Chương 45: In the Black with a Polish Cat II

On the opposite end of the building, the heavy, reinforced metal side door was unlocked. The door was equipped with a standard, high-end digital keypad, and Kotka had simply punched in the temporary access code that Santi had forwarded to her Agent during their holo-call. The lock disengaged with a click, and the metal door glided open, allowing Kotka to step into the dry, lit interior of the warehouse, shaking the lingering evening drizzle from the shoulders of her dark jacket.

At seventeen years old, she stood at a modest five-foot-six, moving with a quiet and deliberate grace. She had taken the Metro as far as it would go into Santo Domingo, then hailed a cab for the final, sketchy leg into the industrial depths of Arroyo. She had short, slightly messy dark hair, styled purely for practicality and ease of interface rather than adhering to any current boga fashion trends. It perfectly framed a face that was sharp, highly observant, and perpetually guarded.

Unlike the ostentatious chrome-junkies that infested the streets of Kabuki, Kotka's body was completely organic. There were no visible cybernetics, no metallic plating tracing her jawline, and no glowing synthetic skin. All of her substantial hardware was buried deep within her, a state-of-the-art neural rig designed for maximum digital processing speed and minimal visual footprint in the physical world. She quietly closed the side door behind her, pulling it until it sealed with a magnetic lock.

Her stunning eyes, which started off as pink towards the iris before quickly shifting to blue, swept across the warehouse. She had expected to walk into a decaying, rat-infested ruin. A forgotten shipping yard reeking of toxic mold and desperate edge-runners. That was usually the reality when dealing with off-the-books storage in Arroyo. Instead, she found herself standing in a climate-controlled facility.

The concrete floors were immaculate, the lighting was perfect, and stacked neatly in the corner were several massive, incredibly expensive-looking wooden crates secured with steel bands. Sitting in the center of the room was the stripped and rusted chassis of an old car. She scanned the room, fully expecting to finally lay eyes on Ghost.

His reputation as a netrunner and the possibility that he could have been lying to her about who he was led her to picture him as a hardened Corpo defector, or perhaps an older, cynical mercenary permanently wired into a liquid-cooled processing rig. Instead, her gaze landed on a thirty-something-year-old Hispanic woman with her dark hair tied back in a neat tail, casually humming an upbeat Spanish tune while looking through the faded inventory manifests tagged to one of the wooden crates.

Kotka froze in her tracks, a spike of genuine confusion stalling her mind. She blinked, stepping entirely out of the shadows by the door. Julia heard the soft scuff of the wet boot against the concrete and turned around. For a long second, the two women just stared at each other across the warehouse.

"Oh," Julia said softly, breaking the silence. She casually wiped her hands on a cloth, her analytical eyes quickly and thoroughly assessing the teenage girl standing before her.

"You must be Kotka." Kotka shifted uncomfortably on her feet, her hand subtly dropping toward the curve of her hip out of ingrained street reflex, even though she wasn't carrying iron.

"You're... Ghost?" she asked, her voice a mix of a half-statement and a highly skeptical question. Her brows furrowed in deep confusion.

"I thought you were a guy. And... I mean absolutely no offense by this, but you don't exactly look sixteen." Julia threw her head back and let out an echoing laugh.

"Me? Ghost? Oh, heavens no, child. I can barely operate the microwave at home without asking for technical support." Julia walked out from behind the stack of pre-Krash crates, closing the distance between them. Her sharp, maternal eyes took in Kotka's appearance with a mix of approval and assessment. The rain-dampened dark hair, the refreshing visible lack of heavy chrome, and the striking, beautiful contrast of her eyes.

"You are quite cute, little Polish cat," Julia said, her tone warm but carrying an underlying weight of serious evaluation. Kotka blinked again, entirely thrown off balance by the casual use of the translation.

"Polish cat? Wait, how did you- who are you?"

"Oh, how rude of me. My name is Julia," she said, her posture shifting ever so slightly from casual host to firmly protective matriarch.

"I am this 'Ghost's' mother." Kotka's jaw actually dropped, and her guarded exterior was completely shattered.

"His mother?"

"Yes," Julia said, stopping just a few feet away. The warmth in her voice remained, but her dark eyes locked onto Kotka's with unwavering intensity.

"And as his mother, I only have one extremely important question for you, Miss. Do you intend on screwing my son over in any way regarding this current business arrangement?" This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. Kotka felt a cold bead of sweat prickle at her hairline. She had dealt with her fair share of Tyger Claw gangers and some soulless corpo fixers in her line of work.

But the sheer, unwavering maternal threat radiating from the woman standing in front of her was an entirely different beast.

"No," Kotka said firmly, instantly finding her voice and standing her ground.

"No, ma'am. Absolutely not. Ghost and I... we're partners. We watch each other's backs in the Net. I'm just here to help him safely fence the merchandise." Julia held her gaze for three agonizingly long seconds, her eyes searching Kotka's for any hint of deception. Finding none, her face suddenly broke back into a radiant, welcoming smile.

"Good! I'm so very glad to hear it. He talks about you quite a bit, you know." The tension that had gripped Kotka's shoulders completely evaporated, and she let out a long, shaky breath she didn't realize she had been holding, her shoulders visibly slumping in relief. Before she could formulate a response, the loud, metallic clatter of the office module's door unlocking echoed across the warehouse. Santi stepped out of the small office space.

He was freshly showered and wearing the clean, dark grey t-shirt Julia had brought, which stretched tightly across his conditioned body, paired with fitted black jeans. He ran the towel vigorously through his damp, shockingly bright, white hair, ruffling it into a messy, chaotic halo. He looked up, freezing mid-step as he spotted the girl standing next to his mother. Kotka turned at the sound of the door, and the breath caught in her throat.

She looked him up and down, her eyes widening as they took in the towering, six-foot-two teenager. She was relieved to see that he wasn't a grizzled Corpo defector or some frail, pale, chair-bound netrunner hooked up to a dialysis machine. He was actually quite pleasing to the eye, his body that of a professional athlete's, built with the kind of natural musculature that usually required invasive hydraulic implants and bone-lacing to achieve.

But his face stunned him the most, seeing that his features were aristocratic in nature, and that he was undeniably handsome. His hair was an unnatural shade of snow-white, and his eyes, staring back at her from across the room with equal parts shock and profound nervousness, were a deep, mesmerizing violet.

"Whoa," Kotka blurted out before she could filter the thought. She gestured vaguely toward his head.

"What's up with the get-up? Is that heavy biosculpting?" Santi swallowed hard, his throat suddenly bone-dry. His voice, usually a deep, commanding rumble, felt a little too high.

"Uh, no. It's... it's all natural. Just a genetic quirk."

"Oh," Kotka said, her cheeks suddenly flushing a very visible, light shade of pink as she realized she was staring.

"It's... preem."

"Thanks," Santi muttered, awkwardly clutching the damp towel in his hands.

"You, uh. You found the side door."

"Yeah," Kotka nodded rapidly, pointing her thumb awkwardly over her shoulder toward the entryway.

"Punched in the code. Worked perfectly."

"Cool. Cool," Santi nodded. A deafening and incredibly agonizing silence descended upon the warehouse. They stood twenty feet apart, incapable of forming a single coherent sentence in meatspace. Julia rolled her eyes toward the high steel ceiling, letting out an incredibly exaggerated sigh that cut through the tension. She clapped her hands together, the sharp smack snapping them both out of their paralyzed trance.

"Ay, por el amor de Dios," Julia muttered, shaking her head in theatrical disbelief. She looked directly at Santi, planting her hands firmly on her hips.

"Are you planning on standing by the door for the entire night like a gargoyle, Santiago? Approach the lovely lady and introduce yourself properly. Con modales!" Santi flushed furiously, the heat crawling all the way up his neck. He threw the damp towel over the top of a nearby crate, took a deep, steadying breath, and forced his legs to move.

He closed the gap between them, and despite the overwhelming awkwardness radiating off him, his posture naturally straightened as he approached, his sheer height forcing Kotka to tilt her head back slightly to look up into his eyes. He extended a large, calloused hand toward her.

"So, um, Kotka. My name is Santiago Andrés Reyes," he said, his voice finally settling back into its deep natural resonance.

"But... everyone just calls me Santi." Kotka looked down at his outstretched hand, and a delightful chuckle escaped her lips. The musical sound of it made the nervous system hooked into Santi's internal chrome buzz slightly, sending a warm rush of adrenaline that had nothing to do with combat.

"The famed Ghost of Watson," she said, a playful, genuine smile finally breaking through her guarded exterior as she looked back up at him.

"And he actually goes by the nickname Santi."

"It's not like I got to choose it," Santi said with a slight chuckle that caused Kotka to smile even wider. She reached out her smaller hand and gripped his firmly.

"I'm Sasha... Sasha Yakovleva." Their eyes locked as they shook hands, and, for a fleeting moment, the entire world completely faded away. It was just the two of them, finally crossing the abstract digital chasm that had separated them for two years. They both let out awkward smiles that felt entirely alien against the backdrop of Night City. Santi scratched the back of his neck with his free hand, feeling the strange, nervous buzzing in his chest intensifying.

He looked down into Sasha's eyes, captivated by the beautiful contrast of the colors.

"Are your eyes... natural?" Santi asked softly, realizing a second too late that he was openly staring, but finding himself entirely unable to look away.

"The pink and blue?" Sasha's smile widened, her gaze flickering affectionately to his own violet eyes.

"Yeah. They are. Just another natural genetic quirk." Before Santi could formulate a witty response, a loud KA-CHAK accompanied by a blinding, uncalibrated LED flash erupted from just behind them. Santi and Sasha both jumped, whipping their heads around, spots dancing in their vision. Julia was standing on her tiptoes, holding an old digital point-and-shoot camera from the early 2030s, which she had apparently dug out of her duffel bag while they were talking.

She lowered the battered device, a wide, deeply satisfied grin plastered across her face as she reviewed the glowing, cracked LCD screen on the back.

"Ma!" Santi groaned, dropping his hand from Sasha's and covering his face in utter mortification.

"Did you really just take a picture of us?"

"Hard evidence, mi niño," Julia laughed brightly, tapping the camera's small screen triumphantly.

"For when you try to tell me again that she is just a business partner."