Chương 43: Chapter 43
We left Dogtown in the predawn gloom. Mission accomplished. We got the contract on Abernathy, checked out Cynosure, tossed Slider the scraps of some engineering documents, and even dealt with Hunt.
The loses? Just a big toe that needed replacing and a few titanium implants in my right leg.
Night City greeted us with fog and a light drizzle. Wet asphalt glimmered faintly under the streetlights. Late-night stragglers wandered home—or into the arms of their favorite gutters.
"Never thought I'd be happy to see this city," Panam admitted. "But Dogtown… that's another level of hell. It's like the worst parts of Night City and the Badlands had a bastard love child."
"Guess Hansen's so-called 'freedom' didn't vibe with you?" I quipped from the passenger seat.
"Freedom?" Panam scoffed. "Freedom to OD in some shithole or get chopped up by Scavs? Hansen built that place for himself and his inner circle. He hates corps until they start lining his pockets."
"Well, you could always write an expose," I joked. "Kurt Hansen: War Criminal and Tyrant. Slap it in a collection called 1,000 Obvious Things, right between '2+2=4' and 'People fuck for money on Jig-Jig Street.'"
"Hansen's the bald one, right?" Becca chimed in from the backseat.
"Yep. Planning to share your political insight, too?"
"Yeah, I wasn't really listening to what you guys were talking about. Tried for a bit, but damn, I just couldn't stop laughing. Figured that wouldn't help you, so I turned up the music instead."
"Laughing?" I asked, confused. "About what? We could've been flatlined in there."
"Well, you were just sitting there on the couch, surrounded by those meatheads. Serious business talk. All tense. Mister Price this, Arasaka that. And I couldn't stop thinking about this one porn BD I saw—"
"Okay, stop!" I cut her off. "Don't need the details."
Panam burst out laughing at the wheel, already turning toward Mega Building Ten. The streets were nearly empty, and we made it home in no time.
"End of the line, Mister Price," she announced, pulling into the skyscraper's parking lot. "Go take a shower before your next… uh, business meeting."
"Get lost," I shot back, holding the door open for Lucy. "We regroup in three days."
Hopefully, that would give us enough time to gather all the intel we needed. Two months for preparation and execution. Sounds like a lot, but it's really not. Even the initial recon could take days. Then we'd have to plan everything and follow through. No way to guess how long that part might take—it all depends on how complicated the plan gets.
Still, a couple hours of rest wouldn't hurt. Back at my place, I powered up my computer, typed in the password, and opened the encrypted file listing Linda Sherman's mercenaries. Found Wesley Hunt's entry and made an update.
Wesley Hunt
Threat level: High, then worse.
Neutralized. Twice.
As I typed, Lucy walked up behind me, resting her hand on my shoulder and chest. Her damp skin smelled faintly of some "Arctic Fresh" shower gel. Funny. Like Arctic air actually has a scent. Still, it smelled nice.
"What the hell happened in that bunker?" she asked softly. "You can talk freely. I've already activated the blockers."
"Some rogue AIs got stuck in there," I explained. "Slipped through the Blackwall thanks to Militech experiments, but not fully."
"Not fully? What do you mean?" she asked, planting a kiss on my neck that sent shivers down my spine.
I was sure if I turned around, I'd find her completely naked, but I kept my eyes fixed on the monitor. It was a game—a mix of teasing and provocation.
"AIs can split off parts of themselves," I said. "Create independent fragments. I think when they pushed through the Blackwall using Militech's little loophole, they knew it might be a trap. So instead of sending their whole selves, they sent fragments. Now they're stuck there, like a stepsister in a washing machine. If we're keeping the porn braindance analogies going."
"And you're not seriously considering helping them, right?"
"Well…" I trailed off.
Her fingers traced down along my collarbone.
"They're monsters, V," she whispered. "Bloodthirsty beasts. Even that iron fuck Smasher got nothing on them. People love fairy tales so much…" Her cool, damp fingers slid down to my stomach. "…that when they realized monsters weren't real, they decided to make their own."
"So, does that make me possessed?"
"There's darkness in you, but you're stronger," she murmured. "Those stories exist too. The hero who tames the dark power. Turns it into a weapon."
Sorry, Lucy. This isn't one of those stories. Strip away the lies, and our fairy tale turns into a horror flick.
"Hey, Delamain fits into the world just fine. Maybe the other AIs aren't all bad either."
"Del only behaves because he's scared of NetWatch. Who knows what his cabs are up to on dark nights? Night City's big, and a couple brain-burned corpses could easily be blamed on the Voodoo Boys."
I thought back to my late-night rides with Delamain. Her theory wasn't far off the mark, though she had the wrong culprit.
"Alright," I "relented." "You win. No deals with rogue AIs. Promise."
Lucy tilted my head back and kissed me. How sweet. A kiss full of lies and desire.
"Come on, let's hit the shower," she whispered when we broke apart.
"You just came out of there."
"And you haven't."
"Afraid I'll take apart the drain and find a hidden AI bunker?"
"Who knows?" she teased. "Better safe than sorry."
"Fine, let's go."
A couple hours after our shower session, we got an unexpected call from Falco. Lucy put it up on one of the apartment's monitors so we could both talk to him.
"Hey there," greeted the nomad, who looked like he'd caught some sun and was now rocking a colorful Hawaiian shirt.
"Where are you, and what's going on?" I asked.
"Cuba," he said. "Not far from Havana."
"Whoa, what took you there? Coming back anytime soon?"
"Hard to say," he answered vaguely.
"If you need help, just ask," Lucy added. "Still selling the car?"
"Getting by for now. Yeah, the car too. Things have gotten… complicated. But don't worry, I'll be back. Alright—" Falco glanced over his shoulder. "Looks like it's time for me to go. Havana's calling."
"Good luck," I said as the call ended. "What's he gotten himself into now?"
Lucy just shrugged. Whatever it was, we had our own problems to deal with. Time to kill Abernathy.
That evening, we started our prep work. For ten grand, we hired a pair of former journalists. Another ten went toward buying leaked databases.
"We need to know her schedule, her current residence, and how her security operates."
Not exactly the kind of info you could Google. I also began cross-checking Jenkins's data to see how outdated it was.
"She's definitely moved," Lucy confirmed. "Some banker lives in her old place now."
"Shit…"
In the phantom life where Abernathy's goons had ambushed me for Jenkins's chip, all the intel on her would've been sold off. In reality, I kept the chip and escaped. Abernathy probably assumed the info was compromised, so she covered her tracks—moved, replaced people. Wouldn't be surprised if she even ditched her mistress.
So here we are, basically starting from scratch. And unlike Jenkins, we don't have access to Arasaka's internal systems.
Should I just eat one of her employees? Maybe a netrunner? Too bad I can't control puppets for long. No way I could just possess someone and waltz them into her office. An hour tops is all I've got.
The critical desync with the body was bound to start soon.
Still, some of Jenkins' info came in handy—specifically, the data on Abernathy's accounts.
We spent about a day hacking and infecting nodes handling her banking data.
Night City Cooperative Bank, Marble Bank, Matterhorn-Switzerland Bank—we had her account numbers for all three. Not that we were planning to steal her money; that wasn't the goal. Instead, we aimed to track transactions and pinpoint where the Ice Queen had built her new castle.
By the next day, a promising lead surfaced for the Lair of Evil: an Arasaka-owned skyscraper in the Corporate District.
The moment Lucy and I took a quick look at the security setup, she made it clear:
"Either that bitch is in there, or someone from the Arasaka family. Even the janitors are rocking premium corpo chrome."
Two days of surveillance later, we had enough intel to call the crew together for a first draft of the plan. Evening beers, plotting the murder of a top Arasaka exec—that's about as ideal a Night City party as it gets.
We broke the assassination methods into two categories: traditional and Net-based. I wanted to start with the traditional options. I had a pretty good reason for steering clear of anything Net-related—killing someone of Abernathy's caliber through the Net would immediately flag the Watchers. If they sniffed around too much, they'd dig up something ugly about me. Too many unusual hacks, weird human-controlling abilities—it wouldn't take them long to connect the dots. At best, they'd chalk it up to stolen Arasaka secrets, which still meant they'd come knocking.
Around 7 PM, the four of us gathered at my and Lucy's place. We spent about half an hour poring over a virtual layout of the skyscraper on Union Street. Abernathy had fortified the penthouse into a fortress.
She was expecting someone to try.
"An armored AV escorted by eight drones picks up that bitch every morning," Lucy announced. "Takes her from her penthouse to the tower, and then back. Arasaka has the entire building locked down. Guards from the first floor to the roof. Drones on 24/7 patrol."
"A sniper shot?" Panam asked. "When she steps out of the AV?"
"It all happens in enclosed garages," Lucy shot her down.
"What about a bomb?" Panam pressed.
"Already thought of it," I said. "Getting close to the penthouse is next to impossible. We could maybe test sending a drone through the ventilation."
"What if the bomb's bigger?" Becca chimed in. "Like, bam! Wipe out a bunch of floors."
"Abernathy's neighbors include a City Council member, a top lawyer, and a well-known actress," I said. "Look, if I wanted to raise the bounty on my head instead of taking hers off, sure. We could go full Johnny Silverhand and drop the whole building. But the city would freak, and they'd definitely hunt us down. Pyrrhic victory."
"Pyrrhic what?" Becca squinted. "The fuck that's supposed to mean?"
Sometimes I forget the kind of company I keep.
"There was this ancient general," Panam stepped in unexpectedly. "Won a battle but lost most of his army. Pyrrhic victory means you win, but it's worse than losing."
King, not a general but whatever. Nice to see some scraps of ancient knowledge still kicking around.
"What kind of general? Some kind of European?" Becca asked.
"How should I know?" Panam shrugged. "Irish? Romanian?"
"Who cares? He's dead, and I'm alive trying to stay that way. We need a real plan to take out Abernathy. Besides Net attacks, what else we got?"
A brief silence. Poison? No. With her implants and platinum Trauma Team subscription, she'd survive anything short of a miracle. Even if we managed to sneak something into her steak, she'd get stabilized before she croaked.
Mini-bomb? A TNT-packed kebab? Too risky. Security would catch it. They protect that woman better than they ever guarded the Biochip in Konpeki.
I closed my eyes, picturing the Union Street skyscraper: seventy-five stories of metal, glass, and concrete. A giant wasp nest. Abernathy was the wasp—stinging, gnawing, consuming the worker ants scattered outside the Corporate District. The AV was her chitin armor and wings. Her agents were the sting, financial power the venom.
Day in, day out, a perfect biological machine at work. My job was to break it. Find the weak spot and strike hard.
But where?
No answers in the data we'd gathered. Her defenses were nearly perfect. In games, there's always a way forward, some conveniently hidden plot point around the next corner. Real life? Not so much.
"Can't we just walk in and shoot her?" Becca asked, batting her eyelashes. "Kill the guards, then her. Done."
"So, the plan is 'bang-bang-bang, RAWR, fuck yeah?'" I clarified. "As much as I'd love that, there's one problem. The moment shit kicks off, her guards will send an alert to Arasaka. Three to five minutes later, cavalry arrives—AVs with SpecOps, Netrunners, drones, medics, the whole circus. Might even get a guest appearance from Adam Smasher. Security may hate Abernathy, but they'd still treat this as a serious threat. The cops would go full force, too. Long story short, taking out mid-level corpos is one thing. Abernathy? Whole other ballgame. She's on the level of people with famous A-listers and Myers."
"We need to take her out fast, from a distance, and disappear immediately," Lucy summed up.
Another short silence.
"She's dug in well," Panam said. "If there aren't any weak points, maybe we make one. A provocation. You said she only boards the AV in closed garages? What if we hit one of those?"
"V, you used to work for Arasaka," she added. "Any idea what their guards' protocol is during an attack?"
"Either hunker down and wait for backup, or..." I trailed off, thinking. "Evacuate her to a secure location."
"Exactly!" Panam snapped her fingers. "And if the garage's off-limits, they'll have to extract her from the roof. One shot up there, and boom—problem solved."
Hmm. If we manage to sabotage the garage, we might take her out right there. But Panam's idea had potential—set her up for a fallback, only to push her right into another trap.
"How about we hijack an AV and ram it straight into hers?" Rebecca chimed in.
Tricky, but not impossible. Load it up with explosives, and it might work. Although those armored AVs are tough bastards. They can survive even a freefall. Abernathy's model was top-tier—practically military-grade.
In theory, we could time it right and crash a hijacked, bomb-loaded AV straight into her penthouse.
"We'll keep the AV idea in the mix," I nodded.
So, here's what we've brainstormed so far:
A sniper shot.A mid-air collision or an AV crash onto the penthouse.Killing her using someone from her own security or staff—either hacked or coerced.Worst-case scenario: a full-on netrunner hit.
"And what's the game plan?" Rebecca asked, leaning in.
"All of it," I smirked. "Everything at once. One plan might fail. Hell, even two might flop. We need multiple strategies, plus room for improvisation. And it all needs to go down fast. Let's give this bitch one hell of a day."
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