Chương 13: It All Comes Crashing Down II

He pushed himself off the brick wall and began to cross the dark street, letting his shoulders relax for a fraction of a second when the blinding glare of high-beam headlights pierced the rain, and an armored Chevillon Emperor 520 Ragnar roared down the asphalt, its engine screaming as the driver gunned the accelerator, hydroplaning slightly on the wet street. Alejandro turned his head, his pupils constricting against the harsh light.

He didn't even have time to raise his arms, as his body was too damaged for sudden responses, and a split second later, the grill of the SUV struck him. The impact shattered his remaining ribs and fractured his spine. He was thrown violently through the air, crashing down onto the wet asphalt, sliding across the rough ground, his body coming to a halt near the flooded gutter. He lay flat on his back. He couldn't move his legs. He couldn't feel his left arm at all.

His blood flowed freely from his shattered body, mixing with the dirty rainwater and swirling down into the city drains. He heard as the armored SUV screeched to a halt nearby, one of its doors swinging open. Meredith Stout stepped out into the rain. She was limping badly, her corporate suit soaked with blood from the gunshot wound to her stomach. She held a pistol in her right hand. Her face was twisted into a mask of pure, unadulterated rage.

She walked over to where Alejandro lay broken on the street and stood over him, the rain plastering her blonde hair to her skull. Her breathing was ragged, her free hand pressing a combat dressing against her abdomen. Alejandro stared up at her, but there was nothing he could do. He couldn't fight anymore, and the combat stims had burned out, leaving nothing but cold, paralyzing agony. He looked past the furious corporate agent, staring up at the gray Night City sky. Memories flooded his fading consciousness.

In the back of his mind, he saw Julia smiling at him across their kitchen table before having a child had even been a topic they discussed. He saw Santi's striking white hair and violet eyes playing through his head. He remembered the day they had brought the boy home as if it were just yesterday. He had bought them time. He had managed to prepare his son as best he could. He had done what he had to do.

"Did you really think we wouldn't be able to track our property?" Meredith asked, her voice tight with pain and anger. She aimed the barrel of the pistol directly at his face. Alejandro remained silent, memories replaying in his head as the rain fell softly against his skin. Meredith's anger flared even hotter. His silence pissed her off even more than getting shot, and embarrassing her in front of a squad of grunts ever did.

"You should know this better than anyone, Reyes. No one runs from Militech's grip. No one." Her arrogant words finally prompted him to react. Alejandro turned his head slightly, locking his fading hazel eyes on the ambitious woman. He saw the ruthless corporate machine staring back at him, young and eager to climb the ladder over a pile of corpses, just like he had been years ago.

"I've already been... on the other side of that gun..." Alejandro coughed, blood spilling over his lips. He offered her a bloody, defiant grin, refusing to give her the satisfaction of his fear. He made the effort to move his chrome arm and raise it to give her the middle finger.

"Just wonder how long it'll be before they decide it's your-" Meredith didn't let him finish the thought, pulling the trigger. The gunshot echoed through the empty street, and silence fell for a second. Then she pulled it again, and again, and again, emptying the entire magazine into his head in a fit of rage. The rounds pulverized bone and chrome alike. When the slide locked back on an empty chamber, Alejandro Reyes was zeroed.

His head was left as nothing but a ruined mess of bloody mush and shattered chrome in the pouring rain.....

The simulated sun of the African virtual safari beat down on Santi's skin, radiating a programmed warmth that felt indistinguishable from reality. He stood in the tall, dry grass of the digitized savannah, analyzing the majestic stride of a massive bull elephant. The commercial braindance wreath rested securely around his temples, feeding sensory data directly into his cortex and bypassing his optical nerves entirely.

He was mapping the emotional resonance of the recording artist, categorizing the feelings of awe and profound peace the original creator had embedded into the raw data stream. It was a fascinating exercise in understanding organic emotional variables. In the physical world of the Charter Hill apartment, Julia was standing in the kitchen, pouring a glass of sparkling Real Water.

Her Agent buzzed on the marble countertop, and Julia glanced down, expecting a routine notification from her superiors at the Militech logistics division. However, the screen illuminated with a highly encrypted, priority-one ping with no sender identification and a decryption key matched Alejandro's unique local signature. She tapped the screen and watched the text that appeared on it. Julia. They found out. Get the data chip from the office, hit the EMP to fry the servers and the terminals. Grab Santi and run.

Don't look back, I'll contact you when it's safe. I love you both. This message will delete within a minute of you opening it. The glass slipped from her fingers and shattered against the tiled floor, sending water and sharp crystalline shards scattering across the kitchen. A suffocating cold seized Julia's chest, and the air seemed to vanish from her lungs.

She stared at the glowing text on the Agent, reading the words over and over until the harsh reality of the message carved its way into her bones, and the message ultimately self-deleted. Alejandro was compromised, and the corporation had found out about his search beyond the Blackwall. The "I love you both" part of the message was stripped of all his usual Solo bravado and corporate confidence, something that confirmed her deepest, most paralyzing fear. Her husband was most likely already dead.

She could feel the brutal truth of it anchoring itself in her soul. Alejandro would never send a message telling her to run without him unless he was already beyond saving. She felt panic hijack her nervous system and sprinted into the living room. Santi was resting peacefully on the plush sofa, completely submerged in the virtual safari, a serene expression smoothing out his usually analytical features. Julia grabbed the silver halo of the braindance wreath and ripped it roughly from his head.

Santi gasped, his body jerking upward as his consciousness was violently yanked from the sun-drenched savannah and slammed back into the dim, neon-filtered lighting of their apartment. He blinked rapidly, his violet eyes wide and disoriented. The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Get up!" Julia screamed, her voice cracking with fear.

"Santi, get up right now!"

"Ma?" Santi asked, blinking rapidly as his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting of the apartment. He looked at her shaking hands and the wide panic in her eyes.

"What's going on? What's the emergency?"

"Go to your room!" Julia grabbed his shoulders, physically pulling him up from the sofa and pushing him toward the hallway.

"Pack your cyberdeck! Pack the wreath! Grab a backpack and put your clothes in it right this second! We are going on a trip!" Santi stumbled slightly, catching his balance. He turned to look at her, his brow furrowing in confusion.

"A trip? Ma, we didn't plan anything. Where are we even going? I don't even know what to pack right now."

"Do it now, Santi!" Julia shrieked, tears finally breaking free and spilling down her cheeks.

"Do not argue with me! Just pack your things!" Santi flinched at the scream. He had never seen his mother lose control like this. The sheer panic in her voice overrode his confusion, and he gave a quick, worried nod before sprinting down the hallway toward his bedroom to do what she asked. Julia turned and ran in the opposite direction, skidding to a halt in front of Alejandro's home office. She pressed her thumb against the glass and leaned in for the retinal sweep.

The security protocols recognized her secondary clearance, and the seals hissed, allowing the solid door to slide open. The room was freezing, dominated by the humming towers of super-cooled server racks Alejandro had been using for his illicit dives. Julia rushed to the primary air-gapped terminal. She didn't know the first thing about coding or Net architecture, but she knew exactly what her husband kept hidden.

She reached behind the primary monitor, her fingers frantically searching the dark casing until she felt the small, concealed release latch. She pressed it, and a tiny compartment popped open. Resting inside was the data chip that contained the blueprints for the carbon-nanotube mesh currently woven into her son's brain, along with God knows what else.

Julia snatched the chip and shoved it deep into her undergarments, pressing the cold silicon flat against her skin where no corporate security scan would casually search. She turned her attention to the wall beside the terminal and saw where Alejandro had installed a physical failsafe exactly for this scenario. She flipped the red protective cover up and slammed her palm against the manual EMP detonator. A deafening crack echoed inside the sealed room as a localized electromagnetic pulse ripped through the office.

The humming server racks instantly died, and the monitors went completely black. A loud sizzle of frying circuits filled the air, immediately followed by the acrid, toxic stench of burning silicon and melted copper wiring. Everything inside the room was permanently zeroed. Julia spun around, abandoning the ruined office. She sprinted into her own master bedroom. She dragged a large canvas duffel bag from the closet and threw it onto the mattress.

She ripped open her dresser drawers, grabbing handfuls of clothing, completely ignoring color coordination or logic. She grabbed a stash of physical eurodollars Alejandro kept hidden in a hollowed-out book along with a chip that contained 10, 000 untraceable eddies. She threw it all into the bag, her hands shaking so violently she could barely work the zipper. She grabbed the handles, ready to run, when her mind completely halted.

The frantic, animal-like panic froze, suddenly replaced by a cold wave of pure corporate logic. She was a secretary at Militech. She understood how the machine operated. Militech owned the streets of the corporate center. They monitored the transit networks. They controlled the airspace. If a low-level administrative assistant and her ten-year-old son suddenly vanished into the night just hours after her husband went rogue, it would instantly confirm her complicity.

NetWatch would flag their biometric signatures at every checkpoint, and Corpo hit squads would hunt them relentlessly through the badlands. Running was an admission of guilt. Running would paint a permanent target on Santi's back. Therefore, the only play they had left in the book was absolute ignorance. Julia dropped the duffel bag and unzipped it, pulling the clothes back out. She meticulously folded every shirt and placed them exactly where they belonged in the dresser drawers.

She returned the physical currency to its hiding spot, including the credit chip. She smoothed the wrinkles out of the bedsheets until the room looked undisturbed. She walked out into the hallway and approached Alejandro's office. Thin wisps of foul-smelling smoke were leaking from the edges of the doorframe. She pulled the door completely shut, ensuring the biometric lock engaged and secured the room.

She moved to the apartment's environmental control panel on the wall and manually bypassed the automated settings, forcing the air scrubbers to maximum capacity. The ventilation system roared to life, aggressively filtering the stench of burnt wires out of the living space. Julia closed her eyes, forcing herself to take long, agonizingly slow breaths. She had to bury the grief and the fear, becoming nothing but an empty vessel.

She opened her eyes, her expression settling into a rigid mask of forced calm, and walked into Santi's bedroom. The boy was standing by his bed. His backpack open, his silver Moore Technologies braindance wreath carefully nested inside. He was currently organizing his silver personal link cables, trying to fit a few pairs of jeans into the remaining space.

"Santi, stop," Julia said quietly, her voice dropping to a steady tone. Santi paused, a cable still wrapped around his fingers, and looked up at her, completely thrown by the sudden shift in her demeanor.

"You just screamed at me to pack, Ma. I was trying to figure out which cables I need and grab my clothes."

"I know what I said, papi," Julia murmured, stepping into the room.

"But we are not going anywhere right now. We are staying here." Santi's brow furrowed in genuine confusion.

"But you were scared and crying."

"You're right," Julia admitted, swallowing the massive lump of grief lodged in her throat. She fought her own emotions, desperately maintaining eye contact to project stability for her son.

"I was wrong. I got a message from your father, and I panicked. I wasn't thinking clearly. I am sorry for yelling at you." Santi tilted his head, noticing the slight tremor in her hands and the redness around her eyes.

"If Pa sent a message that made you panic... is he okay? Did something happen to him?"

"It just means we need to wait," Julia lied smoothly, moving to the bed. She began pulling his clothes out of the backpack, setting them back on his dresser.

"Help me unpack this. We need to put everything exactly back where it was." Santi did not understand the contradictory commands, but he recognized the necessity of following her lead. He silently unpacked his cyberdeck and his coiled cables, placing them back on his desk. Julia took his hand, her grip tight, and led him back down the hallway into the living room. The environmental scrubbers had successfully eliminated the smoke, leaving the apartment smelling of recycled air.

"Sit down," Julia instructed, guiding him to the sofa, passing him the braindance wreath for him to put on.

"Put this back on, and continue doing exactly what you were doing before I interrupted you." Santi stared at the silver halo, then back at his mother.

"Ma, putting this back on doesn't make any sense right now. Let me jack into the local subnets. I can ping Pa's deck, or look for news feeds to see what's wrong."

"No," Julia said firmly, placing the wreath directly into his hands.

"You will not touch the Net or look for him. You put this on, and you stay in the simulation until I tell you to take it off. Do you understand me?" The authority in her voice left no room for negotiation. Santi nodded, slipping the metal band over his head and aligning the internal diodes with his temples. He activated the sequence, and his consciousness slipped away from the uncertainty of the living room, returning to the programmed warmth of the virtual savannah.

Julia watched his body relax as the simulation took hold, and turned away, grabbing the remote control for the wall-mounted screen. She navigated the media library, bypassing the news feeds and the corporate propaganda channels, and selected an ancient, two-dimensional movie file Alejandro had downloaded years ago. Star Wars. The iconic yellow text began crawling up the starry screen, accompanied by the blaring, triumphant orchestral score as Julia sat down on the opposite end of the sofa.

She pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs. She stared at the screen, watching laser blasts exchange between fictional spaceships. She sat there acting as if nothing had happened, pretending she was just a normal corporate employee enjoying a quiet afternoon with her son. Though inside her mind, she was screaming.

She was going completely crazy, tearing herself apart with the knowledge that her husband's body was likely thrown somewhere in the pouring rain, while the people who killed him were undoubtedly marching toward her front door.