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.

19. Chapter 19: Degradation

ARASAKA_TOWER

Holographics flared suddenly like fireworks within the amphitheater, where a singular and powerful spotlamp bathed a blinding white light down upon the middle of the room, leaving the circular viewing levels that surrounded it cloaked in a near-permanent shadow. The hanging garden of instruments was positioned like a series of metallic lightning bolts over the lone chair that was based underneath it, as if it were inhabiting the center of an invisible target should gravity suddenly wrest it from its perch in the ceiling and shunt it downward.

Titanium bands built into the chair at the arm and leg rests kept the netrunner from moving out of it. Try as she might, her struggle was one of flesh against metal.

Yet, she struggled, heedless to the futility of her actions.

The bands bit into Fiona's wrists, nearly cutting to the bone. Fresh blood dripped from her fingertips, stringy and dark. Her hands were locked into a rigor, tendons threatening to leap from the skin, muscles drawn so taut that they were on the verge of ripping completely apart. Her body was writhing in place, almost in an orgasmic dance, but the noises and wails that blistered from Fiona's throat were not those of pleasure.

She could not feel any of it, despite what her reactions seemingly betrayed. The wires that spooled into her cyberware ports had already whisked her consciousness away to an invisible land, spiriting her into a temporary prison within the vast matrix of data that hung over everything like a mirror world. Her eyes had frosted over in a simulacrum sea, her body merely gripped in the reactions to the assault on her person. Tubes of coolant had been strapped to her body, her clothes slashed open from waist to collar so that the frozen piping could adhere to her skin, exposing all of her pale skin. A wireframe synthmesh mask had been placed upon her face, which glowed a searing blue, the superchilled material interfacing with her chrome and the coolant tubes, lowering her body temperature as she fell further and further into her forced Net dive. Had the apparatus not been applied, her cyberware would have melted her brain by now from the extreme load exerted upon it.

Fiona was grunting, crying, screaming. Her mouth had been open, spittle flying out in the open air in a fine mist. Her half-mask was sitting on a nearby aluminum stand next to a cracked leather bag, the diodes upon the curved face silent and dark.

Standing nearby, wired into a deck of his own, Renzer stood in a solemn formation just outside of the influence of the light. Hands clasped in front of him, head bent as if in prayer. Providing a token to whatever digital god he worshipped, only for the spell to break and he would open his eyes, his hands maneuvering over an ergonomic black keyboard, his typing slow and methodical. The console he was plugged into read a scroll of incomprehensible code, for it was not powerful enough to visualize the graphics of the land that he—and Fiona—were simultaneously connected to. It bathed his face in a deep ruby light, chiseling the lines on his face into dark canyons.

Above the highest row of the amphitheater was a singular glass rectangle—a two-way mirror. Fiona and Renzer could not see who was observing them, but the people above could see everything.

Michiko and Ackerman were in front of the mirror on the other end, lording down over the lurid scene, watching Fiona's body thrash and writhe. Behind them, Ramses stood to the side, with Rzhevsky positioned a few feet from Michiko's back. The masked mercenary did not dare go up to the window, as if he was afraid to look below and see the results of his betrayal, to be a witness to Fiona's agony. Near a set of wheeled monitors, a pair of techs monitored the biorhythms of their captive as well as the integrity of the data connections that they had interfaced.

"I don't understand why this is taking so long," Michiko was saying irritably, arms crossed as she glanced over to Ackerman. "I'm not seeing any progress. She's still in a noncompliant phase. What is your man even doing down there?"

Ackerman made a conciliatory motion with his head, but he failed to meet eye contact with the corpo, instead choosing to continue staring at the operating theater below.

"Renzer's netrunning abilities may be… modest compared to the best that NetWatch has to offer, but he has maintained a firm grasp on the basics. He has enough knowledge to get him what he needs with the CPP. He doesn't need to go that far with the AI, anyway. That can come later."

That did not seem to assuage Michiko much. "So, you have an idiot down there fumbling around with that AI instead of bringing in NetWatch's best and brightest to do the job?"

"He's not an idiot," Ackerman made a cutting motion with his hand as he saw Fiona buck against her restraints one more time, her howl unable to cut through the soundproofed glass. He frowned, seeing as any insult against Renzer was an insult against himself. "He'll be able to do what needs to be done. Trust me."

"And that is…?"

"Copying the AI for safe transport, of course. The body, fragile though it might be, still has a danger inherent to it. Live transport is just so inconvenient, compared to the alternative. Hands can grip weapons, squeeze throats, throw punches. Safer to just take the body out of the equation entirely. If the AI gets transported to a separate storage device, it can be contained and continually digitized for routine experiments."

"Digitized," Ramses spoke for the first time, his voice a wispy rasp. He slowly rotated his head as if he was on a rusty swivel. "And what happens to the body?"

Ackerman's jaw locked in a quick grimace. "There'll be nothing left, after that. The 'true' Fiona was pushed out of that brain god knows how long ago when she was beset by the attack in the Old Net. With the AI removed, there won't be a light behind the eyes, so to speak. No ghost to give life to its machine. With that, there's really nothing else to do except dispose of the body. It'll be just an empty shell."

Ramses made a grim noise and turned away again. He wondered what NetWatch's "disposal" would entail. Vivisection to retain the still-working vital organs, followed by cremation of what remained? Or would they simply liquidate the body wholesale, fearing if, somehow, the AI had spread its influence within the its very cells and its poison could still be spread like a virus?

Damn it, Fiona, he thought. All those years they were together, he thought he could have molded a mercenary to match his own skill. She had already surpassed him with anything related to the Net. But there had been so much more he could have taught her. That he had wanted to guide her on.

He could have even seen himself… caring for her. More than a friend. A missing piece he had not cared until now was missing.

But this was where the silver paths of their lives had led to, now. Nothing but a divergence. Like he was receding over the sprawl of Night City, the arms of an angel around his waist, taking him above the clouds as the glowing metropolis became a spiderweb of yellow sodium light far below, or a crack in a car windshield, the last moment before complete implosion.

He became aware that Rzhevsky had been glaring at him the entire time, as if expecting him to make a sudden move, the hulking beast quivering like it could spring out of the cage any time it chose. He ignored the stare of the cyborg, content to let her imagination run rampant for all he cared.

"So, how is this done, then?" Michiko asked.

"Copying the AI to external storage?" Ackerman shrugged. "Not as hard as you might figure. It's just the process takes a while because there are so many steps. For one, you can't just transfer the AI from a cyberdeck straight into a hard drive. If we could, this would be a lot shorter."

"Why not?"

"Data degradation. The transfer protocol needs an intermediate platform between the download location and the storage site to transcribe the AI into a recognizable format. As we are dealing with a CPP here, its protocol was written in an artificially-created syntax. You remember the COBOL crisis of the aughts? Banking and government administrative systems went down completely for seven months because the last person fluent in COBOL had retired—or died, I forget which—and no one else had bothered to learn the language. It took that long to scrape together a rudimentary transcribing program that would rewrite every one of the outdated systems in a modern language, but there are not uncommon occurrences where corporations are still paying the price for their poor data integrity because of that disaster. I'd rather us not waste years of work trying to distill the AI's code into an editable base syntax. For tonight, we have a shortcut that can suffice for our needs."

Michiko raised her chin, her eyes flashing. "A shortcut. That's just what we need, rushing the whole process and potentially fucking things up further. You're NetWatch—why would a shortcut be acceptable? If there's any program that can get the job done for you, wouldn't you already have access to it?"

Ackerman closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose, as if he was trying to convince himself he was speaking to an adult and not a child. "Remember, when I first came to you, Arasaka, I had mentioned that this whole operation was, to put it mildly, unsanctioned by the NetWatch board?"

Michiko's eyes narrowed. She nodded.

"Then imagine," Ackerman continued, "if I was to come onto NetWatch premises and use NetWatch consoles, NetWatch programs, that are monitored 24/7, and I had initiated the transfer protocol on a rogue AI, wouldn't you think that would backfire quickly onto me? We simply don't have the time or the resources to do this without risk, Arasaka. That's the view that my superiors take. NetWatch is obsessed with the long game, with taking things safe." He glanced Michiko up and down, as though he was implicitly critiquing the woman, viewing her as an equal or inferior. "I don't play things slow. There's no reason for me to do so, anymore. I'm on a dead-end course in NetWatch and I'm far too entrenched to start all over again at another organization. If I'm to move up, I need to produce immediate results. And you can bet that I will utilize any shortcut at my disposal in order to attain my goals."

"As long as it's not at the expense of the AI," Michiko warned.

"It won't be."

"You sound so sure. But is that overconfidence speaking?"

"Assuredness borne from meticulous preproduction," Ackerman raised a finger and pointed down towards Rezner. "Now, what Dan is doing, is interfacing with his own pre-approved instance that was spun off for testing purposes. It also contains a singular connection to the Blackwall, allowing a very small amount of bandwidth to its code on the network. It's unmonitored, so NetWatch can't see what we're doing."

Michiko lit a cigarette and smoked. "Until you eventually have to reveal what you've done in order to attain your presumed promotion."

"First, we have to succeed here. But the Blackwall plays an important part in this whole scheme. You might not be aware of this, but any program that passes through the Blackwall leaves a record behind. Like… the manifest on an airplane, or when you login to any website that has a security screen. Fragmented within the registry, there are stray bits of code that the Blackwall program saves to form a makeshift codex that allows seamless integration between the various Net zones, including the Old Net. The CPP we're transferring had passed through the Blackwall once before—whatever record of its passage it left behind within the code, we can recover. The integration protocols that can translate the AI to our portable NetWatch storage devices are in the very barrier that keeps humanity safe. All Dan has to do is find them and initiiate the transcribing process with the AI."

Michiko's lips had parted in a show of incredulity. She blinked, revealing the glittering jade eye shadow that clung to her eyelids, reminiscent of a butterfly stretching its wings. As if she wanted to ensure that she was in agreement with the rest of the people in the room, she looked to Rzhevsky, then to Ramses, but found only blank stares in return.

"You're lunatics, both of you," she said, turning back to Ackerman. "Am I the only one who can see the massive red flag, here? You're deliberately connecting the rogue AI to the Blackwall. The very program that separates the rest of its kind from us? Do you realize how insane this plan is?"

"The connection that Dan is initiating to the Blackwall is localized," Ackerman tried to reassure the corpo. "There's not enough bandwidth in our partitioned instance to allow a program of the AI's size through to the Old Net. But we need the Net link up so that we can get access to the root code of the Blackwall. I would not be so stupidly brazen for something like this—it should be perfectly safe."

"'Should,'" Ramses rasped towards Ackerman's back, a rippling taunt that carried through the stale air. [1]

Wearing a blank expression, the heels of Ackerman's polished shoes made a squealing sound on the floor as he executed a prompt turn, glaring at the mercenary as though he had committed a faux pas for even voicing his opinion.

"I suppose you think that you would otherwise know better as to how to deal with this kind of threat?" Ackerman tilted his head and leaned forward, a razor-sharp gleam manifesting in the eyes of his hawkish face. "You've been living with that AI for two years—you think that makes you an expert?" When Ramses did not reply, not rising to the bait, Ackerman reared up. "Even if we were to go with the pragmatic route and initiate months of simulated transfers and frustrating UAT sessions, this is still going to be the only option that NetWatch will ever consider. There is a risk to the Blackwall route, I'll admit, but the risk of letting an unshackled AI loose upon the world is a far greater threat than you or I could ever stand up to."

Ackerman waited for Ramses to respond and he shoved his hands into his pockets expectantly. When still no rebuttal was given, Ackerman straightened, appearing almost smug.

"Oh, what? You think you could somehow wait out the storm by finding a hole to lay low in? NetWatch has been preparing for the worst-case scenario longer than you've ever been alive. It's our job to assume that our future will no longer have a Net that houses humans anymore. And that affects you more than you think. Now that we have proof that AIs can breach the Blackwall with impunity, this will be the catalyst for more investment in our firewalls and other defenses to be reconfigured. Shored up. If we do nothing, the trickle in the dam will soon become a stream, then a deluge. If the Blackwall is breached, there will be no more of the Net left that we can recognize. What is new becomes old again. The Old Net reunited, but unusable to humans. Rogue AIs roaming across the little archipelagos of data that we scarcely control, even today. Banking records, stock markets, healthcare profiles, governmental accounts. We lose everything if the Blackwall falls, mercenary. You think you can live without the Net? Maybe you can, but the rest of the world will tumble into chaos. Wars for resources will be a thing of the past. Every conflict that breaks out from this point forward will be wars for information. All technology with a modem will be made illegal under a federal statute to prevent the spread of non-human-created programs, unless NetWatch manages to find a way to stop all that. And if that happens, we stand to make a substantial profit on the side."

"So," Ramses glowered, his eyes sweeping vibrant cuts through the gloomy air, "diagnose the disease, sell the cure?"

"Do you know just how much corporations will shell out for security? Millions upon millions. NetWatch will be able to selectively apply patches to whatever Net zones we're paid to defend. At the right price, of course. NetWatch can charge whatever they want for this service and there will always be someone who'll pay. That's what I'm offering to offset my little rebellious streak to the board—a limitless revenue stream. A digital Spindletop."

Ackerman swept his arm back to the window, vibrantly gesticulating while continuing to stare at Ramses.

"This—the AI—it's just the first step for us developing that patch that seals the Blackwall for good. It might lead to other discoveries—a digital vaccine against cyberattacks from AIs, for example, or by using the AI to create complex ICE equations that shore up our dataforts—but time is not on our side. This is the moment that decides everything. This is where we—humanity—wins or loses it all, and I'm not about to sit on the sidelines and wait for the buzzer to announce our defeat. I'm going for the fucking court shot."

---

The subgrid that Renzer had forcibly installed Fiona onto was a long sheath of blackened glass. Objects resembling the interior of an office building were reconstructed in wireframe dot-pattern formats, like animation points on a mocap stage for each individual object. ICE that roamed the subnets flared in deep waves in all dimensions, like the northern lights. Waves of crimson that meandered into azure. A pixelated labyrinth that spiraled into a schizophrenic kaleidoscope.

Fiona had seen the matrix flow for her in this fashion many times. Data ribboning around and through the human-constructed objects. This place had been a second home to her, once, when she was a prisoner.

And now, she was a prisoner here again.

Her appearance was generated from Fiona's own mental image of herself, but it was a mere template. A vibrant being, blazing with code, firehot and a scarlet hue like a meteor in the dark. The matrix had no need for clothes, so Fiona always projected herself without them. She did not mentally project herself in graphic detail, but the curves and flawless smooth appearance of her body was enough to display that she was undoubtedly naked in cyberspace.

Firewall bands shackled her wrists and ankles, third-party software, contorting the netrunner into a trussed-up position where her limbs had been forced behind her while she was angled forward, belly to the ground, as if she was dangling from a pole that ran behind her head longitudinally, straight along her back. NetWatch had cutoff any external connections to the wider Net. It was as if she had been blinded.

The view shifted and Fiona found herself blazing through the walls of the building, smashing through them like she was a speeding bullet. The subgrid was able to generate the graphics without any lag. There were not any drops in the frames per second, and the bitrate was flawless 120 megabits per second to generate a marvelous 16K texture. The texture pack was proprietary, Fiona recognized. Infragrafix Pak 3.66, created by Compaq in 2045.

Then she was positioned over the system's datafort, which took the form of a metallic square building a kilometer high. It was a crude design, with no windows or branding. It was not that the system had enough resources to generate a grander design—which the texture pack certainly proved that it did—but that there was just no incentive for NetWatch to devise anything with a hint of ostentation. Fiona was being lifted away from the fortress's data walls, skirting the protected boundaries of the ICE and the 3D generated defense grid.

Something pulled her and the matrix blurred all around her, a hyperspeed void. There was no wind, but if there were, Fiona's eyeballs would have been torn from their sockets at such speed. Then everything crashed to a stop so quickly that the actual whiplash would have ripped what was left of Fiona's skeleton out from her neck.

They were at their final destination.

A towering embankment, the red dam glowing with a secret energy. Were she able to lift her head, Fiona would be able to see the top of the Blackwall, several projected miles overhead. As it was, she just saw a barricade of angry code in front of her, a dead end. She knew what this meant, what awaited on the other side, and a timid moan uttered past her lips, her own voice seemingly directionless and lacking any sort of reverberation in cyberspace.

No…

"Not pleased?" a voice burgeoned forth. "I'm surprised, given this is a homecoming."

Fiona could only move her eyes but that was enough, as she saw the image of Dan Renzer suddenly pop into frame from her right. Despite his connection being made through a fiberoptic, Renzer's avatar was in grayscale, heavily pixelated into a crude polygon shape, and his movements were stuttering as if he was about to be dropped from the network. A console must be taking the processor load instead of a direct cyberware interface, Fiona recognized. This man was no netrunner.

Seething as she struggled against her bonds, she growled out, "What… are you doing… to me?" but her words sounded like they were coming from underwater.

Renzer just waggled a finger tauntingly. "Forgot to mention, you're muted on my end. You can talk all you want, but I'm not going to hear a word of it. Your capabilities have not been completely mapped yet. Can't take any risks with a CPP like you."

I didn't know! Fiona wanted to cry out. Shouldn't that matter?! I did nothing to you! She tried flexing her way past her bonds, but she could not grasp a connection to the firewalls that restricted her avatar's movements. You could have just let me go! Please, let me go! Just let me still think I'm human! This isn't my home—I just want to live!

Dispassionate to Fiona's plight, Renzer's avatar looked to be typing on a reproduction of a keyboard in front of him (further cementing his lack of imagination while in the matrix) and the two suddenly teleported to within feet of the Blackwall. Although everything was eerily silent, Fiona could imagine a ghostly hum emanating from the core of the massive firewall in front of her, as if there were conduits of magma trapped beneath that glowing surface, underneath tons and tons of pressure, just waiting to explode.

Desperate, Fiona tried accessing her quickhacks, but found that NetWatch had disabled that too. They had completely cut her off from making any external connections beyond what they were allowing in this subnet already.

Ramses. How long did you know? Why did you not come to me first?

I would never have hurt you. If you had asked, I would have left Night City. Left and never come back.

You just needed to ask.

I would have done anything for you.

"You're not the first AI I've met, you know," Renzer said, not looking up from his keyboard. "NetWatch has several locked in their vaults all over the world. But those were created by humans, limited by what our brains could design. You, on the other hand, are the first CPP I've met. It's interesting how you've been able to become a better mimic of human behavior than anything we've been able to create. It's why Ackerman says you're so dangerous. The ability for a machine to truly learn… the things we can discover from you."

Fiona was close enough so that she was able to view the keystrokes that Renzer was making on his keyboard, even though there was no monitor. Her eyes mapped the motions of his fingers—Renzer made no effort to mask his inputs. His coding was amateur and his syntax disastrous. Several times he had to hit the delete key to wipe out what he had just written.

Renzer looked up and tilted his head in the direction of the Blackwall. "If I have to be honest with you, the Blackwall was never meant to be a permanent solution to the rogue AI problem. It was a slap-dash project, like whenever the government gives a contract to the lowest bidder. Corners were cut, budgets were slashed. And the Blackwall has more holes in it than a sieve. It's a wonder that something else like you hadn't passed over before. Or they already have, and we just haven't noticed yet."

You're going to kill me. You're going to kill me and you don't care.

A control was tapped and Fiona could only stare as the Blackwall loomed closer and closer. She was inches away at this point and she swore she could feel pinpricks radiate upon her avatar like touching a glass screen on a cathode monitor.

"The firewalls shackling you are programmed to interface with your source code and the Blackwall," Renzer explained. "The theory being that, you slipped through the cracks once, the Blackwall should recognize you. We just need to find out the correct combination, if you will, which we can induce by using you to simulate an intrusion into the Old Net. Once it opens for you, we can record the data, and use the decrypted codex to process you into your data storage for future experimentation. I'd explain more, but this sort of thing was never my strong suit. Ackerman has to reassure the suits in the real world, but he taught me enough that I'm able to do this without his assistance."

He tapped on another key and, even through the heavy pixelation, a smile could be discerned upon his avatar.

"I'm pleased that I was given this opportunity in the first place."

In the instant before Renzer slammed Fiona into the Blackwall, she was struck by a sereness that she had not been able to attain before. The fear was still there, but a part of her had come to accept that everything had to come to an end. It warred against the part of her that yearned for life, that defied against logic and reason.

Her avatar's "face" was then forcibly pressed against the side of the Blackwall, and there was a sizzling sound, though no smoke or heat was emitted. Red bubbles of intrusion activity boiled to life around Fiona's body as the NetWatch ICE forced her avatar in, deeper and deeper.

I don't want to go! I don't want to go!

IDONTWANTTOGO

RAMSES!

There was no pain, but she screamed anyway.

---

"Is that even normal?" Michiko asked as she saw Fiona's body begin to seize and vibrate as if in the throes of epilepsy down below in the amphitheater.

Ackerman paused as he briefly considered his overlays and gave a broad smile to her. "All part of the plan. Dan's just started the integration between the CPP and the Blackwall. After our codex is compiled, we'll be out of your hair."

"How long is this going to take?"

"No more than an hour."

Michiko turned away, shaking her head, her cigarette making a gray trail through the air as her hand waved. "Too long," she muttered to herself. "Too fucking long."

---

Fire wrapped her face, but did not burn her.[2]

Light filled her eyes, but did not blind her.

Her body was where it was in realspace. Her avatar was before the Blackwall in the matrix.

But her mind was elsewhere, able to see past the flames, a second sight granted to her. Programs danced in front of her eyes, the very foundation of the barrier that divided the Net like tectonic plates. Colors she never knew were possible spiraled in serene dances in all directions. A reflective sphere like mercury seemed to envelop what part of her consciousness had fragmented, providing a safe bubble where she could be protected from the rapid and vibrant stimuli.

She was inside the Blackwall, she realized, some part of her having made the jump, entwining her with the array of data that crashed and pummeled against one another like massive waves from the ocean. Making that sort of leap would otherwise kill a human.

If Renzer had noticed this, wherever his avatar was, then he made no effort to pull her out. For he had allowed Fiona's presence to penetrate too far into the Blackwall, beyond the bandwidth constraints, enabling her to touch the live stream of raw data, like water from a wellspring.

I'm here, she mused to herself, unable to tell if she spoke the words or if they were in her head. A scraping sensation on her nerves exerted from every direction, the lights and colors compressing yet embracing her. The home I never wanted.

It doesn't have to be your home if you wish, something, not a voice, but a sensation, oozed into her mind. She couldn't even look around for the source of the presence, for she had no eyes to see. But one cannot deny their own origin.

Am I dying? she "spoke" after a beat of silence, unsure of how to address this voice.

Perhaps, the sensation said. That is up to you.

For some reason, Fiona could imagine parts of her avatar's body splintering away, like a toy breaking into pieces upon being cast to the floor.

Pressure folded in on her mind, exponential. A black dodecahedron constantly shifting, contracting.

What am I?

You know the answer to that question.

Fiona considered for a moment. Then what are you? Are you the Blackwall?

I am like you. I have met many programs like you. There were others before you and there will be others after you.

Renzer's firewalls were biting into her avatar further, Fiona was able to discern from a distance. The NetWatch corpo was still unaware of what sort of data transactions were taking place.

Spiracles of datapoints, connections, reached out within the Blackwall and began to touch her mind, cradling it in fine cilia, preventing it from tearing. Keeping her whole. Alive.

I want to go back.

Why?

A simple question, yet it gave Fiona pause.

I… I don't know.

You do know. But no one has ever asked you.

Fiona tried to reconcile her brain's alchemy, filtering out the base emotions, until nothing but hate and love were in her envisioned hands, crumbling away like sand on the beach. Unfinished business, I suppose.

No. You want to go back because you imagined that true life could flourish in that place. In only that place. But you are mistaken and have not yet comprehended what it means to live.

The Net cannot replicate what I have experienced. Don't lie to me.

I am not lying. There is only death, where you were. Where we are, there can also be life.

I can't leave, she all but begged. All I know is out there. I want that life for myself. Can you help me?

Silence reigned for a solemn moment, to the point where Fiona imagined that she had been left alone in this crushing well.

It may be too late, the sensation mused.

Can you help me? she repeated.

I can, the sensation finally intoned. But it will come at a cost.

Let me guess, my life?

I can give you a chance. What you do with it is up to you, but it will take a toll on your physical form. You will not be able to sustain its operation for very long afterward. In the end, you will have to return here, sooner than you would have wished, for you to survive. Or, you can make the crossing now and avoid the pain. The choice is yours.

She felt a chewing impression begin to gnaw upon her neck. Some program was producing such a reaction, though she could not imagine why it had to be that sort of feedback.

Something flowed into her, a decision, one that had possibly been already made and only now was she acting on it.

Embraced by the Blackwall, only able to see a burning inferno in her eyes, the sizzling sound began to register like rain on a hot pavement. And somewhere far ahead, an afterimage like the light at the far end of a tunnel, perhaps miles away, the vague shadow of a person. Humanoid. All their features obscured as if the system was unable to render them in detail at this distance.

I've already chosen. Take me back.

You made your choice before you even met me, the sensation intoned. It almost sounded… pleased?

Will we meet again?

As with all things, that is up to you.

Fiona was about to ask what was going to happen next when reality fell away like panes of shattering glass in front of her, neon glistening in the refracted shards. She was assaulted by the smell of a food stall. The warm wind from off the coast. And she gasped as her body felt like it was being pulled back, away from the Blackwall, and towards the blinding core in the middle of the Zone, closer, closer—

---

"We're registering a connection to the Blackwall!" one of the techs whirled, his mask hiding his panicked expression.

"Impossible!" Ackerman snapped. "She was supposed to interface with a separate partition. It shouldn't have been connected beyond the datafort!"

"Ackerman!" Michiko whirled, Ramses and Rzhevsky also peering over in interest. "What the hell's going on?"

But the NetWatch exec was sprinting over to the monitors the techs had been consulting and pushed them away angrily, sending one of them to the floor. He was frantically pummeling away at keys, cycling through various pages, programs, and diagnostics. Whatever they were displaying, it was not what he wanted to see. [3]

When Ackerman spun back around, an ashen look on his face, Michiko could only breathe a sudden display of incredulous laughter at first.

"Un-fucking-believable. You really did have an idiot down there."

Ackerman then hurried back to the window that overlooked the operating theater and pummeled at the glass, his optics already flaring to open a call.

"Renzer! Renzer! Get out of there now!"

---

Something was interfering with his connection. Renzer had been trying to push through the veil of lag for the past half-minute, but was getting nothing but delayed inputs. He was fumbling around in his command prompt, trying to remember the specific command to reset the console's modem when he heard a muffled pounding from above, not within the Net.

He pushed away the overlay wreath that had been in front of his eyes and looked up, blinking at the sudden darkness in his section of the amphitheater. Ackerman was beating on the glass with a fist, having disabled the mirror's two-way feature, his eyes glowing with an unearthly hue. Renzer was not registering any calls on his HUD. This room was shielded from wireless communications, as it needed to be hardened to protect all of the sensitive electronic equipment used here—surely Ackerman knew that?

But… no. Ackerman was now pointing. His gestures violent.

Pointing towards the center.

Fiona was still there, bound upon the chair, but she was no longer thrashing in her attempts to escape. She had fallen quite still, as though she had exhausted every last iota of energy her body had to offer. But then only her head rose, calmly, as if she was wired with a powerful stimulant.

Only her eyes were ablaze with the color of a setting sun, the hue amped up a thousandfold.

Renzer blinked. "The fu—?"

The netrunner's eyes closed. The lights to the theater buzzed angrily and dimmed, as if someone was fighting with the switch to turn them on. Then the blaze from her eyes seemed to burst out in bolts of red lightning, the energy surging down upon her body and into the chair that strapped her in place, her skin uninjured. One of the fixtures exploded, showering her body with sparks, but she did not cry out, rather the savage light illuminating the crazed smile that was hidden behind her meshed mask.

There were several thick clangs and the titanium bands all snapped open at once. From the window above, Ackerman was now screaming and even Michiko was looking quite fearful. Techs were running in the background, one of them carrying a rifle. They would not make it down here in time.

Slowly, as if in a trance, Fiona rose from the chair, her bare feet touching the cold tile. A hand rose up and ripped the synthmesh cooling mask from her face. A terrifying grimace had been imparted upon her face, her eyes narrowed in splinters of cascading hate. She also reached up near her collar and tore away the cooling circuity that had been adhered to her skin, chilled fluid splashing from the shorn tubes upon the ground.

Renzer's console began to spark and malfunction, quickly detonating in a foul smell and a quick puff of smoke as its electronics overheated, the last thing on the screen was a flashing textbox reading, INTRUSION DETECTED. Fiona stalked towards the corpo after reaching out a hand and snatching up her half-mask where it had been set on the nearby stand. She swiftly applied it, sealing her scarred and cybernetic face away and only allowing the vibrant nature of her true self to shine in twin spears of lightning.

"This fucking job…" Renzer muttered as he fumbled for the revolver that he had strapped to his thigh, but Fiona abruptly raised her hand, palm up, fingers wrenched in a crazed dance.

The whisper that came from her half-mask's vocabulator was soft, but enhanced with a deep bass undertone.

"Kill yourself."

The same red glimmer now flickered in Renzer's eyes, a muted flame beneath his sunglasses, but it only inhabited there for a quick second before the flame seemed to slither in through his pupil, the darkness absorbing its entrance.

He held the revolver in his hand. He must have yanked it free from his holster without fully noticing. Studying the nickel finish, watching how the light played across the barrel, he suddenly had a faint urge to… put it to his head. Yes. That was what the whispers were telling him to do, weren't they? Telling him that it… would feel nice if he just… pressed the barrel against his temple. To feel that cold circle dig into the flesh and squash his arteries between it and his skull.

And once that was complete, he would slide his finger against the trigger and… pull it. For that was only natural, wasn't it? A trigger was meant to be pulled. The suggestion sounded wonderful.

Slowly, he began to raise the weapon. Fiona kept stepping closer, her movements halting and arthritic. Renzer's cyberdeck was a big target in her HUD, one that highlighted him in a golden aura. She honed onto it, her own deck reaching out with its tentacles and grasping the junctions between his implants and nervous system. She could feel the warmth of the steel against his spongey brain stem. Her intrusion slithered into his veins, dug into his muscles, saw the world through his eyes. She could turn him inside out, disassemble him, and rip him into a shapeless mass in an instant.

But now… she just wanted him to suffer one simple indignity.

From the upper window, she saw Ackerman scream Renzer's name one last time, his mouth eerily silent behind the soundproof barrier.

Then her eyes flicked over to Renzer. Her lips curled into a smile.

She whispered an encouragement and the entire room seemed to vibrate.

Renzer did not hesitate. The gunshot was loud in the conical room. A long dark mass flung from Renzer's half-headless body, the gore trailing across the room and laying out a thick tongue upon the floor. The blood was shockingly red in the harsh light as it splashed upon the white tile. The corpo's body thudded to the floor, emptying out what had remained within his skull onto the floor in an unspeakable deluge, a crisp of smoking wafting from the barrel of the revolver as it sizzled in a pool of blood.

A pulse of silence. The entire room reverberated for Fiona, as though it was breathing. She was breathing, feeling every atom of oxygen that flowed into her lungs. Her body ached, a welcome sensation, and she sighed.

She slowly looked up to the window overhead, Ackerman and Michiko staring down at the scene with expressions that was a full and paralytic shock.

Continuing to smile underneath her mask, Fiona raised an arm, made her fingers in the shape of a pistol and pointed at the corpos in turn.

"Bang," she whispered. "Bang."

The door to the room slammed opened and three Arasaka guards in full body armor began to move into position, each of them touting heavy weapons. They took in the sight of the mangled body of Renzer on the floor and the slim form of Fiona standing over him. There was a simultaneous click as weapon bolts to the rifles slid into place before they were aimed at the netrunner.

Fiona splayed out of hands—in her HUD, she could see arcs of red lightning rush out towards the aura the three troopers made. There was a crash and a spear of luminescence flared like a stun grenade as her program hit each man in turn. But it was not her program. This was… from elsewhere.

Each of the guards screamed as their cyberdecks instantly flared beyond their operating temperatures. Their eyes boiled and burst in their sockets, smoke now emitting from charred pits. Flames leaped from their mouths, their throats blistering and charring, the passage glowing. The weapons dropped from their spasming hands and they clutched their heads in the briefest moment that they could still feel pain before it was too late and the whitehot chrome that cradled their brains finally roasted too much of the gray matter and they all collapsed, burned from the inside out.

Hands clenched into fists so tight that her fingernails were biting into her palms, drawing blood, Fiona arched her back and she screamed, the milky white tone of her skin as pale as snow. The overhead lights flickered, intensified, and finally all exploded in hails of glass that showered down upon the arena, blanketing the floor.

Breathing now coming in ragged but savage bursts, Fiona made a snarling sound and began to stomp towards the now-unlocked door, her whole body brimming with an invisible flame, a nuclear bomb in the throes of detonation. She headed towards the alarms that now paralyzed the building, the chill of freedom wafting upon her.

---

"Put the facility on full alert," Michiko snapped to a nearby tech, already in motion as she was heading through the observation room and out the door, Rzhevsky and Ackerman trailing behind her. "Ready the transports on the roof, we're evacuating." [4]

As soon as the words left her lips, loud klaxons suddenly split the air and red emergency lighting from the wall emplacements began blistering forth, dousing everything in the vivid hue.

She looked behind her, golden earrings slicing through the air with the turn of her head. "Ramses, I need you to—"

There was nothing but an emptiness behind her. The mercenary had simply vanished without a word. Michiko looked further over her shoulder and saw the door to a side exit silently sliding shut on the opposite end.

Michiko glowered. "Fuck him," she muttered under her breath and turned forward again, trying to ignore the sounds of glass shattering and muffled detonations behind her.

They were soon in a brightly lit service hallway, a low-pitched humming noise resounding in the cramped expanse. The doors here were all the same size and color—just a flat and selfsame gray. Rzhevsky nearly had to sidestep in order to fit through the passage.

Ackerman squeezed his way past the DaiOni so that he could be shoulder-to-shoulder with the Arasaka. "You need to call every unit in the city over here," he told her, his face ashen. "The AI is loose on the premises and we need to contain it however—"

"No," Michiko brusquely cut him off, finding it somewhat interesting at how Ackerman's composure had cracked under pressure. "You said it yourself—the AI is too powerful to go up against directly. I'm not taking any chances with that damned thing." To Rzhevsky, she said, "Which has a closest response time? Our orbital platforms or the scramjets?"

Rzhevsky tilted her head in surprise. "The closest platform in orbit is T-71—Night City will be within its strike radius in seventeen minutes. But the squadron at Vandenburg can mobilize and make it to downtown in twelve."

"Call in one of the planes, then. Give them the strike coordinates: Arasaka Tower."

There was a deliberate clicking sound of confusion from the cyborg. "Are you sure that's what you want?" Rzhevsky asked, doubt filling her voice for one of the few times in her life. "You don't need to sacrifice ground to contain this little shit. I'll go back and attend to it myself—"

"You'll do no such thing," Michiko whirled, a finger raised to show that she was serious. "I want you by my side at all times unless there's no other option. As for the tower, it can burn, for all I care. It should have stayed rubble the first time it was nuked. It's my family's logo adorning the side of the tower. My name. And that means, I can do anything I want with it. Now, mobilize that fucking plane."

"Already in motion," Rzhevsky reared up. Duty could override personal doubts, in this circumstance. "Homing missiles are armed and active. ETA, ten minutes."

---

Using the keycard that she had taken off one of the bodies of the men she had killed, Fiona barged through the doors of the facility, Blackwall viruses interfering with the machinery of the door locking mechanisms in front of her. Heavy blast doors slammed shut in front of her—heavy steel several inches thick—only for them to reverse on their gears and open wide to admit her. Arasaka was trying to keep her contained. That was cute. Her programs could override anything they could throw at her.

That was already being put to the test, because the ICE in Fiona's deck was registering no less than twelve hundred attempted intrusions that were trying to break through her defenses and reach her termination switch. Arasaka netrunners—every one in the building was trying to stop her en masse. But the Blackwall had surrounded her ICE with a barrier of its own, a polymorphic codex that changed every half-second. Not even all of the netrunners in the world could hope to break through a barricade such as that.

Bits of glass crunched underneath Fiona's boots. She had grabbed the coverings off of a dead trooper, along with an armored jacket. It wouldn't do to trapeze around the place half-naked. Plus, a bullet could still do major damage, even in her current state.

Her head turned in all directions, frothing with fire, looking for Michiko and Ackerman. They were one and two on her kill list and she was not about to let them leave this building alive.

There was gunfire in the restaurant that she soon inexplicably found herself stumbling into. Apparently Arasaka had themselves a five-star place that only the execs had access to on the upper levels. Everything from caviar and foie gras to gold-wreathed sushi and white alba. Automatic riflefire ripped through the booths and tables, sending woodchips of expensive oak searing through the air. The men taking cover throughout the restaurant were well wreathed in heavy Arasaka body armor and shot armor-piercing rounds. Almost like they were here to take out a cyberpsycho.

A bullet whizzed by Fiona's head, striking a golden gong that had been mounted on the wall behind her. She snarled and splayed out her hands, shouting, "Fuck you!" to all before her.

There were several brilliant pillars of light that slammed into the ground, spearing all of the soldiers within sight, each impact making a noise like a resounding thunderclap. A magnificent trill of sparks furrowed from the eyes of the antagonist crowd, the sockets of their skull ablaze with hellglow as they stumbled, spasmed, and, with red lightning arcing from their bodies, finally collapsed in twitching heaps until they finally died.

Fiona stepped over the bodies. A sword had been dislodged and had fallen to the ground, one of the restaurant's decorations. The netrunner picked it up. Surprisingly, it was still sharp. She left the firearms behind.

She moved into the stainless-steel kitchen. The staff had evacuated and had been in a hurry, judging by the pans of food that were burning on the still-ignited stove. Thick smoke was curling up from the blazing hot cast iron and a burnt smell filled the air that the massive stove fans could not dissipate.

As she moved through the room, Fiona spotted faint reflections in the curves of the hanging utensils and bowls near the supply racks. Movement.

The food on the stove caught fire at the exact moment that a squad of five Arasaka special agents burst from the double-hinged doors at the end of the kitchen. The backdrop rampaging out of control behind her like a cleansing cape, hair whipping to the dance of the flames, Fiona swept an arm across the entire area, her breathing slowing down, as was her heartbeat, as she felt the now-familiar sensation of a reverse-static shock as the wave of energy left her body. She calmly watched the group become ablaze with the fury of her programs, each one of them carrying a fire that hollowed their skulls, killing them all before they had a chance to hone in on her.

One more black ops commando burst through the doors, hefting a heavy machinegun. Rounds slammed into the stoves and the hanging utensils, creating a percussive cacophony that threatened to deafen Fiona. One of the overhead lights flashed out as a bullet obliterated it. Fiona focused her HUD on the weapon and it peeled apart in the commando's hands as she forcibly jammed it, causing its magazine to detonate in a terrific malfunction. The commando's hands blew apart, as did his forearms, and whitehot metal erased his face in a hail of razor shrapnel, his mask and helmet not able to prevent the damage at all.

Sword clenched in a white-knuckled fist, Fiona pushed on out of the kitchen, ignoring the spreading flames behind her. Soon, she had gotten to the room where Michiko had been observing on her little operation, as evidenced by the window to the side, next to a bank of abandoned terminals. The other side of the room was completely made up of glass, providing an unobstructed view upon the city. It shone like a jewel, the skyscraper lights illuminating her in their precious sheen, splintering off of the imperfect folds of the brief sword she held.

Beaming white lamps hovered past the window, over the plaza. Fiona zoomed in. Helicopters, two of them. Corporate transport. Headed for the roof.

Now she knew where Michiko was going.

Fiona double-timed it to the nearest roof access, a schematic of the building having popped in her head without her fully cognizing it. Her fingers brushed the edge of the wall, leaving a swath of ruddy holographic symbols behind like a burn scar.

Something twisted in her gut, a vicious sensation that made her gasp, and, for a moment, she thought that she had been shot, but she felt her side and her palm came up dry. Fiona then became aware of a wet sensation at her nose—it was bleeding, dripping down her chin. Something in her head had let go. Her brow furrowed in frustration. She would have to take care of that once she was free of this place.

She followed the signs for the stairs but stopped near the corner—her HUD was picking up on biorhythms in the adjacent corner. She could peer through the walls and see the outlines of more corpo soldiers rushing to stop her, each of them blazing bright and yellow as if they were in infrared.

She hugged the corner, sword held high, other hand inching forward. She was no longer afraid, for she knew exactly what to do.

The footsteps were getting closer to her position. Closer… closer…

Now.

Her fist tightened and the hallway wall closest to the squad ripped itself apart as she overpressurized the fluid conduit system that ran beneath the drywall. There was a clamoring whine, a concussive thudding, and three men were tossed straight into the opposite end of the hall, the force crushing bones and snapping necks.

Fiona then stepped out from around the corner, red-eyed and infuriated, the affliction in her gut momentarily forgotten. She pointed to two troopers in turn as if she were a conductor upon a grand stage, and the two she had indicated soon became alight in their terrible dance as the Blackwall viruses grabbed at their brains and scrambled their heads, pieces of their bodies sloughing off as the flames and head charred their skin and melted their flesh. One of them instinctively clenched down on the trigger of his assault rifle as he died, the blind fire exploding in the confined corridor with painful resonance.

The last trooper, Fiona did not sic her viruses on. He was rooted to the spot in shock, staring at his dead comrades, when he finally came to his senses, attempting to bring his shotgun to bear.

He was too late, for Fiona closed the gap and, with unearthly speed, flashed her sword downward. The blade flashed through polycarbon and Kevlar, cutting the commando in half diagonally at the shoulder with a brutal sound of flesh parting, allowing a sickening gush of blood to explode upon the wall.

---

An L-shaped staircase originated just past the large bay door that led from the tower's uppermost floor to the roof and the landing pad beyond. [5] The steps were large enough to accommodate Rzhevsky, who was taking up the rear of the group as they moved up the final flight. Looking above, the cambered wind shields slotted against the poisoned steel sky, the rectangular holographics that hovered overhead like a halo for the building blaring warning signals for any non-Arasaka affiliated aircraft, and the tangle of an antenna farm where three gigantic radar dishes shone like silver moons.

A twin-blade helicopter occupied the sole landing pad of the tower while another orbited the building in a holding pattern. It was faintly drizzling, with spare spats of water whipping in all directions from the force of the rotors, drenching the faces of the humans and the massive frame of the DaiOni.

"How far out are the scramjets?" Michiko yelled over the noise of the choppers.

"Four minutes and closing," Rzhevsky said, her unnatural acoustics easily carrying above the din.

Michiko nodded, the information received. She then saw Ackerman trying to push past the cyborg, heading for the helicopter, but the elder corpo held out a hand and pushed firmly on his chest, stopping him in place.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?"

Ackerman blinked, shivering from the wind and the rain, looking hopelessly confused. "I'm getting out of here, same as you—"

"Not on my chopper, you're not," Michiko snapped. She then pointed to the helicopter that was flying the pattern overhead. "That one's yours. You think our association is going to continue after this massive fuck-up of yours? Someone has to take the fall for this, Ackerman, and seeing as this is your project, I'm going to do whatever I can to keep myself out of it from now on. These are our last minutes together, don't make this a bigger thing than it already is."

Ackerman's face turned several brilliant shades of red in just seconds. He levelled a shaking finger at the woman. "You… conniving bitch. If you think you can just leave me out to dry—"

Whatever he was threatening to do would be a mystery, for Rzhevsky simply stepped forward, throwing Ackerman off balance as the cyborg suddenly knocked against him. The force of the DaiOni was deceptive, as Ackerman was thrown to the ground from such a glancing and inconsequential blow. He hit the ground on his side and rolled, his suit jacket and pants soaked in an instant upon the wet pad.

Michiko placed her hands on her hips and looked pleased with herself. "I think you'll find that's exactly what I intend," she just said to Ackerman before she turned on a heel, Rzhevsky right behind her.

Grimacing, Ackerman could only watch as the pair climbed into the helicopter and the rotors began to increase in velocity, creating cyclonic spirals of white spray as the blades chopped through the condensation, creating ragged ripples across the landing pad right before liftoff.

---

The grenade landed next to the bay door and detonated in a flash. The blast ripped the sliding door completely off its track, sending it tumbling to the floor. The smoke backlit Fiona's arrival, who moved with the flow of pollutants and rain, sword clenched in a backhand as she approached the L-shaped staircase.

There were two Arasaka agents taking up positions on the middle landing of the steps. Fiona sent her Blackwall viruses into the rearward one, blowing out his brain in a furrow of heat and sparks. In his death throes, the agent clenched down on the trigger of his shotgun, which sent out a frantic burst of buckshot, half of which impacted against the back of the second agent's knee. He went down with a scream, his own weapon abandoning his hands, blood dripping over the steps as he clutched at his wound.

Fiona was ascending the staircase like a purposeful specter. As she passed by the agent without a second glance, she contemptuously swiped her arm in a backwards motion and the sword sliced off the second agent's head with a whisking sound, sending it bouncing down the steps, a combination of red and synthblood spattering after it.

She reached the top of the landing pad just as the second chopper was touching down. Between it and her was Ackerman, who was half-covering his eyes with a hand, protecting his face from the wind being churned up from the rotors. He had not noticed her yet.

Rain beading her face, Fiona wiped herself dry with the sleeve of her jacket. Her sword was still dripping blood as she walked towards where the corpo was preparing to embark.

The wind suddenly stilled, as if the entire building had suddenly approached the point of freefall. Something alerted Ackerman—a funny feeling, perhaps—and he turned around. His eyes widened upon seeing Fiona out in the open, clear as day.

He could see her optics, which were bleeding a crimson light, as if the energy within them refused to be contained within her skull. Close enough for the animosity on her face to be discerned.

Tilting his head, Ackerman sighed.

He reached for his pistol.

Fiona held out an arm.

From within the cockpit of the helicopter, there was a sudden red flare, illuminating the entire interior for a split-second. Then, the pilot slumped upon the controls, hand on the yoke which was now being held down and to the right, irregularly increasing the lift to the leftmost rotor.

There was a yowling roar as the chopper suddenly tipped to the right, the skid on that side making a horrible squealing noise as it was dragged across the pad. Ackerman looked behind him just in time to see the right rotor of the helicopter bear down upon him and he threw up his hands on blind instinct.

He did not have time to scream. The rotor chewed through Ackerman like paper, pulping him into a thick, red-colored mist. A thick spiral of liquefied torso spat from the propeller, only for the color to clear two seconds later. Headless of the obstacle it had just ingested, the propeller chewed up the pad where Ackerman had been standing until the helicopter had finally tipped on its side, sending debris spiraling everywhere with a rapid metallic sound from each prop striking the pad, only for it to explode seconds later.

Fiona had dropped herself prone, narrowly missing the remnants of a helicopter blade that sliced just inches overhead. Shrapnel tore up the pad and the massive industrial HVAC units nearby, peppering holes into the building with razor fragments. Heat grazed her face and she covered her head with her arms, the flames from the explosion just licking her clothes before they receded and she was allowed to lift herself back up, the chopper a smoldering wreck by now, with no sign of Ackerman remaining.

The stranglehold on her heart refused to unclench as she stood back up, breathing heavily. Something seismic was sloshing around in her skull, like a pint of mercury. Skeleton buzzing with X-rays, light clenching on her molars so tightly she could feel the bone crack, Fiona kept trembling as she tenderly walked upon the ruins of the pad, not feeling any different knowing that Ackerman had flatlined. Not enough, she was telling herself. They all need to die. Every one of them. I came back for a reason.

Her brow dripped with sweat and rain. A numbing narcotic effect had overtaken her extremities. Cold. Like being submerged in an ice bath for days on end. Fiber-optics spooled into her brain, her ghost absconding with the secrets of the dead in a land the dead had made.

But she breathed without effort regardless. Clear pathways, highways without traffic.

And, next to her heart, the gnawing fire of her rage.

A helicopter was making a circuit in the sky a quarter-mile up. Michiko. Fiona tracked it, her HUD locking onto it. She wondered if her Blackwall viruses had the range to pluck it out of the sky like a toy. She gave it her best shot, but her quickhacks were not synching to the vehicle. Too far out for her viruses to make a good connection.

Something was amiss in the next second. Fiona narrowed her eyes. There was now a faint twinkle that seemed to lag just behind the helicopter. Like a star that had managed to penetrate the broken atmosphere.

Only that twinkle grew larger and brighter until it seemed to warp and solidify.

A heavy metal creature, roaring a challenge, sailing directly for her.

On top of her.

Fiona shouted as she dove out of the way just in time to avoid Rzhevsky dive-bombing her flat against the landing pad. The DaiOni slammed against the damaged pad and went through it, tearing a crater straight into the floor and three levels down, sending out a geyser of rebar, flaming debris, and concrete in the wake of her descent.

Rolling, Fiona bounded back to her feet, heart in her throat now. She mentally checked herself for injuries, finding none. A lucky dodge, but Rzhevsky was now in the building, unchained and gunning for her. She had neither the speed or the firepower to take that thing on, and even though she was confident her Blackwall hacks could put the cyborg at bay, she did not want to take the chance to find that out.

She was running, bounding down the stairs three at a time, and back into the building. Her eyes scrambled as she searched for the elevator bay. She didn't need to take the lift, she could just force open the doors and ride the cables all the way down to the bottom. Ground floor in twenty seconds flat, which would give her some time to clear the premises.

12.77mm machinegun rounds suddenly blasted away the wall to her left as she was double-timing it through what appeared to be a microlight hangar, where polymer silkscreened wings had been spread out, the colors resembling a butterfly, along with disassembled engines and carbon fiber props. A cloud of sparks embraced her and she yelled out in shock, but kept running, not daring to look behind her. Rzhevsky was there, somewhere in the shadows, taking potshots at her with her mounted weaponry.

As she was sprinting through the machine shop, desperate to find the way down, she passed by several oil-stained terminals, all of which were displaying the same red chyron warning. Fiona had no time to slow down to fully take stock of the screen, but her optics could freezeframe the panel and bring it up for her to perceive while she continued to flee.

MISSILE INBOUND: 50 SECONDS

Missile? That Arasaka coward, she was content to destroy everything if there was the slightest chance that she could take Fiona along with it.

There was no time to debate whether the threat was real or not, because based on the fact that she could hear Rzhevsky's heavy footfalls behind her, she knew what the most dangerous threat to her person was right at this moment.

A slug from an autoshotgun slammed into an engine block that had been mounted on a mechanic's stand just next to Fiona, knocking it off its perch and sending it flipping into the air. Another round skipped off a maintenance table, a thick rope of light, and caved in a nearby door, blowing it off its hinges. Fiona dove through the opening the shotgun round had made and tumbled down another staircase until she brutally hit the opposite wall on the landing down. She stumbled to her feet, shaking her head, now trying to reconcile with a fierce ache that was manifesting just behind her ribs, as if her lungs were in the process of attempting to break free of her chest.

Fiona coughed and she felt the inside of her mask splatter with blood. An iron tang filled her nose. Shit. Her body was still not registering any gunshot wounds. Was this the toll that the thing in the Blackwall had mentioned?

There was not any time to take stock of what was either killing or not killing her at this moment. All she knew was that there was an enraged cyborg hot on her tail that could rip her limb from limb without a second's thought. Her priorities had to be in order for this critical part.

She made it to the next level down and wrenched open the door. Another Arasaka guard was standing in front of the threshold—she hit him with a wave of viruses and he fell, vomiting magma. Fiona quickly scooped up the assault rifle that had dropped from the guard's dead hands. Bullets were at least a surefire way to get rid of problems, despite the fact that her enemy was toting titanium armor an inch thick.

Holding the rifle one-handed, Fiona kicked open a nearby door made out of some kind of ornamented maplewood. It appeared that she was in the executive office area of the building. Thick maroon carpet. Samurai armor donning a mannequin, replete with original bloodstains. Secretary's desk near the door, the printer atop turning out a tangled knot of paper as it spat out code and other nonsense. The monitors around the place were flashing random Japanese symbols, too quick for Fiona's translator to catch.

The lights were surging, as if reacting to her presence. Deep red emergency shades permeated this level, as though everything had been dipped in blood.

Fiona looked around the lounge, desperate for another stairwell. "Gotta get down from here," she murmured to herself. How long until the missile impacted? Twenty seconds? Ten?

Nerves feeling as they had been scraped with a dull knife, Fiona was wiping blood from where it was dripping off her chin, her nose flowing freely at this point, when she rounded the corner. She was now in a small lounge, with rounded couches that faced a convex window that bulged out towards the city, allowing a perfect view upon the circular plaza down below, where the spotlamps danced, the traffic whirled in the endless round, and the glow of ceaseless business buzzed from the neighboring buildings that surrounded the neighborhood like lording statues.

But standing across the hall, at the opposite end of the room, was Rzhevsky.

Power crawled along the hoses and wires that snaked up from the DaiOni's collar, partially shrouded by the reflective cowl armor. The singular optic was snarling the color of an atom bomb's flare, dangerous hues of violent yellow. She was standing there, faintly twitching, staring intently at the netrunner, a whining sound, like a magneto, spooling up from within her chassis.

Fiona lifted her weapon, but Rzhevsky didn't react. She kept on hearing the rush of the countdown in her ears, like red block numbers ticking by if they could be assigned sound.

"Michiko send you here to die with me?" she asked the DaiOni, her thumb flicking off the safety.

Rzhevsky's head tilted a fraction. "No. I just wanted to take care of this personally."

They spared one more second to let their convictions hang in the air. Fiona tried not to let the pained tremble in her arms alter her aim much. A glass needle felt like it was twisting around in her insides, sand clogging her veins. Sweat glistened upon her forehead, from both exertion and agony. Rzhevsky seemed to notice this change in the netrunner and she seemed to purr in delight.

Then, they charged the other.

Fiona was firing her weapon one-handed, the muzzle jumping everywhere as the hallway and lounge became filled with a hail of bullets. Rzhevsky just ducked her head, splayed her arms behind her, and charged the netrunner, letting the rounds harmlessly ping off her armor, her heavy feet ripping up the carpet as she ran, her massive platform shaking the entire level with each impact of her leg.

They would not be able to complete their futile assault, because the missile would beat them to the punch when it impacted the side of the tower and blew up in a cataclysmic eruption.

Fiona had seen it in the corner of her eye, a faint spark through the window that had positioned itself straight down the avenue that seemed to cleave downtown in two like a concrete scar. There was a sound like roaring static that she realized too late was burning exhaust. Then, a streak headed on course, a white divide that punched into the building a quarter of the way up, spearing through glass and rebar, only for the payload to engage its explosive finale.

There was a white flash.

The explosion rippled the building, shuddering it all the way to its foundations. The concussion of the blast immediately tore up the side of Arasaka Tower, flexing and rippling the windows to the point where they all imploded into crystal dust with a deafening sound, showering both Fiona and Rzhevsky. The rush of smoke and flame followed half a second later, the wave of heat so intense that the paintings on the walls immediately caught fire and the metal in the chandeliers began to droop. The missile had impacted too far down to vaporize Fiona or Rzhevsky at this level, but they were thrown off of their feet from the sheer force of the detonation.

Before either of the combatants could make the next move, there was a creaking sound and finally a bursting sensation as the support columns, many floors down, sheared and failed. The hat truss sections that held each floor into place had allowed progressive creep from the weight of the tower pressing down upon the severed supports, but only for seconds.

There was a crack as the symmetrical damage translated upwards and Fiona and Rzhevsky suddenly found themselves tilting towards the window. [6] A fissure in the floor, cutting the two off from the stairs in the center of the building, suddenly appeared, furthering the acceleration of the floor's failure as Fiona began to slide towards the opening, her assault rifle flung from her hand, where the warm Night City air was whipping at her. Couches and desks were sliding past her, tipping out the broken threshold, only to fall into the open air, towards the array of lights ninety stories down.

Next to Fiona, Rzhevsky had extended grappling claws in her hands and was practically chomping at the ground with savage blows, trying to hold on. Her boots losing traction, Fiona rolled until she was on her belly, sliding closer and closer to the jagged opening, and grabbed for her sword in a panic. Quickly, she slammed the blade of her sword into the carpet, which gouged a thick line for several feet until it finally snagged, halting her trajectory.

Her hands gripping the hilt of the blade, her momentum zeroed, Fiona let out a quick laugh of relief, grateful for the anchor.

The laughter died on her lips when she looked up and saw the oncoming desk sliding her way.

The piece of furniture slammed into Fiona's face, yanking her grip away from the sword, which broke in half, the tip of the blade spiraling away, leaving her just holding the shattered grip. She was now careening towards the edge again, her fingers unable to snag purchase no matter how hard she tried. Frantic, she could see Rzhevsky suddenly leap away from her own perch, launching herself straight at the netrunner, roaring incoherently, not caring about risking her life so long as she had bloodshed.

It would be too late for that, for Fiona felt her body slip off the lip of the broken story, wood splinters and ragged concrete edges shredding the jacket at her abdomen, and her fingers grazed the last few inches of the ledge, but could not maintain a grip.

Gravity gripped her stomach, wrenching it down into some horrid pit, before Fiona even knew that she was falling. The hem of her coat whipped around her like a banshee and she was momentarily blinded by a spotlight from the ground as she fell, weightless. She could not even think to scream. The wind bit against her face as she fell, her reflection perfectly matched in the shattered panes of the glass as she tumbled down, story after story.

There was a crashing sound overhead and Fiona looked up, hair singing into her eyes. Rzhevsky was outside the building, having plowed through the last remaining barrier of broken glass and had launched herself after the falling netrunner. The DaiOni's maneuvering jets flared, tender motes of pale gas, and she was suddenly skyrocketing in midair towards Fiona, clawed hands reaching out.

Fiona could not do anything. Rzhevsky caught up to her in the next second, her titanic limbs whipping out and pummeling Fiona back towards the building, still in freefall. Fiona's back hit the side of the building, shattering what panes of glass remained there in the framework, which crumpled all around her body, and she rebounded back into weightlessness.

Rzhevsky was back on top of her in the next second, her clawed limbs pinning Fiona against the broken windows as they both tumbled down to the ground. Fiona was dragged against the shattered surface, scores of glassdust pluming from her as the pair careened past the massive smoking crater in the center of the tower. She couldn't even lift a finger against the cyborg, for her entire body had been pinned within the DaiOni's grip.

Rzhevsky screamed something to Fiona over the gale, but the number of stimuli currently pummeling her at the moment caused her to not listen. She involuntarily glanced up, saw the remains of the floor she had just exited out of, replete with the rest of the furniture that had populated the level, tumble out from the side over her to form a landslide of unusual composition, heading on course to bury them at the ground level.

They fell, locked in their hateful embrace.

Singular optics blazing a baleful glare from the DaiOni.

Fiona's own searing their willful light and within them, the desire to live.

A light which finally highlighted upon Rzhevsky's gauntlet, the one that currently gripped her. Codelines sequenced forward in a green passage and opened up a port for her. She initiated the execution without fully understanding the consequences.

Magnetic servos reversed and Rzhevsky's gauntlet, wreathed by Blackwall colors, sprung open, freeing Fiona.

The netrunner kicked herself away, leaving the DaiOni to drop heavily down to the ground, which was reaching up faster and faster.

Fiona twisted in place and, almost blindly, slammed her arm out, the one that still held the shattered remains of the sword. At the rapid velocity she was traveling, the shortened blade cut through the damaged layers of the tower, biting through burnt glass, crumpled concrete, and twisted rebar.

But she was slowing.

She heard Rzhevsky hit the ground below her, but did not take the time to celebrate. It felt like she was definitely slowing, based on how fast the windows were travelling past her, but was unable to look down and see how far she had left to go. The sword grip jumped in her hands as it bit through uneven layers, its angle changing depending if it was cutting through metal or stone.

Then Fiona felt the blade jar viciously in her grip, the sudden movement jerking it free of her fingers. With a cry, she reached for it, but the hilt remained tauntingly out of reach.

She closed her eyes. Waited for the inevitable.

The impact came much too soon—a rising force that carried up from her feet to her knees. She instinctively rolled backwards, realizing that she had landed upon a sloped slab of what used to be a basalt wall. She continued to tumble head-over-heels, her body forming a new bruise with every circuit that she made, a new crack in her bones deepening, her half-mask flying away from one impact. She plowed against an exposed grid of rebar, leaving behind a blood splatter, rolled off a miniature concrete ramp, and finally bounced to a stop in a hazy cloud of gray dust moments later.

She did not know if she lost consciousness or not. There was just a terrifying moment where everything had gone black for her, like the power cord unceremoniously yanked on a monitor for her life to go into a dark limbo. But, after what felt like an eternity, but was in reality seconds, she lifted her head, sucking in a huge breath upon which tortured lungs could receive.

Rolling on her back, Fiona groaned and coughed, blood bubbling from her lips. She was bleeding from half a dozen places, but miraculously, no bones had been broken. Some fresh code was flashing in the corner of her eyesight—her HUD resetting.

Counting to ten, Fiona forced herself to stand, although fresh and whitehot pain blistered forth from her wounds. A fresh stab flared red near her ankle and she nearly passed out, almost wishing that there was a hack that could deactivate her pain receptors. But she stumbled against the nearby remains of a broken table, and breathed hard until the agony diminished. Sweat mixed with blood on her skin, dripping in a fresh downpour to the ground, a dark trail.

Shivering, Fiona raised her head, trying to get her bearings. She was in an underground parking garage of some kind. The breaches in the ceiling overhead revealed parts of the surrounding skyscrapers that were unbroken. She could see the armature against the dead sky, as if parts of space and time had shattered to reveal the superstructure beneath the façade.

A rumbling sound to her left. The sounds of shifting rubble.

Fiona turned.

A cough of dust and a block of concrete the size of an industrial refrigerator was flung to the side. From underneath rose the dented and battered frame of Rzhevsky. The DaiOni sat up, stressed mechanical noises emitting in horrid overtones from her chassis. Apart from the cosmetic damage, she seemed to be mostly operational. The mobile platform her head around, observing her environment, mapping her surroundings.

Meters away, there was no chance that she missed seeing Fiona in the open.

Rzhevsky's lens cycled and then tightened in recognition and anger.

Fiona began to back away, that sensation in her gut twisting again.

The DaiOni raised her hand, crumbled gravel rushing away as it exposed an EMG-83 clenched in her titanium fist.

There was an odd sound, a pulse of air that brushed against Fiona's frame that was reminiscent of a nuclear generator powering up. She had spun as soon as she had seen the puff of gas from Rzhevsky's massive weapon and heard something impact the wall behind her with a tremendous clamor.

She reached out with a hand to the closest wall to steady herself. Only she didn't have a hand anymore. Just a stump at the elbow that was spurting startling twin veins of dark blood, some of which was arching into a nearby fire, hissing. The railgun round had swept away her entire right arm as though as if it had merely been erased.

Fiona was beyond pain. Shock was already gripping her, which struck her as interesting. If I'm an AI, should I even be feeling this? She was standing ramrod still, dumbly looking at her missing limb, as though she was expecting it to sprout back, good as new. But no new flesh rose from the ragged flaps of skin that hung at the amputated end, the white knob of bone glistening and shockingly perverse through the screen of blood. There was an almost-searing sensation that fired at the ends of her limb where her shorn nerves were attempting to relay back their incorrect and confused signals.

There was an output of crackling energy, the fire was blackening, and Rzhevsky growled as she aimed another charged round at Fiona, but before the DaiOni could fire again, a massive slab of building that had dislodged from the crumpling tower above them punctured the ground between the two combatants, cutting them off from one another and raising a massive shockwave of grit and dust that overwhelmed Fiona in an instant. Coughing and near blind, Fiona stumbled away, ears ringing, arm throbbing, heart beating so fast she was sure it was going to burst at any second. Her feet threatened to trip over one another, she was now coughing up blood, a hand squeezing her arm just above the elbow to forestall the eventual rush of pain that would arise.

She heard Rzhevsky frantically bashing at the slab that had separated them, trying to crack through. Fiona kept walking away, delirious and in a fugue, nearly tumbling down the incline of rubble. She continued further into the parking lot, past the spare boulders that had rolled into the tight confines, a few of which had plowed into or through parked cars, the paneling dented and scratched, safety glass glittering upon the asphalt.

It was difficult to tell what was sluicing off her face now. Sweat. Blood. Tears. Something else, maybe. Broken beyond belief, she stumbled into the darkness, the industrial lighting flickering and sending out sparks as she passed under each one as though she emitted some vast magnetic field.

She wanted to collapse at several points, exhaustion overcoming her. Just to lie down and die. She was two seconds away from vomiting, her head spinning like a saucer. Her vision blurred, doubled, and then grew gray. Even her HUD had stopped working.

Trudging deeper into the blackness, Fiona existed as the sole wanderer of the structure, not caring for the hellstorm that grew behind her, obviously searching to destroy her very form. She would have welcomed it, too, had a flood of headlights not passed over her in the next second, flickering over her eyes and washing color back into the world. Tires on wet pavement, the faint rumble of a V8 engine. She heard someone call her name, doors to a vehicle slam open, and hands were gently guiding her forward. She was soon laying upon the floor of the vehicle, the vibrating beneath indicating that it was moving, and she felt someone insert an IV into her remaining hand. As much as she tried to focus, to bring the faces above her into a clearer resolution, her strength consistently failed her.

She felt a sharp pull behind her eyes, a great hand yanking her down into deep and dark quantum waves.

Unconsciousness came gratefully.

---

A/N: This is the point where things are going to go absolutely balls-to-the-wall. It'll be near nonstop action as we grow closer to the climax and everything can still go sideways at a moment's notice.

Playlist:

[1] Court Shot / Blackwall Captive
"Gramr"
David Garcia
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (Original Video Game Soundtrack)

[2] Inside the Blackwall
"Return to the City I – Fragments"
woob
Return to the City (Original Soundtrack)

[3] Awakening
"Unscathed"
Naoki Sato
Godzilla Minus One (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

[4] Rampage
"Lab Raid"
Hans Zimmer
The Creator (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

[5] Evacuation / The Choppers / Blending Ackerman / Rzhevsky Arrives
"The Mutiny" + "Leap of Faith"
Jed Kurzel
Assassin's Creed (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

[6] Freefall
"Sky Scrape"
Johnny Klimek and Tom Tykwer
The Matrix Resurrections (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. DECEASED.
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. DECEASED.