“Ms. Jones. What a pleasant surprise.”

“As much of a surprise as getting an anonymous message sent to my secure drop box despite knowing that I never gave you the address. I’ve got to say, it took me a bit to figure out how you did that. But I know how to gather my information and I just wanted to say that I might have some work for a young merc that shows that kind of talent.”

I didn’t trust myself to say anything. After all the steps I had taken to try and stay anonymous after the RCS heist, it had only taken Watson’s resident fixer less than 24 hours to find me. And if Regina Jones could figure out who robbed the RCS warehouse and the Tyger Claws, it was an almost certainty that Wakako could uncover it as well. How much would the Lady of Westbrook Estates be able to sell my information for?

“Oh, it wasn’t all that big a deal. I’m sure you’ve got tons of mercs on your payroll who could have done a better job.”

How did she figure out I had pulled off the heist? For that matter, how did she get my number? Nobody other than Fred, Mor, and Deng had my number. I glanced over at Fred and Mor and my heart sank. I had roped them into this. What if the Tyger Claws targeted them? What if they attacked the alcove to get at me?

“I think you’re underselling yourself. But that’s neither here nor there. I just wanted to call and say that you did good work, although I’d prefer more of a heads up the next time you need to fence such a large amount of goods.”

“Well, you know how it is. You’re walking down the street and find a couple vans that people carelessly left idling, the keys still in the ignition. It was a spur of the moment decision and it’s doubtful I’ll be able to – “

I was brought up short as a bank transfer flashed in the corner of my vision. 7,000 eddies. Wait…what?

“What’s that for?” I asked.

“It’s your take from the two vans I fenced for your friends,” said Regina. “I got around 35,000 eddies for each truck. Minus my standard 30% fee. I sent the rest to your friends.”

The 7,000 eddies that Regina gave me, plus the money from Marcus, totaled almost 30,000 eddies. Not bad for a single job. But was it worth having a fixer know my name now?

“Anyway,” said Regina, interrupting my train of thoughts. “If you ever come across any more vans idling by the side of the road, you’ve got my number. And when you’re ready to step up and put in some work, I’ll be waiting.”

She hung up, leaving me stranded there thinking over the ramifications of that phone call. Fred and Mor had been watching me the whole time, making note of my rigid stance and stunned face, and shot me questioning looks.

“That was Regina. The fixer who fenced the vans.” They nodded along as if to tell me to ‘get on with it.’ “She knows who I am.”

“Of course she would,” Fred laughed. “She’s your fixer, isn’t she?”

“No,” I shook my head. “She’s a fixer. I sent a message to her because I didn’t want all the stuff I stole to be fenced in Watson. It would have been too easy to track me down if everyone in the Roundabout was suddenly selling goods taken from an RCS warehouse. And if someone tracks me down, chances are good that they’d find you guys too. So, I reached out to her to help fence the goods.”

“I don’t really see the problem,” shrugged Fred. “You pulled off an amazing gig. All by yourself. That’s not something a newbie merc can normally brag about. You’re going to try and get some gigs from her right?”

Mor jumped in. “Obviously we’d prefer it if you didn’t make the stupid decision to be an edgerunner.”

“What would you have me do?” I asked, stunned at Mor’s statement. I thought everyone wanted to be an edgerunner. I mean, I didn’t really. I liked the money and everything, but the whole idea of going out in a blaze of glory didn’t really sit well with me.

“Work for a corporation. Sure, they’re bastards. But so is everyone else,” said Mor matter-of-factly. “Plus, if you work for a corp you’ll have a bunch of those bastards backing you up.”

Fred just nodded along at the “wisdom” in Mor’s statement. “Edgerunners burn bright. But they burn out too.”

I sighed. This wasn’t the conversation I wanted to be having.

“If Regina knows who I am, it’s only a matter of time before other fixers know too. Wakako is out in Westbrook and she has a bunch of ties to the Tyger Claws. I…I don’t really know what her whole story is. I don’t think she’s completely with the Tyger Claws, but she also is. It’s confusing. All I know is she works with the TC and I don’t want to show up on her radar.” I said as I sat back down on the couch in despair. “How’d all this happen? How’d Regina find out it was me who pulled off the RCS heist?”

Fred and Mor looked at each other with bemused expressions before turning back to me. “Tomas,” they both blurted out and then fell about laughing with each other as if it were obvious.

“What?”

“Tomas obviously talked,” said Mor. “Fred and I didn’t. And you know that Deng doesn’t tell anyone about whatever it is he does. Hell, we’re friends and we have no clue what he’s doing right now.”

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Fred pulled a NiCola can out of the mini fridge next to the couch and tossed it to me. “Deng said that when he got your GPS coordinates, he tapped up Tomas to help him out. When the van got to them, Tomas was so excited that he wanted to take it over to the Roundabout and sell everything to Frank. Deng had to practically sit on him to get him to calm down. That’s about the time that your fixer Regina called to help fence the goods.”

“She probably knew that neither Mor nor I would talk about you. And nobody who’s ever spoken to Deng would think he’d talk about other people’s business. That leaves Tomas.”

Mor laughed and poured himself another glass from the liquor I had brought. “He was probably bragging about it. It’s doubtful he knew you wouldn’t want people to know it was you that klepped the vans. Your fixer wouldn’t have needed much to get him to talk. Just ask him a couple questions and let him babble. He thinks what you pulled off was nova.”

I buried my face in my hands and let out a groan. I couldn’t really blame Tomas for talking with Regina. He was brought onto a gig and earned more in one day than he would have made in a year. Of course he was going to brag. This was bad. A fixer knew my identity, and I didn’t trust that she’d keep it a secret if RCS or the Tyger Claws started poking around.

Sure, I had never had any problems in the game. She seemed an honorable enough person and never sold me out or anything. But I had to keep reminding myself that the game was one thing, but this was real life. If there was a big enough payday in it for her, I expected she’d sell my information to anyone who came knocking. Maybe she’d be less open about selling out a merc in her employ though. The idea of working for her started bubbling in my mind.

One thing was for sure though; I needed to up my security and there was only one person who could help me.

I said my goodbyes to Fred and Mor, leaving them with a promise that I would visit more regularly now, and made my way towards Kabuki and Indrajit’s shop.

The last time I had visited Indrajit was to get an ID to ensure the NCPD didn’t pick me up off the street for the simple crime of ‘being shady.’ Now I needed his help to make me disappear from fixers and gangs. Plus, I figured that I could ask him a couple questions to get a better understanding of the rules of the Night City underworld. Fred and Mor were great and had introduced me around to a few fences in the Roundabout, but there were hard limits to their knowledge. I didn’t have any real experience with crime and criminals, which was odd to realize since I had just stolen a bunch of vans from under the watchful gaze of a corporation and a street gang.

I got to Indrajit’s shop and strode up to the guard standing outside the front door. The last time I was here, Yoko had called ahead to let Indrajit know to expect a customer. He had given Yoko a pass phrase for me to use on the guard at the front door. I didn’t know when the last time Indrajit had changed his password, and I didn’t have a contact number with which to get in touch with him. I took a breath, waltzed up to the guard like I was expected, and caught his eye.

“Something something bad boy needing spanked,” I said with a flat voice and expression. “Let me ask you something. He’s the one who comes up with the password, right? Does he do it just to embarrass the both of us?” I asked the guard.

He pursed his lips and rolled his eyes before giving me a brief nod and then jerking his head towards the door. That was my sign to walk right in.

I stepped into Indrajit’s store and was once again caught off guard with how much it looked like someone’s living room. Indrajit stood off in a corner of the room, his back to the door, and he turned to me as I walked in.

“Noah. To what do I owe the pleasure? I don’t remember seeing your name on my schedule today, which means that someone is a sneaky sneak and should have made an appointment.”

“Hey Indrajit. I had a couple questions and wanted to run them by you. How would someone…what are you doing?” I asked.

At first, I thought Indrajit had just been hanging out in a random corner of the room. That was a supremely odd thing to do but I couldn’t tell what was weird and what was normal with him. But as he turned to face me, I caught sight of the stove that he was standing in front of. And I thought back to my three months in Night City and realized that I’d never seen anyone cooking in their homes before.

“I’m making dinner. None for you though Noah. You don’t get to ‘accidentally’ be here in time for dinner and expect to eat my cooking. You’ve got to wine and dine me first.” I watched as he stirred the pot on the stove, trying to think about the last time I had cooked something. It had to have been in my past life. “You came here with questions Noah. So, ask them.”

I shook my head to clear it. “Right, I wanted to know about how I could keep someone from finding out that it was me who robbed them.”

He chuckled and turned back to the stove. “You’re going to have to give me more than that.”

I recounted what happened with the RCS warehouse gig and explained that I had been trying to stay anonymous. I told him about the call from Regina and how it blindsided me, and asked if he knew of any idea on how to stay off people’s radar.

“It’s quite simple Noah. Stop having stupid friends. Nothing you did to hide who you are couldn’t be undone by your friend Tomas blabbing to the first person to get him on the phone.”

“Well, is there a way I could hide my ID while I’m…hypothetically committing crimes?”

“You want a mannequin,” said Indrajit. “It’s where you get someone wearing your shoes and making themselves noticeable while you go off and do things you’re not supposed to. It’s not all that common lately.”

“Why not?”

“Well, it used to be a lot easier to craft yourself an alibi. You’d slip a couple hundred eddies to a bartender, and he’d tell whoever comes knocking that you were there all night. But all that changed a couple years back when internal Agents became popular. Suddenly, you could make cardless transactions for everything and nobody was carrying cash around anymore. And Cops starting tracking purchases and they’d ask ‘if you were at the bar, how come you didn’t buy any drinks? Don’t tell me you paid cash for everything. The one night you pay cash for things and this terrible crime happened.’

“So, to get around that you had people building mannequins. You get yourself a friend and they’d camp out at a bar or a nightclub or something, making sure to stay out of sight of any cameras, and pay for everything using your ID. You’d wander off and do your sneaky sneaky stabby stealy act, and when you’re finished you head back to the club and take over for your buddy. Nobody’s any the wiser cause you got all the receipts for your drinks and lap dances.”

“That doesn’t really seem like what I need,” I sighed and sat down at his table. “Is there a way you could make a second ID? One for normal walking around, and one for when I want to do something that would be frowned upon by the NCPD?”

Indrajit turned fully towards me with a wide grin on his face. “You’re talking about a domino mask. I’ve got to say Noah, you are much more interesting than my normal clientele. So interesting, in fact, that I’m not even going to charge you the exorbitant rates I’d normally charge for a consultation.” When he saw my eyes bug out of my head he laughed, and I realized that he was just joking. Or maybe he wasn’t. My eyes wandered through his store, looking at all the expensive...everything.

“A domino mask is something you slip on and off to protect your identity. Noah Batty rocks up to a building, flips a switch, and now he’s John Smith. A corpo security guard scans you and they see John Smith. Cameras ID you and they see John Smith. The people you rob and beat up know you as John Smith. Then you walk out the door, hide in an alley, flip a switch, and you’re back to being mild-mannered Noah Batty.”

“And you have one of these, uh, domino masks?”

He let out a chortle as he pulled the pan off the stove. “Nobody has a domino mask.” He paused before laughing again and pointing at me with his stirring spoon. “Not you, nobody.”

He reached up to grab a bowl from the cupboard and then turned back to me. “The domino mask is like the holy grail for shoemakers. No one has ever managed to build one. It’s something that is theoretical. I heard rumors that Militech was working on a prototype domino mask but couldn’t figure it out. If I could make a domino mask, hell, if anyone could make a domino mask then…” he didn’t finish the sentence, seemingly lost in thought as he placed his bowl on the counter. “That’s the dream.”

He turned back to me. “Can you imagine it? One day you’re Noah Batty, random guy with horrible fashion sense. The next you’re…Saburo Arasaka, rolling up to a boardroom meeting and making deals. Or you could resurrect Morgan Blackhand. Or, if you really wanted to impress people, you become a second me. If we had a domino mask you could take all the meetings I hate dealing with. I could catch up on my reading.” He seemed to forget I was there was he got lost in his daydream of a second him. “Oh, I could date myself. That’s the icing on the cake right there. A second me would be a gift to society.”

He finished pouring his food into the bowl on the counter and came to join me at the table, but I wasn’t paying attention to anything else at that point. It was my time to go internal. Indrajit had claimed that the domino mask was the holy grail for shoemakers; an impossible dream that represented the pinnacle of the craft. But I knew that someone had built a domino mask. And I also knew exactly where it was.