So the muse struck. With so many good cyberpunk fics out I decided to try my hand at one with a concept not many quite focus on (hint hint, its cars). Now I'm not too much of a car guy myself so recommendations are welcome for modding cars (and obviously tips on making my writing better).

Tap tap

Come on, a little more to the right annnnd…

Click

There we go. Now to find the wires. Jiggling the hook around a bit, I feel around the motors and circuit boards in the door, mapping my way around the-

"Choom! What's taking so long!? We're gonna get caught!" Marvin whispers beside me, sweating as he peeks over the hood of the car.

"Marv, for the last time shut up! It's my first time doing this shit and I can't focus with your gonk-ass questions!" I send a quick kick to his shin to hammer in how annoying he's being.

I ignore his grumbling as I focus on the hook shoved deep into the door frame. Ah crap, where was I? Shifting the metal around a bit, I feel it catch on something, a quick tug letting me know there's some give.

Taking a quick glance around, I see there's no one else except us down in this dump of a parking lot, well us and a few rusty cars. Marv's right, we've been here a while so we should head out before anyone, or the guard, decides to take a quick jaunt down so…

With a quick yank, I let the sharpened edge cut through the wires-

"Oof!" I stumble back from the force hitting my torso, straight into Marvin who turns just in time to take my weight head on, squawking in surprise as we tumble to the ground.

Staring at the concrete ceiling, I take a second to catch my breath, bringing a hand around to rub my stinging gut before my cushion decides to unceremoniously turn and toss me to the dusty ground.

"Asshole."

I grin at his groan of pain as I push myself off the ground. Patting some dust off my jacket, I take a look at the open car door.

"Huh, guess I was wrong, was poking around the door's motor," moving around it, I drop myself onto the ripped-up driver's seat and cough a lung out from the dust cloud exploding in response.

Waving a hand around I wheeze as I try to breathe some clean air, well, clean as you can get around here at least.

"C'mon Drake, you can die later once we're outta here so open up!" Marvin in the meantime decided to go around to the other side.

Unlocking the car and holding my breath when he decides not to learn from my mistake, I reach under the steering wheel and feel around the seam of the plastic covering for a gap.

"Aha!" Yanking down reveals the inner wiring of the car.

Digging around I easily find the wireless receiver just like the manual on the net said it would be. Now to cut that one off, grab those other two, strip their covering and one, two, three-

Chi chi chi vroom

"Yeah! I told you Marv I cou-" I shut up when the engine lets out a loud bang and its rumbling quiets down to a whisper.

"Hey! Who in the fuck is down there!"

"Oh shit."

"I told you! I fucking told you!"

My heart picks up speed in my chest as the shout echoes through the parking lot, and I don't waste a second.

"Hang on, Marv!" I yell as the doors click shut and I grab the wheel tightly.

With a deep breath, I stomp on the gas pedal and we launch. I barely hear the tires squeal in pain as a cloud of smoke trails the speeding car while pressed against my seat.

The speed! I've never gone as fast as I am now! Letting out a whoop of joy as we rocket past cars and trash, I don't bother looking at Marvin, knowing from his scream of terror that he's right at home.

We speed through the dimly lit garage, concrete pillars flashing past in a blur and I soon spot the exit ramp ahead, I veer sharply to the left and the tires do their best to keep up but I feel a jolt as we clip a car from the sharp turn, sending sparks into the air.

"Look out!" Marvin shouted, pointing at the ramp ahead.

I curse under my breath as the wide eye security guard freezes in the middle of the ramp, but we don't have time to stop.

The guard barely has time to react as he dives to the side with a yelp, the car just barely avoiding clipping his foot as they whip past him.

"Jesus, Drake!" Marvin yells, his voice a mix of adrenaline and fear, mainly the latter.

Ignoring him, I focus on the road ahead and tense my muscles as I jerk the wheel to the side and burst out of the parking garage and onto the street, catching some air before landing with a thump, the suspension just barely holding as we shake up and down in our seats. Swerving to avoid a car, I spin the wheel around, bringing the car under control just in time to merge with traffic.

Heart still racing, I glance at my pale passenger, "We made it," I can feel the grin on my face as the adrenaline pumps through my veins. "Told you we could do it."

Marvin just shakes his head at me as he takes in a few deep breaths.

"Ne-never again. I'm never driving with you again," he says, slowly releasing the death grip he had on my poor dashboard.

"C'mon choom! It was my first time driving, you can't blame me for trying to test it out!" I say indignantly.

"I c-can and I will. It didn't look like you were driving for the first time back there!"

Well can't say he's wrong about that; I didn't expect myself to be able to do that either even with that one driving BD I played a couple years ago. We sit in silence for a minute as I weave between traffic, getting half a dozen honks in turn but doing nothing no one else isn't, hell there's even a guy just going between cars and scraping tons of paint.

Bang bang

Okaaay, not anymore. Seems someone didn't appreciate the scratches left on their car. I steer clear of the shot-up car slowly veering towards the thick railing surrounding the street.

"Ok ok. We got out. Just, pull over to some parking lot, I need to get out of this thing and off the street, and we need to clean this up a bit before we can go get our payout."

I nod as I spy a SynthSmoke Pit™ to the side and cut across the lanes, forcing cars to swerve out of the way as I take us to the lot towards the back.

Getting out once we're out of the way, I let out a chuckle when Marvin gracefully stumbles out the car, and by gracefully, I mean just falling to the ground. Ignoring the gonk, I go to the back and after jiggling the handle, the trunks opens and step back when bags of trash fall out from it.

Digging in a bit with my foot, I see that it really is just trash and leave it on the ground before huffing a bit and moving in to throw out the rest.

It takes a few minutes to go through the whole car, even with Marvin's help when he decides to get off the ground.

"How the hell did they fit this much trash inside, must be at least half a ton," I hear Marvin murmur as I pass the last box to throw.

Shuffling out the car, I stretch my back with a groan as I look back at the car, looking a bit better with no more trash filling the windows in the back.

"Say, how much did you say Pietro was offering for this again?" I ask when Marvin comes to my side, dusting some grime off his hands.

"700 eddies," he says with a grimace.

"That's not a lot y'know, especially for a car," I point out the obvious.

"Yeah yeah, but it's a C125 made when it was first released, not a lot of features compared to newer ones or security, you never broke into a car before, and you got in with a piece of scrap in like five minutes."

Sighing as I sit down on the hood and ignoring how much the car sags in response, I think. 700 split two ways is not even enough for rent, much less utilities and other bills, though I guess its still about how much we make in a month.

Slipping my agent out I navigate to my bank account and after waiting a minute for an ad for Mr. Studd™ to pass I wince at my low triple digit balance.

Wait, didn't Ashely mention at work a few weeks ago about a race her input took her to?

Going to my contacts, I scroll down to her name and call her. I hold up a hand to Marvin as he sends me a questioning look and it takes only a few rings before she picks up.

"Drake? You don't usually call. Don't tell me you missed me so much that you couldn't wait another day to talk to me again," she says with a teasing tilt which I roll my eyes at.

"Yeah yeah, anything else you wanna say so you can get your input to come and flatline me?" I respond flatly

"Hmm, nope! I'd rather not get stuck with the slob for nine hours on my own thank you very much. And Leon likes you enough that he wouldn't flatline you, at worst he'll just break your legs!" She ends in a chipper tone.

"That's true!" I hear a noticeably deep voice get past her agent's voice filter.

"Hey Leon, didn't catch you two at a bad time did I Ashely?"

"You're good, we're just out to eat. So what's up?" She questions.

"You said a few weeks ago about a race you were gonna go to, mind sending me the detes?"

"Oh you wanna go watch? Well I don't know myself when it's happening. Leon the rac-" her agent cuts her off as she presumably talks to Leon.

Looking to the side, I flip the bird at Marvin when I notice the odd look he's giving me before Ashely starts talking again.

"So Leon says there's a race happening tonight, I'll flick you the detes in a second but its over at East Austin."

"That's pretty deep into the city for a race ain't it?"

"You really think Rangers give a shit what happens on the road?" She responds with some amusement.

I chuckle a little as well, "True that, alright thanks for the info, c'ya tomorrow."

She laughs lightly and responds the same before dropping the call.

Turning to Marvin, I see him watching me curiously, and with an unneeded hint of dread, as I put my agent away.

"Please don't tell me what I know your about to say."

I shut my mouth and shrug as I get off the hood and go back in the car, "Fine then, I won't tell you."

He scrambles around to the passenger seat as I start the car, "Wait, I didn't mean it literally!"

(P.S. non-existent schedule)