You want to know the secret to breaking into places you’re not supposed to be? A hi-vis jacket. Seriously. Nothing hides you better than drawing attention to yourself, especially in upscale areas like the border between Westbrook and Chapel Hill. By Night City standards, the place is fancy. Sure, you still have the occasional mugging, maybe even a murder if someone is really unlucky, but compared to the rest of the city? It’s practically paradise. It’s safe enough that the people walking by don’t bother paying attention to anything out of the ordinary.

I sat in the passenger seat of Diego’s truck, idly tapping my fingers on my thigh while Sandra fiddled with something on her datapad next to me. Diego’s ride still had that new car smell – synthetic leather they use to make things feel fancier than it actually is. It was all black and chrome when he bought it; the kind of vehicle you’d expect a merc to ride around in. But now?

Diego glanced over at me, one hand casually resting on the wheel. “You know, when I bought this thing, the guy selling it said it was a great ‘work’ truck,” he chuckled, shaking his head. “Winked at me, like he knew what kind of work I’d be using it for. Pretty sure this wasn’t what he had in mind.”

I’d turned his new ride into something that looked straight out of a construction yard. We’d splashed it with water-soluble paint – just enough to make it look like the property of some two-bit mom-and-pop construction firm. There were a few orange traffic cones tossed around the back. And the finish touch? The hi-vis jackets. Neon green and yellow, so bright they screamed ‘official business’ so loudly that it made people too annoyed to actually question it.

Sandra smirked, eyes still glued to her pad. “City crew aesthetic. Nice touch.”

“Subtlety is overrated,” I said, adjusting my jacket. “Wrap yourself in a neon yellow highlighter and people look away. They see infrastructure workers and immediately think, ‘not my problem.’”

And that was the beauty of it. In a place like Westbrook, where the residents paid ridiculous money to live away from the grime and chaos of Night City, nobody wanted to stop and get involved. They saw the truck, the cones, the bright vests, and immediately tuned out. A bunch of workers fixing something? Boring. Mundane. Perfect cover.

“Anyone asks any questions, we just start talking about concrete and pipes. They’ll be so bored they’ll walk away before we can even finish the sentence,” I said, staring out the window.

Sandra finally looked up from her datapad, scanning the area where we were parked. “How long before someone realizes we’re not exactly a construction crew?”

“A couple hours, maybe. We shouldn’t need more than that. We get in, do what we need to do, and we’re out before anyone starts asking too many questions.”

Diego reached into the back and grabbed his own hi-vis vest to slip on. He looked like the world’s least enthusiastic construction worker. I opened the door and stepped out into the cool Westbrook air. It was cleaner here. Less of that grimy, synthetic stink you got in other parts of the city.

I hopped over a flimsy barrier on the side of the road and looked to my right. The same concrete benches where I’d had a conversation with Anna and Angelica yesterday were still there. And there wasn’t anyone hanging around them, like yesterday. Up on a pole nearby, a couple security cameras lazily panned the area. They were supposed to be recording everything, but Sandra had looped the feed so they wouldn’t be able to ID us. Nobody was watching. I caught her eye, and she gave me a quick nod, letting me know everything was ready.

I stepped down onto a metal grate running alongside the road. To everyone else, it looked like just another piece of urban junk – a grate, a drain, nothing special. But if you knew what to look for, there was a secret. A few feet away, tucked under a thick layer of grime and city filth, was a hatch, marked only by a simple, heavy lock.

Diego appeared beside me, handing over the bolt cutters. By the time I took them he was already moving to the other side of the street, setting up cones and making the whole area look like a routine maintenance job. The lock was a little bit fancier than the kind you could buy at any convenience store in the city, but the bolt cutters made quick work of it. One quick snip was all that I needed.

I pulled open the hatch and blinking lights spilled out. I peered inside, careful not to dip my entire head into the room behind the hatch. It was dimly lit with blinking lights that decorated the server racks that stretched along the walls. It was the kind of place that you wouldn’t even know about unless you had a reason to look for it. And the worse part of all? In the corner, mounted like some overzealous watchdog, was a security turret.

It wasn’t a piece of advanced corpo tech. No. This thing ran on PIR. Passive infrared. It wasn’t sophisticated enough to differentiate friend from foe or even know whether the room was full or servers or people. All it cared about was heat. If something human-shaped and over 98 degrees Fahrenheit moved, it started firing.

In other words, it was dumb and wouldn’t hesitate to shred someone who popped into the room without turning off the security first.

When I’d first started planning this job, I toyed with the idea of using a glitter bomb. I mean, glitter’s basically the herpes of the crafting world – it gets everywhere, and it’s impossible to clean up. I figured that if I blasted the room with glitter, it might clog up the turret’s targeting system and throw off its sensors. But some late-night research told me that was a terrible idea. Turns out, there are much better ways to deal with cheap security turrets.

Luckily, I had something a lot more effective than glitter: Night City’s NET. This world’s version of the internet was pretty limited. There weren’t any convenient Youtube tutorials to show how to break into a secure facility. But what it did have was its own underground scene – forums and blogs from the early days of the NET, half of them looking like relics from geocities. I spent hours coming through the NET and finally found a few posts about how to disable cheap PIR systems without frying everything else around them. Turns out, glitter wasn’t on any of the lists.

What did work? A modified CHAR grenade. I’d called up Regina to see if she could help me out, and she seemed more than happy to speak with me after the whole blackout. She got me the grenade with a promise that I’d stop by and hear out a proposition that she had.

The grenade was tweaked to release its heat gradually, raising the temperature in the room over time instead of going off in one big flash. I’d thought about using an EMP grenade, but the makers of that – Tsunami – didn’t sell them to just anyone and it would’ve fried the servers too. And we weren’t here to destroy the data. It was the whole point of this heist.

I pulled the CHAR grenade from my jacket, twisted the cap, and dropped it through the hatch. A soft hiss filled the air as it released its gas, and I could feel the temperature in the room start to rise. Slowly but surely, the entire room warmed up, the vents and air conditioning struggling to keep up with the sudden change. The turret, as dumb as it was, had no idea what to do. It couldn’t lock onto anything because now everything was registering above 98 degrees. It sensors were overwhelmed.

I pushed the hatch open wider and quickly poked my head in, ready to retreat if the turret did anything. It just sat there, motionless. I slipped into the room, landing softly on the floor, and made a quick dash for the turret. Its barrel didn’t swivel to pack my face with bullets, so that was a good sign. Without wasting a second, I plugged my personal link into the turret’s access port and ran a few commands. Within seconds, the turret powered down with a whirring sigh.

I unplugged and exhaled, wiping a bead of sweat from my forehead. “Alright,” I muttered. “Sandra, you’re good to come down now.”

Sandra’s head popped through the hatch, her eyes darting from the server racks to the now-silent turret. I could almost see her trying to piece together how I’d pulled this off. She climbed down beside me, her gaze lingering on the motionless turret.

“This it?” she asked, her eyebrows raised as she took in the entire room.

I couldn’t help but grin. “Yep. Not exactly Fort Knox, is it?”

The server room wasn’t much to look at. A few racks behind plastic windows, blinky lights that gave the room a weird green, red, yellow, orange glow, and a small terminal tucked away in the corner. But the room was impressive when you learned what it housed. It was a data fortress. Specifically, it was the Kiroshi Optics data fortress.

Most data fortresses in Night City were housed in towering skyscrapers and wrapped in layers of security – private guards, military drones, firewalls thicker than a city block. Kiroshi Optics, the industry standard when it came to optical cyberware, should’ve been no different. But here we were, standing in front of their little hidden treasure trove that was guarded by a two-eddy lock and a turret that couldn’t tell a person from a microwave.

Sandra walked over to the now-disabled turret, giving it a quick once over. She turned back to me, her eyebrows raised. “How’d you even know this place was here? Most data fortresses are stashed in high-rises or corporate compounds. And they’re protected by, you know, actual security. Not…whatever this is,” she said, gesturing to the dingy room around us.

I shrugged, keeping my expression nonchalant. “Just one of those things,” I said, throwing her a vague smile.

I couldn’t tell her the truth. I couldn’t tell her that in one of the updates to the video game, the developers had hidden legendary clothing items all over the city, little Easter eggs for those willing to dig deep enough. And this dusty server room? It’s where you could find the legendary netrunner shoes, on the corpse of some rando who’d been sliced in half by that same janky turret I’d just disarmed.

Sandra clearly wasn’t satisfied y my non-answer, but she didn’t press. She moved to the terminal in the corner, pulling out her personal link and laptop. She knelt beside the terminal and plugged in, fingers flying across the keyboard as she started downloading the data we came here for.

I stepped back and let her work. She was a much better netrunner than me, and I’d only get in her way.

There were two reasons we were pulling off this heist, and neither was what most people would expect. The first, and more immediate, was to give Sandra’s people something valuable. I needed to dangle something juicy in front of them to convince them to side with The Pack and keep working for me. And what better way to do that than to give them access to the data fortress of a massive corporation?

Usually, netrunners would spend hours trying to hack into a fortress like this, battling daemons, black ICE, and security programs that only had one goal: frying your brain like a cheap burrito. But I worked differently. None of Sandra’s people would’ve thought to find the physical location of Kiroshi’s data fortress and just…plug in. Netrunners spent so much time in the virtual space, they sometimes forgot about the real world. Me? It was all about the backdoor approach.

Title of your sextape.

Break the dumb turret, snap the cheap bolt lock, and physically connect to the servers. Boom. Kiroshi’s security was banking that nobody would ever find this place, let alone bother walking through the front door.

Hell, even after I laid it all out for her, Sandra still looked like she couldn’t quite believe that this data fortress was stashed underground in Westbrook, protected by nothing but a discount lock and a glorified Nerf gun.

But the real reason we were here? Client information.

Sandra was muttering to herself as the data streamed in, completely focused on her screen. I knew she was mirroring it to some of her people back in her apartment. They were probably going through whatever files they were downloading from the server, but I only cared about one thing.

“Got something here,” she said, eyes still glued to the terminal. “Shipment details. Found their shipments to North Watson.”

“Ripper clinics?” I asked.

She nodded. “Mostly. I can cross-check these clinics with known ripper docs, cut out the legit ones like Cassius Ryder.”

Her fingers danced across the keys, narrowing down the list. “Here’s something. HeavenMed. Up in Northside. Got a big shipment of Kiroshi’s Interferometry Systems.”

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Maelstrom was infamous for their optics. And they didn’t rock the typical enhancements you’d find on the street. They ran off systems far more advanced and niche than what any average customer could buy. When you’ve got three, four, even five different eyes, each calibrated to focus on a completely different target, you couldn’t just plug and play. You needed mods that interfaced with the human brain. You needed a company that’s an expert in optical cyberware.

Kiroshi was the only company around that was capable of designing tech that could handle Maelstrom’s bizarre requirements, which made them the go-to for all things vision-related for the gang. And since no one else was using those systems except for Maelstrom, it made tracking down their ripper clinics a hell of a lot easier. Follow the trail of specialized gear, and you’d eventually find Maelstrom.

“HeavenMed…” I repeated. “Who’s running it?”

Sandra paused, her eyes flickering as she was no doubt pinging her people for info. “Othmar Brasi. Hmm, he’s a ripper with a rep. Shady as they come, but still under the radar. Barely. Doesn’t step on the wrong toes and he’s got connections.”

That was the one. I could feel it. “Sounds like we got our next stop.”

&&&&&

The water-soluble paint we’d splashed on Diego’s new ‘work’ truck was starting to fade as we cruised through North Watson. But even with the wear, it still made it look like we belonged there. We were just another road crew. Definitely not an armed squad prepping to hit a ripperdoc’s clinic.

Anna sat in the passenger seat, her fingers tapping impatiently against her leg. Cyndi was in the back, quietly humming along to some radio station none of us were really paying attention to. Diego, behind the wheel, was scanning the road like a hawk, eyes always moving, always looking for trouble. He seemed a lot more excited than before. He didn’t get to do anything at the Kiroshi data fortress, just plant and then pick up traffic cones.

Deng: in position. Clean sightlines on the clinic.

Deng and Zion had set themselves up as snipers on nearby rooftops, keeping an eye on the HeavenMed clinic. We weren’t expecting this to devolve into a firefight – at least, not if everything went according to plan. But this was Night City, and I didn’t want to get caught off guard.

HeavenMed was the clinic of Othmar Brasi, a ripperdoc with a list of unsavory connections, including a direct line to Maelstrom. The whole reason we were targeting him was because of that connection. I needed a bargaining chip to smooth things over with the Animals and try to make “amends” for having pushed them away from my polling sites. Angelica’s boss – whoever that was – probably still wanted me dead. I figured that I could smooth things over with the Animals by offering them something, or better yet, someone they’d want to tear apart even more than me.

That someone was Brandon Frost.

Now, Frost wasn’t just another Maelstrom thug. The guy was infamous. And not for any run-of-the-mill slaughter or standard Night City mayhem. A few years back, he’d gotten his hands on some unlucky Animals who wandered into his territory. Instead of just killing them quietly, like any sane gangster would do, he went full psycho. He filmed an XBD of himself burying them alive in concrete at an abandoned dock. That XBD made the rounds through the city and became an underground sensation. It was the kind of twisted shit that only Night City could produce. People loved it. They were tossing money at XBD sellers so they could revel in the sheer brutality of it.

Frost made a fortune off his snuff film. Until, of course, the Animals found out. Pissed didn’t even begin to cover their reaction. They beat the everlasting shit out of any XBD seller who stocked the thing and put a massive bounty on Frost’s head. The Animals weren’t exactly a powerful gang. Not on the level of Maelstrom. But it was still terrifying to have a gang that could tear off your arm and beat you to death with it hunting you.

Frost knew he pushed things too far. So, before anyone could cash in on the bounty, he disappeared. Just vanished from Night City for a few years, leaving the Animals fuming and eager for revenge.

Fred, always one for gossip, had picked up a rumor a few weeks ago. Frost was back. He’d crawled out of whatever rock he’d been hiding under and was trying to get back in with Maelstrom.

If I could get my hands on Frost, handing him over to the Animals would be the perfect peace offering. Angelica’s boss wouldn’t keep holding onto a small grudge when they had the chance to get Frost strapped to a chair in a dark basement somewhere.

Diego drove us past the front of HeavenMed, his truck rattling slightly over the cracked pavement. The clinic was crawling with Maelstrom goons. I spotted a couple leaning against the building, decked out in chrome and sneering at anyone in the area who dared to make eye contact. But as intimidating as they looked, they were also complete idiots.

Maelstrom had a tendency to go all in on chrome and forget about basics like common sense. Case in point: the back of the HeavenMed had zero security. No guards. No cameras. Just a metal security shutter that covered a window that led to the second floor. It was practically an open invitation for anyone to just sneak right into the clinic.

Diego slowed the truck once we were out of sight and looped back around, quietly moving us to the back of the clinic. He caught my eye in the rearview mirror and asked, “You ready?”

I nodded, and he parked the truck a little bit away from the back of the clinic. We all hopped out, moving like we were just another crew doing routine maintenance work. Diego and I grabbed the ladder from the truck. It clanked softly as we leaned it up against the side of the clinic. Diego held it steady while I started to climb and Cyndi followed right behind me, her Satara shotgun slung over her shoulder. Her earlier humming was gone, replaced by focused silence.

At the top, I pried open the window with a bit more force than I’d meant to. The frame creaked, but not enough to raise any alarms. I slipped inside and dropped lightly to the floor. The room was dim, illuminated only by the glow of nearby computer monitors. Cyndi followed close behind, landing softly beside me. Her Lynx Paws gave her crazy amounts of stealth to the point that, even standing next to her, I couldn’t hear her shift around. We both crouched low, staying close to the ground as we scanned the room.

It was a normal room with a few couches and desks scattered about the place. On one of the desks was a collection of computer monitors, and parked in front of the monitors sat a lone Maelstrom goon. He had one hand resting on the desk, the other flipping through a crinkled screamsheet on his lap. The monitors showed feels from all around the clinic – front entrance, a few hallways, the attached garage. Luckily for us, he wasn’t paying attention to any of them, far too engrossed in his magazine.

I moved slowly, unspooling the monowire from my wrist as I crept up behind him. Just as I closed the distance, one of the monitors switched to the security feed showing the room. The guy glanced up from his screamsheet, and I saw the moment of realization hit him. His eyes flicked to the screen and saw me standing behind him, monowire poised to strike.

It all happened in a split second. I looped the monowire around his neck in a single smooth motion, activated it, and pulled. He tried pushing a hand up to his neck to block my attack, but the monowire sliced through both his cybernetic hand and throat with sickening ease. The choked cry that escaped his lips was more a gurgle than a scream as blood sprayed across the consoles. His head fell to the floor with a dull think, and Cyndi rushed over to help me drag his body off the chair and onto the floor.

“Messy,” she muttered, wiping her hands on her pants. She crouch-walked to the other side of the room, hiding at the wall next to the security door to keep out of sight.

I was already plugging my personal link into the system, my focus on wiping the security logs and cctv footage. The clinic’s system was surprisingly light on security measures – probably because nobody was dumb enough to try and sneak into the security room itself to hack everything. The cameras blinked out, and I wiped all the access logs before sifting through the clinic’s data, looking for any mention of Frost.

Cyndi kept watch as I rifled through the clinic’s logs. It didn’t take long to find what I was after – client information. Sure enough, Frost had been in recently, getting fitted with some new implants. I checked the records and hit gold – an address in North Watson. Not far at all.

I couldn’t help but grin as I pulled my personal link from the console and locked eyes with Cyndi. “Got it. Let’s go.”

Just as I said it and moved to leave the room, the door swished open, and time seemed to slow. Standing in the doorway, staring right at us, was Brandon Frost.

Even my good luck was shit.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cyndi tense up. Her mantis blades clicked out with a metallic snick. The shotgun that had been in her hands moments before was way too loud for this tight space, but the blades? Silent and deadly. She was already moving before I could get a word out.

I only had enough time to yell, “Alive!” before she lunged.

In that split second, Cyndi adjusted her aim. Instead of going for his head, which she could’ve easily sliced off, she angled low and swiped. Her blade sliced clean through one of his wrists, severing his hand. Red blood mixed with white borg fluid and sprayed everywhere as Frost let out a guttural scream, clutching the stump where his hand used to be. His wide, panicked eyes darted between me and Cyndi, his brain struggling to catch up with what just happened.

Noah: trouble

I didn’t wait for Frost to recover. I dove at Brandon, tackling him to the ground. He was a borged-up tank of a man, and wrestling with him was like trying to pin down a boulder. We rolled around the ground and I was able to get behind him but he started slamming his head back into me and I felt something crunch. Maybe it was my nose, maybe my tooth, I wasn’t sure. Adrenaline was keeping me moving and let me ignore the pain. I jabbed my personal link into his neuroport, forcing my way into his system. His ICE flared up, trying to block me, but I pushed at it with everything I had.

I fired off a quickhack – cyberware malfunction. Most of a Maelstrom goon was machine, which meant one good hack had the potential to shut them down in seconds. Of course, they knew that was their weakness and spent tons of money on ICE to fend off netrunners. Since I was using my personal link to deliver the quickhack – which is something that most netrunners would never do – I was able to bat aside most of the ICE in his system. My quickhack didn’t do as much damage as possible, but his muscles still spasmed and his cyberware glitched. The shock of losing his hand combined with my hack had him disoriented.

Gunfire erupted outside, mixing with screams and curses. Well…this job just went to shit. I blocked out the chaos and focused back on Frost. His ICE was stronger than I expected, and it wasn’t long before he started regaining control of his body. He started kicking and thrashing and punching me with his one good hand. His blows hit hard, even with the awkward angle of us on the floor and me on his back. Pain pulsed through my ribs, but I couldn’t afford to stop. I kept focusing on his neuroport and the ICE that was there.

He cried out as Cyndi started stomping on his ribs. The crack of bone was sharp, but then she froze, hearing something. She darted for her Satara, leaving me tangled with Frost on the floor. With my right hand I was able to dig into my jacket and pull out an old signal blocker chip. It was something I’d scavenged during the Jotaro job. I couldn’t remember who I’d looted it from, but that didn’t matter right now. I jammed the chip into Frost’s neuroport, cutting off his internal Agent and any backup system he might have.

I sent another quickhack his way, hitting his cyberware again to make sure he stayed locked down. It was only targeting a few of his systems and wasn’t stopping him from punching and hitting me with his one good hand. My personal link was still tethered to his neuroport, which made my next move incredibly difficult. I managed to loop my monowire around his remaining hand and activated it with a pull. It sliced through flesh and metal with ease, and his second hand dropped to the floor with a wet thud.

You’d think that losing two hands would knock someone out of the fight. But the asshole was a damn tank and even without hands he was still dangerous – nothing but brute force, rage, and weight. I was pinned beneath him, my lungs screaming for air as he tried to slam his head back into me again and again. I could feel the bruising already, the sharp pain flaring up with each bone-rattling impact. He was heavier than anyone had a right to be. Probably over 300 pounds of metal and muscle. And every ounce of it was crushing me.

“Fucking…asshole!” Frost roared, spitting blood as he hurled every insult he could think of at me. His back arched as he threw his weight into another slam, and this time, something in my chest gave way. A rib. Maybe two. I screamed, pain blurring my vision for a second.

Cyndi’s shotgun blast echoed through the room, mixing with my scream in a painful harmony. Two solid blasts from her Satara, the slugs ripping through the security door behind us. The Maelstrom member who’d tried to rush to Brandon’s rescue crumpled to the ground just outside the door.

But I couldn’t focus on that.

Frost was still thrashing on top of me, and I could barely breathe. My ribs screamed with every movement, and all I wanted was a second to gather myself to try and push through the pain. My personal link was still jacked into his neuroport, but his ICE was putting up a hell of a fight, locking me out and throwing everything it had my way. I gritted my teeth and sent another cyberware malfunction his way, but my quickhacks weren’t sticking.

His head slammed back again, and stars exploded behind my eyes.

“Fuck…you!” Brandon hissed, his voice ragged, trying to throw his whole body into the next headbutt.

And that’s when I felt his defenses finally crack. I pushed through the last layer of ICE that protected him, and with a satisfying mental click, started shutting all his shit down. First, I yanked the power to his ligaments. His legs twitched before going limp. I killed his optical feed next and his eyes flickered out like dead bulbs. After a few more shutdowns, his entire body seized up for a second and then he just…sagged on top of me.

“Fucking finally,” I muttered, my breath ragged from the struggle. My mind briefly wandered, trying to remember the last time I’d used a quickhack like this in a fight. If I’d used a quickhack in a fight before this. Didn’t matter. What mattered was that Brandon Frost was down, even if it took more effort than I expected.

But the relief didn’t last long. He was still a mountain of metal and muscle laying on top of me, and my chest was burning with the strain of holding his weight. Cyndi was reloading her Satara, occasionally glancing over at me to check to make sure I was good.

I was finally able to get my arm free, wincing as I pulled it out from under Brandon’s limp body. I’d managed to unholster my Kenshin and charged it up, aiming past Cyndi to fire into the room beyond the security door. I’d noticed two Maelstrom gangers rushing up to the top floor, ready to kill us and save their friend.

They sprayed fire at us, forcing Cyndi to duck behind the wall. My Kenshin was charged and I let out three rounds, the bullets forcing my targets to dive for cover. Shooting at them made me a target, and their return fire starting crawling closer to me – rounds pinging off the floor just inches from where Brandon and I were tangled.

“Assholes,” I shouted, my voice cracking with desperation. One of the rounds pockmarked the ground near Brandon’s head, and I became desperate to get them to stop shooting. “I need him alive, dammit.”

Cyndi and I both managed to get a charge in our weapons. I could see the Maelstrom gangers moving outside, their heavy boots pounding on the metal floor as they regrouped and prepared to rush us. Cyndi swung out from behind the wall she’d been using as cover and fired her Satara. The shot tore through the flimsy clinic wall, ripping out a chunk of concrete and sending debris everywhere. It also bit through the leg of the Maelstrom ganger who’d been sheltering behind it. He didn’t even have time to scream before his shin was gone, severed clean off by the blast. The guy toppled over like puppet with its strings cut and I didn’t hesitate. With a quick squeeze, I fired a three-round burst from my Kenshin and the Maelstrom ganger’s head snapped back.

One down.

But the second ganger wasn’t waiting. He rushed the door, a hulking figure with a DB-2 Testera shotgun clutched in his hands. The guy fired off a wild blast as he charged, the twin barrels spewing out buckshot. His gun wasn’t as hi-tech as Cyndi’s Satara. Instead of his shot piercing through the clinic walls, it simply blew out chunks of plaster and concrete. Dust and debris flew everywhere, some of it cutting small gashes into Cyndi’s face and arms. Cyndi flinched and ducked back behind the cover for a split second.

But then she swung out from behind the wall and tossed the Maelstrom ganger her Satara. The guy had no time to react. He instinctively caught the shotgun, surprise flashing in his red-glowing eyes as he looked down at the gun in his hand. And that’s when Cyndi launched herself at him.

With a scream, she leapt forward, her mantis blades extending from her forearms in a flash of steel. It only took a second. I barely had time to register the movement before she’d already stabbed him seven times. Red blood and white borg fluid sprayed from his body and the guy crumpled to the floor in a twisted, twitching mess.

I crawled out from under Brandon and my eyes alighted on a blinking message in the corner of my vision. It was from Zion, and it was only one sentence.

Zion: Maelstrom prob has backup.

“Shit,” I muttered under my breath. Cyndi was already on the move, grabbing Brandon’s limp body by his shoulders. His hands were gone, just bleeding stumps where they used to be, and his face was locked in a grimace of pain. But he was still alive. Barely.

I grabbed Brandon by the legs and, together, we dragged his dead weight over to the window we’d used to sneak inside. Outside, the sound of gunfire echoed – Anna and Diego holding the line, Maelstrom caught between them and Deng and Zion’s sniping.

“One, two, three,” Cyndi counted as we pushed Brandon’s body through the window.

He tumbled through with a thud, crashing down on the gravel below. It wasn’t a nice landing – second story drop straight to his back. He groaned in pain, but his cyberware, though still deactivated, had done enough to keep him from breaking into pieces.

“He’s fine,” Cyndi grunted, already heading down the ladder. I followed her down, feeling the rush of adrenaline carry me through every sharp movement while I ignored the searing pain in my side.

As soon as we hit the ground, I saw Diego sprinting toward us, leaving Anna to cover him. He was yelling over the gunfire. “I’ll get the van. Hold tight.”

Cyndi and I grabbed Brandon again, dragging him towards where Diego had parked his van. He was barely conscious, muttering something under his breath, but he wasn’t fighting anymore. I guess losing both your hands and having all your cyberware shut off was enough to take the fight out of him.

Diego zoomed the van forward and the door flew open. Cyndi and I shoved Brandon into the back. He groaned again, but I didn’t care – he was cargo now.

“Get in!” Diego shouted as Cyndi hopped into the front passenger seat while I climbed in the back with Frost. Diego rode up to where Anna was still firing at Maelstrom and she scrambled in, slamming the door shut behind her.

Deng: we’ll cover from the rooftops until you’re clear. Then we’re pulling out.

The engine roared as Diego floored it, the van screeching away from the clinic. Through the rear window, I saw Zion and Deng take their last shots before we took a curve and everything disappeared from view. The sound of gunfire faded behind us as we sped through the streets of North Watson, leaving the chaos of the HeavenMed clinic in the dust.

I leaned back, finally allowing myself to breathe. The rush of adrenaline was starting to fade, and pain was beginning to creep in, but I still had a bit of time before I was completely useless. Anna clicked the safety on her rifle and then looked over at Brandon Frost, handless and barely conscious, before she turned to me.

“Who the hell is this?”

“This,” I said, slapping Brandon on the leg, “is my amends to the Animals.”