Chương 39: Of Corpos, Gonks, Gangs, and Mustangs II

[A-Prime: The federal forces are making unprecedented gains in the Southwest. Myers is not content with simply securing the boss-wash corridor or the immediate border states. Intelligence confirms NUSA high command is drafting logistics for a total continental sweep. They will not stop until every Free State, and every independent territory, is subjugated under Washington's boot.] [Unknown Target 4: Night City is neutral. Myers won't risk a full-scale corporate intervention by marching Militech into Watson or City Center.] [A-Prime: Your neutrality is an illusion tolerated only until the NUSA secures its primary objectives. Once the Free States fall, Night City will be surrounded, isolated, and annexed. Arasaka offers you the means to defend yourselves. We will provide the capital, the weaponry, and the tactical advisors. You will bleed Militech dry in the streets of the Free States, and if they push into Northern California, you will turn Night City into a fortress they cannot conquer.] Santi yanked the shard from his neuro-port, his chest heaving as if he had just sprinted for blocks. The text vanished from his vision, replaced once again by the massacre that had gone down around him.

"She won't stop," Santi whispered, his voice trembling with a mixture of profound dread and rising fury.

"Myers wants it all. Every single state and every single city." It would be great if the Unification War were just a distant conflict happening in the deserts of New Mexico or the mountains of Colorado. Unfortunately, it was a tidal wave of blood, lead, and chrome, and it was heading directly for Night City.

And Arasaka, the banished corporate boogeyman, was using the city's gangs and the desperate Free States as proxy armies to fight their old rival, Militech, bleeding the NUSA forces without ever officially declaring war themselves. It was a phantom Fifth Corporate War happening right under everyone's noses. Santi stared down at the dead Arasaka Corpo. This man was an operative sent to fan the flames of war, negotiating weapon drops with Maelstrom to ensure the streets ran red with Militech blood when the time came.

The sheer arrogance of it, the absolute disregard for the millions of lives caught in the middle of this corporate-political meat grinder, ignited a blinding, uncontrollable rage inside the sixteen-year-old.

"You son of a bitch," Santi snarled. The anger, boiling over from years of trauma, paranoia, and the crushing weight of the city, violently erupted from Santi, and he stepped forward and drove the heavy heel of his combat boot directly into the dead Corpo's face. The sickening crunch of shattered bone echoed over the sound of the rain.

"Fuck you!" Santi screamed, his voice cracking as he kicked the corpse's head again, sending a spray of blood across the concrete. And he didn't stop. He couldn't stop. The phantom ache in his previously shattered ribs flared to life, but he ignored it, channeling every ounce of his adolescent fury into the brutal assault.

"You corpo bitch!" Kick.

"You think you can just come here?" Kick.

"Dragging us into a fucking war!" Kick. Santi kicked the lifeless head until his chest heaved with exertion, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The Corpo's face had been reduced to an unrecognizable mass of flesh and broken chrome. Santi staggered backward, his hands shaking, his knuckles white as he clenched his fists. The rain washed the blood from his boots, but it did nothing to cool the burning anger in his chest. Night City was a meat-grinder, he already knew that. But this was worse.

This was the threat of utter annihilation. If the NUSA marched on Night City, and Arasaka armed the gangs to fight them, the streets would be a literal warzone. Millions would die. His mother. Kotka. Everyone. Santi sighed heavily, cursing the luck of this godforsaken city. He closed his eyes, forcing the panic down and burying it under the logical framework of his mind. He needed to focus.

He was standing in the middle of a massacre involving Arasaka operatives and Maelstrom gangers, possessing highly classified corporate intelligence. If whoever had killed these men came back and saw him standing there, he was dead. He needed to secure the Boss 429 frame and delta out of Northside before he became another casualty of the shadow war. He opened his eyes, sweeping the area. The massive metal doors of the warehouse were shut tight, secured by heavy, magnetic industrial locks.

"How the hell am I supposed to access the warehouse?" Santi muttered, wiping the mixture of rain and sweat from his forehead. He tapped into his Paraline Mk. 1, bypassing the dead subnets of the corpses and casting a wide-net ping specifically targeting localized infrastructure hardware. A faint, green wireframe pathway illuminated in his HUD, tracing the electrical current from the magnetic locks of the warehouse doors directly to a heavy-duty industrial fuse box mounted on the side exterior wall of the building.

The power grid for the warehouse was currently off, plunging the interior into darkness and locking the doors down securely. A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Santi jogged toward the side of the warehouse, splashing through the mud and overgrown weeds.

If he could interface with the fuse box, he might be able to manually override the magnetic locks, slide the doors open, tag the chassis for a heavy-lift transport drone later, and delta, even if it would cost him ten to fifteen thousand eddies. He rounded the corner of the brick exterior, his eyes straining to see in the gloom. He approached the fuse box, raising his hand to pry open the metal casing, only to see that the fuse box had been obliterated.

It looked as though someone had taken a heavy-caliber shotgun and unloaded it directly into the electrical panel at point-blank range. Twisted wires, shattered circuit boards, and warped metal hung uselessly from the brick wall. There was absolutely no light or power. The locking mechanism was dead and fused shut. And if that wasn't enough, slumped against the wall, directly beneath the destroyed fuse box, was a fifth dead stromer. This one hadn't been shot or fried by ICE.

His throat had been cleanly, surgically opened from ear to ear by a single slash from a monowire or a thermal katana. A massive pool of blood had washed over the mud, staining the dead ganger's heavy leather boots.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Santi screamed, the frustration finally boiling over. He threw his hands up in the air, his voice echoing against the brick wall.

"Could this day get any worse?!" And, as if Night City itself had heard him and decided to answer the challenge, a deep, resonant hum vibrated through the freezing air. Santi felt the vibration in his chest before he heard the distinct, deafening roar of heavy aerodyne thrusters. The wind in the courtyard suddenly whipped into a violent frenzy, scattering the flames of the burning Galena and kicking up a blinding spray of rainwater.

Santi snapped his head up, looking past the edge of the roof toward the sky where he saw a heavily armored AV descending rapidly through the rain clouds, its powerful spotlights cutting through the gloom of the courtyard like massive blades of white light. It wouldn't have been too bad if it were a standard Trauma Team ambulance or a blocky NCPD transport. But no, this was an aerodyne gunship, painted in a matte-black finish with blood-red accents.

It was an Arasaka AV likely coming to retrieve their dead operative and the data shard he carried. Unadulterated panic seized Santi's heart since he was pinned against the side of the building with the megacorp's most classified intelligence sitting in his pocket. Once that AV landed, the corporate kill-squad would instantly sweep the perimeter, and if they caught him out here, he wouldn't even have time to blink before a round tore his head clean off his shoulders.

He desperately looked around for a way in since retreating back to the parking lot was suicide. It was way too open and illuminated. He glanced just a few feet past the destroyed fuse box he was currently standing next to. Partially hidden by shadows and overgrown ivy along the brick wall was a reinforced steel side door. Santi lunged toward it, his boots slipping in the bloody mud. He turned the rusted handle and pushed it with all his might, but it was stuck.

The frame had warped from years of neglect, and the metal had rusted and fused to the hinges. The roar of the AV thrusters grew deafening as the gunship breached the perimeter of the courtyard, beginning its vertical descent into the parking lot. The blinding white spotlights swept across the concrete, mere seconds away from bleeding around the corner and illuminating the side of the warehouse where Santi stood.

The panic inside him reached a critical point, flooding his central nervous system with a massive, naturally induced spike of adrenaline. The fear of death from the terrifying reality of the corporate assassins descending upon him triggered every survival instinct he possessed. His body, significantly larger and denser than the average sixteen-year-old's, responded to the surge. Santi took a half-step back, planted his left foot firmly in the mud, and threw his entire body weight forward.

He drove his shoulder directly into the rusted steel door, and the warped metal groaned, the rusted hinges shrieking in protest. Santi roared, ignoring the flare of pain in his collarbone, and pushed harder, his leg muscles straining against the mud. With a sharp, metallic crack, the rusted lock snapped, and the steel door gave way, allowing him to burst into the warehouse. As soon as he did, he grabbed the edge of the door and slammed it shut behind him, plunging himself into absolute darkness.

The roar of the AV thrusters outside was muffled by the thick metal, but the vibration still shook the walls of the warehouse as they had landed. Santi stammered backward, his hands blindly feeling the air in front of him, which was stale, smelling of rust, old oil, and damp concrete. He navigated blindly through the dark, bumping into heavy wooden crates and cold metal scaffolding, desperately trying to put as much distance between himself and the door as possible.

He stumbled into a far corner, his back hitting two stacked shipping crates, and he slid down the wooden surface, pulling his knees to his chest, making himself as small a target as humanly possible. His heart was hammering so violently against his ribs he was terrified the Arasaka strike team would hear it through the walls.

"Think," he mouthed silently, his breath hitching.

"Think, Santi." The physical door was closed, but against an elite corporate hit squad, a piece of rusted metal was nothing. In his mind, they would deploy netrunners, sweep the building with active sonar, thermal imaging, and aggressive network pings. If he had even a single line of code broadcasting from his deck, they would lock onto his coordinates and blow a hole through the wall to get to him.

Santi closed his eyes, instantly diving into the cold embrace of the Net, turning his entire fifteen terabytes of processing power inward. He initiated a deep digital camouflage, a technique he had practiced for months, refining his ability to mask his massive bandwidth footprint. He started doing everything in his power to camouflage himself, throttling his neural output down to a microscopic hum.

He wove a polymorphic stealth daemon around his own local network, masking his massive bandwidth footprint to perfectly mimic the ambient, dead static of the abandoned warehouse to avoid being picked up by a ping. To a sweeping netrunner, he wouldn't register as a human, a target, or a threat, but rather as a void of dead data. Santi slowed his breathing to a near stop as he sat in the pitch-black corner.

He pulled his iron out of his pocket and readied himself to use it as the sound of muffled heavy armored boots hitting the concrete courtyard outside echoed through the rain.