The shotgun's roar faded into a ringing silence. Demon's body hit the concrete with a wet thud, her last four crimson optics dimming one by one like dying stars. Smoke curled from the gaping hole in her sternum, the edges of the wound still glowing faintly from the Crusher's incendiary payload.
Carl's hands trembled—not from fear, but from the Crusher's recoil shredding his already dislocated shoulders. Blood dripped from his split lip onto the shotgun's still-smoking barrel, sizzling as it hit the scorched metal.
Jackie crouched beside the corpse, his gold-plated Saints clinking like loose change as he poked at her mangled facial plating. "Damn, KK. Left her uglier than a she was." He gave Oliver the look. "You sure she wasn't your ex?"
"Only if your mom's got a chrome fetish," Carl rasped, spitting out a tooth fragment. His face felt like it had been tenderized by a pneumatic hammer. Every breath whistled through his newly straightened nose, raw and metallic.
Oliver kicked a stray cybernetic finger across the floor, his Nova revolver still trained on the shadows. "Subdermal armor this grade? Had to be their boss. No street-level chromefuck could afford plating that tanks Copperhead rounds." He nudged Demon's sparking neural port with his boot. "Bet her ICE could've fried a netrunner's brain in seconds."
Jackie grinned, hauling Carl upright with a grunt. "Split the eddies, and I might finally get some decent plating too. Maybe even one of those fancy reflex boosters. Y'know, so I can dodge your next fuckup."
Carl's neural port buzzed with incoming damage reports—concussion warnings, dislocated shoulders, three cracked ribs. He swiped the alerts away like stale notifications. "First—we burn the crate. Then Viktor. In that exact order."
The factory's terminal screen cast a sickly blue glow over Carl's battered face as he jacked in. The flickering holodisplay painted his bruises in corpse-gray hues. No crate coordinates—just endless logs of Maelstrom's recent activities scrolling by like a digital epitaph:
[SECURITY LOGS - LAST 72 HOURS]
- 03:47: Raid on Tyger Claws territory (Kabukicho) - 12 casualties
- 14:22: Ambush on 6th Street firearms shipment - 8 casualties, 3 vehicles torched
- 21:15: Corporate convoy strike (Arasaka) - 3 vehicles disabled, 5 corpo suits flatlined
So that's why the radio mentioned Maelstrom stirring shit.
Carl's lips curled into a painful smirk. A gang this size didn't go on a citywide rampage without reason. But that was a problem for NCPD's overworked badges—not some edgerunner two days fresh off the trash heap.
He put a Lexington round through the terminal for good measure. The screen shattered spectacularly, glass shards skittering across the floor like ice chips. The bullet lodged deep in its guts without exiting the other side.
Pathetic penetration.
His "reliable" pistol was officially on borrowed time.
The crate sat in a dim storage bay, its Arasaka-red finish gleaming under the flickering emergency lights like fresh blood. The crimson flower logo stared back at them—a corporate rose with thorns sharp enough to gut a city. The air reeked of old machine oil and something faintly chemical, like burnt sugar laced with arsenic.
Carl dialed the fixer, the holodisplay casting jagged shadows across his ruined face. Static hissed through the connection before a voice cut in—cold, clipped, and utterly bored:
"Status."
"Package acquired. Verifying." Carl rattled off the markings, his eyes never leaving the crate. Something about it made his fresh neural port itch, like spiders crawling under his scalp.
"Destroy it. Now."
Oliver jacked into the security feed, his fingers dancing over invisible controls. Camera lights blinked red across the warehouse, their unblinking eyes capturing every angle. Jackie worked quickly, rigging the crate with scavenged grenades—Maelstrom's own explosives turned against them. The countdown syncers beeped an angry red rhythm, each pulse echoing like a deranged heartbeat.
00:05... 00:04...
Carl backed away, his boots crunching over spent shell casings.
00:03... 00:02...
A stray Maelstrom gurgled somewhere in the shadows. Oliver put a round through his skull without breaking stride.
00:01...
Fire swallowed the crate whole. The explosion tore through the silence, flames licking the ceiling as the shockwave rattled loose bolts in the rafters. Carl caught a glimpse of what might have been data chips inside—slender, glowing things that pulsed like living creatures—before they vaporized into corporate confetti.
The video proof hit the fixer's inbox before the smoke even cleared.
Ten seconds of silence. Then—
[ACCOUNT CREDIT: €$70,000]
A follow-up message blinked into existence, stark white against his blood-smeared HUD:
"Clean work. No questions. Refreshing."
Oliver eyed the smoldering wreckage, his nose wrinkling at the acrid smell of melting composites. "We getting paid or what?"
"Done." Carl split the eddies with two neural taps, the transactions flashing gold in his vision. "Two-three-three each. Extra hundred's for dinner."
Jackie whistled, slinging an arm around Carl's shoulders—careful of the dislocations. "Know a place in Heywood. Best synth-sushi this side of the town. Hundred won't cover the top-shelf wagu, though."
"Then I'm buying." Carl spat blood on Maelstrom's corpse as they turned to leave. "Celebrating not dying counts as a business expense."
[MISSION COMPLETE]
REWARDS:
- €$100,000 (split 3 ways)
- 1x Trauma Team membership (pending)
- 3x Newfound distrust of chrome-plated psychos
- 1x Urgent dental appointment
The Quartz's engine coughed to life outside, its headlights cutting through the factory's gloom. Jackie slumped into the backseat, his bandaged leg propped on a stack of stolen ammo crates. Oliver fiddled with the radio until a synthwave beat crackled through the speakers—something with too much bass and a vocalist who sounded like they'd smoked a pack of Kiroshis.
Carl stared at his reflection in the rearview mirror. His face was a roadmap of bruises and split skin, but the job was done. For now.
"Next time," he muttered, thumbing the safety on his Lexington, "we saving up for a bigger ride."
Jackie barked a laugh, tossing a decades-old ketchup packet at his head. "Next time, hermano, you're buying the tequila."
The tires screeched as they peeled onto the highway, leaving the factory—and what remained of Demon—to rot in the dark.