Meredith Stout took a drag of her cigarette as she watched the rotund form of one Dexter DeShawn and his hired muscle get into their car. She surfed the data that she’d bought from him minutes ago, reading through the transcript of D’s speech.

  More importantly, the footage of his movements from that fixer-meet that he’d been in.

  That Sandy speed was impressive. His baseline speed was high enough that, coupled with his no-doubt light weight, and the Apogee Sandy he was likely sporting, he really was too fast to follow with the naked eye.

  He topped out at a hundred kilometers an hour, travelling in short bursts with the utmost control and precision, bringing out a level of skill and precision with the implant that she had never seen before. It was like he was born for it.

  There were too many damn Apogees in this city. The higher-ups had made the decision to lightly flood Night City’s underbelly with around half a dozen of them for the sake of live testing. The idea was to see how well the implant performed under suboptimal conditions. Militech could program the implant for a particular user to have it play perfectly with their gray matter, and in those tests, they had gotten a good measure of what it could do.

  But gauging its performance when installed into a person without any prior preparation was good data for the eggheads in R&D.

  Then, of course, like all plans that involved Night City and experimentation, the plan had gone to shit. Their initial test subjects had died, and each of their implants had been scavved off from their corpses in record speed, going through the black markets and appearing in a variety of different places.

  One Tyger Claw on record had come into possession of that implant. Then he had died, and the implant had once again gone into the wind. Sloppy.

  But that was probably what the higher-ups were aiming for, anyway. Maximal chaos in this shithole that masqueraded as a city. The more chaos that could be pinned on the powers that controlled this place and kept it firmly in the hands of Arasaka, the better. No matter how many lives were lost.

  She wondered what her higher ups would have to say about this information, whether to encourage D’s destabilization, to do nothing and stand by, or to contain it within the city. Containment seemed like the better option. No one wanted another Tijuana incident.

  She did wonder what Freeman’s family would have to say about him, after the threat he had made after the boy had so foolishly flown close to the sun in search for more information on the terrorist. They probably wouldn’t be advocating for anything subtle.

  She’d simply report and standby for now. If the higher-ups wanted her to throw a stone and hide the hand, rather than play nice with the Task Force, she’d oblige them, and wait for their instruction on whether or not to share DeShawn’s data with that aforementioned band of backstabbing intelligence officers, who were all playing to their own agendas anyway.

  DeShawn’s car sped off from the alleyway.

  And then it summarily exploded.

  A rocket flying from the ledge of a rooftop up ahead had caught it right in the hood, causing the car to flip several times before landing on its roof, a smoking wreck.

  Meredith’s bodyguard dragged her bodily into the Hellhound, and they were racing off a moment later, all the while as she hyperventilated from the close brush.

  She fought for composure and glared at the bodyguard seated next to her. “Who was it? D?”

  “No,” he said. “They looked like Animals.”

  Hired by D, no doubt.

  “Keep your eyes peeled,” she growled. “We’re not safe.”

  “Reinforcements are en-route,” the guard said.

  As the car swung out from the alleyway and into a street, driving like a bat out of hell, she waited for the other shoe to drop.

  She waited even as they got on the highway. Even as her bodyguard reported that they were being trailed by a convoy of Militech security officers in their own Hellhounds, protecting her as they drove to Militech’s NC HQ.

  Minutes later, as they finally arrived at HQ in the City Center, the security guard gave her the report as she got out of the car and entered the building. “Dexter DeShawn is dead. We have confirmation that this was an attack by the Animals.”

  “How long were they there?”

  “They were setting up while the deal was underway,” the guard reported.

  Why did they wait until the deal was over?

  Moreover, why was she still alive?

  If D had wanted to be thorough, then he would have killed everyone in that alleyway, but instead he had only gone for DeShawn. Maybe he just wanted to root out a traitor without directly provoking Militech?

  Something felt fishy about all this.

  000

  I unleashed Excalibur.

  The program, a two-meter long and fifteen centimeter wide sword, wreathed in blue fire, manifested before me in a shower of sparks.

  I grabbed the handle and stabbed it into the data fortress, beginning the subsumption process.

  Blue cracks spread out from the data structure, and out from them, fire spat outwards. The cracks spread incredibly quickly without an enemy Netrunner to stop me. It sliced cleanly through ICE, and within seconds, the data fortress was mine.

  But I wasn’t done.

  I sent the influence through every connection I could find, hopping between different localnets in the area. Neighboring apartment buildings and businesses became nodes that allowed the influence to spread outwards, and from those nodes, more influence spread.

  Until… my influence came across a familiar connection that I had already breached before.

  The Tsviets, hanging behind, as they sent what looked to be actual Maelstrom members ahead of them to weaken the army of Tygers in the pachinko parlor.

  They already had their Shershen drones flying overhead, ready to rain fire in case of anything.

  There were five Tsviets on this operation. I recognized them by their designations.

  I could kill them all using their drones. Or at the very least, injure them severely if they proved to be resistant to machine gun fire.

  I wondered if the after-report from the Tsviets would fixate on my using this Net vulnerability of theirs, and whether or not they’d somehow be able to tie that back to my meddling in their Bratva base the day before.

  [Just use Overheat on the attacking Maelstrom. We don’t need to involve their drones yet.]

  She was right, but there were some risks, like—

  “D!” Wakako roared.

  “Stay where you are,” I ordered. “Don’t leave unless you want to die.”

  I focused on the Maelstrom, all of them connected to the same localnet, one that originated from their network of vehicles that they had brought with them for this raid. That very same network had already been absorbed into my own super-network, using the Sword program.

  Forty-nine Maelstrom gangsters. The Tsviets hadn’t spared any expenses. That, or they somehow managed to manipulate them into doing their bidding some other way.

  They were all within my Ping.

  I infected one of them with Overheat.

  He combusted into flames.

  I checked my heat levels. Barely moved the needle. Between the Netsuit, the chair and Nanny’s improvements to my body, I was well within tolerance levels of heat.

  Finally time to test my Tetratronic Mark 5 Rippler to its limits.

  I infected three more with Overheat, and watched through the cameras as they combusted mid-combat against the Tygers. It distracted their compatriots, allowing the Tygers to rain fire on them in their stunned state.

  Barely any heat.

  I infected ten more, then fifteen, and continued pushing my luck to twenty, all within seconds.

  My Cyberdeck was starting to ‘creak’. And by ‘creak’, I meant burning the back of my skull.

  [Keep going. This is nothing.]

  I felt the discomfort disappear within seconds, and did as Nanny told me, this time pacing my uploads a little better.

  The Tygers guarding the pachinko parlor made a mad dash out from their entrenched positions to meet the Maelstrom in the streets, where they were going nuts seeing their friends suddenly catch fire before their eyes and die. I didn’t even have to infect all of them for the Tygers to pounce on the opportunity presented, lighting up every last Maelstrom member.

  “Get out, Wakako,” I said. “Take the backdoor. I’ll—“

  I felt a presence within the Net, and froze.

  I scanned the presence, and felt its origin point stretch across the city, towards the port. One of the Tsviet Netrunners. That made six Tsviets to contend with, at least right here.

  Raduga hadn’t reported to me yet, but I could hear the chatter between his people. A program was busy at work translating all the Russian, and as I skimmed through the text, I got a general gist of the situation.

  Dexter DeShawn and Padre were already dead.

  I couldn’t help but feel my heart clench at the last name. That man had heard my confession, and to my knowledge, he had kept to the seal he told me he was bound by. And moreover, he had been sparing about the concept of war, which had earned him some points with me.

  He was a good man.

  And Arasaka would pay for his demise.

  The Tsviets near the pachinko parlor reported to their boss that they were experiencing a problem. A Netrunner problem. That’s why the Netrunner had logged in to attack ‘on foot’.

  I felt him fly over towards the giant ugly building that was the pachinko parlor.

  I ‘teleported’ to the outside, Excalibur in hand, and watched the creature approach. A cross between a man and a violet dragon of a sort, with giant wings, spines and a horn, but human limbs. Or maybe he was trying to be some kind of demon? He was dressed in resplendent black armor, and in his hands were two swords absent of any light or color.

  He laughed as he descended towards the tower, towards me.

  I hefted Excalibur, and flew to meet him in the air.

  [Blackwall Gateway,] Nanny said. I had sensed the idea forming a fraction of a second before she announced her intent. The idea was to activate the program by a crack, using the Excalibur as a vector. Not to lead rogue AIs in, but to manipulate the actual Blackwall into bolstering the attack.

  The Blackwall, the great divider between the new Net, and that daemon-infested nightmare realm of corrupted data and rogue AI. The greatest form of ICE known to man.

  Excalibur’s blue fire extinguished.

  Then the blade lost all color and became black as night. The ‘air’ around it shimmered and contracted, like all light around it bent to fall into the endlessly hungry sword.

  The violet dragon man stopped laughing.

  In his final moments, I sensed him send out a message to his friends.

  ‘Blyat.’

  My sword sheared through the Tsviet Netrunner’s twin blades, and through his body, separating his torso from his legs.

  But I wasn’t done. Just as his ICON was about to fizzle into nothingness, I turned around and stabbed his upper body, chasing his signal across town, and into the Tsviet hideout.

  Signal established.

  The ICON dissolved, and the Netrunner convulsed in his chair, brain cooking with enough volts to fry a steak. I saw it through the cameras that I now had access to.

  I always had, but now D had that very same access. And that was good.

  ‘Shit. Purple Rain’s dead. That Netrunner’s too strong. Drop the EMP from the Shershen.’

  One Shershen drone received a signal to open up its bomb compartment.

  I sent a signal to jam the mechanism and fly all their drones up as far into the air as possible. Seconds later, the EMP detonated still inside the drone, frying it and all the others at the same time.

  ‘FUCK! Fuck this, we need to go in. Hand me the EMP grenade.’

  ‘You’ll throw it from this distance?’

  ‘Only way.’

  Shit.

  The Tsviets overlooking the pachinko parlor operation had stayed back three city blocks, and were on top of a building that didn’t give them any direct sight-lines to the building. A thrown projectile was another thing.

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

  I seized control over every home defense system and turret that I could, preparing to shoot the EMP grenade out of the air while it was mid-flight.

  “Wakako, leave,” I said. “Take the back exist. Tell your men to reinforce the north side of the building. Go now.”

  She and her men rushed out of the office at my orders.

  I watched through a street camera as the Tsviet winded his arm back for a pitch.

  In a fraction of a second, I reviewed every firearm system in reach. None were able to hit the Tsviets directly.

  He threw the grenade.

  The neighborhood erupted into gunfire. Several turrets from private apartments, places of business, and derelict automated defense systems from a bygone era, awoke at the same time to rain bullets into the air, scaring the absolute shit out of everyone.

  And between each bullet, the EMP grenade just glided across the air, missing every projectile, except for a few flying bits and pieces of broken concrete from where the guns were shooting out of.

  Not enough to detonate them prematurely.

  The EMP landed.

  I swam through the Net as quickly as I could, transporting my ICON far away from what would in moments become dead space.

  In the Net, as the EMP detonated, the castle of cutesy images glued together to form the most eye-wateringly over-the-top construction of Japanese pop culture, disappeared all at once.

  Subsumed into a rift of nothingness. I lost all eyes in and around that region of the Net. Lost sight of Wakako as well.

  I tried calling her, as I kept half an ear on the Tsviet chatter.

  ‘The EMP has taken out the Net, and hopefully that pesky Netrunner that killed Purple Rain. We’re going in.’

  ‘Eyes on Wakako?’

  ‘The drones are dead. No more eyes.’

  Wakako finally accepted my call.

  Wakako: We are out.

  D: Where?

  Wakako: You would like to know that, wouldn’t you?

  D: I saved your life. Just. Make sure that wherever you go, you steer clear of ganglands. And corp nests. Go to ground in the slums.

  Wakako: What are you telling me? Who is responsible for this?

  D: Arasaka.

  Wakako: Hmph! How convenient!

  D: Convenient? Wakako, hear me: if you fail to recognize the debt that you are in, then I will stop. Being. Polite. Go. We shall talk.

  Wakako: You—

  I hung up on her. I’d deal with her later.

  I logged off. If I had lost track of her, then the Tsviets had, too.

  Success.

  I woke up in the ‘guest room’ that Lucy and I had converted into a Netrunner room. She was standing right next to me. “Gig complete?” she asked.

  “Not yet,” I grunted. “We still need the others to survive.”

  000

  The Totentanz, Dino’s greatest militarized refuge in the entire city, was on fire. The cyberpsychos on his side were fighting off a wasp’s nest of Tyger Claws approaching their subbasement from above.

  He, himself, sat at subbasement three, alongside three hired guns, his girlfriend, and a dozen Strom chomping at the bit to kill something, anything.

  He sent a message to his girlfriend.

  ‘Be prepared to shoot these fuckers up.’

  ‘Of course, babe.’

  He sensed that she didn’t quite understand his meaning. Annoying. Stupid whore.

  ‘I mean the other Maelstrom, too. In case they turn on us.’

  ‘Of course, babe.’

  Good. He sent similar messages to his men.

  D had good data that whoever the fuck were trying to kill him seemed to have an incredible amount of influence over the gangs.

  Influence meaning money, clearly. Enough money to choke a horse.

  He walked up to a table, and threw a baggie on it, as well as a metal tray from his pocket. Then, he found a crisp hundred-eddy bill in his pocket, and splayed it on the table as well.

  “Babe?” His girlfriend said. “Now might not be the time.”

  “Time for what?” Dino growled as he unzipped the baggie and poured the glittering, powderized contents on the metal tray.

  “To… to do drugs?”

  Dino chuckled.

  “It’s a system, honey,” he said. “My system. I do drugs, and things work out.”

  The door to the subbasement blew open. He looked up in shock. The Tygers marching in got mowed down by his own crack team of Maelstrom gangoons.

  RATATATATATA-

  Such a satisfying noise, guns firing. His Strom boys mowed down the invading Tygers, and proceeded through the opened door, and up the stairs.

  Before he could get to his glitter, he heard a sudden drum-roll in the music playing.

  Paratatam, paratatam, paratatam, paratatam. Paratatam, paratatam, paratatam, paratatam.

  Then a disgusting electric guitar strum. Dat. Dat. Dat. Dat. Dat. Dat. Dat. Dattam.

  “Babe!” he shouted.

  “What?!” She asked, staring at the open doorway, gun in her hand.

  Dat. Dat. Dat. Dat. Dat. Dat. Dat. Dattaaaaaaaaaawm.

  “That’s Daft Punk!”

  “It’s a good song, babe!” his girlfriend exclaimed nervously. She shivered slightly at the gunshots, still keeping her eyes on the exit.

  Good song? Just ‘good’?!

  More gunshots. More drums to the beat of this crazy good song.

  This was it: his guilty pleasure. Electronic pop.

  He didn’t respect anyone else that liked it. The fact that he, himself, liked it was immaterial.

  Everyone else? They deserved death.

  He rolled up the bill and snorted the line.

  His mind exploded as the music picked up.

  Dino’s mind raced as he considered the situation. D had been right. People were gunning after him. Tygers hired by mercs who were in turn hired by Arasaka. Out-of-town mercs for sure. Maybe even out-of-country. Their approach was quick and dirty, but manipulative as all hell. They seemed to relish in chaos. Maybe that was their modus operandi: confuse the opposition, take advantage, and come out the other side with a convenient narrative.

  Gang war, essentially. All just to weaken this baby-movement in the making.

  That only made Dino even more determined to double down.

  He grabbed a gun from a table. “Let’s bounce,” he said, nodding towards the exit. Towards where the shooting was. He’d get as close as possible to the violence just to have a scope on the situation. It was smarter than waiting down in the basement, desperately hiding away.

  The plan was to leave the Totentanz entirely.

  With his girlfriend in front of him, he climbed the stairs, getting closer and closer to the gunshots until finally, they abated.

  The only sounds coming through the rooms above were shouts, and the music cranking up. The Maelstrom had won.

  As he walked into the room, keeping his eyes and ears peeled, one gangoon laughed at him. Brick. The tech-visored coagulation of flesh and chrome clapped Dino on his shoulders. “Dino! We fuckin’ raped those Japs! Ripped their eyes off and skullfucked them through the holes!”

  He looked around at the killing floor, and the overhead turrets, still smoking. “Earned your keep,” Dino nodded. He had half a mind to ask the man for more glitter. Eh, fuck it. “You got a teenth?”

  Someone tossed him a ziploc bag, and he grabbed it out the air.

  Anytime now.

  He unzipped the bag and snorted the contents, strategically looking away.

  The burst of glitter shocked his system, ascending it into a level of supernatural awareness. He knew all that had been, all that was, and all that would ever be.

  And he knew that these fucking assholes weren’t about to let him fight in a bidding war for his own life. They’d rather take the eddies they could get today from whoever the fuck was sending these psychos, than the eddies that Dino could promise him in the future.

  So he grabbed his girlfriend and dragged her to him.

  Just in time for her to take a bullet meant for him.

  He activated his synaptic accelerator. Nothing like good old Arasaka technology to make the most out of your Kerenzikov.

  His fortified ankles threw him into the air, letting him land on a table, where he then made a dash towards an exit. He dove through the air, contorting his body in order to avoid the gunfire, and ran through the exit.

  Gangoon right ahead of him. He raised his gun and fired.

  Bullet struck him right through the gangoon’s insectile tech-eyes.

  He kicked open a door to the stairwell, and started climbing, pushing his body harder than he had for a long, long time. Almost made it feel like he was back in his edgerunning days, playing stupid gambles with his own life for just a crumb of progress in this fucked up city.

  Everyone with half a brain knew that the real money was in becoming a fixer. And with all the connections he had made running job after job for everyone that would pay, be it gangsters, fixers, nomads, or corps, he had managed to cut himself a piece of prime real estate in NC.

  His mad dash up the stairs brought him to the roof access door. He kicked it open and bolted, hopping from one roof to another. He holstered the gun to have both hands in the ready as he dove down an alleyway, breaking his fall by pushing himself from one wall to the other.

  They were still after him. He could hear them easily with his ear implants. Hear their borg-hearts beating white blood a mile a minute.

  They were desperate beyond just the promise of edds now. Because they knew that if they didn’t kill Dino, then he would raze that fucking nightclub to the ground, crucify every Maelstrom gangoon he could find, and fucking eat them.

  The last parts of them that were flesh, at least.

  Eugh. No, that’s—

  Whatever. He could think of revenge later.

  And revenge for his girlfriend! He almost forgot about her, but they really did him dirty by sliming her.

  He navigated the alleyways easily, as though he had practiced it already. Because he knew everything that would be, after all.

  He started slowing down, letting the Maelstrom gangsters after him catch up just a little.

  He ran out into the streets and saw three black vans pull up, out from which black-clad giants with huge tech weapons burst out. He laughed as he dove into the opened van, watching the Lazarus mercenaries open fire on the mouth of the alleyway.

  Nothing beat corporate security. In moments, every last Maelstrom member were turned into a fine paste of white synth-blood and metal. They drove him off an instant later, towards Pacifica.

  Without a word, they stopped at the Glen, and he got out. Then they drove off. Not a word had been exchanged the entire time: just eddies.

  Evidently, Lazarus Group was still not quite on the uptake on this D witchhunt. Or maybe there were some internal schisms and factionalisms that prevented them all from working together. That made a lot more sense. This could all just be an Arasaka plot, with them trying to work behind the backs of all their chooms.

  Another truck pulled up in front of him. Friendlies, this time. Some of his in-house mercs, including his new girlfriend, had come out to greet him. “What’s the word, boss?” the girl, Kerry, or… was it Terry? She asked the question.

  “We go to ground in Dogtown,” he said. “Let’s not waste any more time. Also, I need glitter.”

  000

  Muamar Reyes gazed languidly out his window of his militarized truck as his huscle drove him through the streets of Rancho Coronado, a convoy of mercenaries following behind him.

  When he had first met that boy D, up in his little outlook over the dam, he hadn’t expected the kid to amount to much more than a good, reliable merc. His Sandevistan speed was impressive, and he had a thirst for work as well as high tolerance for violence. Add that to his impressive Netrunning skills, Reyes wondered for a moment why he hadn’t expected this outcome all along: that he would turn into some kind of living legend, at record speeds at that.

  It had barely been two months since they had first met. Two months. And now he was planning to unite Night City’s underworld against the corporations that ruled it.

  He wasn’t unique in having this ambition in the first place. A lot of chumps who ended up having drinks named after them in the Afterlife’s catalogue dreamed big. Some dreamed of even more than just a flashy death, too. They dreamed of taking down the corps, uniting the gangs, maybe even helping out their community.

  D differed in that he actually seemed to have a shot. And he had won Reyes’ own loyalty from their time working together. He was reliable, overachieving, and he had an inner kindness to him that few had: a kindness that would have him murdering hundreds of gangoons and monsters for no other reason than to clean the city up.

  The first time he’d heard the kid mention that he had just cleared out an entire den of Maelstrom members, he almost hadn’t believed his ears. Then he saw the BDs. Fucking crazy.

  But the good kind of crazy. The kind you rooted for.

  Hopefully, Reyes would be able to accomplish a couple of things today for the cause. He had already made contact with some hired guns, and was on his way to hitting a convoy of trucks carrying pharmaceuticals for Trauma Team. A bit of the old charity work to get the people happy as well as riled up with the knowledge that it was possible to make things right, as long as you kicked the right people in the balls.

  And the edgerunners following him were all die-hard D fans. Lunatics with less power, but a lot of heart. Heart was good. Heart would win the war.

  That and their overwhelming firepower.

  “Huh,” the driver said, looking at the rearview mirror, and then the side-view.

  Reyes sat up, looking behind.

  Then he saw it.

  A fucking bus painted with animals, from which several roided-out bastards were hanging out the windows, carrying huge guns, was following behind the last of his convoy of edgerunners.

  Fuck me.

  Then, the gunfire started.

  His driver swerved, taking a turn through a street without traffic. The edgerunners hanging behind would hopefully be able to soften those fucks up. Still—what the hell was going on? Why were Animals after him?

  Just as the driver made the turn, he shouted. “FUCK!”

  There, down the street, stood a muscle-bound monster of a man, hefting a rocket launcher over his shoulder.

  The rocket was already en-route.

  Reyes’ entire world flipped on its head. His ears rung—something struck his head, hard. And his body.

  He opened his eyes. The darkening sky above was visible. To the side of his vision, he saw… a filthy curb that his head now rested on. Ah, my hair.

  Then, he saw two enormous legs step towards him, and he realized that he might have bigger fish to fry.

  He looked up at the Animal gangoon that was about to end him, and…

  He decided not to fight it.

  Instead, he sent a message to his oldest daughter, one that he kept pre-saved in a draft, and had never deleted. A message telling her that he loved her. And information on how to gain access to all his savings.

  His family was already set up for life, but maybe the extra money would ease the sting of his demise.

  He took a shuddering breath, and hovered his attention over the send button.

  Se—

  BOOM.

  The Animal staggered away from Reyes. Why? He turned his head slightly up to investigate. He expected to see the Animal’s head. Instead, he found the remains of one. And a neck that spurted out blood going nowhere. Blood that splashed onto him, and stung his eyes. Fuck, that’s gross.

  He heard even heavier footsteps and turned to look at his savior.

  “Phew! Glad we got here in time. Holy shit, captain. You look like fuckin’ shit!” Deep, gravelly, and jovial.

  Maine grabbed him and threw him onto his shoulder.

  “Fuck,” Reyes chuckled. “Holy shit, Maine…” he coughed. Broken ribs. Also, he couldn’t feel his legs. Did he even have any?

  “It feels worse than it actually is,” Maine said. “You’re probably just gonna need bone fusions. The bleeding’s light. By the way,” he said as he threw Reyes deep into a car. Seated on either side of him were three mercs, all of whom he recognized. Maine’s crew. “You played dirty with D one time. Sent him to the way of a shady fixer. He thought you should know you’re on thin ice.”

  “Fuckin’ gonk!” a nasally voice shouted, and he felt a kick on his side. A light kick, but one that sent agony through his entire body nonetheless. The leg belonged to some pale, crazy bitch. She was small, too.

  “Easy!” came a deeper, feminine voice. Maine’s output, Dorio. “Let’s get the guy to a ripper first before we lay in on him!”

  Reyes chuckled dryly.

  No secrets stay hidden forever, eh?

  At least the kid was a good sport about it. He owed him. Big-time.