Chương 58: A Gig for Padre I

"When you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat." - Ronald Reagan The radio in the common area was tuned to N54 News, and the anchor's voice filled the kitchen with a smooth and rehearsed cadence as the man read casualty figures like they were stock market projections.

"... and the Federal Department of Defense has confirmed that the Battle of Ridgecrest has entered its second day, with initial reports placing the combined casualty count at three thousand and seventy personnel killed within the first twenty-four hours of engagement. This marks Ridgecrest as the bloodiest single-day battle of the Unification conflict to date, surpassing the previous record set during the Fall of Denver by a factor of nearly four.

Militech Forward Commander Baines described the resistance as 'desperate but ultimately futile,' stating that NUSA forces have secured the northern perimeter of the former China Lake installation and are currently consolidating their hold on Highway 395, which serves as the primary logistical artery connecting the Mojave theater to the Central Valley approach corridors..." I stood in my bedroom on the third floor, my back to the open door, listening to the broadcast while I dressed.

Three thousand and seventy people zeroed in a single day. I let the number sit in my head and waited for it to do something, waited for it to provoke the same gut-wrenching feeling that the Laguna Bend footage had triggered in me when I was a little kid, watching corpo cops beat civilians to the dirt from the safety of my father's air-gapped sandbox. But it didn't. The number just sat there, tagged and categorized by my Neural Link, like another data point in an ever-growing spreadsheet of human misery.

Ridgecrest was two hundred and something miles southeast of Night City, a speck of sun-blasted desert town that I had never visited and probably never would, and the three thousand people who had died there were names I would never know, faces I would never scan, and stories that would be compressed into a single line of scrolling text at the bottom of a corporate news ticker before being overwritten by the next atrocity. I hated that it didn't affect me more.

I hated that the boy who had once wept at the sight of an old man getting cracked across the jaw by a riot cop was now pulling a black, short-sleeved button-down shirt over his shoulders and buttoning it up while listening to a war correspondent describe the incineration of a Free State militia position with the same emotional investment as someone checking the weather. But the hatred was a luxury I couldn't afford at the moment, so I filed it away and kept getting dressed.

The shirt was a recent acquisition from a vendor in Kabuki, and the matte-black synthetic cotton sat well across my shoulders and chest, the fit clean and tailored enough to look intentional without crossing into corpo territory. I left the top two buttons open, exposing the hollow of my throat and the faint ridge of my collarbone. My Kiroshis automatically adjusted the ambient light filtering as I stepped in front of the small mirror mounted on the wall, and I took stock of the reflection staring back at me.

The past few months had been unkind to any lingering traces of the boy I used to be. My body had kept growing, stretching me to a height that I had measured at six feet and six inches the last time I stood against the doorframe, and though the lean, functional muscle from years of training and garage conditioning covered my body, it hadn't quite caught up to another rapid elongation of my bones.

I was left with a body that was undeniably imposing from a distance but carried a subtle and slightly awkward lankiness up close. It was as if my bones had sprinted ahead and left my meat scrambling to fill the space. My shoulders were broad enough to give me a nice bit of definition, and my arms carried the defined muscle, but my body was still settling into something that would eventually look proportional to the new height.

My face had sharpened over the months, taking with it the last remnants of adolescent softness as my genetics and diet left behind angular cheekbones, a strong jaw dusted with dark stubble that I kept short, and dark, heavy brows that framed my eyes in a way that projected a permanent disinterested apathy that I didn't have to try very hard to maintain. My voice had also finally finished dropping, settling into a deep and commanding baritone that resonated from my chest rather than my throat.

It did make me feel kind of badass, I won't lie. I had a voice that made people listen, even when I wasn't saying anything worth paying attention to. I slid the dark fabric mask over my nose and mouth, adjusting the fit until it sat snug against the bridge of my nose, the material thick enough to obscure my features without restricting my breathing.

It wasn't the skull-painted Ghost balaclava I usually wore on gigs, but rather a cleaner and more understated alternative that I had started using for face-to-face meetings with fixers and clients. The balaclava was more than useful for gigs, but it had started to get a bit annoying, and it just screamed edgerunner, while the mask simply communicated that I preferred my anonymity over pleasantries.

I strapped a thick-banded watch onto my left wrist, serving absolutely no functional purpose beyond what my internal HUD already provided. But I liked the style of it. I grabbed a pair of simple wireframe glasses from the desk and slipped them on. They were also cosmetic, with non-prescription lenses set in thin black frames that softened the intensity of my eyes just enough to make direct eye contact feel less confrontational for the people on the receiving end.

It was a lesson I had learned the hard way last week after a mid-tier data broker in Little China had nearly pulled a gun on me during a routine exchange because he thought my uncaring stare was an active threat scan. I also had on some dark tactical cargo pants fitted with large utility side pockets that could hold everything from data shards to spare rounds for my overture.

I cinched a black belt around my waist and strapped a drop-leg tactical holster to my right thigh, feeding the retention strap through the loop and snapping it into place. I slid the Overture into the holster with a satisfying click and tucked the pant legs directly into my black combat boots. I stood up, rolled my shoulders, and took one last look in the mirror, no longer seeing Santiago Reyes, but instead Ghost staring back at me.

"... NUSA High Command has issued a statement assuring the public that the Ridgecrest engagement is proceeding within acceptable operational parameters. President Myers is expected to address the nation this evening from the Virginia Congressional Bunker. In other news, Night City's municipal council has reaffirmed the city's declaration of armed neutrality, stating that..." I killed the radio with a command through my Neural Link and walked out of my bedroom into the hallway.

Mom was standing in the entrance of the common area, leaning against the doorframe in a bathrobe, her dark hair loose around her shoulders. She was holding a mug of something warm, and the steam curled lazily in the morning light. Her eyes tracked me from head to toe as I stepped into the hall, and I watched the sleepiness fade from her face as she took in the full tactical loadout.

"Where are you going?" she asked, her voice carrying the raspy edge as she had just woken up. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"I need to go make some eddies," I said, adjusting the strap on my thigh holster.

"The RatATax isn't going to keep us afloat forever, and the building costs aren't going to pay themselves." Mom's eyes lingered on the Overture strapped to my leg, then drifted up to the mask covering the lower half of my face. Something shifted in her expression, and the maternal worry that was always present in her eyes was suddenly joined by a bitter nostalgia.

"You look so much like your father," she said softly. I felt my jaw tighten beneath the mask, and the familiar ache that accompanied any mention of my pops pressed against the inside of my chest. I didn't know what to do with the comparison because I never did. Part of me wanted to hear it as a compliment, an acknowledgment that I was carrying on the work of a man who had died trying to protect his family.

But the other part, the part that remembered a cheap metal urn and a mother sobbing on a kitchen floor, recoiled from the association.

"Ma..." I started.

"I know," she said, cutting me off with a tired and understanding smile.

"Hold on. Wait for a second." She pushed off the doorframe and disappeared into her bedroom, and I heard the sound of a drawer opening, followed by the rustle of fabric, then a faint metallic clink as something small was lifted from its resting place. She came back with her hands cupped together, holding something I couldn't see.

"Turn around and bend down a bit," she said. I frowned behind the mask but did as she asked, turning my back to her and dropping my head. I felt her reach up, and even at my reduced height, she had to stand on the balls of her feet to loop a thin chain over my head. I straightened up and looked down. Resting against the black fabric of my shirt was a small, silver cross pendant, hanging from a thin chain. The cross itself was unadorned silver, worn smooth at the edges from years of use.

"I gave that to your father when we first got together," Mom said, her voice carrying a slight tremor.

"He wore it every day. It was supposed to keep him safe... They returned it to me with his ashes. I have been keeping it in my drawer all this time, and now it should fit you." I closed my hand around the pendant, feeling its weight. I thought about my father wearing this same cross against his own chest while Militech operatives hunted him down. I thought about him wearing it while he cleaned his Lexington on the living room sofa and while he tucked me into bed.

"Thank you, Mom," I said quietly, releasing the pendant and letting it fall against my chest. I turned around, looked down at her from my full height, and leaned forward, pressing my lips against her forehead.

"Don't worry too much. Everything should be fine." She reached up and patted the side of my face, her palm warm against my jaw.

"You say that every time."

"And I'm always right," I said.

"Except for the time they cracked your ribs like walnuts," she said with a small smile.

"In my defense, that was a learning experience," I said.

"Go," she said, waving me off with a flick of her wrist.

"Make your eddies. And call me when you're done."

"I will," I promised before turning and walking down the hallway toward the stairwell. The ground floor stretched out before me, and sitting in the center of the space, occupying one of the four vehicle bays, was the rusted, stripped-down husk of the Mustang Boss 429. I had brought it over from the Arroyo warehouse two weeks ago, loading it onto a rented flatbed and driving it across the city in the dead of night. Parked beside it, looking like a junkyard refugee, was the G240.

It was Mom's daily driver now, and though she still grumbled about the aesthetic every time she had to park it next to someone else's ride, she never once complained about how it ran. I walked past both vehicles, heading for the grey-side pedestrian entrance. I pressed my thumb against the biometric scanner, punched the sixteen-digit code through my Neural Link, and the hydraulic locks disengaged.

The morning air of Northside Watson hit me as I stepped outside, carrying the faint chemical tang of the industrial district and the rumble of traffic moving along the Ringroad North overpass. I pulled the door shut behind me and heard the locks re-engage. As I turned toward the road, I saw someone standing near the back of the orange-and-blue building about forty yards away, walking toward a fire truck that had been parked in the same spot for the past three weeks.

The vehicle looked like it had been retired or decommissioned, and then beaten with a pipe wrench for good measure. Its red paint was faded and peeling, its chassis sagging on worn suspension, and its emergency lights nowhere to be found. But the girl approaching it was carrying a heavy-duty industrial ratchet and a coil of synthetic cable, which meant she was either trying to fix the thing or strip it for parts. I had seen her around the neighborhood a few times since we moved in.

She was hard to miss, with bright, colorful hair that shifted between neon pink and electric blue depending on the light, and the left side of her head shaved clean, exposing a strip of pale scalp and the faint metallic trace of a neural port above her ear. She looked young, maybe around my age, and she moved with a purposeful stride. She glanced up as I stepped into the lot, her eyes flicking over my tactical outfit and the Malorian holstered on my thigh with neutral assessment.

I offered her a nod, and she returned it with one of her own, acknowledging the dip of the chin, before turning back to the firetruck and ducking under the chassis. I didn't linger and pulled up the cab network, and flagged a unit from one of the automated transit services that operated in Watson, sending my current coordinates and the destination address. The cab pulled up within three minutes.

It was a boxy, sun-faded autonomous sedan with a cracked front bumper and an ad for Nicola plastered across the rear quarter panel, its electric motor humming at a pitch that said the thing was overdue for a service by at least six months. The passenger door slid open with a mechanical stutter, and a pre-recorded voice announced from the speaker embedded in the headrest: "Destination confirmed. The Glen, Heywood. Estimated travel time, twenty-seven minutes. Please keep all limbs inside the vehicle."

I climbed in, dropping into the worn synthetic leather seat that smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and industrial cleaner, and the door rattled shut behind me. The cab pulled away from the curb with a lurch, and I used the ride to pull up everything I could find on the man I was about to meet. His name was Sebastian Ibarra. He was known universally as "Padre," a high-tier fixer who operated out of Heywood with deep authority that money couldn't buy and violence couldn't manufacture.

My Kiroshis tagged the data as I scrolled through the runner boards, the independent journalist profiles, and the fragments of public record that still existed in the municipal databases. The man was, or had been, an actual Catholic priest. He had been ordained in Heywood and had served his parish for years, providing genuine spiritual guidance and community organization that Night City had ground into dust before it could take root.

But Night City had a way of corrupting even its most resilient institutions, and somewhere along the line, Father Ibarra had crossed the threshold from shepherd to fixer. By 2070, Padre was firmly established as Heywood's primary fixer, operating from the shadow of his church and maintaining the extraordinary and almost paradoxical position of being both a spiritual leader and a criminal operator. People still came to him for confession, comfort, and guidance.

And people also came to him for gigs, mediation, and targeted violence that the system refused to deliver. His information network was built on trust, and that trust was genuine since it had been forged over decades of serving a community that had no one else to turn to. His relationship with the Valentinos was complex, almost symbiotic in nature. Though he wasn't one of their leaders, he had influence over them.

He mediated their internal disputes, steered their younger members away from the worst of the street, and used their muscle when the situation demanded it. The Valentinos respected him because he was Padre, their spiritual father, and that respect carried more weight in Heywood than any amount of chrome or firepower. However, what made him dangerous, and what made him different from every other fixer I had worked for, was his selectivity. Padre didn't give two shits if a job got done.

He cared about why it was being done. For him, gigs carried moral weight, and every contract that came through his network was filtered through a personal philosophy that balanced the necessities of survival against the convictions of a man who still, despite everything, believed that God was paying attention to this Godless city. I had sold him a few pieces from the warehouse haul a couple of months back, small items that he had purchased through intermediaries and that I hadn't given a second thought to.

But this was the first time he had requested a face-to-face, and the fact that he wanted to meet the merc before assigning the gig told me everything I needed to know about how seriously he took the work. The cab rolled to a jerking stop on a side street adjacent to a basketball court in The Glen, its brakes squealing faintly as the autonomous nav system overcompensated for the curb.

The court was a concrete slab surrounded by a rusted chain-link fence, its painted lines faded to outlines, and the backboards at either end were cracked and sagging. A handful of kids were running a pickup game at the far end, their shouts and the bounce of the ball carrying across the open space.

"You have arrived at your destination," the pre-recorded voice announced from the headrest speaker.

"Thank you for choosing NightTrans Automated Transit. Please collect all personal belongings."