Chương 40: Of Corpos, Gonks, Gangs, and Mustangs III

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." - Thomas Edison I don't really know why, but the darkness of the warehouse felt less like a hiding spot and more like a tomb. I pulled my knees tighter against my chest, letting the cold from the damp concrete seep through my jeans and freezing the water that coated my skin. My heart was hammering against my ribcage so hard that I was genuinely afraid the sound would bleed through the walls.

I squeezed my eyes shut while clutching the grip of my Overture with both hands, my finger resting near the trigger.

Outside, the deafening roar of the thrusters from the Arasaka AV began to wind down, shifting to a whine as the gunship settled onto the cracked asphalt of the courtyard. The heavy vibration rattled the stacked shipping crates at my back, shaking loose accumulated dust that rained down on my hood. But I didn't dare move or breathe too hard. I had woven a polymorphic stealth daemon so dense and tightly coiled around my local network that I was sure that if someone didn't see me, they wouldn't even know I existed.

If an Arasaka netrunner threw a sweeping ping into this warehouse, my signature would bounce back as ambient static, something like a rusted pipe or a pile of rubble. But digital camouflage wasn't enough to calm my ass. If they walked through that door with thermal optics or a basic flashlight, I'd be iced on the spot. The sound of the hydraulic hiss of the AV's troop doors opening cut through the slight sound of the rain, followed by heavy, synchronized boot thuds that splashed through the bloody puddles outside.

I couldn't see them, but with my body currently in fight or flight mode, I was able to pick up their voices. They were muffled by the walls of the warehouse, but I was able to pick up the fact that they were speaking Japanese. Normally, that would have left me entirely in the dark. But since Night City was a chaotic melting pot of a hundred different cultures, languages, and dialects. Operating here without a real-time translator was a rookie mistake.

A few months ago, Kotka had practically forced me to install some high-end, linguistic-decryption suite directly into my Neural Link, tapping a portion of my processing power to instantly translate incoming audio feeds into my native tongue. She had told me that, "Anyone in Night City who only speaks one language is just begging to get zeroed on a misunderstanding." And she was correct on that, since right around now, I was able to depict some of the things said.

The software flared to life and I felt a subtle pressure at the base of my skull as the muffled, foreign words bleeding through the metal were instantly analyzed, broken down, and fed back into my auditory cortex in crisp, synthesized English.

"Perimeter is secure," a deep male voice reported, though the heavy modulation of a tactical comms helmet clipped the edges of his words.

"No active hostiles in the immediate vicinity. Thermal sweeps of the lot are negative."

"Status of the primary?" a second voice demanded. This one was sharper and more commanding while lacking the heavy modulation, which probably meant they were the squad leader. There was a brief pause, filled only by the sound of boots moving across the wet concrete, which I pictured was them finding the butchered Corpo, the man whose face I had just pulverized into unrecognizable meat a couple of minutes ago.

"Target is deceased," the first voice confirmed, the tone utterly devoid of emotion.

"He has severe cranial trauma. Cause of death appears to be a high-caliber entry wound to the thoracic cavity, followed by post-mortem blunt force mutilation."

"And the asset?" the leader snapped.

"The briefcase has been compromised. The internal lock was bypassed. It is empty. Furthermore... his suit has been sliced. The concealed micro-pocket in the left sleeve is empty. They took the shard." A tense silence fell over the courtyard as the first voice finished. I held my breath and felt my lungs practically burn while my grip on the Malorian tightened until my knuckles started to hurt.

The shard they had just mentioned was currently sitting in my own jacket pocket, and it was more than enough of a damning piece of corporate espionage meant to fan the flames of a war Night City wanted nothing to do with.

"I warned counter-intelligence that utilizing Maelstrom assets for localized logistics was an unacceptable risk," a third voice chimed in. It was a woman's voice, smooth with the distinct tone of a corporate netrunner.

"They are rabid dogs. Predictable only in their unpredictability. They likely attempted to double-cross the primary, triggering a firefight with his security detail, and a third party swept in to clean up the remains."

"That is irrelevant," the leader growled.

"The asset has been compromised. The shard contains unencrypted logistical data regarding the Free State supply lines and our planned weapon drops for Night City's residents. If that data reaches Militech or the NUSA high command, our covert involvement in this Unification War will be exposed. We will track down the culprit. Pull the local network data and find me every footprint, every ghosted IP, and every scrap of data left in this yard." This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road.

If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"Already on it," the female netrunner replied.

"But the local subnets are fried. The security detail was hit with a short-circuit, and the Maelstrom optics are completely blown out. Whoever did this knew what they were doing. I'll be expanding the sweep to the surrounding infrastructure." I felt a cold bead of sweat track down the side of my face and squeezed my eyes shut, mentally double-checking the integrity of my stealth daemon. A quote Kotka and I had run across while exploring the Old Net came to my mind.

'Be formless. Shapeless. Like water. Water can flow or crash. Be water.' I repeated it over and over to myself, thinking of staying small and staying dead, when I noticed the shuffle of footsteps as Arasaka corpos outside began to move once again. The sound of a set of boots splashing through the mud snapped me back into focus. They were moving deliberately along the side of the warehouse, in the direction of the destroyed fuse box and the side door.

My heart leapt into my throat, and I shifted my weight slowly on the concrete floor, raising the heavy barrel of my iron. Though I couldn't see the door in the pitch-black warehouse, the warped and rusted frame allowed a thin outline of ambient light to seep through the edges. I aimed towards what I believed was the center, doing my best to keep the barrel pointed at the middle of that faint rectangle.

"Sir," the female netrunner's voice came through, much louder and closer now. She was standing right on the other side of the wall. I could hear the rustle of her gear.

"I have located the primary infrastructure junction. But we have a problem... The fuse box has been destroyed by gunfire. The local grid is severed."

"Can you restore power to see if the cameras caught anything?" the leader asked, his voice slightly more distant.

"Negative. The hardware is damaged. But..." She paused, and I heard her shifting in the mud, stepping directly in front of the rusted steel side door.

"There should be a backup generator somewhere inside," she reported.

"Door frame is severely warped, but the locking mechanism is sheared. This door has seen semi-recent activity."

'She knows,' my mind screamed.

'She knows I'm in here.' I thumbed the hammer of my iron back, which was rather loud in the deafening silence of the dark warehouse. I froze, praying the rain outside had masked the sound and that I had pushed that door shut hard enough. If she opened that door, I had a fraction of a second to put a. 577 caliber round through her chest before her squad lit up the warehouse and turned me into a Swiss cheese.

"Get that footage," the leader ordered.

"And sweep the interior. If the culprit is hiding inside, take them alive. We need to know who possesses the shard." The door handle rattled violently, and I watched the thin outline of light shift as the woman pulled against it. I held my breath and applied a microscopic amount of pressure to the trigger.

'Come on,' I thought, the terrified, primal part of my brain taking over.

'Open it. I may die, but at least I'll be taking one of you with me.' She grunted, pushing harder, but the door refused to budge. I guess I had slammed it hard enough to drive it deep into the rusted frame, effectively jamming it once again.

"It's wedged," I heard her mutter in frustration.

"I'm blowing the hinges. Stand by for breach." Understanding the words she had just said in Japanese made my stomach drop. She was going to shoot her way in, and the moment that door fell, flashlights would sweep the corners, and my digital camouflage wouldn't mean jack shit as I would be facing some black ops 'saka fuckers. Bang. The first shot hit the top hinge, sending a shower of orange sparks biting through the gap in the door frame and causing the door to groan. Bang.

The second shot hit the bottom hinge, and the door shuddered, sagging inward by a fraction of an inch as a wider beam of light cut across the floor of the warehouse, stopping just inches from the toes of my boots.

"Abort!" the male leader's voice suddenly barked, crackling with urgency.

"Yukina, fall back to the AV immediately!"

"Sir?" she questioned, her tone laced with confusion.

"I am just about to get inside."

"There is no time!" the leader yelled over the sound of the rain.

"We just got word from Overwatch. They have detected a massive spike in NUSA orbital radar sweeps originating from the Southern California border. Our operational window is closing rapidly. If we do not break leave within the next two minutes, we'll have Militech interceptors to worry about. let's go, now!"

"But-""Everything is already in place!" the leader cut her off.

"The scene is prepped. The evidence points to a rogue mercenary hit squad. We're taking the body and letting the charge take care of the rest. We're leaving, now!"

"Tch," the female netrunner clicked her tongue in disgust.

"Wasted ammo." I watched the shadows shift as she holstered her weapon. The sound of her boots squelching in the mud rapidly retreated from the side of the building, moving back toward the center of the courtyard.

"All units... AV... go," the leader's words cut in and out, having gone too far for me to be able to interpret his words anymore, allowing only for snippets. The hydraulic hiss of the troop doors sealing shut echoed through the lot, and a second later, the deep, resonant hum of the thrusters aggressively spiked into a chest-rattling roar. The wind shook the warehouse's front doors as it lifted off.

I listened, paralyzed as the sound of the AV rapidly ascending faded into a distant whine, and finally disappeared entirely. I sat there, my Overture still aimed at the door and my arms trembling so hard I could barely hold the weapon straight. My lungs felt like they were on fire, and I let out a ragged exhale, lowering the gun to my lap and resting my head back against the rough wood of the shipping crates. I had almost died at the hands of a random Solo ten months ago, but that was just a street merc.

Facing a synchronized squad of covert ops from a banished megacorp... I was absolutely sure I was going to die.

"Okay," I whispered to myself, my voice shaking.

"Okay. You're alive. You're fine." I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to force the adrenaline out of my system, trying to bring my heart rate back down to a manageable rhythm.

"Be formless. Shapeless. Like water. Water can flow or crash. Be water." The silence of the warehouse returned, accompanied only by the sound of the rain, when a low beeping caught my attention. Beep... beep... beep... It was faint and muffled by the thick walls, but living in Rancho, I could recognize that accelerating tone anywhere. I remembered that the leader had mentioned something about a charge.

Beep-beep-beep-beep-"Oh, fuck-" realization hit me a bit too late for me to cover my ears as the sound of a detonation assaulted them. The charge, likely planted inside the Corpo's ride, resounded with a synchronized chain reaction. The shockwave shook the entire building, and I felt the concrete floor pitch beneath me, throwing me hard against the shipping crates as a deafening, metallic shriek tore through the air.