Chapter Text
The acid fog clung to the streets of Night City, obscuring the bright neon lights of Lizzie’s Bar from the denizens hurtling down Sutter Street in brutalist jalopies. Lost souls shuffling hopelessly from place to place. This was Kabuki, a sub-district of Watson, known for overwhelming poverty and brightly colored cyberpsychos. Whereas normally one would be oppressed by the strong mix of exotic cuisines and piles of aging garbage, this morning, both familiar smells were suppressed by the stench of pungent burnt fireworks and rotten eggs that came with high levels of hydrogen sulfide in the lower atmosphere.
[KABUKI- LIZZIE’S BAR PARKING LOT]
Sunday| 04 JUL 2077 | 06:55
[MILITECH OFFICIALS ANNOUNCE 2077 FOURTH OF JULY FIREWORKS BUDGET SURPASSES ENTIRE GDP OF NEW PHILIPPINES.]
Will Scrap was a lot of things. A streetkid turned cop (now ex-cop), a former drunk deadbeat, occasionally a big gonk, and of all things, a part-time mercenary and a full-time manager of a medical clinic. Today was his day off from the clinic, so he had taken a small job for Regina Jones. He had many things he could complain about, but lack of variety wasn’t one of them. Not that he complained much anymore, if at all. He was sitting in an old 2068 Villefort Columbus that was technically the property of Doc Kowalski, a ripperdoc from Poland and a former member of the esteemed Trauma Team International. The past month had been…eventful.
One second, he’d had a gun pointed at his brain, ready to leave Night City and his life behind. The next second, Will had squeezed the trigger, and nothing had happened. Some would call that a fluke. He had called it bad luck, but now he wasn’t so sure. Waiting in the parking lot of a seedy strip club (where half the employees were violent gangers themselves) for a client he was warned was an ‘eccentric asshole’ might not seem like a step up to some. For Will, though? Just breathing in and out continuously felt like a miracle. So when Regina, his fixer, had asked him to drive her protege out to the middle of the Badlands to pick up some tech, he’d agreed without hesitation. So here he was, dealing with the ecological consequences of humanity’s bad decisions and waiting for the client. His heightened sense of smell made the acid fog nearly unbearable, but he’d suffered far worse just in the past two months. In fact, he enjoyed the work despite everything. It was hard for him not to maintain a positive attitude after coming back from rock bottom. Compared to where he’d been, his life these days was roses. Kind of. Relatively speaking.
Knock knock. Will had heard him coming from the moment he’d gotten off the elevator at Regina’s ‘tower’ across the street. Max Jones was trying hard to be inconspicuous (and failing). He was wearing a full gray trench coat, a trilby hat, and dark black sunglasses. It was like something out of an archaic detective film. Will stepped out of the van casually. He was wearing his Kang Tao Street Operator jacket over a button-up shirt and rocking black cargo pants and Militech brand hiking boots. It was too early in the morning for sunglasses, and the rolling fog made it a bit of a moot point anyway. Beneath the street gear, Will wore the full custom fit Gibson Battle Phantom Package. It felt more like a second skin than a light-armored stealth suit.
When you’re trying to look inconspicuous, that’s when you stick out the most. Max Jones was an ex-media, the principled and high-strung friend of Regina Jones (no relation), and he had risked his life by reporting news that the big two stations didn’t want the people to know. He was smart and brave, but not accustomed to the street. This was evidenced by the pink-purple-haired Mox bouncer at the door of Lizzie’s Bar, who was eyeing him, her baseball bat resting in her chromed-out hands as if she was looking for any reason to start swinging.
After standing around for a moment too long, Max spoke in a low, nervous voice, “I rented a car for this, uh, this job. Grab your gear or whatever and meet me across the street. I’m driving.”
Will just nodded. His job today was to keep the client happy and alive. He grabbed his kevlar duffel bag with one hand and carried it across the street. It looked light, but it weighed well over a hundred pounds thanks to what was inside. A stockless M2038 Tactician with a Kanetsugu sporting a short holographic scope, and loaded with six rounds of APFSDS (Armor-Piercing Fin-Stabilized Discarding Sabot). You know, just in case. Next to that was a trauma kit filled with QuickClot, Stims, tourniquets, nitrile gloves, chest seals, and hemostatic bandages. Lastly was a crapload of ammunition and Will’s angular full-face ‘Smart-Helmet’. He hadn’t used the helmet yet in the field. You could use it for infrared and thermal scanning, or slot it into a neural port to get the equivalent of a high-end Kiroshi cybereye (with a few milliseconds lag). It’d be useful for collecting bounties and running facial recognition searches.
The car, a 2075 Archer Quartz EC-L R275 with a 410 Horsepower Twin-turbo 3.2L six-cylinder engine, was designed for off-roading with all-terrain tires. This model was a favorite of nomads and badland raiders. Will opened the trunk and placed his bag inside, pulling out the helmet and the shotgun, before shutting it and sliding into the passenger seat.
Max eyed the shotgun, “I suppose that might be necessary.”
“Just might.”
“Okay, slot this and let’s get ready to go,” he said as he handed him the shard. Will reached into his jacket, pulled out his external Agent (identical to an average smartphone), and placed the shard into the slot. He had a rule about putting strange shards into his personal slots, even from clients.
He read over it quickly, swiping the screen continuously with his left thumb. The route was iffy. It went through several known gang territories where impromptu blockades often sprang up at random. So Will made some tweaks that avoided those areas and took them east over Watson Bridge into Japantown, past Pondsmith Street, and onto Ringroad East. New Pacific Highway 101 stretched South through the desert all the way to the Border Wall checkpoint into South California. They’d head off-road to the coordinates of some kind of Power Station, north-west of the old Regional Airport ruins. Satisfied, he turned to Max.
“Okay, you good with the new route?”
“I, uh, I’m, um, not sure. Why did you change it?”
“Used to patrol those roads. They’re ganger playgrounds. Unacceptable risk.”
Max thought it over. “Fine. We’ll go your way.”
It was easy to tell that Max wasn’t used to being corrected. From what Regina had told Will, he was an expert on multiple subjects and generally a brainiac. It wasn’t his job to know which routes through Night City were likely to get you carjacked or worse; it was Will’s.
The trip through Japantown was mostly pleasant. Max was tense and nervous, but his driving was tight and controlled. Once they hit Ring Road East, his shoulders dropped a little, and he started breathing normally. “How much did Regina tell you?” he asked, settling into the groove. Regina had told him a lot more about Max Jones than she’d said about the actual gig. It had felt more like a venting session from his fixer than a mission briefing. Will decided not to divulge the full contents of the conversation just yet. He’d keep it cool and relevant.
“She said you needed an escort into the Southern Badlands and told me where to meet you.”
“Typical. She’s always had a complex relationship with the truth.”
Will kept his mouth shut. He wasn’t getting paid enough to get in the middle of a squabble between his fixer and the client. Max continued, perhaps not noticing the subtle ‘I don’t want to have this conversation’ vibe Will was desperately trying to emit from every pore in his body. “She saved my life, you know. It doesn’t change the fact that she sold out.”
There were several mirrors and camera feeds that Will could check to look like he was actively engaged in looking for threats. He made a great show of checking each as Max hurtled forth, boldly ignoring the signs. “The world is heading into the next phase of a 5th Corpo War, and Night City is at risk of being swallowed up. That’s why we’re out here. Neither WNS nor N54 wants you to know that we’ve been the hosts of a deadly shadow war since before the Metal Wars began.”
This was neutral territory, and Will could talk about this and steer the conversation away from any badmouthing of his employer. “I don’t really pay attention to the news. It’s kind of like all the advertising around Night City. After so much of it, you just kind of stop noticing, you know?” Max didn’t respond right away, so Will continued. “That being said, I thought Arasaka was on their way out? Isn’t that what Militech wants? Why escalate?”
“You not watching the news doesn’t matter. The lies that are propagated enter the public consciousness. Everything you hear is shaped by that. Arasaka isn’t ‘on the way out’, they’re experiencing an internal civil war.”
Will remembered hearing something about the Arasaka Board of Directors being killed in a terrorist bombing. “So, they’re not crumbling, it’s just an internal power struggle? The media is lying again?”
“Whether or not they’re crumbling isn’t the point. The point is, people are saying that it is. Truth and lies are both effective means of manipulating the population into producing a desired response. I used to think facts mattered, that if I just found out the truth and put it out there, people would respond accordingly. I was wrong.”
“Okay, but if it’s true that Arasaka is crumbling, how is there going to be a 5th Corpo War?”
“Arasaka isn’t the only player on the board. The fourth corpo war wasn’t even started by Militech or Arasaka. Two Aquatech companies you may have heard of, OTEC and CINO, started things off and brought them in. When they finally negotiated their truce through Eurobank, it was already too late to stop the war.”
The Archer was fast approaching the exit off of Ring Road. Will still wasn't sure what any of this had to do with the job. “Okay, so what are we really doing here?”
“I hid an info shard out near the southern solar farm. Incriminating evidence on a Militech black op paid for by the NUSA and directly approved by the late President Rosalind Myers. They were going to assassinate Colonel Kurt Hansen and use the ensuing chaos to justify Militech's encroachment into Night City.”
Will let out a long sigh. He hadn't signed up for this. “Regina know this?”
“Of course not, she thinks I'm picking up an old Arasaka weapon prototype I found during an exposé on the Wraiths. I told her it was worth a small fortune.”
“So instead, we are going after a top secret shard implicating the NUSA and Militech and you…are driving an Archer with a part-time merc you hired under pretenses.”
“What do you mean ‘part-time’?”
“I mean, I’m not some elite killer with state-of-the-art chrome, and we’re not equipped to deal with the team of Militech commandos that could be waiting for us down the road.”
Max Jones snorted. “You don’t think I know that? I asked Regina for someone quiet, someone who wasn’t going to go cyberpsycho on me. The plan is not to get caught. This Archer is customized for stealth. IR deflecting paint, an ECM suite, even chaff and flares in case we get targeted with a heat-seeking missile. I’ve thought of everything.”
Whenever anyone said that they’d thought of everything, alarm bells went off in Will’s head. “Okay, so you’ve thought of everything. Who else knows what you have stashed out here?”
“No one. I memorized the coordinates and didn’t put them onto that intel shard until five minutes before I handed it to you. Will, I may not be a merc or a fixer, but I know how to keep a secret.”
“Yeah, I have no doubt about that. What I’m worried about is the source for all of this. Militech doesn’t forget about stolen data. If they even suspect that someone collected something that goes all the way up to the head of the NUSA, they’ve got somebody out there looking for it.”
“That’s why I hired you.”
That was the problem with getting a rep. Sometimes it worked in your favor, and you could bluff your way out of a confrontation. The other side of it was getting pulled into situations where you were in way over your head. Will reconsidered his options. The client had, after all, lied to Regina about the level of danger involved. That alone was reason enough to call it off and have Delamain drive him back to the Kabuki market. Unfortunately, for Will, Max had been honest with him. He could easily have led him into the situation blind, but he, for whatever reason, chose to tell him the truth. Will had made his decision.
“I guess we’re doing this, then. Risky business for sure.”
“Important though. There’s been a delicate balance in Night City since the war was put on pause. Anything I can do to tarnish the reputation of Militech and the NUSA might help prevent a new war.”
Will wasn’t so sure about that part, but he was pretty stubborn once he decided to do a thing. They pulled off the New Pacific Highway 101 and onto the desert terrain. The Archer held up surprisingly well. It was another ten minutes or so before they would arrive at the location. Will kept himself busy checking air traffic and looking for tails. It was 8:45 AM by the time the Archer rolled beneath the shadow of the massive satellite dish(?) just a few miles from the main solar array. Will wasn't exactly sure what it was for. It looked like a massive heatsink and was connected to what looked like a power station.
“What is this thing?”
“It's called a Microwave Transceiver Antenna Dish, and that's the extent of my knowledge. I hid the shard in a small cryo container in the center of the base.”
Max reached into the center console and pulled out a bulky electronic, a Microtech Mk-5 Signal Detector (according to the product label). Max turned it on, and the screen loaded with 7 different bar graphs. One was at maximum while the rest were at zero. Max grinned triumphantly as he turned to Will.
“Nobody is looking. The cryo container is buried beneath a large stone placed in the exact center. Maybe 3 inches from the surface.”
Will donned his Gibson helmet and connected it with the personal link just behind his right ear. A light green HUD appeared as the helmet's infrared scanners activated. The device reacted with a loud beep.
“The only infrared scan it's detecting is yours. I should be able to detect multiple scanners at once. I think.”
Will knew that it could still be a trap, but for some reason, he felt calm and relaxed. Will removed his armored jacket, then his street clothes, until all he was wearing was the Gibson Battle Phantom suit. He gave Max a quick nod before the door to the Archer opened with a hiss. Will was out of the car a second later at full sprint. He was up over the fence and beneath the giant MTAD in under five seconds. Will hopped over the railing and dropped down to the center. The large stone Max had mentioned wasn't there. That wasn't terribly surprising. Extreme weather events were common. He started digging with his gloved hands and felt it almost immediately. It was a rectangular outline, a small container. He dug it the rest of the way out and pulled the small cryo case up from the dirt. He scanned it for hidden trackers or hidden explosives with his helmet. Nothing detected.
He wasted no additional time before leaping over the rails and sprinting back to the Archer, alert for threats. He slid inside, and the door quietly slid shut. The undertaking took less than two minutes. Max reached out and accepted the container from Will. The look on his face was a mix of excitement and glee. He looked like he was on top of the world. And then he opened the case.
“It's…gone.”