Chương 44: In the Black with a Polish Cat I

"Behind every great man is a mother who rolls her eyes." - Jim Carrey Santi simply stood by the interior control panel, his finger resting casually on the access button of the digital interface. He had previously taken the liberty to further explore the warehouse while he waited for his mother to arrive, noting every detail of the space he had rented. The concrete floors were swept clean and painted with fading, yet visible yellow safety lines.

The overhead fluorescent lighting was bright and free of the buzz that plagued cheaper edgezones.

More importantly, the massive space was fully climate-controlled. Outside, the freezing drizzle of the late February evening was thoroughly illuminated by the sweeping, mismatched headlights of a Thorton Galena G240 turning off the main service road and rumbling down the alleyway, and as the car rolled out of the rain and crossed the threshold into the dry interior of the warehouse, the engine purred.

Beneath the carefully cultivated exterior decay, Santi had spent countless sleepless nights meticulously rebuilding the CHOOH2 engine above the average factory state almost two years ago. It was the ultimate sleeper build, a rustbucket that could outrun most mid-tier corpo interceptors if pushed to the redline. Santi hit the control panel once the Galena's rear bumper cleared the threshold. The heavy metal doors smoothly reversed direction, sliding shut and locking with a heavy thud.

The driver-side door of the G240 creaked open, the hinges intentionally left unoiled to maintain the illusion of a junker, and Julia stepped out. Julia rose to her full height of a respectable five-foot-eight, shutting the door with a solid click and immediately looking up at her son. At sixteen years old, Santi had already shot up to an imposing six-foot-two. His broadening shoulders were currently slumped under the weight of exhaustion.

His scuffed jacket was smeared with soot, his boots were caked in mud and diluted synthetic fluids, and his usually vibrant white hair was matted with dirt. But Julia didn't seem to notice the grime, the soot, or the exhausted look in her son's eyes as she was practically vibrating with a maternal energy that Santi hadn't seen from her in years.

She beamed, her dark eyes crinkling at the corners with joy as she rushed forward, effortlessly carrying a canvas duffel bag in one hand and a steaming, insulated thermo-container of fresh food in the other.

"So!" Julia practically sang, her voice echoing brightly off the concrete walls and the high steel beams of the ceiling.

"A girl! My little boy finally has a girl coming over!" Santi immediately felt a rush of heat rise to his cheeks.

"Ma, please. Stop. She's not my output."

"Oh, claro que no," Julia teased mercilessly, setting the steaming container of food and the duffel bag down on top of a nearby wooden crate, completely oblivious to the fact that she was currently resting his dinner on top of an authentic, Ming Dynasty porcelain replica worth eighteen thousand eddies.

"Just a 'female friend' that you urgently demanded a fresh change of clothes for. You're standing in an industrial warehouse in Arroyo, Santiago, not a five-star, reservation-only restaurant in the heart of Corpo Plaza. Why the sudden, desperate need to impress if she's just a friend?"

"Because I literally smell like ozone, smoke, and I'm covered head to toe in dirt," Santi deflected, crossing his arms defensively over his chest and acutely aware of how thoroughly he looked like a vagrant.

"And I told you on the holo, it's not even like that. I've known her for two years."

"Two years?" Julia's eyebrows shot up toward her hairline. She placed her hands firmly on her hips, looking up at him with a mixture of maternal suspicion, mock betrayal, and deep amusement.

"Two years, and I am only hearing about this mysterious girl now? Where did you even meet her?"

"In the Net," Santi mumbled, dropping his gaze to his muddy boots and rubbing the back of his neck.

"She's a netrunner. She approached me first, was a fan of my work, and we've pulled our fair share of gigs together. But I've... I've actually never met her in person. Tonight is going to be the first time." Julia blinked, taking a moment to fully process the information.

"You're meeting a girl from the Net? In realspace? For the very first time? Santiago, you don't even know who this person really is! What if it's some fifty-year-old scav trying to set you up?"

"Ma, I know her," Santi argued.

"We've gotten semi-personal over the last couple of years. We just never shared our actual names or faces. I know she's seventeen. I know her dad is a lab scientist for Biotechnica who practically lives at the facility, pulling eighty-hour weeks. I know her mom passed away a few years ago. I even know she has an older sister who is currently busting her ass trying to get into the NCPD academy." Santi sighed, his posture softening.

"We've spent hundreds of hours in the Net talking. I trust her. But we just... we never shared our names. Just our handles." Julia's expression shifted, and the protective mother vanished for a fraction of a second, replaced by a flash of analytical recognition.

"Well, alright then. You know her life story, but not her face," Julia mused, a deeply amused smirk slowly spreading across her lips.

"What is this handle she goes by?" The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

"Kotka," Santi said.

"Her family is Polish. She mentioned her grandparents immigrated from Warsaw."

"Kotka," Julia repeated, her dark eyes dancing with a renewed, mischievous light.

"Oh, Santiago. You do realize what that translates to, right?"

"Yes, Ma, I know," Santi groaned, aggressively rubbing his temples as the blush deepened on his face.

"She told me the day after we met. I know it means female cat. A kitten." Julia's smile broadened into a full, triumphant grin.

"Oh! So she freely volunteered that information? My future daughter-in-law explicitly introduced herself to you as a little Polish kitten? Santiago, that is simply too precious. The romance writes itself."

"Ma! Stop!" Santi groaned loudly, throwing his hands up in utter defeat.

"She is not my output! We are strictly business partners. She's a high-end fence with serious connections in the ivory towers. She's coming over here to help me move the..." He vaguely gestured to the tightly sealed wooden crates stacked meticulously around the warehouse.

"The cargo I acquired today. That's it. Just biz."

"Uh-huh. Sure. Just biz," Julia smirked, her tone indicating she didn't buy a single word of his desperate defense. She reached over, grabbed the canvas duffel bag, and shoved it firmly into his chest.

"There's a clean grey t-shirt, your good-fitted black jeans, a fresh towel, and a bar of soap in there. I saw a small office space constructed in the far right corner of the building when I drove in. There should be a washroom attached. Go take a shower. You look like you crawled out of an industrial landfill, and you are absolutely not meeting your little kitten smelling like a wet dog."

Santi opened his mouth to argue, realized he was fighting an unwinnable war against a mother who possessed limitless ammunition, and snapped his mouth shut.

"Fine. But please, Ma. I am begging you. When she gets here... just be cool. Do not embarrass me. She's probably just as nervous as I am."

"I am always cool," Julia said smoothly, waving him off and turning her attention to the steaming thermo-container of homemade arroz con frijoles.

"Go. Ándale. Get clean." Defeated, Santi turned and retreated toward the far right corner of the warehouse. The space Arturo Vargas had provided was surprisingly well-equipped. A prefabricated, enclosed office module sat securely bolted to the concrete floor. Inside, the space was an incredibly clean room with a polished metal desk, a functional swivel chair, a dedicated subnet terminal, and a surprisingly spacious, fully functional washroom and shower stall.

Santi locked the solid metal door behind him and stripped off his drying, dirt-caked clothes. He threw them into a pile in the corner, stepped into the shower stall, and turned the water on. The plumbing hummed quietly, and the water that cascaded from the overhead nozzle was scaldingly hot. As the thick layers of sweat and dirt washed off his skin and swirled down the drain, Santi leaned his forehead against the cold metal wall of the shower. His mind was a chaotic, swirling storm.

He closed his eyes, and the images from the Northside parking lot flashed behind his eyelids. He saw the slaughtered Maelstrom gangers, their chrome ripped apart by overwhelming force. He saw the fried, smoking cyberware of the Arasaka security detail. He saw the face of the corporate operative, reduced to an unrecognizable, pulverized ruin of bone and synthetic flesh beneath the heel of his own boot. The Unification War.

The geopolitical powder keg that was slowly ticking down toward zero was being led by Rosalind Myers, who had commanded the NUSA military machine to go marching across the continent and subjugate every independent state and free city in their path. And Arasaka, the banished corporate dog, had begun operating in the shadows, funneling astronomical sums of untraceable eddies and mil-spec iron to the local gonked gangers to turn Night City into a proxy warzone.

Santi ran a wet hand through his bright white hair, pushing the soaked strands back from his face. The sheer scale of the conflict was paralyzing, a tidal wave of blood and chrome that threatened to swallow everyone he loved if Myers pushed into Northern California. But alongside the existential dread of the impending war, there was the loot. Eight hundred and twenty-five thousand eddies worth of pre-Krash art and weaponry were sitting securely just outside the bathroom door.

Over the course of his career as a runner, Santi had barely even reached that amount of scratch. Getting it all at once, however, could alter the entire trajectory of his life, his mother's life, and Kotka's life. If she could connect him with Regina Jones, and Regina could broker a deal with the execs who hoarded such items, they would be set. And then there was the Boss 429. He was already visualizing the rebuild. He would reinforce the chassis with modern, carbon-laced alloys to handle the torque.

He would build a custom, twin-turbo CHOOH2 engine from the block up, tuning the ECU to push an absurd amount of horsepower to the wheels and, since it had no drivetrain or anything, he'd make sure it was All Wheel Drive. He would resurrect the antique of the Old World, transforming the rotting shell into a mechanical apex predator that would dominate the asphalt. But eventually, his thoughts circled back to the most immediate stressor of the evening. Kotka. He was going to meet her. In a matter of minutes.

In the flesh. For two years, their relationship had been incredibly deep. A profound partnership forged entirely in the digital realm after Kotka had actively tracked his digital footprint and pinged him before pulling him into a private chat room. In the beginning, she had completely run circles around him with her more refined code, and eventually, she had become his mentor in the Old NET.

But as the months bled into years, Santi's skills had exponentially exploded, his processing power and tactical execution eventually surpassing her own formidable toolset. Yet, despite the shift in their dynamic, she remained his closest confidant, and the only person he could consider a choom in Night City. Over thousands of hours of shared processing, they had slowly chipped away at the impenetrable walls of their street personas.

She had been the one he confessed his darkest fears to when the crushing weight of the city felt like it was breaking his spine. And she had confided in him during the lonely emotional episodes she had gone through. Sharing the suffocating pressure of her father's Biotechnica servitude, and the anxiety of watching her sister navigate the corrupt and dangerous ranks of the NCPD academy. They knew the contours of each other's lives better than almost anyone else alive in this neon-drenched dystopia.

But they had existed strictly as lines of code, faceless phantoms floating in an isolated digital sandbox. She only knew him as the imposing Ghost of Watson, and he only knew her as the quick-witted neon-pink cyber-cat. To cross the boundary into meatspace, to shed the digital armor and stand before her as a sixteen-year-old kid living in Rancho Coronado was something that made him feel impossibly vulnerable.

While Santi stood under the scalding water, lost in his anxieties, an electronic chime echoed through the expanse of the warehouse outside.