David looked so content petting the street cat, I wanted to feel that as well. I could see it in the way his shoulders dropped. The way his breathing slowed.
Approaching up the steps, the cat suddenly stood up and ran away through the hole in the fence and somewhere out of sight.
Maybe I was too quick on the approach. I should make a strategy next time. Approach slower. Crouch. Let it come to me.
You let them make the first move. The cat was no different. I filed that away for later.
David, still squatting down, sighed in defeat. His whole body seemed to deflate. The tension left him all at once.
"Oh man. Cats are cool."
Walking up, I patted David on the back. The corners of his mouth were stretched in a smile.
He immediately erased it, looking at me. His eyes were now barely noticeable as cybernetic, using the classic Kiroshi brand iris patterns. Vik had done good work. The integration was seamless. The brown was just a shade too bright, but you'd have to know what you were looking for to spot it. It has to be the lighting.
"My bad. Are we in a hurry?" David asked me, standing up and assuming a confident posture and what he assumed was a serious face.
I don't understand what goes on in his head even a little bit. The way he was already learning to hide. It was necessary. It was also sad that he felt the need to do that in front of me. But I don't want Sasha to be alone in her condition for long, so it will wait.
"A little bit. Did Vik feed you?"
David shook his head, but then tilted it in thought.
"Those bars he gives away don't count. He doesn't even like eating them himself," I pointed out. The old man hated them as much as anyone. Food is just fuel to him.
"Yeah, nothing then."
"Let's get something on the way. What's your favorite?"
"Pizza would be nice. But pizza for breakfast is weird."
I waved my hand in dismissal.
"Pizza it is," I answered and began walking, and David closely followed.
I looked up the spots on the way to the M4 Megabuilding, and there were a couple. The websites were 90% ads for anything they could place in there, and the software to keep you from blocking them was amongst the most kept-up in the NET. I scrolled through screens that were practically unreadable. Pop-ups for cyberware, pop-ups for BDs, pop-ups for things I didn't want to think about. A blinking banner offered me a "THROBBING" discount on a Mr. Studd implant. I closed it. It came back. I closed it again. It came back again. I gave up and avoided it.
But they did offer some faux functionality. Delivery time was estimated to be up to 2 hours with no guarantee. Better to order it now and go pick it up ourselves.
"Two large pepperonis. Sounds good?" I said, looking through the ads. There was no real way to tell if the pictures were real, and the reviews were respectable 2.9 stars. 2.9 stars in Night City was basically five stars anywhere else. People make it their task to shit on everything.
"I can't eat that much."
"For both of us."
David's tone changed again; this time he was feeling out the limits.
"Okay. Can I get a large Nicola?"
I looked further down the menu. There it was. They even offered to add ice. Who the fuck would trust that their water is any better than the usual tap? David can't drink it, probably.
"Got it."
I'll get water for myself.
The car doors opened, and David was the first one to get in as I walked around. He got the seatbelt and looked at the central console while I wasn't in yet.
Touching my ass down, I adjusted the seat a little and the doors closed with a pneumatic clank. The sound was satisfying.
Taking off, David was silent. As good a time as any.
"It would be a good time to explain what happened yesterday. I didn't get the text, Dee."
His eyes widened.
"Fuck. I forgot. Sorry."
I suppressed a deep sigh.
"Get on it. What got you acting so distracted?"
David turned towards the window as we passed some armed robbery taking place. A convenience store situation with 3 cop cars outside. Good luck. The cops were standing around. Looking at their phones. One of them was drinking coffee. Nobody seemed to be in a hurry.
"I don't know. It doesn't feel real. All of it," David stated flatly.
Overwhelmed? It's not like anything crazy happened just yet. I'm being biased. He hasn't died before.
"What specifically?"
His mouth opened and closed in the corner of my vision as he found the words.
"You got everything under control, Raf? Because I get the feeling, sorry if I'm wrong, that you are scrambling."
Annoying that David of all people noticed it. But it's not something entirely unexpected. He was never stupid. I'd given him enough pieces to put together a picture.
"It's manageable. Little chaotic, but manageable. You are one of the reasons. Nobody half sane can be chilled out having problems with Arasaka."
"But it's my problem."
"Can you solve it? Are you sure that you, I, anybody in this damn world can go out there and apologize so pathetically low to the ground they forget all about the threat to the other students with the deadly weapon? If you go to the offices of the Arasaka Academy, will they let you out?"
"I-"
"Then it's mine as well. Now stop bitching around and tell me the details," I said harshly.
It's high time he snaps out of it. The world doesn't wait for you to process. It keeps moving. It keeps killing. You either move with it or you get left behind.
David was quiet. Then he nodded. Slow.
"Okay."
"Okay what?"
"Okay, you're right. I've been in my head. I'll tell you."
He took a breath. Then he started talking.
The story he told was almost the same as what I got from his filesystem. He added details on, got confused in the order of things, but in the end it did not make a difference.
The words he described them using were changed significantly. In the unsent text I got the impression that they mocked his mom's death, with details—which are unfortunate.
But now he told me just that they were referencing his status. Commoner and all that. Much less serious.
They attacked him, and he beat the shit out of them. Then he ran away. He doesn't know if there were any cameras. He doesn't know their most likely state of health. He doesn't know if they employ cyberninjas on the regular, which kids would be bragging about. Basically, this all hinges on the whims of 4 children and their possibly angry and varying degrees of powerful parents.
But knowing that their social dynamic follows that of their parents, only one of them is actually influential enough to be a pain in the ass. That being Tanaka Ken, of course.
But telling him that we need to kidnap or kill him may be a bit much before David gets food. Only that can keep him from running for the rest of his life.
"I could have killed them. All four," David uttered after a considerable silence as I delved deeper into thinking how to approach this.
"Everybody can die," I pointed out.
David waved his hands in front of him. The gesture was frantic. Almost desperate.
"No no. I mean like I knew I could, but I didn't."
"Hmm. What stopped you?" I asked.
"Uhhh, I just figured that seeing them dead won't even feel right. I don't know. I don't think I could decide that. I know they are pieces of shit, but I would just prefer to avoid them, I think."
"Really? And what then? Live your life avoiding people who punk you? That's a sure way to die achieving nothing, Dee. That's why I gave you a gun. You need to be a really slimy kind of guy to be able to avoid trouble using only words. Licking asses and all. And you don't strike me as the type."
"That's a bit— I mean, those guys in particular. Giving them a response is always to make it worse. That's what Mom said," David said, his voice lowering as he ended the last sentence. The words hung in the air. Heavy. Uncomfortable.
My face twitched, and I found my organic eye becoming blurry and I had to blink to dissipate the sudden interference while my other eye stayed on the road.
It's probably just dehydration.
"Raf?"
"What?" I touched my face and felt the slim line of tears on my cheek. Warm. "Something got into my eye."
I wiped it off.
"It's advice to get bullied less often. Rules change when the possibility of death comes into play. Crystal?" I continued the conversation.
David nodded. Good enough.
Now a few hundred feet from our stop, I noticed that the order was already ready to be picked up.
"Guillermo's. Dee, go in and pick up an order for," I quickly checked the name I'd put in, "John Hog. Ask for lots of napkins, every piece they can give us. I left a big tip."
My random name generator broke down. It's almost entirely "Johns" now.
David cringed hearing it, but sighed and responded with a simple, "Got it."
Parking nearby, I had to roll into a side street. Santo Domingo sure did have a lot of homeless. The whole street we rolled into was basically a huge homeless camp. And the houses were clearly a long shot from their original idea of being a suburban utopia. Just a lot of shacks. Tents. Cardboard. People sitting on the curb with empty eyes.
People glanced at the car, and I suspected if left alone, it would be stripped or stolen within minutes. No other car parked here after all.
David unbuckled and stepped out, adjusting the gun in his waistband as it slipped down while we were in the car. The list of habits to fix grows larger.
He approached the diner, and I tried accessing any security network just in case. There was none in place. Trying different signal ranges, it all went null. Nothing near. Well, it could be stolen and resold. Shitty ass place. The lack of cameras was either a blessing or a warning. I leaned toward the latter.
David opened the door and I tried looking in, but David opened and banged it closed after himself quickly. The only glance I got was a brightly lit wall of white and red tile.
A minute passed. I hesitated to work on things because David might be back any minute.
Two passed, and I began dusting my netrunner undersuit off. I need to stop sleeping in it. Bits of something got in every nook and cranny.
Three minutes passed, and I glanced back at the pizzeria door. Still nothing. Nobody even approached the building in the meantime, preferring just to pass by.
A young kid with a huge gold star cybernetic cosmetic on her forehead approached the driver side window and cupped her hands over her eyes, trying to look in.
I rolled down a window slightly and pushed the barrel of a gun out. She tilted her head, nodded, and walked away casually, without making a fuss. She scratched her head under the bleached hair as she walked.
I scanned her face out of habit. First name: Star. Last name: Star. Age: 19. Star Star seems to have fallen on hard times.
The ragged kid kicked an empty trashcan lying on the ground, and it accidentally bounced straight up. She walked for a step, turned around, and kicked it again so hard it flew into the nearby wall, bounced back, and struck the young woman in the shin, who responded by beating the trashcan again mercilessly.
Sorry Star Star, it's my car. I almost feel bad.
I looked where she went after, and it was an unremarkable small sleeping tent way in the distance. It was spray painted bright gold.
David was still nowhere to be seen. And the order was still "Ready to pick up!"
David, it's just pizza.
"Is there a holdup?" I texted David and waited for a response.
Thirty seconds passed without a response. Damn it.
---
*Quadra Type-66 640 TS* – rough-looking and beat-up door latch hissed and opened, shifting the entire door backwards.
A leg stepped out, a thin calf with a big dirty steel-toed boot.
Then stepped out a lanky tall man dressed in a tight netrunner suit that stopped at his ankles and forearms, with a red jacket over it. He dragged his hand through his dirty brown hair, pushing it from his forehead. He took a deep breath that showed his caved-in stomach of a starving man.
Then the man frowned and rubbed the emp threading under his dark blue eyes and stepped forward, glancing all around him as he approached the pizzeria. As he did, it showed that the sclera of his right eye was bloodshot and changed shade significantly.
The car door hissed closed behind him, and that earned a sigh of relief out of the man, who then placed an active monitor link on the car, attaching it to HUD in his left eye.
After crossing the street, the lanky man swung open the heavy metallic door and carefully stepped inside the establishment.
The insides were constructed like a bunker, with the only entrance being a corridor with a double turn, creating a chokepoint. The place was filthy but not too much; most of the trash was nicely tucked in the corners.
He checked for cameras, but it seemingly lacked any security at that end completely. Hidden cameras at this range should still be giving out signals that one can pick up.
The sound of the ceiling fan was so loud it overpowered even the sound of his own footsteps.
He walked through the security structure and noticed that the windows that looked normal from the outside were actually barred with heavy metallic shutters.
The man scowled and took out his gun, watchful for any sign of people. The light behind the ceiling fan flickered, periodically leaving half of the area dark for a split second every now and then.
The dining area was empty. Spotless. The tables were wiped clean. The booths looked like they'd been bought yesterday. No crumbs. No stains. No signs of life. The chairs were pushed in neatly. The napkin dispensers were full. The salt shakers were aligned.
Then the man looked at the direction of the counter and employee area. His eyes suddenly unfocused, and a moment later, the clarity returned.
---
There is nowhere else he could have gone.
"David?" I called out, going in further.
I looked over the counter with a cash register and to the "Staff only" door. It had a keypad lock right beside it. The screen was mostly clean except for the fingerprint smudges on the places of 1, 4, 7, and 9. Good thing. Otherwise I would have to break down the door.
I opened the counter flap and entered behind it. In the counter shelves below were just supplies like napkins, salt, and pepper. Part of the supplies nearing the door was thrown all over the floor, and I carefully stepped over them.
I approached the staff only door and listened in over the loud fan. I had to place my ear to it to hear soft rambles of a conversation.
There was an implant that allowed you to "see" through walls using electromagnetic spectrum penetrating walls and getting back the reconstructed image; this would be the thing to have. I don't like going in blind.
I entered the code of 1947 and opened the swinging door as slowly as possible, checking the corners first. The voices became much clearer and they continued, disregarding the slowly opening door.
"So you do know how to cook pizza?" a younger voice asked.
"It was a job requirement. Yes," the gravelly man answered.
"Eh. I just said I could. It's not like we actually need to."
"That's why you won't climb the ranks, fuckhead. I once cooked a pizza when a badge came over for a check."
"Really?"
"Well, I almost served it. You know what happens with the surprise inspector? He left a messy scene. Boss ate a slice or two of the pizza though, said I'm up there to get promoted."
I stopped opening the door once I saw the back of one of the men.
"Damn. When is it coming? Don't forget me when you are at the top, choom."
"It's been two years."
"Oh."
"Yeah, well. What can you do."
They are unprepared and unaware. This is the moment.
I quickly peeked through the doorway and pointed my gun at them.
The door cracked open. I could see the back of one man's head. He was leaning against a prep table. Another man was behind the counter. Both were relaxed. Too relaxed.
"DON'T MOVE. WHERE IS THE KID?"
Both men turned. The older one reacted. His hand went to his belt. The younger one's eyes went wide and he began to raise his hands.
I uploaded a quick short circuit and shot the old man in the chest once, but two shots were fired. A waste.
He went down and began spasming, gurgling electrified blood.
"WHERE IS THE KID?"
The surviving guy's jaw clenched and he stood in fear, not sure whether to raise his hands or follow the command.
"SPEAK!"
"Fuck. He is in the freezer. Look!" He gestured to my left. "There is a door to the basement. I can show you—" He began shuffling in my direction.
I shot him in the skull and uploaded cyberware malfunction to his falling body, which took 0.8 seconds to upload. Now there was a sound of metal beating against metal cupboards and flesh as his arm replacements began acting on their own.
Turning left, I looked at the freezer and saw neatly shelved sliced synth meats. I opened it and forcefully threw the entire trays out, revealing a hidden doorway, big enough for 2 men to enter.
There was a handle flush with one side of it, and I pulled with all my strength. I couldn't be stealthy when there were gunshots.
As soon as I opened the door, the chilled air struck me and I heard a crack of a gunshot.
I braced myself for the pain and the impact, but it never came.
"You little shit! Let go."
I stormed in, pushing open the door completely and aimed downwards.
The freezer door swung open. I stormed in. Gun down. Aiming low.
It was a walk-in freezer that had been converted into something else. A butcher shop. Human butcher shop. Blood on the walls. Cyberware limbs stacked in bins. Chrome arms. Chrome legs. A pile of spinal columns in the corner. Fucking chop shop. The cold air was thick with the smell of death and stale shit.
The operating table dominated the center of the room. Plastic sheeting hung around it. The floor underneath was dark. Sticky. I didn't want to know what had been there.
But it was what I saw in the back that made me stop. A row of cages. Metal bars. Rusted. Bolted to the concrete floor. And inside them, figures. Huddled. Pale. Watching me with empty eyes. They were barely alive. Skin stretched over bones. Some had fresh surgical scars. Some were missing limbs. One of them reached a hand through the bars. Weak. Trembling. She opened her mouth. No sound came out. Just a rasp. A dry, desperate rasp that was worse than screaming.
More goons stood nearby with guns aimed at me. Three of them in the corners. Two machine guns on the left. An automatic shotgun on the right. My skin weave was light armor at best.
In the middle was the operating space. The table was separated from the rest with thin plastic sheeting. The blood underneath was fresh.
And there was David.
A big fat guy had him in a one-armed hug from behind. One arm across his chest, holding both of David's arms in front of him. David was struggling. His fingers were gripping his gun. He couldn't bring it up. Couldn't aim. His face was turning red from the pressure.
In his other hand, he held a big shiny revolver. He simply held it to his side, tapping it on his thigh.
"Stay there. Or the kid gets it."
"I GOT THIS!" David screamed, only to get pulled into a tighter hold where he could not even properly take a breath. His eyes went wide. His face started to go pale.
"I take the kid back and go back. Live our own lives. Little eddies on top? Sounds good?" I asked, cracking his security in the meantime.
His name came up on my HUD. Guillermo Marchetti. No bounty. No criminal record. The system didn't know him. That meant he was either very clean or very connected.
Guillermo laughed. It was a wet sound. Phlegmy. He had a gold chain around his neck that began to clank each time his stomach moved.
"You bought two large pepperoni pizzas, John." He smiled. Yellow teeth. "You walked into my establishment. Killed my men. Made a mess of my kitchen. And now you want me to hand over the kid? No, John. That's not how this works. Where is the second pizza?"
"What the fuck are you on?" I stalled for time.
His security was one I'd never seen before. My automated breach protocols were failing one by one. Whatever he was running, I'd never seen it before. It wasn't standard ICE.
"What do I want?" He tilted his head. "Let me think. Well, respect, for one, obviously."
David struggled but he couldn't budge even a little, and I heard his teeth grind in the struggle.
SC?
Brace.
The numbness spread from my spine outward. My fingers went cold. My vision narrowed. I felt like I was watching myself from the bottom of a well. Every physical feeling faded into distant obscurity. My ears were as if they were filled with water. Even my sense of smell went away, leaving me only with enough to feel the weight of gravity to stabilize my feet on the ground.
I sent a simple message to David.
*'When I give a signal, shoot to kill.'*
David nodded as much as he could in that hold, his face quickly changing shade.
"Naaaah." Guillermo shook his head. "I'll just get that boy's ass and sell you piece by piece. You're not my type, John."
His other hand began moving, one with a huge revolver.
The automatic scans were over. You run the oldest shit you could find. Silly trick, nothing more. I was past his ICE. The breach was open. His system was mine.
I pushed the overclock. My vision went white at the edges. I felt the heat climb up my spine. My processing speed spiked.
Upload initiated. Three instances of cyberware malfunction. One for each goon. Their bodies locked up. One of them began twitching. The others were still.
They screamed something, but I heard nothing but mumbles.
The fat guy got everything left I had, which was another cyberware malfunction and two short circuits.
Guillermo's grip on David loosened. Just a fraction. Just enough.
David took the chance and broke from his grasp, turning around in midair as he fell forward.
That moment, I raised my gun to shoot him, but David suddenly unloaded his whole magazine into the man's chest from the prone position. All 11 bullets that he had left.
Adjusting, I switched to the closest goon, but he simply pulled the trigger of his machine gun and began raining hell as he was unable to control the spread.
The prisoners were screaming. Crawling. Dragging themselves across the concrete as the rain of bullets hit their cages.
I aimed for his head, but the sudden jerking of his made it difficult to be sure. I shot 3 .45 bullets in quick succession, but the machine gun did its damage on the caged people. He dropped like his strings were cut, and I switched targets for the other side.
David was still on the ground with the gun in his hands, still trying to pull the trigger of his gun, which was now pointed at the ceiling.
"DAVID! MOVE!" I yelled.
The second goon was already bringing up his shotgun. I fired twice. The first shot hit him in the shoulder. He stumbled and fired in my direction. The second hit him in the face. He dropped.
I felt the slight pressure of pellets hitting my torso and legs. It's fine.
My legs suddenly gave way and my body fell forward down the stairs.
It's fine.
Mid-fall, I released my hands from the gun and pushed them towards the nearby walls of the stairway. With every bit of force I could muster.
I caught myself at a weird angle and released my hands once my legs could stand again. I'm too late; the second shot is coming.
Looking up, I heard a loud crack come through as David was holding a revolver scavenged from the corpse, now crouched just behind the corpse.
The last goon's head exploded in a fiery mess and ricocheted after, destroying the luminescent lamp above.
David panted heavily, staring at the massacre. His hands shook heavily. Otherwise he showed no pain.
"Good job," I muttered and descended the stairs as fast as I could.
It's hard to walk. It's all so numb. SC. Stop it, SC. I can bear the pain.
I was ignored.
Stopping the overclock of my cyberdeck, I hoped would help. It did nothing.
SC. Search and Copy. Stop it.
I looked under myself and saw a small pool of blood gathered from my wounds.
Biomonitor gave out endless warnings that meant nothing. Only one did: blood pressure was dropping.
I looked at my legs.
The pellets had caught me across both shins and the lower thighs in a loose spread. The skin weave and the netrunner suit had taken the worst of it; I could feel the deformed mesh in the places where it had caught and distributed rather than let things through. Two had punched past it in the thighs. Maybe three, hard to tell with everything still numb.
The blood was dark. Venous. Nothing major was hit.
I pressed two fingers against the worst-looking one on the left shin and pushed in until I felt the resistance of meat below the torn suit fabric.
Not deep. Bruising below, pellet above, nothing structural complaining back at me.
I straightened up and looked at the room.
The cages were in a row against the back wall. Five of them that I could count, bolted to the floor, the kind of bolting that wasn't an afterthought. Drilled through the concrete and into whatever was below.
The naked woman in the second cage from the left was missing her left arm from the elbow, and the bandaging on the stump was the provisional kind, the kind that said this happened recently and the person doing it was more interested in keeping her alive than comfortable.
The man beside her hadn't moved since the shooting started, and I couldn't tell from this angle if he was breathing.
Two of the cages near the back wall had taken rounds from the machine gun.
I did not look at those for long.
David was still crouched in front of the nearest one. The woman inside had pushed herself as far into the back corner as the dimensions allowed, knees up, both arms wrapped over her head, making a sound that wasn't language anymore.
David had his hand through the bars trying to reach her arm.
"Hey." His voice came out quiet, barely enough for me to hear. "Hey, I'm not going to—"
She pulled further away. Not fighting. Just contracting. The cage wasn't big enough for the distance she was trying to make.
"David. Are you injured?" I said, unsure if this was loud enough.
"No. I can get her out if I—"
"The lock," I said. "Look at the lock."
He looked at the padlock. Looked at me.
"We don't have cutters. Nor the keys," I said. "Even if we did. Even if we got all of them out, most of them can't walk and the ones who can aren't going to go with strangers."
"We can't just leave them here."
"We're not. We're calling it in and leaving."
"That's—"
"The cops have to respond to an active fire with confirmed victims. That's the calculation, Dee. We stand here arguing and they get less time, not more."
I picked up the Defender from the corpse. The thing was heavy and ugly and I didn't like carrying it, but the options in this room were limited. I cannot reload my Unity in this condition. My fingers barely listen to me.
"Move."
He looked at the woman in the cage one more time.
She was still doing the sound. She was going to keep doing it whether we were in the room or not.
David stood. His hands weren't shaking anymore, which was either composure or the other thing. I'd watch him.
He kept the revolver pointed at the floor and followed me back through the freezer door.
The kitchen was how we'd left it. The older man against the base of the prep counter, the younger one settled after his cyberware burned itself out. I moved through it quickly and didn't look at either of them any more than I had to to confirm nobody was getting up.
At the staff door I stopped.
The parking sensors pinged in the corner of my HUD. Another car drove and stopped near mine. It was swift on the approach and stopped a few feet behind mine.
"They have backup," I said to David.
He looked at me.
His grip on the revolver adjusted.
I opened the staff door a crack and listened through the corridor and the ambient noise of the kitchen.
Voices outside, two of them, moving with the specific unhurried quality of men who thought they were arriving to a situation that was already controlled.
They were about to walk into the front entrance.
I looked at the corridor ahead. The double-turn bunker structure at the front of this place had been built as. Whoever designed it had done it so that anyone coming in from the street had to make two ninety-degree turns before reaching the dining room, creating a natural chokepoint with no sightline. The intention had been to protect whoever was inside from whoever came in off the street.
The geometry worked in both directions.
Clamping the gun under my armpit, I reached into my jacket for the grenade I took from the car. I struggled for a second to pull the pin and held it tight.
"Get back," I said to David.
The slight vibrations through the floor told me he did.
I leaned into the corridor mouth and looked at the angle. The first turn was approximately eight feet in. If I threw it to bounce off the right wall of the turn, it would carry around the corner into the chokepoint rather than stopping short against the bend.
I threw it low and hard off the right wall, stepped back, and grabbed David by the collar of the oversized coat and physically moved him behind one of the diner tables.
The grenade went off inside the enclosed double-turn, and the sound it made in that space was not the sound a grenade makes in open air. The corridor amplified it and focused it, and the percussion came up through the floor. The wall to my left developed a crack that ran diagonally from the floor junction to somewhere above the wall tiles. Dust fell from every horizontal surface in the building simultaneously.
I heard one voice stop. One voice kept going. Something incomprehensible.
He came through the smoke at the end of the corridor with one arm hanging at a wrong angle from the elbow and a Lexington pistol in the hand that still worked. His entire body twisted so that he could point the barrel.
He fired.
The rounds hit me in the chest. Pressure. I did not feel the crack. Nor the pain.
Flexing my arm muscles to their maximum, I unleashed hell on him with the Defender. After a few seconds of firing, I lowered the drum.
"Forward," I said to David, trying to sound as calm as I could.
I kept the Defender at chest height, muzzle moving ahead. The small openings in the metal shutters were not enough to see who was outside still.
On the other side of the street, a Mahir Supron was parked 5 feet left from the Quadra's rear. Black. The engine was still running.
From the backseat stepped out a man with an assault rifle across his chest, and he had it up before his feet were both on the ground. He already had his sight on us.
I uploaded 3 consecutive short circuits into his system, then continued by emptying the drum at him, covering for David as he dashed for the car. I opened the driver side door remotely.
Sidestepping towards the car, the drum clicked empty. Not sure if the man was dead just yet, as he slipped back in as soon as I opened fire. My senses are too muddled to confirm.
I threw away the empty gun and stumbled towards my car, gathering speed as I went. David was already in his passenger side seat.
Glancing at David, he pointed with his revolver outside his window with a concerned look.
"There's someone there."
I got to the driver door, falling into the seat. Bullets bounced off the metal of the door right as I did. Fucker is alive. In the mirror I noticed that his speed was simply ludicrous as he ran up to me at damn near 40 miles an hour. Kerenzikov or a Sandevistan.
David hurriedly peeked as well.
"A blonde girl is on my side. On the ground," David called out loudly.
Irrelevant. I floored the accelerator, and the engine roared to life, quickly making distance from him, as the man quickly lost the boost to his speed.
As we gained distance, I made sure to look at the mirrors and watch out for any more surprises.
The last thing I saw was that girl getting shot as she ran away from the gunman on the side of the street.
The shot caught her in the back of the head. Her body crumpled. She dropped. Face first. The gold star on her forehead was still catching the flickers of the sunlight.
The man lowered the rifle. He didn't check her. He just turned back toward the pizzeria.
I drove towards David's place. He did not let silence sit for long, putting away the revolver on the middle panel and then leaning on his arms forward, exhaling loudly in stress.
Braking at an intersection, I saw that the small pool of blood beneath my feet had gathered on the cat mat. I did not feel it at all.
David opened his mouth to speak but quickly decided otherwise, looking at me.
I opened the semi-anonymous NCPD report channel and wrote a simple report. I expect to get questioned again in some time if this becomes a bigger issue somehow.
*'Chop shop. Active victims in cages. Basement. Guillermo's Pizzeria, Santo Domingo. Armed individuals present.'*
Then, taking out a MaxDoc, I stared at it for a while before getting the half dose.
Now, SC. It's fine now. There is no need to brace. I can take it.
There was absolutely no answer. There appear to be too many things SC can do that it doesn't explain. Waste of a MaxDoc.
One good side effect is that I'm not starving anymore. Makes me feel alive.
…
I did not bother checking if someone was in David's apartment and went right in after David. I can survive negotiation with mercs, but not the lack of blood.
The door opened and I sat down on the floor, tending to my wounds. First, chest. Pressing, I tried to feel out any pain, but found small fabric indents in my netrunner suit. Worth its money.
David closed the door and clenched his fists.
"Raf. I'm sorry."
I couldn't even bring myself to get annoyed. It's really all my fault for choosing such a shitty pizzeria.
"Good shots," I replied. I expected much less from a person who was wide-eyed at the sight of a gun a few days before. He truly is special.
"You need help?"
I rolled up the pant leg and looked over my leg. It looked like bug bites. The pellets were really embedded at the hypodermis level at most. Nanomachines did their job.
"Chill, Dee. I got this. Not unusual for me. Worry about yourself. I'm, for one, not hungry anymore."
David stayed unusually silent, brooding over some unquestionably stupid stuff.
"Fetch me something to wipe the blood."
He turned slightly and tossed me a half-used roll of paper towels from the counter.
He then went to the window and opened the shutters, letting sunlight in. The light briefly flickered on the ash urn of Gloria Martinez's remains. For a second, I looked at the silver rose.
I don't like the flickers. The shine doesn't have to be in a place like this.
Standing up, I turned to David, who looked through empty food containers absent-mindedly. He turned his attention.
"David. I want to give you the chance of getting back to the academy."