章節 17: Chapter 14: Target Acquired
"You know, I get that I'm not one to talk, but these Reyes-Martinez' folk got some serious family drama going on."
"Says the guy who killed his first man before his age even hit the double digits, all because his, quite literal, monster of a mother lost a bet against a rival gangoon leader…"
"I said I knew I'm not one to talk-!"
"And yet here we are: me, listening and you, talking. Life's injustices are truly endless."
"Oh you're impossible when you get like this."
"It's called 'keeping your head in the game'. Helps out in keeping your head attached to your neck. You should try it sometime."
"You and I both know the Edgerunner tall enough to take a swing at my neck still needs to be born."
"Don't say that where Sasquatch can hear it, she might go and have a try at giving you a baby brother."
"… Gross."
"Hey, you brought it up, not me."
"You keep this up and I'm gonna throw you off this rooftop."
"You could, but you and I know both know I'd just land on my feet. These babies might've cost someone else a pretty ennie, but they're not called 'lynx paws' for nothing after all."
"… that's annoyingly true."
"'sides, you wouldn't jeopardize the gig. Not when it means so much to the kid, not to mention the greatest fixer in all of Santo Domingo."
"Naturally. Professionals have standards."
"I'll make sure to remind them should I see any."
Shannon?"
"Yes Boss?"
"Shut up."
"Sure thing Boss."
I let out a humph of disapproval at the Nomad-turned-Animal-turned-Predator crouched nonchalantly at my side. Ever since the Faraday gig where she caused the roadblock on the bridge, Shannon has been taking it easy with my crew, really only coming into play to give Big Pete an earful when the crabby mechanic returned to the hide-out in her dusty 'borrowed' Rattler Galena.
Now that Reyes had thrown his full network of street urchins, data-jockeys, preem Solos and even the odd gangoon member (both 6th Street and Valentino surprisingly) behind my Predators' search for Jacob Shipman however, it had quickly become time for my in-house ninja to dust off her katanas.
Or, well, mantis-blades in Shannon's case.
Though admittedly, it had taken me slightly off-guard just how rapidly I had to call in my stealthiest Animal once El Capitan had joined the search for Biotechnica's in-house freak scientist and chief rapist.
Now, I was (justifiably) proud of my Predators, particularly the skills they've displayed when it came to tracking people down that desperately didn't want to be found, especially not by a hulking behemoth of an Animal with a fang-filled grin and a bad upbringing. Between my own netrunners, Solo contacts and of course connections with some of the preemest bouncers and Huscle all over NC, it usually didn't take long for word to reach me about whatever little hidey-hole my prey had chosen to bunker down in, once it had been unfortunate enough to catch my personal attention.
I had honestly expected Shipman to be no different, corpo protection or no. Sure, Biotechnica hiding the disgusting little man under their shadowy wings meant I couldn't get my claws on him directly, but then again, I didn't need to in order to strip away his defenses. In time, Corpo-mentality would be his own worst enemy. Everything was a cost-to-profit calculation for them. Everything. Including him.
I simply figured I'd quietly keep the pressure on just long enough for Biotechnica to either decide his accommodations were getting too expensive for their tastes and kick him out, or better yet, realize the safest (potential) whistleblower is a dead one and zero the fucker themselves.
Either way, Shipman would end up a dead man.
Over the past few years, gigs like that had become the bread and butter for my Predators (though most would probably substitute the butter for protein powder. Some would even do the same for the bread) and so while no immediate progress had been made back when David first 'hired' me for the fistful of eddies in his pocket, I figured my prey would show itself in due time.
That was before the best fixer in one of Night City's six districts had thrown his considerable weight behind me. I thought I had built up a pretty solid network of contacts, either made on my own once Ma had given me the green light to form my Predators, or through the Sasquatch pack and the rest of the Animals during my younger years.
'How laughable.' I thought grimly to myself.
I didn't have a 'network'. I just knew people I could call on, or in the worst case, could intimidate to get what I needed from them. El Capitan had a network. Every organization, every district, fuck it almost every home in Santo Domingo, Muamar Reyes was in their walls, eyes and ears everywhere. As the hunt unfolded, it almost began to seem like everyone was either on his payroll, or connected to someone who was. Sometimes they didn't even realize, just reporting up a seemingly endless chain of never-ending middlemen and shady contacts. The unsung and often unseen middle-management level of the criminal underworld. Reyes knew them all. The waitress at your favorite slop-house, the dancer at your favorite XBD-club, the guy who knew the guy to fix you your dose of Glitter-Stim, the Techie who modded your ride on the sly, the doormen at your Habtower who let you in after hours, all of them found eddies in their hands as long as they whispered secrets in El Capitan's ear.
He could track your entire life from dusk 'till dawn, all through the people you saw and talked to throughout the day and you'd never even know it. To a man as connected as him, almost everyone in Santo Domingo might as well be on the Truman Show, with him setting comfortably with a bucket of popcorn behind the cameras.
And he was one of six fixers in NC with that level of access. That level of oversight. That level of control.
I'll admit, I didn't sleep much that first week after David got to reconnect with his long-lost father. Bully for him, sucked for me. All of the paranoid fears from my childhood seemed to have jumped back with gleeful vengeance, just targeted at the people around me instead of the corpos this time around.
Which wasn't much better all things considered, since I still felt paranoid when it came to corpos and for good reason.
But where Muamar Reyes' display of power made me anxious, it seemed to delight David instead. While the kid still had a tendency to glue himself to my or his mother's side during most of the day, he had recently taken up tailing his old man on El Capitan's own invitation.
The fixer had wanted to reconnect more with his son, but didn't really have much of an idea on how to do so outside of a twisted version of a 'take your kid to work' day, which I could tell left the man somewhat conflicted.
On the one hand, he could not be going more against the wishes of his (ex-)wife than showing his estranged son the ins and outs of the very lifestyle she had left him over in the first place. On the other hand, both father and son were united in that they were using that lifestyle for the sole purpose of finding and punishing the man who was personally responsible for Gloria's sorry state and much, much worse if I hadn't stepped in to send him running.
But while Muamar might have been conflicted, David was having an absolute blast. He had profiled himself in 'Saka Academy as somewhat of a grifter, getting his hands on those things his stuck-up classmates were either too naïve or too embarrassed to obtain themselves. I guess running down leads all over his old neighborhood, seeing his father broker deals and favors while navigating effortlessly between all manner of territories, lifestyles and rivalries like a salmon shimmying up a waterfall, probably just felt like an expansion of what he had already been doing at school.
It certainly helped that in almost every interaction, his father was greeted with respect and sometimes even with friendly warmth. El Capitan was known as one of the nicer fixers in town, one that had built a rep for himself as one of the guys who made it out of the slums, who managed to climb the fucking mountaintop but who'd had the good sense to glance back down and look out for the little guy that got stuck behind. Considering much of Santo Domingo consisted of such 'little guys' and that was a powerful image to have.
Thing is, between what I remember from the game and what he told David, I'm actually inclined to believe that image, which made Muamar Reyes a rare breed indeed: a fixer not on my shitlist. He actually beat out Regina Jones in that regard. I still wasn't wholly convinced her whole 'save the poor cyberpsychos' questline wasn't just a secret recruitment drive for MaxTac to pump up their numbers of leashed killers.
Plus she killed Skippy. I'll never forgive her for that.
I wonder if he's already lying in a back-alley somewhere near the Electric Orgasm bar, next to his previous handler? Nah, the body was too fresh, must've only been there a few days max before V stumbled across the Rihanna-singing Smart Gun. We're steadily closing in on the date of the Konpeki Plaza Heist though, so I might check on it again some months in the future. Figure I might wanna swing by Dino's sometime soon anyways.
Incidentally also one of the fixers not on my shitlist: in my mind, no man that just gives a Quadra that sweet can be all bad.
'… I might have an addiction. Can you even have a specific car brand addiction? I mean, if Hands were to dangle that sweet Sport R-7 "Sterling" in front of me… Dammit, yeah, I'd rip out all of Pacifica by the roots for him, no questions asked. Well, it helps that I was already sort of planning on doing that anyways, so it all evens out. I think…'
I'm shaken from my idle musings by a subtle shift in Shannon's stance at my side. Both of us are on top of the roof of a fairly fancy high-rise on the outskirts of Central Plaza. Not quite the dreary, smog-choked sub-urbs of Santo Domingo, but not yet the shining neon-covered glass and steel from the towering megastructures at the heart of Night City. The high vantage point gives us a clear view of a slightly smaller apartment building right next to us, one which I was surprised to find was probably one of Biotechnica's go-to stash houses for compromised personnel, as it perfectly matched the one in which Dino sends V to track down Joanne Koch, the lead on Project Nightingale, an experiment that saw the gruesome prolonged deaths of at least 70 Nomads from the Red Ocher clan.
One of the survivors would end up being one of those very same cyberpsychos that Regina siccs V on, come to think of it, driven mad in his desperation for a cure… or at the very least a way to finally kill the pain.
Considering the additional deaths involved in the cover-up of Koch's involvement on the secret Biotechnica experiment (at least two media and three co-workers off the top of my head) and it might not be a bad thought to start pulling that thread a little early, considering how much of a thorn in Biotechnica's side I'm already being.
I glance down at the tense former Nomad at my side. Putting a stop to Project Nightingale early might also be enough to convince Saul not to sign away the souls of his clan in exchange for glorified indentured servitude to one of the scummiest corpos on the planet. I never met the man in this life, but somehow I feel I owe him somewhat, considering how his clan always made my V feel a part of their family in most of my playthroughs. Preventing dozens of his kin from coughing up their own lungs while being electrocuted to death seems like an appropriate way of settling that debt.
"Target in sight." Shannon murmurs lowly, her earlier relaxed joking tone gone completely.
"Security systems?" I simply rumble in response, idly rolling my broad shoulders and shaking out my enormous muscles. Not that I necessarily need to; despite having stood out here in the cold for several hours now, my muscles don't really get stiff like normal humans do.
"I have control of the doors. Cameras are turned off. Automated alarms are turned off. Automated turrets are turned off." Vasili's deep voice came through clearly in my ear, the holocall connection stable.
I'd have preferred a quick smash-and-grab, but since Muamar had located Shipman's location earlier than expected, it meant Biotechnica still had their eyes firmly fixed on him. Which meant we'd have to blind them first. Now, while I was the first to admit I wasn't exactly one to blend into a crowd, that didn't mean I wouldn't at least try to maintain some level of anonymity in gigs that directly affected a corpo's bottom-line, especially now that I had done so to the three biggest ones in NC already in the span off less than a month.
Even if they'd eventually trace things back to me (and having seen what a mere fixer like Muamar was capable of, I had no doubt the big bad corpos definitely would) I still would prefer not giving those assholes video evidence of my misdeeds on a silver platter to use against me. Not that I expect them to gather the evidence in order to sue me or anything (if they decide they want me gone, they'd rather just make sure I'm the gone type of gone), but still. Ma raised me better than to have my crimes caught on tape.
Thankfully, with Vasili jacked into the central control room of the building's closed-off intranet, Biotechnica at large should remain unawares of Shipmans fate until they actually send a physical body round to check up on their resident freak, which is why Shannon and I doubled back to this adjacent rooftop so we could keep an eye on the surrounding streets and the landing pad atop the skyscraper, careful to spot any approaching patrols or AV's. We can thank the ancient netrunner Rache Bartmoss for our B having gone unnoticed so far though: after he caused the DataKrash that killed the old Net way back in 2022, most buildings, especially corpo ones, tend to run on their own tightly closed-off systems. Take control of that system from the inside and no one on the outside will ever be the wiser.
Not that Bartmoss ever go to see the catastrophic results of his final 'fuck you' to the world. His body had been dead a couple of years by that point already, with just his mind living on through the Net, before that too got zeroed by 'Saka's own netrunners. Which is why the contract for his cryo-fridge unit didn't get extended and they just ended up dumping his popsicle ass out in the Badlands.
Hmm, actually, that should be right around now… That might actually be worth investigating. Sure, the man himself is useless to me, a meatsicle that has been biologically dead for the past 50 years, but he does still carry his (very heavily booby-trapped) cyberdeck with him, an Elysia model made by SGI Technologies in 2017, a few years before Zetatech came with its own, still-popular Paraline models. Or at least popular enough that V was sporting one before the doomed Heist.
Though by this point, it wasn't as if Zetatech's budget deck had any real competition in that regard, since decades ago SGI went under in one of the funniest cases of bankruptcy in corpo history: their entire stock plummeted practically overnight when a sudden rumor went viral that interfacing with their Virtual Vicky 2.2 program on an Elysia deck would make you sterile.
Tough luck Nyx. Not that I want the deck just to hand it over to Rogue's in-house 'runner, but my own of course (though probably only after making sure the Vicky rumor was in fact just a mere rumor). The cyberdeck itself might be an outdated model, but Bartmoss is held up as the netrunner even half a century after his death(s), something between a boogeyman and living (well… not-so-living) legend in the hacking community. His Elysia deck probably has some personally written custom Daemons, or perhaps some useful insights from his raids on Arasaka alongside Alt Cunningham's digi-ghost for the Soulkiller's location. If nothing else, it would make a hell of a gift to Sasha.
For now though, my other less-cute netrunner had done his job flawlessly, though in large part that was because jacking into a system from within was much easier than trying to Breach it from the outside (again, thank Bartmoss' DataKrash for that). Of course, while the hacking itself may be easier, that still means you actually need to get inside first, which is where I had come in.
The process had been simple, one I had mastered during my years within the gang and further refined on my gigs alongside Benedict when I still had to curry favor with Rogue before I fully built up my own squad. Though perhaps refined is a bit of an exaggeration when you're built like a bi-pedal rhinoceros in a body-building competition.
Essentially it just boiled down to casing the building from every possible angle just like you would in the game and then finding the quickest route to the back entrance without getting spotted by the cameras. Usually I'd just try and tear them straight out of the walls, or if I couldn't reach them, take them out simply by throwing something at them, preferably something small and soft enough not to make a huge ruckus, like a tennis ball.
My strength was great enough (and most cameras fragile enough) that the tennis ball would still shatter the plastic casing and vulnerable lenses without issue.
Unfortunately, that really only worked well when I went after rival gangoons or just regular run of the mill scum. Anything more organized (or paranoid) tended to notice when their surveillance feed suddenly got shut down, which would just buy me some moments at best before the base got put on alert and guards were sent out to track down the disturbance. Thankfully, a moment was all I usually needed to clear the perimeter and find my way up several stories, perhaps even the roof to plan the next stage of my hunt.
However, with a large corpo-owned building like this, that likely meant they had a resident dweller and they'd likely be able to pin-point my exact location the moment I tried anything funny with their precious digital eyes. Not to mention the various automated defenses they'd be able to precisely sicc on my ass in that case as I tried to find a way to scamper up multiple floors at once. I could just wait out the regulated 15 minute window in which the dweller needs to get up out of their chair to actually take a leak, before they dive back into their next 24 hour shift, but that would be a moot point if the building had a second dweller to fill in the gap. I didn't think a building of this size would have multiple dwellers, corpos usually saved that for their more prestigious (and confidential) sites. Konpeki of course has room for two as the Heist revealed (though the hotel only has the one when Yorinobu is staying there for… reasons, I guess), but 'Saka HQ in NC might have half a dozen at any given time.
So the safest (or at least most efficient) bet would be to enter the building unseen and stealthily take out the building's dweller, then usurp control of the building's sub-Net and blind Biotechnica without them even knowing it. Considering the high fencing around the perimeter and the camera's keeping a close eye on the front entrance, the first step would also have been the most difficult step, if it weren't for my secret weapon: me.
Earlier that same day
Taking Vasili and Shannon with me to the back of the building (Reyes had offered some of his own Solos, but I had politely declined since they likely wouldn't be able to keep up with my Predators anyways and I wanted this gig done as cleanly as possible) I gave Shannon a boost which she then used to wall-run up and over a several meters tall fence that blocked off a cramped and twisting alleyway towards the back of the building. It wasn't really even a proper street, more of an accidental gap due to the poor haphazard city planning of the surrounding high-rises that just so happened to get asphalted with the rest of NC's streets. It's sheer uselessness as a proper avenue of approach was probably why there was a gap in this spot in the cameras' field of vision.
Usually, the tall fence would've sufficed considering it was much too high for any regular cyberpunk, even if they had Fortified Ankles installed, to clear. Thankfully, my own homegrown blood and meat vastly outperformed Zetatech's artificial plastic fibers and nanogel-filled joint capsules, which meant my team and I had no issue vaulting over the otherwise too-tall obstacle.
I'm just grateful Biotechnica (or their contractors) hadn't bothered electrifying it. I might be bulletproof, but when it came to electricity, I was about as lightning-proof as a frog.
Using her Mantis blades to spider down to ground level on the other side of the fence, Shannon had stayed crouched for a long moment before giving me and Vasili the 'clear' signal. At her sign, I turned towards Vasili, ignored his disgruntled expression with professional ease, slung my arms around his waist and veritably yeeted my plus two-hundred pound netrunner right over the fence. Now, if you were to toss any regular 'runner around with strength like that, you'd probably snap them in half, but Vasili was an Animal netrunner. He landed roughly with a grunt and a muttered curse, but pushed himself back to steady feet, pulling air back into battered lungs as he leaned on Shannon's offered shoulder.
Muscles: not only do they look good, they even negate fall damage! Honestly, what can't they do!
… I'm sounding way too much like Ma there, tone it down Sim, play it cool.
Shaking myself, I simply bent my knees and pushed off, clearing the fence as if I were a pole-vaulter at the Olympics. My boots slammed down on the craggy asphalt with a deep resounding impact which caused all three of us to tense up for a breath-stealing moment, but when no movement from the building came, we slightly relaxed.
"Vasili." I muttered under my breath.
"On it." The netrunner immediately responded, his eyes lighting up with a tell-tale blue glow.
"None of the cameras have spotted us, road is clear."
"Move."
At my order, all three of us stealthily crept forwards. Even though we're Animals (and thus traditionally speaking are as stealthy as an pink elephant in a tea shop wearing jet-powered roller skates) we were unexpectedly silent. Shannon is really living up to her ninja-status, having swapped the Juice for chrome more often seen in corpo assassins or secret agents, whereas my literal lifetime experience in organized and (hyper-)violent crime means I move like a lion stalking in on its prey with nary a sound, my body surprisingly low to the ground despite its large size.
I stubbornly try not to think about how naturally slinking about almost on all fours feels to me. Like tigering up and down the stairs like kids usually do in their youth.
Well, normal kids I presume.
Really the only one who wasn't creeping along the black asphalt like the ghost of body-builders past is Vasili but then he has other methods of making himself (and us) unseen.
A lone camera was bolted into the wall just above the shabby door at the very back of the building, likely only used to throw away the trash into the overflowing container just off to its left.
"Shannon, go high. Vasili, on me." I whispered lowly, getting a nod from my Predators.
"Got it Boss." Shannon responded just as softly, this time without a hint of sarcasm in her voice, before moving ahead, taking care to stay towards the back of the camera.
She eventually made it to the wall unseen, before again unsheathing her Mantis blades. Sinking the sharp tips gently into the fading brickwork of the building, Shannon slowly clawed her way up until she was roughly at the same height as the camera. Gently extending one hand, she took a firm hold of the cameras housing and pushed it downwards. While most would think we Animals would just smash the thing (if we even bothered to remember such things as cameras in the first place), all a cut-off video feed would accomplish is we'd alert the dweller someone was messing with his security system.
However, my hope was that by pointing the camera straight down to the ground, it'd be written off as a malfunction instead while still giving us a chance to move unseen. Ideally the dweller would think a bird had landed on it or something, but wildlife had become a scarce sight in NC over the years. Really, us Animals were probably the closest thing you could get to strays here in Night City.
With the camera pointed straight down towards the asphalt, Vasili and I moved closer towards the door. As we crept forwards however, my superior hearing caught movement coming towards us from the other side of the door and my eyes widened.
Either the response time of the Biotechnica guards was quite frankly insane, or we just had shit luck.
Well… at least not as shit as the guy who was unfortunate enough to spot me while I was attempting a stealth run. By the time the unassuming guard threw open the door (an unlit cig between his lips showing he had simply been planning to step out for a smoke) I had already exploded in motion, gravel crunching and shooting away from underneath my heavy boots. All the unfortunate guard saw was an enormous blur descending upon him before my large claw shot out and grabbed a hold of the front of his security vest.
I'd rather have gone with my go-to method and torn out his throat immediately to ensure he wouldn't scream and alert his buddies, but annoyingly his vest came with one of those thick collars at the front protecting his neck.
Was it just me or had those become more and more popular in recent years?
I had enough experience dealing with them at this point I knew I could've reeled him in with one hand, pulled back on his helmet with the other and used my large fangs to rip through the soft flesh and tubing of his exposed throat that way, but I preferred not to.
I was no stranger to the coppery scent and taste of blood at this point considering the split lips (and worse) I've caused and suffered over my short and violent life, but killing a man with my bare teeth still left a bad taste in my mouth.
Literally. No matter how many times I brush my teeth or gargle industrial grade cleaning solvents, I still feel like I can keep tasting rusty iron on the back of my throat for days. So I tended to avoid it at all costs if I could, even if Ma kept insisting it looked cool as fuck. Thankfully, I had brought someone more… refined along for this gig.
In a single smooth motion, I lifted him clear off the ground with just a single hand as if he were weightless. The cig slowly tumbled to the ground as it fell from his widened lips, his mouth just now opening to let out a shout of surprise. But due to my size, he soared up into the air, until his head was parallel with the still wall-climbing Shannon.
Thankfully quicker on the uptake than the security guard, Shannon pushed off the wall, both Mantis Blades swinging forwards in a scything motion as she let herself fall to the ground. Well-maintained and stupidly sharp, they sliced through the man's neck-muscles with ease, parting tissue like Moses did the Red Sea. The man's scream never even made it past his throat as his head simply toppled off his torso, free-falling to the ground just like his cigarette. Before it could hit the floor though, my other hand shot out and caught it like a baseball, my claw completely engulfing the severed head.
Without a word I walked towards the overflowing garbage containers placed next to the back door as Shannon quietly hit the ground and smoothly came up in a combat roll. Next to her Vasili blinked a few times, his mind still catching up to the last two seconds, before he sprung into movement as I shot a pointed look from him to the garbage container.
Grabbing a few bags with a disgruntled look on his heavy-set face, Vasili emptied the container just enough so I could toss in the guard's body and head and close the lid on him. Considering the abysmal state of garbage collection in large parts of this town, it'd probably be some time before the body was discovered.
It's wasn't as if the corpse would really make the smell here worse after all.
Before we entered the building to deal with the dweller, I allowed myself a small moment to blink the blood from my eyes as I tried to wipe most off it off my face and front with a tissue Vasili helpfully (and silently) provided. As I had found out in this new life (at a depressingly young age too), being right there when someone gets decapitated is messy business, considering blood can spray up to six feet when arteries are cut. A bit more than that if you got high blood pressure (which considering how roided up most of my family and rivals were, was almost all of us).
How did the French ever manage to get anything done back when they kept decapitating nearly fifty people a day (on average) during Revolution times? Considering most of those beheadings got treated as prime time live entertainment, I can only imagine a primitive open-air version of the blood disco in the first Blade movie.
Maybe the country was broke at the time because everyone in Paris had to keep buying laundry detergent by the bucket?
Shaking my head to clear it of any further thoughts about French Revolutionary times as well as the last flecks of blood stubbornly clinking to my brows and side-burns, I turn towards my fellow Animals, giving them a nod and we proceed.
Shannon takes point, with me close on her (figurative) tail, Vasili moving at the back. I'm the fastest and my reach is large enough I can grab or claw someone even standing behind my personal Assassin, while Shannon is lithe and maneuverable enough she can then move in for the take-down. Between my claws and her blades, we were as lethal as we were silent. Vasili on the other hand was tough enough that, should someone get the drop on us from behind, he'd likely not go down in one hit, giving Shannon and I enough warning to turn on a dime and deal with the threat at our back before it got the chance to take us down.
We stay low and move steadily, but not too hastily. This bottom floor of the building is sparse. A few corridors, bland and not exactly in pristine condition anymore, a supply closet or empty storage room and that's it really. It's only once we move down two floors and get closer toward the center of the building and begin approaching the dweller's nest that we start encountering additional security forces.
There's two at the end of the hallway, one of them standing idle, both hands resting on the top of his M221 Saratoga, a staple for your average corpo-soldier and Militech's updated answer to Arasaka's near century-old Shigure. The light frame and relatively cheap price make it the undisputed king of urban close-quarters combat, despite it being close to thirty years old now.
Or, well, it was undisputed, until I was born that is.
The second guy just has a side-arm strapped in a holster against his thigh, his hands preoccupied with the read-out screen that's hooked up to a wall panel. Just two security guys checking the building's systems, maybe because of the now-faulty camera at the back.
Just a normal day at the office… before a throwing knife suddenly sprouts from the submachinegun-wielding soldier, the handle of a large bowie knife sticking out from his shattered face-plate, the steel having punched clean through. The impact is sudden and strong enough it actually lifts him off his feet and throws him against the wall, where he slowly slumps down towards the floor, leaving a smear of blood staining the décor.
His buddy jerks in surprise, even dropping the tablet, but he's quick enough on the uptake that he immediately goes for the pistol at his side as he tries to turn on a dime. Unfortunately for him, right as I rounded the corner, stepping into the first guard's field of view while throwing my knife to eliminate said view, Shannon had already exploded in motion as well, ducking underneath the slab of steel as it overtook her, on a direct collision with the guard's helmet.
The second guy has barely cleared leather before Shannon has cleared the distance, one mantis-blade spearing his head, the second embedding itself in his chest, piercing his heart.
The dude is dead in an instant, his body not even giving out the tell-tale deathrattle as he sags in on himself, only held up by the steel sprouting from Shannon's arms. She may have focused on stealth and assassination these days, but after her stint as a Nomad she did run with the Animals for several years and it shows as she holds the man aloft effortlessly. Gently bending down and letting the guy slide of her blades to the ground, her head remains on a swivel as Vasili and I move up. I retrieve my own throwing knife (though I suppose smaller human's might be more inclined to call the slab of metal a machete instead) and we move deeper into the building without a word.
Similar scenes play out twice more, the second time being a bit hectic as we stumble across a break room of sorts with five guys off duty. The room has two entrances so I send Shannon to creep ahead, sticking low to the floor and ducking underneath the sparse windows of the bare room. Drawing inspiration from horror BD's, she stealthily opens the door, while ducking out of sight, drawing the attention of the five guys inside. Two of them get up to investigate and when they get close enough, Shannon springs into action, descending from the ceiling where she had been hiding and killing the guy in front with a move that reminded me of the way Sasha decapitated the security robots back during her raid on Biotechnica HQ. As the second guy reels back in shock, the three at the large table in the center of the room spring up, already going for their weapons.
Which is my queue to kick the other door clear off its hinges, catching the middle guy in the back and sandwiching him between it and the table. The other two try to turn, but I've been trained by Ma to be ambidextrous practically since birth, so I let a knife fly from each hand, once more scoring headshots as the large steel, propelled by my enormous strength, easily penetrates their flimsy helmets, killing them instantly.
The ruckus makes the second guy that checked out Shannon's distraction make a fatal error as he turns away from the ex-Nomad, who silences him with a swift and precise decapitating strike from behind as she leaps off the first victim's shoulders.
The remaining guy that got the air smacked out of him by a sudden door-slam is trying to clamber back to his feet, desperately gasping to refill his lungs, but in two large strides I've covered the space between us, grabbed a hold of his head with both of my large hands and snapped his neck like it's a toothpick.
It's the noisiest kill so far, but thankfully Vasili found one of those wall-jacks that V can use to hack local systems, so he's been drawing the dweller's attention by making it look like someone's trying to breach the building's net from the outside.
"Dweller is distracted. And arrogant. Go."
With Vasili's voice in my ear spurring me on, Shannon and I swiftly move down the last hallway, making it to the dweller's lair. It's really just a regular room (though noticeably colder), stacked with databanks all surrounding a net-jockey chair. The dweller himself is rather non-descript, most of his pudgy features hidden by his netrunner suit and the thick helmet that connects him to a bunch of screens, most of them showing security feeds of the building's interior.
And one of them showing midget porn. Because of course.
Normally, people tend to be cautious around netrunners and taking one down on their own turf is seen as tricky. You need to circumvent impossible to spot countermeasures and hidden boobytraps, all while your target has a clear shot and practically unlimited ammo. It's an edgerunner's worst nightmare, so it doesn't surprise me when Shannon keeps her blades unsheathed, an edge in her voice as she looks from the myriad screens, to the dweller and then to me, clearly expecting auto-turrets to drop from the ceiling any second now.
That, or suddenly find her eyeballs booting down as her own Mantis blades suddenly pierce her heart that suddenly starts leaking toxic chemicals instead of regular blood and coolant.
Like I said, netrunners can be terrifying. Unless you're all (un)natural of course and you're barely running any hardware that can even be hacked in the first place.
Like me.
"So, how are we gonna boot him, Boss? You got some virus stashed on you that you can jack him into, or-" Shannon tries to ask, clearly aware that defeating a dweller in their... well, dwelling, is a delicate operation, before she's suddenly cut off.
Unfortunately for Shannon, and much more unfortunately for the dweller, nothing about me can be considered 'delicate'. One hand engulfs the man's throat, just above his sternum, the other takes a firm grasp of his whole head, helmet and all. With a deep growl of effort, my muscles swell and I tear the man's head clean off in a single, jerking violent motion.
A section of vertebrea and cabling that formed part of the man's upper spine (most of it replaced to allow for better interfacing) comes out with it and I can't help but be a bit disturbed at my own sudden urge to shout 'get over here!'. Killing folk is one thing, but making jokes about their gruesome deaths, that's something that feels like a line I shouldn't cross... especially because that's exactly the sense of humor my mother has. I start thinking like her and I'm a goner for sure.
"… or… or we could do… that. Yeah. Sure thing." Shannon mutters under her breath, an odd tone in her voice as she glances at me with a look I can't quite decipher.
"What?" I shrug, holding up the runner's head.
"See? I thought things through, made sure to go the subtle route. It'd be safer to just smash the head into a pulp, but that'd ruin the helmet. This makes sure that Vasili can just take over, no problem." I explain, giving it a little demonstrative shake.
There's an odd sound, somewhere between a scrape and a squelch and then the head falls out from the now empty helmet, falling on the floor between us with a dull thump.
"… I bet he's just thrilled." Shannon says after a silent beat in a tone drier than her beloved Badlands.
As it turned out, Vasili didn't really mind the used helmet, mostly complaining that it was a tight fit, but otherwise seemingly unbothered by the extra coat of red 'paint'. Animals are just built different, I guess. From there, he started on taking over control over the building's subnet, making sure to take down the red flags the dweller had thrown up before his death and soothing any suspicions Biotechnica might have of something untoward happening here.
Or at the very least, something untoward that they hadn't pre-approved first.
All that was roughly fifteen minutes ago, during which Shannon and I had double-backed and exited the building again, moving faster now that we knew the building no longer had eyes on us. I briefly thought about gathering the bodies and stashing them somewhere, but that was fairly useless considering the very obvious amounts of blood we've left in our wake and other than the manga, I didn't carry any bleach on me.
Like I said, decapitations are a messy business, hon hon hon.
The present
Now that Shannon had spotted the target and Vasili confirmed control over the building's automated security systems, my personal assassin and I could simply bust in through the roof instead of having to fight our way up all the levels of the building and it's man-powered security forces.
"In the words of a murder-gremlin I know and both admire and somewhat worry for…" Shannon begins as she straightened up, softly bouncing on her feet as I take a few steps back.
"… fucking launch me big guy." She finishes with a grin, before launching into a backwards somersault as I rush forwards. Our movements align perfectly, her feet landing square in the middle of my palm and with a grunt I push forwards like a baseball pitcher looking for his final strike-out of the match.
… I don't even know if that comparison makes any sense, actually. It's not like I've ever watched a game after all, Animals by and large only watch sports if blood is a given and death a possibility. That must go for most people in NC actually, given the city-wide apathy in actually doing anything with the stadium that never got finished and now lies at the heart of Barghest territory.
Much like a baseball though (probably) Shannon goes soaring through the sky, clearing the gap between our building and the Biotechnica safehouse with ease. She drops several feet, but her Lynx paws ensure a smooth and near-silent landing on the opposing rooftop. There's not even a guard posted there, considering they likely though the only access to it was via AV and the only gang in NC who could possibly have access to those babies were Kurt Hansen's aforementioned dogs of war.
Well, him or the NCPD, depending on your definition of 'gang'. Night City tended to blur the line at times.
I move back several paces, before breaking out in a dead sprint right towards the edge of the rooftop, crouching down low and exploding in a jump that sends a small shudder through the uppermost floor of the building, gravel exploding away from my feet. Wind whistles past my ears and tugs at my hair as I blur through the sky, gaining several feet before I start rapidly dropping, the space between the two buildings a gaping chasm underneath my flying form. My stomach does flips as vertigo creeps its way up my spine, an odd weightless feeling prickling all of my senses, almost enough to make me nauseous.
But then there's the smack of impacting concrete, a tremor sent through my bones, absorbed through my musculature and I rise to my full height, now on the adjacent rooftop.
There's one access-hatch that leads to the landing pad on the roof, usually wired up to an alarm, but with Vasili at the helm, I simply take hold of the handle, and tear the entire slab of steel out in a single motion. Shannon flits through the opening like a bloodhound diving into a foxhole, moving swiftly to catch any stragglers that might've been alerted by the sudden crash above their heads.
It's a tighter fit for me though and I need to pull in my shoulders and take a deep breath in order to squeeze myself through, landing heavily on the floor below. I don't see Shannon anywhere, but I trust she can take care of herself, so I instead move closer towards the penthouse-area of the top floor. It's tastefully decorated, if unbearably bland and non-descript like the lowest floor of the building had been. Though I suppose it makes sense for a safe-house to be a bit dull. It's hardly a hiding spot if you light it up in a neon-pink after all.
It's a short trek from the hallway that Shannon and I entered towards the foyer area leading to the double doors providing access to the penthouse proper and it's eerily still and quiet.
That's partially due to Shannon's pre-emptive handiwork I note, as I step over the body of a guard that sits slumped against the wall next to the double doors, the smell of copper and the wet shine on the front of his dark uniform indicating an expertly cut throat.
The double doors are locked, but before I can kick them straight off their hinges, a security panel embedded into the wall next to them is suddenly flagged green and my sensitive hearing picks up a series of clicks let out by hidden mechanisms in the door as it unlocks itself.
Giving it a gentle push and seeing it weightlessly and soundlessly swing open for me, I let out a sharp grin.
"Appreciated Vasili."
"Don't mention it Boss."
Stepping into the penthouse, I take it all in with a single glance, instantly spotting motion in the kitchen. Despite my size, my thick combat boots don't make a sound as I stalk forwards, hugging the wall as I approach the dining area. Glancing around a corner, I spot a middle-aged man by the drinks cabinet. He's pouring himself a whiskey (Armagnac Massy if my nose doesn't deceive me. Fancy stuff. Very fancy) while leisurely perusing what appear to be several medical files and reports. He hardly looks like a man on the run from a monster.
Probably helps that he's a much bigger one than I am, despite our appearances.
He takes a sip from the top quality liquor, smacking his lips in an annoying way that somehow manages to raise every hackle on my body (and considering how hairy I am, that's a significant amount of hackles to be raised), before glancing around the rest of the kitchen, approaching the various cabinets and drawers.
"What this needs is some of those macadamia nuts. I know I requested the imported stuff, none of that synth-shit bullshit they peddle here. Now where…?" he murmurs to himself, puttering around the kitchen as I slowly approach him with measured silent steps.
The man found what he was looking for, opening a cabinet door with a triumphant 'aha!' before slightly slumping as the packet of nuts is placed on the tallest shelf, incidentally just out of his reach.
"That damned Adams. I know he stashed them here on purpose. Oh, but I'll have the last laugh you anabolic ape. I'll make sure this gets taken out of your pay-stub, see if I don't!" the pudgy man groused as he tried to reach the packet, standing on his tippy toes, his fingers desperately extended, before sagging in on himself with a defeated sigh.
Which is when he suddenly feels a large clawed hand engulfing his shoulder, a deep rumbling voice right behind him, close enough that he can feel hot breath caressing his ear, the whispered words filled with cruel amusement, their dark timbre resonating inside his lungs as an arm as thick as his thigh easily clears the top shelf, the packet of nuts disappearing in a paw that can just as easily engulf the entirety of his head.
"Here, let me get that for you." I whisper with glee in the ear of a terrified Jacob Shipman.
AN: I know this took much longer than expected, but I've started a new job a few months ago that has been insanely busy, leaving me very little time to write. As such, this sadly won't be a double update as I simply do not have any time to advance this story further. I'll try and find a way to make it up to you guys, but please to keep in mind that it simply might take a while before I manage to squeeze in enough time (and energy, that's the most important thing I'm lacking recently). Hope to see you guys soon(er)!
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Bakkughan
Bakkughan Fun Fact: The most expensive nut in the world, the Kindal in the language of the native aborigonals, more commonly known as Macadamia after Dr. John Macadam, is mined in Australia and Hawaii. Its price at home, even in an unpeeled form, can be well over $60 per kilogram. Per comparison, cashews are only $20 per kilo. The reasons for the Macadamia's high price lies in the difficulty of obtaining the shelled nut. There are ten different types of macadamia trees in the world, but only two produce nuts and they don't start producing the nuts until seven to ten years after being planted. The nuts can't be picked regularly either: they have to be harvested from the ground after falling and then crushed with incredible pressure. They have the hardest shell of any nut in the world.
(number three on most lists are almonds (almost $30 per kilogram), but technically they're more like seeds or pits and so are more closely related to peaches than other nuts)
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