The 6th Street clawed its way out of the Fourth Corporate War's ashes, built by American vets who'd gotten sick of watching NCPD do jackshit to protect their streets. They preached "bringing justice back to the city," but in practice? Just another gang with better PR. Total membership: around 2,300. And among those fresh-faced recruits? Oliver—who'd barely earned his colors a week ago.
As a rookie, he shouldn't have been anywhere near Watson. 6th Street respected turf lines—they policed Santo Domingo and stayed the hell out of other districts. But when a shipment of their smuggled guns got jacked mid-transit through Watson, Oliver's squad drew the short straw. First responders to a fuckstorm.
This was not what he'd signed up for.
Who the hell starts shooting over a verbal spat?
Maelstrom, apparently.
The rumors were true—these chromed-up psychos had replaced so much flesh with machinery that "human" was more of a suggestion. And they'd brought friends. Thirty of them.
Oliver's ten-man squad had managed to drop four Maelstrom goons before taking cover. Not bad, considering their captain caught the first round—a hypervelocity slug that turned his skull into a vaporized halo of bone fragments and gray matter, misting across the food stall's neon signage like gruesome confetti.
Fuck fuck fuck.
Oliver hadn't joined for glory. His old man pulled strings to get him this gig—a "safe" squad under a decorated vet. Three square meals and a roof, that's all he wanted. Now? Now his captain's neural matter was dripping from the overhead awning, and only four of them remained.
Another teammate collapsed mid-sprint, his spine severed by a ricochet. The man spasmed violently—legs kicking like a beheaded chicken—before going still in a spreading pool of arterial crimson.
Oh you gotta be shitting me.
Oliver did a quick headcount.
Four became three.
Where the fuck was NCPD? Gunfire this loud should've brought every badge in Watson running.
Every muscle screamed at him to run. But 6th Street had rules. Desertion meant more than death—it meant getting strapped to a chair while the families of those you abandoned took turns with straight razors. Oliver had read about "scraping the bone to remove poison" in some old book. Sounded heroic in print. Less so when you imagined your own jawbone gleaming white under strips of flayed flesh.
The sharp cough of a Lexington echoed through the alley—not from Maelstrom's position, but from their flank. Then came the rapid staccato thump-thump-thump of controlled bursts, each shot punching through Maelstrom's makeshift cover with terrifying precision.
Amid the chaotic gunfire, Oliver's combat-trained eyes caught the moment four Maelstrom gangers dropped simultaneously—their chrome-plated skulls erupting in synchronized sprays of synthetic fluids and sparks. The unexpected flank attack sent the remaining scavengers into panicked disarray. Some forgot cover entirely, standing like dumbstruck targets before scrambling for new positions.
Fucking lunatics.
Oliver didn't waste the opportunity. Years of forced marksmanship training from his old man paid off as three controlled shots found homes—one through a Maelstrom grunt's exposed throat, two more center-mass.
"Where the fuck—" a Maelstrom enforcer roared before his head snapped back violently. The thwip of a hypervelocity round punched clean through his concrete cover, leaving a smoking hole where his right eye used to be.
"Smartgun! Kang Tao shit!"
From his position behind a gutted vending machine, Carl monitored the Lexington's ammo counter with clinical detachment.
Twenty-one round capacity.
Six expended.
Five kills.
For someone who'd never fired a gun before today, the results were… statistically improbable. Then again, so was waking up in 2075 with a brain that functioned like combat software. That first shot had been wild—but by the second trigger pull, his neural interface had already compensated for recoil patterns, wind drift, and the Lexington's specific ballistic quirks. By the sixth? He was calculating ricochet angles to drop enemies behind cover.
It felt less like aiming and more like pointing—an extension of that old gamer instinct where crosshairs magnetized to targets. Except now the headshots came with warm brain matter splattering across his boots.
The trash bin shielding Carl shuddered under kinetic impacts—thunk-thunk-thunk—each strike dentting metal already corroded by decades of acid rain. Fitting. Whether literal garbage or human refuse, he couldn't seem to escape either today.
His hands tingled from recoil, the vibrations still echoing through his wrists despite bracing properly. Another data point logged—another adjustment his freakish memory would optimize next time.
Need proper training, Carl noted absently as he checked the firefight's status. Maelstrom's initial thirty-strong force now decorated the pavement in sparking heaps. Only one 6th Streeter remained standing—some green-eyed kid who couldn't be older than twenty, his rifle barrel still smoking.
Carl exhaled. The adrenaline surge faded as abruptly as it came.
Thirty-four corpses in under three minutes.
Not bad for a man who'd just been trying to get some goddamn noodles before all hell broke loose.
Hell, the way his day was going, he'd probably have a bounty on his head by lunchtime.