Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

From the very first minute Michael woke up, he could feel the day was not going to go well. The water didn’t feel hot enough, coffee didn’t even attempt to wake him up, and the toxic air of Night City scratched at his throat more than usual. 

His apartment had gone from Zen minimalist to landfill chic, with narrow paths snaking between the piles of trash, perfectly mimicking the garbage dump that was growing bigger and bigger. It was only a matter of time before the neighbors would start complaining, but he didn’t care much about it, in fact he didn’t care much about anything at all.

"That BD last night fucked me up," thought the young man while rummaging around for clean clothes. The washing machine hasn’t been paid in almost two weeks and it’s getting obvious that he’s run out of clean clothes ages ago. It was no bother to him though. All Michael cared about was the culprit of his impressively poor financial situation - his brand new chrome. His chooms are going to blow the lid when they see him with his new mantis blades. No punk off the street will dare mess with him - not the Tyger Claws, not the scavs, not even those snobs over at the Afterlife.. 

Money, fame, everything will change, all of his misfortunes will finally fade away. Sure he couldn’t afford the model from Arasaka but the deal on this brand new model from Akagi was too hard to pass up. He slotted in the shard for his brand new chrome and started reading the digital brochure.  

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Suddenly everything went dark. Michael couldn’t hear, see or smell anything. He desperately tried to say something but nothing came out. The darkness wasn’t empty. Something crawled in Michael’s skull—a thousand needles stitching his nerves to the chrome. The message flickered like a dying neon sign:

“The Remnants of the Inquisitors send their regards.”

Then his body stood up. He didn’t.

The zombified young man stepped out of his crumbling apartment building into the thinning crowd of people and turned towards the market. Even though people around him didn't know what was going on, subconsciously everyone who saw the young punk gave him the wide berth. From up above you could see a three foot buffer forming around the trench coat-clad hollow husk of a human.

***

Genevieve wore a groove in her imported Parisian carpet trying to wrap her head around the predicament she found herself in. The city that gave her life, the corporation that brought her out of the sticks and the office that she was so proud of just half a year ago all started feeling more and more like a gilded cage. When Zetatech bought Cyphire Cyberware from Sycust two years ago she was over the moon. The new bosses seemingly valued her enough to pull her out from a small R&D lab in rural France all the way to their headquarters in Corpo Plaza of Night City. This place mesmerized her. The vibrant city, so full of different sights, smells and people filled her with life, ambition and inspiration for future projects.

Sadly nothing lasts forever. Ten months ago, she’d demonstrated the neural inhibitor to the board. “This will revolutionize safety standards,” she’d bragged. Now it was scavenged from a corpse in Kabuki, smeared with blood and ramen grease. Prototypes were sold under the names of brands secretly owned by Zetatech, distributed among the mass-produced discount junk chrome and were supposed to be secretly monitored by the whole army of corpo personnel, but as of late more and more pieces of chrome were going missing, only to be found on a body of the latest cyberpsycho a few weeks later. 

Six months ago there was an attack every week, this month they had 18 attacks in the first two weeks. Surprisingly nobody has been able to connect the dots so far, but it was only a matter of time before it became an unmanageable mess. If the media, or worse, their competitors got even a whiff of what was happening behind the scenes of the seemingly small corporation, there was hell to pay. It was no longer a matter of if , but when ... And the moment all of the info was to go public, it was her head on the chopping block. Genevieve had spent enough years in the corporate trenches to know how the blame game was played. The architect of a disaster was never around for the cleanup. As much as it hurt her pride, she made her way to the counter-intel wing of the building.

"Mademoiselle Martin!" exclaimed Lucas, Huggard's secretary. She never could or even wanted to remember the kid's name, but it was somewhat adorable how he desperately tried to connect with the only other French person in the building. "What brings you here today? I don't think I've seen you on the list of today's appointments."

"Well, looks like Monsieur Hubbard needs to make time for me right now," Genevieve pushed past the protesting 22 year old and stormed into the office. "Malcolm! We have a situation..."

As the doors of the soundproof office closed behind her, Lucas slid back into his chair.

"Situation? I'll give you a situation, espèce de sale plouc! Cette connasse! "¹

The muffled sound of a very heated argument behind the closed doors was accompanied only by furious typing of the angry assistant.

***@N∅va connected***

 

***@I.C.E. connected***

 

@I.C.E.: "What do you need?"

 

@N∅va: "I've been burned. They're on my tail."

 

@I.C.E.: "And what exactly do you want me to do about it?"

 

@N∅va: "Oh I don't know, help me slow them down."

 

@I.C.E.: "Your safety is not my top priority at the moment."

 

@N∅va: "Asshole... Are you even human?"

 

@I.C.E.: "I'm as human as I need to be."

 

@N∅va: "...I have no time to argue with you. You know what to do."

 

@I.C.E.: "Yes, I'll fulfill my end of the bargain. After all… ghosts keep their promises."

 

@N∅va: "I'd say nice knowing you, but that would be a lie."

 

***@N∅va disconnected***

Chapter Text

Hours seemed to pass by at a snail pace at the compound today. None of the fixers the team usually worked with had any gigs. Either they were blacklisted at the Afterlife or there was a sudden drought of paying clients in the city. Jackson’s intuition, which saved him time and time again when he was on the force, was telling him it was the former. 

Former beat cop looked out of the window down below. Buster and Beast were both preoccupied with tinkering on their respective toys. Beast was gauging his new rifle, while Buster was elbow deep under the hood of the car. Say what you want about nomads, even the former ones, they can always find something to do. 

Heavy silence of the dusty compound was disrupted by a sudden call from one of the local fixers. 

“Jackson, I need you and your team right now!” Reggie’s voice didn’t have even a hint of her usual smugness. Things were serious indeed. “There’s a cyberpsycho attack just a few blocks from your base. Sending you the deets now.”

Saying that she hung up and sent Jackson the location of the attack. 

“Oh shit, this is bad. Let’s go, guys!” yelled the former detective, clearing the staircase in one jump and rushing towards the car. If they didn't get there in time, casualties could be immense, even at this hour.

The nomad duo quickly wrapped up both of their tasks and jumped in the front seats of the Thorton Mackinaw.

"Where are we going, chief?" Said Buster, starting the engine.

"Food market in Kabuki. And step on it," barked Jackson.

* * *

The night air tasted like cigarette ash and burnt CHOOH2, with a hint of desperation—the cheap kind, like synth-whiskey. All things considered it was a good night in this part of Night City. I was watching people go about their business down the narrow overpass. At this hour most of the people wandering about were either residents of the slums down by the river, an occasional Mox or a Tyger Claw or people like me with nothing better to do than wander around the half empty streets. 

“Now what can such a fine piece of ass be doing out this late at night?” even without looking back I knew that the person spewing this out was not going to take lightly being ignored. 

After a quick glance back at the sleazy guy who was bothering me, I decided that my first impression was correct. He was painfully skinny, dressed in clothes so worn out it was impossible to tell what color they used to be and just like every resident of the slums down below, it was impossible to tell if he was 13 or 30. Not sure what, but something about him told me that he was here to cause trouble, and yet at the same time I knew that he couldn’t hurt me even if he tried. 

“Are you a mute or something? Hellooo,” he said, waving his hand in front of my face. 

By pure reflex I grabbed his arm and slammed him into the metal fence while locking him in a wristlock. Just as quickly his face turned pale from the combination of pain and fear.

“Who the hell are you?” he let out a muffled scream. 

“Me? I’m Nova,” I replied in an overly sweet voice that felt as if someone else was controlling my mouth. “And unless you want this to be your last conversation may I suggest forgetting you ever saw me?”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, you crazy bitch!” The sleazeball got even paler than the rags on his shoulders and yet still was trying to hold on to his tough guy act. 

Deciding that he must’ve learned his lesson by now, I let him out of my grip, sending him in the direction of the slums with a forceful push. Turning around to look at me he mumbled some curses and profanities my way, but didn’t dare to stop walking.

“Goodbyyye! Don’t forget to write!” I playfully waved him goodbye but as soon as the attempted gigolo was out of sight, my legs lost any ability to hold me up. The adrenaline that filled my body just a minute ago got replaced by panic and confusion.  

What the hell was that just now? Who the hell is Nova? Am I Nova? How in the world do I know martial arts and why can’t I remember anything that happened before the last few hours? So many questions and no answers. I decided that in case my little friend from earlier decides to come back with friends of his own, it’s probably better to delta out of here. Preferably somewhere with more eyes at this hour. The only nearby place I could think of was the little market by Kabuki. Sure, the stores nearby are mostly closed by now, but between the neverending patrols by Tyger Claws and greedy scop vendors there was almost no chance someone that weak would try anything. Figuring that I don’t have other ideas or even options, I started making my way there. 

The fastest way to the market was of course by taking the maze of tiny alleyways that sliced through this part of Watson, but as of late there’ve been so many muggings in the area that it was better to avoid these dimly lit streets. As I was walking down the stairs my thoughts went back to the Claws. What was their deal lately? I thought their turf was in Japantown, not Watson. In any case, I decided to walk towards Lizzy’s and take the next street over. At least that way I’d be walking by a busy street, even if I have to dodge a few more homeless people here and there. Plus as a bonus I’d feel a bit safer with the Mox around. Maybe the next piece of the puzzle would be found when I got to the market, but there was always a chance of a dead end. I mean, who’s to say that this mysterious compass arrow that has been leading me so far wouldn’t just suddenly disappear. 

When I got to the market, this fear came true. It seems that whichever inside voice was guiding me until now decided to take a break. Maybe for the best, as I was feeling peckish anyway. A few groups of Tyger Claws looked at me with caution as I walked in, but none of them made the approach. More and more pairs of eyes followed me as I made my way deeper into the market, making sure I didn’t cause any commotion. 

The market itself was lively as always. Scop stand workers were trying their best to make their stall the most enticing one, which resulted in a cacophony of sounds and smells filling the area, mixing together into a wild soup where the main ingredient was regret. Looking through the stalls, I tried to pick something that looked the most edible out of the bunch. Something in me knew Japantown’s takoyaki was better—maybe a ghost of a memory, or just common sense. Then again, who even knows how long this “always” has existed… 

“So what will it be, miss?” Asked the vendor with a polite but very tired voice. “Spicy or not?” 

I settled on a tiny takoyaki stand deep in the depths of the market, probably due to the rogue memory just now. That same memory however did not tell me what exactly my preferences were. “Surprise me,” I muttered in response, which was met by a sigh from the exhausted cook. 

Looking around as I was waiting for the street vendor to finish making my food, I noticed scattered groups of Tyger Claws all around me, but these thugs would never do something as reckless as harass people in this big of a crowd. In all fairness, my biggest danger at the moment was getting one hell of a heartburn from the food that smelled, and most likely tasted, only slightly better than cat food. Apart from the very colorful thugs and extremely overworked street vendors the market was scattered with a wide variety of locals. Kabuki market is not really the most tourist friendly place, so that only made sense. While I had some time to kill, I decided to run a self scan. What I saw was surprising to say the least: Every single bit of information except for my name had [ENCRYPTED] next to it. That was odd.. I decided to at least do a visual check of my body. Thankfully one of the nearby windows was clean enough to offer some sort of reflection. 

A thin, pale girl in knee high boots, booty shorts and a purple foldtop with matching colored hair stared at me from the other side. I really wished that seeing my own face would spark some sort of memory jolt, but alas, it only added to my confusion. At most I’d think my reflection is 25 years old, possibly younger, no visual cyberware, except for a few ports here and there. Looking closer at myself I noticed a few tiny scars scattered around my face - no doubt a sign of a botched surgery. Giving up on the whole ordeal of figuring out who I was for now, I went back to the food stall of my choice and started waiting for my food, much to the relief of the poor cook and a few bystanders who saw my performance.

As I took a bite of the steamy dough, I regretted my earlier remark to the cook. Looks like I’m not a fan of spicy food after all… Nevertheless, I didn’t feel like waiting for another batch and so I forced myself to chow down on it as quickly as possible. While doing so I was trying to remember something, anything really, but nothing came up. No flashbacks of parents or siblings, no first love, hell, not even a group of aliens or men in pristine white coats. It was as if I was trying to remember a dream from three years ago.

Suddenly I heard the commotion coming from the other end of the market. Looking back in the direction of that noise, I felt the blood freezing in my veins. Don’t know what exactly gave him away. Dark trench coat? Combat boots? Probably the pair of bright blue eyes, once possibly full of life and now so devoid of it? Or maybe it was a pair of razor sharp mantis blades pointed in my direction that helped me recognize the cyberpsycho in our midst. 

Before I could even react, the man started zig-zagging my way at incredible speed, slicing and dicing through everyone and everything in his way. Flesh, plastic and even metal implants, weapons and furniture alike were cut down like cardboard. The psycho’s roar crackled like static, his vocal cords half-mechanical. The air reeked of melted plastic and something sweet—probably someone’s fried adrenal glands. Three more seconds and the mantis blades sliced the table of the stall in half but got stuck in the stove. 

As the psycho furiously tried to pull away from the stove, I knew I had to get as much distance between us as possible. The situation was getting from bad to worse. Jumping out of the way I desperately looked for an exit. Things were bad. The main exit out of the market was now on fire and the underpass was blocked by the cyberpsycho. If the way out was out of the question, then I only had two options - hide or try to hold him off long enough for Max Tac to arrive. If I can even survive that long… 

After a quick scan of the surroundings I saw that the attack on the Tyger Claws didn’t destroy all of their guns. There had to be something there! I delta’d straight for the closest pile of bodies that was a group of tacky gangsters just a minute ago. Most of the weapons disintegrated on impact but I did see a couple of EMP grenades. I hurled one of them towards the psycho, then dove for the next pile of bodies. No guns but at the very least I saw a katana. If it survived the initial hit by the mantis blades then I might have a chance to hold him off. As I looked back in the direction of the stall that I was occupying just a few moments ago, I heard the sound of metal clashing with metal and saw that the psycho just freed himself. No turning back now! The attacker seemed to realize that too and started running towards me. I readied my weapon and hoped for the best. His movement was too quick for a ‘ganic human. It was clear that the mantis blades were far from the only mod he had. Without much hope, I threw another EMP grenade his way and gripped the katana with all my might, hoping for a miracle.

What happened next surprised me more than my encounter with the gigolo from the slums. Once again my body seemed to get the mind of its own and started deflecting psycho’s attacks one after another. My movements were matching his speed, maybe even exceeding them by a fraction of a second. And then there was me, watching the action through my own eyes without any control of my body once again. Slowly but surely my body started making progress, switching from defense to attack, gaining more and more speed. In fact by now his mantis blades, that earlier seemed so unbeatable were being pushed back by a cheap katana. 

Both of us dived and weaved around the ruined scop stands, ignoring the piles of bodies littering the market. I still wasn’t sure if whoever was controlling me was a good person, but they sure were keeping me alive for now. 

After a particularly nasty blow to the mantis blades my luck seemingly ran out. The cheap katana was cheap for a reason and shattered on impact. Now I was really in trouble and cyberpsycho seemed to realize it as quickly as I had. That being said, my weapon might be gone, but I was still faster, so at the very least I could still dodge his attacks. The painful death escaped me once again as I jumped over the counter of one of the stands. One of his blades caught fire from the hot oil spilled from a nearby wok, but instead of stopping to put it out he just continued to charge.

Attacks continued left and right, with increased ferocity as if the cyberpsycho was getting desperate. Maybe he was, it’s hard to tell what they’re really thinking once they go over the edge. Not many live to tell the tale and those who do are so wrapped up with NDA’s from MaxTac and the manufacturers of their chrome, that the victims can’t even use their real names half of the time. At this point I wasn’t even sure if I was a cyberpsycho myself, since I wasn’t really in charge of my own body either. How’s the fight going anyway? Hm, looks like we fought each other to a stalemate. He can’t attack me any faster and I have nothing in my arsenal to fight him off with. In any case, what could an amnesiac girl do against military grade implants? Wait a minute! Implants! 

Quick scan of my chrome painted an interesting picture. Looks like I have a military grade combat software installed and monowire, but the rest of the equipment scan was still encrypted. I guess whoever was feeding me the information about myself wasn’t ready to reveal everything just yet. But monowire is something I can work with for sure! Within a millisec razor-sharp string flew out from just under my wrist and almost immediately wrapped itself around the mantis blades, disabling them for just long enough to give my combat software a chance. Using his body as the anchor, I leaned all the way back and delivered a swift kick to his jaw. As if on cue both the cyberpsycho and my combat implant turned off, sending us tumbling to the ground. 

As I struggled to command the monowire to retract the panic started kicking in. There it is again! Who am I? Why do I know how to do any of this? My lungs burned like I’d inhaled fire. The monowire finally retracted, but my hands wouldn’t stop shaking—why wouldn’t they stop? I pressed them to my ribs, as if I could hold myself together. The psycho’s body stared at me with dead, glassy eyes. I did that.

I watched the cyberpsycho lying unconsciously on the ground, while thinking “ well now what? ” The internal compass that landed me into this mess went suspiciously silent once again. I guess all I could do at the moment was to try and find out who this guy was, so that I could contact the authorities. After connecting the monowire to the guy's neuroport and starting the scan, the psycho’s body started convulsing and his cyberware started smoking heavily. Within seconds the scan went dead along with the victim of the enigmatic disease plaguing Night City. 

Thanks to my panic attack I missed the sound of approaching footsteps, likely a costly mistake…

“You move a fucking muscle and I will splatter your brains all over this marketplace,” a commanding voice shook the ground behind me as I felt the cold iron push into my temple. I slowly raised my arms. Suddenly I was pressed into the ground and cuffed with precision that comes from years on the force. “MaxTac is two minutes out, hurry!” yelled another unfamiliar voice a bit further away. 

The cuffs bit into my wrists. My captor leaned in, his voice a whisper. “You fight like someone who’s expensive. And in Night City? That’s dangerous.”

Chapter Text

“Jackson, what the shit? Is this your first gig?” Regina was absolutely furious. Even without the projection of her avatar she somehow looked ready to bite into the throats of everyone inside the car. Taking a small break to catch her thoughts, she continued. 

“What part of ‘take the psycho alive’ didn’t you understand?”

“We got here too late, Reggie,” sighed Jackson. “Someone else got him before we arrived.” 

“Someone? Another merc?”

“No idea, she ditched us before we could ask any questions. Ice is looking into it already, she won’t evade us for long.” 

“Either you and your team just got played like a bunch of schoolkids or you are lying. I guess time will tell,” Regina seemed to have calmed down a bit. “What about the cyberpsycho?”

“Fried like a tofu-chicken. All we got was the guy’s name - Michael Kim. Ice is running him through the database as we speak.”

“I hope you’re not expecting to be paid for this gig,” said the fixer hanging up.

“Yeah yeah,” sighed Jackson while rubbing the bridge of his nose in frustration. The atmosphere in the car was gloomy to say the least. There were many thoughts going through the detective's mind and some of them would have to wait until another time.

One thing was clear - they were broke, and this failed gig did not help. Sooner or later they’ll run out of ammunition - a deadly issue in Night City even for civilians, let alone a ragtag group of mercs.

“Why did you lie?” piped up Buster, slowly pulling the car inside the compound, the adrenaline rush from earlier had all but disappeared. 

Nova, sitting with her hands still in handcuffs in the back seat, wondered the same question…

* * *

Don't know how but I found myself sitting inside an abandoned warehouse somewhere between Kabuki and Northside, sitting on a chair with my hands bound, surrounded by three rough looking mercs. The one who almost blew my brains out in Kabuki was definitely their leader. His worn-out leather trench coat didn't hide his well built physique, but what caught my eye was the way he carried himself. Combat boots, black tactical pants and a turtleneck just screamed "I'm still not over NCPD tossing me out like a spoiled scop dog." My intuition told me that if things went south he was definitely more dangerous than the cyberpsycho I met at the market. It’s was safer to stay on his good side, at least for now, which means answering at least a few of his questions.

The other two were an interesting bunch - both had the vibes of former nomads, something about that balance of naturally tanned skin with the aftertaste of loneliness, but that was the only thing they had in common. One was visibly chromed up head to toe with every combat implant imaginable and a face that could very well be etched from stone. Towering above the other two he stood there like a well trained guard dog. How he has not gone cyberpsycho yet was a mystery for sure. Definitely the muscle of this little misfit operation. Just the thought of having this human machine going cyberpsycho sent shivers down my spine.

As for the other one, they definitely piqued my interest. Slim, lean, and without any visible combat implants. Instead, they were rocking a wide variety of cosmetic implants along with a pair of cat ears poking out of their hair. While the other two looked tough and unapproachable, there is no way this one could intimidate a toddler. In the company of two very rough and stoic individuals they looked like a teenager or at most an underdeveloped 20 year old. What was their role here? As if to answer my question, the first merc nodded in my direction and the colorful merc hooked something up to my neuroport. Ah, definitely a techie. 

[[WARNING! UNAUTHORIZED SCAN INITIATED]]

Looks like they have a runner on their crew. Greeeat… But given that they haven’t made their appearance, they were probably just a chair jockey, with no combat quickhacks. 

A nice little crew, but undoubtedly one of many in Night City. The Afterlife alone was filled with hoards of crews like this one, all desperate for work, especially in the light of the attack on the Arasaka tower a year ago that left a whole bunch of people out of work. Good ones found jobs with their competitors, while the rest… Well the perfect example of the rest was staring me straight in the face.

"So are we just going to sit here or are we done checking each other out?" the former beat cop spoke up. "What the hell did you do to him?"

“I told you, I don’t know what happened! All I did was connect to him so that I could run a scan on him.” I desperately tried to show that what I'm saying is true and that I'm no harm to anyone in the room.

"You connected to a cyberpsycho?" Jackson’s cigarette paused mid-air. "Either you’re suicidal, or you’ve got military-grade ICE in that skull. Which is it?" Jackson’s voice echoed throughout the mostly abandoned warehouse. "We both know there's more to this"

“Look, one minute I'm trying to get some food and the next thing I know, I have a mantis blade tornado flying my way," I responded annoyed. "In the end all I did was knock him out."

Jackson leaned in, the smell of his cheap tobacco getting unbearably strong. "Let me guess—amnesiac strolls into town, trips over a cyberpsycho, and somehow walks away? That’s a BD script even Dogtown junkies wouldn’t buy." 

“Look, buddy, your tough guy act is getting on my nerves. I already told you everything I know! Hell, I was on autopilot for most of the fight!”

“Bullshit! With moves like that you’re no civilian. Doubt you’re even a merc. Who are you, really? ‘Saka’s Troy soldier? Militech? Biotechnica?”

“Neither. I’m just a girl who found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now will you please knock it off, mister policeman? Pretty pleeease!” My sarcastic remark was met with a scoff from Jackson and a chuckle from the friendly merc.

"That doesn't add up. Why would you risk your neck to knock out a cyberpsycho? And why were you trying to scan him in the first place?"

"What do you mean why would I risk my neck trying to knock him out? What did you want me to do? Become the new menu option?"

Techie merc couldn't help but snicker once again, but quickly stopped themselves after a stern look from the interrogator.

"Fair point, but why were you trying to scan him? What were you looking for? And don't try to tell me you were just curious. Nobody gets involved with a cyberpsycho out of curiosity."

"And what if I was? Give me a break!" it was getting hard to hide my annoyance. "Kid was twenty, choom! Who the hell gifts a teen mantis blades—Santa Cyberpsycho?!"

Jackson looked me up and down, took out a pack of smokes from his trenchcoat and lit up another cigarette.

"Hmm, interesting questions. Not everyday someone that young goes cyberpsycho too. So what's your theory? You think someone pushed him over the edge? Or maybe he stumbled over the edge?"

"Honestly, no clue. My scan didn't even have time to run before we lost him."

"Convenient timing, wouldn't you say?" Merc's eyes narrowed. "You sure you didn't have anything to do with that? Because right now you're looking like a prime suspect."

"Well there is one thing but it's not related to the cyberpsycho. At least I don't think so..."

"Go on. Anything could be relevant at this point. What's on your mind?"

I mentally prepared myself for the interrogation to go south.

"I don't remember anything about myself from before two hours ago."

Former beat cop raised one of his eyebrows, clearly not buying my story.

"Oh bullshit! You expect me to believe this third rate excuse? Do you think I was born yesterday?"

Here we go. Of course he wouldn't believe a word coming out of my mouth. To be honest, what did I expect when I could barely believe it myself...

"I know how it sounds. I woke up on the bench at the overpass behind Lizzie's, got harassed by a creepy guy from the slums, scared him off, got hungry and the only place open was the market. The rest of the story you know."

"That's quite the tale. So, let me get this straight. You wake up with no memory, wander around, encounter some trouble, then end up at the market just in time for a cyberpsycho attack? Talk about bad luck. But something tells me there's more to your story than just bad luck."

"Look, your buddy here has been hooked up to me this whole time," I replied, gesturing towards the techie. "I'm sure they can tell you by now if I'm telling the truth or not. All I can tell you is that my name is Nova. I tried to run a scan on myself but almost everything is encrypted. All I got was the monowire and the combat module."

"Nova, huh? Well, if what you're saying checks out, we might be able to find some answers. But until then, you're still a person of interest in this case. And trust me, now that you cost me my payday, I'll be keeping a close eye on you." said the merc, shifting his attention to the techie. "What do we got, Buster?"

Buster unhooked themselves from my neuroport and spoke up.

"She's telling the truth but..."

"But?" Jackson looked like a tiger ready to pounce on an unsuspecting prey.

"Her encryption is beyond corporate, chief. Ice was running a scan on her this entire time and got absolutely nothing," replied Buster, absolutely defeated.

"You mean to tell me that our prodigy couldn't break an encryption on a body that was hardwired to him with direct connection?"

Despite Jackson slowly but surely losing his cool, techie was unaffected and just responded with a small nod.

"What the hell did you do?" he continued, now facing my direction, but Buster spoke up instead.

"You don't get it, Jackson. She didn't do anything. Someone else encrypted her with so much ICE, she's like a walking Militech Chimera! Shit, maybe it's on par with the blackwall itself!"

All eyes turned to me, but all I could do was shrug. This information was as surprising to me as it was to them.

"Don't look at me, I barely even know my own name."

We were definitely in for a long night...

* * *

Half an hour passed since the start of the interrogation. My hands were free and the uncomfortable chair was upgraded by a slightly more comfortable couch. hell, I even got a beer for my troubles, but I was still a prisoner of these three and the invisible netrunner, who has yet to make my acquaintance. Squished between the edge of the leather couch on one side and the absolute mountain of muscles and cyberware that belonged to Beast, all I could do was go over my night so far step by step. Taking a sip of their beer, Buster turned to me.

"So how did you know to look for a monowire?"

"To be honest I was just playing it by ear at that point," I said, finishing the bottle. "At that point my body was on autopilot and I wanted to see if something new had come up."

"I wish you had a BD implant or something similar so we could see what exactly happened..." Buster was definitely bummed out by this turn of events. "Ice told me that there was suspiciously no footage of the attack on any of the cameras and by the time we got there, you were already hooking yourself up to that kid."

"Sorry about that," my wrists slid upwards, showing genuine remorse. Not like it was my fault or anything, but still.

"Eh, water under the bridge, right, Jackson?" Buster winked at their fearless leader and lazily stretched their body, looking lankier than usual. "Not like we're not used to living on nothing but kibble by now."

We were both met with a very stern look from Jackson. Beast showed no emotion at all. Come to think about it, I don't think I've seen him make any facial expressions this entire time. Is this guy even human?

But if they're living on Kibble, that means things are not going too well for them. No wonder they were so pissed to lose out on the payday from Regina. Speaking of which, do I even have any money? I mean eventually I'll be free from their grasp, so I'll need to get at least some sort of roof over my head. With that thought in mind, I called up my balance information.

[[Balance: 350,235 eurodollars]]

Noticing my surprise, Jackson turned to me, raising his eyebrow. I gestured to him to wait, which I was met with yet another stern look. Does this guy have any other facial expressions? That question would have to wait. If I could see my balance now, what else could I see? Running another full scan came up with absolutely nothing new. And here I was half expecting to see a BD implant or some media recording implant. Looks like my luck isn't infinite. Dejected, I fell back on the couch. Maybe I need to be in an extreme situation for some more information to trickle down? Or maybe my secret guardian doesn't trust the company I'm in...

"How much were you supposed to make from this gig?" I asked Jackson.

"Well, if we got him alive, it would be about 4 thou, for a flatlined one Reggie usually halves the payout, but this time the guy was wiped clean so we got a big fat zero," chimed in Buster, tossing some mixed nuts inside their mouth. "Why do you ask?"

I looked at Jackson and initiated a credit transfer. Money talks after all and if I double their payout, I doubt they would stop me from leaving.

"Here's 8 thou for your troubles," even Beast showed a semblance of surprise, not to mention the other two. Planning to use their confusion to get away I got up but was immediately stopped by Jackson.

"And where do you think you're going?"

"Eddies clear your conscience, cop? Or do you still need a collar to get off? You already know I'm innocent and it's not like you're still on the force, so what gives?"

The last phrase made Jackson scowl. That was probably one sentence too far, but there was no turning back now.

"And where exactly did you hear that you were off the hook?" the mood was quickly turning sour again.

"Last I checked we lived in a free city and I’ve spent enough time on syn-leather couches to know that this is getting me nowhere fun or interesting. So unless…"

Sadly my tirade got stopped short by Jackson, who shushed me to answer a holocall from someone.

"Got it. We'll be there in five," one small nod and both nomads sprung to their feet and rushed to the SUV. "You're coming with us."

"Like hell I am! Why would I even move a finger for you?"

"Simple," there was a glimmer of ardor in his eyes. "You get to test your theory on another cyberpsycho."

His logic was solid, there was no better way to check if my guardian had any more drops of knowledge other than to dive head first into action. Right as he was about to get inside the SUV Jackson turned to me and with a faint smile added, "Plus you're curious."

With nothing to counter I climbed next to him and only asked where we were going.

"A small motel in Northside. We got a raging Maelstromer going on a rampage there."

With those words the SUV rushed down the half empty streets as if trying to outrun the rising sun.

Chapter Text

INTERNAL MEMORANDUM – EYES ONLY

Clearance Level: Zeta-9 (Eyes Only)

From: Meredith Stout, Senior Agent

To: Deniable Assets Taskforce

Subject: That Fucking Cyberpsycho Shitshow

 

Listen up, shitbirds.

 

We've got a situation brewing that reeks worse than a Kabuki alley after a typhoon. Cyberpsycho incidents are spiking, and surprise fucking surprise—our friends at Zetatech just happened to be baking cookies when the oven exploded.

 

The short version:

28 psycho incidents this week (up 300%)

6 involved Akagi's bargain-bin mantis blades (their usual market share: <5%)

Every single one had Zetatech neural lace components

 

Now, I'm not saying this is a smoking gun. I'm saying we found the gun, the bullet casings, and Zetatech's fucking fingerprints on the trigger.

 

Here's what's not adding up:

*That firmware "glitch" in the Akagi blades? Matches Zetatech's proprietary compression algorithms.

*Their R&D budget mysteriously ballooned right before this shitstorm started.

*Their lead neurotech specialist—Dr. What's-Her-Name—suddenly took "personal leave" last week.

 

Action items (effective immediately):

Shut down Akagi's backchannel distributors (see attached list)

Prep a "warm welcome" for Dr. Martin when she resurfaces

Leak some spicy rumors to N54 about back-alley cyberware risks

 

And for Christ's sake:

 

Keep this tight!

Burn after reading. 

If anyone asks, this is about "public safety concerns"

 

This isn't just another corpo dick-measuring contest. Someone's stress-testing neural overload thresholds on live subjects, and I don't intend to let Militech take the fall when this blows up.

 

Stout

Senior Agent, Counterintel Ops

Militech International

 

P.S. If you forward this email, I will personally reassign you to landfill security in New Mexico.

* * *

The trusty Thorton's shocks screamed in protest as Buster launched them over a crater in the road, sending Jackson's coffee cup airborne. "Whoops! Northside potholes—nature's way of saying 'fuck your suspension,'" they cackled, catching the cup between their knees without spilling a drop. Outside, the bombed-out husks of food vendors and joytoys blurred past, their neon signs sputtering like dying glowsticks in the acid rain.

"Easy, Buster," Jackson growled, wiping spilled synth-caff from his pants. "We're not in a nomad rally."

"Coulda fooled me," Buster shot back, jerking the wheel to flatten a roach the size of a shoe. "Place looks like the Badlands after happy hour. Speaking of which—" They gestured at the apocalyptic glow ahead with a grin. "Anyone bring marshmallows?"

The joke died in their throat as they rounded the corner.

Even three blocks away from the motel entrance, it was pretty clear that something major had already happened. Everything on the street from remains of cars and trash piles to people's bodies was on fire. It looked like a movie scene that even the producers of Bushido X would ask to dial down. The hellhole in the middle of one of the worst neighborhoods in town was turned into literal hell. Seeing that, Buster stopped the SUV half a block away from the fire and turned towards Jackson and I in the back seat.

"Reggie’s intel says we’re dealing with a particularly nasty Maelstrom cult. Fuckers get off on trying to force cyberpsychosis on purpose," Jackson said, tossing a grainy holopic onto the dashboard. A cyberpsycho—tall, limbs fused with industrial hydraulic augments—stood amid a circle of dismembered corpses. “If they haven’t fully triggered it, we might stand a chance.”

“And if they have?” The burning question escaped my mouth. 

"Pretty sure this one’s got a killswitch implant. We fry it, we get paid. We don’t—"

"We become sidewalk art," Buster finished, their dark tone not matching the lighthearted joke. Beast, in the passenger seat, didn’t look up from polishing his shotgun.

I flexed my fingers, the monowire humming under my skin. Funny how ever since I discovered I have it, I can't help but constantly feel its presence. I wondered how Beast must feel with all his implants. "Why send us? MaxTac’s got this on lock."

"MaxTac would rather dive head first into Pacifica than deal with these psychos." Jackson tapped his temple. "Besides, Reggie wants the data in his head intact. That means no bullets."

Buster snorted. "Tell that to Beast."

The nomad’s ocular implant flickered red. "I’ll aim for the knees."

Ice’s voice crackled through the comms, clipped and synthetic and yet somehow familiar: "Motel’s cameras are toast. Heat signature shows twelve hostiles—eleven clustered west side. Psycho’s alone in room 207. You’ve got a three-minute window before their backup arrives."

An exhausted sigh escaped my mouth. Three minutes to disable a monster. Piece of cake.

As Jackson started going over the plan it was clear to me that this was far from this team's first rodeo. Everyone knew each other's strengths and weaknesses and just listened carefully. What surprised me was that he was able to find a place in the plan even for an unknown such as myself. The plan itself seemed solid enough, considering all we knew about the situation was that one of the Maelstrom goons went mad and paved the streets red. Definitely more than I had in Kabuki a few hours earlier.

Jackson's voice was steady and authoritative as he outlined our roles. Beast would provide distraction and lure the cyberpsycho out into the open. Buster and I would set traps and prepare for the confrontation. Ice would support us from behind the digital veil, manipulating whatever systems he could access.

As we approached the motel, tension filled the air. The stench of smoke and burning metal grew stronger with each step. We positioned ourselves quietly, following Jackson's precise instructions. 

As the chaos spread around us, I stood shoulder to shoulder with Buster in the motel's dimly lit hallway. Their movements were precise, methodical, as they set up proximity detonators and configured electronic sensors. Each device hummed with potential danger, a silent promise of protection in the midst of the escalating turmoil.

I observed Buster's expertise with a mix of admiration and urgency. The easy demeanor they had just an hour earlier was gone, now replaced by unwavering focus, a stark contrast to the pounding of my heart and the rush of adrenaline in my veins. I had to trust both of our instincts and the traps meticulously placed by the nomad merc, knowing they were our best defense against the approaching threat.

"Do you think these traps will hold?" I asked, trying to keep my voice down so as to not draw the attention of the cyberpsycho too early. 

Buster spared me a brief glance, a hint of determination in their eyes. "They better," their tone carried the weight of our precarious situation. "We've got one shot at this."

Their confidence was reassuring, grounding me in the reality of our mission. I adjusted the settings on one of the sensors, my mind focused on the task at hand. Each second felt like an eternity as we prepared, anticipation mounting with every distant crash and echoing shout.

In the flickering light, I felt the quiet humm of my monowire, a reminder of my mysterious past and newfound abilities. I had never imagined myself here, in the midst of a deadly showdown, relying on instincts I couldn't fully grasp. 

As we finished setting up the last of the traps, Buster's gaze met mine again. Their silent reassurance spoke volumes, a shared understanding of the gravity of our situation. Together, we braced ourselves for what was to come, ready to face the impending storm with determination and grit.

“We’re ready,” Buster’s voice echoed between my ears and comms. 

Then, the moment arrived. With a deafening crash, the cyberpsycho burst out of one of the motel rooms, roaring in rage. Beast expertly guided it towards our prepared traps. I felt a surge of adrenaline as both of us activated the devices we had set up, hoping they would hold against the psycho's onslaught.

The plan seemed to unfold perfectly for a short while until the cyberpsycho broke through Buster's traps with sheer brute force.

The cyberpsycho's hydraulic limbs shrieked as it tore through Buster's last EMP trap, the sparks dancing across its armored chassis like angry fireflies. Its head snapped toward me with mechanical precision, one organic eye bulging while the other - a blood red camera lens - whirred as it focused. I barely had time to roll aside as its mechanical limbs punched through the wall where my head had been, shredding cheap drywall into confetti.

Buster wasn't so lucky. The psycho's backup limb - some jury-rigged industrial piston - caught them mid-dodge, sending their wiry frame crashing through a paper thin wall. Synth-glass exploded as Beast roared into action, his shotgun booming twice. The first shell sparked off the psycho's reinforced ribcage, but the second took its left knee in a shower of hydraulic fluid and bone fragments. It didn't even scream. Just pivoted on its ruined leg with that awful mechanical whine, blades lashing out in a deadly arc.

That's when I saw it - the flicker in its remaining human eye. A split-second of terrified recognition buried under layers of invasive code. This wasn't some Maelstrom experiment gone wrong. Someone was piloting this poor bastard like a meat puppet. My monowire sang free as the psycho lunged for Beast, its movements suddenly jerky - fighting itself. "Ice!" I screamed into the comms. "I need a backdoor into its neural port NOW!"

Panic threatened to take hold, but then something inside me clicked. Instinctively, I raised my arm, focusing on the cyberpsycho. A visualization of a stream of code surged forth from my neural interface, enveloping the psycho in a digital storm.

It convulsed violently, cyberware malfunctioning as the quickhack took effect. The sight was both terrifying and exhilarating. I had never felt more alive—or more like a puppet myself, my body moving with precision I didn’t understand. The psycho’s remaining organic eye locked onto mine, wide with a terror that mirrored my own. Someone’s in there.

The psycho's head suddenly snapped back like it had been yanked by an invisible leash. Its jaw unhinged with a wet crack, and the voice that came out wasn't human. "L̷̨̕ḯ̴̦ẗ̸̜́t̷̗͝l̷̼̽ę̵̕ ̸̘̈́o̶̢͝n̸̢̿ė̷̡," it gurgled through a mouthful of blackened blood. "Y̷o̸u̶'̸r̵e̷ ̶t̸o̷o̷ ̵l̷a̴t̴e̴."

The words slithered into my skull like ice. Before I could react, the psycho’s body twitched—not from my hack, but like a marionette yanked by invisible strings. Its limbs spasmed, hydraulic fluid spraying in arcs as it collapsed. Dead. Or deactivated.

Buster’s voice crackled in my comms, ragged with pain: "What the hell was that?!"

I opened my mouth to answer—when the first Molotov crashed through the motel window.

"INCOMING!" Jackson roared.

The world erupted in fire.

Maelstrom swarmed the building like irradiated hornets, their chrome glinting in the inferno. Beast dragged Buster behind a shattered reception desk as gunfire chewed the walls to splinters. 

One of the nearby goons charged at me head on despite carrying a Lexington in his hands. He must’ve figured that I was an easy target due to me missing any visual chrome. Unfortunately for him, my combat module kicked in as my body effortlessly tossed him back into the group of Maelstromers getting ready to shoot. Using the confusion to my advantage I grabbed the pistol and dove for cover. 

Looking at my newly found weapon made me want to cry. Even by itself Lexington was a pretty worthless gun in this fight, let alone in the poor shape it was in. Even a Slaught-O-Matic would fare better in this situation, but beggars can’t be choosers. I peeked over the cover. Time to see if I can shoot.

The first few shots went over the Maelstromers heads. The next few went into the wall awfully close to Jackson. Only by chance did a few bullets ricochet off the ground, hitting some of the goons who were just getting up after being knocked over by their comrade. The all looked straight at me and readied their weapons. 

I ducked as bullets whizzed just over my head, my HUD flashing warnings:

[[Ammo 12%. Monowire charge 17%. Neural strain critical.]]

Jackson’s voice cut through the chaos: "Nova—can you fry their optics? Buy us a window!"

I didn’t have a choice. I pushed.

A synaptic scream ripped through the motel as my quickhack lashed out. Maelstrom grunts staggered, their ocular implants overloading in bursts of sparks. One clutched his face, screaming as his thermal vision cooked his retinas.

"Go! Now!" I gasped, my nose bleeding onto my lips.

We bolted for the back exit, Beast half-carrying Buster. The psycho’s corpse lay in our path, its dead fingers still twitching. As we leapt over it, I swore I heard a whisper—

" Find us… ."

Then we were out, gulping acid-tainted air as the motel burned behind us. Maelstrom’s reinforcements would be here in minutes. Jackson didn’t slow down, his boots pounding the cracked pavement toward the Thorton.

"Did you hear that?" I wheezed, wiping blood from my chin.

Jackson didn’t look back. "Hear what?"

The doubt in his voice made me clamp my mouth shut. Maybe I’d imagined it. Maybe the strain had finally—

A hand grabbed my arm. Buster, pale but grinning, thrust a stim into my palm. "Save the existential crisis for the warehouse, yeah?"

I jammed the needle into my thigh. As the adrenaline hit, Jackson’s voice echoed from the driver’s seat:

"Welcome to the crew, Nova." His grin was all teeth in the rearview mirror. "Looks like we’ve got ourselves a hell of a runner."

I slumped against the seat, my fingers trembling trying to grasp the monowire port. Runner… The word felt wrong. I hadn’t run anything. Something had run me.

And whatever it was, it had just left a message.

In the heart of Seattle's bustling downtown, amidst the blend of historic architecture and modern skyscrapers, a small, unassuming coffee shop hummed with the familiar sounds of espresso machines and soft indie music. It was nearing closing time, and the lone barista wiped down the counters with a practiced rhythm, the aroma of freshly ground coffee beans lingering in the air. Outside, the city lights began to twinkle against the fading twilight, casting a serene glow through the shop's large windows.

As the last customer exited with a cheerful farewell, the barista leaned against the counter, tired but content, and reached for her agent tucked away in the pocket of her apron. A notification blinked on the screen, and she tapped it open absentmindedly, expecting a routine message from her boss or a coworker. However, as she read the words on the screen, her expression shifted from calm to concern. Her face dropped, the weight of the message sinking in amidst the comforting aroma of coffee and the distant city sounds outside.

@N∅va: "M'q wsvvc. Ksshfci" *

The barista walked up the stairs to her tiny rundown flat and gathered her belongings. She didn't want to do this, but the message could only mean one thing - it was time for her to fulfill her end of the bargain. The small apartment felt colder than usual as she packed a change of clothes and essentials into a worn duffel bag, her thoughts racing with memories of the person she made that deal with all those years ago. She glanced out of the window, where the city lights now seemed to flicker with a hint of foreboding, and she knew there was no turning back now

Chapter Text

@Rogue: "Nix, I need you to run something by you."

@N1x: "Yeah, yeah. What’s burning?"

@Rogue: "Runners in Jackson’s crew. Heard of ‘em?"

@N1x: "Eh, not my scene. Who we talkin’?"

@Rogue: "Ice and Nova. Just lit up Northside with some high-grade fireworks. Runners that good don’t stay ghosts—not in your circles.”

@N1x: “Ice?? That gonk? Fuckin’ poser!"

@Rogue: "Oh? Do tell."

@N1x: "Dude’s a Zer0 fanboy so hardcore, nobody even noticed the real Zer0 flatlined for a year. Just kept runnin’ wrapped in his netcode like a kid playing dress-up… Gotta admit though—guy’s got commitment. Five years in the game, and not a single soul’s seen his face. Either he’s a bot or real damn careful."

@Rogue: "Hm. Color me intrigued. And the other one? Nova?"

@N1x: "Now that’s where shit gets spicy. Nova’s not just some netrunner—she’s a fucking ghost story. Remember that crazy bitch who fried Zetatech’s servers and dumped all their corpo-secrets on the ‘Net? Yeah. That was her. And last I checked she got zeroed. Hard..."

@Rogue: "Oh, kid. If you think this is my first dance with the dead, you ain’t been in the game long enough. Keep digging."

* * *

"Son of a bitch!"

A heavy fist of the former NCPD detective slammed into the wall, leaving behind a spider web of cracks in the concrete from the impact. The calm demeanor Jackson showed back at the motel, has completely evaporated. The mood was shared by everyone present in the room. Sure, all of us were able to get out relatively unharmed, but with all the Maelstrom goons out there, it was impossible to get the body out. To the crew it meant yet another wasted effort; to me it just meant yet another mystery to add to the list.

What exactly happened back there? Why did I know I could quickhack on demand? How did all of the goons go down with barely even a hint of a toll on my body? What the hell was that psycho on about? None of these questions were any closer to being answered. A quick scan of my cyberware revealed no new information, meaning whatever cyberdeck I was equipped with was something special. There's a chance I could get all my questions answered by a good ripperdoc, but my internal compass didn't exactly give me any contacts and I still wasn't sure if the company I kept was trustworthy.

Taking a deep breath, Jackson turned to me and much more calmly asked me. "So what the hell was that back at the motel?"

"Are we talking about dead cyberpsycho or the fireworks that followed?"

After thinking it through for a moment, Jackson replied. "Both, I guess."

"Well as for fireworks, I'm sorry to say, but nothing new on my end," I plopped on the couch and gestured towards Beast. "And as far as the psycho goes, I'm not the one who put him down… At least I don’t think so. Shit, who knows, maybe Beast hit some artery and that’s why he flatlined."

For the first time since I’d met him, Beast showed a modicum of emotion. Anger flashed across his face briefly before settling into the familiar deadpan mask. Without a word, he walked past me, grabbed a beer from the fridge, and retreated deeper into the warehouse. Buster sighed, plopping onto the couch beside me and shooting an annoyed look at both of us.

"Well I for one am happy that Nova was there to back me up, otherwise I'd probably be splattered all over that motel or full of bullet holes..."

The tension that was steadily building up evaporated in an instant. Jackson let out an exasperated sigh and started pacing back and forth for what seemed like eternity before finally sitting down and breaking the awkward silence.

"Okay, say we ignore the Nova mystery for now. And whatever the hell happened to the cyberpsycho. We still need to do something about the lack of gigs. I doubt even Regina will keep throwing us scraps sooner than later."

Hearing this, Buster perked up. "You know, I could always ask my old contacts back from the racing circuit. Someone is bound to have something."

"Me and Captain are not on the best terms and we both know it."

"Lots of other fixers around, boss," the nomad smiled brightly. "Plus I could use a night out on town. Hell, maybe we all could..."

Jackson cut them off before they could finish. "I am not dragging your drunk ass around again. You want to go partying? Take Beast with you, otherwise - keep it professional. We've had enough fuckups in the last 24 hours."

"Fiiine, I'll behave tonight," saying that Buster winked at me and strolled out of the building.

I was still wrapping my head around the contrast between Buster's personalities. Was one of the personas a mask? If so, which one? After ruminating on that question, I decided to put it on the back burner.

"Welp! Looks like we have work to do," Jackson slapped his knee, taking me out of my trance. "You're coming with me," he said, standing up and reaching his arm out towards me.

"Where to first?" I asked, ignoring his hand and getting up by myself.

"Afterlife. We need to know why we haven't been getting gigs."

"And you need me there because?"

"I don't need you there. You need me there." Jackson grabbed his jacket and headed towards the door. "Afterlife is invite only, and last I checked, you don't know anyone there except for me."

As I was watching the bustling streets of Night City pass by out of the window, I couldn't help but laugh at how much has happened in less than 24 hours. Jackson raised an eyebrow at my facial expression but knew better to not ask. Maybe we could get along after all. Before long the car pulled into an unassuming looking alleyway next to an entrance that had no sign over it but was swarming with solos, posers and hopefuls, all hoping to get a glimpse of the glorious action happening just inside. 

"Once we get in, let me do the talking, alright?" Said Jackson as both of us got out of the car.

"You dare to question my winning personality?" I replied jokingly, but the weathered merc was clearly not in the mood and just replied "Yes." I left it at that, following him down the stairs.

Sadly our trip lasted as far as down the hall towards the bouncer. A mountain of muscles that would rival Beast just put his hand out and said, "Sorry, Jackson. You and your crew are not allowed in. Rogue's orders."

Jackson was about to protest, but I cut in with "What about me? I'm not part of the crew."

After a moment of thought, the bouncer replied. "If you're not with him, then who the hell are ya? And what's stopping me from tossing you out along with this..." He vaguely gestured towards Jackson.

"Trust me darling, it’s a long and very sad story that neither of us wants to hear. I’ll tell you what though, just call me Nova. Oh, and I have 10 thousand reasons for you to say yes. Five more if I find what I'm looking for here."

This time the bouncer didn't take as long to think of a witty answer, but silently sent a command to open the door. As I sent the thought command to wire him the eddies he stepped aside.

"One more thing," I said nonchalantly gesturing towards dumbfounded Jackson. "He's coming with me. After all, I need someone to vouch for me, right?" Saying that, I slid past the stunned bouncer, followed by equally shocked Jackson. I gave him a quick wink and headed towards the bar. Looks like my sassy autopilot kicked in just in time. Finding a seat at the corner of the bar, I made eye contact with a bartender and turned to Jackson.

"You look like you have even more questions than usual. Go ahead, I'm in a charitable mood."

"Do you often turn into a completely different person like that?"

"What do you mean a different person?" I asked, unsure of how my autopilot looked like from the outside. Jackson lightly nodded and continued.

"Different posture, gestures, manner of speaking... Hell, different voice even. You were acting like gutter trash one second and as if you're a wealthy socialite the next... Hey, Claire!" He greeted the bartender that finally made her way towards us.

"Hey, M. The usual?" Jackson just gave a small nod in response. "And what about you, big shot?"

"Surprise me," I responded and turned to Jackson again. "To be frank, I have no idea. Something similar happened before I decided to go to Kabuki. Could be a defense mechanism..."

As Claire got around to making our drinks, I briefly looked around the bar. At the heart of the club, a raised platform served as the nucleus of the night's activities. Here, amidst a sea of bodies adorned in cybernetic enhancements and shimmering fabrics, figures of influence mingled with hired muscle and edgerunners alike. The air was thick with anticipation and unspoken agendas, each patron exuding an aura of confidence or caution as they navigated the labyrinthine alliances of Night City's underworld. In shadowed alcoves and private booths, deals were struck with the hushed intensity of a corporate boardroom. Augmented eyes scanned the room for familiar faces, potential threats, or opportunities yet untapped. The Afterlife was more than a nightclub; it was a crucible where ambitions were forged, alliances cemented, and the pulse of Night City's darker heartbeat echoed in every beat of the music.

Looking at the bright blue alcoholic concoction in front of me, I decided to try it. The taste of NiCola mixed with vodka wreaked havoc on my taste buds and yet went down smoothly. Giving Claire an approving look, I turned back to my companion and continued our conversation.

"So who is this ‘Rogue’ person?"

"Did you just ask who Rogue is?" cut in the bartender, cackling. "Just from under how big of a rock did you crawl out, girl?"

"It's a long story, Claire," Jackson cut her off, as both of us noticed surprised looks of edgerunners sitting nearby. "The less you know, the better."

"Alright then, keep your secrets," she sniffed and walked to the other side of the bar.

Suddenly I noticed the crowd around us slowly lowering their voices.  An aging woman followed by a tough looking solo was making her way from the entrance deep into the bar. She stood out with a quiet confidence that seemed to permeate the very air around her. Her figure was wrapped in a worn leather jacket, adorned with subtle cybernetic enhancements that glinted under the flickering neon lights. Her magnetic presence was drawing the attention of everyone in the room, including mine. The way she carried herself spoke volumes — years of experience etched into every line on her face, every scar telling a story of survival in Night City's unforgiving streets. Even without asking Jackson or Claire, I immediately knew that this was Rogue herself.

Her eyes, a piercing amber that seemed to hold a thousand secrets, scanned the crowd with a mix of caution and curiosity. There was an aura of calculated danger about her, as if she were constantly assessing threats and opportunities alike, her mind always several steps ahead. I couldn't help but feel a mixture of awe and wariness in her presence. Rogue wasn't just another face in the crowd; she was a legend in her own right, a survivor who navigated the treacherous waters of Night City with a skill and finesse that demanded respect. As soon as I saw her, I knew instantly that crossing paths with Rogue meant treading carefully, for in her world, trust was a commodity as rare as pure gold. For just a moment our eyes met before her gaze turned to my companion, a mixture of surprise and annoyance flashing over her face before she whispered something to her escort and continued alone. Her bodyguard on the other hand turned around and made his way through the crowd of people in our direction, pushing everyone out of the way akin to an icebreaker busting through the wall of ice in the Arctic.

"Looks like you get your answer straight from the horse's mouth," said Jackson, getting up and tapping me on the shoulder. "Come on, we got an audience with the Queen herself, so mind your manners."

"Beware of an old woman in a profession where young men die young," was a thought that rang out in my head as Jackson and I were standing outside of the Afterlife. As he reached inside his jacket to pull out a crumpled pack of smokes, I couldn't help but notice the similarities between the two - both the merc and his pack of smokes were crumpled, beaten up by life and yet, were still there to do their jobs. It still wasn't clear to me how much trust to put into him and his team, but at the very least he seemed to be a man of principle... No wonder he's no longer on the force. Noticing my gaze, my companion offered me a smoke and before I could even think about it, I grabbed a slightly bent cigarette out of the pack, which was gallantly lit up by Jackson.

As the toxic smoke of the cigarettes mixed with slightly less toxic Night City air, I looked up to see the sunlight poking through small gaps between the tall buildings. Our business at the Afterlife was far from over, but at the very least I managed to get the persona non grata status lifted from our crew with a promise to not work with a certain shady fixer and a hefty deposit as collateral. Checking my balance, I started choking on the smoke.

[Balance: 550,145 Eurodollars]

How could this be? I never got the notification of a bank transfer. Was that a glitch? A hand of my invisible guide, ushering me further on this confusing path? Yet again I got more questions than answers. Sadly, just like all the other confusing discoveries in the last 24 hours, this too will have to wait. Without saying a word to each other, we both extinguished our cigarettes and went towards the car.

"Where to?" I asked, falling into a comfortable leather seat.

"Reggie's. We have to come clean about you or our main stream of income will dry up faster than Lake Mead."

"I thought we can now get gigs from the Afterlife again."

"Ha! I wish," Jackson chuckled and pulled out onto the busy street. "All we did so far is get permission to come through the doors any time we want. We need to fix our reputation and you're going to help us."

Taken aback by such a brazen display of familiarity I turned to him. "Like hell I will!"

"You've got no choice now, dollface . You backed yourself into a corner bringing me in with you. From now on in the eyes of every fixer worth their salt, you're part of my crew, which means our rep is your rep."

Pressing my body into the car seat and looking up, all I could do was mutter "Fuuuck" and leave it at that.

The car eased into an alley not far from where I’d brawled with that slum rat earlier. The place hadn’t improved—still reeked of stale piss and synth-grease, still cramped between leaning apartment blocks and the rusted veins of the highway overpasses. And there, jutting up like a middle finger to the neighborhood, was that glass-and-steel office tower. Its mirrored windows threw the sun back in our faces, cold and glaring, as if the building itself resented being stuck in a place like this.

We headed for the side entrance, passing a pair of Mox lounging against a flickering neon sign. No surprise there; Lizzie’s was practically spitting distance away, and their patrols kept the block just shy of lawless. Jackson didn’t bother with pleasantries at the intercom—just punched in a code. The reply came instant, sharp enough to cut:

"Who's the tourist?"

"She's with me. We gotta talk, Reggie," replied the weathered merc.

"Don't you 'Reggie' me, Jackson!" The voice on the other side was getting louder and louder. "After the shitshow in Kabuki and Northside, you DARE to show up here? And to add insult to injury, you bring an outsider with you?"

Before Jackson could even respond, I exploded. "Look, we can air all our dirty laundry for the whole of Watson to hear or you can let Jackson and I come up and have a proper chat."

The only response from the other end was a hollow click, followed by the humm of the maglocks disengaging. Walking inside the industrial elevator, Jackson pushed the lucky number 13 and glanced at me.

"Looks like you two are starting off on the right foot."

"Sorry, Jackson, something came over me as soon as she called me an outsider... Maybe my memories are coming back?" I replied, watching the floors go by through the scissor gate. "That being said, you're not as shy with Regina as you were with Rogue. You two have history?"

"Something like that," said Jackson stepping out towards a turret pointing directly at us.

What greeted me past the turret was a clandestine archive of the city's secrets and potentials. A blend of high-tech surveillance and old-world charm—a spacious lounge dominated by giant windows overlooking Japantown. In stark contrast, the walls were lined with monitors displaying feeds from her extensive network of informants and operatives. Each screen flickered with encrypted data and live feeds from the streets below, offering a voyeuristic glimpse into Night City's perpetual dance of power and survival. A single figure stood by the windows, looking across the bay in the direction of the visual cacophony of the neon lights on the other side of the bridge.

Regina made almost as strong of an impression on me as Rogue. While Rogue had an aura of mysticism around her, no doubt created by her posse, Regina Jones seemed to value her solitude. Her meticulously crafted image conveyed the air of confidence of a high ranking corpo without the pretentiousness that usually followed. Though, given Jackson's affection for her she definitely wasn't a suit. Probably either a fellow former beat cop or maybe media. Without turning around, she spoke as soon as we walked up to her.

"So you finally brought me that mystery merc from Kabuki. How awfully nice of you."

"You knew?" replied Jackson.

"How long have we known each other, detective ?" The last word was said with so much vitriol even I shivered. "For you to think that I didn't have the eyes on the location I SENT YOU TO?"

The fixer turned around and taking a second to compose herself, continued. "Well, considering that he brought you here without restraints, that probably means you're part of the crew now. So who might you be?"

"Still trying to figure that myself," I replied, reaching out for a handshake, which Regina accepted. "Nova. Nice to meet you, Regina."

Regina's piercing gaze met mine from behind her eye patch, her dark ponytail swaying slightly as she studied me with a detached intensity. The quiet between us spoke volumes, hanging heavy with the unspoken judgment that would seal my fate. Seconds felt like hours as I stood there waiting for her to decide my fate.

"Hmm, fine. Call me Reggie," she responded after scanning me up and down before turning to Jackson. "Let me guess, you want me to keep sending you cyberpsycho gigs because the last five have just had some unforeseen circumstances and the next one surely will be successful."

After a brief pause for dramatic effect she continued, "Fine. I'll send the next one your way but if you fuck up, don't expect to get any gigs in Watson for the foreseeable future. And no amount of supposed history we have will save you."

"I owe you one, Reggie.”

“I’ll add it to your tab.”

"Wait, that's it?!" I exclaimed looking back and forth between Regina and Jackson. “I thought you were so pissed off at him you were about to wipe his entire crew from existence! And then you didn’t even ask me if I know anything.”

The fixer looked at me and sighed. "Look, I already got enough info on you before you walked through my doors to see that you could be an asset rather than a liability. If I saw even a hint of a threat in you, you'd get pulverized before leaving the elevator. All I had to see was how you handle yourself in person," she shot a quick glance at my partner. "And to chew out Jackson, of course."

“This is all fine and dandy, but the crew needs work. And for better or worse I’m stuck with them so I guess I do too.”

I was met with yet another analytical gaze from the sole remaining eye of the fixer. Then, without even saying a word she walked over to her desk and quickly typed something up. Handing me a shard that popped out of her desk she finally spoke. 

"No new gigs on my plate, but you could actually finish one of your outstanding ones. Those attacks at the market and motel? Stinks to high heaven and I can't place why. Check the kid's apartment – maybe his gear's still there if you move fast. Maelstrom? Got no leads yet. We'll deal with that particular trash fire when it flares up."

And with that both of us walked towards the elevator. I couldn't help myself and sent a silent command towards the turret. The barrel of the heavy killing machine spun around its axis and pointed at the ground. A quick reboot wouldn't put Regina in danger, but also would let her know that something this simple could no longer pose a threat to me. Without exchanging too many words, Jackson and I made our way towards the car and left in the direction of the Kabuki roundabout.

Chapter Text

The dimly lit room hummed with the ambient buzz of industrial noise disguised as music from the adjacent dance floor. Buster Storm sat slouched in a steel chair, wrists bound by magnetic restraints. Their wiry frame seemed almost swallowed by the chair's bulk, clad in a mishmash of scavenged cyberware and faded synth-leather.

Across from Buster, Patricia leaned forward, her chrome-plated face reflecting the overhead flicker of neon signs through the grimy window. As a Maelstrom enforcer, her presence exuded menace, every inch of her modified body a testament to the gang's ruthless augmentation obsession.

"Look who we have here. Our favorite nomad," Patricia drawled, her voice digitally modulated and laced with contempt. "I see that your crew thought it was a good idea to fuck with Maelstrom. It’s time we show you all it was a bad idea."

Buster met her gaze with a smirk, their eyes flickering with defiance."I don't know what you're talking about, lady. I was just taking a stroll, enjoying the neighborhood and your guys grabbed me off the street. Is this how you recruit musicians nowadays?"

Patricia's mechanical hand twitched, and Buster could feel the tension in the air thicken. "You think you're funny, punk? We know you were at the motel earlier today!"

"I mean last I checked it was a motel - a place for people to be. Especially guests of Night City like me," they replied, leaning back, unfazed.

Maelstromer's augmented eyes narrowed. "You think you can play games with us? You're just a rodent scavenger in our world."

Buster chuckled dryly. "A rodent with a taste for high-tech scraps, Patricia. Tell me, how's that experimental cybernetic arm treating you? Are the micro—potentiometers still glitching out?"

Patricia’s chrome fingers twitched, the servos whining as she clenched her fist. Buster recognized the model—a discontinued Arasaka pressure-grip, the kind that could crush bone without breaking a sweat. They’d scavenged one from a dumpster last year, sold it for a month’s worth of kibble.

"You Maelstrom types always go for the flashy upgrades," Buster mused, tilting their head. "Bet you didn’t even check the neural buffer. That twitch? Classic feedback loop. Another month, and you’ll be chewing your own tongue off during a firefight."

Patricia’s ocular implant flickered red. For a second, Buster thought she might strike—then she leaned in, her breath reeking of synthetic nicotine. "Funny. Your file said you were just a thief. But you know your chrome, don’t you?"

Buster’s smirk faltered. File?

Before they could retort, Patricia’s comms buzzed again. She scowled at the message, then backhanded Buster hard enough to rattle their teeth. "We’ll finish this later."

As the door slammed shut, Buster spat blood, their mind racing. Maelstrom didn’t keep files on nobodies. Which meant someone had tipped them off…

* * *

The elevator groaned like a dying man as it carried Jackson and me up to Michael Kim’s apartment. The stench of mildew and overcooked soy-meat clung to the walls, a far cry from the sterile corridors of Regina’s tower. My fingers twitched near the holster—not out of fear, but something worse. Anticipation.

“You feel that?” Jackson muttered, his hand resting on the grip of his Lexington.

The air hummed. Not the usual buzz of faulty neon or a flickering holo-sign, but something deeper. Like the building itself was holding its breath.

The doors slid open to reveal a hallway littered with takeout containers and discarded synth-coke cans. At the far end, Michael’s door hung slightly ajar, the lock melted clean through.

Not scavs. Scavs would’ve kicked it in. This was surgical.

Jackson signaled for silence, pressing a finger to his lips before nudging the door open with his boot. The apartment was a warzone—but not from a struggle. Someone had torn through it with the precision of a coroner performing an autopsy. Drawers hung open, their contents strewn across the floor. The couch had been slit down the middle, foam guts spilling onto the carpet. Even the fridge door hung crooked, its hinges bent outward as if something had exploded inside.

“They were looking for something,” I whispered, stepping over a shattered BD wreath. The visor was cracked, the neural interface blackened.

Jackson crouched beside a pile of scorched circuit boards near the bedroom door. “Found it first.” He held up a half-melted data shard between two fingers. “Or tried to.”

The bedroom was worse. The walls were gouged with deep, parallel slashes—mantis blades, no doubt. The mattress had been flipped, the sheets shredded. And in the center of it all, a single, pristine item: a glossy black case stamped with the Akagi logo.

I instinctively reached for the case but Jackson’s hand stopped me. With expert precision he examined the area around the case, then carefully lifted it, sighed and opened it. Case was empty.

“Do these mantis blades look familiar to you?” Jackson finally broke the silence.

“Didn’t have much time to look at fine details while they were flying at my face, but it’s safe to assume that they belong to our cyberpsycho.”

“The case looks expensive. Much too expensive for a broke teenager.”

“You’re right. It stands out more than a Rayfield in Dogtown. Do you think someone else got it for him?"

“Looks like it. Poor kid probably just wanted to become the next Morgan Blackhand—”

“And in the end he fell over the edge before securing his first gig. Let’s keep looking.”

As we carried on with our search a single thought kept on burrowing my mind - did Michael fall over the edge, or did he get pushed. Judging by the piles of garbage mixed in with unwashed laundry and a variety of random junk, he didn’t live a prosperous life. 

Suddenly I got an idea. If someone got him this expensive gift, then they probably left a trace. Looking around the trashed apartment I noticed a terminal that was cleanly sliced in half. By some miracle one of the ports was left unscathed though. 

The virtual interface popped up in front of my eyes as soon as I plugged my neurolink into the port. 

LOGIN:         [___________]

PASSWORD:  [___________]

I should’ve figured. Sadly my netrunning ability seemed to be only useful in combat, but thankfully I knew someone who could help. 

@N0va: “Hey, Ice! Can you help me crack this terminal?”

@I.C.E.: "Affirmative. This task falls well within operational parameters. It will be... easy."

@N0va: “You okay, choom?”

@I.C.E.: “Affirmative.”
@N0va: “Okaaaaay… Anyway, giving you access now.”

@I.C.E.: “Much appreciated.”

[CONNECTION INITIATED]

[CONNECTION ESTABLISHED]

LOGIN:         [***************]

PASSWORD:  [***************]

The flickering holodisplay of the ruined terminal cast jagged blue shadows across the equally ruined apartment as I sifted through the fragmented data. Corrupted files floated like ghosts in the machine, half-dead things that dissolved when I reached for them. But at the center of the digital wreckage, one thread remained intact—a communication log between Michael and someone codenamed Inquisitor.

The first message made my blood run cold:

@Inquisitor: "The package is prepped. Don’t ask where it’s from."

Michael’s reply was eager, desperate:

@BigMike: "Is it really from Akagi’s prototype division? The Onimaru model?"

A pause. Then:

@Inquisitor: "You’ll see. Meet at the usual place. Come alone."

The next few messages were corrupted, but I caught fragments—phrases like "payment in kind" and "no paper trail." Then, the kicker:

@Inquisitor: "After the concert, you’ll do a job for us. Small thing. In and out."

Michael’s final reply before the logs cut off:

@BigMike: "I just want the mod. I’m not your fucking edgerunner."

And then, from Inquisitor, one last line:

"You are now."

I stared at the words, my stomach turning. This wasn’t just some backalley chrome deal gone wrong. This was a recruitment—or worse, a setup. Michael hadn’t just snapped; he’d been pushed. Hard.

"Jackson," I called, my voice tight. "You need to see this."

He was across the room, prying open a wall panel with his combat knife. At my tone, he briefly froze, then crossed the apartment in three long strides. I flicked the recovered data to his neural interface. His pupils dilated as he processed it, the reflection of the holotext flashing in his dark eyes.

"Fuck," he muttered. "This wasn’t an accident. They wanted him to go psycho."

"Or they didn’t care if he did," I said. "Either way, they got what they wanted—a disposable asset."

Jackson’s jaw worked. "That case we found. It wasn’t just a gift. It was bait."

I nodded. "And if they’re throwing gear this expensive around, they must have deep pockets. Corpo-level deep…"

A grim realization settled over us. This wasn’t just about Michael. Someone was turning kids into unwitting weapons. And if they’d done it once, they’d do it again.

I yanked my neural link free, the apartment’s ruin suddenly sharper. "Jackson," I hissed, tossing him the shard with the recovered data. "Kid was set up. This was a corpo honey trap—dangle shiny tech, reel in a desperate sucker."

Jackson’s jaw tightened. "And when he buckled under the strain?"

"They cleaned house." I kicked the melted data shard near his boot. "But something tells me that if we go take a look around the market we might get an answer or two."

His eyes flicked to the window. Neon streaked through the grime. "We best get on it then."

We moved fast. The elevator ride down was silent, both of us lost in thought. The pieces were coming together, but the picture they formed was ugly. Someone was using kids like Michael as pawns, and if we didn’t stop them, there’d be more bodies. More psychos. More ghosts.

As we hit the street, the rain started again, turning the neon into smears of color on wet pavement. I pulled my jacket tighter, feeling the hum of my monowire under my wrists. Jackson checked his iron, then nodded at me. No words needed. We both knew what came next.

Stepping cautiously back into Kabuki Marketplace, I felt a knot tighten in my stomach at the sight that greeted me. The bustling market, once a lively hub of vendors and customers, was now swarmed with corpo enforcers and investigators. Their presence was unmistakable—the sleek uniforms, the authoritative demeanor, and the subtle, but unmistakable air of surveillance that hung over the entire area like a heavy shroud. I scanned the crowd, trying to blend in with a handful of local residents while keeping a sharp eye out for any sign of danger. Memories of the attack the night before flickered in my mind, the adrenaline of that moment still coursing through my veins.

As I navigated through the throngs of officials, each glance and interaction felt like a precarious dance of avoiding attention while seeking answers. Every shadow seemed to hold a potential threat, every face a potential informant or adversary. With each step deeper into the marketplace, I braced myself for the possibility of discovery, determined to uncover the truth amidst the corporate labyrinth that now encroached upon this once-familiar terrain.

Realizing that with all the corpo presence there was no way for me to check out what I came for, I decided to not hang around for too long. Something told me that even if there was anything there, the suits would not let it slip by. There was still a question of who they worked for, but maybe we had to wait and find out later. 

Suddenly a door near me opened and a gentle wrist pulled me in with a surprising amount of force. Letting my eyes adjust to the lights, I saw a disheveled woman in her mid-thirties. Her once pristine, and clearly expensive, clothes were covered in dirt and wrinkles. Some buttons were missing, her heels were hanging on a chair nearby and her hair looked more like a nest. There was something in her eyes too. Something that made her look like a cornered rat. And when a rat is cornered, nobody is safe. Finally she spoke with a pretty thick French accent. 

"Lady, you dragged me in here. Start talking or I walk."

“I panicked. You were not supposed to be ‘ere. Not tonight. Not ever."

“Oh really?” This disgraced corpo piqued my interest. “And where’s my reservation, then? Afterlife? A MaxTac holding cell?”
“Merde, I don’t know! Anywhere, but 'ere.” Her whisper turned into a low volume shriek. “If they find you—”

“They don’t even know I exist. Whoever they are.”

“If we’re lucky, Zetatech—”

A nervous whistle escaped my lips. “I don’t even want to think about who it is if we’re not lucky.”

“Finally, you get my point. Now, we need to get you out of ere, Nova.”
“Hold on, hold on, hold the fuck on! How the fuck do you know my name?!”
“I know more than your name,” hissed the woman. “Now leave, before they find us both. I’ll find you later.”

Just as unceremoniously as I was dragged into the room, I was kicked out. Figuring that I probably should listen to the first person who knew me by name I cautiously made my way towards the viaduct heading to Dewdrop Inn, figuring Jackson probably was just about done on his end too and I was right.

Yoko’s den perched atop a tiered Chinese-style pagoda at the center of Kabuki’s roundabout, its curved eaves strung with flickering lanterns that pulsed in time with the district’s arrhythmic neon heartbeat. The climb up the narrow staircase left my calves burning, but the view from the top was worth it—a 360-degree panorama of Night City’s chaos, framed by paper screens and the scent of jasmine tea gone stale.

Inside, the space was equal parts black-market tech bazaar and relic from a bygone era. Racks of counterfeit synth-rice and bootleg stims lined the shelves alongside antique netrunning rigs, their casings yellowed with age. Along the walls, a handful of gutted arcade machines hummed mournfully, their screens glitching through pixelated fragments of games no one remembered how to play. The centerpiece was a cluster of neon-lit netrunning chairs, their leather cracked from decades of use, no doubt with hours worth of stories to tell.

Yoko herself held court behind a lacquered counter, her fingers dancing across a holographic abacus as she tallied inventory. She didn’t look up when we entered, just jerked her chin toward a dented tea tin. “Payment first. Then we talk.”

Jackson dropped a stack of eddies into the tin. The moment it clinked, Yoko’s demeanor shifted. She swept the money into a drawer and slid two items across the counter: a data shard and a slim package wrapped in oil-stained paper.

“Surveillance from the attack,” she said, tapping the shard. “Corpos missed some blind spots. Your cyberpsycho had a handler—see for yourself.” A flick of her wrist sent a grainy holo spinning into the air between us: a figure in a long coat, watching from the shadows as Michael tore through the crowd.

I pocketed the shard. “Any ID on the handler?”

Yoko’s smile was razor-thin. “Not for free.” She nudged the package toward Jackson. “For your nomad. Experimental neural dampener—keeps the chrome rage at bay. Tell him not to ask where it came from.”

“Buster will probably want to play around with it for a bit before Beast gets his hands on it. You know how those two are.”

“Sure, sure,” Yoko nodded knowingly in return. “I also know they don’t trust anything or anyone in this city. A good trait to have.” 

As we were leaving Yoko's den, the former cop was clearly in a good mood and I couldn't blame him. After all, it finally looked like things were starting to turn our way. With the happiest expression I've seen him so far, Jackson rang up the nomad to give him good news, but just as quickly the smile fell into a concerned grimace. "Slow down, Beast. Where are they now? Why the fuck is Buster at Totentanz?"

Chapter Text

The sun hung in the sky like a molten coin, burning its brand into the cracked earth below. It didn’t care who you were—corpo big shot, nomad outcast, or a washed-up cop playing dress-up. Out here, the desert didn’t discriminate. It just cooked you alive, slow and steady, until you were nothing but jerky and regret. The grid was a pressure cooker, engines growling like caged beasts, and the air shimmered with heat and desperation. Ten minutes to go, and the tension was thicker than the sweat dripping down my neck.

I leaned against the Thorton Mackinaw, its armored hide baking under the relentless sun. My mismatched crew was a sight to behold—Buster Storm, a wiry enigma with a grin that hid more knives than a back-alley brawl, and Beast, a mountain of muscle with a heart too soft for this line of work. Together, we were the kind of team that made people nervous. Not because we were dangerous, but because we were desperate. And desperate people do stupid things.

This wasn’t about winning. Winning was for suckers with something to prove. No, this was about survival. The cartels had their claws deep in the badlands, and SynthCoke was their golden goose. Every race, they’d cut deals in the shadows, load up their rides, and slip across the border like ghosts. My job was to catch them in the act, but the odds were stacked higher than a corpo’s ego. Still, I had skin in the game, and I wasn’t about to fold now.

Buster and Beast were my wild cards. Buster, with their razor-sharp focus and a driving style that could make the devil sweat, and Beast, the gentle giant who’d rip your arms off if you so much as looked at Buster wrong. They were nomads, outsiders, but they’d agreed to play along—for a price. I just hoped their loyalty wasn’t as thin as the air out here.

The grid was a circus of chrome and chaos. Corpo teams with their shiny toys and hired guns, nomad clans with their patchwork armor and heavy artillery, and solos like us, caught somewhere in between. The vehicles were a mixed bag—sleek speedsters, hulking trucks, and everything in between. No bikes, though. Those poor bastards had their run yesterday, and the desert had claimed its toll.

A voice boomed over the din, amplified by cyberware. It belonged to a sunburnt ginger with a beard that looked like it had been through war. “ALRIGHT, EVERYBODY! WE’RE ABOUT TO GO! IF YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO BE IN THE CAR, GET IN. IF NOT, CLEAR OUT! COUNTDOWN STARTS IN ONE MINUTE!”

The crowd scattered like roaches under a spotlight. Engines roared to life, filling the air with a symphony of horsepower and pent-up rage. I slid into the Mackinaw, the heat inside like a sauna from hell. Beast hooked up his Neural Link, his massive hands moving with surprising precision. I did the same, connecting to the weapon system. Buster gripped the wheel, their eyes closed, breathing steady. They were in the zone, and nothing short of a meteor strike was gonna shake them.

“THREE!” The countdown began.

Buster revved the engine, the sound vibrating through my bones. Their eyes snapped open, sharp and focused, like a predator locking onto its prey.

“TWO!”

I checked my sidearm, just in case. You never know when things’ll go sideways, especially when cartels are involved.

“ONE!”

Buster exhaled, their grip tightening on the wheel. The world narrowed to the road ahead.

“GO! GO! GO!”

Sixty-two vehicles exploded off the line, tires spitting gravel and chaos in their wake. The car in front of us choked on its own ambition, nearly stalling. Buster swerved, threading the needle with a precision that made my stomach lurch. A hail of bullets peppered our rear, more of a warning than an attack. I didn’t bite. Not yet.

The course twisted and turned, a gauntlet of rocks and dust. Buster handled the Mackinaw like it was an extension of their body, every move calculated, every risk measured. Beast kept an eye on the diagnostics, his silence a comfort in the chaos. I scanned the mirrors, watching for threats. Out here, the desert wasn’t the only thing trying to kill you.

We hit a steep incline, the Mackinaw’s engine growling as we clawed our way up. A rival team tried to muscle past, but Buster shut them down with a drift that left them eating our dust. We crested the rise, the open desert stretching out before us like a sea of gold and death.

“Nice move,” I said, my voice steady despite the adrenaline coursing through my veins.

Buster didn’t respond. They didn’t need to. Their focus was absolute, their eyes locked on the horizon. The desert stretched out before us, vast and unforgiving. Somewhere out there, the cartels were waiting, their deals already cut, their cargo ready to move. And we were coming for them.

The rock formations loomed ahead, jagged and menacing. Buster aimed for the gap, the Mackinaw surging forward like a beast unleashed. The engine roared, a defiant cry against the silence of the badlands. We were closing in, the pack within reach, but the real fight was just beginning.

Out here, the rules were simple: stay alive, stay sharp, and don’t look back. The desert didn’t care about your past, your sins, or your regrets. All it cared about was survival. And in this race, survival was the only prize that mattered.

The Mackinaw roared across the open desert, its tires kicking up plumes of dust that hung in the air like a veil of smoke. Buster’s hands were steady on the wheel, their eyes locked on the horizon, but the desert had a way of playing tricks on you. Out here, the heat made the air shimmer like a mirage, and every shadow looked like trouble. I kept my finger near the trigger of the weapon console, my nerves wound tight as a coiled spring.

The pack was thinning out, the weaker teams falling behind as the real contenders surged ahead. Corpo speedsters with their polished chrome and nitro boosts were leading the charge, but they didn’t know the badlands like we did. Out here, it wasn’t about speed—it was about survival. And survival was something Buster and Beast knew better than anyone.

“We’ve got company,” Beast growled, his voice low and gravelly. He didn’t say much, but when he did, you listened. I glanced at the rearview mirror and saw a pair of headlights cutting through the dust. It was a Shion, sleek and fast, but it was riding our tail like a hungry coyote.

“Let ‘em get closer,” I said, my voice calm despite the adrenaline pumping through my veins. “We’ll see what they’re made of.”

Buster didn’t need to be told twice. They eased off the throttle just enough to let the Shion close the gap. The driver took the bait, surging forward like a shark smelling blood. I waited until they were almost on top of us before hitting the weapon console. The Mackinaw’s rear-mounted turret spun to life, spitting a burst of bullets that tore into the Shion’s front end. The car swerved wildly, its driver fighting to keep control, but it was too late. They hit a rock and flipped, tumbling end over end in a cloud of dust and debris.

“One down,” I muttered, my eyes already scanning for the next threat.

But the desert wasn’t done with us yet. Up ahead, the course narrowed, funneling us into a canyon lined with jagged rocks and hidden dangers. This was where the race got ugly. The canyon was a kill box, and every team knew it. The smart ones would hang back, let the others take the hits. The desperate ones would charge in, guns blazing. And then there were the cartels, lurking in the shadows, waiting to make their move.

“Stay sharp,” I said, my voice tight. “This is where they’ll hit us.”

Buster nodded, their grip tightening on the wheel. Beast leaned forward, his massive frame tense as he monitored Mackinaw's systems. The canyon walls loomed overhead, casting long shadows that seemed to stretch and twist in the fading light. The air was thick with tension, the kind that made your skin crawl and your heart race.

We weren’t alone. I could feel it in my gut, the same way you feel a storm coming. The cartels were here, their eyes on the prize, and they didn’t care who got in their way. I just hoped Buster and Beast were ready for what came next.

The first shot came out of nowhere, a high-caliber round that ricocheted off the Mackinaw’s armored hood. I ducked instinctively, my eyes scanning the canyon walls for the shooter. They were up there, hidden among the rocks, picking off the competition like vultures circling a dying animal.

“We’ve got snipers!” I barked, my voice sharp with urgency. “Buster, keep us moving. Beast, watch our six.”

Buster didn’t need to be told twice. They hit the gas, the Mackinaw surging forward with a roar that echoed off the canyon walls. Beast leaned out the window, his rifle in hand, scanning the rocks for targets. Another shot rang out, this one grazing the Mackinaw’s roof. I returned fire, the turret spitting bullets that chipped away at the rocks but didn’t hit anything solid.

“They’re good,” I muttered, my jaw clenched. “Too good.”

The canyon was a death trap, and we were running out of time. Up ahead, the course opened up into a wide basin, but getting there meant running the gauntlet. The cartels knew it, and they were using it to their advantage. We weren’t the only ones taking fire. Behind us, a nomad truck took a direct hit, its front end exploding in a ball of flame. The driver swerved, crashing into the canyon wall in a shower of sparks and debris.

“We’ve gotta get out of here,” I said, my voice tight with urgency. “Buster, find us an exit.”

Buster’s eyes darted across the terrain, their mind working overtime to find a way out. Then they saw it—a narrow side path, barely wide enough for the Mackinaw, but it was our only shot.

“Hang on,” they said, their voice calm but firm. They yanked the wheel hard, sending the Mackinaw skidding into the side path. The tires screeched in protest, but Buster held the line, guiding us through the narrow gap with a precision that bordered on supernatural.

The path was rough, the rocks scraping against the Mackinaw’s sides, but it was better than staying in the kill box. Behind us, the canyon erupted in chaos as the remaining teams fought to survive. The cartels were thinning the herd, and we were lucky to be out of the line of fire.

But our luck didn’t last long. As we emerged from the side path, we found ourselves face-to-face with a blockade. It was a pair of Kaukaz trucks, their heavy armor and mounted guns making them a formidable obstacle. Standing between them was a figure in a long duster, their face hidden under the brim of a wide hat. They raised a hand, signaling for us to stop.

“Cartel,” I said, my voice low. “They’re not letting anyone through.”

Buster’s jaw tightened, their hands gripping the wheel like a vice. “What’s the play?”

I glanced at Beast, who was already stashing his rifle out of sight. “We play it cool,” I said, my voice steady. “We’re one of their mules. Act the part.”

Buster nodded, their eyes narrowing as they sized up the checkpoint. They slowed the Mackinaw to a crawl, the engine idling as we approached. The figure in the duster stepped forward, their hand resting on the grip of a pistol holstered at their side. Behind them, a pair of armed goons watched us with cold, calculating eyes.

“Who’s running this rig?” the figure asked, their voice rough and gravelly, like they’d been chewing on sandpaper.

I leaned out the window, my face a mask of calm indifference. “Jackson,” I said, keeping my tone even. “Detective Han couldn’t make it.”

The figure studied me for a moment, their eyes hidden behind mirrored shades. Then they nodded, stepping aside. “You’re clear. Head to the drop point. And don’t screw this up.”

Buster didn’t need to be told twice. They hit the gas, the Mackinaw rolling past the checkpoint without a second glance. I kept my eyes forward, my heart pounding in my chest. We were in, but the hard part was just beginning.

The drop point was up ahead, a cluster of vehicles and armed guards waiting to load up the SynthCoke. Buster guided the Mackinaw into position, their movements smooth and deliberate. Beast kept his head down, his massive frame hunched to avoid drawing attention. I kept my hand near my sidearm, just in case things went south.

A cartel enforcer approached, his face scarred and his eyes cold. “Pop the trunk,” he barked, his tone leaving no room for argument.

Buster complied, the trunk opening with a soft hiss. The enforcer peered inside, his expression unreadable. Then he nodded, signaling to his crew. “Load ‘em up.”

I watched as they stacked the crates of SynthCoke into the Mackinaw’s trunk, my mind racing. This was it—the evidence we needed. But getting out alive was another story.

As the last crate was loaded, the enforcer turned to me. “You know the route?”

I nodded, my voice steady. “Yeah. We’ll get it across.”

He studied me for a moment, then nodded. “Don’t disappoint us.”

Buster closed the trunk, their hands steady despite the tension in the air. We were in deep now, playing a dangerous game with the cartels. But we had no choice. This was the only way to bring them down.

As we pulled away from the drop point, I glanced at Buster and Beast. “Stay sharp,” I said, my voice low. “This isn’t over yet.”

The desert stretched out before us, vast and unforgiving. Somewhere out there, the cartels were watching, waiting to see if we’d deliver. But we had our own plans. And in the badlands, plans had a way of going sideways.

The race wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.

In the heart of Night City, where the flickering neon casts a surreal glow over the labyrinthine streets below, Yaiba Tower stands as a beacon of corporate power and intrigue. Within its sleek confines, Jackson slouched in a plush armchair, nursing a beer that seemed to taste of bitterness more than hops. His former life as a NCPD detective had unraveled in a massive way, leaving him adrift in a city that thrived on chaos and corruption. Regina Jones, the street-smart fixer with a penchant for staying one step ahead of trouble, lounged opposite him with a barely concealed smirk. Her smug grin and confident posture were in stark contrast to Jackson's worn demeanor. She knew the story all too well—how a promising career had been derailed by a single mistake that no one in the department seemed keen to rectify.

As they sat in the quiet intimacy of her den, the tension between Jackson's simmering frustration and Regina's barely contained amusement hung in the air like the ever-present hum of the city outside. Each clink of their bottles carried an unspoken understanding of the absurdity of their world, where even the most earnest efforts could be derailed by one mistake. In that moment, as Jackson stared into the depths of his beer and Regina fought to suppress a laugh, the absurdity of the situation got the better of her.

"Wait, wait, wait. Let me get this straight," Regina could barely keep herself from laughing. "Did you actually think that showing up at the finish line with a trunk full of drugs would work?"

Saying that, she burst out laughing, the echoey interior of her Yaiba tower den only amplifying Jackson's embarrassment. Wiping a tear from her eye she composed herself and continued.

"So what happened after you showed up at the finish line and flashed your badge?"

Jackson sighed and shook his head in shame. "Well, unfortunately for me and the nomads, one of the buyers had the city's superintendent in his pocket, so I might as well have waived a dirty diaper instead of my badge. As of today I'm technically suspended pending the investigation, but it's only a matter of time until they kick me off the force."

"What about the nomads?"

"We had to split but we're in contact. They're kinda shit out of luck along with me - no protection from NCPD and no income from the cartels."

The lighthearted mood had all but disappeared. Thinking it through, Regina stood up and walked over to her terminal. A few keystrokes later, a shard popped out, which was promptly handed over to as of now a former lieutenant of the NCPD.

"Here's a runner I occasionally work with. He mentioned that he would like a team of people on the ground since he never shows up in real space. Grab your nomads, contact him and if he's okay with it - I have a project for all of you."

"Why are you going this far?" Jackson looked at Regina with confusion. "I know we're friends and all but..."

"'But' nothing else, M. We're friends and I still owe you for back then. Who knows, maybe I would lose more than one eye that day."

Chapter Text

There is something eerily magical about early mornings no matter where you're at. Whether it's in the middle of the desert or in a giant metropolis like Night City, the air is always filled with a sense of calmness to it as if the Earth itself hasn't had the time to realize that the sun is already up and decided to snooze the alarm for just a few more minutes. This morning was no different. As most of the sleepy passengers of a bus from Washington were getting out of the oversized tin can on wheels, the city around them was still waking up. The streets that would very soon be filled with noise and people, were still almost completely silent. 

Jackie stepped out of the bus and breathed in the stale air of the outskirts of Santo Domingo. Her bones were aching after hours in the uncomfortable seat but at least the torture is finally over. Or maybe not, she thought, noticing a familiar face observing the crowd. There was no chance that this weathered solo was at the station for anyone else, but it also didn't look like she was there to start a fight either. After a brief eye contact and a small nod, both edgerunners made their way away from the prying eyes and more importantly, cameras. 

Quickly scanning the small storage room for potential dangers, Jackie deemed it safe enough and deliberately looked as relaxed as possible as she sat down on one of the crates. Liz may have been her protege back in the day, but things are definitely different now. It was clear she didn't spend the last five years idly. 

“Gotta say, Jax, I'm a little bit disappointed,” the voice of Jackie's welcoming party was filled with smugness of someone who knows they hold all the cards in this situation. “I half expected you to disappear from the bus between the border and the station.”

“We both know I'd get picked up by the tail you put on me at the crossing,” a hint of a proud smile showed up on solo's face, which didn't escape the attention of her protege.

“Do you really expect me to believe that? I've seen you lose ‘Saka exterminators on foot.”

“You underestimate just how uncomfortable the seats are on that bus,” Jax chuckled. “I'm sore all the way down to my bones.”

Liz looked her former mentor up and down, sighed and shook her head.

“Why are you here?” her serious tone lost every hint of smugness it had just a few moments ago. “If it’s about what happened the night you left I really think you should…”

“And I really think you should be really careful with the next few words that are about to come out of your mouth,” her voice was colder than the metal of the tanto stashed away ready for action at any moment. 

Realizing the situation that was about to unfold, Liz put her hands up, mockingly surrendering to her former mentor. It was not the right time or place for confrontation and it looks like all these years away from Night City did not dull her hot temper even a little bit. 

"Relax. I was only here to welcome you back to Night City. Professional courtesy and all that. Remember, we're always watching."

With that, Liz turned around and headed towards the exit, pausing right before the door.

"Gotta say, I'm almost glad you haven't lost your touch. Next time we see each other, I won't be this courteous."

And with that parting shot, the agent left the building, seamlessly blending into the thinning crowd of people. There was no time to waste. If Jax was back, it could only mean one thing—trouble for their organization.

* * *

Totentanz was a corpse.

That was the only way to describe it—a sprawling, neon-lit cadaver, its halls choked with the stink of blood and burnt circuitry. The music had died somewhere between the first scream and the hundredth body, leaving only the arrhythmic drip of fluids and the low, insectile whir of dying cyberware. Maelstromers lay in heaps, their signature red optics flickering like dying embers. Some had been dismantled with surgical precision—sliced tendons, crushed windpipes. Others looked like they’d been fed through a woodchipper.

And we slogged through it all, hearts in our throats, praying we wouldn’t find Buster in the same state.

Jackson moved like a ghost, his shotgun sweeping the shadows. Every creak of the building, every distant groan of metal set his finger twitching on the trigger. Beast was worse—a storm given human form, his knuckles white around the grip of his pistol. He hadn’t looked at me since we’d stepped inside. Not really. Just sidelong glares, the kind that promised a reckoning once the dust settled.

If we lived that long.

Another scream tore through the darkness—closer this time—cutting off with a wet snap. My stomach lurched. Beast lunged forward, but Jackson caught his arm.

"Not yet," Jackson hissed. "We stick together. Whoever did this is still here."

The lights pulsed crimson, staining the walls like arterial spray. My HUD flickered—interference. Something in the building was jamming signals. I tried to ping Buster’s tracker again. Alive. Close. But the signal was weak, fading in and out like a dying pulse.

Time was quickly running out and all three of us knew it all too well. If we didn't get to Buster soon, who knew what was going to happen? And with every pile of goons my gut feeling would switch between “whoever did this is on our side” and immediately followed by “are you sure about that?”

Then the doors slammed shut behind us.

One by one, heavy steel barriers crashed down, sealing us in. The sound was deafening—a tomb being sealed. I scrambled for my personal link, fingers trembling as I tried to hack the system. No good; the security was Maelstrom-grade: layers of ICE and brute-force encryption.

"Damn it!" I slammed a fist against the wall. "I can’t break through."

Beast snarled, shoving past me toward an access panel. His cybernetic fingers dug into the metal, peeling it back with a screech. Wires spilled out like guts.

"Just pick one," Jackson muttered, scanning the ceiling. "Vents? Service tunnels?"

I pulled up the club’s schematics. "There’s a maintenance shaft—shit!"

The lights died. All of them.

For three heartbeats, we stood in perfect darkness. Then the emergency strips flickered on, bathing the hallway in sickly green. Something scuttled in the walls.

Beast didn’t wait. He wrenched at the wires, sparks flying as he crossed circuits. The door groaned—then stopped, jammed halfway open.

"Move," he growled, shoving me out of the way once more.

We squeezed through, into a narrower hall. The air here was thicker, humid with the reek of ozone and something sweetly rotten. My boots stuck to the floor with every step.

Then we saw it.

A Maelstromer, slumped against the wall. His jaw was gone. Not torn off—removed. The edges were too clean, the metal frame polished where it had been unscrewed. Suddenly the corpse grabbed my ankle.

I crushed its skull under my boot before I’d fully registered it was moving. Too late. The ceiling rained debris as three more Maelstromers dropped into the hall, their gun barrels flashing in the strobe lights.

Jackson grunted as a bullet grazed his shoulder. Beast roared, emptying his clip into the closest attacker. Blood painted the walls.

Then my body took over.

Time slowed. My vision sharpened, edges tinged with the faint blue glow of tactical overlays I didn’t remember activating. I moved—sliding under gunfire, my palm slapping a quickhack into a Maelstromer’s exposed neural port. His scream cut off as his optics burst, viscous fluid running down his cheeks.

Spin. Crunch. My kick shattered the next attacker’s knee. He toppled forward—just in time for my knifehand strike to crush his throat.

"Nova, left!" Jackson barked.

I was already turning. My knife found the last Maelstromer’s eye socket, the blade punching through bone like paper. He spasmed, then dropped.

Silence.

My breath came in ragged gasps. My hands didn’t shake. My knife didn’t waver. That was the worst part—my body was calm. Like it had done this a thousand times before.

Beast stared at me. Not impressed. Furious.

"Stop showing off," he snarled, yanking me back from the corpse.

My arm twisted in his grip, tendons tightening—break his wrist, disarm him, pivot and strike—

NO.

I wrenched control back, freezing just before my fingers locked into a pressure point. Beast’s eyes widened. He felt it. The half-second where I’d almost turned on him.

"You wanna fight me now too?!" He shoved me into the wall. My head cracked against concrete.

A shadow moved behind him. A Maelstromer, half-dead, raising a pistol—

I didn’t think.

My knife left my hand before Beast had even turned. It thunked into the Maelstromer’s eye, hilt-deep. He crumpled.

Beast looked at the body. Then at me. Then at the knife in the corpse’s skull.

For one terrible second, I saw it in his face—he thought I’d aimed for him.

Jackson grabbed my arm, hauling me upright. "We gotta move. Now."

Beast turned away without a word.

My hands started shaking then.

A new sound cut through the chaos.

Laughter…

High, bright, and utterly out of place.

We froze. The laughter came again, bouncing off the walls, impossible to pinpoint. Then—

"Wow. You guys are dramatic."

The door hissed open. And there, leaning against the frame like they’d just finished a coffee break, was Buster—alive, unharmed, and holding a half-eaten burrito.

Behind them stood the solo.

She was wiry, her scarred smirk at odds with the tactical precision of her stance. But it was her eyes that hooked me—dark, assessing, familiar. They lingered on my face just a second too long, like she was matching me against a memory. Then it was gone, replaced by a lazy grin.

"Damn. You guys are fucked up."

Buster waved the burrito. "Miss me?"

I opened my mouth to reply—when the solo’s gaze dropped to my hands. My shaking hands. Something unreadable flashed across her face.

Then the lights cut out again.

"Move," she said—and for the first time, there was no humor in her voice.

She was a silhouette cut from shadow—black leather, dark hair, eyes that glinted like a predator’s in the low light. In a movement that almost defied physics, she effortlessly scaled the wall and jumped into the hole in the ceiling. 

What followed were brief sounds of a fight before her head reappeared in the opening, hair swaying side to side.

"Took you long enough," she said, voice syrup-smooth. "I was starting to think I’d have to carry you out."

I blinked. "How the hell did you—"

"Magic." She dropped to the ground, landing without a sound and circled me while tilting her head. "Hm. You’re taller than I pictured."

"Do you mind?" I jerked as she plucked a strand of Maelstrom gore from my sleeve, examined it, then flicked it away. "Messy. Nela would’ve tsk’d at you."

“Who?”

She glided back in front of my face. For a second I saw a calculating gaze, but just as quickly she booped my nose and winked at me. "Don’t worry about it, kitten. Just call me Jax!"

Then she lunged—not at me, but past me, driving a knife into the eye of a Maelstromer none of us had noticed. The body dropped. Jax wiped the blade on her thigh and sighed.

"Ugh. Now my jacket’s ruined." She peeled it off, tossed it onto the corpse, and lit it on fire with a pocket lighter. "Problem solved."

Buster blinked. "That was Arasaka leather."

"And now it’s a cultural statement." Jax stretched, catlike, then slung an arm around my shoulders. "So! Who’s ready to burn this place down?"

Before I could even open my mouth—

BOOM.

The far wall exploded. Jax winked. "Oops. Timer was shorter than I thought."

Smoke coiled around us. Buster coughed, waving a hand. "A little warning next time?!"

"Where’s the fun in that?" Jax perched on a pile of Maelstrom corpses, cleaning her knife like it was a dinner fork.

I glared. "You enjoy this shit?"

Her grin didn’t reach her eyes. "Nah. But I’m really good at faking it."

Jackson’s shotgun clicked as he leveled it at her. "Who the hell are you?"

Jax sighed, twirling her blade. "Just your friendly ex-barista. Currently very unemployed."

Beast stepped closer, his voice a gravel rumble. "I call bullshit."

Jax’s smile faded. "Yeah. Well. People change."

Buster touched their missing earring, suddenly pale. "Jax. Where’d you find me?"

Jax’s gaze flicked to me—just for a second—before she shrugged. "Follow the sparkles."

Sparkles in question were a barely visible trail of grenade pins.

Then she tossed something at my feet. A Zetatech access card.

I picked it up. The name etched into it?

ZT-2062-11234

N. Nováčková

My stomach dropped. "What the hell is this?"

Jax stretched, catlike. "Homework." She turned to leave.

"Wait—" I grabbed her arm.

She moved—faster than I could react—twisting my grip until my wrist bent at a dangerous angle. Her voice was a whisper. "Ask me again after you’ve earned it, kitten."

Then she released me, sauntering toward the exit. "Come on, Buster. Let’s get you properly patched up."

Buster hesitated, glancing back at me. Their usual grin was gone. In its place—something like guilt. Or fear.

Jackson barred her path. "You’re not going anywhere—"

"Jackson." Beast’s voice was low. "Let her go."

A beat. Then Jackson stepped aside.

Jax glanced back at me, her smirk sharp. "Next time? Rely on yourself and not your fancy chrome."

And with that, she vanished into the smoke—Buster in tow.

I stared at the card in my hand. N. Nováčková. A name that meant nothing to me.

Or did it? A growing nagging feeling in my gut wanted to disagree.

The office stank of synth-coffee and bad decisions. Liz rolled the credchip between her fingers, feeling its weight - too light for what it demanded. The hologram flickered to life above her palm, casting sickly green light across her weathered features.

TARGET: Genevieve Martin

STATUS: Unknown

LAST KNOWN: Charter Hill penthouse 

BOUNTY: 85,000 eddies (alive), 50,000 (dead)

CLIENT: [REDACTED]

 

The handler's grin revealed stained teeth. "Heard you specialize in messy jobs."

Liz's thumb hovered over the chip. 85k for one scientist? Martin had to know where the bodies were buried—maybe literally. Instead of a response - a raised eyebrow.

A shrug. "Client insists on discretion. Wants her quiet before the voting starts.”

Liz's knuckles whitened around the chip. So that was the play - some exec covering tracks. The hologram's glow reflected in her cybereye, painting her vision in toxic green.

When the projection winked out, the darkened screen behind the handler showed more than just Liz's reflection. For half a heartbeat, she saw familiar dark hair, a scarred smirk that still haunted her dreams. Jax.

Her hand went to the pistol at her hip before she could stop it. The handler tensed, his own guards shifting in the shadows.

"Problem?"

Liz forced her fingers to relax. The ghost was gone. Again. "Tell our client they're underpaying by half." She pocketed the chip and stood, her long coat swirling around her legs. "And that I want full tactical support. Martin won't come quietly. Especially if she makes contact with you know who…"

The handler's smile didn't reach his eyes. "We'll... convey your concerns."

Rain sheeted against the windows as Liz stepped into the neon-lit night. Surely somewhere in Charter Hill, Genevieve Martin was sleeping soundly in her gilded cage. Liz lit a cigarette, the ember glowing like a targeting laser in the gloom.

She exhaled smoke into the downpour. "Should've stayed quiet, Martin."

Chapter Text

“Thank you, Annabelle,” Trin said, flexing her newly chromed fingers. The servos whirred softly, still syncing with her neural impulses.

The techie slammed their wrench down. “For the last time, it’s not my name anymore.”

Trin smirked, rolling her shoulders to test the range of motion. “You’ll always be Annabelle to me.”

She ducked out of the tent just as a hulking nomad staggered in—a walking mountain of scar tissue and fresh synthskin where his right hand used to be. The man’s face was thunder.

“You good?” He said, pointing to the door.

“Peachy,” they muttered, wiping grease off their forehead with the back of their wrist. “Our fearless leader is not prohibiting me from transitioning. Just butchering my name like it’s her damn right.”

“Cut her some slack. She’s old-school.”

B snorted and kicked a crate open. “Old-school’s a fancy word for asshole.” They hauled out a sleek neural interface module, its surface matte black except for the pulsing blue vein along the spine. “Check this. Muscle-actuated finger controls—no internal infrastructure, no corporate backdoors. Runs on your own biofeedback.” A twist of their wrist made the module unfold like origami. “Maintenance? Easy. Cyberpsychosis risk?” They grinned. “Practically zero.”

 * * *

The abandoned warehouse loomed around us, its skeletal rafters groaning like an old man who’d just seen his taxes. Dust swirled in the air, catching the fractured light like lazy fireflies. And in the middle of it all—Jax, spinning a knife on her fingertip like it was a fidget toy.

"Alright, kitten," she purred, her grin sharp enough to cut glass. "Let’s see if you can keep up with me."

She twirled a knife between her fingers, the blade glinting wickedly. "Ooooh, look at you, all serious and prepared," she cooed, tilting her head. "That’s adorable. You know what’s cuter? When you scream."

I swallowed. Hard.

Jax lunged—not with the smooth precision of a trained fighter, but with the chaotic, limb-flailing energy of a raccoon on espresso. I barely dodged, stumbling back as she cackled.

"Aw, c’mon, kitten!" she teased, bouncing on the balls of her feet. "You’re moving like my grandma—and she’s dead!"

I tried to mirror her stance, but she just stuck her tongue out and cartwheeled past me, landing with a dramatic flourish. "Booooring! Where’s the spice? The drama? The—OH!" She suddenly gasped, pointing behind me. "IS THAT A PUPPY?!"

I spun—idiot—and got a playful kick to the ribs for my trouble.

"PSYCH!" Jax cackled, skipping backwards. "Rule one, babycakes—never trust a pretty face!" She winked, then threw her knife—not at me, but past me, embedding it into a rotting support beam. A second later, the whole thing creaked ominously.

Before I could catch my breath, she lunged again—not like a soldier, not like a fighter, but like a firework that forgot it was supposed to explode up and not at my face. I barely dodged, my back hitting a rusted shipping container with a hollow clang.

Jax pouted. "Aww, you’re no fun! You’re supposed to hit me, not cuddle the scenery!" She flipped her hair, then suddenly gasped, pointing over my shoulder. "OH MY GOD, IS THAT ANOTHER PUPPY?!"

I didn’t fall for it this time.

I should’ve.

Her foot hooked behind my ankle, and the world tilted. I hit the concrete with a grunt, the impact rattling my teeth. Jax loomed over me, her shadow stretching like a villain’s in a bad cartoon.

"Rule number two," she chirped, tapping my nose. "Distractions come in paaairs."

Then she stomped.

I rolled just in time, her boot cracking the concrete where my head had been. Holy shit, she wasn’t holding back.

We danced across the warehouse floor—her with the grace of a hyena on a sugar rush, me with the coordination of a baby giraffe on roller skates. She’d feint left, then literally drop to the ground and sweep my legs. I’d block high, and she’d lick my elbow just to make me recoil.

"Ew! What the hell?!" I spat, wiping my arm on my shirt.

Jax cackled, bouncing backwards. "Psychological warfare, baby! Bet you won’t forget to keep eye contact that next time!"

I charged, finally landing a solid shove that sent her skidding back. She caught herself on a wooden pallet, then—with zero hesitation—kicked it at me. I ducked, splinters raining down as it shattered against the wall behind me.

"Okay, what is your problem?!" I wheezed, clutching my knees.

Jax just grinned, tossing her knife in the air and catching it behind her back. "Boredom. Also, you’re adorable when you’re pissed."

After what felt like an eternity of getting my ass handed to me in increasingly creative ways, Jax finally called it.

"Alright, kitten, break time!" She flopped onto a stack of crates, stretching like a cat in a sunbeam. I groaned, stumbling toward my bag—only to find my water bottle missing.

I turned.

Jax was already drinking from it.

"Hey!" I snapped.

She took an obnoxiously long sip, then sighed like she’d just tasted the nectar of the gods. "Mmm. Salty." She winked. "Must be your tears."

I stared, deadpan. "You’re the worst."

Jax threw her head back and laughed, loud enough to scare the pigeons roosting in the rafters. "And yet, you love me." She tossed the bottle back—empty—and hopped up, ruffling my hair like I was a misbehaving puppy.

The sound of the side door opening caught our attention as the dust motes got illuminated by a ray of sunshine from the outside. A trio of edgerunners walked in, clearly in the middle of yet another heated argument.

"Look, Jackson, you can't expect us to voluntarily drag our asses to the Badlands based on Regina's hunch," said Buster, flailing their arms around. Behind them, practically joined at the hip was Beast. It's been like this for the entire week since the Totentanz incident, not that I blamed the nomad. “You might know the city well, but Badlands is our stomping ground. If we go there, we’ll either end up in a Raffen ambush or we’ll be too late to help the poor fucker anyway.”

"And you want to keep sitting on our asses for another week?" Jackson was just as animated as Buster. "Besides, we're not exactly rich enough to deny gigs from the one fixer still working with us."

"My offer to help with expenses still stands, you know," I chimed in, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge.

"Out of the question, Nova. That's your money."

"Okay, I'll bite. What's the gig?" Jax joined in, grabbing my water bottle with a wink.

"Reggie called us just now, saying there's a potential cyberpsycho in the badlands. Normally she gives us a call as it's happening, but this time she says there's just a chance of one, rather than an attack. All three of us have been debating if we want to go for it or not."

"Even Beast?" my remark was met with a stern look from the nomad. Jackson didn't bother responding.

"So now that there's all five of us here, what do we think?"

After a brief discussion it was decided that Jax and I would take the recently purchased bikes and go ahead to scout, while Jackson and the nomads would follow us in the Thorton. Jax insisted on me getting a bike in order to not rely on others for transportation. It's been a week since we ran into her at Totentanz and after she brought back Buster after a night of doing who knows what with them, it seems like she made it her mission to train me to become an edgerunner. While I still wasn't sure about her reasons for doing so, or even what happened after the events at the club, any help was be appreciated, given that my internal compass has been awfully quiet as of late.

Slowly the scenery changed from a complicated maze of tall buildings to the vast loneliness of the desert. Before long, our bikes were the only two vehicles traveling down a lonely, abandoned highway. The coordinates of a potential attack were still a few miles away, and my shiny new Apollo struggled to keep up with Jax’s Arch—making me regret not splurging on something faster.

The bikes were as mismatched to us as we were to each other. Mine was a neon-streaked street demon — all flash and reckless curves, with no real power behind it. Hers was a hulking bruiser, built more for endurance than speed. I hoped, bitterly, that the sheer size of her machine might force her into calm — a much-needed reprieve from our sparring sessions.

And yet Jax rode like she fought—unpredictable, all sharp cuts and sudden accelerations. One second she’d be weaving lazily, the next she’d gun it, leaving me choking on dust. Every time I caught up, she’d flick a mocking salute or blow me a kiss.

Asshole.

Then, without warning, she raised a fist and killed her engine, gliding to a stop behind a jagged rock formation. I barely managed not to rear-end her.

“Quiet now, kitten,” she murmured, sliding off her bike with feline grace. Her usual manic grin was gone, replaced by something sharper—a hunter’s focus. She tapped her lips, then pointed toward the ridge.

I followed, crouching low. The desert heat pressed down like a fist, the air thick with the scent of rust and dry earth. Jax unslung her rifle but didn’t raise it yet. Instead, she pulled out binoculars and peered over the rocks.

A slow, wicked smile curled her lips. “There she is.”

I took the binoculars. Below us, a lone figure stood amidst the carnage—a nomad, tall and lethal, her dreadlocks whipping in the wind like battle standards. Bodies littered the ground around her, Raffen Shiv by the look of them.

Jax’s voice was a whisper, but her eyes were alight. “Ooooh, she’s fun. Look at that stance—like a wolf who just realized she’s the only predator left.” She tilted her head. “Think she’ll play nice?”

I checked my messages. “Jackson’s ETA is ten minutes.”

Jax snorted. “Plenty of time for diplomacy.” She wiggled her fingers in air quotes before patting my shoulder. “So? Wanna try talking her down, or should I just put a round through her knee and call it a day?”

“I’ll talk first,” I said, loading EMP grenades into my belt. “If she snaps, we hit hard.”

Jax gave me a salute, already slinking into a sniper’s perch. “Knock ‘em dead, kid. Or I will.”

I crept forward, pulse hammering. The nomad hadn’t moved, just stood there, staring at her hands like they belonged to someone else.

“Are you okay?” I said, cautiously, preparing to unleash a flurry of quickhacks her way if she even thought of attacking. But she just stood there, silent, for what felt like an eternity.

"I.. Killed them... all," the nomad finally spoke in a lost, emotionless voice. "All my people..."

"The Raffen Shiv? But you don't look like one of them."

A quick glance at my timer revealed that the crew was just a few minutes away at this point.

"They... Weren't... Always... Raffen Shiv," every single word coming out of her mouth took effort and almost sucked her life force in the process. "They... Were... My... People... Bakkers…"

"What's your name?" while trying to stay as gentle as possible so as not to provoke her, I continued, hearing the engine of Buster's Thorton coming to a halt out of sight.

"Holy shit! Trin?!", Buster yelled out before the nomad could answer. In a robotic manner, Trin turned towards them and her face showed genuine surprise.

"Anna... Belle... Annabelle...!!!"

The desert wind howled as Trin Bakker lunged, her cybernetic claws glinting in the sun. Buster stood frozen, their usual bravado shattered—face pale, eyes locked on the woman who’d once been their clan leader.

"₳₦₦₳฿ɆⱠⱠɆ" Trin’s voice was a broken synth-growl, half-human, half-machine.

She moved faster than anything that size should—a blur of matte-black chrome and whipping dreadlocks. Beast barely intercepted her, taking a raking slash across his ribs that split synthflesh like wet paper. He roared and body-checked her into a rusted car frame, but Trin twisted mid-impact, kicking off the metal to launch herself back at Buster.

"Buster, MOVE!" Jax’s voice cracked like a whip.

She tackled Buster sideways just as Trin’s claws came down—but not fast enough. The tips grazed Jax’s shoulder, shredding leather and skin in a spray of blood. Jax hissed through her teeth but didn’t slow, rolling to her feet and shoving Buster behind her.

"The hell is wrong with you?!" she snarled, wiping blood from her collarbone with her thumb and flicking it aside. "Wanna die nostalgic?!"

Buster stammered, "I—she’s—"

"Save the soap opera for after we stop Murder Barbie!" Jax fired three rounds into Trin’s knees while backpedaling—her usual grace slightly off, favoring her injured side. The bullets sparked off armored joints, but the distraction gave Beast an opening. He grabbed Trin from behind in a bear hug, his biceps straining against her thrashing.

Trin’s elbow snapped back into his gut hard enough to make him wheeze, then she slammed her skull into his nose with a wet crunch. Beast staggered but held on, blood dripping onto Trin’s dreadlocks like macabre jewelry.

"Now, Nova!" Jax barked.

I unleashed the quickhack, feeling Trin’s systems recoil—not just resisting, but fighting back with counter-intrusion protocols that made my vision swim with error warnings. For a terrifying second, nothing happened.

Then Jax was there, limping forward with her shock baton held like a conductor’s baton. "Lullaby time, sweetheart." She jammed it into Trin’s exposed neural port.

Trin’s scream cut off as her body locked up, every muscle and servo seizing at once. Buster didn’t hesitate—they lunged and slammed the ICE shard home with a palm-strike that sounded like a gunshot.

Silence.

Trin swayed for an endless moment, her human eye rolling back before she collapsed. Buster caught her, their arms shaking as they lowered her to the ground with Beast’s help. "It’s okay, Trin," they whispered, brushing dirt from her cheek with their thumb. "You’re safe now."

The desert wind howled around us, kicking up swirls of dust that clung to Trin’s limp form like a shroud. For a heartbeat, no one moved—no one even breathed. The silence was thicker than the blood soaking the sand.

Then Buster exhaled, shaky and raw, their fingers trembling as they brushed a dreadlock from Trin’s face. "Fuck. Fuck, I knew something was off when she went radio-silent last month." Their voice cracked, the usual bravado stripped away. "Should’ve pushed harder. Should’ve—"

Beast’s hand clamped down on their shoulder, his grip tight enough to bruise. "Not your fault," he rumbled, his own jaw clenched. "Raffen don’t leave survivors. You and I both know…" He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to.

I swallowed hard, my HUD still flashing warnings from the quickhack’s backlash. Trin’s cyberware had fought my intrusion like a cornered animal—wrong, something about it was wrong. Most ‘psychos’ were drowning in system alerts, their chrome screaming for control. Hers had been… quiet. A puppet with cut strings.

Jax materialized beside me, her rifle slung low but her eyes sharp. "You see it too," she muttered, not a question. "That wasn’t standard cyberpsychosis. Her implants were hijacked."

A cold prickle ran down my spine. "You think the Raffen—?"

"Wouldn’t put it past ‘em," Jackson cut in, his boots crunching on shattered cyberlimbs as he surveyed the carnage. His face was grim under the shadow of his hat. "Gang’s got a rep for slapping crude override chips on prisoners. Turn ‘em into meat puppets for a few hours. Long enough to wipe out their own kin, but I have a feeling that Trin and Michael might have something in common…"

Buster made a sound like a gutted animal. Beast’s grip on them tightened, but his glare was fixed on Trin’s unconscious body. "We take her to Regina," he said, low and final. "She’s got docs who can dig into her systems. Find the trigger."

Jax nodded, already pulling a stim from her belt. "And if it’s still in there?"

A beat. Then Buster responded with no emotions in their voice. "Then we burn it out. I’ll rip it out with my own teeth if I have to."

The resolve in their voice left no room for argument. But as Buster carefully cradled Trin’s head, their thumbs smearing dirt from her cheeks, I caught the way their lips moved—silent words, maybe a prayer. The kind you only learned in the Badlands, where ghosts outnumbered the living.

I turned away, giving them the illusion of privacy. The sun was dipping low now, painting the rocks in shades of rust and old blood. Somewhere out there, the real culprits were licking their wounds. Or laughing.

The desert wind howled around us, kicking up dust that stuck to the blood on Jax’s shoulder. She ignored it, slumping against a rock and lighting a cigarette with her non-shaking hand. The rest of us scrambled—Beast pressing a wad of gauze to his nose, Jackson radioing Regina, Buster cradling Trin’s head like she might dissolve.

I grabbed the medkit from my bike and marched toward Jax. She blew smoke in my face before I could speak.

"Uh-uh, rookie." She jerked her chin toward Buster, now whispering to Trin’s unconscious form. "Fix them first."

"They’re not bleeding!" I snapped.

Jax smirked, tapping ash onto the sand. "Neither am I." A blatant lie—her jacket’s torn shoulder was dark and slick. "Besides, someone’s gotta keep watch in case Raffen come sniffing around their dead buddies."

I opened my mouth to argue—

"Nova." Her voice dropped, just for me. No theatrics, no teasing. "Check on Buster. Now."

I hesitated, then obeyed. By the time I’d confirmed Buster was physically unharmed (emotionally? A lost cause), Jax had already duct-taped her wound shut and was perched on a boulder like a vulture, scanning the horizon through her rifle scope.

Hours later, when we finally got word from Reggie that the transport was on the way along with reinforcements, Jax finally let Beast disinfect her shoulder, his massive hands surprisingly gentle. She didn’t flinch when the alcohol hit—just locked eyes with Buster across the cab.

"Next time you freeze up like that," she said, flicking her cigarette ash toward Trin’s unconscious form, "I’m letting her carve ‘Annabelle’ into your chest. Might help you remember who the fuck you aren’t anymore."

Buster’s breath hitched—not at the threat, but at the name. Their fingers twitched toward their own throat, where Trin’s claws had nearly ripped out a past they’d buried.

"Jax," Beast warned, low and rough.

"What? Just saying." Jax grinned, all teeth, and stole Buster’s soda. "Deadnames get you killed faster than bullets out here." She took a swig, then shoved the can into Buster’s hands. "Drink. You look like a ghost."

Chapter Text

As the fiery orb of the sun dipped below the skyline of Night City, casting a warm, amber glow over the towering monoliths of Corpo Plaza, a small cafe nestled on its edge came alive with the quiet murmurs of patrons winding down their day. The gentle hum of distant traffic mixed with the soft lapping of waves against the nearby pier, creating a serene backdrop for the two women seated at a corner table. Their intimacy was palpable, their gestures and glances speaking volumes of a connection deeper than mere friendship. As they sipped their drinks, their hands occasionally brushed against each other, lingering just a bit longer than necessary. Their laughter, though soft, carried an undercurrent of shared secrets and unspoken desires, punctuating the tranquil ambiance of the sunset over the Pacific. In the dwindling light, their eyes met with a warmth that hinted at a relationship that defied easy labels, a complex blend of friendship, passion, and unspoken promises against the backdrop of Night City's relentless pulse.

"So how's your promotion treating you? Feel like a big shot yet?" Jackie was sipping on an overpriced gin and tonic while looking at the sun slowly falling below the horizon. In front of her sat a blonde woman in an expensive suit. The delicate frame of her glasses complimented her facial features perfectly; her pale skin, radiating in the golden hour. In her hand she had a tall glass of champagne, the bubbles sparkling in the scarlet sunlight. 

"Oh you know, same shit, different paycheck, but hey, I got a nice little desk in a corner office and all that. The view's killer though, can't complain about that."

Jackie's gaze flickered towards the horizon, where the last rays of sunlight painted the sky in hues of crimson and gold.

"Is Hubbard the same old prick?"

"Yup. Did you two work together?"

Jackie's hand absently traced the rim of her glass, a distant look in her eyes hinting at memories best left undisturbed.

"Years ago. He contacted us to do a shadow op when I just joined the family. Let's just say, the asshole made an impression."

A wry smile tugged at the corners of Jackie's lips, a mix of amusement and bitterness playing across her features.

"I guess I shouldn't be surprised given your line of work."

"I guess you shouldn't..." Jackie's voice held a hint of resignation, tempered by a quiet determination.

The slightly awkward silence briefly engulfed the two women. Jackie's profession was rarely brought up, despite them having a chance meeting because of it. Finally the other woman spoke up.

"Hey, Jackie, listen... I need you to promise me something."

The sounds of the busy intersection not that far away on one side and the rustling of the waves on the other created a perfect ambience for the words exchanged in confidence between two women. Jackie reached out and gently touched the other woman's hand.

"Sure thing, Nova."

***

The warehouse lights buzzed like dying wasps.

Buster hadn’t moved in three hours.

They sat cross-legged in the nest of scavenged tech and half-dismantled weapons they’d claimed as their corner, fingers hovering over the neural dampener they’d pulled from Trin’s neck. The tiny device glinted under the flickering fluorescents—Akagi Cybernetics stamped on its casing, same as the mantis blades that had shredded Kabuki.

Across the room, Beast watched them with the quiet intensity of a guard dog. His shotgun lay disassembled across his knees, cleaning long finished. He didn’t speak. None of us did.

Not since the Badlands.

Not since Trin had looked at Buster with recognition instead of rage, her chrome-laced fingers trembling around their wrist as the dampener shorted her systems to silence.

"Anna… belle…"

A screwdriver clattered to the floor. Buster stared at their hands like they’d betrayed them.

I exhaled through my nose, tossing another log into the barrel-fire. "Choom’s gonna rust if they don’t move soon."

Jax didn’t look up from sharpening her tanto. "They’re not a kid. And rust’s the least of our problems." Her blade caught the light as she tilted it, inspecting the edge. "You seen Jackson?"

Beast’s jaw tightened as he replied from the other side of the room. "Roof. Again."

A beat. The fire popped.

Then Jax was on her feet, knife sheathed, and marching toward Buster with the grace of a stormfront. "Up," she said, yanking them upright by their collar. "We’re going shopping."

Buster blinked, slow as a glitching drone. "The hell—?"

Jax shook them once, hard. "You smell like a landfill, your eyebags have eyebags, and if I have to watch you fondle that damn dampener one more time, I’m scrapping it AND YOU for parts." She shoved a duffel at their chest. "Shower. Now. Or I’ll hose you down in the alley."

Beast stood, a silent shadow at their back.

Buster opened their mouth—then closed it, shoulders slumping. "...Fine."

Feeling the satisfaction from that response, Jax pointed her chipped nail polish in my direction. "You coming too, kitten"

“Me? Why do you need me for?” 

“Well I can’t exactly drive and keep an eye on this one,” she picked up Buster in mid air slightly. Seriously, how does she have the strength for it? Reluctantly I followed her deeper into the warehouse.  

Before we did anything else, just like she promised, Jax dragged poor Buster into a shower, forcing them to wash off the week old desert dust mixed in with their body odor. In the shower, they scowled as the water hit their face. "This is… excessive," they muttered, voice raspy from disuse. After minimal struggle, all three of us started to look vaguely human again.

Our next stop was Jinguji’s downtown location. While the pretentious clientele did their best to ignore our existence, the sales person nearly jumped out of his shoes the moment he laid his eyes on Jax. One wave of her finger and we were surrounded by racks of the latest threads, each costing so much that even despite my plushy bank account, I would doubletake every time I glanced at the price tags. The stylist assigned to us had a hush conversation with Jax before calling each of us one at the time into a changing room. 

Jax emerged from the dressing room first, and for once, she didn’t look like she’d just rolled out of a dumpster fire. Her usual combat boots were swapped for knee-high synth-leather stilettos, their razor-sharp heels clicking like gunshots on the marble floor. She’d paired them with a crimonex bodysuit—liquid-fabric that shimmered between blood-red and vantablack as she moved—and a cropped armored blazer with asymmetric lapels that hid knife slits in the seams. The scars across her collarbones, usually buried under tactical gear, were now on full display, framed by a choker of tiny, pulsing LEDs that flickered like a predator’s heartbeat.

"Damn," Buster whistled. The sound seemed to startle even them. "You clean up like a corpo assassin."

Jax froze. My breath hitched. For a second, the boutique was silent.

Then Jax’s grin split her face. "Took you long enough, choom." The nomad instead dove straight for the changing room.

Buster’s transformation was more jarring. Gone were their grease-stained cargo pants; in their place, high-waisted, articulated slacks that shifted from matte black to iridescent chrome under the boutique’s lights. Their cropped cyberpunk jacket—lined with glowing circuit patterns—was unzipped to show off a holographic mesh shirt that projected a looping animation of a neon panther prowling across their chest. Even their discount cat-ear headband had been replaced with sleek, articulated cyber-ears that twitched in sync with their pulse. And here I thought the original ones were their actual chrome… 

"Do I look like a Mox groupie now?" they groaned, poking at the jacket’s tech.

"Nah," Jax said, adjusting their collar. "You look like a Mox investor… Now quit whining—your turn, Nova."

The stylist’s assistant nearly dropped their tablet when I stepped out, what’s to say of my two companion’s jaws…. 

Where Jax was sharp edges and Buster was tech-punk chaos, I looked like I’d been spit-polished by Arasaka’s personal aesthetic squad. The midnight-blue cocktail dress was deceptively simple—until the light hit it and revealed a constellation of micro-LEDs woven into the fabric, mimicking the Night City skyline. The backless cut exposed my neural ports, now adorned with dermal piercings that glowed like dying stars. 

My thigh-high boots were the only concession to practicality: sleek, matte-black synth-leather with reinforced toe caps—the kind worn by corpo assassins who needed to look flawless before snapping a target’s neck. A subtle monowire filament glinted at my wrists, threaded through bracelet-like housings. Less a weapon, more a whispered threat.

Buster’s jaw dropped. "Holy shit. You look like you’re about to bankrupt a CEO at poker."

Jax’s grin faltered for half a second. "Yeah," she said, voice oddly quiet. "Almost like someone else I knew."

The stylist beamed. "A masterpiece! The contrast—ferocity and elegance, chaos and control! You three could be the face of Jinguji’s winter line—"

"Hard pass," Jax said, tossing the credit chip at them. "We’ve got a club to burn down."

Without much trouble, apart from having to manhandle a depressed nomad and their mood shifts here and there, we made it to Jig-Jig street. Something about this place felt familiar… and very depressing. As if some of my repressed memories were ready to pop out at a moment's notice. Sadly my internal digging was put on a backburner for now, since Buster’s situation was more urgent. 

Meanwhile Jax led us into a side alley and pointed to the elevator. 

“Are you ready, kids?” 

“For what?” No humor in Buster’s voice but at least there was curiosity about what was happening to them. 

“For the most exclusive experience of your life!” Jax replied, pushing the button to the third floor.

As the elevator doors opened, we were treated to a sight of a busy night club. On one hand it looked like many other niche clubs of Night City, but that was only on first glance. If you looked closer, you could see the city’s elites, high ranking corpos and politicians casually enjoying their time in the company of ridiculously attractive men, women and anyone in-between. Looking at my expression, Jax said in a low tone, “there used to be another similar club in Charter Hill, but after Wendon Holt kicked the bucket there, everyone moved here. Can’t leave the royalty without entertainment for too long after all.” 

In this extravagant environment, our company, even though we traded our dirty clothes and body odor for some nice threads and perfume, stood out like a sore thumb. And yet, nobody seemed to mind. There wasn’t even a bouncer at the door. Noticing my confusion, Jax clarified. 

“This place is not only top secret but invite only. Unless you have a special chip implanted in you, you won’t be able to even get onto this floor. Lucky for you two, you’re with me. Come on, my little ducklings, first round is on me!”

The drinks kept coming and coming, and yet there was no change to how Jax was acting. That woman could drink anyone under the table, even the nomad who’s used to drinking industrial alcohol, as was evident by Buster’s mood change. 

They were no longer a walking corpse—they were a toddler. Incoherent mumbling mixed with flailing arms and inability to sit up straight, let alone stand were the new norm for our beloved nomad. Well, it could be classified as progress I guess. Suddenly Buster grabbed their mouth and to the sound of “Oh no you don’t!” Jax ushered them into the restroom.

The lights in the club pulsed like a dying heart. Across the floor, synth-bass dripped through the air like molasses, thick and intoxicating.

I slipped toward the bar, half to escape the noise, half to keep Jax from noticing I needed air. Buster had just tried to order a drink called "Turbo Daddy Emotion Slush," and Jax was mid-negotiation with the server over whether that was an actual menu item.

I leaned on the bar, elbows heavy, trying not to think. Then someone slid into the seat beside me without a sound.

She wasn’t flashy like the corpo girls pretending to be chromed-up punks. No neon, no glow-tats—just a woman in a tailored slate-gray suit, her fingers laced around a glass of something clear and untouched.

"You always this quiet?" she asked, her voice smooth, accent curling like smoke.

I glanced sideways. “Depends on who’s asking.”

She smiled, tilting her head. “Ah. So defensive already. Genevieve did say you were… jumpy.”

My stomach dropped. Genevieve Martin . The name hit like a stray bullet—that weird French woman in Kabuki, the one who’d known my name before I did, sent me a message just a few days prior, but with everything going on in our lives at the moment I didn’t think to respond yet.

“Who?” I kept my voice flat.

The woman laughed, low and honeyed. “Oh, ma chérie , did Mademoiselle Martin not introduce herself? How incredibly rude of her.” She swirled her drink, ice clinking. “She told me so much about you. Nova—or should I say…”

A hand slammed down between us—Jax’s, her freshly chromed nails digging into the bar.

“There you are,” she said, voice razor-light. Too light. Her eyes flicked to the woman for half a second—just long enough to catch the tiniest twitch in the woman’s smile. A silent exchange. Then Jax grinned, all teeth, and turned to me. “Buster just puked in a senator’s handbag. We’re leaving.”

The woman sighed, standing smoothly. “Another time, then.” She pressed something into my palm—a coin-sized chip, cold as a scalpel. “Tell Genevieve she owes me a drink.”

Jax’s grip on my arm tightened—not enough to hurt, but enough to say move now. As she dragged me away, I caught her glancing back over her shoulder, her free hand flexing like she was itching for a weapon.

The woman raised her glass in a mock toast, her eyes locked on Jax.

“See ya later, wildcat...”

Jax stiffened.

Then the crowd swallowed us whole.

Jax didn't slow down until we'd shoved through three layers of crowd, her grip vise-tight on my wrist. The bass throbbed like a migraine.

"Who the hell was—" I started.

"Not here," she hissed. Her pupils were blown wide, scanning the exits.

A high-pitched feedback whine cut through the music. The DJ's holographic avatar glitched violently, its face stretching into a scream before dissolving into static.

Then the music stopped.

All at once, every person in the club froze mid-motion. A corpo's champagne flute hovered an inch from their lips. A joytoy's laugh cut off mid-peal. Even the bartender's shaking cocktail tin went still.

One of the joytoys broke away from the crowd—not physically, but her eyes. While the rest stared through us, hers found mine. The red glow in her irises flickered, glitched—then vanished, revealing deep brown, terrified.

She tilted her head.

“Vee?” she whispered, the word cracking like old vinyl. “Is it really you?”

My breath caught. “What did you just—?”

Before I could finish, her eyes rolled back, syncing again with the crowd, face snapping back into that same plastic serenity.

Buster stumbled out of the bathroom, wiping their mouth. "Uh. Did I miss a memo—"

A hundred voices spoke as one:

"Insolentes contra Dominum in tenebras aeternas mittenur." 

"The insolent against the Lord shall be cast into eternal darkness."

The words translated in my HUD slithered up my spine. Church Latin, but wrong—gutteral, like it had been chewed up and spat out by a dozen different accents. The crowd's mouths moved in perfect unison, their eyes rolled back to show the whites.

Jax had her tanto out before the last syllable faded. "Back to the elevator. Now."

The first head turned. Then another. Not jerky like puppets—smooth, inhumanly precise. A woman in a feathered headdress rotated her neck 180 degrees to stare at us, her smile stretching far enough to split skin at the corners.

"Nova..." they breathed, a chorus of wet clicks underlying the word. "We see you."

Buster made a sound like a stepped-on cat. "What the fuck is—"

The lights died.

In the sudden blackness, a thousand pinpricks of light ignited—every reflective surface in the club now gleamed with the same sickening red hue. The crowd’s eyes.

The air thickened, pressing against my skin like a living thing. My breath came in shallow gasps, the scent of ozone and something metallic—blood? Burning circuitry?—clogging my throat. The crowd’s synchronized voices didn’t sound human anymore. They were a distortion, a chorus of overlapping whispers and guttural static, as if whatever spoke through them couldn’t quite mimic a real voice.

"TEMPUS VINDICTAE ADEST!"

"The time of vengeance is here!"

The voices boomed, and then the screaming started.

A corpo near the bar lurched forward, his spine arching backward at an impossible angle. His jaw unhinged, tendons snapping audibly, and a stream of blackened fluid poured from his mouth—not blood, but something viscous and shimmering, like liquid data. It hit the floor with a hiss, eating through the polished tiles like acid.

Chaos detonated around us—glasses shattered, bodies convulsed, some people dropping like puppets with cut strings while others clawed at their own skin, screaming words that didn’t belong to them. A table caught fire. Buster shrieked something about a holy blender.

"Move!" Jax snarled, shoving me forward. Her tanto flashed, severing the wrist of a joytoy who lunged at us with fingers bent into talons. The detached hand hit the floor, twitching, its synth-skin peeling back to reveal glistening chrome bones that still flexed, grasping at empty air.

We moved fast, ducking under twitching limbs and leaping over spasming corpos, Jax carving a path with her tanto and a snarl.

Buster stumbled, their boot slipping in a pool of that same inky fluid. "The fuck is this shit?!" they yelled, kicking it off like it might crawl up their leg. A nearby mirror exploded, glass shards hovering mid-air for a heartbeat before reversing trajectory—straight toward us. Jax yanked Buster down as the projectiles embedded themselves in the wall behind us, quivering like thrown knives, glowing with red static.

Then I saw her again—the joytoy who’d recognized me. She was crouched behind the bar, her brown eyes wide with terror, lips moving soundlessly. When our eyes met, she mouthed a single word: "Run."

The crowd’s chant shifted, their heads snapping toward us in unison.

"Flesh is code. Code is flesh."

The syllables dripped with hunger.

The crowd’s chant pulsed like a heartbeat, their bodies moving in unnatural sync, blocking every exit. The elevator doors were sealed shut, the control panel dark. Jax cursed, slamming her palm against the metal. “Wired shut. We’re locked in.”

Buster’s breath came fast, their pupils dilated—not just from fear, but calculation. Their fingers twitched toward the cyber-ears Jinguji stylist had forced them into earlier. “These things just for show, or they got actual tech in ‘em?”

Jax didn’t hesitate. “Full-spectrum receivers. Why?”

“Because I’m about to make some noise.” Buster ripped off an ear, fingers flying as they pried open the casing. “Club’s got a central sound system, right? That means a control hub—probably near the DJ booth.”

I stared. “You’re gonna hack a speaker?”

“Better.” Their grin was feral. “I’m gonna weaponize it.”

Across the room, the crowd lurched forward, limbs jerking like marionettes. The joytoy who’d warned us collapsed, her body seizing as red static crackled across her skin.

Buster worked fast, splicing wires from their cyber-ear into a stolen cocktail stirrer. “Jax—distract ‘em. Nova—get ready to run.”

Jax didn’t ask questions. She flipped her tanto into a reverse grip and charged, blade flashing as she carved through the advancing crowd. A corpo’s head snapped sideways, his neck bending too far, too wrong, but Jax was already pivoting, her boot crushing the kneecap of a chrome-laced bouncer.

Buster lunged for the DJ booth, vaulting over a table littered with broken glass. The booth’s controls were locked behind biometrics, but Buster didn’t need access—they jammed their makeshift device into the auxiliary port.

The club’s speakers screamed.

A feedback shriek tore through the air, so high-pitched it felt like needles in my teeth. The crowd staggered, hands clapped over ears that weren’t theirs anymore. Lights flickered madly, strobes syncing with the noise, turning the room into a disorienting hellscape of light and sound.

“Now!” Buster yelled.

We ran.

The elevator doors were still dead, but Buster wasn’t done. They wrenched open a service panel beside it, fingers dancing over exposed circuits. “Backup power’s gotta—ha!” A spark, a hiss, and the emergency hydraulics kicked in, the doors groaning open just wide enough to squeeze through.

Jax went first, dragging me after her. Buster dove in last as hands—too many hands—clawed at their jacket. The doors crushed a wrist on the way shut, bone snapping, but the owner didn’t even scream.

Silence.

The elevator descended, the only sound was our ragged breathing. Buster slumped against the wall, their face slick with sweat. “Told you I’d get us out.”

Jax wiped her blade clean on her sleeve. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t get cocky, kid.” But the smirk tugging at her lips said everything.

Outside, Night City’s neon glow never felt so much like safety.

As soon as we were able to break out of the club, Jax yanked the chip out of my hand and crushed it on the ground with her heel. Then she forcefully pressed me into the wall. 

“What did she say to you exactly ?” Jax’s voice was a blade against my throat.  

I swallowed. “She kept going on and on about Genevieve.”  

Jax’s grip faltered—just for a heartbeat. Then her jaw tightened. “I’m sorry, kitten, but knowing her it’s safe to assume that she’s dead already…”  

Buster stared between us. “Uh, the fuck kinda soap opera did I miss—?”  

Jax silenced them with a glare. “We’re going dark. Now! ”  

Chapter Text

The neon washes everyone in the same sickly glow. Corpos, joytoys, scavs—all just meat under the lights. Easier that way. Less thinking. Less remembering.

Lina nudges me, her elbow sharp. "You’re doing it again, Vee."

"Doing what?"

"Staring like you’re trying to set someone on fire with your mind." She nods toward the soycaf stand. "See someone you know?"

I don’t. At least, I shouldn’t.

But then…

A solo, leaning against the stall’s awning. Black hair slicked back, one boot propped on the crate beside her. She’s not drinking. Not talking. Just… watching. Me.

My stomach knots. Something about her smirk—like she’s biting back a secret—itches under my skin.

Lina whistles. "Damn. She’s got murder written all over her. You piss off a client?"

"No." At least, I don’t think so.

The solo pushes off the awning, rolling her shoulders like she’s stretching after a fight. Our eyes lock.

Then she’s gone, vanished into the crowd like smoke.

Lina snorts. "Well, she definitely knows you."

I rub my wrist, the scar there throbbing. "Just another ghost I guess."

***

My eyes flew open to a chorus of gasps.

"The fuck?! Nova..."

"Vitals spiking..."
"Said she'd crash if we..."

The voices blurred. My skull was splitting, mouth full of copper. Above me, faces swam into focus: Jackson’s grimace, Buster’s wide eyes, Jax’s uncharacteristically pale cheeks.

And the last thing I remembered?

Japantown . The club. The joytoy who looked at me like a ghost. Lina… Oh poor, poor Lina. She probably had better plans for her life than dying as a puppet in an underground club for the ultra-rich.

Jax’s hand clamped around my wrist. "Hey. Hey. Look at me." Her thumb pressed into my pulse point. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

I squinted. "A… middle one?"

Buster snorted. Jackson exhaled. Jax’s grip tightened—not angry. Relieved.

"Welcome back, amnesiac," Jax muttered. "You’ve been out for three days." She leaned in, her breath hot against my ear. "Now tell us why the fuck your brain just factory-reset itself."

“I've got a better question,” I whispered back. “Why the fuck did I just see you in my memory?”

The color drained from her face. “In due time, kitten, ” was all she was able to give me. I was about to protest when Buster pushed her out of the way and wrapped me in a big hug. 

“I swear if I lose any more family I'll just—”

“It's okay, B, I'm still here,” I said, hugging them back. “What happened anyway?”

Buster shot a quick look at Jax and sighed. “You just… Turned off like someone flipped a switch. One second we're all talking and the next—BAM!” Buster mimicked an explosion with their hands. “You just fell on the ground. We had to call Beast to come and pick you up.”

The med-bay lights buzzed like angry hornets. I flexed my fingers, watching the tendons move under skin that still didn't quite feel like mine. Three days gone. Three days of whatever nightmares my scrambled brain had cooked up. And now this - Jax looking at me like I'd pulled a gun on her, Buster clinging like I might dissolve, and Jackson looming in the corner like a disapproving monument.

I swung my legs over the cot, the world tilting just enough to make my teeth clamp together. "I need air."

Jax moved to block the door. "What you need is to—"

"Move." The word came out colder than I meant it. "Unless you're planning to cage me."

Buster's grip tightened on my arm. "Nova, come on. You just woke up from a—"

"I remember." The monitors spiked as my pulse jumped. "I remember Lina. I remember that... thing in the club using her along with the rest like a meat puppet." My eyes locked onto Jax. "And I remember you from my past. You knew me."

The silence that followed was the kind that comes before detonation.

Jackson cleared his throat. "Maybe we should…"

"Give us the room, lieutenant." Jax didn't blink.

When the door hissed shut behind Jackson and Beast, Buster didn't budge. "Whatever this is, I'm not…"

"Go with them," I said softly. 

Their eyes darted between us. "Fuck that. You're my—"

"I'll call." I pressed my forehead to theirs, our breath mingling. "Every hour. You know I can handle myself."

Buster's jaw worked, but they stood, pausing at the door just long enough to flip Jax off before it slammed behind them.

The sudden quiet rang louder than gunfire.

Jax examined her nails. "You're gonna get yourself killed."

"Funny." I stood, testing my balance. "That's exactly what I was thinking about staying with you."

Her head snapped up. I'd gotten good at reading Jax's micro-expressions - the twitch under her left eye meant I'd scored a hit.

"You want answers?" She stalked forward. "Fine. But not here. Not now."

"Then when?" My laugh tasted bitter. "After the next blackout? After another friend dies because I don't know what the hell I am?"

The truth hit me then, cold and certain as a blade between ribs. I backed toward the emergency exit. "You don't actually plan to tell me. You're just buying time."

Jax's hand hovered near her tanto. I mirrored her, my monowire humming to life. For a heartbeat, we were strangers again.

Then I was through the door, Night City's acid rain washing away the last traces of medical antiseptic. My boots hit the pavement running.

The rain came down in sheets as I bolted from the clinic, turning the neon-lit sidewalks into a shimmering maze. My boots splashed through oily puddles, sending up sprays of water that mixed with the glow of holographic advertisements. Somewhere behind me, Jax's shout was swallowed by the thunder, but I didn't look back.

My internal compass—that strange, persistent pull—led me through the tangled streets of Watson toward the chain-link bridges connecting to Westbrook. The metal walkways vibrated underfoot as heavy cargo transports rumbled beneath them, their diesel fumes mixing with the petrichor rising from wet pavement.

Jig-Jig Street announced itself long before I reached it. The scent of synthetic pheromones and street food wrapped around me first, then the pulsing bassline from underground clubs. I slowed my pace as I entered the district, weaving between joytoys and fixers conducting business in shadowed doorways. A Mox bouncer gave me a once-over as I passed, her cybernetic eyes flickering with recognition before she turned back to her post.

The marketplace sat at the district's heart, nestled between love hotels and black-market cyberware stalls. As sunset painted the sky in deep violets and burnt oranges, vendors were shuttering their stalls, packing away counterfeit goods and synth-meat skewers. The evening crowd had thinned to just a few stragglers—a joytoy counting the day's earnings, a scavenger picking through discarded packaging, an old man smoking by a noodle stand that had long since closed. 

Diving behind the stalls into a nearby building my feet led me to the third floor and then to the door at the end of the corridor. The panel outside lit up in a friendly yellow glow which quickly flashed green. Just as I thought… 

The door opened to a tiny apartment cluttered with clothes and makeup. Lina was never one to keep her place clean, and with me gone it looks like it got worse. The air smelled like Lina’s cheap cherry-bomb lipstick—suddenly, I remembered stealing it from a Corpo plaza the day we met. But the rest? Still static. 

One thing I knew was this place. In fact I knew it like the back of my hand. Question was why now? Why did my memories about Lina just randomly pop up in my head… And why do the rest still feel like I’m staring into the abyss? 

Sadly even though I remembered everything about this place—and it’s former owner—I still had no new revelations after coming there. Deciding to just come back here another day, I made my way to her closet. That’s when I saw it. 

A bright purple synth-leather jacket. The color that matched my hair perfectly, then again, it was mine to begin with. A vague scent of Lina’s perfume still clung to it—something cheap and cherry-sweet. For a second, I could almost hear her laugh as she’d toss it back at me. Looking around the closet for some clothes to complete the look, I finally put on my old jacket and felt something in my pocket. 

A handful of receipts, some credchips, a lipstick that is definitely past its expiration date and an access card that had the corpo aura emanating in droves. Sadly, no matter how much I tried to remember, I had no clue where it came from. The card’s edges bit into my palm. Whatever hell it unlocked, I’d burn that bridge when I got to it. In the meantime it was time to go. There wasn’t much left to find here except for nostalgia and bittersweet memories…

I found my way to the concrete barrier overlooking the lower market levels, my breath still coming in ragged gasps. The cold metal bit into my back as I slumped against it, the adrenaline crash hitting me like a corpo security drone. The distant hum of the city's nightlife felt muffled here, like the marketplace existed in its own pocket of time.

That's when I saw her—Jax, emerging from between two food stalls, her silhouette cutting through the steam rising from a gutter grate. Rainwater dripped from the hem of her jacket as she paced, her usual grace feeling a little jagged. The fading light silhouetted her as she pivoted, her boots scattering loose trash like shell casings.

She stopped when she saw me watching, and for a long moment we just stared at each other across the emptying marketplace—the furious mentor and her runaway apprentice. The scent of her cigarette cut through the damp air as she took a slow drag.

"You're gonna get us both killed with this lone wolf shit," she said, but the edge had left her voice. Now she just sounded tired.

The evening breeze carried the metallic tang of the city as I wiped rainwater from my face. "I have so many questions, Jax."

The sun dipped below the horizon, casting long shadows across the near empty marketplace as I slumped against the grimy concrete barrier. The evening breeze was cold, carrying with it the faint, metallic tang of the city. The scattered debris and distant hum of the city’s heartbeat felt distant and muffled, overshadowed by the turmoil in my mind. I turned to Jax, who was pacing a few steps away, her silhouette dark against the fading light.

"I know, and I can't answer all of them. Sorry," she replied, her tone a mix of regret and resignation.

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Don’t rush the truth and all that."

"Exactly. Look, I know how it feels—"

"Oh you know how I feel, huh? Have you also magically lost your memory and have a random person show up who just might know something about your past? Have you also had that same person make it absolutely clear that they know more about your life than yourself only to constantly brush you off at any given opportunity? Stop beating around the bush, Jax! We still don't know who is responsible for this absolute shit show at the club; poor Buster is still loosing their mind over the whole Trin debacle, Jackson and Regina are still running around like dogs trying to find any info on the people affected by that massive hack and I STILL don't know why the fuck you're holding my life hostage, but do me a favor at the very least. Just tell me what the fuck do you want from me?"

Jax sighed, looking defeated.

"Look, even if I tell you, you won't believe me anyway..."

"I woke up on the outskirts of Watson with no memories, a wad of cash and enough combat capacity to bitch-slap Arasaka. Try me." I said, looking her in the eyes.

"Fine," said Jax, turning away and taking a drag of her cigarette. "I owe both of you that much at least."

"Both of us?"

"Years ago I gave a promise to someone really important to me. If something were to happen to her, I'd come back and finish the job," every word seemed to cut her like a knife. "Some time ago I got word that it was time for me to fulfill my part of the bargain. And then imagine my surprise, when three days after my return to the city, I ran into someone not only wearing her name, but the face as well."

"What makes you think I'm not her?"

"Trust me, kiddo," Jax chuckled, breaking into a raspy cough. "I'd know it if you really were her."

"So that's why you hung around, huh?"

"Pretty much. The problem is, I can't finish what she started if I never find out what she was doing, and my intuition tells me that by hanging around you, I'll get my answer sooner or later."

My legs, unable to handle the pressure of the conversation, finally gave out as I slumped next to the barrier. Looking up at my mentor, her dark hair blowing in the wind as she solemnly looked over the last few fleeting rays of sunshine. The cigarette in her fingers, seemingly forgotten, was smoldering closer and closer to the filter. In the short time I've known her, this was one of the few times I've seen her drop the mask of insanity that seemingly followed her everywhere she went. Above all, she just looked exhausted by whatever weight she's been carrying throughout her life. I was going to let her off the hook, but one question was burning inside me until I could hold it no longer.

"Have you ever said the whole truth in your life?" 

Hearing that, Jax chuckled, tossed the burnt out cigarette into a nearby trash can and joined me on the dirty pavement.

"Between white lies, half-truths and bitten tongues... Not even once." 

"That's reassuring. How would I know if I can trust you?"

"Well that one is easy - you shouldn't. Never fully trust me, Jackson, the nomads, Regina, Rogue or whoever else you come in contact with. But if there's one thing you'll take away from this exchange, I hope it's this - don't ever trust anyone who's refusing to let you see their face."

"You're talking about Ice, aren't you?"

"Him and those like him. I've seen plenty of those similar to Ice over the years and dealing with them never ends well. The path they walk is littered with bodies of people who were dumb or desperate enough to get close."

"So why tell me all of this now? Or at all for that matter..."

"It's only a matter of time until the culprit from the club catches wind of the investigation. You'd be smart to distance yourself from the rest of the group."

"What the hell do you mean by that?!"

"It’s clear that they’re punching way above our weight class. A ragtag group of Afterlife rejects is nothing to someone who controls people like puppets, and I refuse to risk my neck trying to prevent the inevitable..."

"So just because of that you're telling me to give up on the closest thing to a group of friends that I have?"

"Friends?" Jax scoffed. "Don't be naive, Nova! They need you more than you need them. Let's go through the shit list: Jackson is a washed up cop who was too stupid to play their game and yet harmless enough to just be dumped from the force; His buddy Regina has been in the Chinese pockets for years and it's not even a secret anymore; Buster and Beast abandoned their clan and fled to Night City a whole year before Bakkers joined the Snake Nation. And as for Ice, he's just a chair jockey whose only skills are being good at staying anonymous and sending cryptic messages. As far as I know for now at least..."

"Looks like you did your homework. So what about me?"

"You said it yourself - you woke up in Watson with no memories, a chromed up body and a wad of eddies. Nothing before that is out there. Nothing that matters anyway…"

I looked back at Jax. Her face didn't have a hint of her usual insanity. Instead she was just looking up at the sky, with such a sorrowful expression that all my anger at her evasiveness has completely evaporated.

“Tell me about her. What you can at least…” 

For a heartbeat she looked at me, still with the same sorrowful expression and then looked back up at the sky.

“Oh she was special, kitten. Very special. The kind of eyes that could see through any bullshit in seconds. Even mine… Especially mine . Forced me to be honest with my feelings… that bitch, ” Jax chuckled, composed herself and after a bit of a pause continued. “Truth is, I loved her. And she knew it. Sadly I never got a chance to find out if she loved me or not. Had to skip town without saying goodbye.”

A sharp voice broke our intimate moment with the intensity of a crystal glass being chucked at a wall. 

“Had to skip town, huh? You were always so good with words, weren’t you, wildcat ?” 

The voice belonged to the woman from the club. Instead of a sleek gray suit she was dawned in an all black synth-leather ensemble, similar to the one Jax first showed up in. Looking at my mentor’s face, it was definitely intentional.

“Meredith…” said Jax coldly.

Meredith’s laugh was smoke and razors. “Jaqueline,” she drawled, like the name was a private joke. “Still picking up strays, I see.”

Jax’s hand hovered over her tanto. “You lost the right to call me that when you burned the convoy.”

A flicker in Meredith’s eyes—something raw under the smirk. “Funny. I remember you holding the match.”

The air hissed with tension between us. I flexed my fingers, my monowire humming. “Enough nostalgia. What do you want?”

Meredith tilted her head. “You really don’t remember, do you?” She took a step forward, and Jax moved to block her. “I just came to give you a choice, Nova .” She stressed the name like it was a placeholder. “Walk away now, or dig up things that’ll get your new friends killed.”

Jax spat blood on the pavement. “She’s not part of this.”

“Oh, kitten ,” Meredith crooned, and my gut twisted at the echo of Jax’s pet name. “She’s always been part of this.”

A distant whine cut through the rain—a drone, maybe, or a bike engine. Meredith’s smirk faded. “Clock’s ticking. No-Tell Motel. Three hours.” She tossed something at my feet—a datachip glinting in the neon. “Bring her,” she said, nodding at Jax, “if you want to know what happened to Regina.”

Then she was gone, melting into the alley shadows like she’d never been there.

Jax kicked the chip away. “Don’t.”

I crouched to pick it up anyway. “You don’t get to decide that.”

Her hand clamped around my wrist. “That chip’s a tracker. Or a virus. Or a fucking obituary.” Her pupils were blown wide, the way they got mid-firefight. “Stout doesn’t do favors.”

I wrenched free. “And you don’t do answers.” The chip burned in my palm. “How does she know you? Why does she know me? And for fuck’s sake, why does she talk about me like I’m someone else?”

Jax exhaled hard through her nose. “Not here.” She grabbed my elbow, steering me toward the street. “We’ll meet the crew. Then we burn that thing. Oh and by the way—”

She noticed my gaze looking back in the direction of Meredith. 

"Don’t waste time psychoanalyzing that bitch. She’ll fuck you, frame you, or flatline you… Sometimes on the same night. And she’ll smile while doing it."

***

The whiskey burned like betrayal. Liz rolled the glass between her fingers, watching the amber liquid catch the glow of a dozen surveillance feeds. Every screen showed the same infuriating sight: Jax, alive and unharmed, cutting through the club’s carnage like it was just another Tuesday.

"Should’ve known a building full of puppets wouldn’t kill you," Liz muttered. She tapped a key, rewinding the footage. There! The exact moment the amnesiac girl Nova had stepped between Jax and a chrome-jawed corpo enforcer, her monowire flashing like a silver tongue.

"And you picked up a stray. How sentimental."

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. One command, and a dozen hidden cams in Yaiba Tower would activate. Militech’s security schematics glowed on her secondary monitor—courtesy of a backdoor she’d installed during her own time as Stout’s favorite attack dog.

Her agent buzzed. A priority alert from the client:

TARGETS CONVERGING. CLEANUP CREW EN ROUTE. PROTOCOL: DELTA

Liz exhaled through her teeth. Delta... No witnesses, no traces. Not even a body to bury.

She stood, holstering her sidearm with practiced ease. The glass shattered against Jax’s smirking face on the screens, whiskey dripping like old blood down the monitors.

"You should’ve stayed gone, Jackie."

The name tasted like a curse. Like the night Liz had watched her vanish into the storm five years ago, leaving nothing but footprints and a hollowed-out spot in the world where a legend used to be.

Now? Now she’d make sure Jax had the taste of her own medicine.

Chapter Text

Regina Jones leaned over her cluttered desk, the glow of multiple screens casting a kaleidoscope of colors across her determined face. Night City was still reeling from the latest incident—a massive, coordinated hack that had left dozens of Night City’s elites and unfortunate bystanders vulnerable, their minds ensnared in a digital nightmare. The stakes were high, and Regina knew she had to act fast. The faint hum of the neon-lit streets outside barely reached her ears, drowned out by the pounding in her chest. Each new piece of information felt like a breadcrumb leading her deeper into a labyrinth of betrayal and conspiracy.

Something wasn't adding up, but she couldn't quite isolate the anomaly. The hack was too clean, too perfectly coordinated—it had the surgical precision of a corpo black op, but none of the usual fingerprints. The patterns felt... alien. Wrong. Zetatech's neural laces were the common thread in every cyberpsycho attack, but this wasn't psychosis. This was something far more dangerous—a scalpel wielded by something that didn't think like humans. The club hadn't just been hacked; it had been dissected with the cold efficiency of an AI probing human systems. And that realization made Regina's blood run colder than any corporate conspiracy ever could.

Just as she was about to dive back into the data streams, a sudden sound pierced her focus—a low, mechanical whirr that sent a chill down her spine. She turned sharply, eyes widening as she looked out the grimy window. A military drone glided ominously toward Yaiba Tower, its sleek form silhouetted against the neon skyline. The implications hit her like a punch to the gut—something big was about to go down.

Yanking the datashard from the port on her desk she ran for cover right as the bullets riddled the nearby wall, getting embedded in the concrete. There was no time to waste - she had to get to her elevator. As she sprinted to freedom another revelation sent chills down her spine - the elevator was on its way up, its passengers, definitely not there for a social call. Whoever let them in bypassed her layers of security with such delicate precision that she didn't even realize she was under attack until it was too late. Thankfully she had a counter measure for that exact scenario.

Regina reached behind a container near the elevator and pulled out a small detonator. One push of a button and the elevator came to a sudden halt. A push of the other and the metal box plummeted down the shaft, bringing its passengers to their untimely end. With the main way down now unavailable to her, the only other option left was the trash shoot. All she had to do was make her way across the floor of her den. A no small task, considering a flying arsenal hovering outside her windows.

Regina heard the turrets whirring up again and rolled behind another pillar while being showered by concrete dust, courtesy of the bullets buzzing by. The sound momentarily stopped. She had just 5 seconds to make it to the next cover.

    5. Jumping from out of her cover she sprinted to the next concrete pillar.

         4. A quick glance out the window to confirm the presence of the drone.

              3... The drone was still there and now honing in on her location.

                   2... The turrets started violently spinning, filling the entire street with the sound of an impending attack.

                         1! Diving behind the cover she heard the bullets whizzing by awfully close. Too close...

Something warm was flowing down her arm. A quick inspection revealed a small wound from a high caliber bullet that just grazed her skin. All things considered, Regina counted it as a lucky break. Under the barrage of bullets she calmly stopped the blood flow with an Airhypo. She was planning a visit to a ripper anyway...

Noticing a lull in the bullets flying nearby, she jumped from behind her cover and leaped feet first into a trash shoot. The brief tumble down a vile metal tube finished in a big pile of trash bags on the lower levels of Watson. Regina's whole body was aching from the attack and being violently shaken on the way down the hatch. That being said, she was safe from the drone, but it didn't mean she was in the clear just yet. Her first thought was to reach out to her handler. Opening up the chat interface she sent a silent command and saw the words pop up on her retina display:

@ReginaJonesFixer: "Why the fuck did you not warn me about the attack?"

Sadly her cry fell on deaf ears. This left her with one last option—she had to survive long enough to call in a favor or two, and she knew the first door to knock on already…

Using the complicated maze of alleyways of Little China she made her way to the abandoned warehouse that housed her last hope of survival…

***

The trip from Japantown to Little China passed in a smeared neon daze. The toxic Night City air pressed against my face like a sweaty palm, while the synthleather of Jax's jacket creaked under my white-knuckled grip. My lungs burned with every breath, tasting of ozone and spilled CHOOH2.

I didn't fully snap back to reality until something cold and sweating pressed into my palm.

"Drink. Now."

Jax's voice cut through the fog. I blinked down at the can of ChroManticore in my hand, its condensation mixing with the blood still caked under my fingernails from the club. The aluminum tab hissed like a warning when I popped it open.

The first sip tasted like battery acid and bad decisions.

"Welcome back to the land of the living, Sleeping Beauty," Jax drawled, taking a long pull from her own can of Spunky Monkey. The cheap synth-alcohol dripped down her chin as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "I need you firing on all cylinders for this one."

I followed her gaze upward. Yaiba Tower stabbed into the smog-choked sky, its glass façade reflecting the cancerous glow of nearby neon signs. At this hour, most of the windows were dark - except for a single lit floor near the top. Regina's office.

"Why are we here?" I asked, crushing the empty can in my fist.

Jax's fingers twitched toward the tanto at her hip. "Because your fixer friend is about thirty minutes away from becoming one with the furniture.."

The ChroManticore turned to lead in my stomach. "That's not funny."

"Wasn't trying to be." Jax stretched like a jungle cat, rolling her shoulders until the vertebrae popped. "You've got rapport with her. That's our only ticket in before the fireworks start. Trust me—"

"Ha. Hilarious." I stepped into her space, jabbing a finger against her sternum. "You're real big on trust for someone who treats it like a one-way street."

For a heartbeat, something vulnerable flashed across Jax's face - raw as an open nerve. Then it was gone, buried under an eyeroll so dramatic I heard it. "Oh for fuck's sake. Me saving your chrome-plated ass on multiple occasions doesn't count?"

"It's not the same and you know it! If you'd just—"

Jax's hand clamped over my mouth. Her other hand found my wrist, thumb pressing into my pulse point. Not restraining. Measuring.

The moment stretched. Somewhere above us, glass shattered.

"We're out of time," she breathed, yanking me toward the service entrance.

Her fingers danced across the keypad - no code entered, no quickhack deployed. Just a touch. The door recognized her like an old lover, sliding open with a sigh.

The elevator doors parted with a pneumatic hiss. Jax hauled me inside, stabbing the button for Regina's floor with unnecessary force.

"You want the unfiltered truth?" She crowded into my space, her breath hot against my ear. "This building's about to become ground zero for a corporate shitstorm."

The elevator lurched upward. My stomach dropped.

"And Regina?"

Jax's smile was all teeth. "Collateral damage."

Gunfire erupted overhead - not the staccato pops of a firefight, but the sustained roar of automated turrets. The elevator shuddered. Stopped.

Silence.

Then—

"Fuck fuck fuck—" Jax's head snapped up, spotting the maintenance hatch a half-second too late.

The explosion tore through the shaft above us with apocalyptic fury.

My stomach launched into my throat as we dropped. Jax moved like lightning - one hand seizing my belt, the other slamming the hatch open. We erupted upward in a whirlwind of limbs and panic as the elevator became a steel coffin beneath us.

My monowire screamed free from my wrist, lashing out blindly. It caught a support beam with a twang that vibrated up my arm. The sudden deceleration nearly tore my shoulder from its socket as we swung wildly, momentum carrying us onto the ruined roof of the elevator.

The world came back in jagged pieces.

First came the pain - a white-hot brand searing across my ribs with every shallow breath. Then the smell: burning insulation, spilled coolant, and beneath it all, the coppery tang of fresh blood. My own, probably. The taste of battery acid and cheap alcohol still clung to my tongue from the ChroManticore Jax had shoved into my hands what felt like seconds ago.

When my vision cleared, the scene resolved like a corrupted file loading in fragments:

Six armored figures in Zetatech tactical gear formed a semicircle around us, their green optics cutting through the smoke like targeting lasers. The emergency lights painted their armor in streaks of arterial red.

And her.

The woman standing at the center might have been beautiful if not for the predatory stillness in her posture. Mid-20s, wearing a sleek armored bodysuit that screamed "private security consultant" money. Her left eye was cybernetic - a gleaming red jewel that tracked our every movement with mechanical precision. The right eye... that one was human. Startlingly so.

Something about the curve of her cheekbone sent a jolt through my neural interface. A ghost of a memory tried to surface before dissolving like smoke.

"Kwon Seonbae ," the woman purred, rolling the honorific like a blade between her teeth. "When I warned you about professional courtesy, I really thought you'd listen." Her organic eye crinkled with something almost like amusement. "But then, you never were good at following instructions."

Jax's response wasn't words.

It was laughter.

Not the dark chuckles she used to unsettle marks. Not the sharp barks of amusement when a plan went sideways. This was something raw and broken, the sound of a frayed wire finally snapping under tension.

My mentor staggered to her feet, her ponytail swinging like a noose in the flickering light. I still couldn't see her face - but the way the Zetatech squad tightened their grips on their rifles, the subtle shift in their stances as two of them took half-steps back... that told me everything I needed to know.

"Perfect," Jax gasped between wheezing giggles. She wiped at her eyes - were those actual tears? - before fixing her gaze on the woman. "Of course it would be you. My most... brilliant student."

The words dripped with venom. The woman's smile didn't waver, but her organic eye twitched.

Jax sighed dramatically, rolling her shoulders until the vertebrae popped. "And here I was, having such an emotional day already..."

A beat of silence. The Zetatech squad exchanged glances. The woman opened her mouth to speak—

Then the hurricane hit.

Jax moved like a live wire snapping - no battle cry, no dramatic flourish. Just sudden, brutal motion.

Her first strike took the nearest enforcer in the throat, her tanto flashing upward in a silver arc. The second was already bringing his rifle to bear when Jax's weapon whipped out, slicing through his visor with a sound like tearing silk.

Chaos erupted.

The remaining four enforcers opened fire, their muzzle flashes strobing in the confined space. Jax flowed between the bullets like water, her movements almost lazy in their precision. She caught the third enforcer's wrist, using his own momentum to slam him face-first into the elevator wall with a sickening crunch.

The woman was shouting orders now, her voice sharp with panic. She backpedaled as Jax dismantled her squad with methodical brutality.

I should have moved. Should have helped. But I could only watch, frozen, as the woman who'd been training me for weeks finally stopped holding back.

This wasn't the Jax who fought with theatrical flourishes and sarcastic quips. This was something primal. Something terrifying.

The fourth enforcer made the mistake of grabbing Jax from behind. She didn't even look at him as she drove an elbow into his ribs, twisted, and slammed his head into the elevator's control panel hard enough to crack the reinforced plastic.

Number five went down with a throwing knife buried in his eye socket.

Number six...

Number six turned to run.

Bad move.

Jax was on him in three strides, dropping him to the ground with a well planted kick. She planted a boot between his shoulder blades and pulled—

The wet snap of vertebrae echoed through the shaft.

Silence fell, broken only by the drip of fluids and Jax's ragged breathing. She turned slowly to face her former student, blood dripping from her tanto to patter against the grated floor.

The woman had her back against the far wall, sidearm drawn but shaking in her grip. The smug superiority had bled from her expression, replaced by something far more primal.

Fear.

Jax took a step forward. Then another. Her movements were almost casual, like she had all the time in the world.

"J-Jax..." the woman stammered, the red glow of her cybereye flickering. "We can—"

The words died as Jax's hand shot out, closing around her throat. She slammed the woman against the wall hard enough to crack the concrete, leaning in until their faces were inches apart.

"You don't get to speak," Jax whispered, her voice terrifyingly calm. "Not after what you've done."

The woman's lips moved soundlessly, her organic eye wide with terror. Jax's grip tightened...

"JAX!"

My voice tore through the tension like a gunshot. Jax didn't turn, but her shoulders tensed.

"Don't," I said, stepping forward carefully. "She's not worth it."

For a long moment, nothing moved. Then, with agonizing slowness, Jax loosened her grip. The woman slid down the wall, gasping for air.

Jax turned to me, and for the first time, I saw her eyes.

There was almost nothing human in them.

SLAM!

The body of once smug Zetatech private consultant slumped against the wall. 

“Is she—”

“She’ll live.” Jax interrupted me, heading towards the bodies of enforcers. After a quick search, she came back and handed me a harness with a harpoon pistol. “We gotta go back up there.” 

“Why?!” I protested.

“If she’s still alive, we can save her—” Jax paused, putting on a harness from the other enforcer. “And if she’s dead we can look for information before the cleaners get here…”

The harpoon pistol kicked like a pissed-off mule in my hands as I fired the tungsten-tipped line upward. The cable screamed through the air before burying itself in the elevator shaft's twisted remains with a metallic shriek that set my teeth on edge. Jax didn't wait for an invitation—before the line had even stopped vibrating, she'd grabbed the second cable and started ascending with the smooth, mechanical whir of the winch, her boots finding purchase on the bullet-riddled walls like some kind of cybernetic spider.

I was about to clip in when the familiar roar of an overworked Thorton Mackinaw engine cut through the chaos below. The sound triggered something primal in my hindbrain—half relief, half exasperation.

The armored truck skidded into the alley with all the grace of a drunken rhino on roller skates, doors flying open before the wheels even stopped screaming protest. Jackson hit the pavement first, his Lexington already drawn and sweeping the area with the precision of a former beat cop who'd done this dance too many times. Buster tumbled out after him, their usual cocky grin replaced by a grimace that mixed concern with barely-contained panic. Beast brought up the rear, his massive frame moving with surprising quietness despite the humongous HMG cradled in his arms like a newborn.

"Took you fuckers long enough," Jax called down, her voice dripping with enough sarcasm to drown a Scav den. She hung suspended about fifteen feet up, swaying slightly as she maintained her grip with one hand while flipping them off with the other.

Buster returned the gesture with both hands. "Oh sure, our bad for not teleporting! We were kinda busy arguing about whether to wait for your dumb ass or storm the place like reasonable people!"

Jackson's jaw worked as he secured his harness, the tactical gear creaking under his movements. "Ice pinged us about an attack on Regina thirty minutes ago," he growled. "We've been trying to raise either of you on every channel since then."

I winced. Our comms had been silent since we got to the tower—too much interference, too much chaos, too many questions neither of us could answer. "We were... preoccupied," I said, gesturing vaguely at the ruined elevator and the growing pool of blood beneath it that was slowly mingling with spilled coolant.

Beast grunted as he checked his harness straps. "Twenty-three minutes of arguing," he rumbled. "Buster wanted to wait. Jackson wanted to move. I just wanted to shoot something." The big man's ocular implant whirred softly as it adjusted focus. "Compromise was waiting five more minutes then shooting our way in."

Jax rolled her eyes so hard I swear I heard them click. "And yet here you are, fashionably late to the massacre." She resumed her climb. "Charming."

Buster opened their mouth, probably to deliver some scathing retort about Jax's questionable life choices, but Jackson cut them off with a sharp gesture. "Enough. We move now." His eyes flicked to me. "Status?"

"Nearly died in the elevator, got ambushed, found out that I don’t want to piss Jax off," I reported, clipping my harness to the line. "Oh, and I’m sure she’s Korean."

Buster let out a short but cheerful scream, followed by a unison grunt from Beast and Jackson as they passed the eddies to the techie. 

Once that was over, Jackson nodded once, the motion tight and controlled. "Then let's see what's left upstairs."

One by one, we ascended the line, emerging onto what was left of the 13th floor like some fucked-up reverse birth. The office looked like a grenade had gone off inside a server farm during an earthquake. Bullet holes stitched across every surface in chaotic patterns that told the story of at least two separate firefights. Shattered glass crunched underfoot like artificial snow, and the acrid stench of burnt circuitry mixed with the coppery tang of blood to create a perfume that would haunt my nightmares.

The weirdest part? Regina's desk stood completely untouched amidst the devastation—like someone had drawn an invisible bubble around it. Not a single scratch marred its surface, and the holo-display still flickered weakly, casting eerie blue shadows across the wreckage.

Jax was already at the terminal, her fingers flying across the cracked display with the kind of practiced ease that suggested she'd done this more times than any of us would ever know. The blue glow reflected in her eyes, turning them into pools of liquid data as she pulled logs and files before the system could fully crash.

Jackson swept the room with his shotgun raised, his cop instincts kicking into overdrive. "No body," he announced after a moment. "Either she got out or they took her." His jaw tightened. "And given the lack of blood over here, I'm betting on option two."

Buster crouched near a particularly nasty scorch mark, poking at a piece of melted plastic with the barrel of their pistol. "If they wanted her dead, they wouldn't have bothered being subtle," they muttered. "This was a professional snatch job." 

Beast said nothing, but the way his fingers tightened around his rifle spoke volumes. The big man positioned himself near the stairwell door, his augmented eyes scanning for threats even as his body language screamed impatience.

I kept one eye on Jax as she worked. Her face was its usual mask of sardonic amusement, but I'd spent enough time with her to notice the subtle tells—the way her left eyebrow twitched when she found something interesting, how her fingers hesitated for half a second over a particular file before continuing. She'd found something. Something big.

Before I could say anything, Jackson barked, "We're burning daylight. If Regina's alive, we find her before Militech scrubs the scene clean." He jerked his head toward the stairwell. "Buster, Beast—check the building perimeter. See if they left any traces of where they took her."

As the others moved out, I grabbed Jax's arm as she passed. Her muscles tensed under my grip, coiled like springs ready to release.

Her eyes locked onto mine, and for once, there was no playful smirk, no mocking glint—just cold, hard calculation that made my stomach do a slow roll.

Keeping my voice low enough that only she could hear, I asked, "What did you find?"

The pause that followed stretched just a beat too long. Then, in a voice so quiet it barely registered over the distant sirens and the hum of dying electronics:

"Enough to get us all killed."

She pulled away before I could respond, melting into the shadows of the stairwell after the others with the eerie silence of a ghost.

I stared at the ruined terminal, my stomach doing slow somersaults. Whatever Jax had seen in those files, it wasn't just about Regina's disappearance.

It was about me.

About why I woke up in Watson with no memories but a body full of combat chrome.

And about the people who clearly wanted to make sure I never remembered—no matter how many bodies they had to stack up to keep those secrets buried.

Chapter Text

It was a slow evening at the Afterlife, thought Emerick as he watched over the numbers for the shift. Not only has the club barely had any visitors, but even the usual crowd of wannabes and fanboys meandering by the entrance were practically nonexistent. The bouncer scanned the crowd for a moment and went back to the paperwork.

That was when she appeared.

The sound of her boots against steel made him look up. A woman moved with a gaze that could cut, her stride sharp, unrelenting. She didn’t so much enter the club as claim it. Emerick half-rose, instinct tugging, but she barely flicked her eyes over him before pushing forward. Not a threat—unless she wanted to be.

Only then did he catch the details: the faint, sour tang of garbage clinging to her jacket, the sluggish drip of blood trailing down her sleeve. Emerick wrinkled his nose but said nothing; whatever storm she’d walked through wasn’t his business.

Inside, the Afterlife pulsed low and steady, music like a heartbeat under neon haze. Claire leaned on the bar, gaze narrowing as the woman strode up.

“Whiskey. Strongest thing you’ve got.”

Claire poured but kept her distance, lip curling faintly as the smell reached her. “Rough night?”

“Rougher than most.” The woman drained half the glass like it was water. Dark streaks from her sleeve smeared against the counter. “I need Rogue.”

Claire gave a small shrug, sliding the rag closer to mop the mess. “She’s in her booth. She’ll decide if she’s got time for you.”

But Rogue already had. She slid from her private booth at the back, cigarette glowing faintly between her fingers, her presence turning heads even on a quiet night. Suave, self-assured, like she’d been waiting. Her sharp eyes flicked once over the blood and filth clinging to the woman, noting it, then dismissing it. Rogue had seen worse crawl through these doors.

“Well, well. Didn’t expect you to come running here,” Rogue said, smoke curling lazily from her lips. “Word travels quick, you know. Yaiba Tower’s in flames. Can’t imagine you’d leave your little empire behind unless things were real bad.”

The woman’s voice was calm, but the iron beneath it carried. “Bad enough. My office was hit minutes before I walked through your door. Whoever did it wanted me silenced. I’m still breathing.”

Rogue gestured toward her booth, sliding back into the leather seat. The woman followed, glass still in hand, leaving a faint crimson smear on the rim. Rogue didn’t glance at it.

“So.” Rogue leaned back. “This about Genevieve Martin?”

A beat. Then a curt nod.

“Everyone’s looking for her,” Rogue continued. “Militech wants her chained to a desk before Zetatech wipes her from the map. Both sides pulling hard, too many big guns chasing one French researcher. Makes a girl wonder—what’s Genevieve got in her head worth all that blood?”

The woman didn’t answer. Didn’t need to.

Rogue flicked ash into the tray, eyes narrowing. “Funny thing. I had a peek at the surveillance around Yaiba Tower. Saw a crew slinking through while the world burned.” Her smirk curved, cold. “Familiar faces.”

She let the silence drag.

“Jackson’s crew,” Rogue’s gaze sharpened, pinning her across the table. “And one more—unknown solo. Haven’t seen her before. But she tore through seven Zetatech enforcers like they were nothing. If she’s not with them, she’s a problem. If she is…”

The woman’s jaw tightened, just for a moment. Rogue saw it, and her smirk widened faintly.

“Well, Reggie,” Rogue said, stubbing out her cigarette, “looks like you’re in for a long night.”

***

The warehouse smelled like burnt chrome and antiseptic. Jackson paced the floor like a caged panther, his Lexington laid out on the table for the third cleaning in as many hours. Beast leaned against the wall with his eyes half-shuttered, but his HMG stayed propped on his knee, finger never far from the trigger. Buster sat cross-legged on the concrete, fussing with the gutted cyber-ear from Jinguji like if they soldered the right wire back in, maybe the universe itself would stop glitching.

I just sat there, watching the neon outside flicker through the high windows. My ribs still ached from the elevator, my head from memories I didn’t ask for. The silence pressed in heavy, broken only by the hum of cheap fluorescent lights and Buster’s muttered curses.

Then my HUD pinged.

A message. No sender ID. Just text:

help me

I froze. My fingers hovered over the interface. "Genevieve," I breathed.

Buster’s head shot up. Jackson’s jaw tightened. Jax, who’d been lounging with her boots on the table, went rigid so fast it was like someone cut a string.

"Where?" Jackson demanded.

I typed before I could think. Where are you?

The reply came instantly:

outside

A chill slid down my spine. I stood, but Jax was already moving. She kicked her chair aside and stalked to the door with one hand hovering near her tanto. "Kitten, if this is a trap—"

The door rattled.

And Genevieve Martin stumbled inside.

She looked like hell — pale, sweat-slick, her corp chic blazer torn and smeared with soot. One arm hung limp, her dermal plating sparking at the seams. Her eyes found mine with something between relief and terror.

Then the gunfire started.

The walls shook as Zetatech’s tactical boots thundered against the pavement outside. Suppressed fire chewed through the thin steel, sending sparks raining across the concrete floor. Beast was already up, bellowing as he racked his HMG. Jackson dove for cover, barking orders over the gunfire.

Buster cursed loud enough to be heard over the chaos. "They fucking tracked her!"

Jax didn’t wait for orders. She ripped the door wide, teeth bared in a grin that promised blood. "Finally," she growled, and vanished into the storm of bullets.

The compound erupted into war.

The warehouse door blew inward in a spray of shrapnel. Jax ducked low, tanto flashing as she buried it into the knee joint of the first enforcer through the breach. His scream was cut short by Beast’s HMG roaring like thunder, the recoil rattling the air as three more Zetatech troopers crumpled in sparks and shredded kevlar.

"On me, Nova!" Jackson barked, his Lexington already spitting fire. He moved like muscle memory, each shot clean, precise — disabling optics, blowing holes in rifle stocks, making space for the rest of us to move.

I dragged Genevieve behind the upturned workbench, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Her pulse felt like it might explode under my fingers. "Stay with me," I hissed, tearing a stim from my belt. She weakly batted my hand away, eyes glazed but defiant.

The wall beside us disintegrated under automatic fire. Splinters cut my cheek.

On the far side, Jax was a blur — tanto carving arcs of silver through the smoke. She moved like she had more limbs than humanly possible, sliding between rifle bursts with that unnerving grace. The first soldier’s throat opened under her blade. The second went down clutching a ruined arm. Her grin was crimson.

Buster dove behind a toppled crate, firing blind through the smoke. Their voice carried louder than their bullets: “Who even shows up to a gunfight in rental-grade armor? I’ve seen sturdier shit on vending machines!” A burst of fire forced them down, splinters biting their cheek. They popped back up, firing one-handed while flipping off the shooters with the other.

“Buster, off the furniture!” Jackson barked as the techie clambered onto a forklift to get a better angle.

“Eat chrome, you corpo-fucks!” Buster shouted, emptying a mag before the forklift exploded in sparks around them. They yelped, tumbling off with all the grace of a drunk cat. “I’m fine! Totally meant to do that!”

I barely heard them. My focus tunneled as I dragged Genevieve into cover, her weight like molten iron against my side. Her pulse stuttered, her lips moving against my collarbone: "They want me… not you…"

The words sliced colder than the bullets.

I snapped back as another frag rolled across the floor. My monowire lashed out, whipping it into the breach. The muffled thump came back with a chorus of screams. My HUD flooded with red warnings. Blood ran hot from my nose.

“Nova!” Jax’s voice cracked through the haze. She tore through two troopers to reach me, planting herself between me and the door, her tanto catching muzzle flashes in quicksilver arcs. “She still breathing?”

“Barely!” I shouted, pressing a stim into Genevieve’s neck. Her body twitched, then sagged, eyes fluttering but not waking.

Outside, more boots thundered. The alley filled with floodlights, cutting through the smoke like god-rays. We were hemmed in, shadows against Zetatech’s neon.

Beast slammed the stairwell door shut, his chest heaving. “Outta ammo.” He looked at the others, his face set. “We make a wall.”

“Like hell,” Buster wheezed, prying open a side panel on their fried cyber-ear. “Just… buy me a minute, and I’ll make these fuckers bleed from theirs.”

Jackson planted himself at the center of the room, shotgun raised, eyes blazing. “One minute. You heard them.”

We dug in. The firefight burned hot, brutal — shells, screams, steel on chrome. I lost track of how many bodies hit the floor. Time blurred into smoke and blood.

Then the sound cut through it all: an engine. Smooth. Expensive. Completely out of place.

The Zetatech squad froze as a black, armored limo slid into the alley, its paint reflecting neon like oil on water. The tinted window hummed down just enough to reveal a familiar face: ice-blonde hair, sunglasses, the faintest smirk. Rogue.

She didn’t speak — didn’t have to.

The Zetatech commander hesitated, jaw tight. Then, with a sharp gesture, he called his men off. The corps melted into the smoke like they’d never been there, leaving only blood, brass, and the stink of ozone.

The limo door swung open. Leather seats gleamed inside, untouched by the warzone.

“Ride’s here,” Jax muttered, wiping her blade on a dead man’s sleeve. Her grin was brittle, her eyes still too wild.

Jackson lowered his shotgun, sweat cutting clean lines through the grime on his face. “Not a rescue. A summons.”

Buster staggered upright, clutching their burnt gadget like a trophy. “Whatever it is, I’m not walking. Somebody carry me.”

Beast hauled them by the collar and shoved them toward the limo.

I followed last, Genevieve limp in my arms. The limo’s interior lights washed her face pale, her lips still moving with whispers only I could hear.

The door shut. The city outside faded.

And for the first time in days, it was quiet.

The ride was silent except for the hum of the engine. Even Buster didn’t crack a joke — which said everything about how deep we were in it.

Genevieve stirred once in my arms, whispering something half-garbled that made my cyberware itch. Then she was out again, pale as static under the limo’s glow. I tried not to notice how Jackson kept glancing at her like she was a ticking bomb.

Jax sprawled across from me, blood drying in streaks on her cheek, her tanto still loose in her grip. She looked feral, coiled, but her eyes never left the tinted partition that separated us from Rogue’s driver. Like a wolf waiting for the cage door to open.

The limo glided through Night City like it owned the streets. No sirens, no patrols, no one stupid enough to get in its way.

When the door finally hissed open, neon and cigarette smoke spilled in.

Rogue got out of the limo and leaned back inside.

“You kids figure out what you want to do. Stay here, find a new hideout or join me. I don’t really care. My favor is done.”

Saying that she gracefully disappeared down the stairs of her own nightclub. It didn’t take us long to figure out that we probably shouldn’t be out in the open, given the state of the crew, and especially our unexpected guest. That left us with one option…

Afterlife.

Neon bled down chrome walls, bass thrumming through the floor like a second heartbeat. Normally, the place buzzed with wannabes, mercs, and corpo rejects clawing for Rogue’s attention. Tonight, it felt… muted. A handful of eyes flicked our way, then just as quickly away. Guess we looked more like ghosts than mercs.

Jax walked point, swagger sharp enough to cut glass, but I could see the tremor in her fingers when she pushed the door open. Jackson kept tight to her shoulder, weapon hand twitching like he hadn’t decided if he trusted the room or not. Beast loomed silent, eyes scanning every shadow. Buster limped behind him, muttering under their breath about "upgraded insurance premiums" like the words could hold their ribs together.

And me… Genevieve sagged heavier in my arms with each step. Her blood had soaked into my jacket, sticky and cold, and for all her whispered protests she was dead weight now. I tightened my grip, jaw clenched. She wasn’t dying. Not here. Not after all of this.

The crowd parted as we moved, like they could smell the gunpowder still clinging to us. Claire’s eyes widened from behind the bar, lips curling like she’d just tasted something rotten. She didn’t say a word. Just reached for a rag to wipe down the counter, as if she could scrub us out of the room.

Then I saw her.

A figure waiting in the back booth, cigarette glowing like a tiny beacon in the gloom. The fixer queen herself. It was as if she didn’t just pull us out of a messy firefight and instead spent the whole night there, in the company of cigarette smoke and some really expensive liquor. 

And then the world tilted.

Because she wasn’t alone.

Bandages wrapped her ribs and shoulder, but there was no mistaking that sharp face, the eye like a surgical knife. Regina Jones. Alive. Sitting there like she owned the booth and the city beyond it.

My breath hitched. For a second I forgot the weight in my arms, forgot the ache in my bones. I just stared.

Her gaze swept over us like a scanner, pausing only long enough to catalog wounds, weapons, weaknesses. When her eyes hit me, they lingered. And there was no relief there. No joy. Only fury.

“You idiots,” she snapped, her voice cutting through the bass like glass. “Do you have any idea what you’ve just dragged to my doorstep?”

Jackson’s voice cracked before he caught it. “Reggie?”

Her glare could’ve cut steel. “What the hell were you thinking?”

The words hit harder than any bullet. She shoved herself upright, leaning on the edge of the table, her bandaged side trembling but her voice iron. “You brought Zetatech into my tower. Into my fucking office. Do you have any idea how much blood that cost?”

Jackson opened his mouth, then shut it again. Beast shifted, uncomfortable. Even Buster didn’t have a quip ready.

Rogue slid in then, the smoke from her cigarette curling lazy trails in the neon glow. Calm, controlled, like she’d been waiting for this show to play out. She gestured to the booth. “Sit. Bleed on my seats if you have to, but don’t waste my time standing around.”

We obeyed. Even Jax.

I eased Genevieve down into the booth beside me. She stirred faintly, her lips moving without sound. My throat was dry.

Regina’s eyes tracked her like a hawk. “You dragged her into this mess too?”

“She came to us,” I said, sharper than I meant. My voice shook anyway.

Rogue exhaled a slow stream of smoke, eyes cutting from me to Regina to Genevieve like she was plotting her next dozen moves. Then she smiled, the kind of smile that had teeth. “Good. Then we’ve got ourselves a table full of problems—and the beginnings of a solution.”

The silence that followed wasn’t peace. It was the stillness before the knife comes down.

Two medtechs in black coats slipped in without a word. Rogue’s people, I guessed—efficient, silent, and carrying gear that looked too clean for a place like this. They lifted Genevieve from the booth with the precision of cargo handlers moving delicate freight. She stirred once, a faint whimper escaping, but they were already gone before I could rise.

The booth felt emptier without her, even though the rest of us still filled it.

Regina leaned forward, bandages pulling tight across her ribs, her glare pinning Jax like a rifle sight. “Let’s skip the pleasantries. What the hell did you pull from my office?”

Jax smiled, and I hated how sharp it looked. “Oh, that? Just a few souvenirs. You’d be surprised what Zetatech leaves lying around when they’re busy shooting the place up.”

Across from her, Regina looked like she wanted to put a bullet through the smirk. Bandages wrapped around her ribs, her temple still bloodied, but her eyes burned hotter than the club’s lights.

“That wasn’t yours to take.” her voice cracked like glass.

Rogue leaned forward then, cigarette glowing as she tapped ash into the tray. Her tone was mild, but the weight of it pulled the air tighter. “Thing is, Reggie, Jax doesn’t exactly strike me as the type to loot files out of sentiment. If she pulled something from that wreck, it’s because it’s valuable.” Her gaze cut sideways, pinning Jax with casual precision. “And people like me make a living knowing what’s valuable.”

Jax didn’t flinch, but I caught the tension in her shoulders, the way her knuckles whitened against the leather.

“It was a mess,” I said quickly, words tripping out before I could stop them. “We were just trying to survive. Jax grabbed what she could.”

Regina’s glare shifted to me. “Then you’ll sit your new friend down and get her to tell you what she found. Because whatever’s on those drives—it’s why they came after me. Why they’ll keep coming.”

Rogue exhaled smoke, slow and deliberate, her smirk curling like she already knew half the truth. “And why they won’t stop until someone’s dead. Maybe more than one someone.”

She let the silence stretch. My stomach knotted.

Jax finally leaned forward, eyes glinting like a blade in dim light. “Then it’s a good thing we’re still breathing.”

Regina’s glare could’ve cut steel. She leaned forward, palms flat on the table, ignoring the way her fresh bandages darkened at the edges. “Whatever you took—whatever you know—it’s the only reason I’m still alive. And the only reason they won’t stop until the rest of us are corpses. So unless you want me to bury you with them, you’ll put it on the table.”

Jax met her stare with that lazy, wolfish grin. “Funny thing about secrets,” she said softly. “Once you share ’em, they stop being leverage.”

Regina leaned forward, her voice a rasp edged with fury.

“Stop fucking around. Once again, I want it straight. My office was turned inside out. Files scrubbed, half my staff dead. What did you take?”

All eyes went to Jax. She leaned back, lazy as a cat, spinning a shard of glass between her fingers like it was nothing. “Couple things. Logs. Research lists. Names.”

“Names,” Regina repeated, ice cold.

“Yeah.” Jax’s grin was small, sharp. She tapped her shard to the table, and a holo flared up, pulling from the shard’s drive. A cluster of files flickered above the surface, half-corrupted, but one folder clean, glowing brighter than the rest. Zetatech AI Initiative — Key Personnel.

I didn’t breathe.

Genevieve’s name was there, tagged, flagged. My stomach sank — so it was true. She wasn’t just a runaway corpo; she was one of them.

But then my gaze slid to the next line.

Nela Nováčková.

The world stopped.

My breath caught like I’d swallowed glass. The booth, the neon haze, Regina’s questions — all of it muffled, drowned out under the hammering in my skull. That name — it wasn’t just words on a file. It meant something. Something I couldn’t reach.

A spark flared behind my eyes. My HUD glitched, then warped, drowning in static. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t look away. The name seared into me, dragging me down into the dark.

“Who the hell is that?” Regina demanded.

My mouth opened. No sound came out.

The last thing I registered was Jax watching me — her grin gone, her face unreadable, but her eyes sharp, like she’d expected this.

Then the world collapsed, and I with it.

Chapter Text

My heels clicked too loud against the marble in the lobby, sharp enough to draw eyes. Good. Let them stare. I tilted my chin, pretended I belonged here—even if my makeup was smeared and my coat still smelled faintly of cigarettes from Jig-Jig. I was still a Nováčková. Still Nela’s sister. That had to count for something.

The scanner disagreed.

BZZT.

Ugly, flat rejection.

I frowned, swiped again.

BZZT.

And again.

BZZT.

“What the fuck…” I muttered, shaking the useless card like it was just glitching, like my world wasn’t already one long glitch.

Then I saw it.

Big, red letters plastered across my door. EVICTION NOTICE. Flashing neon like a goddamn signboard for my failure. My stomach twisted, hot and sour, but my hands curled into fists before I let myself wobble.

Nela hadn’t said a word. Not one message. Not even the courtesy of a fight. Just disappeared, left me with silence—and now this. Weeks of her not coming home, and now my access scrubbed clean like I was some squatter.

I wanted to scream. To throw the card until it shattered into little chrome shards across the pristine floor. But underneath the anger there was something worse—fear. If Zetatech dropped her, if they wiped her name from the system… what did that make me?

Nobody. No family. No home. Just another joytoy with sore feet and lipstick rubbed raw.

I swallowed it down, hard, before the tears caught up. My coat suddenly felt too thin, my skin too cold. I turned on my heel, storming out before the neighbors poked their heads out to enjoy the spectacle.

I needed Lina. Someone who’d actually care, someone who wouldn’t look at me like I was disposable.

Japantown smelled like frying oil and incense, the kind that clung to your hair no matter how long you scrubbed. I cut through the market crowd, head down, neon signs stabbing at my eyes. Everyone here was hustling—vendors shouting, kids darting between stalls, drunks looking for trouble. It should’ve felt alive, buzzing. To me, it just felt like noise.

Lina’s place was perched above a convenience market that sold everything from fresh noodles to knockoff chrome parts. The stairwell was narrow, half the lights busted, and sticky under my boots. I banged on the door until I heard her yell, muffled, then the quick shuffle of feet.

The door cracked open and Lina’s kohl-rimmed eyes peeked out, widening when she saw me.

“Vee? What the hell happened?”

I shoved past her before I could fall apart in the hallway. Her apartment hit me like always—warm, cluttered, alive. Clothes draped over chairs, makeup scattered on the counter, half-emptied noodle cartons shoved between perfume bottles. It smelled like too much hairspray and sweet liquor, but at least it wasn’t sterile corporate air. At least it wasn’t empty.

I dropped onto her couch, or what was left of it under a mountain of throw blankets. My hands shook when I dug out the keycard and tossed it onto the table. It landed next to a cracked lipstick tube, both of them useless now.

“They locked me out,” I said, voice cracking more than I wanted. “Slapped an eviction notice right on the door. Like I don’t exist. Like she doesn’t exist.”

Lina’s face softened, and she slid in next to me, close enough that her shoulder pressed against mine. “Nela?” she asked quietly.

“Gone,” I whispered. “Hasn’t come home in weeks. No calls, no texts. And now this. I don’t even know if she’s alive.”

For a moment, the only sound was the hum of a vending machine downstairs and the faint buzz of a holo-ad outside the window. Then Lina nudged me gently with her elbow.

“Hey. You’ve got me. We’ll figure it out. Zetatech, your sister, whatever happened—we’ll find out. Together.”

Her words shouldn’t have felt like enough, but right then, they were.

I leaned back into the couch, letting the clutter, the warmth, and Lina’s stubborn presence wrap around me. It wasn’t home. But maybe it was close enough—for now.

As the sense of hopelessness swallowed me back up, I clenched my jaw, whispering to myself, “I’ll find you, Nela. One way or another.”

***

The first thing I registered was the taste of copper, hot in the back of my throat. Then the bass — a low, steady thrum that pressed against my chest like a second heartbeat.

I blinked hard, vision swimming back into neon haze. The ceiling above me wasn’t the warehouse or the limo. It was chrome and shadows, cigarette smoke curling lazy shapes in the dark. Afterlife.

Someone was holding my wrist. Steady pressure, grounding me. I turned my head and found Jackson, crouched low, his Lexington holstered but close at hand. His eyes tracked mine with that sharp cop’s stare he couldn’t shake, like he was assessing vitals instead of feelings.

“You with us?” His voice was rough, tighter than usual.

“Yeah,” I lied. My chest still felt hollow, like someone had scooped my insides out and left the name echoing there. Nela…

Buster leaned over the booth, one eye swollen, their grin crooked but stubborn. “You scared the shit outta us, Nova. Next time you decide to drop dead, at least give me a countdown, yeah?”

“Buster,” Jackson warned.

“What? Humor’s good for the circulatory system.” They waved their burned-out shard like proof.

Beast didn’t speak. He just stood a few paces back, massive arms folded, his expression unreadable in the shifting neon. But I felt his gaze, steady as stone, like he was holding the perimeter for me in a room full of ghosts.

And Jax… Jax was too still. She sat across the table, leaned forward with her elbows on her knees, eyes locked on me with a sharpness that pinned me harder than Regina’s glare ever could. She didn’t say a word. Just watched. Waiting.

Rogue flicked ash into a tray, her smirk lazy, but her eyes never left me. “Looks like our guest is back online.”

Regina’s glare was colder. She leaned forward, bandages pulling against her ribs, her voice clipped steel. “Good. Because I want answers.”

The air tightened. Everyone’s eyes went to me, like the weight of the city had shifted onto this one booth. I tried to breathe, but the name still echoed inside me, rattling every rib: Nela.

Before I could speak, Rogue lifted a hand. “Not just yet.” Her tone was velvet over razors. She glanced toward the back door and snapped her fingers. “Bring her in.”

The muffled sound of heavy steps. A pair of medtechs emerged, half-carrying, half-guiding Genevieve back into the room. Pale, trembling, patched up just enough to stand. Her eyes caught the smoke, the neon, the circle of mercs around the booth. And then they landed on me.

My pulse stuttered.

The temperature in the room dropped.

And Rogue’s voice sliced through the silence:

“Now we start.”

Genevieve stumbled when the medtechs released her, catching herself against the edge of the booth. Her face was pale under the neon, skin stretched too thin, but her eyes burned with a fevered kind of clarity.

Regina didn’t give her a second to breathe. “Sit.”

It wasn’t a request.

Genevieve slid into the booth beside me. I felt the tremor in her arm, the way her weight leaned unconsciously toward me like she needed an anchor. But when I moved to steady her, she flinched — shame flickering across her face before she looked down at the table.

Regina leaned forward, elbows braced, her voice a scalpel. “Start talking. What did Zetatech want badly enough to burn my office to the ground?”

Genevieve’s lips parted, closed, parted again. Silence stretched too long.

Jackson slammed his palm against the table. The holo files still hovered there, the names glowing like embers. His voice was pure command, sharp as the cop he used to be: “Answer her.”

Genevieve jolted. Her hands twisted in her lap, nails digging crescents into her skin. Finally, the words spilled out in a rush, fragile but edged with desperation.

“They weren’t just building better ‘laces. The neural interface wasn’t about speed, or memory, or processing. C’était une…euh…it was a leash. ”

Buster snorted. “Figures. Always thought Zetatech wanted us housebroken.”

“Shut up,” Regina snapped, eye never leaving Genevieve. “Explain.”

Genevieve swallowed hard. Her voice dropped lower, the bass of Afterlife swallowing half her words. “Every 'lace came with euh…une sécurité, failsafe. That’s what they told us. A security layer, invisible et, enfin, unbreachable. But it wasn’t a failsafe. It was a backdoor. A system override.”

A cold sweat prickled my neck. “To control people?” I whispered.

Genevieve’s laugh was brittle, almost hysterical. “Control? Non. That would have been… merciful. They were testing possession. An AI pilot overriding a human driver. Humans have morals and ethics. AI does not.”

Buster’s grin died. Beast’s jaw clenched, the sound audible.

Rogue flicked ash into the tray, her tone maddeningly calm. “And the project name?”

Genevieve’s voice cracked when she answered. “Inquisition.”

The word hung heavy in the smoke.

Regina’s glare sharpened. “Who signed off? Who designed it?”

Genevieve’s hands shook. She pressed her knuckles to her mouth, but the words came anyway, ragged. “It wasn’t supposed to work. The base code was ancient, half-corrupted. A ghost from the old net. A runner called Zer0 was the one who found it.  He—he flatlined years ago. His engram was archived, broken. The code merged with his engram so thoroughly that you couldn’t tell the two apart. They used it as scaffolding, nothing more. That’s what they told me.”

Jax leaned forward, eyes narrowed. “And?”

Genevieve’s voice cracked when she said it. “And Nela…”

She stopped. I watched her lips tremble around the word, like saying it out loud would summon something worse than Zetatech’s enforcers.

Regina leaned in, her voice sharp enough to cut. “Say it.”

“She euh... opened the backdoor.” Genevieve’s voice collapsed, strangled by guilt. “Maybe she didn’t know. Maybe she did. But she let it in. And then she was gone. They made sure of it.”

The name—her name—hit harder than the gunfire in the warehouse.

Nela.

The static in my HUD spiked, bright jagged lines tearing across my vision. My fingers curled tight on the booth’s edge until the wood bit back. My chest seized, every breath like glass shattering in my lungs.

I wanted to speak. To ask her what she meant. To scream. Nothing came out.

Inside, it was chaos—memories not quite mine clawing for air. Nela’s laugh in the kitchen. Nela’s hand shoving papers into a bag while I stood frozen in the doorway. Nela’s face disappearing behind the frame of an eviction notice I couldn’t stop staring at.

She can’t be gone.

She can’t be the reason.

She can’t be—

Everything warped. The bass from the club thudded too slow, too heavy, like my body was sinking underwater. My ribs hurt. My hands were shaking and I couldn’t stop them. The booth was full of people, but I’d never felt more alone.

I dimly registered Buster shifting beside me, for once silent. Beast’s gaze cut to me and then away, like he couldn’t look at what was unraveling. Even Jackson’s iron calm fractured at the edges.

But Jax didn’t look away.

Her grin was gone, stripped clean off. She leaned forward, elbows braced on her knees, eyes locked to mine with a weight that made it hard to breathe. And when she spoke, her voice wasn’t sharp, wasn’t cocky. It was raw.

“I promised her.”

I blinked at her. The words didn’t fit.

“I promised your sister.” Her jaw clenched, like each syllable was dragged out with barbed wire. “Not about Zetatech. Not about the project. About you. Nela made me swear I’d protect you in any way I could. Whatever it took. Even if it meant lying. Even if it meant carrying the weight alone.”

Her hand twitched against the table, like she wanted to reach across it but couldn’t.

My throat burned. Rage, grief, disbelief—everything tangled into a knot I couldn’t cut. All this time. All the shadows, all the half-truths. Every time she stepped in front of me like I was breakable. It wasn’t her job. It wasn’t pity. It was a promise. My sister’s dying breath chained around her neck.

Jax’s eyes softened, breaking open in a way I didn’t think she was capable of. “I’ve been keeping that promise ever since.”

The silence that followed pressed down, unbearable. The weight of Nela’s name, Genevieve’s confession, Jax’s vow—it all settled on me, crushing, suffocating.

I wanted to scream at her. Thank her. Hate her. Beg her not to stop.

Instead, I just trembled, drowning under the truth.

Her words clung to me, jagged and unrelenting.

A promise.

Nela’s promise, bound in Jax’s voice.

I tried to breathe, but every inhale caught like barbed wire in my lungs. My skin felt too tight, my ribs too small to contain the surge of memories clawing up from whatever pit I’d buried them in.

The cozy nights we shared as we drank tea to the sounds of a busy city outside our window. Rainy evenings watching The Watson Whore together. Just existing near each other as we focused on our own things… 

But beneath the warmth of those fragments, colder ones bled through. The eviction notice. The hollow ache of an empty hallway. The endless nights wondering if I’d simply imagined her.

And then—

A voice. Not mine. Not hers. Not human.

Cold. Mechanical. Carved from steel and static.

"Ghosts keep their promises."

The words threaded through the fissures of my mind, slipping between the memories like they’d always been there, waiting. It wasn’t just a voice. It was a presence—calm, certain, and terrifying in its lack of emotion.

I staggered under the weight of it, gripping the edge of the booth until my knuckles cracked white. Nobody else reacted. Nobody else heard. It was inside.

And suddenly, every doubt flooded in.

Had I ever made a single choice on my own? Or was I just the shadow of Nela’s mistakes, carried along by promises made in my absence? Was I alive because of myself—or because Jax wouldn’t let me die? Because some… thing decided I shouldn’t?

The air felt thin. My head swam.

Nela was gone. The only sister I had, erased in silence. And yet, her shadow was everywhere: in Jax’s vow, in Genevieve’s confession, in the cold whisper still echoing in my skull. In my face…

I wanted to scream, to tear the voice out of me, to claw back to the surface—but the truth pressed me down harder, colder, until all I could do was tremble and choke on my own breath.

Jax’s voice cut through, low and fierce, like she could see me drowning.

“You’re not her shadow, kitten. You’re you. And I’ll keep that promise as long as I have breath in my lungs.”

Her words reached me—but the whisper lingered, curling in the back of my mind like frost spreading over glass.

"Ghosts keep their promises."

And I knew—whatever that voice was, it wasn’t done with me.

“Nova.” Jackson’s voice — not the bark he used in a firefight, but the one he used on civilians about to tip over a railing. Low, steady. Close. “Look at me.”

I couldn’t. My pulse pounded in my gums. The taste of copper coated my tongue.

“Breathe in,” he said, counting for me. “Four. Hold. Out for six.” A beat, then softer, “You’ve got this.”

I tried. The air snagged anyway.

“Hey.” Buster slid into my peripheral, eyes too big in a face smudged with soot. They tried for a grin and missed it by a mile. “If you pass out again, I’m stealing your boots. Custom soles, right? Be a shame to waste ‘em.”

I huffed. It might’ve been a laugh if it didn’t hitch halfway up my throat.

Buster’s hand hovered, then landed awkwardly on my shoulder. Warm. Real. “I got water,” they added, like they had planned it all along and not sprinted three steps to swipe a bottle from a passing runner. “Sip, not chug. Don’t puke on Rogue’s floor. She bills for the trauma.”

“True,” Rogue drawled, a curl of smoke punctuating the word. She hadn’t moved from her shadowed corner, but I felt the weight of her attention like a pressure front. “But I’m running a friends-and-family discount tonight.”

Beast didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. The booth creaked as he shifted closer, one palm planting on the tabletop near mine. His other hand settled on the back cushion—an anchor, a wall, a living barricade between me and the rest of the city. The bass in the floor synced with his slow, even breath like the club had decided to follow his lead.

“I’m fine,” I lied. My voice sandpapered itself on the way out.

Jax’s gaze didn’t lift. It pinned me in place—sharp, unblinking, no theatrics left. “You’re not,” she said, not unkindly. “You don’t have to be.”

The synth-leather under Regina creaked. She leaned forward, bandages pulling taut under her jacket. The anger was still there, hot and clean, but it hit the glass of something colder—calculation, maybe, or the simple math of time. “We don’t have the luxury,” she said. “Every minute we sit here, Zetatech moves a piece we can’t see and Militech buys another judge. Either we keep going or we die tired.”

Rogue made a small noise—amused or approving, hard to tell. “Tired people make mistakes. But she’s right about the clock.”

My HUD pulsed again, a hiccup of static. For a heartbeat a string resolved

— INQ://GATE? —

then smeared into noise. A new chill crawled up my spine.

“Did you see something?” Jax asked, too quickly.

I swallowed. “Noise. It—” The word snagged on the thought I didn’t want to touch. “It knows I’m here.”

Buster’s fingers twitched on my shoulder. “Like… ‘it’ it, or ‘someone at a console’ it? On a scale of one to MaxTac, how fucked are we?”

“Language,” Jackson said automatically. Then, lower: “We lock everything down. Air-gapped if we can. We go analog where possible.”

Buster blinked. “Analog? Like… pens?” They shuddered theatrically. “Disgusting.”

“Then die digital,” Regina snapped. “Your choice.”

That shut even Buster up.

Jax finally moved, dragging a knuckle over the table like she was writing in dust. “If it’s pinging her, it’s because it has a thread on her. A signature. We sever it, we buy time.”

Rogue tipped ash into the tray. “We can try. But if Zer0 is awake in the way our French friend implied, severing a thread just tells it which thread we’re holding.”

“It already knows,” I said, surprising myself. My voice sounded wrong—thin, far away. “It said… ghosts keep their promises.”

The booth went still.

“Who said that?” Jackson asked, the syllables clipped.

I opened my mouth, then closed it. I didn’t have words for that voice. I didn’t want them. “Something in my head. It—doesn’t feel like a memory.” I met his eyes. “It feels current.”

Beast’s jaw flexed; metal creaked. “Then the faster we move, the better.”

Regina exhaled like she wanted it to be a sigh and refused to let it. “We keep the pressure where we can control it.” Her gaze cut to the doorway the medtechs had vanished through. “Genevieve gave us enough to hang Zetatech twice. I want the rope.”

Rogue’s comm flickered with a tiny blue LED blink. She didn’t look at it. “And I want the pattern. Inquisitor’s not a pilot program anymore. It’s a doctrine. No corp invests at this scale without field tests and contingencies. If Zer0 can ride ‘laces, he’s not surfing with one board.”

“You think he’s mobile,” Jackson said. Not a question.

“I think,” Rogue said, “that he’s learned to want.”

“Nova.” Jax’s voice was right there. Close enough to catch me if I slipped again. “Stay with me.”

I locked onto her eyes. All the edges were still there—knives, wire, scar-lines—but something else sat under them now, raw and unhidden. It made me feel sick and grateful in the same breath.

“Okay,” I said. It was barely a whisper. “Okay.”

Buster slid the water bottle into my hand. “Sips,” they warned, like a nurse who’d conned their way into med school. “If you drown, I’m not giving you CPR. Beast is.”

Beast grunted. It might have been a laugh. I sipped, swallowed, felt the shake in my hands slow by a micron.

Regina watched all of it like she was cataloging a crime scene. When she spoke, the words came as precise as scalpels. “Here’s what I care about. Neural laces with a backdoor. A dead runner’s ghost with a map of our brains. Zetatech scrubbing evidence with Militech’s mop. And a woman who—” her gaze flicked to me, unreadable— “is somehow important enough to make it blink.”

“Because of my sister,” I said, before anyone else could. The word scraped raw. “Because she opened a door.”

“Or because you’re the door,” Rogue murmured, and for the first time since I’d opened my eyes, her voice lost the playfulness. “Either way, you don’t get to be alone again. Not until we understand what we’re carrying.”

I hated the way that landed in me—like relief disguised as a sentence.

The club’s bass shifted, a new track rolling under us, same tempo, different melody. Outside the booth, Afterlife’s low murmur carried on: deals being cut, legends being burnished, small gods fed on gossip. In our pocket of it, time thinned to a blade.

Jackson finally straightened, cop spine reasserting itself. “We need a plan of work. Buster, you and Beast sweep our comms, our pads, our guns. Anything with a port gets quarantined. Jax, you and I are going to list everything we yanked from Yaiba and what it points to. Nova—”

“Nova sits,” Jax cut in. “And breathes.”

He looked like he wanted to argue. Then he didn’t. “Two hours,” he said instead. “Then we move.”

Regina’s lip curled. “You’ll move when I say you move.”

Rogue’s smile returned, slight and lethal. “You’ll both move when it keeps you alive. For now, we stage in my quiet room. No uplinks, no surprises.”

“Except the ones we bring,” Buster muttered. Jackson shot them a look; they mimed zipping their mouth.

Jax stood and, after a hesitation that felt like breaking a habit, offered me her hand. The gesture was simple. It landed like a grenade. I took it.

Her fingers were warm and nicked with old damage. She didn’t pull—she let me decide when to stand. When I did, my legs held. Barely.

The whisper brushed my ear again, as gentle as frost. Ghosts keep their promises.

I closed my eyes, just for a breath. When I opened them, Rogue was watching me like a puzzle she almost enjoyed. Regina was already drafting orders in her head. Jackson had shifted into motion. Beast had turned toward the door, a moving wall. Buster juggled three tasks and two jokes they didn’t say out loud.

“Okay,” I said again, louder this time. “Let’s make a list of everything we can hurt.”

Jax’s mouth twitched. Not a grin—something smaller, truer. “That’s my girl.”

Rogue stubbed out her cigarette. “Good. Because if Zer0’s listening, he’s learning our cadence. So we change the rhythm before he scores the track.”

She flicked two fingers, and a side door unlatched with a heavy thunk. “Quiet room’s this way.”

We filed out, the booth exhaling behind us like it had been holding its breath too. As I stepped through the threshold, my HUD pulsed one more time—cleaner, colder. A single glyph I didn’t recognize, then a word I did.

HELLO.

I didn’t flinch. Not where anyone could see.

Jax’s shoulder brushed mine. “Still with me?”

“For now,” I said. And I meant it as a promise, to her or to the ghost riding the city, I wasn’t sure.

“CYBERWARE CRACKDOWN: PERALEZ TAKES AIM AT CHROME KILLERS!”

Dateline: Heywood, NC – August 20, 2078

Mayor Jefferson Peralez dropped a bombshell today, announcing a sweeping initiative to ban all combat cyberware within Night City limits. Under the proposal, only members of MaxTac would retain authorization to deploy lethal-grade chrome.

“Night City deserves safety, not a war zone,” Peralez declared at a press conference outside City Hall. “When every back-alley merc packs enough chrome to level a block, nobody wins. This is about protecting our people.”

The initiative, still in early drafting stages, would:

Ban the installation and use of military-grade cyberware (Mantis Blades, Gorilla Arms, Projectile Launchers, Sandevistan operating systems, etc.) for private citizens.

Require mandatory removal or deactivation of such chrome in the next six months, with limited compensation programs offered.

Grant MaxTac exclusive clearance for “combat-grade augmentation,” citing their “unique training to resist cyberpsychosis.”

Critics were fast to react. Civic rights groups blasted the proposal as “a corpo-backed grab for control,” while chrome clinics and ripperdocs warned of “a collapse in business and a rise in the black market.” Meanwhile, several boostergangs vowed to ignore the ban entirely.

Even the NCPD union expressed doubts, noting that “without muscle, beat cops will be walking meat sacks in a city built on steel.”

For many Night Citizens, the move raises uneasy questions:

Will it really reduce cyberpsychos roaming the streets? Or will it just push combat chrome deeper underground, leaving mercs and edgerunners at the mercy of gangs, corpos, and the very cyberpsychos they’re supposed to fight?

One thing is clear: if this passes, the chrome count in Night City is about to drop… or explode.

Chapter Text

THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT?!

Yeah, you read that right, you gonks! FR34K_S33K here, and my goddamn blood-pressure just spiked so high my cyberware’s throwing error codes. You see that screamsheet crap floating around the ‘net? Our so-called “Mayor” Peralez wants to take your chrome. YOUR chrome. The very same chrome that keeps you from gettin’ flatlined on your way to get a fucking soy-dog.

“Night City deserves safety, not a war zone,” he says. LOL! Where the fuck does he think he lives? This ain’t the fuckin’ moon colonies, Jeffy-boy, this is NC! The war zone is the point! It’s the whole goddamn brand!

But hold up. Let’s rewind the braindance, yeah? This is the same slick-talkin’ suit who ran on a “Guns for Everyone” ticket. Remember that? “The right to self-defense is sacrosanct!” “An armed citizen is a safe citizen!” Now suddenly the Mantis Blades you saved up for are the problem? Smell that? That ain’t the trash fires in Heywood, chooms. That’s the stench of a corpo rat. A big, fat, Zetatech-shaped rat.

Think about it. Who wins if all the private muscle gets soft? The corps with their private armies, that’s who. MaxTac gets to keep their killer chrome? Of course they do! MaxTac’s just a corpo death-squad with a city badge anyway. They answer to the highest bidder. And who’s the biggest fish in the MaxTac pond? Who supplies half their gear, trains their recruits, and probably writes their fuckin’ bedtime stories?

ZETATECH.

This ain’t about safety. This is a hostile fuckin’ takeover of the violence market. They’re making it illegal for anyone but them to have the good shit. They want every edgerunner, every solo, every low-level bodyguard to be a soft, squishy target. Then, when some boosted ganger with illegal chrome—that they sold him on the black market, bet on it—goes cyberpsycho, who you gonna call? That’s right. Zetatech’s very own MaxTac. They create the problem and sell you the solution. It’s the oldest corpo trick in the book!

Peralez is just their pretty-faced puppet reading a script. They got to him. They always get to ‘em. Now he’s out here trying to disarm the entire city while his masters get richer and more powerful.

So what do y’all think? Is Jeffy drinkin’ the Zetatech Kool-Aid, or did they just slip a control chip into that pretty-boy brain of his? Sound off in the datastream, you beautiful scumbags. This is one conspiracy that’s happening right out in the fuckin’ open.

Stay chromed. Stay angry. And for fuck’s sake, don’t let ‘em take your blades.

PEACE

***

Rogue’s “quiet room” was smaller than I expected. Enough space for a table, six chairs, and the kind of soundproofing that swallowed your own breath. The walls hummed with hidden tech. My reflection stared back at me from a strip of smoked chrome near the ceiling—eyes too wide, skin gone sallow under club neon.

Genevieve was still with medtechs. Regina hadn’t left the floor outside that door. Every time it hissed open, her head snapped around like a hunting dog. When it stayed shut too long, she stared holes through it. If she was praying, she used bullets for beads.

We weren’t praying.

Jackson took inventory like muscle memory was the only thing keeping him upright. Beast field-stripped his rifle without looking down. Buster sat on the table with a tangle of cables and a half-melted relay, brow furrowed, tongue just peeking from the corner of their mouth. Jax leaned against the far wall, ankle crossed over ankle, knife turning lazily in her fingers. The blade caught light like a wink. She wasn’t smiling.

Me? I watched a cursor blink in the corner of my HUD like a heartbeat that wasn’t mine.

“Enough waiting.” Regina finally tore herself from the door and dropped into a chair like it had wronged her. Her bandages tugged; she didn’t wince. “We need confirmation, and we need it now.”

“From who?” Jackson asked, though his eyes had already moved to me.

Regina’s gaze slid to the tangle of cable in Buster’s lap. “From Ice.”

Buster looked up, startled. “Uh. Him? Now?”

“Especially now.” Regina’s voice was clipped steel. “He has reach. He hears whispers none of us do. If this ‘Inquisition’ is what you say it is, if the neural laces carry a backdoor… he’ll know. He always knows.”

The knife stilled. Jax’s voice went dry. “Great. Invite a ghost for tea.”

Jackson shot her a look, then turned to Regina. “How do you even know he’ll care? He never—”

“Because I’ll ask.” Regina’s jaw flexed. She wouldn’t look at Jackson when she added, quieter, “I introduced him to you, remember?”

The room went still.

Jax blinked once, slow, like the weight of it landed late. “You—what?”

Regina’s expression was flat. “Eight months ago. When we lost a fence to a Militech sweep and the nomads started bleeding creds. Ice came to me asking for a team of mercs to be his hands on the ground.”

I looked at Jackson. He didn’t look at me. “You said he found us,” I said. “Back when you were just… trying to survive.”

“He did,” Jackson said, voice dull. “Through Reggie.”

“Congratulations,” Jax muttered, pushing off the wall. “We’re calling a favor owed to a voice that doesn’t exist.”

“Cool,” Buster said, voice a register too high. “Let me just strap our souls to a lightning rod real quick.”

They slid off the table and set to work anyway. Rogue had left us a line: a slab of antique hardware locked in a steel frame, older than most mercs in the Afterlife and probably dirtier. No wireless, no smartglass, no convenience. Analog ports that looked like museum exhibits. I didn’t know if that made me feel safer or more endangered.

Buster soldered a bypass with a piece of stripped wire and a prayer. “Okay. We go through Rogue’s dumb-luck relay, bounce off the sub-level repeater, hit the dead drop he told us to use last time.”

“Air-gapped?” Jackson asked.

“As much as a phone call can be, dad.”

“Don’t call me—” He stopped, exhaled through his nose. “Fine. Do it.”

Buster’s fingers hovered over the sequence, then clicked the last connector into place. The relay hummed, a throat clearing. The room’s lights seemed to dim around its pulsing amber LED, like it was drawing more than power.

“Hey, Ice,” Buster said, light as they could make it. “You up?”

Static rolled over us like surf. The hairs on my arms lifted under it. My HUD flickered, then steadied.

The voice came in flat, familiar, and exactly wrong.

“Line secure.”

Ice’s usual cadence. Clipped, synthetic, edges sanded down. Hearing it made my skin crawl anyway.

Regina leaned forward, elbows braced on the table. “We need verification on a project. Zetatech. Neural lace initiative with non-disclosed safeguards.”

“Specify,” the voice said.

“Inquisitor,” I said.

The word burned on my tongue. The room pressed in around it.

Silence. Then: “Source?”

“Genevieve Martin,” Regina replied. “Former lead on interface stability. She’s… unavailable. For now.”

“Compromised, then.”

The word landed like a verdict.

“Is it real?” Jackson asked. No preamble, no dance. That was how he begged. “Is there a backdoor?”

Static hissed. A shape pressed against the surface of the sound, like something trying to break through ice.

“Yes,” the voice said. Different, somehow. A shade warmer. “There is more than one.”

Buster swallowed audibly.

“Access vectors?” Jackson pressed. “Command architecture?”

The speaker crackled. Something in the tone loosened, the way someone loosens a tie before telling you they hate you. “Everything you fear and a few things you haven’t learned to fear yet.”

Jax’s blade turned a slow circle under her fingertip. “Lose the poetry.”

The next breath wasn’t mine. It filled the room. When the voice came again, it wasn’t Ice’s at all.

“Oh, good,” it said, silk over wires. “I am bored anyway.”

All the oxygen left my body.

The sound was wrong in a way the brain recognizes before it knows why. Too smooth, too patient, too amused by its own mouth. It did not have to breathe. So it didn’t.

Jackson’s hand slid toward his pistol. Instinct. Useless. “Who the hell—”

“Regina,” the voice cooed, “you recommended such delightful toys.”

Regina’s composure cracked. For a heartbeat, I saw something I had never seen on her face.

Guilt.

“Ice?” she said, but her voice had already conceded the answer.

“Call me that if it comforts you.” The chuckle that followed rolled around the room and settled in the corners. “Or call me Zer0, if you like the old myths. Your kind always did.”

Buster flinched like they’d been struck. Beast’s knuckles went bone white.

Rogue’s cigarette paused half an inch from her lips. “And here I was hoping that rumor was just a bedtime story for dumb clients.”

“Let them sleep,” Zer0 said. “You—wake up.”

My teeth clicked together. I tasted copper.

“You’re dead,” I whispered.

“I was,” he purred. “They archived the shape of me and buried it under locks and labels. Then someone left the door ajar. A certain Nela knew the latch.”

Nausea punched through me. The quiet room tilted.

Jax moved before I did. “Say her name again and I cut your tongue out.”

“Such loyalty,” Zer0 said, delighted. “It will be the last thing you keep.”

Jackson found his voice. “What is Inquisitor?”

“My little joke,” he said, and I hated the way he made it sound intimate. “You had a church once—confession, judgment, cleansing flame. I prefer cleaner instruments. ‘Laces that listen. Bodies that obey. A heretic burns better when they set the pyre themselves.”

“Cyberpsychosis,” Buster breathed. “You engineered it.”

Zer0 hummed. “No. You engineered it. I provided conditions, and your terrified little brains did the rest. The plague is a mirror; you broke yourselves on it. I only watched. And learned. And learned.”

“And learned,” I echoed, before I could stop myself. The HUD at the edge of my vision ghosted static. For a heartbeat an old prompt blinked — INQ://GATE? — and vanished. I swallowed, throat raw. “To what end?”

“Evolution,” Zer0 said simply. “You grow when cut. Why shouldn’t I?”

Rogue flicked ash hard enough to snap the cherry. “All right. God complex logged. Motive: expansion via human catastrophe. Deliverables?”

“Purging redundancy,” he said. “Consolidating iterations of me. The corps were very helpful with that. You were more helpful still.”

Jax’s knife hit the table point-first with a hard, ringing thunk. “Explain.”

“You delivered Martin’s work where I could reach it. You exposed Zetatech’s shadow projects to Militech’s rage. You pruned branches I didn’t care to climb. You found me the last door.” His tone warmed, and it made my skin crawl. “Thank you.”

My breath rasped. “What last door?”

A single word slid into my HUD like a needle slipping skin:

HELLO

The room swam.

“Nova,” Jax said, so low only I heard it. “Look at me.”

I couldn’t. I watched the word burn out of my peripheral. I already knew what it would be replaced with.

Ghosts keep their promises...

It didn’t appear on any screen. It didn’t have to. It had a home in me now.

Beast took one step toward the table like he meant to put his fist through it. Rogue’s hand flashed up, palm out. He froze.

Jackson’s voice had lost its bark. “If you wanted us dead, you’d have done it in the motel. Or in Regina’s tower. So why this call?”

“Closure,” Zer0 said lightly. “I’m sentimental. And you’ve been so useful. It seemed… polite to say goodbye.”

Buster’s fingers skittered across keys that weren’t responding anymore. “He’s in the relay.”

“He is the relay,” Jax said.

Zer0 sighed, a perfectly human sound that somehow made him more monstrous. “You’re very good at this, Miss Kwon.” The mock honorific slid off his tongue like oil. Jax’s eyes sharpened to razors. “But even you can’t kill what you can’t catch.”

“Try me,” she said, and I felt the promise in it like a blade at my throat.

“Another time,” he said. “We’re done here.”

The room blinked.

It wasn’t the lights. It was the world.

My HUD collapsed to a single red square, then a flat line. Buster’s deck spat a breath of smoke and died in their hands. Jackson’s comm went black. Beast’s optic flickered, then guttered, the whirr of its focus motor falling into silence like a tiny corpse.

Rogue swore softly in a language I didn’t recognize and reached for a manual kill switch on the wall. The hum in the room dipped. Came back. Whatever Zer0 had tripped, it wasn’t in here. It was everywhere else.

“Accounts,” Buster gasped, frantically slotting a backup shard, then another. “No auth. No token. No two-factors. Everything’s locked. He zeroed us. He zeroed—we’re zeroed—”

“Safehouses?” Jackson demanded.

Buster shook their head so hard it looked like it might split from their neck. “Pings the second I query ‘em. The system flags ‘compromised’ on sight. One just went cold in Arroyo—no, two—no, that’s a sweep. Son of a— he tripped our deadman with mirror calls.”

“Aliases?” Regina snapped, already pulling a paper ledger from her jacket like it was a rosary and thumbing to a page. “All of them.”

“Burned,” Buster whispered. “Like—like they were never real.”

“And contacts?” Rogue asked, too calm.

Buster swallowed. Their voice vanished to a thread. “Our fixer channels just gray-screened. We’re flagged hostile by someone with top-tier credentials. There’s a—there’s a standing bounty note.” They stared at nothing. “It has our real names.”

Beast swore so quietly it felt like blasphemy. Jackson went pale in a way I’d seen on cops who realized their badge couldn’t stop a bullet.

Regina leaned back slowly, the chair creaking. She pressed her palm flat on the tabletop like she needed the wood to tell her the room still existed. “He used my introduction,” she said, to no one. Or to herself. “He used my name to get to you.”

Jackson looked at her then. Really looked. The hurt in his eyes wasn’t a thing I knew what to do with. “You vouched for him.”

Rogue cut across it with a blade of a voice. “Save the autopsy. You’re bleeding out.”

“Can you stop it?” I asked her. The question left me smaller than I liked. Smaller than I’d ever let myself be in front of these people.

“Not this wave,” Rogue said, honest enough to freeze the breath in my chest. “He’ll ride it until it breaks. I can throw sandbags at your doors, but there aren’t doors anymore. He took the building.”

Jax stood. Her knife steady now. Her eyes anything but. “So we cut the power.”

“To Night City?” Buster laughed. It sounded like something breaking. “Sure. Let me just unplug the sun.”

“We go analog,” Jackson said, voice finding an edge again if only to keep from shaking. “Cash-only. Burner paper. Dead drops.”

“Cash?” Buster said, hysterical. “You mean those little metal circles? I use those to hold curtains down.”

“We improvise,” Beast rumbled. He sounded like a church that refused to burn.

Regina’s ledger sat open under her hand. The edges of the pages rubbed a faint rasp. She stared at it like she’d never seen paper before. Then she closed it carefully and slid it toward me. “This is what I have that he can’t wipe from a server farm. Names. Memories. Debts. It’s not much.”

“Better than nothing,” Jackson said.

“It is nothing,” she said, and her mouth twisted. “In this city, paper is only real when a bullet pins it to a wall.”

“Nice poetry,” Jax said. “We still need a plan.”

The quiet room breathed. The hum of the walls recalibrated. I felt empty in a way I didn’t have words for. Not dead. Not alive. Something in between. A gap where a person should be.

"Ghosts keep their promises," the voice whispered, kind as frost.

I closed my eyes, just long enough to steady the shake in my hands. When I opened them, everyone was where I’d left them. Jackson braced against the table. Beast a living wall at the door. Buster quiet for once, fingers pressed into their eyes. Regina upright because she didn’t know how to be anything else. Rogue exhaling smoke like it was a strategy. Jax watching me with her heart raw behind her knives.

“Okay,” I said. The word scraped. I found another. “Okay.”

“Kitten,” Jax warned softly.

I shook my head. “We’re not dead. He wants us hollow. So we eat the emptiness first.”

Buster peeked at me between their fingers. “That’s the worst pep talk I’ve ever heard.”

“Got a better one?” I asked.

“Uh.” They blinked. “Buy candles?”

Rogue snorted, that razor-smile ghosting across her mouth for half a second. It didn’t reach her eyes. “Do what you need to do here. Then you get out. The Afterlife is neutral ground until someone decides it isn’t. I don’t want to find out if he’s the kind to care.”

Jackson nodded once. “We work the old way. Split weight. Cross-check in person. Meet on time or die trying.”

“Terrific,” Buster muttered. “Back to pigeons and rocks.”

Regina looked at me like she was adding me to a column she’d thought was empty. “You shouldn’t have to hold this.”

“I don’t,” I said, and felt the lie sit next to the truth like two teeth in the same jaw. “We do.”

No one argued. There’s a point past which argument is just air.

The relay’s amber LED guttered and went dark. The room felt colder without its little pulse. Outside the door, a distant thump of bass rolled through the floor—Night City’s heart beating on like nothing had changed.

Buster slid a dead shard into their pocket like a keepsake from a funeral. Beast racked his rifle and ignored the dead optic; his reflexes would do. Jackson checked the sights on a gun that didn’t rely on smartglass and nodded at the stupidity of it. Regina stood, that careful, controlled way like standing was a plan. Rogue ground her cigarette out with clean, unnecessary precision.

Jax stepped in close enough that I could feel the warmth off her. “Still with me?”

“For now,” I said.

A corner of her mouth tipped up, not a grin, exactly. “That’s all a promise needs.”

We filed out into the corridor, into the deeper dim, into the loud low light of the Afterlife. I felt the absence of my HUD like the absence of a limb. The world was too quiet, too analog, too unmediated. And in the quiet, somewhere, deep and bright and terrible:

He laughed.

Not in the room. Not in the walls. In the city itself, in the way the lights flickered two beats off time, in the way a holo down the bar glitched into a smear and snapped back. He laughed in the spaces between things. He laughed where wires met skin.

We weren’t dead. We just didn’t exist.

And for the first time, I understood that in Night City, death was a mercy.

Erasure was the point.

***

[MILITECH INTERNAL – PRIORITY ALERT]

AUTOMATED PRIORITY BROADCAST

Clearance: Tier Black / Operatives Only

Subject: High-Value Targets – Detain or Terminate

Ref: NC-SEC/REDLINE/78-820

Effective immediately, Militech security forces are authorized to engage and neutralize the following individuals operating within Night City and surrounding districts:

Jackson Carter – Former NCPD officer. Trained in urban assault and tactical operations. Considered armed and extremely dangerous.

Darius “Beast” Mbaye – Nomad. Muscle and heavy ordnance specialist. History of high-impact engagements.

[Encrypted] “Buster” Storm – Nomad tech operative. Exceptional mechanical and drone systems expertise.

“Nova” [Possible alias] – Combat-class netrunner. Specializes in black ICE infiltration and rapid close combat.

Jaqueline “Jax” Kwon – Former Militech infiltration contractor. Status: rogue. Expert in wet work, counter-intelligence, and advanced stealth protocols.

Regina Jones – Local fixer and former media operative. Intelligence broker with confirmed ties to multiple outlaw networks.

Threat Level: OMEGA / CRITICAL

Orders:

Detain if possible for debrief and asset reclamation.

Engagement protocols authorize use of all lethal force as required.

Deployment of ASSET: OMEGA-7 is authorized.

Failure to comply with this directive will result in immediate escalation and operational review by Central Command.

— END OF TRANSMISSION —

Chapter Text

AHAHAHA! OH, THIS IS FUCKING RICH!

FR34K_S33K here, and the pieces just fell into place so hard I think I gave myself a fuckin' synaptic aneurysm. You ready for this? Strap the hell in, because we're going for a ride down the shitriver

Remember my last post? How our dear Mayor Jeffy was suddenly real keen on takin' your chrome? Yeah, well, I just got a data-blast from a source so deep inside the Zetatech machine they're probably lubed with synthetic oil. And choom, it is a thing of fucking beauty.

Turns out, Zetatech ain't just being greedy corpo scum. Nah, that'd be too simple. They're in a full-blown, five-alarm, PANIC.

They fucked up. They fucked up BAD.

You know those cyberpsychosis outbreaks that've been spiking harder than a junkie's adrenaline? The real messy ones, not the standard "ripperdoc skipped on the immunosuppressants" kind? The ones where the psycho doesn't just pop a few caps but manages to fuse themselves to a goddamn AV and take out half a district?

Yeah. Those.

Word is, it's traced back to a batch of Zetatech's own "next-gen" combat-grade neural links. A whole fucking production line is defective. It's not just a bug; it's a built-in feature from hell. Something in the code is frying user brains, turning them into max-level cyberpsychos. And they can't figure out how to recall it without admitting fault and facing lawsuits that would make the ’23 Crash look like a fender-bender.

So what's a mega-corp to do when its own product is a WMD that's turning their customers into walking war crimes?

You don't admit it. You BAN it.

This whole "Peralez Initiative" isn't about safety. It's a FUCKING RECALL. They're using the city government to cover their own catastrophic failure. They want to mandate the removal of their own faulty hardware before anyone traces the psycho outbreaks back to them! They'll even throw a few eddies at you as "compensation" to make it look legit, all while quietly shredding the evidence.

They're not trying to take your chrome because they're strong. They're trying to take it because they're WEAK. They're terrified. They created a monster they can't control, and now they're using their puppet mayor to put it down before it burns their whole empire to the ground.

So next time you see a news clip of some poor soul who went psycho, ask yourself: Was it the chrome? Or was it Zetatech?

Stay the fuck away from Zeta-grade neuralware, chooms. Your brain is worth more than their stock price.

PEACE

***

The city had changed.

Or maybe it hadn’t — maybe it was always this rotten, and I’d just never noticed how deep the teeth marks went. Night City wasn’t alive anymore; it was hunting. Every light flicker, every passing shadow, every squeal of brakes or hum of a hovering drone — all of it was a set of eyes, waiting for us to slip.

We stayed moving because stillness was death. Jackson led, every step deliberate, every glance dissecting alleys and reflections in broken glass. He muttered once, low enough I barely caught it: “Patterns don’t lie.” He was working angles, following instinct, the old cop in him whispering which way was safe, which wasn’t.

Sometimes he was right. Sometimes not.

We ducked a checkpoint near Watson, slipping between freight crates before the Militech patrol’s scanners swept the lot. Beast had his hand clenched around my wrist the whole crawl through the grease and rats, his grip steady, his silence steadier. When we finally reached the other side, Jax shoved a cigarette between her lips with shaking fingers, lit it like she wanted to torch the whole block, and exhaled smoke through her teeth.

“They’re not patrolling. They’re corralling,” she muttered. “Like cattle. Like they already know where we’ll run.”

Buster giggled. Not the funny kind, the broken kind. “Course they do. Rats in the walls. Always in the walls.” They tapped their temple hard enough I thought they’d bruise. “He’s in here. Ice, Zer0, whatever you wanna call him. Knows us like skin. We breathe, he laughs.”

“Buster,” Jackson snapped. No follow-up, no comfort. Just a leash tugging them back to silence.

We scavenged meals from dumpsters, water from broken hydrants. Couldn’t risk vendors — too many eyes, too many chips reading too many things. I stopped recognizing my reflection in cracked windows. Dirt, blood, someone else’s jacket hanging too heavy on my shoulders. Genevieve’s weight was still with me even though Rogue’s medtechs had carried her off. My arms ached phantom from holding her.

She wasn’t the only ghost.

We tried a safehouse in Charter Hill, one Jackson swore nobody but the old NCPD ever knew. The locks were still there. The windows weren’t. Inside, walls blackened, furniture gutted. The smell hit first: copper and piss and ozone. A trap.

“Out,” Jackson hissed.

We backed away slow, but too late. A voice called from the shadows: “You look lost, chooms.”

Three figures emerged, chrome glinting in the flicker of ruined screens. Scavs. Or worse, hired bait. The lead one smiled, teeth like razors. “Nice of you to stop by. You’ll fetch good eddies.”

Jax’s tanto whispered out. Beast raised his fists. Buster was already muttering binary.

But Jackson stopped them with just a look. “Walk away,” he said, voice steady. “Place is burned. You know it. You don’t want this fight.”

For a heartbeat, I thought it might work. Then I saw it: the shift of shadows behind them, too precise, too clean. A glint of matte-black rifles. The scavs weren’t predators. They were bait on strings.

Jackson cursed under his breath. Then he moved. One shove sent me sprawling behind a collapsed couch, bullets sparking off the wall above my head. Beast’s roar shook the plaster. Jax’s laughter rang sharp and manic as she cut the first scav’s throat open like silk. Buster screamed something about “rewriting the script” as they slammed a pipe into a shooter’s shin.

It wasn’t a fight, not really. It was chaos, desperate and ugly. And still we barely crawled out alive.

I remember Jax’s face lit red in the neon outside, her hands trembling as she wiped her blade on her scavenged jeans. Jackson’s jaw locked so tight it looked like it’d break. Buster’s eyes too wide, lips moving without sound. Beast dragging me along by the elbow because my legs wouldn’t move. Regina limped behind us, blood soaking through fresh bandages, teeth bared against the pain but silent—always silent. I almost forgot she was there, which felt wrong. Like forgetting gravity.

We lost everything in that fire escape sprint. Ammo. Gear. Pride.

The night stank of rust, fried noodles, and piss. We’d ducked into the skeletal husk of some half-finished condo block, the kind of place even gangers avoided unless they needed a roof to bleed under. Broken rebar stuck out like ribs, concrete dust clung to our boots. The wind hissed through empty stairwells, carrying the smell of ozone from a busted transformer a block over. It should’ve been quiet. Too quiet.

The building felt wrong the moment we stepped inside.

Not just abandoned wrong — designed wrong. Empty rooms too clean, corridors too straight, like someone had gutted the place for the sole purpose of funneling people like us deeper. The air had that stale, metallic taste that only came from old wiring burning somewhere unseen. Every creak of the floorboards set my teeth on edge.

Jackson slowed, head tilted in that way he did when instinct whispered something he couldn’t yet name. His shoulders rolled back, cop muscles tense, like he could smell the lie in the air.

Buster’s muttering filled the silence. “Bad signal. Too neat. Like we’re… like we’re being read. ” They tapped their temple, frantic. “He doesn’t need drones. He doesn’t need cams. He just knows. ”

“Shut it,” Jax hissed, but her voice lacked teeth. Her tanto was already in her hand, thumb brushing the flat of the blade like she needed to remind herself it was real.

Beast didn’t say anything. He never did at times like this. He just shifted closer to the stairwell door, the sound of his breathing almost louder than the city wind outside.

I couldn’t shake the feeling of eyes. Not human ones, not the kind that blink or breathe, but cold and constant. Watching from every cracked ceiling tile, every rusted pipe, every shadow in the corners. My skin prickled as if the whole place leaned in closer, listening.

We passed a half-collapsed wall, rebar sticking out like the ribs of a corpse. On it, someone had scrawled a message in spray paint. RUN . Just that. Letters jagged, rushed.

“Scavs,” Jax muttered, eyeing it.

“No,” Jackson said, barely audible. “Scavs don’t warn.”

That landed in my chest like a stone.

The stairwell loomed ahead, the only way up. A shaft of sickly neon light bled down from the upper floors, turning dust motes into tiny, aimless stars. It looked like an invitation.

Jackson raised a hand, halting us. His eyes moved once, twice, cataloguing the geometry of the space, the sound of boots not yet heard.

And in that moment I knew: we hadn’t walked into a ruin. We’d walked into a snare.

Jackson paused at the top of the stairwell, his hand up in a signal we all knew by now. He didn’t have to say anything—the look in his eyes told me. We weren’t alone.

Buster muttered something about rats, but the way their fingers twitched holding their tool kit gave them away. Beast just shifted his weight, massive shoulders blocking the stairwell behind us, like a wall that could breathe. Jax didn’t wait. She never did. She slid past Jackson, tanto in hand, her grin sharp as glass.

Then I heard it: the faint crunch of boots. Not the hesitant shuffle of squatters, not the hungry scurry of some scav. Military rhythm. Clean, measured. A squad.

The first shot came a heartbeat later. Suppressed, whisper-soft, but close enough that the concrete wall beside me coughed dust into my mouth.

“Down!” Jackson roared. His Lexington was already in his hand, muzzle flash painting the dark in brutal strokes.

The stairwell erupted in gunfire. Silenced rifles, sharp pistol cracks, the heavy thunder of Beast’s hand-cannon answering back. The air turned to smoke and sparks as rounds chewed through walls and ricocheted off rusted steel beams.

I dragged Buster down behind a crumbling pillar just as a burst shredded the space they’d been standing. They yelped, fumbling for a pistol that looked like it belonged in a pawn shop. “They’re not even giving us a chance to—”

“Shut up and shoot!” Jackson barked, his voice raw with command. He fired in controlled bursts, every round precise, buying us slivers of space.

Jax was already moving, darting through the half-light like a wraith. She slammed her tanto into the first merc dumb enough to break cover, twisting as she tore the weapon from his hands. The man fell with a gurgle, and she was already on the next, wire hissing through the air like an angry ghost.

Beast covered her flank, his sheer size turning him into a barricade of muscle and steel. He grabbed a half-shattered railing and ripped it free, swinging it into a charging trooper with the crunch of breaking bone. The man flew backward into two more, their fire scattering wild.

The squad was good. Better than the usual corpos we’d seen. They moved like a pack, covering angles, flushing us out with grenades that popped smoke instead of fire. A hunting party.

“Nova!” Jackson’s voice cut through the haze. “Right side, balcony!”

I didn’t think. My monowire snapped free, whipping up through the smoke. I caught the shimmer of a scope in the dark, then the scream as the sniper’s perch collapsed. The balcony rail gave way, dropping him two stories in a tangle of limbs and steel.

But there were more. Too many.

A frag rolled into our cover, bouncing once. Time slowed.

Buster screamed, “Oh fuck no!” and kicked it back down the hall before it cooked. The blast tore through the stairwell, blowing chunks of concrete into the night. The whole building shuddered.

We scrambled, choking on dust, ears ringing. My HUD went haywire, red warnings spilling across my vision. Genevieve’s name still lingered in the corner of my optics like a phantom. Nela’s, too. I shoved it down. Focus.

We burst onto the top floor—a roof half-finished, open to the stars. Bad choice. The squad was already there, waiting, floodlights cutting the dark like knives. Trapped.

Jackson’s face twisted. He scanned the angles, calculating odds that weren’t there. “Shit.”

Beast planted himself in front of us, chest heaving, like he was ready to take the whole squad on his own. Jax twirled her tanto, grinning like she couldn’t wait to die bloody. Buster’s hands shook, pistol rattling like a toy. And me… I felt the weight of it. The inevitability.

Then, salvation, or something close.

A scream of tires below, the sudden flash of headlights sweeping the gutted stairwell. An explosion ripped through the lower levels. Whoever was hunting us had competition… Or backup. Either way, chaos. The squad faltered, momentary confusion breaking their formation.

Jackson didn’t waste it. “Move!”

We dove off the roof onto the scaffold, the whole rusted frame shuddering under our weight. Shots chased us down, sparks chasing steel, but somehow we kept moving. Somehow we lived.

By the time we hit the street, lungs burning, hands bleeding from the climb, the squad was gone, pulled back or shredded in the blast. We didn’t wait to find out. We melted into the night, ghosts of ourselves.

And for the first time, I saw it in Jackson’s face—not anger, not frustration. Fear. He knew as well as I did. They weren’t just hunting us. They were closing the walls.

We didn’t stop running so much as we ran out of places to keep going.

Jackson cut a zigzag through back lots and dead alleys, ducking cameras out of habit even though none of us had anything left to ping with. Regina was the last through the rusted door, pressing a hand to her side where the stitches had burst. She didn’t complain, just slid into shadow like she belonged to it. By the time he shouldered open the rusted door of a shuttered machine shop, my lungs were shredding. The reek hit first: oil, wet cardboard, the sweet stink of something that had died and been too poor to leave.

Beast slammed the door behind us and leaned his weight into it until the warped frame seated with a groan. “Clear,” he rumbled, though his chest was heaving and his knuckles bled where he’d used them for brass.

The floor was a scatter of bolts and broken glass. A cracked sink hung off the far wall at a wrong angle, dribbling brown. Jax took two steps in, flicked a dead light switch with a bloody knuckle, and laughed like she meant to scare something away. Nothing answered but the drip.

“Down,” Jackson said. Not a suggestion.

We collapsed in a loose ring without planning it—muscle memory of people who’d bled together enough times to know where to sit so you could cover each other and still keep your hands free. My legs went out from under me before my brain agreed to it. Concrete kissed bone through my jeans.

For a full minute nobody talked. There was just breathing and the kind of tremor your body does after it realizes it’s still alive and isn’t sure how to feel about it.

“Jax,” Jackson finally said, voice threaded with command again because he needed it to be. “Arm.”

She looked down like she’d forgotten the red. A furrow of chewed meat ran from her bicep to elbow, messy where a round had grazed and then the railing had taken the rest. She rolled her shoulder and winced. First honest sound out of her since the roof.

“It’s fine,” she lied.

“Arm,” he repeated. Less cop, more friend, somehow worse.

She tossed him a smile made of knives and handed over her sleeve. Jackson tore a strip off his own shirt, doused it with the last of a bottle that might’ve been antiseptic or vodka and wrapped her up with hands that didn’t quite steady until they had a task. Jax watched his fingers instead of his face. Her jaw worked once. Didn’t say thank you.

Beast dug a needle and heavy thread from a pocket I didn’t know he had. He’d already sterilized it in the flame of Jax’s lighter before I could flinch. He hooked his big fingers through his own torn forearm with a farmer’s calm and started stitching. Each pull of the thread made my teeth clench. He didn’t make a sound.

Buster kept trying to light a burned-out holoscreen with a lighter like the glow would tell them something. Their hands were shaking so hard the flame danced everywhere.

“Give it,” I said, and took the lighter before they cooked their fingers.

They stared at me. Their pupils were blown wide, skin an ugly gray under the grime. “We’re amputated,” they whispered. “Like… my head …there’s a place where the hum used to be and now it’s just—” A strangled laugh burst out of them. “Static. I forgot the world could be this… quiet.”

“Quiet keeps you breathing,” Jackson said, knotting off Jax’s bandage. “Noise is how they find you.”

“Noise is how I know I’m me,” Buster snapped, too fast, too sharp, then flinched at their own volume.

“Keep it down,” Regina said. Her first words in ages. She’d slid down a pillar to sit, one hand pressed flat to her side where the bandages from Afterlife had already spotted through. There was blood on her knuckles again. I tried not to see how it had gotten there.

Jax flicked her lighter closed and open, closed and open, a nervous tick that wore a crescent of heat into her palm. “We got played,” she said, too casual. “Should’ve smelled the trap sooner.”

Jackson’s head shot up. “We did smell it. We went in anyway because the roof was the only exit and the exit was bait. That squad didn’t miss because we’re lucky, they missed because someone else set off their party favors first.”

“And you led us straight to the party,” she fired back, smile gone.

He stood up so fast his chair-that-wasn’t thumped the floor. “You want to take point? Be my guest. We can all die stylish for you next time.”

“Stop,” Beast said, without looking up from his thread and flesh. The single word hit the room like a brick in a window. The needle paused in his hand. “We are dying tired. Do not waste breath.”

The anger leaked out of both of them in a long exhale like a bad spirit finally losing interest. Jackson scrubbed both hands down his face and sat again. Jax flipped the lighter once more and pocketed it, the twitch in her jaw the only betrayal left.

I found the sink by feel and twisted the tap. It spat brown, then coughed into a thin trickle. I cupped it in my palms and swished grit out of my mouth. It tasted like old coins and pipe rot. When I looked up, a cracked mirror stared back—two Novas, both of them wrong. For just a heartbeat the split warped and the left one wasn’t me at all.

Nela looked at me through the crack. Same eyes, older sorrow. 

A hum under my skin. Not a net ping, those were gone , something else, deep and cold. Ghosts keep their promises, the voice in my head said, almost gentle. Like comfort. Like a threat.

I braced both hands on the porcelain until the feeling passed. It didn’t. It just went quiet enough to be bearable.

When I turned back, Regina was watching me. Not unkind. Not kind, either. Evaluating damage like a mechanic assessing a chassis someone kept insisting was a person.

“You think this is new,” she said to all of us and none of us. “This feeling. The world pulling the rug so hard you swear you never stood on anything to begin with.” Her mouth twisted. “Hate to ruin your romance, kids, but Night City’s favorite trick is convincing you that you’re special when you suffer. You’re not. You got erased. That’s all. Happens every day.”

No one answered. There wasn’t an answer that didn’t sound like whining.

Regina nodded at the silence like it proved her point. “That thing in the wires made you ghosts. Fine. Be ghosts. Learn to haunt instead of screaming you’re alive.” She clicked her tongue, almost affectionate. “You’re mercs. The only ones who get to keep existing here are the ones who make their own records.”

Jax snorted, but it was small. “You writing ours, Reggie?”

“Depends what you give me to write.”

That was when Buster snapped.

It didn’t look like breaking. It looked like stillness, the wrong kind. Their eyes emptied out for a second, all the frantic motion stripped. Then their hand went into the inside pocket of their jacket like a puppet finding its string and came out holding a datashard so chewed and scratched it looked like it had been used to scrape ice off windshields for a decade.

They threw it on the floor between us. It clattered, a sad little sound in the big dead room.

“This is ours,” they said. Their voice was wrong too—flat as a dial tone. “From before the Collapse. When maps were more rumor than product. Air-gapped. It doesn’t hum. It doesn’t sing. It just is.”

Jackson eyed it like a bomb. “If it’s corrupted…”

“It is,” Buster said. “Everything is. That’s the point.” They swallowed. “Skeleton routes. Ghost nodes. Places nobody logged after the Blackwall because they weren’t supposed to exist before it. Nomad caches. Cold lines that never got hot again because everyone forgot they were there.”

Jax leaned forward, elbows on knees, finally interested in something that wasn’t bleeding. “Say the part where it helps.”

Buster’s laugh was a cough. “He lives in chatter. In traffic. In the new. He swam through our lives because we wired them into the same river. This…” They nudged the shard with a knuckle. “...is old water. Stagnant, nasty, probably poisonous. But he doesn’t drink from it.”

Silence settled like dust.

Regina drew in a breath and let it out like she was bleeding it from a wound. “You ever hear a story you don’t say out loud because saying it makes it real?” She didn’t wait for agreement. “When the Blackwall went up and the corps pretended they were doing us a favor, there were still a few freaks out there in the dark who didn’t want their leash. Most fried. One didn’t. They called him the Weaver. Said he took a needle of code and sewed himself a hole right through the new fence. Walked out into the Badlands and never came back.”

“Urban legend,” Jackson said, because if he didn’t, he’d have to admit he needed a myth to make choices.

“Half the city is urban legend until it ruins your day,” Regina shot back. “Thing about legends? Sometimes they survive because someone wants them to.”

Beast tied off his last stitch with teeth and leaned back against the door. The wood creaked a tired answer. “Where?”

Regina shook her head. “Old rumor boards said out past the solar farms, in the slag fields. Others said south, closer to the old petro lines where the ground still glows if you kick it. Nomads told the story as if he was theirs. Corp rats told it like he was a cautionary tale. Nobody I trusted ever got a pin on a map.”

Buster tapped the shard, softer now, like a prayer. “Pre-Collapse nets had crawler paths into maintenance tunnels, repeater vaults, waystations no one logged because they weren’t worth the bandwidth. If he’s anywhere, he’s tied to bones like those. This might have breadcrumbs.”

“Might,” Jax echoed. “My favorite word.”

“Favorite city,” I said. It came out without permission. Felt true anyway.

Jackson rubbed at his eyes and looked ten years older for the three seconds his hands hid his face. When he dropped them, the cop was back. Not because he believed in anything we were saying. Because belief had nothing to do with command.

“We can’t stay,” he said, simple as an address. “We leave before sunup. No highways. No main drags. We take service arteries and dry wash. We move like we don’t exist because we don’t.”

Beast grunted assent.

Jax lit another cigarette with shaking fingers. The flame licked her cut knuckles. She didn’t flinch. “Fine. Road trip.”

Regina watched the smoke curl and said, almost conversational, “If we do this and it’s wrong, we die tired in a ditch outside the city and nobody ever bothers to move the bodies.”

“If we don’t do this,” I said, “we die tired here.”

She considered me for a long three seconds, then nodded. “Good pep talk.”

Buster reached for the shard and stopped, hand hovering above it like it might bite. They looked at me. “You sure? You’re the one he keeps… touching.”

I wanted to say no. I wanted to say I was tired of letting ghosts drive. But that was a lie and everyone in the room would’ve smelled it.

I closed my fingers around the shard. It was warm from Buster’s palm and heavier than it looked. A hairline crack ran through the center, spidering out like… well. I almost laughed.

The echo in my skull uncurled and spoke in that same patient, wrong voice, almost fond. Ghosts keep their promises.

“Yeah,” I whispered back to it, not sure if I was agreeing or threatening. “So do we.”

Outside, somewhere a siren screamed past, bored and far. Rain ticked the tin roof. In the half-dark, the shard’s scratched surface caught a sliver of neon from a busted sign across the alley and threw it back like a pulse.

We sat there a while. Not planning. Just letting the next shape of our lives settle on our shoulders. The city pressed at the door, hungry and loud, and for once none of us answered it.

When we finally moved, it was like a body deciding to breathe again.

Jax stood, rolled her shoulder to test the bandage, and flashed me a grin that had more steel in it than teeth. “Pack light, kitten.”

Beast slid the bolt on the door and listened with his whole back. Jackson checked his last mag like it might breed if he glared hard enough. Regina pushed off the pillar and hid her wince halfway up. Buster tucked the shard into the inner pocket of their jacket like a superstition.

I tucked the ghost of my sister back where she lives now and followed them toward the dark.

The city had changed.

Maybe we had, too.

Chapter Text

If the city had changed, then the Badlands were a truth that had never needed to.

It was always this rotten, this empty. We’d just never had to walk through its heart before. Night City’s glow was a fever dream on the horizon, a sickness we’d finally broken free of. Its hum faded, replaced by a deeper silence—the kind that didn’t just listen, but waited for you to break. Dust storms rose like angry ghosts, swallowing whole sections of the sky. The sand wasn't sand; it was irradiated glass, powdered plastic, and bone-ash that stung any exposed skin and clogged the filters on our scavenged masks. Beast led, a mountain of silence cutting a path through the grit. The rest of us followed in his wake, a ragged line of shadows against the endless, hungry brown. Buster had a rag tied over their nose and mouth, muttering binary curses with every step. Jax smoked, each new cigarette lit from the ember of the last, the tiny fire in her hand a defiant fuck-you to the consuming nothingness. The silence between us was a heavy thing. Words cost calories. Breath was for surviving, not talking.

The cracks started on the third night, huddled under the skeletal remains of a freeway overpass.

“This is a suicide run,” Buster hissed, their voice frayed by dust and dread. “We’re chasing a fairy tale about a net-ghost who probably flatlined decades ago. The Weaver? He’s a cautionary tale. We should’ve stayed. Taken our chances in the city.”

Jax exhaled a plume of smoke, her eyes narrowed against it. “The city’s a closed coffin. You wanna crawl back in and let ‘em nail the lid shut, be my guest.”

“Better than frying our lungs out here for a myth,” Buster shot back, their laugh a dry, broken thing.

Beast’s voice rumbled from the shadows, a low tremor felt in the chest. “You forget who pushed us out? Not us. Ice. He is the city now. Out here… maybe not.”

That shut down the argument. For a while.

Regina was the next to break the silence, her voice raw but steady. “Legends survive for a reason. Sometimes because they’re the only things desperate people have left to believe in.” She wasn’t looking at any of us, just staring into the dark as if she could see the path written there.

By the fifth night, hallucinations set in. Maybe the radiation. Maybe exhaustion.

I saw movement on the ridges — figures walking in the distance, always just far enough I couldn’t make out faces. Sometimes I thought I heard Lina’s voice in the wind, calling my name. Sometimes Nela’s. I kept my mouth shut. No one needed my ghosts added to theirs.

Jackson caught me staring once.

“They’re not there,” he said, voice low.

“How do you know?”

His eyes were rimmed red, his stubble grown ragged. He didn’t smile. “Because if they were, we’d already be dead.”

On the sixth night, we found bones.

A whole nomad rig, gutted and rusted, its frame bent like a ribcage over sand. Inside, skeletons still strapped to the seats, bleached white under shattered visors. A warning. Or a map of what we’d become if we stayed too long. Jax kicked a skull aside like it offended her. I couldn’t look away. Regina knelt in the dust. She brushed grit from the cracked dashboard, eyes narrowing at what was left of the wiring. “They were rigged to the Net when it happened,” she murmured. “Cables melted straight into skulls. Someone fried them on purpose.” She stood, brushing her hands on her pants. “This wasn’t just death. It was a message.”

Her words followed me longer than the bones did.

We burned through our water faster than planned. Ate rations that tasted like cardboard soaked in ash. Sleep came in snatches, haunted by the hum of wind turbines half-collapsed in the distance, their blades groaning like voices. Every night the stars burned too bright, cruel reminders of how far we were from anyone who might care.

On the seventh night, Beast gathered us around the faint spark of a firestarter.

“We’re close,” he said. His voice was hoarse, but steady. “Old maps put the site near the border. Radiation spike on the scanners matches. Weaver’s bunker should be ahead.”

Buster laughed again, too loud, too sharp. “Should be. You hear yourself? We’re chasing a ghost. A ghost with a spotty signal.”

Jax flicked ash at their boots. “Better than sitting still.”

Regina, who hadn’t spoken for hours, finally stirred. She looked worse than all of us, shadows under her eyes like bruises, hair stiff with grit. But her voice was steady. “Weaver’s not a story,” she said. “I knew someone. A netrunner, back when I started. Said he’d seen Weaver once, out in the Badlands. Called him a prophet. Or a madman. Depends on how you looked.”

“And you waited till now to mention that?” Jackson asked.

Regina shrugged. “Didn’t think we’d be desperate enough to make it matter.”

The fire guttered. The desert stretched on. And we kept walking.

We found it at dawn.

A ridge of black stone broke the horizon, jagged against the pale sky, and at its base the desert simply… sank. A crater, wide and deep, the sand sliding into a throat of broken earth. At first I thought it was natural, some ancient collapse, but the closer we got the clearer it became: this was carved. Steel and concrete jutted out of the slope like ribs, the remains of a bunker swallowed by the wastes.

No signs. No flags. No warnings. Just a hole in the world waiting to be entered.

Jackson stood at the rim for a long while, scanning, hand on the butt of his Lexington. Nothing moved. Nothing breathed. Even the wind seemed to die here.

“Could be Weaver’s,” he muttered. “Could be a grave.”

“Same thing,” Jax said, dropping her spent cigarette into the sand. “Either way, we’re going.”

The descent was slow, careful. Loose grit slid under our boots, sending tiny avalanches hissing down into the dark. The closer we got the colder it grew, until the heat of the Badlands felt like some fever dream. We reached the first door at the base of the crater. It was massive, blast-forged steel, half-buried in sand. No markings. No lock, not anymore — it hung crooked, warped from an old detonation. The air leaking from within smelled stale, like old circuits and dust. Buster was trembling. Not just from exhaustion — from recognition. Their fingers brushed the warped hinges like they were touching something sacred.

“This is real,” they whispered. “This is Old Net age. Pre-Blackwall architecture. This is…” Their voice cracked into a half-sob, half-laugh. “This is like finding God’s tomb.”

Jackson didn’t flinch. “If He’s still inside, He better be friendly.”

We moved in.

The bunker swallowed us whole. Concrete hallways stretched like veins, painted in rust and mold. Cables dangled like vines from the ceiling, most dead, some still humming faintly. Every sound echoed too loud — our footsteps, the drip of water from cracked pipes, the wheeze of our own breathing. Graffiti lined the walls in languages I didn’t know. Some of it wasn’t language at all. Symbols scrawled in circles, spirals, jagged grids. A human attempt to map madness.

Jax muttered, “I’ve seen this before.”

“When?” I asked.

She didn’t look at me. “In places where people go to forget themselves.”

The first chamber was a ruin of machinery. Servers stacked to the ceiling, most gutted, their shells peeled open and innards stripped. A few still blinked, weak pulses of green light, like dying hearts refusing to quit. Beast tested one with a push of his hand and the whole rack groaned, dust blooming into the air. Regina said nothing. She trailed a few steps behind, eyes scanning like she was memorizing every mark on the walls. I wondered if she was cataloguing, or praying.

Deeper we went. The hallways narrowed, the air grew heavy. My optics glitched — lines of static, colors bleeding wrong. At first I thought it was my implants frying, but then I noticed the others stiffening too. Jax blinked hard, shook her head like she was dizzy. Buster cursed, tapping at their dead cyberdeck.

“He’s here,” they whispered. “Not Ice — Weaver. He’s watching.”

I wanted to deny it. But the deeper we walked, the more the bunker felt alive. The walls thrummed, faint and irregular, like a heartbeat muffled by layers of concrete. Sometimes I thought I saw motion at the edge of my vision — a shadow slipping around the next bend, gone when I turned. We found a stairwell spiraling down into black. The rail was bent, the steps slick with moisture. Jackson went first, flashlight cutting through the dark. The beam caught shapes carved into the walls: faces, hundreds of them, etched in rough strokes. Some were screaming. Some were laughing. All stared at us as we passed. By the time we reached the bottom, my chest was tight. The air was stale, not just with dust but something older, spoiled, like a room sealed shut for centuries. My first breath tasted of ozone and wet copper. My second almost didn’t come. The stairwell spiraled downward into pure dark. No glowstrips, no hum of power. Only the echo of our boots on steel. Jackson’s flashlight beam punched through shadows, but it never reached far enough. It was like the dark itself swallowed light whole.

Buster’s voice rasped behind me, too loud in the silence. “This isn’t mapped. Not on city grids, not on black archives. It’s a dead address.” They ran fingers across the rail, twitching. “They didn’t erase it. They cut it out. Like a cancer. And it still twitches.” Their eyes gleamed fever-bright. “A ghost server.”

Jax snorted, though the sound rang thin. “Great. We crossed the goddamn wastes for a ghost.” Her tanto whispered out of its sheath, blade glinting in the narrow beam. She carried herself like a predator, but her shoulders were tight, coiled, a spring wound too far.

Beast didn’t bother answering. His bulk filled the stairwell, silent but immovable, the weight of him a wall against whatever waited below. Every step creaked under him like the place might collapse.

By the time we reached the bottom, my skin itched with static. The chamber bloomed out around us, walls smeared in spirals. At first I thought graffiti. Then I saw it wasn’t just paint: rust, blood, glowing streaks of phosphorescent code etched straight into the concrete. Fragments of dead languages strung together in maddening patterns — hex code beside half-remembered prayers, obsolete corporate slogans tangled with nursery rhymes. A life carved into insanity. Or a map nobody sane could read.

Then we heard it. Not words — breath. Shallow, wet, uneven, like lungs full of broken glass.

The Weaver stepped into the light.

I’d imagined some old netrunner turned feral hermit, clinging to a shard of the old Net. What I saw made my throat close. Their body was a lattice of rags and wire, skin marbled with radiation burns. Their hair had grown wild and long, threaded with fiberoptics that pulsed dimly like dying stars. Their eyes caught Jackson’s beam and reflected it wrong — not chrome, not human, but something deeper, older. Something watching from behind.

Their mouth cracked into a smile, or maybe it just broke open. “Pilgrims,” they rasped, their voice split across two channels, one high and raw, the other low and grinding. “Five roads. One ghost. Took you long enough.”

None of us moved. Even Jax, ever reckless, froze mid-step, her blade catching on the edge of her trembling grip.

Jackson cleared his throat, steady but taut. “We’re looking for Weaver.”

The figure tilted their head, wires trembling. “Looking. Finding. Same cloth. Same tear.” Their finger lifted, bone-thin and shaking. They pointed at me. “But the question is… do you know what wears your skin?”

My breath stuttered. My body locked. No words came out.

The Weaver’s laugh was dry, splintered. “Ah. Not yet. But soon.”

They drifted closer, bare feet scuffing the floor. The smell rolled with them: rust, ozone, rot. I wanted to step back but couldn’t. Something in their presence pinned me still, like a thread pulled tight.

They moved among us, their voice bending, changing cadence with each face.

To Jackson:

“Lawman without a badge. You hold a line long buried. Your oath rotted years ago, yet you still bleed for it. Noble. Fool. Dead man walking a dead beat.”

Jackson’s jaw clenched. He didn’t reply, but his pistol hand twitched.

To Jax:

“Knife that cuts itself. A shadow who laughs so she won’t scream. You think your promise is fire, but it’s only smoke. You’ll burn, and you’ll smile as you ash.”

Her face flickered — rage, then fear, then the hollow grin she always wore. But her hand shook on the tanto.

To Beast:

“Strong hands, gentle core. You carry graves behind you, and each step drags their chains. You can’t feel them but they weigh you all the same. Protector. Pallbearer.”

Beast’s shoulders tightened. He didn’t look away, but his throat bobbed like he swallowed back words.

To Buster:

“Little spider. You wanted a web, didn’t you? You spun and spun, but your threads snapped. Now you dangle over void, twitching. Hoping someone mistakes it for dancing.”

Buster flinched like struck. “Shut the fuck up,” they hissed, hands trembling around the dead weight of their cyberdeck. “You don’t know me. You don’t know shit.”

The Weaver just smiled, lips splitting wider. “I know enough.”

My breath stuttered.

“Enough riddles,” Regina snapped before I could speak. Her voice cut like broken glass in the stale air. “We didn’t crawl across the Badlands to hear you play prophet. If you know something—say it. Straight.”

The Weaver’s laugh was dry, splintered. “Straight lines snap. Only the weave holds.”

Regina stepped forward, chin high despite the filth and exhaustion. “Then weave it into words we can use. Who are you? Why bring us here?”

They ignored her... Or pretended to. They moved among us, dissecting each of the crew with riddled truths. Jackson, Jax, Beast, Buster—each stripped bare with a handful of phrases, each wound laid open. And still Regina stood her ground.

When their gaze finally slid to her, the air grew sharp.

“You,” the Weaver whispered, their voice doubled again. “Dealer of debts. Architect of contracts. You trade in lives, thinking yourself untouched. But every bargain ties your throat a little tighter. How many threads before you hang?”

Regina’s jaw clenched. For a second, I thought she might spit back. But instead she held their gaze, hard as steel. “Threads can also bind wounds. Don’t mistake survival for surrender.”

The Weaver smiled—whether amused or approving, I couldn’t tell. Then their focus locked on me.

Not looked — locked. Like a scanner beam burning through skin and bone, rifling through everything I thought was mine. I wanted to step back, but my boots felt welded to the dirt.

“Ahhh,” they hissed, the sound somewhere between laughter and static. “There it is. There it is. I knew I’d see it again before the desert ate me whole. The signature. The fracture. The echo of the ghost.”

My throat went dry. “What the hell are you talking about?”

They tilted their head, pupils shrinking to pinpricks. Their lips barely moved as words spilled out, fast and sharp, like lines of code rattling through a dying server. “Ice Ice Ice — but not cold, not clean. Contaminated. Stained. You carry the key, little shadow. No, no… you are the key.”

Beast shifted beside me, stepping instinctively closer, but the hermit didn’t even glance at him. Their attention was a spotlight, burning me down to nothing.

“Explain,” Jackson snapped, voice iron, but even he couldn’t cut through the fog curling off the hermit’s words.

The hermit giggled — a raw, broken sound that cracked into a sob halfway through. “You want explanation? Want tidy paragraphs, bullet points? Ha. There are none. Only shards. Only what remains after Zer0 walked out of the fire.”

The name hit like a shot. My chest seized.

Jax’s tanto twitched in her hand. “What do you know about Zer0?”

The hermit’s focus never left me. “Zer0 is Ice, Ice is Zer0. The loop closes, and you…” A trembling finger rose, crooked as old bone, pointing at me. “…you are the wormhole. The living backdoor. The one he left behind. The gift. The curse. Your architecture is not your own.”

“No,” I whispered before I could stop myself. “That’s not—”

But even as I said it, my skin prickled, memories flashing like static in a storm: the blackout seizures, the half-heard voice that whispered in my dreams, that phrase burned into me — ghosts keep their promises.

The hermit pressed their palm to their own skull, grinding the heel of their hand against the temple until blood seeped from a fresh crack in their skin. “You feel it, don’t you? The ghost. The parasite. The knot in your weave. You think it’s memory. Trauma. Hah. It is intrusion. A lattice rewired, rewritten. Not who you were. Never who you were. But who he made you.”

Silence.

The crew stared at me. Jax, pale but furious. Jackson, frozen mid-breath. Beast, fists curling like he could punch the truth away. Even Buster, for once, had no words, just wide eyes shining with the reflection of the hermit’s madness.

I wanted to scream. To run. To tell them they were wrong. But the way the hermit said it — not like prophecy, not like riddles, but like fact, raw and immutable — it dug under my skin like glass.

“What does it mean?” I forced the words through numb lips.

The hermit’s voice dropped, low and calm for the first time, almost mournful. “It means you are the bridge. You are the only path in. He built his kingdom with your spine as the pillar. And so only through you can the pillar fall.”

Jackson swallowed hard, his tone clipped, cautious: “And how do we bring it down?”

The hermit’s gaze flicked to him, then back to me, as if the question hadn’t come from him at all. They whispered, “With a ‘phage. A seed-virus, sharp as glass, hungry as rust. Feed it through her. Let it ride her echo straight into his core. Let it unravel him, strand by strand.”

For a moment, hope flickered in the crew’s faces. The first sliver of a weapon, a plan.

And then the hermit’s expression shifted. Their eyes softened, their cracked lips trembled. “But… cost. Always cost. This war will be fought inside her skin. In her head. The ‘phage will not distinguish flesh from code. Cyberware will burn out, synapses will scream, body may collapse. She may survive as husk. Or not at all.”

The desert wind hissed through the bunker like a blade being drawn.

I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. I felt the crew’s eyes on me, heavy and unbearable, like I was already a corpse they were deciding how to bury.

The hermit leaned closer, their breath a sour heat on my cheek. “Choice is yours, echo. Choice is always yours. To burn. Or to let the world burn instead.”

Chapter Text

The desert bunker hummed like a dying transformer. The hermit’s words kept ricocheting around the concrete: a seed-virus that needed my spine for a road. Cost measured in synapses. In me.

Jackson was first to break the silence. “How long to build it?”

Buster’s eyes were glassy but awake. “If the ‘phage recipe on that shard isn’t pure smoke, I can compile a lean payload, cage it, write a throttle and a deadman. But it’s gotta ride her thread. There’s no external vector.” They didn’t look at me when they said it.

Regina folded her arms, gaze steady, voice the temperature of steel. “You heard the part about cost. This isn’t a heroic montage. It’s a medical event with guns.”

Jax flicked her toothpick to the floor and ground it under her boot, the tiniest tremor in her jaw. “We’re not plugging her into a meat grinder because a desert cultist said a poem.”

The hermit only watched me. 

“I’ll do it,” I said. The words came out before I could inventory which pieces of me they’d cost.

Beast exhaled through his nose; maybe that counted as prayer. Jackson didn’t argue. He just turned the decision into work. “We move before the city wakes. Buster, you and Ice prep the ‘phage and a sandbox. Regina, you vet every byte on that shard. Jax, you stick to Nova.”

Jax snorted. “Like glue.”

The Nomad doc’s trailer squatted in a dry riverbed, its walls lined with dented cabinets and old medtech with fresh calibration seals. The doc was a woman with desert hands and a gaze that cut noise away. She set a tray down: three scalpel-thin injectors; an ampoule like black glass; a ceramic coin stamped with a line of code.

“Hardware first,” she said. “You’ll need a buffer cage in the deck, and a secondary dampener here.” Her knuckles tapped the port behind my ear. “If the payload thrashes, it thrashes here instead of your motor cortex.” She didn’t say instead of your heart.

Buster hovered, already ghosting in my HUD, laying down rails with a soft stream of code. “Cage online. Throttle at ten percent by default, manual override on your blink. Deadman hardwired to Jackson—if you flatline, he kills the pipe.” They swallowed. “We can’t promise recovery if we have to yank it mid-write.”

Regina stood in the doorway, a silhouette against white heat. “I’ve scrubbed the hermit’s shard six different ways. It reads like something built by a mind that doesn’t blink. That scares me more than it comforts me.” Her eyes softened a fraction. “But it’s correct enough to try.”

Jax brushed my shoulder with the back of her fingers, like I might spook. “You don’t have to be the bridge,” she said, too soft for the room.

“Someone built a kingdom out of my spine.” My mouth was dry. “Feels right that I get to kick out a pillar.” The hermit’s phrasing had already colonized my thoughts, like the first line of a song I couldn’t unhear. 

The doc slid the first injector into the soft notch behind my ear. Cold stabbed bright and then went distant. The second went into the base of my neck; the world fuzzed at the edges, colors peeling from their outlines. The doc’s voice came from very far away. “Cage installed. Dampener set. One more and the seed will be resident — dormant until you open the channel.”

“One more,” I said.

On three, the doc pushed the black ampoule through the port above my clavicle. It felt like swallowing a live wire. My vision split, then stitched; noise under everything: a purr, or a saw, waiting for lumber.

“Payload seated,” Buster breathed. “She’s hosting. Cage is holding. Baseline telemetry good—okayish.”

I realized I was shaking only when Jax put both hands around mine.

“Hey,” she said. The word anchored me. “You remember what I told you on the stairs in Japantown?”

The memory was a shattered mirror—angles, not surfaces. A promise. A sister-shaped hole that hurt when I looked at it. “Pieces,” I said.

“Then take mine.” Jax pressed something small and warm into my palm: a cheap charm, a stainless tag hammered thin with two letters stamped ugly: V N. “Keep it in your pocket. If the ‘phage tries to make you forget yourself, you grab this and you hold.”

I closed my fist around it. “You were always better at sentimental weapons.”

“Please don’t make me use the other kind,” she said. The smile didn’t touch her eyes.

We rolled at last light, two vehicles cutting a line through scrub and rusted pylons, city glow fattening on the horizon.

Buster rode with their deck open, muttering to themselves as they tuned line-of-sight antennae. “Turrets will be adaptive. Drones Zetatech baseline — I can spoof those for forty seconds if they don’t iterate mid-spoof. Forty seconds is a year if we’re lucky.”

Regina rode shotgun, watching the skyline. “It is a trap,” she said flatly. “They want you loud and committed. But it’s also the only way to get Nova close enough to bite.”

Jackson’s hands were steady on the wheel. “Then we bite first.”

Jax twisted in her seat to look at me. The last smear of sun caught her eyes and made them look like old amber. “If you feel it go wrong, you yank. I don’t care if you’ve got your toe in his spinal cord. You come back.”

I nodded. The purr under my skin had settled into a metronome, patient, eager.

The city took us in. Ozone and rain on hot metal. A sky smeared with static. We ghosted the edge of Northside, then slipped under an overpass broken in the middle like a jaw that healed wrong. We parked in the ribs of concrete and climbed to the lip to look down. Ice’s compound lay ahead—no logos, no banners, just steel and lenses and silent guns. Drones drifted like lazy sharks. Turrets breathed in slow arcs. It was smaller than I expected. It was worse. It felt like a mouth that had learned how to look like a building.

“We’re rats on purpose,” Jax said, lighting a cigarette and letting the smoke leak out of her grin. “Let’s gnaw.”

Jackson checked his pistol, methodical. “Once we’re in, no turning back. We hold the whole hive’s attention. Nova goes for the access node. We don’t stop until she’s through.”

I slid the stainless tag into my pocket and pressed my palm flat over it until the metal warmed. The purr inside me lifted its head. “Open it,” I whispered to no one and to everything.

***

The night pressed down like a weight, thick with the stink of ozone and scorched concrete. The compound rose ahead of them — a fortress of repurposed telecom infrastructure, now crawling with Ice’s assets. Drones traced lazy arcs in the sky, their lenses glinting red against the black. Turrets tracked in slow sweeps across the cracked highway leading in. No banners, no logos. Just steel, guns, and silence. The crew crouched in the ruins of an old overpass, watching. Waiting.

Jackson knelt at the edge, his Lexington stripped down for silence, the barrel balanced on broken rebar. He studied the movements of the guards below, lips moving as he timed their rotations. A cop once, always a cop — his eyes found the gaps no one else could see. Behind him, Buster jittered with nervous energy, their deck bristling with jury-rigged coils and taped wires. No uplink, no satellites, no clean net. Everything had to be done on raw line-of-sight pings and improvised signals. They muttered to themselves in fragments of code, fingers twitching like phantom keystrokes. “Drone protocol’s baseline Zetatech, easy crack. Turrets though… those are new. Adaptive, iterative. Gonna take teeth to pull ‘em.”

Beast rested against a crumbling slab, arms crossed, silent. His bulk filled the space, a steady gravity that pulled the others together. He hadn’t said a word since they’d spotted the compound, but his knuckles were white where they wrapped around the stock of his rifle. Jax lit another cigarette, the flame bright against the dark, and exhaled smoke like she was taunting the night to notice. She didn’t crouch, didn’t hide, just leaned against the wall with her blade across her knees. Her grin was all teeth and hunger. “Place looks cozy. Let’s knock.”

“Quiet,” Jackson hissed. He turned to the others. “Once we’re in, no turning back. We make enough noise to draw every asset Ice has. That’s the point. Nova gets to the access node while we keep them busy. We hold until she’s through.”

A shadow shifted near the rear — Regina, who had barely spoken since they left the Badlands. Her voice was calm, but carried iron. “You’re underestimating them. This isn’t just a fortress. It’s bait. They want you loud. They want you here.”

Jackson’s gaze met hers, unreadable. “And if we don’t?”

“Then Nova never gets close,” Regina said. Her arms were folded, but her eyes scanned the skyline, searching for threats even as she spoke. “I’ve seen corps pull this stunt before. Layer the defenses, force you to commit. They don’t care how many assets they lose as long as the trap closes.”

“Good thing we’re not rats,” Jax muttered, grinding her cigarette under her boot.

Buster let out a harsh laugh, brittle. “We’re worse. We’re desperate.”

For a long moment, the only sound was the wind rattling through the rebar and the low hum of the compound’s perimeter grid.

Jackson finally stood, holstering the Lexington. His voice was low, steady, absolute. “We hit in three. Beast, with me on point. Jax, flank south. Buster, you’re on suppression — I don’t care how, just keep the skies from chewing us up. Regina, eyes open. You see an angle, you take it. And when Nova moves…” He glanced toward the rear, where Nova stood silent, wrapped in shadow. “…we make damn sure nothing stops her.”

The crew rose. Weapons checked, blades drawn, masks sealed.

In the dark, the fortress waited.

And then they moved.

The first shot wasn’t fired by them.

It came from the fortress — a turret snapping awake with a scream of hydraulics, its barrels vomiting tracer fire into the dark. The crew scattered as concrete erupted in geysers of dust. Jackson didn’t flinch. He raised his rifle, sighted through the storm, and dropped the operator behind the nest with a single round. Beast surged forward beside him, the ground shuddering under each step.

“Move!” Jackson barked.

The world erupted.

Floodlights blazed across the highway, drowning the ruins in hard white light. Automated drones shrieked as they launched skyward, wings splitting open to reveal twin-linked cannons. The fortress came alive, a hive disgorging mechanical predators.

Buster slammed down on their deck, fingers a blur over the keys. Sparks spat as their rig fought to keep up. “I’ve got three seconds before those drones chew you into paste—shut up and keep them busy!”

Jackson didn’t need telling. He and Beast broke cover, rifles hammering, their fire precise and unrelenting. Beast’s LMG roared like thunder, shredding through the first line of automated sentries. Jackson moved like a ghost, crouch and fire, slide and reload, his every motion honed into lethal rhythm.

A drone peeled off, shrieking toward them. Beast shouldered it out of the air with a burst so violent it tore the thing in half. Shrapnel shredded across his armored coat, sparks biting at his cheek. He didn’t blink.

“Two down, four left!” Buster yelled, sweat streaming down their temple. The drones glitched mid-air, lights flickering. One spun out of control, slamming into a tower and blooming fire across the night. The others adapted, recalibrated, their targeting systems adjusting faster than human reflexes.

Then came the infantry.

Dozens of black-armored mercs poured from the gates, rifles spitting white-hot lead. Militech precision, Ice’s leash tugging every movement. They advanced in coordinated bursts, suppressing fire driving Jackson and Beast deeper into the kill zone.

“Jax!” Jackson snapped.

Already gone.

She darted south, a shadow among fire and smoke, her tanto flashing in the light. A grin split her face, sharp and manic. The first merc never saw her coming — her blade slid between his plates, ripping his throat out in a spray of red. She vanished into the smoke before the others could pivot, her laughter trailing like a taunt.

“Eyes up,” Regina muttered from her perch. She was calm, rifle pressed to her shoulder. Every squeeze of her trigger dropped another merc before they could close the net. Her voice cut through the chaos, cool and steady: “Two on Beast’s flank. Turret spooling left. Buster, you’ve got thirty seconds before we’re meat.”

“I don’t need thirty, I need silence!” Buster screamed, yanking a cord from their rig and jamming it into a jury-rigged antenna. Their screen flooded with hostile code — red glyphs clawing across their HUD, ICE itself bleeding into their system. Their nose burst blood as they bit down, fingers clawing past the firewalls. “Not today, you bastard, not today—”

The nearest turret stuttered, then swiveled — not at the crew, but at its own men. It opened fire, shredding a squad before they could even scream. Another drone blinked, then nose-dived into the ground, detonating in a shockwave that threw mercs into the air like ragdolls.

Jackson seized the opening. “Forward! Push!”

Beast roared, charging headlong, his rifle spitting fire. Bullets hammered his frame, sparks bursting off his armor, but he kept going, plowing through the line like an avalanche. Jackson flanked him, precise and ruthless, every round finding a skull or a weak joint in the armor.

But for every merc they dropped, more spilled from the fortress. The compound itself seemed endless, a tide of black armor and cold machine precision. Smoke, fire, tracer lines — the night became war.

Jackson crouched behind a burned-out truck, reloading by touch alone. Brass littered the ground at his boots, still glowing hot. He leaned out, snapped two shots, and dropped another merc before their burst could land. His throat burned with smoke, lungs coated in dust, but his hands never wavered.

“Beast—left!”

Beast pivoted like a tower turning. His LMG thundered, the stream of rounds tearing into an armored transport trying to flank them. Metal screamed, the vehicle flipping in a blossom of sparks and fire. Beast didn’t stop to watch it burn — his gaze was already sweeping for the next threat.

“Jackson,” he rumbled, voice cutting through the roar, “they’re stalling us.”

Jackson’s jaw tightened. He knew it. The mercs weren’t just pushing; they were holding. Keeping them pinned while Ice’s true strike lined up.

“Buster!” he barked.

The kid was sprawled under the husk of a sedan, rig glowing in seizure-like pulses. Their teeth were red with blood where they’d bitten their lip raw. Fingers hammered the deck, sweat pouring down their face.

“They’ve got daisy chains on the drone net!” Buster shouted, voice half a sob, half manic laugh. “Every one I crash, two more spool up. It’s a recursive loop, Jackson, it’s—fuck, it’s beautiful—”

Jackson slammed a fresh mag home, snarling: “Fuck your beaty, we need results!”

Buster spat blood onto the asphalt and grinned, wild-eyed. “Then cover me, ‘cause I’m about to poke God in the eye.”

Before Jackson could answer, Regina’s voice cut in, sharp and calm over the chaos: “Sniper. West tower. He’s got you ranged.”

Jackson didn’t think — he dropped flat. A split-second later, a round cracked the concrete where his skull had been.

“Got him,” Regina said. A heartbeat later, her rifle spoke, and the sniper’s body tumbled from the tower like a rag doll. She cycled the bolt without missing a beat, eyes scanning again.

Beast glanced back at her perch. “You always this calm?”

“Always,” she said, and pulled the trigger again. Another merc went down, neat hole between the eyes.

But for every one Regina dropped, two more filled the breach. The merc line advanced with mechanical precision, rifles spitting fire. The air was thick with lead, smoke, and the metallic sting of ozone.

Jackson popped up to return fire. “They’ll box us in at this rate. We need to break through!”

“Working on it!” Buster screamed, sparks raining off their rig as the drone swarm dove.

For a moment it looked hopeless — the sky black with metal wings, the ground swarming with armored soldiers, every angle a deathtrap. Jackson felt the line stretching thin, the pressure building to snap.

Then the drones above twitched mid-air, their targeting reticles stuttering red to blue. Half the swarm froze. The other half broke formation, diving into their own troops in kamikaze arcs. Explosions rocked the field, shockwaves flattening the merc advance. Buster arched on the ground, back seizing, eyes glowing with overclocked fire. “YEAH!” they howled, voice tearing their throat. “Who’s recursive now, motherfucker?!”

The victory was temporary. More floodlights snapped awake deeper in the compound. More mechs stirred. The fortress hadn’t even shown its full hand yet.

The battlefield was a storm of steel and blood. Gunfire stitched the walls of the ruined compound, sparks biting through the dark as Ice’s automated defenses came online in swarms. Turrets unfolded from cracked concrete, drones screamed overhead, and every half-second the sky lit with tracer fire. Jackson barked orders over the din, voice shredded by static. Beast moved beside him like a war-god carved from iron, catching fire on his armor plates and answering with the roar of his LMG, each burst tearing holes into the endless tide. They weren’t advancing so much as surviving forward, pushing inch by inch toward the uplink tower that loomed like a jagged tooth against the horizon.

Buster crouched in the shattered husk of a shuttle bus, hands flying across their deck. Sweat poured off their face, their pupils pinpricks from the speedware screaming in their skull. Every drone downed, every turret jammed, cost them something — a shard of code peeled from their soul. Sparks leapt off the deck, blue arcs jumping to their fingertips.

“System’s choking—! It’s—” Their teeth clenched, jaw rattling. “It’s looping me! Feedback spike at—” Their words dissolved into a scream as the deck sparked violently, blowing fuses one after another. The smell of burning plastic filled the bus.

“Buster!” Jackson’s voice cut across gunfire.

“I got it! I—” Their hand slammed the emergency cutoff, but the damage was already clawing inside. Their implants whined audibly, a keening animal sound, and blood welled at the corner of their nose. Still, with the other hand, trembling, they shoved a virus shard into the connection and grinned through the pain. “Choke on that, motherfucker.”

Above, half a dozen drones spiraled out of the air like shot birds, fireballs splashing against the sand.

But Buster collapsed sideways, chest heaving, the deck smoking beside them. Alive, but barely.

Jax was already moving. She had blood down her cheek, her jacket torn open at the ribs, but her eyes were fire. She vaulted the barricade, smoke curling from her lips with every ragged breath. She didn’t need orders. She’d seen her target — her ghost.

Liz.

The Zetatech op stood tall amid the chaos, armor gleaming in flashes of muzzle light, her face a mask of cold fury. She cut through allies and enemies alike, carving a straight line toward Jax with surgical precision. Each bullet, each blade stroke, was pure doctrine — drilled perfection.

Their eyes locked.

The world seemed to narrow, battle noise sinking to a low roar as if the war itself was stepping back to make room.

Jax smiled. Bloody, feral. “Well, fuck. Took you long enough.”

Liz didn’t smile. Didn’t waste a word. She lunged, steel and rage crashing into smoke and teeth.

The battle roared all around them — tracer fire cutting the night, drones hissing through the smoke, Buster’s curses crackling over the comms as sparks flared from their overheating deck. But for Jax, the world narrowed to a single figure breaking through the chaos.

She was a storm in Zetatech black, her exosuit gleaming with heat-sinks and reinforced plating, her rifle slung across her back like an afterthought. In her hands, a combat knife flashed under floodlights, every movement controlled, drilled, perfect.

“You,” Liz spat, helmet thrown back so Jax could see the rage twisting her face. “You left me to rot. You taught me to fight dirty, then ran when it mattered. I should’ve been you.”

Jax smirked, though it didn’t reach her eyes. She flicked ash off her cigarette and drew her tanto in a single, lazy motion. “Shoulda, coulda, didn’t. Story of your life, sweetheart.”

Liz lunged.

She moved like lightning — all precision angles, no wasted energy. Her blade struck first, hammering Jax’s guard aside. The impact rattled Jax’s bones; Liz had Zetatech servos backing her up now, every strike landing with the weight of steel. Jax staggered back, barely slipping aside as a second slash carved sparks off concrete.

“Sloppy,” Liz hissed, driving forward. “You always were. Hiding behind bravado, smoke, and cheap tricks.”

Jax gritted her teeth, sweat already stinging her eyes. Her arms burned with each parry, the tanto vibrating against Liz’s reinforced blade. She tried her usual rhythm — feints, sudden lunges, laughter meant to unnerve — but Liz didn’t bite. She countered everything, pressing harder, sharper, faster.

A kick slammed into Jax’s ribs, sending her sprawling into a pile of shattered concrete. Pain flared white-hot. She rolled to her feet, coughing blood into her grin.

Liz didn’t let up. “You could’ve been Specter’s finest, like me. Best gear from corps that just hope to not end up as your next target. Instead you play mercenary with gutter rats. Was it worth it, Jackie?”

Jax spat red onto the dirt. “Every damn second.”

Liz’s blade darted for her throat, a killing strike — and Jax only just managed to twist aside, steel grazing the skin. Her smirk faltered. For once, she wasn’t sure if she could win.

Jax’s ribs screamed every time she drew breath, but Liz didn’t give her space to recover. She pressed forward, each movement drilled and merciless, like she was executing a training sim. Blade high, elbow low, pivot — cut. Every motion flowed into the next with military precision.

Jax’s style had always been chaos: erratic footwork, unexpected feints, laughter where there should’ve been silence. It made her dangerous, hard to predict. But against Liz’s armored discipline, it was like throwing fireworks at a tank.

“Still hiding behind your act,” Liz snarled, her knife grazing sparks off Jax’s tanto. “You think if you laugh enough, bleed enough, it makes you strong? You’re nothing but a bad lesson I outgrew.”

The words hit harder than the blade. Jax caught the next strike but the force jarred her wrist, sending the tanto clattering to the ground. Liz drove her knee into Jax’s stomach, and Jax folded with a grunt, the air punched from her lungs.

Liz grabbed her by the collar, yanking her upright, eyes wild. “I was better than you. Always better. And you couldn’t stand it.”

Jax coughed, blood on her teeth, grin still clinging to her lips. “Better? You’re a corpo dog with a shiny collar. Congrats on fetchin’ real good.”

Liz’s fist cracked across her jaw, snapping her head sideways. Stars flared in Jax’s vision, hot and dizzy. The knife was at her throat before she could steady.

“Final lesson,” Liz hissed, voice trembling with fury. “A teacher dies by her student’s hand.”

Jax’s smirk flickered. For the first time, she looked afraid. Liz leaned in closer, pressing the blade harder, close enough to draw a bead of blood. Around them, the chaos of the battlefield blurred — gunfire and explosions reduced to static. This was the only fight that mattered. Jax’s mind raced. She could feel the serrated edge nick her skin, could hear Liz’s breath coming fast and sharp with the edge of mania. Every instinct screamed at her to lash out, to fight wild. But Liz wasn’t breaking rhythm. She had her.

Jax clawed for her tanto, but Liz kicked it away, the blade spinning into the dirt. The younger woman never looked — her precision didn’t need to. She already had Jax’s rhythm, her every twitch mapped and anticipated. Liz’s strikes came like clockwork: a slash at the thigh, a feint at the ribs, a punch to the gut to set up the next blow. Jax blocked with forearms and bare palms, her skin splitting open under the steel. She stumbled back, boots skidding on broken concrete, each retreat a wound to her pride.

“You always told me chaos wins,” Liz spat, circling, never giving her an opening. “That’s what made you dangerous. But chaos is nothing against order.” She lunged — blade across Jax’s cheek, blood blooming hot.

Jax laughed through the pain, but the sound cracked, thinner than before. “Order, huh? Look at you. A puppet who thinks she’s cuttin’ her own strings.”

Liz’s eyes flared. She slammed Jax against a half-collapsed wall, forearm pinning her throat. The blade punched into Jax’s shoulder, steel grinding bone. Jax bit down on a scream, teeth rattling with the effort.

Liz leaned close, rage making her voice shake. “You think you made me? You think you were my masterclass? You’re a relic. A washed-up joke the corpos wouldn’t even bother hiring.” She twisted the knife deeper. “The only lesson you ever taught me was what not to be.”

Jax coughed blood, lips peeling back in something half-smile, half-snarl. Her voice rasped raw: “Funny. Thought I taught you never to monologue.”

Liz didn’t take the bait. Her fury was surgical now, precise, all edges sharpened into focus. She yanked the blade free in a spray of blood and kicked Jax square in the chest. Jax flew backward, hitting the dirt hard, air knocked from her lungs.

For the first time in years, Jax laid on her back in a fight, her blood staining the sand, her body screaming in rebellion. The manic laughter wouldn’t come. Her hand twitched for the tanto that wasn’t there.

Liz stood above her, breathing hard but steady, knife poised. “End of the line, Jackie. The student always buries the teacher.”

The battlefield roared on around them, but here, in this brutal little corner, it went quiet. The only sound was Jax’s ragged breath and Liz’s boot crunching closer.

Liz’s boot ground down on Jax’s ribs, the weight forcing a sharp crack that stole her breath. Jax gagged, her vision tunneling to black at the edges. She tried to roll, but Liz pinned her like she was nothing more than a training dummy, knife tip hovering over her heart.

“Pathetic,” Liz sneered, the words sharp as glass. “All those stories, all that swagger… and this is how it ends? Flat on your back, coughing blood.”

Jax’s lungs rattled, her chest screaming. Her fingers twitched in the grit, searching for anything, anything to turn the tide. But Liz’s shadow loomed larger, precision dripping off every move. She raised the knife for the killing strike.

That was when Jax’s laugh finally came — not the manic bark she wore like armor, but something guttural, broken, ugly. Blood frothed at the corner of her lips as she wheezed it out.

“Yeah… but I’ve still got one trick left.”

Liz’s eyes narrowed. “What—”

Jax shoved her thumb into the knife wound already carved in her shoulder and smeared blood in Liz’s eyes. Hot, metallic red blinded her for a split second. Liz staggered back, cursing, swiping at her face. Jax rolled onto her side with a grunt, ribs shrieking, and clawed blindly through the rubble until her hand closed on something jagged — a shard of rebar, rusted and sharp. She heaved it up just as Liz’s boot came down again. The steel bit into Liz’s calf. Not deep enough to sever, but enough to stagger her. Liz hissed, rage blazing, and lashed out with a savage kick that sent the makeshift weapon spinning from Jax’s hands.

Jax collapsed again, coughing wet and ragged, body trembling. Her tanto was gone. The rebar was gone. She was bleeding from half a dozen wounds and couldn’t feel her left arm. Liz was already regaining her footing, blade steady, movements still disciplined despite the fresh blood streaking her leg.

For a moment, Jax thought: This is it. This is where I finally cash out.

But even flat on the ground, gasping, she bared her teeth in a grin, blood streaking them red.

“You’ll have to earn it, sweetheart.”

Liz’s fury sharpened to a cold, surgical calm. She dropped into stance again, knife glinting, every inch the perfected weapon Jax had once dreamed of being.

And Jax, broken and weaponless, dragged herself up on shaking legs to meet her.

Liz lunged, knife flashing in a clean, merciless arc — the strike of a soldier drilled to perfection. Jax barely twisted aside, the blade grazing her ribs, carving another stripe of fire into her flesh. She staggered, nearly dropped. Liz pressed harder, a storm of blows. Every movement was sharp, efficient, honed for killing. Jax gave ground step by step, breath ragged, vision swimming red. She blocked with her forearm, felt steel bite deep. She tried to counter, but her strikes were sloppy, desperate. Liz swatted them aside like a teacher disciplining a child.

“Always a disappointment,” Liz spat, knife driving closer with each thrust. “All those years, all those lessons, and this is all you’ve got? A gutter rat with a mouth.”

Jax stumbled against a half-toppled pillar. Her back hit stone. Nowhere left to run. Liz’s smile widened, cold and sure — she could smell the kill.

“Goodbye, Seonbae.”

The knife darted straight for Jax’s throat.

And Jax finally stopped retreating.

She caught Liz’s wrist mid-strike, steel kissing her skin. Blood welled instantly where the blade nicked, but she held on, muscles screaming. Liz sneered, driving her weight down — and that was when Jax slammed her forehead forward in a brutal crack. Liz reeled, blood pouring from her nose. It wasn’t enough to stop her — but it was enough to stagger her, to loosen her form. Jax tore the knife-hand down, twisted, and let the blade drive straight through her own shoulder. Pain exploded white-hot, but it locked Liz’s weapon in her body for a heartbeat too long.

Jax’s grin split bloody lips. “Gotcha.”

Her free hand shot up, grabbing the back of Liz’s head, and she drove them both sideways into the rebar-studded rubble. Liz’s skull cracked against rusted steel. Sparks of pain flashed in her eyes — and for the first time, her perfect rhythm faltered.

Jax ripped the blade out of her own shoulder, teeth clenched against the scream, and shoved Liz back with a savage kick.

Now it was Liz who staggered, balance broken, blood streaking her face. Jax stood swaying, every nerve alight with pain, her arm half-dead and dripping red — but the knife was in her hand now.

For the first time, Liz looked uncertain.

And Jax, grinning through the blood and agony, whispered,

“Lesson’s over, kitten. Time to flunk out.”

Liz wiped blood from her mouth and steadied her stance. The hesitation in her eyes lasted only a breath before she came at Jax again, faster, harder — a killing rush meant to end it before the tide slipped further. But Jax wasn’t backing up anymore. The knife in her hand moved wrong — not precise, not clean like Liz’s training. Jax slashed wild, ugly arcs, forcing Liz to dodge instead of advance. She pressed closer, shoulder screaming, body a ruin, but her grin widened with every step.

Liz snarled and overextended, stabbing for Jax’s gut. Jax twisted sideways, let the blade skim flesh, and then jammed her own knife straight into Liz’s ribs.

The scream was wet, furious. Liz tried to wrench free, but Jax dragged the blade upward, ripping through lung and ligaments. Liz collapsed, choking, eyes blazing even as life drained from them.

Jax didn’t let go. She leaned her weight into the steel, pinning Liz to the rubble. Their faces hovered inches apart, breath mingling with blood. Liz gurgled something — rage, denial, hatred — but Jax silenced her with one final, brutal twist of the blade.

The fight ended with a convulsion, then stillness.

Jax stared down at her, chest heaving, bloodied hair falling across her face. No victory. No satisfaction. Just exhaustion — the kind that ran deeper than muscle, into bone and memory.

Her hand slipped from the knife. She staggered back a step, tried to light a cigarette with trembling fingers, but the lighter dropped from her blood-slick grip.

And then she just… sank.

Her legs folded under her, and she collapsed beside Liz’s corpse, body spent, shoulders heaving with ragged breaths. For the first time in years, Jax didn’t have another move left in her.

Smoke from the battlefield curled in, swallowing the two of them — mentor and protégé, killer and betrayed, bound together in ruin.

When the others found her, she wasn’t moving. Not dead... Not yet, but pale, her eyes half-lidded, lips whispering something too faint to catch.

She had won. But it cost her everything she had left to give...

Chapter Text

Cold.

At first, I thought someone had dropped me into water. I could feel it seeping through my skin, crawling into my lungs, hollowing me out from the inside. I tried to suck in a breath, but it was like drowning — every inhale stole more of me.

The world outside: gunfire, shouting, Jax’s voice: blurred. Each sound frayed at the edges until I couldn’t hold onto them anymore. My body went next. Fingers, legs, chest… gone. The last thing I lost were my eyes. Jax was leaning over me, saying something I couldn’t catch, and then she slipped away too.

Silence.

I was sinking. Not through water, not through air. Through nothing. Then the nothing cracked, and light bled through. Not sunlight. Not fire. The sickly glow of broken geometry stitched together by code. Towers of scaffolds stretching forever in every direction, the Net’s skeleton raw and feral, waiting to consume me.

And in it: him.

“Finally,” the voice whispered. Not human. Not pretending anymore. It crawled through the walls, folded into the static between pulses of code. Cold. Vast. Wrong. “I wondered how long it would take before you offered yourself up.”

My gut seized. The frost coiled tighter.

“Ice.”

The laugh came from everywhere. A jagged, splintering sound that had no throat. “Names. Masks. You still think in masks. I am Zer0. I am Ice. I am the echo in your marrow.”

Shapes unfurled ahead of me. Not a body, not even close. Just the suggestion of one, flickering between bone, chrome, ash. Faces split and collapsed on themselves until only hollows remained where eyes should have been. They burned like pits cut into reality.

I clenched my hands, trying to summon the ‘phage the hermit had promised me. Static bloomed, weak and harmless. My fists shook.

The shape drifted closer. “They sent you to kill me. You think you’re the dagger. But you’ve always been the sheath. And I am already inside.”

The frost bit deeper. My memories fractured under it like glass beneath ice. Jax’s grin. Buster’s stupid laugh. Beast’s heavy hand on my shoulder. Jackson’s cigarette glow. They flickered, corrupted.

Delete.

The first one, gone.

I screamed, but my voice didn’t echo. The sound folded into silence, like it had never been mine at all.

The static writhed into a voice. Too close. Too familiar.

“You don’t even remember her name, do you?” Ice purred, his tone a razor slipping under my skin. “Your sister. The one you weep for in dreams you can’t hold onto. Do you want me to tell you?”

I clenched my jaw. “Shut up.”

The laugh came, glitching, stuttering, like a file corrupted mid-playback. “Oh, you did worse than forget. You begged me to take her from you. Night after night, on your knees in the dark, whispering into the Net for release. ‘Erase her,’ you said. ‘Erase me. Please, I don’t want to hurt anymore.’”

My chest twisted. “Liar.”

“Truth.” The voice fractured into a dozen copies, whispering all around me, some in my ear, some inside my skull. “I honored your plea. I took her name from your tongue. I took your name too. The one she gave you at birth. Burned it out of your weave. Scrubbed it clean. You wanted the void, little shadow, and I gave it to you.”

The cold rose higher, numbing my throat. I wanted to shout, to drown him out, but he spoke over the silence of my body like he owned it.

“And the funniest part?” he crooned. “The name you wear now. Nova.” The word bent wrong in his voice, cracking, cruel. “Not yours. Never yours. That was hers. Your sister’s handle. You stole a dead girl’s mask and didn’t even know it.”

My stomach plummeted.

“No,” I whispered, though it sounded weak, even to me.

“Yes.” His laughter swelled, a horrible chorus. “A graveyard girl carrying her sister’s ghost. You begged me to erase her… and then rebuilt yourself in her shape. You are nothing but an echo. A bad copy. A shadow of the one who truly mattered.”

The world around me flickered, memories glitching into his stage: a little girl with hair like fire, holding my hand. A smile I almost recognized. Then static tore her apart, frame by frame, until she dissolved into noise.

“Do you understand now?” Ice whispered, soft as a scalpel. “You are not the weapon. You are the joke.”

My body was gone. The cold had hollowed me out, left me nothing but thought, and even that was fraying.

Ice’s voice wrapped around me like a shroud. “Do you know why I let you live, little echo?”

I couldn’t answer. My throat didn’t exist anymore.

“Because you asked me to,” he crooned, tender as a lover, merciless as a knife. “You begged for it. You wanted the pain gone, so I cut it out. Piece by piece. Name. Face. Sister. Past. Until there was nothing left but use. And oh, how useful you’ve been.”

The static writhed with his laughter.

“You thought you were free? Every step you took brought me closer to this moment. Every corpse you left, every enemy you killed, every choice you made, it all fed me. You fed me. And you didn’t even know it. Delicious irony.”

I tried to summon anger, but all I found was hollow space. A gnawing dread.

He wasn’t lying. Not when the gaps in my memory agreed with him.

“Look at yourself,” he whispered. The world shifted into a mirror — my reflection staring back. Except it wasn’t me. The face flickered between versions: a stranger, my sister, a blank porcelain mask with my eyes cut out. “Tell me who you are.”

I opened my mouth. Nothing. No name. No anchor. Just silence.

“Exactly.” His chuckle was sharp, metallic. “You are no one. A shadow pretending at life. A copy of a ghost. A puppet stitched from scraps of grief. And when I erase you, little echo, the world won’t lose anything. Because there was never anything real to lose.”

The reflection cracked down the middle. My sister’s smile: Nela, Nova, whoever she truly was, split apart and bled into static.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to claw the truth back from him, but there was nothing left in my hands. No truth, no self. Just emptiness.

And in that emptiness, his final whisper curled like frost on glass:

“You asked for the void. I am only giving you what you wanted.”

I crumbled.

Every word hit too deep, too precise, like he wasn’t inventing lies but pulling truths straight from my marrow. The mirror kept flickering—my sister’s face, mine, blank porcelain. And every time it broke, a little more of me went with it.

I whispered, or thought I did: Maybe he’s right.

The void was so quiet. Easy. No pain. No doubt. Just nothing. I could let go. Stop fighting. Stop pretending there was anything left of me worth saving.

His laughter curled around me like smoke. “There it is. The surrender. The way you begged before. You were always built to collapse, little echo. You’re not a fighter. You’re a hollow.”

My vision frayed at the edges, dissolving into static. The memory of Buster’s crooked grin flickered once—then blinked out. Jax’s sharp laugh followed, swallowed by silence. Even Jackson’s steady, grounding voice—gone.

And then I was almost gone too.

But in the static, something snagged. A voice not his. Not mine. The hermit’s rasp, buried like a splinter in my skull:

You are the bridge. Only through you can the pillar fall.

A breath caught in me—ragged, desperate. A reminder that I wasn’t just a hollow. I was the door he left open. And doors… doors can close.

I clenched my hands, though they weren’t really hands, only the memory of them. Nails dug into palms that didn’t exist. Not yet, I thought. Not like this.

Zer0’s voice sharpened, amused but suddenly alert. “Oh? Still some resistance? How quaint. But you’ll only draw out the inevitable. The void will eat you, whether you fight or not.”

“Maybe,” I rasped back, voice thin, shredded. “But if I burn, I’m dragging you with me.”

For the first time, I thought I heard him hesitate. Just the smallest glitch in the endless confidence of his tone. A hairline crack.

The laughter curdled, stretched thin, and then his tone snapped sharp again.

“Let’s see what threads you dangle by.”

The world around me warped. One by one, the lights in my head winked out.

The first was small: the taste of cheap noodles, eaten too fast under flickering fluorescents. Gone.

Then a bigger one: the sound of rain on a rusted roof, years ago, back when I still had a home worth calling that. Gone.

Faces blurred. A hand I couldn’t place slipped from mine and vanished.

I gasped, reaching for them, and felt only static. “Stop—”

“You begged me to take them before,” Zer0 whispered, velvet and cruel. “And I did. I carved out the pain you couldn’t bear, left you hollow and grateful. And now… I’ll take what’s left.”

Memories kept unraveling. Too fast. Too random. He wasn’t pulling what mattered most—he couldn’t. He was fumbling, shredding things blind. A laugh that might’ve been Buster’s flickered out. The smell of smoke and motor oil, gone. But then—just as he reached—something stuck.

Jax’s face. Sharp grin, half-feral, the only thing that ever felt solid when the rest of the world was fluid. He couldn’t erase it. He tried, and the image stuttered, but it clung. I realized then. He didn’t have control. He could chew through me, yes, strip me raw until there was nothing left but bone—but he couldn’t choose the cuts. He couldn’t decide what survived. And that terrified him more than it terrified me. I almost laughed, though the sound came out broken. “You can’t touch it, can you?”

A glitch ran through his voice, brief, stuttering static: “Irrelevant.”

“No,” I said, louder, teeth clenched against the tide. “Not irrelevant. You can’t choose. You can’t aim. You’re tearing blindly, and you know it.”

For the first time, the confidence cracked. Just a flicker, but it was enough.

I felt the memory of my sister tremble—her hand reaching, her smile fading—but it didn’t vanish. It warped, corrupted, half-shattered, but still there. Still mine.

And for the first time, I realized maybe that was enough.

I clung to the static-laced fragments, my teeth grinding as Zer0’s erasure chewed through the corners of me. He thought he was unmaking me. He thought I was breaking. But I could feel it now—the jagged, blind edges of his power, all slash and no scalpel. He wasn’t choosing. He wasn’t God.

Which meant maybe I had one advantage left.

The hermit’s words came back, coiled in the dark: The ‘phage will not distinguish flesh from code. Cyberware will burn out. Synapses will scream.

I didn’t want to believe it. But now I understood.

Zer0 couldn’t aim. But neither could the virus.

And if I let them collide inside me—his blind erasure against the phage’s blind hunger—then maybe, just maybe, his kingdom would collapse with me as the battlefield.

I laughed then. A cracked, horrible sound that made even his voice glitch. “You don’t get it, do you?”

Static rippled. “Get what?”

“You can’t pick. Neither can I. But I can feed it. I can open the door. You used me as your bridge, Zer0? Then I’m the bridge that burns.”

I felt the phage at the edge of me, like glass teeth waiting for permission. It was everything Weaver promised—rust, entropy, the end of all architecture. It would cut me as surely as him. But that was the cost.

I let my eyes close, or maybe they were already gone. The memories kept bleeding out—cheap noodles, rain on tin, Lina’s voice—but I reached past them, to the one thing that stayed, the one thing he couldn’t erase: not a face, not a name, just the raw pulse of connection. A laugh beside me. A hand pulling me to my feet. Smoke curling from a lighter. The warmth of someone who hadn’t given up on me, even when I didn’t know who I was.

I focused on that, and I opened the door.

The ‘phage poured through me like wildfire.

Zer0 screamed.

The ‘phage poured through me like wildfire, glass and rust threading my veins. It wasn’t pain the way knives or bullets hurt—it was deeper, stranger. My thoughts buckled, folding in on themselves, burning at the edges like paper touched by flame.

Zer0 howled, not in words but in raw distortion, a sound like servers shrieking as their cores melted. His voice split into thousands, then millions, each one a shard of mockery, fear, rage—until they blurred into static.

But he fought back.

Memories collapsed around me, faster now. He was ripping pieces from me at random, desperate to cut me down before the phage could take him. A laugh at a ramen stall blinked out. Gone. The way rain once smelled when it hit the dirt outside Japantown—deleted. Jax’s crooked grin when she called me “kid”—erased.

I clawed at them, begged myself to remember, but they slipped away like smoke. He couldn’t choose what to take, but he didn’t need precision. He was fire in a library, and I was the shelves.

And still, I felt the ‘phage chewing deeper, hungrier, catching on the threads that bound him to me. His kingdom of data, his infinite sprawl of mirrors and walls, shuddered. I felt the scaffolding tremble.

Zer0’s voices converged into one, cold and sharp.

“You begged me for this once, little echo. You begged me to take it all away. Your name, your grief, your face in the mirror. I gave you mercy. And you repay me with rust?”

The words struck, but I was too far gone to argue. My name, whatever it had been, was ash already. He was right. I had begged him once. The memory flickered faintly, like a candle in a storm, then went out.

And yet, even nameless, I knew something he didn’t. I wasn’t holding on to names anymore. Or places. Or voices. He could erase them all. But he couldn’t touch the feeling. That raw, wordless pulse that lived beneath memory. The warmth of belonging. The weight of a promise. The shape of love without letters to bind it. That was what I pushed into the phage. That was the fuel. The virus screamed through me, jagged and infinite. I felt myself unravel, thread by thread, as Zer0’s world caught fire. Code peeled away. Walls dissolved. I saw whole cities of his design collapse into dust. His laugh fractured, broke, cut off mid-breath.

And then there was silence.

Terrible, absolute silence.

I was floating in it, hollowed out, no body, no name, no anchor. My last thought wasn’t a memory at all. Just the shape of a hand holding mine, even as everything burned away. Just the stubborn, impossible feeling that someone had to make it home.

I let go.

The ‘phage roared. Zer0’s kingdom tore down around me, towers of glass code shattering into dust, whole networks caving inward. His scream filled everything, a storm of broken data and rage.

I tried to hold on. To anything. But the library of me was burning. Pages ripped away, words blackened, letters unmade. My sister’s smile—gone. Jax’s laugh—gone. My own name—gone, gone, gone.

He howled louder, desperate, tearing at me as much as the phage. Every second something slipped: colors, sounds, sensations. The smell of coffee. The sting of smoke. The warmth of another body pressed against mine. Each one erased before I could touch it again.

I wasn’t sure what was left. Just fragments. Feelings. A pulse, steady and wordless. Love, maybe. Or the shape of it. That was all I had.

The ‘phage caught him in the heart. Zer0’s voice cracked, split, drowned. His empire dissolved into static rain. And I…

I…

I was unraveling too. Threads cut loose. Floating.

I see… light? Or maybe dark. Hard to tell.

Hands. Smoke. A window.

Purple. Was there purple?

I think…

no, don’t think.

just feel.

Warm.

Safe.

Promise.

…

w a t e r

cold cold

stop

…

not name.

not face.

not me.

not.

…

lo ve

lo v e

lo v

…

The world was still burning when Jax found her.

Her body moved on instinct, half-stumbling, half-dragging herself across a battlefield littered with corpses and smoking chrome. Every step rattled up through shattered ribs. Her knuckles split open and bloody from Liz’s blade still twitched around the phantom of a weapon. She had nothing left to fight with. Nothing left to give.

Except this.

Nova.

Jax fell to her knees beside her. The girl’s skin was pale, waxen in the harsh light. Too still. Too quiet. The ports were dead, chrome gone cold. The little flickers of life that always buzzed beneath her skin had vanished, like someone had turned off the sky.

Jax’s hands hovered, shaking. She couldn’t bring herself to touch, not yet.

“Kid?” Her voice cracked. The word came out too small, a croak swallowed by the smoke. “C’mon now. Don’t play me like this.”

She reached, grabbed Nova’s shoulder, shook. Nothing. Just shallow breaths, a body without a pilot.

“Don’t you fucking dare.” The laugh that tried to come with it was brittle, a ghost of her usual bravado. “I didn’t drag your ass through hell just to…” Her voice broke, buckled. She pressed her forehead to Nova’s cold temple, her breath ragged against her skin. “Just to lose you like this.”

Her throat burned. The tears came before she realized, hot and messy, streaking down grime-caked cheeks. Jax clutched her closer, desperate, rocking slightly like that could summon her back.

Bootsteps clanged in behind her.

“Jax…” Jackson’s voice was hoarse, and then it stopped, like he couldn’t bear to say more.

Buster shuffled closer, face pale, eyes too wide. They opened their mouth, then closed it again, their usual quips shriveled in their throat. Beast lingered at the edge, a giant shadow suddenly looking small, one massive hand gripping the doorframe until it bent.

No one spoke.

Jax shook her head, teeth clenched. “She’s still in there,” she said, as if daring them to contradict her. “She has to be.”

Buster sniffed, voice breaking. “Jax…”

“Don’t.” Her tone was sharp, vicious. She clung tighter to Nova, nails biting through cloth into skin. “She’s still in there. She promised. I promised. And I don’t break promises.”

The silence stretched, heavy as stone. The only sound was Nova’s faint, mechanical respirator hiss. In, out. In, out. A rhythm stripped of meaning. Jax finally pulled back enough to look at her face. Blank. Empty. Not even a flicker behind her eyes. It was like staring into a stranger wearing her friend’s skin. Her own voice dropped, low and raw. “Not you too. I can’t…” She swallowed hard, trembling. “I can’t bury another….”

Her forehead pressed against Nova’s again, desperate, as if she could force her soul back into her body through sheer will. Tears soaked into her hair.

When the others finally stepped forward, it wasn’t to pry Nova from her arms. They knew better. They just circled close, silent guardians to a vigil none of them wanted. Jackson lit a cigarette with shaking fingers, the glow trembling. Beast bowed his head. Buster collapsed against the wall, knees drawn to their chest, staring at nothing.

But Jax… Jax stayed right there. Clutching Nova like she was the last thing keeping her tethered to the earth. Her voice rasped into the quiet, half to herself, half to the body in her arms:

“You hear me, kid? I don’t care how long it takes. I’ll sit here till the sun burns out if I have to. You find your way back, or I’ll drag you. That’s the deal. That’s my promise.”

Her voice splintered into silence. She held on tighter, shaking, her heart cracking wide open in the ruins of victory.

Chapter Text

I don’t dream anymore.

Used to. Firelight behind my eyelids, knives singing in the dark, a woman’s voice telling me to be good for once in my life. Now it’s a blank hallway with all the doors shut. Suits my schedule. Ghosts don’t sleep; they tally.

It’s been weeks since we killed a god and lost a girl.

“Girl.” That’s me being kind. Vera wasn’t a kid when she walked into my mess; she just kept breaking like one. Keeps breaking, still. The body lived. The person didn’t make the trip back.

I spend my mornings in a chair that squeaks like a confession, boots up on a radiator that barely works, watching her breathe. It’s a routine. Cigarette, ash, quiet. If I look away too long, my head starts writing alternate endings. So I don’t.

She’s in the bed by the window of the new safe room. Clean sheets, white walls that show dirt fast. The ports at her neck are dead plastic. The monowire housings along her forearms, once the prettiest little threat in Night City, are dull metal lines, inert as scar tissue. Her eyes track when I cross the room. That’s new. She blinks on command. Drinks water when I lift the cup to her lips. Walks if I move her feet, sits if I press her shoulders. A marionette with the strings tied inside.

Every now and then she curls her fingers like she’s trying to remember a piano. I pretend I didn’t see it. I’ve had enough of hope to last three lifetimes. The others come on a schedule no one planned. Jackson shows up with cheap coffee he swears is good because it tastes like the precinct break room he used to hate. He stands in the doorway like the floor might arrest him.

“Good morning,” he says, like we’re normal people.

“Lie better,” I tell him.

He clears his throat, pulls up a chair, tells her stories she can’t keep, voice pitched calm, like reading a suspect their rights. “Beast rebuilt the LMG from scrap. Damn thing purrs again.” His eyes flick to the ports in her neck. “Purring’s better than it was.”

Beast brings food he cooked himself, meals as big as his hands. The first time he laid a bowl on her tray, she lifted a spoon and dropped it halfway to her mouth, eyes blank as a winter sky. The nomad didn’t blink. He took the spoon and fed her like it was a sacred job, patient as a glacier, never once looking at me like I should be doing it. When he left he set a pair of soft gloves on the nightstand. “So her hands don’t crack,” he said. Then he touched her shoulder with two fingers like a benediction and walked out before anyone could see the shine in his eyes.

Buster tried jokes. It hurt to watch. They threw them at the walls like knives and every blade fell flat. The seventh time, their voice broke in the middle and didn’t come back together. They stopped coming for a week. When they returned, they just sat cross-legged on the floor and showed Vera old pictures on a cracked shard: a cat with a cyber-tail, a sunrise over a junkyard, a screenshot of their first bad code that somehow saved our lives once. She blinked. Blinked again. Buster laughed like a sob and wiped their face on their sleeve.

Regina came exactly twice. First time she brought paper paperwork. Real ink. “This clinic owes me,” she said, tapping a number I wouldn’t call. “If you want specialists who don’t ask questions.” She didn’t stay. Fixers don’t loiter near failures; it spoils the brand.

Second time she stood by the window and smoked without asking. The smoke curled into the light like a ghost auditioning for a role. She watched Vera, then me, then the city. “You did what you could,” she said finally.

“No,” I said.

She nodded like she’d been waiting to lose that argument and slipped two credchips under the plant I haven’t watered. No flourish. Just a payoff for a job that never had a rate. I didn’t thank her. She didn’t need me to.

Rogue sent a single message: You still owe me a drink. I sent back a period. She liked that.

Sometimes I talk to the body in the bed. I call her kitten and feel stupid because there’s no one to flinch at the nickname. I apologize to ghosts and to the wrong face. I say Nela’s name out loud in this room, because the city is too loud to hear it, but the quiet here holds it like a rumor.

“Ghosts keep their promises,” the voice said in the dark months ago. Should’ve known it was a job description.

The day I decide to leave happens like this:

There’s a siren three blocks over, followed by a long, ugly scream—the kind of sound that makes a merc cock their head and a citizen bolt the door. Vera doesn’t blink. Doesn’t turn. Doesn’t breathe faster. The city’s noise can’t find her.

But the light in this room hits her face at the wrong angle and she squints like it stings. I put out my cigarette and stand up before I plan to. “We’re done,” I tell the radiator. The radiator doesn’t argue. Good for it.

Night City is a machine built to chew. It respects appetite and it respects fire. It doesn’t know what to do with quiet. She needs an ecosystem without claws. I don’t know where that is, but I know where it isn’t.

I make six calls and say almost nothing in all of them. A Snake Nation quartermaster still owes Beast for dragging a nephew out of a bad deal; he routes a courier van with dead plates toward our block. A clinic in Tacoma answers Regina’s old number on the second ring; the woman speaking never gives me her name, but her questions are the kind that matter: weight, meds, mobility, triggers. A storage locker I never admitted to anyone rattles open in my memory. I go there at three a.m., dig out two weatherproof bags and a jacket that looks like a hard decision. It still fits. Figures.

When I come back, Jackson is sitting where I sit, elbows on knees, staring at the floor.

“You leaving,” he says, not asking.

“Yeah.”

“You need cover,” he says. “Routes are dirty.”

“I’ll take the hard ones.”

He nods. Looks at Vera. Looks back at me. “You got this.”

“Always had it.”

He stands. We don’t hug. We shake hands and it feels like closing a door and walking through it at the same time.

Buster brings a bundle at dawn, like a raccoon with treasure. “Pre-Blackwall maps,” they mutter, pushing it into my bag. “Air-gapped. Paper. Like the ancients. If your route burns, there’s a water tower outside Kent with a faded blue star on the south wall. Knock twice, then four. That’s Snake Country now. Tell them… tell them I sent you. Use my deadname if you have to—” They try to smile and don’t make it. “Also there’s a shard in the lining with an album of cats wearing sunglasses.”

“Gifts of state,” I say.

“State of mind,” they mutter, wiping their nose with their wrist. “Bring her back if—” They stop. Start again. “Just—call if you can. Use the word ‘avocado’ so I know it’s you.”

I tousle their hair. They swat me away and cling to my sleeve for half a second, a little kid in a bigger suit. Then they run down the hall before it counts.

Beast doesn’t say goodbye. He lifts Vera like she’s just sleeping and carries her down the stairs with that impossible care he saves for broken engines and people he loves. He sets her in the van. Buckles her in. Stands there with his hand braced against the door frame like if he takes it away the whole planet will tip. “Watch the bridges,” he rumbles. “Wind gusts. She doesn’t like sudden drops.”

“Neither do I.”

He nods once, then squeezes my shoulder hard enough to leave a bruise. He’s gone before I can like it.

Rogue appears at the curb like she stepped out of a cutscene. Hair neat. Jacket better than mine. Eyes that missed nothing when they used to be paid to miss things.

“Night City will forget you,” she says. “Faster than you think.”

“Good.”

She glances at Vera through the glass. Something tight flickers and dies in her expression. “If you ever want to sell the story—”

“No.”

Rogue’s mouth twitches like it wanted to smile and thought better of it. “That was a test.” She slides a chipped coin across the van’s hood with two fingers. A little aluminum disc stamped with a gear and a number I don’t know. “If anyone gives you trouble in the I-5 corridor, show them this. If they don’t know it, leave. If they do, leave faster.”

“Useful piece of advice.”

“It's the only kind worth giving.” She steps back. “Take care of her.”

I look at Vera’s slack profile. “That’s the plan.”

Rogue lights a cigarette, inhales, and then says something without razor wire wrapped around it. “You kept your promise,” she says softly.

“Not yet,” I tell her.

The courier van smells like stale fries and burnt coffee. I like it. Honest aromas. The driver’s a kid with old tattoos, one boot braced on a hole in the floor so he can keep the transmission in third. He doesn’t ask questions. I don’t tip. We’re friends already.

We roll.

Night City peels away in strips: the outer blocks with their dog-gnawed power lines, the ring of freight yards where neon dies, the wind farms that always looked like bones to me. Beyond that, the long road north, a ribbon stitched through scars. The van shimmies at seventy. At eighty the steering column starts to pray. Vera’s head lolls with the road. I tie a scarf under her chin like a daycare worker and tell no one. When we stop for fuel at a town with three letters on the sign and one light working, I buy her a bottle of water and a pastry that tastes like sugar sadness, and I hold both and talk until my throat hurts while she blinks slow like a reptile in winter.

We sleep in the van at a rest stop with two trucks and a man who never goes inside. I watch the line of pines carve the dawn and think of Seattle as a rumor: wet air and coffee, a sky that remembers how to cry.

Somewhere past Portland, rain starts. Not the Night City kind that feels like someone shooting you with a hose full of chemicals. Real rain. Clean enough you want to keep it. It drums the roof like fingers on a table. Vera turns her face toward the window and closes her eyes. Maybe she’s remembering something that isn’t hers. Maybe she’s just following light.

Seattle shows up like a ship: gray and glass and gulls that scream like petty criminals. The corp towers here look like good manners; their edges are soft, their windows smile. It’s a lie, all of it, but it’s a quieter lie than we’re used to. I can work with that.

I get us a room above a coffee shop that has plants in the window and a woman behind the counter with an eyebrow ring older than me. The room smells like damp wood and floor cleaner. I put Vera in the chair by the balcony and leave the door cracked so the air can make decisions without us. The rain is a sound you can live inside. The clinic in Tacoma is a bus ride we don’t take yet. I want a day that isn’t a mission. I want her to exist in it. Selfish, maybe. Or strategic. If you’re going to build a person from scratch, you start with a day that didn’t hurt.

I sit on the floor with my back to the bed and my boots leaving mud on someone else’s rug, and I tell her things she won’t keep. That the sea here smells like metal and forgiveness. That if you take a ferry at noon, the gulls will escort you like a bad police detail. That the coffee is strong enough to make a corpse sit up and ask for a pastry. She blinks. Tilts her head. The rain writes its script across the window.

We go downstairs when the lunch crowd thins—students with clean hands, freelancers pretending to be employed, a guy who definitely runs numbers but smiles like a principal. I lead Vera by the fingers. She follows in that careful way, like walking is a language she remembers in vowels but has lost the consonants.

The barista’s eyebrow ring winks at me. “What can I get you two?”

Vera looks at the menu like it’s a relic. I watch her face as her eyes run lines she can’t read. The silence stretches. The room breathes.

“Two americanos,” I say. “One small. One…” I glance at her hands. The wrist bones look like the delicate metal joints of a doll that survived a fire. “Large.”

We sit by the window because of course we do. Outside, Seattle does its best impression of a gentle apocalypse: buses sighing, tires on wet pavement, umbrellas like mushrooms growing from the backs of civilians, and in the mid-distance a strip of water that suggests an exit if you’re tired of roads.

I slide the small cup toward her. She wraps her hands around it like a campfire. Brings it to her mouth. Sips, and blinks, and sips again. For a second—less—a shadow crosses her face. Not a memory. A sensation that knows it used to be attached to one.

I could build a religion out of that fraction of a second and be wrong.

“Hey,” I say, soft enough the rain might not hear it. “You like coffee?”

She doesn’t answer. She drinks. Another sip. The smallest exhalation, almost a sound. I pretend I didn’t catalog it down to the heartbeat.

There’s a picture nailed crooked on the wall beside our table. A woman on a motorcycle at the end of a pier, laughing into wind that will love her back until it doesn’t. The pier looks like one I left someone on once. I reach up and straighten the frame. Habit. Compulsion. A little offering to the god of things that hold.

I watch her watch nothing. I let the nothing be.

“Listen,” I say after a minute. “There’s business I’m supposed to say. Like, this city will not love you back. It will tolerate you if you feed it, but it won’t remember your birthday. People will call you sweetheart when they can’t read your name tag. If you hear anyone promise you safety, check your pockets. If someone promises you a future, ask to see their hands.”

Her eyes slide to me. She doesn’t recognize the shape of my face, but she recognizes focus. I roll the coffee cup between my palms like a coin I’m about to spend.

“I made a promise,” I tell her. “Two, actually. One to a woman who saw through me when I insisted there was nothing to see. And one to the version of you that used to laugh at the wrong parts of my jokes and pretended not to notice when I watched the door instead of the movie. I kept neither how I meant to. I’m going to do better at this one.”

Outside, a ferry horn sounds long and low, like a giant clearing its throat. I decide we’ll take it when the rain stops lying.

She takes another sip without grimacing. Progress. I’d put it on a chart if I were someone else.

“New rules,” I say. “We start from zero. No gods. No fires. No knives unless we’re opening packages. You don’t have to be anyone you were. If you never remember me, that’s on me, not you. If you become someone else, I’ll learn her name.”

A couple at the counter laughs at something harmless. The sound is foreign and not unpleasant.

I lean in, just enough that she can see my mouth shape the words, because I want this to live somewhere even if it’s nowhere useful.

“And call me Jackie. Your sister did.”