\+/ Tales From Night City \+/ Chapter 47 - Rip and Recycle
The bright full Moon beams down on the wet, dark and quieted Night City streets. The sounds of stray sirens and slow rolling cars fill the air as you see the entrance to the hideout discretely tucked away from prying eyes. As Audrey lay unconscious being tended to by Netty she finds herself recalling a memory through her dreams:
*BANG BANG BANG* Audrey hears a sudden, heavy pounding on the door to her shop jolting her awake and nearly falling out of her chair while quickly looking over at it.
*BANG BANG BANG* "PRESCA!" *BANG BANG BANG* Audrey quickly gathers herself and rushes over to the door. She slides it open to see 2 well dressed PetroChem huscle who slowly enter struggling to carry an extremely heavy black body bag.
"Easy! Easy! Watch it! Don't bang anything ya gonk!" One of the huscle yells to the other while struggling. "Table! Right here! Hurry up!" He yells as Audrey moves out of the way and they drop the body bag on the table with a loud, heavy thud... They both rest their hand's on their hips in heavy exhaustion taking deep breaths.
"The fuck is this..?" Audrey asks with her eyebrows lowered and her hands out.
"Got an A-36 for ya doc. Rip and Recycle... I tell ya, the craziest ones always come in at the wildest hours y'know."
"A-36...? Executive Blacklist..? Who is this?"
"Said it yourself doc... Executive Blacklist. No deetes, No clue. Other than the fact that they're fuckin' tall n heavy. You do the math." The huscle says dismissively while he quickly scans the body bag and enters some information onto a smart tablet. "Be seein' ya doc" The huscle says as the pair promptly leave.
Audrey watches them walk out and the door slide closed. She turns around to see a lone bodybag in the center of her shop on a cadaver table. The dead silence intensifies the heavy tapping of her boots as she slowly walks up to it. She takes a long, intense look at the lone yellow PetroChem logo on the jet black body bag and hesitantly reaches for the zipper.
She slowly unzips the body bag down to the chest revealing Zaunya's mother's pale, lifeless face along with the discolored bruising around her neck. Her eyes and mouth open wide in disbelief as she feels the air in her lungs get yanked out of her. She slowly stumbles backwards... losing her balance as the quiet silence of a mute, high-pitched ringing in her ears takes over. The room begins to slowly spin as she hyperventilates and gradually becomes light-headed while her heart pounds. She runs her fingers through her short hair as she begins to scream... Audrey rushes back over to the table with her eyes full of tears as you hear the fading sounds of her screams of terror give way to a gentle nudge she receives on her shoulder from Netty; slightly jolting her awake and ending the dream. Audrey slowly opens her eyes with no reaction... this is a dream she has become all too familiar with.
Audrey glances over her shoulder to see Netty unplugging from her neuro socket and giving her a soft pat on the back of her shoulder. She then glances over to see BugBear stood in a corner of the room with her arms crossed watching him work.
"Rise n Shine." Netty says in a soft tone with a slight grin. "Didn't wanna wake ya, you honestly seemed like you needed the rest... You were mumbling somethin' in your sleep."
"What did... what did you find." Audrey says in a groggy tone as she slowly sits up on the couch while scratching her head.
Netty glances at BugBear before responding. "You had some sort of... nano tracker embedded into one of your neuro sockets. If they wanted to... they could have geo-sats pinging your location at anytime... It was still inactive so... I guess it was just waiting for a trigger remotely. We tried combing through info but couldn't find anything formal on whatever the hell custom hardware that is... You Didn't know about this..?" Netty says as he looks over at Audrey. She closes her eyes tight without responding and plops her head back down onto the sofa; They then hear the backdoor to the hideout slide closed as Zaunya and Brian step back in.
You next see them all gathered in the living room of the hideout... Temporarily both warm and safe from the various brutal hazards of Night City as early rain droplets begin to fall. The energy of the crew has shifted as everyone sits patiently while Brian paces back and forth in the room. He occasionally glances over at Audrey while doing his best to avoid making eye contact while having an aura of embarrassment surrounding him. They light smokes as BugBear casually offers Netty one. He hesitantly takes the cig and places it on his lips as he leans over toward BugBear who lights it for him. He takes an uncomfortably big, rookie drag of the smoke forcing him to let out a deep, uncontrollable cough causing drool and spit to go flying. BugBear closely watching him die lets out a cute giggle with a hand over her mouth.
"They were after me once upon a time. However like all things in this city, focus changes from one event to the next. Like I said before, in times of crisis... they run on borrowed time. Think about how many enemies a corp like PetroChem makes a day... overtime it gets hard for them to see what's coming and from who." Zaunya explains as the idle smoke from her cig whisps in between her fingers.
Netty finally finishing his cough puts the barely smoked cig into an ashtray on the coffee table. "I was able to isolate the geo-sat trigger and replace the resulting ping with something a little more... appropriate."
"Appropriate?" Brian asks.
"If they trigger the bug, those gonks'll get an urgent S.O.S pinging them directly to a deeply hidden compound run by The Animals. A nosy buddy of mine used to do dives into their subnet just to peep on em. Ended up learning more about The Animals than any of us really needed to. We used to always fuck with him and say he was lookin' to join and they had a personal stack of synthroids waiting for him . Real chrome heads these guys... almost like they communicate through violence over words."
"So not only will it route them there but Audrey will still get notified of the trigger as soon as it hits." BugBear says to Netty piecing it together in an impressed tone.
"Exactly." Netty replies while grinning back at her. The two share a brief and subtle moment.
Brian instinctually opens his mouth to confront Audrey on not telling them about the tracker but quickly catches himself and instead switches subject slightly. "Good work kid... I need you to do me a favor and do a quick sweep of the local networks in the area and cross reference them with that trigger. Let me know if anything comes up."
"You got it." Netty says as the crew disperses around the hideout to do their own thing. Brian sees Audrey make her way to the fire escape on the balcony. He waits for her to exit onto it alone before he follows her out. Audrey lights a smoke and rests her forearms on the dented railing as the pair share a silence with each other. Audrey breaks it.
"Hey listen... i'm sorry I didn't-"
"No, i'm sorry Audrey... I didn't handle that shit the right way at all. I just... communication and results often never pan out the way I expect or hope em to. I don't know its just... its hard to trust people without holding onto em too tight. I guess... i guess what i'm trying to say is-"
Audrey gently places a hand on Brian's shoulder causing him to stop and look over at her.
"I'm not the type to keep secrets from the people I care about Brian. I know how this looks... but I just want you to hear it straight from me. I fucked up... guess I never realized whatever they did could come back to bite me in the ass like this... Regardless of however long ago it was."
"What'd they do exactly?"
Audrey sees quick flashes one after the other of her screaming while being tortured and interrogated in various traumatizing and inhumane ways... Being slowly cut on different areas of her back... Slowly strangled by a rope around her neck while trying to to balance on a small flimsy cardboard box with one foot... Being waterboarded while crying and screaming in a desperate panic... These thoughts cause her to close her eyes tight in discomfort before responding.
"Megacorps... operate on ownership... if they feel they own you? Well... you piece together the rest." Audrey says as she takes another drag of her smoke before exhaling deep. "Shit they do changes you... violent or not."
"So no love lost then... between us huh?" Brian says causing the two of them to glance at each other with a friendly smile.
"Depends." She says before flicking her smoke out down into the alley below and pausing to think deeply. "I need someone to ride with me." She says causing Brian to look over at her again. She continues.
"My buyer has been bothering the shit out of me since we left for Jig Jig. The optics you guys helped me piece together are gonna fetch us some serious scratch. More than i'm comfortable with just picking up alone... even though the buyer is kind of a good choom of mine once upon a time, the area is pretty shit... and so are his contacts."
"Didn't answer my question choom... are we good?" Brian asks in a vulnerable and sincere tone that Audrey's never heard before.
Audrey pauses as she crosses her arms and a big smile takes over her face. She nudges Brian's shoulder hard with her shoulder. "Yeah.. of course." She says through her teeth in a comforting feminine tone that he's never heard from her before... The two share a moment.
"Don't start to get soft on me now Varga... We've still got work to do." She says in a light giggle.
Brian hears his last name out of Audrey's mouth as she walks back into the hideout causing him to close his eyes tight while being hit with a wave of sudden discomfort like a truck... Cutting to black.