Anna and I were out front of Indrajit’s place early the next morning, picking up Cyndi and John. A quick scan told me that I was looking at the newest legal residents of Night City. Their fresh IDs, along with the clothes we bought them yesterday and new haircuts and dye jobs, made them almost unrecognizable from when I had found them locked up in Jotaro’s playroom. I flicked payment to Indrajit – for two IDs and the Lexington – clearing out everything that Deng and I had earned from the Jotaro job.

To celebrate their newfound freedom to move about Night City without Tyger Claws tracking them, the four of us headed over to Lizzie’s to meet up with Mor. Fred was still hanging around the underpass, trying to work out exactly how he wanted his camp to look like. I had no clue where Deng was. So, it was going to be just the four of us hanging with Mor.

When we arrived, I noticed trouble brewing. An NCPD car, with its flashing blue and red lights, was parked in the lot in front of Lizzie’s. Two badges, a man and a woman, were held up at the entrance. The guy was screaming in Rita’s face, and I could see her calm façade starting to crack. Anna jumped out of the car and headed over to see what was happening, and I left John and Cyndi with Mor at the alcove where all the homeless were craning their necks to watch what was happening.

Of the two cops confronting Rita, one caught Anna’s eye.

“Hernandez, what is this shit?” Anna demanded as she approached.

“The hell you doing out here, Hamill? Thought they finally kicked your ass to the curb. You stoop to working for joytoys and pimps now?” the male cop sneered.

Rita’s grip tightened on her purple baseball bat, clearly getting ready to swing. I didn’t want to get involved in the whole mess, but Anna was in the middle of it so I had to back her up. I patted the holster on my hip, ensuring my Chao was in place and ready to go.

Hernandez, the female officer Anna had called out, put a restraining hand on her partner’s shoulder. I could see black metal stretching across her right hand, noting she was sporting military-grade chrome. “You need to calm your ass down. You’re not making any of this better,” she hissed at her partner.

“They got one of ours. We need to show these Mox bitches that we won’t be pushed around. If you don’t got the heart for it, wait in the car. I’ll handle it.”

I could feel the situation was slowly unraveling and I knew it was only a matter of time before two cops would be left bleeding out in front of Mox HQ. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a few Mox moving towards us, their hands drifting close to the weapons at their side. Hernandez seemed to understand the growing danger her partner was creating and tightened her grip on his shoulder, drawing his attention.

“Stop talking. Get back in the car. Now.”

Her words finally got through to him. Or maybe it was the way her metal hand dug into his shoulder, making him gasp in pain. He glanced around, realizing he was vastly outnumbered and outgunned. His hand started to drift to the gun holstered at his side, but Hernandez tightened her grip and stopped him. He got the message and, with one last dirty look at Anna and Rita, moved back to the patrol car.

“What the hell was that?” asked Anna as the crowd realized there wasn’t going to be any bloodshed and started dispersing. Rita still looked pissed and ready to fight but seemed to recognize that Anna had defused the situation and had everything under control.

“Meat wagons picked up Kirk this morning. Shoveled him off the sidewalk a couple blocks from here. Word around the station is he was bragging about a joytoy informant who was gonna make him heaps of eddies. Then he turns up dead. We were coming to Lizzie’s to check if they knew anything when…” she trailed off, gesturing to the scene around her.

Anna shot me a look before turning back to Hernandez. Welp…Anna was going to find out sooner or later that I had dealt with Kirk.

Rita cut in, “that doesn’t explain why your boy there was dumb enough to come pissing on our turf. We don’t have beef with the badges. Yet. But that can all change if you guys keep sending gonks over here to try and throw their weight around.”

Hernandez spun to Rita with a scowl across her face. “There something you wanna say Mox?” The calm she radiated during the dust up was cracking, not used to being challenged by a gang member.

“Just that a lot of people, including judges and politicians, love the kind of BDs we make here. They’re not gonna be too happy with anything that stops us from producing.”

Hernandez snorted and backed down. “Kid used to work the City Center beat; he’s used to bowing to all the suits down there. He probably heard Watson was different, and he’d be able to throw his weight around a bit. I tried telling him we stay off gang turf for the most part. But he’s not what you should be worried about right now.”

“What is?” asked Anna.

“Someone dropped a badge. You know how it’s going to go. Shit’s going to be bad around here for a while. Business is going to suffer.”

“From what I hear,” Anna interjected, “Kirk was tied up in that whole Jotaro thing that went down. He was probably running security or something, screwed it all up, and this is blowback from the TC for what happened to their meal ticket.”

Hernandez tilted her head and gave Anna a disbelieving look before slipping into deep thought. She started nodding.

“Hm, yea. Kirk was on the take and was pulling security. He messed up. A major TC moneymaker gets dropped. The Claws need to find some way to offset that loss, so they dump the badge that screwed up near Mox territory. NCPD picks up a bunch of joytoys for solicitation and cracks down on the Mox, trying to find out who killed the badge. And the Tyger Claws move in to claim some territory.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“It’s a believable enough story that I can sell it to the captain. Keeps the rest of us from knocking heads, calms things down, nobody looks too hard at how everyone around here is making their money. But we both know that Kirk had a pattern of getting handsy with joytoys he ran in for solicitation.” She glanced my way before adding, “and he had a nasty habit of beating on the homeless. The next time you all want to drop a body, do me a favor and make sure it isn’t found.”

Anna and I watched as Hernandez and her partner drove off, then checked in with Rita to make sure everything was okay before we headed over to the alcove where Cyndi, John and Mor were standing with a large group of homeless still watching the scene. Deng had slipped in while we were dealing with the cops, and as soon as we approached the alcove, everyone started bombarding us with questions about what happened.

Mor was finally able to get everyone to quiet down enough for Anna to explain. “A badge was flatlined last night, not far from here. They were checking to see if anyone knew anything about it.”

“Who got dropped?” asked Mor. “And do they know who did it?”

Anna shot me a quick disapproving look before responding, “Officer Kirk.”

Neither Cyndi nor John reacted – they had no clue who Officer Kirk was. Mor shot me a look and then sighed. The rest of the alcove perked up at hearing that one of the most vicious street predators of homeless in Watson had been flatlined. They all split off into smaller groups to chat about what they knew and to celebrate. There was certainly no love lost there, and no one was unhappy to see him go. Deng gave me a strange look before briefly nodding and motioning us to the couch where Fred and Mor usually sat.

“What’s up, Deng? Here to celebrate the newest legal residents of Night City?” I asked, nodding towards Cyndi and John. “Or you here to give some advice on our next steps?”

Mor cheered at the news that Cyndi and John were now free from Tyger Claw scrutiny, grabbing two cans of NiCola from the fridge next to the couch. “Advice, huh? Not like you ever take it,” he joked.

“I always welcome contributions,” I smiled and pulled a shard from my neuroport that I handed to Anna, who slotted it in and quickly scanned through the information before whistling in surprise. I had prepped it last night while waiting for Cyndi and John to finish with Indrajit, and it was pretty impressive if you asked me.

“Gambling dens, pachinko parlors, small-time gunrunners. None of them are connected to the Tyger Claws or any larger gang,” I said.

“What do you wanna do with this?” Anna asked before handing the shard to Deng.

I shrugged. “We all need eddies. We gotta pay rent, buy clothes and food, maybe get some new chrome. Why not get paid to do our civic duty, and shut all these places down? Also, I was thinking we should use some of the people in the alcove.” I looked over at Mor and he gave me a puzzled look.

“We can do it like a bounty system. We put the word out that we’re looking for anything interesting they might find in their day to day around the city, like a gambling den or a drug house or whatever. When they find one, they come and tell you, then we go and clean it out. They’ll get something like…ten percent of the take. Who knows the city better than the homeless?” I asked Mor.

He shrugged and I could tell he had some qualms about the idea. “That might be a little too dangerous. If word gets out to gangoons in Watson that the homeless guy on your block might be scouting for a crew that’s going to come in and wipe them out, it could paint a target on all our backs.”

“Yea, that’s a risk. But think it over, I think it might be good.”

“Interesting,” said Deng as he handed the shard back to me. “But that’s not why I’m here. There was another attack on a camp up in North Watson.”

***

Anna drove us up to North Watson and, not for the first time, I found myself thinking about getting my own car.

It hadn’t bothered me much before now since I could never afford one. Paying rent and getting enough food to sustain myself had pushed buying a car far down my list of priorities. Then everything just started happening to me and I never bothered shopping for a car or motorcycle. Now that I had some financial breathing room, and with all of us crammed into Anna’s Archer Hella, the idea of car shopping had become much more appealing.

When Deng announced to the alcove that another homeless camp had been attacked, it dampened a lot of the good cheer the news of Officer Kirk’s death had generated. Deng told us he got word about the camp from some friends up north, and he had already called Zion and Diego to help poke around. We all packed ourselves in Anna’s car and sped off towards the camp.

Anna, Deng, Cyndi and I pulled up to the camp a few minutes later. I had John stay with Mor at the alcove, but when I suggested to Cyndi she might want to stay back as well, she gave me such a withering look that I shut my mouth and let her tag along. I still had no clue what was going on with John and Cyndi and made a note to myself to chat with Mor about it later on.

The four of us joined Diego and Zion in spreading through the remains of the camp, looking at the damage the Scavs had wrought. The whole place was eerily silent. Bedding and scattered knick-knacks lay strewn about, left behind because even Scavs couldn’t find much use for them. The once bustling camp was now a desolate wreck.

Anna and Diego moved through the camp methodically, hoping to find some clue that might tell us where the Scavs had come from or where they went to. I knew it was a futile effort. We weren’t going to find a conveniently dropped shard with GPS coordinates to the Scav base, or a laptop filled with emails about their entire nefarious plan.

There were signs of struggle in the camp – bloodstains on the ground, broken pieces of makeshift weapons, bullet casings scattered about – but nothing to indicate where the Scavs had fled to. After an hour of searching, we all started to lose hope of finding anything useful.

“This was the biggest camp they’ve hit so far,” said Deng, nudging some bedding with his foot. “The others were all much smaller, only four or five people in them.”

“How many were here?” asked Cyndi, her eyes drifting across the camp.

“About 14,” replied Deng.

Zion kicked through a pile of old clothes. “This doesn’t make sense. Why hit a camp like this? There’s nothing here worth taking.”

I sighed and nodded in agreement. Scavs were known for kidnapping people off the street and stripping all their cyberware. I doubted anyone who had been in this camp had any valuable cyberware to take. The most advanced tech I’d seen in the alcove was a pair of cyberarms that seemed more at home in a museum than in a body. Why would the Scavs hit this place? Why were they dead set on fighting the homeless of North Watson?

Anna pulled aside a tattered blanket, revealing a small stash of personal items: a broken watch, some trinkets with more sentimental than monetary value. She shook her head and tossed the blanket aside. “I think this supports my theory.”

Deng nodded, but Zion and Diego looked confused. I had no clue what Anna was going on about either. “What theory?” asked Diego.

“I think the Scavs are being paid to target the homeless, to drive them out of their camps. Maybe a corporation wants to build a factory up here, or possibly some new apartments to house their workforce. They need to clear the area before construction happens, so they pay the NCPD who pay the Scavs to go in and do all the dirty work of pushing the homeless out.”

I looked around the camp, making note that there were apartments not too far away. Two streets down there were several shops and restaurants. This camp wasn’t directly in the middle of a busy intersection, but it also wasn’t so far away from people that an attack by the Scavs would go unnoticed and unreported. This didn’t make any sense.

“What happens when someone calls the NCPD and reports a firefight?” I asked, turning to Anna. “Wouldn’t they just show up and clash with the Scavs? Then you got dead badges and dead Scavs, the corporation doesn’t get what they want, and the NCPD is all pissed off.”

Anna snorted. “Nah. Doesn’t work like that. Beat cops are told at the start of the shift if a certain area is off-limits for the night. They’ll get radioed and dispatch will tell them ‘don’t answer any calls in this specific neighborhood in Watson for the next three hours.’ That lets the Scavs had a window where they can do whatever they want.”

“So, what do we do?” Cyndi asked. I could see the anger in her eyes, and it was beginning to boil over. The unfairness of the situation was probably bringing back memories of helplessness from when she had been kidnapped and trapped n Jotaro’s playroom. I knew she wanted to hurt anyone she could, which was one of the reasons I didn’t want her out here at the camp in the first place.

For some reason, when Cyndi asked her question, everyone looked at me as if I had the answer. I paced around the camp, trying to think. None of my knowledge from the video game had prepared me for this. From what I could remember, there hadn’t been any notable attacks by Scavs on homeless camps in the game. Maybe there was an NCPD hustle or a random shard I ignored that mentioned these attacks, but I couldn’t think of any.

I continued pacing around the camp, going over all the information I had. The Scavs attacked the homeless camps, the NCPD was staying out of it – likely paid off by a corporation or someone else to keep clear. I muttered curses under my breath as I walked. Everything had been going so well. I had taken out Jotaro, pulled off a few heists, earned some eddies. I had gathered intel on a bunch of targets that could prove fruitful, and I had used those targets to con Officer Kirk into walking into an ambush. But now I felt like I was sinking, and nothing I could do would change anything.

“Wait,” I said, stopping and turning back to Anna. “You said dispatch tells the beat cops to stay out of certain areas?”

“Yea,” she nodded. Then her eyes widened as she realized what I was getting at. “But they’ve got no reason to help us out. I don’t have a whole lot of favors I can call in to get that information.”

“NCPD is still threatening cuts, right?” I asked. “I think I got something that can help us out.”