I drove us far out from the city on a rented Yaiba, upon Lucy’s request. She hugged tightly around my waist, even though the speed we were going at wasn’t nearly enough to warrant all that caution.

  All the while, I tried not to think. About the QianT deal tomorrow, the Tsviets on the prowl, ready to slaughter the fixers and everyone that came in their way, and my schemes with Rogue that made me feel like what I was fighting for couldn’t be worth it if it required this.

  There had to be a better way.

  There just had to.

  “Right here’s fine,” Lucy shouted over the wind.

  We were in the middle of the badlands, next to a derelict road. Not a soul in sight. Miles away to the west was Night City.

  And above our heads, a night sky twinkling with stars. It was like staring at city lights, except the city existed above our heads. It was as disorienting as it was beautiful.

  Lucy stalked up an outcropping of rock and I followed her.

  Then, she faced the city and watched it. She liked to do that.

  No, there was nothing about the activity that was likeable to her. I knew that well by now. It was a compulsion. Like having eyes on a mortal threat, one that you couldn’t look away from, even for a second. She needed to see because she needed to know when it would strike.

  Was it Arasaka Tower that had her feeling this way? The windows had a display screen built inside, we could just edit it to erase that building. No big deal. I stopped myself before I could share with her my half-baked theories on what had upset her, afraid that it would only upset her more deeply, my pretending to know.

  Because… the truth was, I didn’t know. She wouldn’t tell me.

  So as I sat besides her, I looked up at the night sky, and smiled. “Didn’t know we could even see this many stars without a telescope or something.” Come to think of it, the stars tended to show themselves every time I left the city.

  Lucy scoffed in amusement. “They don’t teach you what ‘light pollution’ is in Arasaka Academy?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “No, not really. Why, what does it have to do with—“

  She laughed. “You go to the best school in the city, and they won’t even reveal that the reason we can’t see the stars is because of all the lights from the city.”

  “Huh,” I said. “Yeah, that tracks. And no, they didn’t exactly fit that in anywhere on our syllabus.”

  “Well, that’s the reason.”

  “Is that why we’re here? To escape light pollution?”

  “No,” she said softly.

  “And… what was the thing about the runner suits and the chairs? You said you didn’t do neither. What was that about?”

  “David. Do you love me?”

  I blinked. “I mean… despite all logic, yes.”

  She frowned at me. “That’s not funny.”

  I leaned closer to her, and widened my eyes as I spoke. “I love you.”

  “And would you love me if—“

  I snorted. “You’re gonna have to try hard if you wanna play that game.”

  “If I was the most broken person you ever had the bad luck of coming across?”

  “Yeah.”

  She was quiet for a moment.

  “Would you try to fix me?” she asked.

  I took her hand. “I’d try to make you happy. And I’d make you feel loved. Always.”

  “You’re so fucking frustrating,” she mumbled.

  So the fuck are you. “I know.”

  “Well,” she shrugged, taking her hand off mine and wrapping them around her knees as she pulled them closer to her chin. She kept looking at the city. “As you may have guessed by now, I’ve had a pretty fucking terrible childhood.”

  My eyes widened and I clamped my mouth shut as I waited for her to go on.

  “Wasn’t all bad,” she said airily. “My old man was a veteran of the fourth corpo war, and an Arasaka operator. That meant that we lived in really nice digs. Things were happy at the start. My mom, who used to be in a hacking gang before I was born, had settled down to live the easy life. And I thought they were both the best people on planet Earth. Then I found out about my old man’s… adventures in the war. The shit he pulled.” She scrunched up her expression in disgust. “Lost all faith in him, just like that. I was seven. In a lot of ways, it feels like that’s where it all started. Where I first came to be. When I figured out the truth. So I retreated into the Net. Tried to run away from home a couple of times, too. Finally, my father figured that I should probably work off all that stress by doing something productive. Like working for Arasaka.”

  She paused for a moment, shutting her eyes. Her breathing picked up slightly, as did her heartrate. A moment later, she swallowed and continued talking. “I took a skill test, and they gauged my affinity with programming and Netrunning. Then, they took me, and twelve other children, to a facility where we received world-class training. They crammed our tiny brains with every goddamn thing they could think of, and the prize they dangled in front of us was the dubious honor of getting to serve ‘the world’s most powerful megacorp’. They said it so many times that I started believing it. Started forgetting all about my dad, and what he did. Maybe I wanted to overwrite his wrongs with my own rights? I don’t know. But… at a certain point, it was all I ever wanted to live for: someone else’s dream.”

  That was why…

  “Eventually, once we were ready, they locked us underground, strapped us to running chairs, and forced us to do deep dives into the Old Net to recover whatever data cache we could find that hadn’t been corrupted by the DataKrash.”

  The Old Net?!

  “That means—“

  “The rogue AIs picked us off one after the other,” Lucy said. “But they kept us working because we were producing just enough value to offset the cost of each loss. The writing on the wall was clear: we were all going to die if we continued. The dream we were chasing was going to kill us. So… we tried to wake up. From the dream. It started small. We talked a little amongst one another. ‘Dying sounds awful’, ‘maybe there’s something else we could do than this’, little stuff like that. Nothing overtly insubordinate. I still remember how… uncomfortable it felt waking up. But we didn’t stop talking. We didn’t stop bitching. Not until we came to the slow and agonizing realization that we really, really didn’t want to die,” she said with a shudder. “And all at once, we realized: we had to get out. We had to escape, or we would die. And so we did. Against the skills they had outfitted us with, the facility personnel didn’t stand a chance. We ran roughshod through their network, and ran, ran, ran, never looking back. Or at least I didn’t. Everything’s hazy after escaping. I woke up in a junkyard. And I realized that while I was free, I had to keep moving. I couldn’t go home anymore. Even if my father acted like a father and tried to protect me, he couldn’t stop them. He wouldn’t even think to. He was still asleep, after all. Stuck inside that damn dream that wasn’t his. I knew if I went back, I’d die, or worse. I couldn’t trust home anymore.”

  Shit. I could almost see where this was going.

  “My mom rejoined her gang, apparently. Kept trying to track me down. Kept trying to find me. But I couldn’t trust her, either. Even though I wanted to. Even though I know that on some level, they actually care. But it doesn’t matter, because they don’t care enough to go against the world for me. So I ran away as far as I could, across Europe, to America. Then I landed here, in Night City, where it’s damn-near impossible to be found if you want to disappear. Even if you have the whole damn city searching for you. And my plan was to go to the moon afterwards, where you truly could ghost. A final disappearing act.”

  “Do you still… want to disappear?”

  She closed her eyes. “I want to be safe,” she said. “And… that won’t happen until Arasaka burns to the fucking ground, or until my parents forget me. Whichever comes first. But I can’t stand the thought of hurting them. I just want them… gone. But not gone gone. So yeah, this is my own selfish reason why I’m on your side. It’s got nothing to do with doing the people some good.”

  “You are people,” I interrupted. “And your good matters the most to me.”

  “I expected you’d lose respect for me.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m a coward.”

  “The fuck you are,” I growled. “Don’t say that about yourself.”

  She chuckled. “It doesn’t erase the truth.”

  “If cowardice is keeping yourself safe, then only the dumb are brave,” I said.

  “You’re dumb.”

  I chuckled. My good mood broke an instant later, and I looked ahead at the city. “Maybe I should be dumber.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve had a day,” I said to her.

  I told her everything.

  And then, “I’m a fucking monster.”

  “No,” she said. “You’d be a monster if you thought nothing of this. You’d be a monster if it was easy. Is it easy?”

  I closed my eyes. “It should be harder.”

  I felt this persistent lump in my throat, and kept hearing this voice in my head telling me that I was worse than the people I was trying to fight.

  If I had options—

  Excuses.

  “This wasn’t your call,” she said. “You’re not the ones ordering these kills. That’s Arasaka—they’re the ones to blame. And you’ll fuck their shit up when the time comes. As recompense for this decision they’re making you come to.”

  I snorted. “I said the exact same shit to V today.”

  “And V can go jump on a dick and spin. He works for Arasaka. You’re the good guy. You have to believe that you’re the good guy, or what the hell would it all be for?”

  She was right. I knew she was right.

  “I can’t just blindly believe that,” I muttered.

  “Don’t. Just… try your hardest. And never stop trying. But don’t lose sight on what matters to you: this city.”

  Reversing everything that made my life in this place a living fucking hell.

  The mission.

  The thing that mattered to me.

  I’ll save you…

  …Night City.

  000

  Breakfast with Fei-Fei, at a famous restaurant called Pepper and Spice, was a sober affair. I tried to be as present as possible, but she had picked up on my low energy within the first two sentences we exchanged, after which I told her that the Task Force stuff was weighing on me. She thankfully didn’t ask for any specifics, not that I would give her any.

  But I was grateful for her giving me a bit of mental space to gather myself.

  We both headed the same way afterwards, to the City Center, to a building that leased to QianT’s corporate operations.

  My lawyer, Benjamin Cohen, was already up there along with Qiang’s lawyers, and Qiang himself. I wasn’t late, but I had cut it a little close. Fei ended up not joining us in the boardroom, instead waiting in the building cafeteria to grab a sugarized coffee drink of some sort.

  As I walked into the room and caught sight of the portly lawyer, we met in the middle and shook hands. “Good morning, Mr. Martinez.”

  “Morning, Mr. Cohen,” I said.

  Seven days. It had been seven days since I last saw this guy, but it felt like months ago.

  “I’ve had some time to read through the contract,” he said before giving me a call.

  Cohen: I’m not exaggerating when I say that you are getting some really good terms here. No loyalty clause, nothing beyond the barest of NDAs preventing you from the most blatant degrees of corporate espionage. There’s already so much wiggle room there that you could get away with a substantial amount of double-dipping if you so desired. Add to that, the shares you will be allowed to purchase, for the sum of one-hundred million Eurodollars, are Class-A executive shares, the kind that normally never leave the hands of board members or founders. Voting rights, dividend priority, and early-access to restricted financial instruments.

  David: Huh. What does this mean in terms of my position with relation to the board?

  Cohen: You have voting power, same as any other Class A shareholder. Not much of it though.

  David: How much, precisely?

  Cohen: Two and a half percent. You’d need five more points of Class A shares to get an actual board seat.

  QianT had lost over ninety percent of its stock price over the last year. And even then, 100 million eddies was only enough to get two and a half percent of the Class A shares. I could only shake my head at those figures. What the fuck. The megacorps really did operate in a whole different world.

  David: You’re saying there’s a chance.

  Cohen: Yes. Your contract actually makes this possible, because it conditionally mandates that you be vested several tranches of options on the Class A stock: if the stock price goes up enough that all the tranches vest, you’re going to have 7.5 points total. That’ll get you a voting seat on the board. But only if your logistics software pans out and the company meets certain financial benchmarks as a consequence. Otherwise, no options at all. Now. Having said all that, I would be remiss in my duties if I did not give you the catch.

  David: Talk.

  Cohen: This corp is a sinking ship.

  Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  David: I know. I’m well aware.

  He looked at me wide-eyed and blinked.

  Cohen: You’re aware of the risks?

  David: Yes.

  Cohen: Would you mind terribly if we could go over them one last time before the signing?

  I snorted. “Sure.”

  Qiang clapped his hands, gaining the attention of the long table. “Martinez?”

  “Five minutes,” I said.

  I sat down next to Cohen, and mollified the old man, while also getting a better understanding of what I stood to inherit in buying these shares.

  The answer was trouble. Financially, at least.

  QianT had assets across the world, it turned out, mostly in Southeast Asia. A few offworld interests as well, unsurprisingly, and I’d have to quietly take a closer look at those when I could without raising suspicion. Some of the core assets, such as the real estate and megafactory interests in Taiwan, were considered particularly attractive on the company’s ‘asset’ side of the balance sheet, but were nowhere near valuable enough to cover the liabilities owed to the creditors, and couldn’t be sold in any case without ruining the company’s baseline ability to function. Much of QianT’s recent growth had been financed on leverage, which had financed the company’s expansion into North America, but now that the stock had fallen so hard those liabilities were biting them in the ass.

  But too much of that information was irrelevant for my purposes. Cohen could barely believe his ears when I asked him to skip over the broad-level numbers and other miscellanea to instead just give me the status of the workforce.

  And it turned out that loyalty contracts were good for something: even with your corp staring down the barrel of insolvency, at least you could rest assured that the employees would remain on-board until the company’s dying breath.

  We had the manpower. Our equipment, land, interests in other companies, everything but the means of production were being auctioned away one after the other to keep the vultures away. But that was fine. As long as the company’s patents, workforce and production lines were intact, that was all I needed.

  I took the pen, an old fountain pen made with a wooden handle, and dangled it over the dotted line.

  The vast majority of my cash, excluding what I’d taken from Tijuana, would go to this gamble.

  I’d already gambled a lot on the race, and it almost hadn’t paid off.

  But I did it because I was confident in my skill.

  Was I still confident?

  I chuckled. “Fuck it,” I said out loud, and signed my name.

  “Welcome to hell,” Qiang said matter-of-factly, reaching his hand over the table. I shook it.

  000

  That was, by far, the least intense of the meetings that I would have today.

  Rogue had made her preparations, keeping it cool. All the while, I received steady information from Raduga regarding the operation. They were still setting up, but things seemed like they might end up progressing sooner rather than later, on account of some pressures from on high.

  Through me, and likely from Jenkins, I had reported to Raduga that it didn’t matter if they couldn’t find Regina Jones, who absolutely refused to be found, or Hands. If they had a bead on everyone else, then it was time they get started.

  In my apartment, hooked up to a runner chair, and wearing my brand new runner suit that kept me cooler than an ice-cube, Lucy was busy typing away on a nearby terminal, keeping overwatch while I went in.

  I’d be forced to simultaneously maintain contact with Raduga while I was in. And if I got cut off for any reason, Lucy was meant to pick up the slack, spoofing my signal and continuing the conversation. She’d be digitally mimicking my voice and address. Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that, but we were already prepared.

  I received a message from Rogue.

  ‘She’s ready. Go on in.’

  “Ready,” I said to Lucy.

  “Be careful.”

  “Always am.”

  I closed my eyes, and an instant later, my mind became encompassed with an ocean of disparate colors that all resolved into vague shapes. Cubes, blocks.

  Then buildings.

  Jig Jig Street’s Net. And before me was what was usually a pachinko parlor. One that belonged to a certain ‘Lady of Westbrook Estate’.

  Mr. Hands had gotten his tip. He would go to ground. Or even further underground as it were. They wouldn’t find him.

  Regina Jones was in the wind, just the way she preferred it.

  Dino Dinovic had hidden himself inside a veritable fortress, bunking underneath Totentanz itself; the headquarters of the Maelstrom.

  Rogue was ready to receive her guests.

  Reyes…

  And Wakako… well, she was mine to protect.

  The pachinko parlor, in the net, looked like an amusement park designed by someone on a psychedelic trip. It was, strictly speaking, a singular building.

  But it was a building so chock-filled with visual detail that it became difficult just to look away from it. A bunch of random ‘kawaii’ details, like cartoon animals and cartoon foods melted together into this massive mound of neon and glitter. Shooting stars, hearts, kittens, puppies, snacks, sushi, schoolgirls, waves crashing onto a beach, all holding up a cartoon cat with a wavy arm that acted as a slot machine lever for the display of three rolling wheels in the middle of its stomach spelling out the number seven three times.

  The Net, as always, tended to act as an exaggerated psychological mirror of its real-world counterparts. When you were a gambling addict with such a fascination with the game of pachinko, I supposed that this was how your internal world would look like: A mess of distracting colors and shapes with no substance whatsoever.

  I walked up to the building and phased into the wall, activating one of Lucy’s infiltration programs. It was hers in concept, but I had made my own special improvements to it that allowed me to seamlessly blend into the make-up of the data fortress, slowly easing my way into a backdoor rather than breaching by brute force.

  I was still breaching. It just barely held the same connotation in terms of the real world. What I was doing was closer to magic to the untrained eye.

  I flowed through the data streams, stretching my digital body into dozens of different tendrils of perception, my mind easily keeping up with the mental demand. I looked through thirty surveillance cameras at the same time, and saw that Wakako had filled her stronghold up with Tyger Claws and assorted mercenaries in preparation for this meeting that Rogue had set up between the two of us.

  Only thing was, Wakako had assumed that this meeting would be happening in the real, hence the guards. That was good for me, either way. Would mean that there would be more meat in the way to stop the Tsviets from assassinating her while I kept her safe from the onslaught.

  Provided they didn’t just snipe her from a kilometer away.

  ‘Still missing Regina Jones and Mr. Hands.’ According to him, they had managed to catch one of the latter’s human dolls, but the Pacifica fixer easily managed to avoid being burned that way by ensuring that said dolls never had any direct contact with him. Proxies on top of proxies on top of dead drops and every other thing. The man was a master of spycraft, I’d give him that much.

  As for Regina Jones, she had simply disappeared without leaving any traces. The ‘how’ of it was murky, even to Rogue and I. Exactly how she preferred it, I guessed. ‘Wakako Okada and Dino Dinovic are both heavily militarized at the moment’ came Raduga’s report.

  I shunted his words back to V, for him to shunt to whoever else.

  Raduga’s report continued.

  ‘Tygers will attack Dino Dinovic and the Maelstrom. Maelstrom will attack Wakako Okada and the Tygers.’ Raduga continued, describing the frame-job that he had planned. Or was it called a false flag operation? ‘Sixth Street attacks Ibarra in Valentino territory. Animals attack Reyes and DeShawn. Raffen Shiv attack Smith. And I kill Rogue. Easy.’

  And what a fine mess that would make. Gangs attacking each other, with the mercs getting into the mix, creating absolute havoc.

  But only for a short time. I’d make sure of that.

  I relayed the messages and found Wakako, sitting inside her office, with a couple of armed guards seated on chairs while she was busy poring over a tablet.

  There was an old-school television in her office.

  I turned it on and appeared inside of it. My ICON, at least.

  Wakako looked up at the TV in shock, and the others inside the room immediately got up and aimed their gun at the TV.

  I chuckled. “That’s really funny.”

  “Lower your guns,” Wakako glared at her idiot huscle. “He’s already inside the system. Shooting my television will not do anything.”

  “Greetings, Wakako,” I said. Since the TV had a holo-feature, I decided to beam myself into the room. Myself and a chair, which I then sat on. “Apologies for the surprise appearance,” I looked around at the room using the cameras. No windows facing the outside proper. Good. “But I hope you’re aware that if I meant you any harm, you would very much have been harmed by now.”

  The old lady scoffed. She was sixty-five years old, fifteen years younger than Rogue, but she obviously cared very little for reversing her outward signs of aging. It had obviously served her well, given her relatively high position within the hierarchy of the Tygers and its affiliates. Japanese culture put a lot of stock in seniority. And she looked as senior as they came.

  “Fond of demonstrations of force, as always,” Wakako said dryly. “One of these days, you might bite off more than you can chew.” I could easily sense as she sent a message through the Net, mobilizing her Netrunner into logging in and checking me.

  Bugbear, again.

  I reached through their connection all the way to her apartment and fried her chair with a chuckle. Then I locked the Net down tightly with a wall of ICE. Wakako could unplug the net and shunt me back into my body if she wanted, but until she did that, I would have all the control in the world of her Localnet.

  Including the weapons inside her ceiling.

  “Perhaps,” I said. “But for now, I am content with what I have achieved thus far by being forceful when I need to be heard. Force is the language of Night City.”

  “True,” she said as she received an update from Bugbear about her chair being fucked.

  “I’d suggest that you don’t send her in after me,” I said. “I do not care that she has admin privileges. I am very much capable of ending her. Just ask T3nsh1.”

  Wakako’s eyes widened. “You were behind that.”

  “I was,” I admitted. “Of course, I am willing to give you a demonstration of my prowess, if you’re willing to sacrifice a Netrunner to glimpse at it. As you said, I am very much fond of demonstrations.”

  “Is this how you come to make amends?” Wakako asked. “By threatening my people? After threatening my family?”

  “When I said that I didn’t care if any of the Tygers I will kill end up being your relatives?” I asked. “That wasn’t a threat. I was merely erecting some boundaries, giving you fair warning. It was fair play, Wakako. And I consider myself a fair person.”

  Wakako sent a message to Bugbear to stand by instead of trying to jack in some other way.

  “Enlighten me on your fairness, then,” Wakako said. “What are you willing to give for my cooperation?”

  “Protection,” I said. “Subsidized labor. And a seat at the table.”

  “Not good enough,” she said.

  I sighed. “We both know that I did you a favor with Shobo,” I said. Rogue had filled me in on all that already, while the rest I had gleaned from the access I had with CoIntel. “The Inu chapter of the Tyger Claws, who were privately cat’s paws for Arasaka’s counterintelligence, and more publicly the Tyger’s sex trafficking arm, were the ones propping up Shobo. The eighty or so gangsters that answered the call to protect Shobo, including the one Kamikaze by the name of Tetsubo—who I only crippled, rather than killed—were all a part of this chapter, now weaker than ever. And your business dealings and connections are with the Neko chapter, in charge of the gambling rings. Am I wrong?”

  Wakako snorted. “Rogue is certainly fond of you, to provide you with this information. I can see why.”

  “On paper, you’re meant to oppose me,” I said to her. “At least, as far as the other chapters of the Tyger Claws think. But in reality, my demonstrations put you well ahead of the gangoon rat race, didn’t it?”

  “My sons, at least,” Wakako said.

  “There we go. Honesty,” I said.

  “What else do you know about my matters?” Wakako asked. “What else are you holding back?”

  “I know that Arasaka killed your grandson.”

  “Careful, boy.” Her eyes widened into a baleful glare. “I’m not one of your gutter dwellers that you can rile up into a frenzy with mere words.”

  “I just did,” I said, tilting my head backwards and looking utterly relaxed. “You asked for honesty. I gave it to you. And my pitch remains consistent. Down with the corps. This isn’t a favor I’m doing to you, specifically. This is something you can do for yourself, by supporting me. What will it cost?”

  Wakako looked almost ready to pull the plug on me. I felt, for a moment, that I may have fucked up fiercely.

  More Raduga reports came in. The costume party was about to begin. I reported to V. V reported to me in a near-instant.

  “Help me clean house.”

  ‘Proceed at your own discretion’ V said.

  I gave the message to Raduga.

  “Clean house,” I said. “You mean the Tygers.”

  “For too long, they have allowed themselves to grow fat while suckling on Arasaka’s teat, like dim children,” she said. “Only the few can see where this will take them. Arasaka will destroy them one day if they deem it profitable enough. But it does not matter to the ones who control things, for they will have their own means of escape. And despite my own influence, I am not among the one percent of Tygers and those affiliated that will survive this annihilation. And neither are my sons. You ask me for what it will cost to have us working together. It is this. And this is my cost, not my price. My price is far greedier.”

  “Helping you take over the Tygers,” I suggested. “You’re right. That is greedy. But… it’s far from impossible.”

  It was really fucking greedy, and it was by far the least of my priorities, but I doubted she’d hate the sound of it.

  Someone else’s dream distracting me from my true purpose, yet again.

  But that was the game when you were trying to inspire people into your cause. You had to fit their desires into yours.

  “As long as you follow my rules, of course,” I continued. “You know them already, but I will reiterate—“

  “Don’t kill or maim or harm any civilians,” Wakako said with a roll of her eyes.

  “Drugs are okay, as long as they are clean. Vice is fine, as long as everyone involved are treated with dignity. That includes joytoys.”

  “And here I thought you wanted to turn our outfit into a humanitarian group.”

  “I don’t think my expectations are particularly opaque,” I said. “I really am doing this for the good of Night City’s people. The people that don’t make their wealth off the backs of others, that is.”

  Wakako hummed. “For now, let us talk about more actionable matters, in the short term.”

  “Yes. And then—”

  ‘The attack is a go.’

  I sent the same message over to V, and then to Rogue, and one other person.

  I could immediately hear gunshots from the assorted microphone bugs all over the parlor. It was showtime.

  “We’re under attack!” Wakako stood up, pulled a drawer on her desk, and retrieved an Omaha tech pistol.

  “I’ll do what I can to protect you, even from here,” I said with a growl.

  I looked through the cameras, took a deep breath, filling my digital lungs with digital air, and exhaled slowly.

  Go time.

  000

  The memories of what happened at Moto Cielo rarely left Sebastian Ibarra’s mind. It was, after all, the day that he knew, in his bones, that no matter how hard he tried, his likelihood of seeing the pearly gates was almost zero.

  The drive-by shooting that he had been party to, while still a part of the Valentinos, had ended up taking out a few Maelstrom caught too far away from home, as well as a family of nine sitting behind them inside a restaurant, celebrating a birthday party.

  The retaliatory fire had killed everyone in his group, and when all hope had seemed lost, his gang had come to reinforce him, taking out the last of the Maelstrom, but not before they in turn were taken out by the borged out cyberpsychos in the process.

  No one had won that day. And if Sebastian had lost his life back then, he would have been burning in the fires of hell for all eternity without a doubt.

  It wasn’t guilt that had caused Sebastian to turn his life around. And that, too, was an indication of his inner rot. It was pragmatism. He pragmatically knew that to enter heaven, he would need to make changes to his own life. He pragmatically knew that as long as he kept staying alive for as long as possible, doing good works (and repenting when life forced him to do evil deeds), his chances would improve.

  As he delivered a litany in Latin to the few people in the pews of his church, he hoped desperately that he was improving their chances as well. That their consciences accused them where his own simply refused to.

  On the front of the pews sat Gustavo Orta, a well-dressed man with a hard face, borne from years making hard decisions in his cousin Campo’s absence. Those decisions had cleaned up Heywood of rival gangs, and had in turn made the people safer, but they had weighed on him. He would come to mass once a month and say a confession, and the confession would not relieve him.

  That was good. That pain and shame was the true mark of repentance. He had a better chance of ascending than Sebastian, for certain.

  At times, it felt like everyone did.

  “Amen,” Sebastian announced.

  His flock echoed.

  Gustavo stood up from the bench and approached him. Sebastian tilted his head towards the confessional booth. Wordlessly, they both walked into it.

  “I’ve had cause to conduct business too often within this place,” Sebastian began.

  “I’m sorry, Padre,” said Gustavo. “But I’m a busy man. At least this way, we can tackle spiritual matters as well as business matters at the same time. You had information for me.”

  Sebastian slid a shard underneath a gap in the black mesh. He received a payment request in response, and accepted the money. He vowed to forward it all to the collection box as penance for doing dirty work in God’s house.

  As the young leader read through the contents of the shard, Sebastian spoke. “D is organizing an anti-corporation movement, and is seeking out fixers for influence.”

  Gustavo snorted. “That almost sounds too good to be true. Funny, too. Guess he’s an old-school freedom fighter after all, and not a power-hungry gangster. Like the rest of us.”

  “He can be both.”

  “Is he both?” Gustavo asked.

  The boy that had given him his confession those months ago, and the man that Sebastian had seen the day before… they were different people. Different, but the same.

  And Sebastian couldn’t help but believe that he was telling the truth, that what he wanted truly was the downfall of the established powers.

  “He has standards,” Sebastian settled on that. “And rules.”

  “Right. Thou shalt not kill, it seems. That, and making eddies at the expense of the helpless. Makes sense. He does have a passionate hatred for scavs, or else why would he do all those things to them?”

  It was unlikely that D was lying about his convictions. That made him attractive to many.

  “I don’t think it would hurt to get on top of this,” Gustavo said. “The people are already dressing up like him. Have you seen the barrios, lately? The guy is a sensation. Why make the people choose between him and us, anyway?”

  So that was his intention, then: to pay lip-service to D’s mission, publicly backing him with words. As for more substantial modes of support…

  “Will you fight by his side?”

  Gustavo snorted. “Funny. But no. Not while there’s so little to gain. I’ve held our borders firm for months now, but even a single slip-up could have all my hard work collapsing. 6th Street are our enemies. The corps will be the corps, and the same goes for the rest of the gangs, but—“

  A gunshot sounded from outside.

  Then the rapid-fire rumbling of automatic rifles.

  Then came the screams.

  Sebastian grabbed a pistol from inside the confessional booth and exited it, alongside Gustavo Orta, who held his own gun, a pricy modified Malorian Overture.

  The doors to the front entrance of the church kicked in. Sebastian tried to reach through his network to release the machine gun turrets from the ceiling, but something was blocking him.

  The last thing he saw before he felt his body get peppered with dots of pure hellfire were men with blue and black tactical suits, wearing NUS-flag bandanas over their faces.