I stretched out in the trunk of Callum Black’s Villefort Cortes, trying to maneuver my body into some kind of position that wouldn’t cause me pain whenever Anna made a quick turn or slammed on the breaks. She was a terrible driver, which was surprising considering I figured that the NCPD would have taught her how to handle a vehicle in a high-speed chase.

As she drove us from Callum’s apartment to the Ho-oh club, I sent a bevy of messages through the group chat to everyone else, detailing my plan to kill Jotaro. Diego had dropped off Wendy at her house – where her family was overjoyed to see her after having been missing all day – and had rejoined Deng and Zion at the apartment overlooking the club. Zion had turned the abandoned apartment into a sniper’s nest with a perfect view into the Ho-oh club’s third floor and promised he could take out Jotaro if he showed his face. Deng was furious that I was ‘willingly getting myself captured and delivered to Jotaro,’ and he kept up a stream of curses to express how stupid he thought I was being.

I laid out the plan for them which was that Anna would pretend to be Callum Black’s partner, delivering a new victim to Jotaro, and drop me with the Tyger Claws at the club. The Claws would deliver me up to the third floor where I’d find the computer controlling the club’s NETArch and hack it to open the security blinds, giving Zion a clear shot at Jotaro and whatever Tyger Claw was up there. I knew that I couldn’t break the NETArch from outside the building, but if I could log into whatever security system they had, I’d be able to shut it down from the inside.

I also made a promise to Anna, and myself, that if possible I would try and rescue any of Jotaro’s victims who might still be alive. Diego and Deng would be nearby, ready to back me up if everything went to hell. I had told them to start a diversion once I got to the third floor, and was hoping that would be enough to buy me a window to escape. Only Anna knew that I no longer looked like myself but instead had assumed the identity of Wendy Buchanan. I was hoping to keep that little factoid in my back pocket and not be forced to show everyone what I was capable of.

I felt the car slow as we entered Kabuki, with Anna concentrating on navigating the winding, confusing streets. When we pulled up to the Ho-oh club, Zion sent a message through the group chat saying that he had eyes on us, and Anna warned me to get ready.

The car stopped and I heard Anna speaking to someone. In the trunk, the entire conversation was garbled, and I couldn’t make out what was happening. Moments later, the trunk opened and I saw Anna.

“Drugged, handcuffed, and silenced. She should be out of it for the next five hours,” said Anna as I was roughly pulled from the trunk. “Just make sure you don’t remove that black shard from her neuroport or she’ll be able to make calls through her Agent.”

The shard was purely performative. It was a tool that Scavs and other unsavory types inserted into a person’s neuroport to block any calls made from an internal Agent, effectively cutting off the target from being tracked through their phone or sending messages to be rescued. Callum had stuffed it in the real Wendy’s neuroport, and I had figured out its purpose when I pulled it out and got a closer look. I deactivated it and slotted it into my own neuroport. It sat there, inert, giving off the impression I couldn’t use my Agent. That was only half-true. I couldn’t make any phone calls because that would have made my eyes glow gold. But I could still send and receive text messages.

I got my bearings but kept my head down, playing the part of a drugged kidnapping victim, not completely aware of what was going on. I let some fear slip onto my face and gazed around at the Tyger Claws in the garage connected to the Ho-oh. Takeshi Kazou was next to Anna and he was sneering at her unsolicited advice regarding how he should handle me. He motioned for the Tyger Claw who had pulled me from the trunk to bring me closer. He scanned me, likely pulling up the photo of Wendy Buchanan that Callum Black had sent him along with the delivery details.

Thank God for the behavioral face implant.

“She’s in acceptable condition,” Takeshi announced, gesturing for the Tyger Claw holding me to move me along. “Where’s Callum?” His voice had an edge of danger. He didn’t like the change in delivery personnel, as it introduced an unknown variable that he had to keep track of.

“You’ve heard that the brass is demanding more tickets, right?” Anna replied. “We’ve got quotas to hit on arrests, citations, everything. Callum is behind. The bosses are laying into him right now, chewing his ass out, demanding he step up.”

I had no clue what Anna was talking about, but Takeshi seemed to take Anna’s answer in stride, and he nodded in understanding.

“I might be able to help with that. We’ve had some…challengers in Watson; small-time gangs trying to carve out territory for themselves. I’m sure we can come to an agreement. I supply the information, you arrest them, get your numbers up, and we erase the competition.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Anna’s expression change. The prospect of getting information about small-time gangs and making sweeping arrests to clean up the streets was something she wouldn’t have hesitated to jump at in her previous life with the NCPD. Thankfully, she seemed to remember why we were there. Instead of taking the offer outright, she simply said she’d let Callum know about it and then she got back in the car and drove off.

I was hustled through the Ho-oh club, carried and shoved through various checkpoints, and escorted up to the third floor. The pulsating music of the club mirrored the rhythm of my own heartbeat as my nerves started to let themselves be known. I was in the belly of the beast, surrounded by Tyger Claws, preparing to kill one of their most important and protected members.

I’m such an idiot. Who the hell would think it was a good idea to willingly walk into a club filled with Tyger Claws and try to kill their leader? Why didn’t Deng argue more stridently against my stupidity? Why did I ever think this was a good plan? Why didn’t I spend some of that RCS van heist money on more mercs? Diego, Deng, Anna and Zion could hold their own. That was true. But this was an entire club filled with Tyger Claws. If something happened to me in there, they wouldn’t be able to extract me.

I should have just bought some optical camo or focused more on netrunning. If I had been able to pierce the NETArch they had surrounding the club, I could have turned Jotaro’s own security against him. I wouldn’t have needed to get into the club to shut everything down. Doubts kept running through my mind as I was manhandled up the steps.

I barely glanced at the group chat on my way to the third floor, only checking to confirm that Anna had safely made it away. Diego reported that he was parked around the corner in the white panel van we’d taken from the Scav base and that Deng was in position for the diversion. All I had to do was give a signal, and Zion would try to provide covering fire while the others stormed the club to extract me. After I read that I once again cursed myself for not coming up with a better plan. If I screwed up, I’d be leading the rest of them into a death trap.

I messaged the group, lying and assuring everyone that I had it all under control. Anna had slipped me the keys to the handcuffs before I got into the trunk of Callum’s car. I had stashed the key under my tongue and could free myself quickly. That, coupled with the fact that I wasn’t the drugged and beaten victim they took me for, would hopefully give me the edge I needed.

As soon as I stepped onto the third floor, I sent another message to the group chat to let everyone know I made it.

Noah: let it burn and make the call.

Zion didn’t have a great view of me, explaining that wherever they were stashing me was obstructed by the security blinds. I was led past a large computer setup into a series of adjoining rooms and shoved onto a bed. The Tyger Claws who guided me up to the third floor left me there, assuming I was too drugged up to escape.

Once they were gone, I glanced around the room to take in my surroundings. There were two people in the room with me, both heavily drugged and barely conscious. A quick scan revealed their names: Cyndi Lathan and John Kaczmarek.

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Cyndi was a 17-year-old black girl and her NCPD file said she was associated with the Aldecados. Seeing her there jogged my memory of watching Malcolm Bell delivering someone to the club in his maroon Archer Hella. Cyndi was likely the girl from the trunk. She had been kept in a cage in the ‘playroom,’ and I noticed the bruises and welts that covered her arms. The other person in the room was John Kaczmarek. My scan showed that he was 19 and from Nevada, his last known address was an orphanage. I guessed that he had been delivered by Jae-Hyun.

Near the bed was what looked like an operating table, covered in stains, with a body sprawled out on top of it. I scanned the body and learned that it had been Sheery Bach from Kabuki. Seeing her there, and noting she was from Kabuki, sold me on the fact that Jotaro had been the one who kidnapped Tomas.

I laid back on the bed and bent my knees towards my chest while I hunched my back and shoulders forward and slipped my ‘handcuffed’ hands under my feet and up until they were in front of me. I spat the key in my mouth into my hands and undid the locks on the handcuffs, and then fished around in my boot. Callum had a bunch of tacticool stuff in his apartment and, before I left, I managed to grab a pen he had sitting on his coffee table. It was honestly pretty cool. It was a tactical pen that looked normal, but when you unscrewed the cap there was a tiny scalpel blade there.

I unscrewed the cap, palmed the pen, and put my hands behind my back to pretend like I was still cuffed. I got up off the bed and started to creep to the large computer setup I saw in the previous room. With any luck, Jotaro wouldn’t be coming into this room for a while, giving me the opportunity to hack into the Ho-oh club NETArch from the computer and open the security blinds.

“Oh, is someone being naughty?”

I turned to face the voice coming from behind me and saw Jotaro Shobo entering the room from the opposite side. He saw me trying to creep out of the room, and shrugged off his white suit jacket as he crossed the room.

Shit.

Shiiiiiit.

Such a horrible plan.

“Why are you trying to leave girl? Don’t you want to see my playroom? I’m going to make you a star. I’ll carve your name in lights across Night City. The entire city is going to remember you. You want that, don’t you?”

The fear that I felt at seeing my plan crumble around me was quickly replaced by all the rage I had built up over the past few weeks, thinking about what Jotaro had done to Tomas, witnessing the horrors he inflicted on his victims, and seeing the cancer he represented in Night City. The rage bubbled to the surface, and I tried to keep it from showing on my face but I don’t think I was doing a good job.

“Oh, I like the feisty ones. So much more fun to break,” he said as he moved to stand in front of me. He put a hand under my chin, lifting my face to meet his gaze. When he looked into my eyes and saw the hate, he smiled. But then my look shifted, thinking about the pen in my hand. He recoiled slightly, like an animal who senses something has changed. Some lizard part of his brain told him that I was dangerous, but by the time he listened to it I was already striking out.

I slipped my left hand out of the handcuffs and whipped my right towards him as fast as I could. Jotaro flinched, trying to raise his hand to stop me, but my right hand, holding the pen, slipped past his defenses and I jammed the small scalpel blade into his throat. Stupid. Scalpels are a cutting instrument. Not meant for stabbing.

His eyes widened in surprise as the scalpel blade was buried in his throat. He looked at me, shocked that I would dare fight back; surprised I wasn’t drugged up enough that he’d be able to overpower me. His only killings were drugged up innocents who couldn’t strike back. Blood spurted from his throat, coating my hands, and the pen started to slip from my grip.

He wasn’t quite dead yet, gurgling out the last bits of his life on the bed in his ‘playroom.’ He grabbed at my hand, clumsily trying to keep me from pulling out the scalpel blade and attacking again. I stood, gripping his shoulder with my left hand while my right still held the pen lodged in his throat, and I spun him around until he landed on the bed.

I fell on top of him, driving a knee into his chest, pushing the air out of his lungs. The shock weakened his grip, allowing me to pull the scalpel back and slice his throat. I slapped his right hand away from my face and covered his mouth with my left.

When he finally stopped struggling, I took a shuddering deep breath. My chest was on fire, and my eyes were wild with adrenaline. My hands started to shake, and I idly wondered if that was going to happen every time that I killed someone.

Shit.

I snapped back to the present and glanced around the room. My struggle with Jotaro had caught the attention of Cyndi and John, and they stared at me, wide-eyed. I put a finger to my lips, signaling them to remain silent, and listened for any signs that our fight had been overheard.

Hearing nothing, I quickly rifled through Jotaro’s pockets and found the key to the cage holding Cyndi and John. I tossed the key to Cyndi, who seemed the most alert, and motioned for them to stay put while I crouch-walked to the massive computer setup in the adjacent room.

Noah: Jotaro’s down. Two people in a cage up here. Going to leave through the rooftop.

I had originally considered trying to make a behavior scan of Jotaro, having Zion snipe him, and then assuming his identity to just walk out of the club. That plan went out the window as soon as I had killed him and I was rushing around to try and salvage the whole situation.

I snuck over to the computer and inserted my personal link. With no password protection on the computer, it was laughably easy to bypass the entire NETArch around the Ho-oh club. I turned off the security cameras, disabled any alarm that could sound, and raised the security blinds for the third floor, giving Zion clear sightlines into the top floor of the club. Then, I sent a ping through the system.

All the Tyger Claws in the Ho-oh club – at least those pulling security for Jotaro – were connected to the club’s security system which let my ping pick out targets. Their outlines flashed red in my vision, and I pushed the information to Zion, giving him targets to aim for.

It was the very first time I used a quickhack in combat, and I felt pretty good about myself. That lasted all of three seconds before I caught motion out of the corner of my eye and turned fully to come face to face with Takeshi Kazou. There was a split second where we both stared at each other, too stunned to understand what was happening, before his head exploded.

Zion: stop standing around and start leaving.

Oh yea. The stupidity of my plan was coming back to me. I was still in the Ho-oh club, surrounded by Tyger Claws, and I desperately needed a way out.

I focused back on the computer controlling the Ho-oh security system and set orders to delete all security camera footage and access logs. Then, I uploaded the same program I bought from Yoko before my Dogtown heist onto the computer – assured it would brick the whole thing – and disconnected my personal link.

When I returned to the room where I left Jotaro’s body draped across the bed, I noticed that Cyndi had unlocked her cage and was holding John. She was a bit more coherent than he was and I motioned for them to follow me.

Diego was sending orders through the group chat, and I pushed and dragged Cyndi and John along behind me. We rushed through the third floor of the club and came to the terraced part of the top floor that was open to the outside. I pushed us to a small half-wall that lay between us and the building next to the club and heard sirens and the panicked shouts of Tyger Claws.

The Ho-oh club was set up in a U-shape. Jotaro’s playroom on the third floor was on the right side of the building, and that’s where we were sneaking out from. I hadn’t paid much attention to the group chat, but when I saw the smoke billowing from the lobby of a building next to the Ho-oh club, drawing the attention of the Tyger Claws, I understood that Deng was able to create the diversion I needed.

He had set a fire in the lobby of the building near the Ho-oh club, drawing everyone’s attention. Then, he had called the FDNC to report the fire, and the sirens of the fire trucks pierced the air in Kabuki. Some of the gamblers at the bottom floor of the club were shouting about the fire, most of the Tyger Claws were rushing around trying to figure out how to put it out, a few were concerned about the presence of the Night City Fire Department. But most importantly, nobody was paying attention to Cyndi, John and I as we made our escape.

Well, almost nobody.

I helped Cyndi and John climb over the half-wall that separated the Ho-oh club from the neighboring building. I heard a snap and chanced a glance behind me to see a Tyger Claw go down to a shot to the head. Hm, Zion was a good sniper. I should thank him later.

Cyndi became more alert as we moved, the drugs in her system countered by the adrenaline coursing through her body, and she helped me push John over the barrier. Once he was over, I leapt the barrier and guided them along the outdoor patio of the apartments. Another snap echoed, signaling Zion had taken out another Tyger Claw who had appeared on the third floor. I continued to guide John and Cyndi along behind me as we rushed through the apartment balconies.

We were able to move along the balconies until we turned a corner and lost sight of the Ho-oh club. There was a fire escape around the corner, the ladder having been retracted up and locked with a padlock. Who the hell locks a fire escape ladder with a padlock? Whoever it was that did that was a jackass. If it had been down, I could have reached this apartment and snuck into the third floor of the club without needing to do anything too special.

I crouched next to the padlock, took off one of my boots, and smash the heel into the padlock. It was a cheap thing; probably only cost a couple eddies at a local convenience store, and the padlock popped open. I released the catch on the ladder, dropping it to the ground, and motioned for Cyndi and John to head down.

I looked down at myself, covered in Jotaro’s blood and without any extra clothes, and knew that we’d be conspicuous on the street: three kids stumbling around – one clearly drugged, another helping to steady him, and the third drenched in blood. It would be a miracle if we didn’t get stopped by the cops, to say nothing of the swarm of firefighters who were descending on the Ho-oh club. I probably should have planned the exfiltration a little bit better. I sighed and deactivated the behavioral face implant, letting my original appearance override the one I had borrowed from Wendy.

Cyndi turned just as I started morphing from young woman into teenage boy and I saw her eyes go wide in surprise. Shit. This job just keeps getting messier. She turned quickly to focus back on helping me wrestle John to the fire escape ladder. Well, future Noah is going to have to deal with that problem.

We descended to the street level just as a white panel van pulled up in front of us. The sudden appearance of the van startled me, and Cyndi crouched, ready to fight, fearing she’d be taken back to Jotaro. John swayed on his feet as the van screeched to a halt. The side door flew open, and Deng’s face appeared, looking at me with shock at the amount of blood that covered my body.

“Get in,” Deng shouted.

Cyndi hesitated at the sight of Deng and the van, but when I pushed John inside and Deng helped get him situated, she decided to trust me and jumped in the van. Diego was driving, and as soon as we were all inside, he sped off.

Diego: got them in the van. Zion, get out of there. Meet at the rendezvous point.

Zion: acknowledged.

Anna: be there soon.

Deng tossed me a towel to wipe away all the blood that was staining my face and clothes. As I patted away the blood I let myself finally fully breathe and felt my muscles loosen from all the stress that started to leave me. I dabbed away the blood and looked up at the others in the van.

John was still barely conscious, staring blankly ahead. Deng gave me a look that was a mix of pride, surprise, anger, shock, and relief. Don’t ask me how I was able to pick out all those emotions on his face. Now that we were out of the Ho-oh club and putting miles between us and her private hell, Cyndi watched me as I wiped the blood away. She narrowed her eyes, trying to decide if she could trust me.

I held out my hand and smiled.

“Hey, I’m Noah. Nice to meet you.”