned the vehicle to make for the hangar doors, he did it so violently that the van nearly tipped over. Unsecured odds and ends at the rear of the van made a loud cacophony as they bounced around the interior, followed by the sound of something smashing.

"There it is!" Fiona pointed out the windshield.

The TorcWing jet had cleared the hangar doors by now, embarking into a very slow turn as it tried to angle itself towards the runway. Keeping pace with it, Fiona could see Ryo, Kross, and Tobin trotting alongside the rearward ramp, which was still extended, automatic fire bursting from their weapons as they shot at whoever was pursuing them back in the hangar.

"Get us over there, Falco!" Fiona shouted.

"I'm going, I'm going!" the wheelman yelped.

But before they could close the distance to the jet, minutemen began pouring out from the hangar entrance in hot pursuit. Bots in their janky gait also joined the fray, firing at the spacecraft with machineguns. Grenade rounds cratered the pavement in massive plumes, bits of asphalt raining down upon Ryo and the rest as the mist from the diminished bay began to roll in across the ground, a few inches in height.

Falco yanked the wheel, moving the van away from the hangar—they couldn't drive through the group that was now in between them and the jet. If they turned their weapons this way, the heavy rounds would rip through the vehicle in a matter of seconds.

The TorcWing jet rolled to a stop so that it could commence with a set of truncated preflight checks. Testing the individual plasma engines, one after the other with a roar of condensed fire.

Ryo used the opportunity to clamber aboard the ramp, Fiona saw. The submachinegun in the ex-Tyger Claw's hand fired a dozen rounds, catching one minuteman in the chest.

Kross followed Ryo up the ramp shortly after, his muscular arms holding two assault rifles at once while he fired them at full auto, the muscles in his arms taut to the point of tearing. One rifle clicked open, the barrel oozing smoke. He threw it to the side in a contemptuous manner and plucked a grenade from his belt, tossing that out as well. There was a pulse of orange flame and bodies and limbs were flung into the air, a thunderclap that reverberated just once around the airfield. One bot had been caught in the blast and bowed forward, blue lightning spasming from its back where the shrapnel had penetrated the armor.

Now covering the front of the ramp, Tobin had somehow managed to obtain a portable minigun that he was sweeping back and forth, the tracers sparking down the line like pinpoint lasers. He dug his heels in, absorbing the blowback, the flashes from the gun razing across his front as if he was standing in front of a wildfire.

Kross yelled out something to him, a demand to board the ship.

Tobin glanced over his shoulder involuntarily towards Kross, but then pitched backwards as a bullet caught him in the chest.

"No!" Fiona yelled in the van, having seen the whole thing.

Falling upon the ramp, Tobin lost his grip on the minigun. His blood had splattered upon the floor of the plane and sparks scattered around him as the minutemen kept firing. Kross approached down the ramp, firing his rifle one-handed, as he grabbed a fistful of Tobin's armor and dragged him on board the ship while Ryo covered them both.

But by now, the jet was accelerating again, Rzhevsky having speedrun through the rest of the preflight checks and now it was moving towards the run-up area of the taxiway, jetfire streaming from its powerful engines.

Fiona opened her mouth to shout to Falco, but the wheelman seemed to know what she wanted to do. The van drew itself away from the advancing NorCal force and drove along the inside ramp, parallel to the track the jet was taking as it took the yellow-lined path marked "Zulu."

"Rzhevsky's not going to stop when she turns onto the runway," Fiona said. "That thing's going to accelerate out of here and we need to be on it."

"Yeah, well," Falco glanced at his driver's side mirror. "There are some people that wouldn't want us to do that. Think you could…?"

But Fiona was already leaning out the window after tying her hair in a ponytail, assault rifle now in hand. [5] The militia had finally noticed that Falco's van was not responding on any of the comm channels and had apparently assumed, correctly, that it had been hijacked. Two motorcycle units, followed by armored cruisers, were in hot pursuit, their headlights snarling across the hot and steaming pavement as they closed the gap.

One hand gripping the roof of the van to keep her steady, Fiona fired her weapon with her left hand, the recoil snapping her aim all over the place until her muscles became used to the blowback and soon fired at a steady pace.

Bullets blistered all over the lead motorcycle and the front tire immediately flattened from a puncture, flipping it end over end, sending its rider sailing for a brief moment only for his body to smear itself across the rough concrete, leaving bits of flesh behind as his uniform shredded, followed by his skin underneath.

Rounds smashed into the rear of the van as the next motorcycle advanced, its rider firing a submachinegun. Falco swerved the van to give Fiona a good angle, as the motorcycle was simultaneously trying to stay on the left side where Fiona could not shoot him. But Falco drove the van close to where the taxiway ended and the grassy partition began, forcing the motorcycle to slow down as its wheels began slipping upon the wet and dead grass, causing him to fall back, directly into Fiona's sights.

She only needed to fire five rounds. One caught the motorcycle rider in the center of his helmet, puncturing his visor and sending out a spray of brains exiting at the rear of the plastic covering.

"We still got company!" she heard Falco yell from behind the wheel.

"I can see that!" she bellowed back, staring as the cool ice headlights of the armored airfield cruisers pushed their way towards them.

She did not have enough ammo to be able to take on cars like that—the militia would have armored them so that it would take more than a full clip for her to be able to puncture the hood and then disable the engine block.

Fortunately, she had something better up her sleeve.

All cars built after 2002 had been outfitted with rudimentary transmitter chips to receive over-the-air firmware updates from the manufacturer, whether it was a change to a car's infotainment system, or a purchased upgrade that would change characteristics of the engine itself to deliver more power at a cost of another attribute.

Most people did not know how to disable this always-on transmitter. She bet the militia did not know how, either.

It was easy for Fiona to locate the nodes of the car once she had pulled herself back into the van, her other "self" floating weightless in cyberspace. The target vehicles were two dim points on a grid, strobing feebly in their walled gardens of data. Fiona was able to punch through their ICE no problem, simply by taking public copy of the car manufacturer's firmware data off the Net and using its base code to disguise her own program as an update. Within seconds, the sprawling access of the car systems was available to her, with her as the spider in the middle of the web.

Fiona's ghost reached out and touched a node. In realspace, one of the cars abruptly veered to the side as its emergency brakes locked on full. The tires made a horrible skidding noise, smearing rubber in thick black marks upon the ground, and then the brakes finally let go after holding so tight that they had turned magma red and had exploded, disintegrating the tires with them. The car began to spin and then it finally flipped after the resulting force overcame its center of gravity. Continuing to flip along its latitudinal axis, the cruiser bounced as it repeatedly hit the ground, shedding paneling as it went. It finally crashed to a halt, a crumpled shell of its former self, the passengers inside either dead or crippled.

"We still got one back there!" Falco yelled.

"On it!" Fiona said, her eyes brimming with solid fire as she surged her digital touch like lightning bolts spiraling from her extended hand, honing straight towards the node of the final pursuing car's engine.

Strada of data, bursting past her as she plunged through the outer defenses, which broke and fragmented around her cyberspace avatar like a pane of sheet ice. Her "hands" grasped a critical juncture and they warmed, sending energy and power flowing into the computer of the car.

In response to Fiona's attack, the computer of the car began miscalibrating the engine's performance, its internal benchmarks all tweaked with. Registering the current pressure the car's operator was applying to the gas pedal, the vehicle now assumed that this meant that the RPM of the engine needed to get to 9000 rotations instead of the 2500 it was already at. Immediately, the engine spiked into the redline with a withering howl that turned into a sharp screech. The temperature of the engine shot through the roof, sensors and vital components already melting and failing.

Seconds later, the hood of the car became pockmarked with punctures that shot through the covering, creating craters of the bodywork. The engine was disintegrating, parts bursting from all components.

Then, with a whisper of red and a concussive thump, the engine finally blew itself apart, whiting out the windshield seconds before the fuel ignited and consumed the vehicle in a ball of flame.

"That takes care of that," Fiona said, her eyes returning to normal as she withdrew from the artificial plane of existence, back to the land of flesh.

But Falco was shaking his head, something in the distance causing him to turn tense. "Not for long, though."

Across the flat horizon, the roaring headlights of armored attack vehicles were beginning to close the distance, replacing the group that had been originally pursuing Fiona and Falco's van.

Already she was trying to lock her cyberdeck onto them, but even though her cursor was squarely oriented on the boxy armored craft, she was registering a red connection. "Their electronics are too hardened," she said, a cold feeling pooling in her stomach. "It's going to take at least a minute to break through their ICE."

Just then, the taxiway in front of them suddenly erupted like a volcano after a shell, fired by one of the treaded machines, had impacted square upon the concrete. [6] Falco yanked the wheel to avoid driving into the smoking divot, the windshield crackling as bits of debris peppered the van.

By now, the TorcWing jet had reached the final taxiway branch—Foxtrot—and had begun the slow turn towards the runway. The rearward ramp was still extended, trailing a thick tongue of sparks as it ground against the pavement.

The ramp was still extended.

Fiona pointed towards the jet. "Falco—"

"I see it," the wheelman said as he gave the van more gas, ignoring the explosions that trailed in his wake from the tanks in hot pursuit. "Hold on."

The engine to the van was now heaving so loudly that Fiona figured it was also going to self-destruct without her having to do anything. But incredibly, it was gaining on the jet, moving further and further down the taxiway until it was within a dozen meters of the ramp.

But then a shadow eclipsed the light that was being emitted from inside the plane. A hulking figure was now standing on the ramp, sparks blazing just inches from their clawed feet. Rzhevsky.

The bottom of her stomach dropped out as she saw the cyborg raise an arm, the wind whipping at the DaiOni's frame. Well, can't say this was out of character—

There was a blast from the DaiOni's right arm and the 25mm grenade from the built-in Tsunami GL launcher sailed past the van and exploded against the front of a treaded militia interceptor that Fiona had not even known was there, just in the van's blind spot. The ground rippled, the windows of the van rattled in their slots, and a violent eruption shockwaved the air as a magnificent fireball razed the night, reaching up as if it intended to carve the stars from their perch.

"Christ," Falco murmured in awe.

Rzhevsky shifted her aim and loosed another grenade, flipping an APC as the resulting detonation lifted it off the ground and ripped its tires to ribbons.

Then the cyborg stepped aside, retreating back into the sanctum of the plane's interior, her business concluded. Fiona pummeled the dashboard with a fist, practically leaping out of her seat as she gestured towards the empty spot Rzhevsky had left them. "Go. Go!"

But Falco was already in motion, angling the van in so that it lined up with the ramp of the jet. Small arms fire from entrenched positions around the runway pinged around the vehicle, but neither the driver or the passenger paid them any mind. Falco nudged the throttle, five miles over the speed of the plane.

Sparks nipping at the front wheels of the van.

Five meters left.

The pyrotechnics now completely engulfing the front of the vehicle.

Two more meters.

One final push of the accelerator pedal.

A bump. The chassis gave a lurch. The front wheels were on.

A second later, the van lunged upward as the rear axle scraped onto the plane, all four wheels now no longer touching pavement.

Falco never lost his concentration as he drove the van straight into the cargo bay, the ramp sliding upward behind the vehicle. He nearly forgot to apply the brake, but did so just in time to prevent the van from smashing into the cargo wall of the jet. Fiona, having not been wearing her seatbelt, had to use her arms to push against the dashboard to prevent herself from flying through the windshield. Had they crashed and the airbag had gone off, her arms would have been shattered.

There was a mind-bending moment of deceleration and then everything wobbled into place, a sense of vertigo momentarily overcoming Fiona, but that was perhaps the plane was still moving—finally accelerating for takeoff. Shakily, she turned towards Falco, who was wiping his shining forehead with the back of his hand, slowly combing his hair back into place, away from his face.

He unleashed a slow breath and gave an unsteady smile. "Least we didn't have to go through security this time."

---

The ramp to the jet had fully closed by the time it had taken off, the lights of the Bay Area rapidly receding from view as they rose higher through the toxic clouds. But Fiona was not so much concerned about the view as she kicked the door to the van open and jumped out, nothing but murder filling her brain like a nest of angry hornets.

A trail of blood had peppered the ground of the jet's cargo bay, which only got thicker and thicker as Fiona followed it. Mustering her way past the door, she was thrust into a luxuriously appointed cabin, the décor of which was the uniform color of cappuccino, the carpets plush and the walls almost psychedelic with thin wireframe lines that approximated angular waves.

The blood had soaked into the carpet, terminating at a couch the same color as the rest of the cabin in a room offshoot from the main corridor. Kross held Tobin across his lap, the latter's helmet having been discarded somewhere. Tobin's blood had coated half the couch, along with the ex-Maelstrom, who seemed numb with shock. The BARGHEST merc's eyes were shut and Kross was gently cradling the man's head, almost as if his friend was sleeping.

Lethargically, Kross lifted his head, as if he only now noticed that Fiona was there. Even with his mutilated head, remorse could still be perceived on what little remaining flesh he possessed. "I… I tried giving him some meds… but it wasn't… I wasn't…"

Fiona knelt down, trying not to look at the hole that had carved its way through Tobin's chest. She just stared at the merc's face that was forever still, already accepting that she had brought this onto him. Now Tobin would no longer laugh, smile, or make joke bets on Kross' longevity anymore, all because of a choice she had made.

Eyes flitting murderously towards the cockpit, she rose, ignoring any noises of protest from Falco behind her, marched past an exhausted Ryo, who was spread out in a chair, trying to attempt something resembling rest, and went to find that damn cyborg.

She found Rzhevsky standing near the open cockpit door, the autopilot blinking on the screen, not bothering to consider how the massive DaiOni had managed to squeeze into here. Fiona reached up, plucked the shard from her neck, the one the machination had provided her with, and, as Rzhevsky turned at her approach, she contemptuously flung it at the conversion. The shard, though it had an impressive topspin, simply pinged off of the cyborg's chest like a pebble flung from a passing rig. Rzhevsky made a show of leaning over to look at the missile that had just assaulted her, which only made Fiona's blood boil even harder.

Fiona didn't care that Rzhevsky could rip her limb from limb without a second thought, never mind that the Arasaka bot was twice her height. She stood her ground, her eyes blazing with such a fury that they nearly manifested their own criticality. "You… motherfucker!" she spat. She then raised her arms. "This is what happens when you don't give us the information at the outset. A man is dead because he trusted me! And I was an idiot for trusting you up until now. You got your tech, congratulations, but you just burned one massive fucking bridge with me, Rzhevsky. You burned everyone today. But that's just on par for Arasaka. Why divert from type? Surely, it's simply easier to fuck people over than cooperate them, right?"

There was a soft rolling sound as the cyborg absorbed the abuse, both physical and verbal. Then, with a calmness that was even more unnerving than her rage, she spoke. "You were informed as much as necessary so that you would be able to accomplish the objective without distraction. You did so, and by the numbers." Rzhevsky looked about the cabin of the executive jet. "The engineers at Arasaka will be having a field day when they reverse-engineer the technology of this thing. What was once proprietary tech is now public knowledge. All to TorcWing's—and Militech's—bad fortune."

"You tried to leave in this stupid plane without me," Fiona glowered, her tone now becoming deeper and more ragged.

Rzhevsky rolled her head in an imitation of a shrug. "A judgment call. I needed to get the plane moving as fast as possible. In doing so, I knowingly drew the attention of the entire base to my position, in turn, drawing them away from yours."

"So you're saying," Fiona was still fighting mad as she approached Rzhevsky, a finger in the air, "you began exfiltrating the airfield as an act of support? For me?"

"Fuck no," Rzhevsky laughed, the sound metallic and cruel. "You were never part of that equation. But then again, I never said that you had to leave with me. With everyone else distracted, you could have easily slipped away—you and your wheelman all cozy in that security station. All that chaos, with the bullets and the shells flying, you could have commandeered another vehicle after leaving the premises and gotten back on the highway without anyone noticing you at all. Instead, you chose to pursue the plane, which was, to be frank, the more difficult option."

Nearly closing her eyes in anguish, Fiona was loathe to admit that Rzhevsky, despite everything that had occurred today, may have just had a point. The fluidity of the plan had relied mainly on improvisation and it had only been from Fiona's decision that to exfil as a unit was what needed to transpire when there had been no requirement, no agreement, that such a thing needed to happen in the first place.

"Don't look so miserable, netrunner," Rzhevsky said upon seeing Fiona's eyes cloud over. "Arasaka won't forget this service you've done for them. And before long, your friends will appreciate this opportunity once they're properly paid. And speaking of which…"

A clawed hand then extended towards the younger woman. A slot in the DaiOni's finger then popped out a shard. Rzhevsky jerked her limb, a gesture for Fiona to take her reward.

Glowering, Fiona snatched the shard from the slot, holding it tightly in a hand. She creaked open her clenched fingers and stared at the shard in her palm. This was it—the first lead in years. Whatever could take her to the truth, this would be everything to her. It would be a start.

She closed her hand over the shard again. "All for a plane?" Fiona asked, her voice hollow.

"The engine, the wing, the airframe. And the guarantee that Militech's contract with NUSA to build the next Space Force One comes into question next year."

Fiona closed her eyes and shook her head. "Wait. Wait, wait. You're not telling me—"

"—That you were used as pawns in the latest corpo manipulation game? Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, sweetheart, but you're just one person. And Arasaka… well," Rzhevsky leaned close to Fiona. Close enough to hear the synthesized fluctuations in her voice—a sound that could not be conjured from anything human, "…do you even know how many countries they own?"

Staring at Rzhevsky, lobes of gray imagining they were boiling the outer layer of the cyborg's armor, Fiona stood her ground, the info shard still clasped tightly in her hand.

"Once we reach the city, I'm out," she hissed. "You. Me. Arasaka. We're done. I'm not taking any jobs from your boss ever again. Though, I don't think you're too disappointed about that, are you?"

Without waiting for an answer, Fiona turned on a heel and walked back down the aisle back to where her crew had gathered, a more appreciative audience.

Rzhevsky watched her go, the DaiOni expressionless and silent. She then glanced down at the ground, where the chip that Fiona had thrown now laid on its side, the holographic sticker glittering as it caught the glow from the nearby ceiling lamps.

Forceps extending from her hand once again, Rzhevsky slowly bent down and plucked the shard up from where it lay on the carpet, surreptitiously slotting it back into her body conversion, her lone optic cycling on repeat, the afterimage of the netrunner burned into what remained of her cortex.

---

A/N: Next week is when my operation is scheduled to take place, so I'll probably be out of commission for several days. Will certainly post the chapter as soon as I can – I haven't left a story unfinished so far and I don't intend to start now.

Playlist:

[1] Tractor Trailer
"Operation Black Flag"
Sarah Schachner
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (Original Video Game Soundtrack)

[2] Moffet Field
"Terrible Resolve"
Sarah Schachner
Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare (Original Video Game Soundtrack)

[3] Security Station
"You Lied to Me"
Hans Zimmer and Steve Mazzaro
Chappie (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

[4] Airfield Chase, Pt. I
"Fight the A.T.A.C."
Joris de Man
Killzone 2 (Original Video Game Soundtrack)

[5] Airfield Chase, Pt. II
"Bio-Techno"
Hans Zimmer
Mission: Impossible 2 (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

[5] Airfield Chase, Pt. III
"Bloodstained Anthem"
Ludvig Forssell
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (Original Video Game 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.