"Damn… that went way better than I was expecting…" It is so weird that I'm not even joking when I say that. That meeting with Lucas went so much better than what I was hoping for. I mean, I was expecting heavy, intense interrogation, but this was more like a normal reporting. I even got them to agree to my demands! Probably because he was monitoring my biomon and seeing whether I was lying or not. But in any case, I was happy as fuck, this was a huge win for me. Obviously not all of us were in just as good a mood as me.
I lost five years of my life back there…
Snorting at her dramatic tone, I slowly stood up from my chair and slowly moved towards the front entrance. "Don't be so dramatic, Haezy." Rubbing my eye tiredly, I slowly moved towards the door without paying attention, when Johnny called out, 'Hey, is that Reed?' Stopping dead in my tracks, I slowly opened my eyes and saw that it was indeed Reed, standing guard at the door.
Startled, I quickly backtracked and power-walked, as naturally as I could, towards the back door. "Fuck me, it is Reed… I hope he didn't see me."
'It wouldn't matter, this is still a fixer's place, despite the corpo dealings,' Johnny said, walking beside me.
Slipping out of the back door, I took a deep breath while stretching my stiff joints a bit. "Well, it looks like we still have the rest of the day."
'So what's our move?'
"I'll be honest, I just wanna rest," I said, shrugging my shoulders. "Dashi Parade is in 3 days, I think it'll be better for me to just go home, sleep, and prepare for the fuckfest that is to come." Saying all that, I slowly moved around the bar towards the main road where Johnny's car was parked. I was about to get into it when I received a simple small message.
Let's meet. No Tell Motel. Room 210
'You were saying.'
"It's that unknown number again…" I commented, while getting into the car. I remember getting this message last time too, but I didn't pay it any attention because I was too busy planning for the Dashi Parade. But this time I had time on my hand, but the question is, do I want to waste it like this?
Want me to trace it?! Haezy asked excitedly before I could say anything. Looks like her mood is improving a bit. Good, I don't like seeing her scared or sad. Anyways, "That won't be necessary, Haezy, I'm just going to ignore it again."
'Seriously? Again?' Johnny exclaimed, disapproval heavy in his voice.
"What? It could be a small low-level job, not even worth my time."
'No one offers a low-level job at No Tell Motel.' That, or some tweaker is calling me so that I can get their daily fix for them. There is no in between. 'Come on! Please! I really want to see who it is!'
"Fine!" I exclaimed, slamming my hand on the steering wheel in mock frustration, glared at the grinning tapeworm riding shotgun in my head. "You can be such a child sometimes."
Stepping on the pedal, I pulled into the traffic and slowly made my way to the highways, outside of the city. Just because I have to get somewhere doesn't mean that I have to rush over there too. This is actually the biggest perk of being a merc, I get to set my own time, except for Muamar, no one really bothers me about time sensitivity which is always nice, really puts it into perspective why I've been working so hard to build up my rep.
So there I was, cruising on the highway near Watson, when a red car blew past me, weaving and cutting through the traffic.
"Woha... Look at that, that's a Yaiba Semimaru," I said with awe and wonder in my voice.
'The bike company made it?' Johnny asked from the passenger seat, also looking at the car with interest.
"Uh huh. I've only ever heard about one, it's a damn sight to see one in person." I was 21 when I first heard of this car, but I've never seen one in person, I would go so far as to say that this might be the only Semimaru in Night City.
Increasing my speed, I pulled a bit closer to the car, wanting to get a closer look at the one-of-a-kind car. The car was built like a proper racing machine, all aggressive lines with a sleek design. I was just about to pull away from the car when I noticed something interesting, there were two people sitting in the car, but that was not the interesting part, both of those people were borged out and adorned with ugly cyberware and a bunch of spikes. "Those are motherfuckin' Maelstromers…"
One of the most elusive, one-of-a-kind cars on this side of the hemisphere is driving a few car lengths ahead of me, and it's in possession of 2 Maelstrom assholes…
'What are you thinking?' Johnny asked after me following the car for a few seconds, and it is a very good question, because "It's fucking Maelstrom… I'm sure no one would cry if 2 of them were to leave this world by my hands today. Right?" I softly asked Johnny, while slowly increasing the speed, chasing after the Yaiba.
After looking at me for a few seconds, Johnny simply shrugged his shoulders, 'Be my guest, just don't dent my car in the process.' And with that, the fucker lit up a cigarette and kicked his feet up on the dashboard, waiting for the show.
Tightening the grip on the steering wheel, I slammed the pedal and gunned it after my target, all while trying to hack the car and safely stop it without damaging it, but I was having a little problem with it. "Haezy, looks like that car is not connected to NC infrastructure subnet." Usually all the cars in the city are connected to the transit subnet of the city or NC infrastructure subnet, which is how the cars drive automatically around the city, and that is how netrunners are able to hack the bitch, but if you are able to take the vehicle off the network then you will gain a completely unhackable and untraceable vehicle, at the cost of the auto-drive, or the option to call the car to you.
All in all, the car in front of me is unhackable right now, however this is but a small snag, and there are ways to get around it. "Can you connect to it locally if I get close to it? I'll be able to use botnet to brute-force my way into the systems then."
It'll take a lot of RAM, but it is doable.
Doable is all I need. Tightening my grip on the steering wheel, I chased after the car while weaving through the traffic. Now it was true that I couldn't hack the car to stop it, so instead of trying to hack it, I hacked the vehicles in front of them and pulled emergency brakes on them, blocking the Yaiba's way. Slowly, after a few seconds, I finally pulled up on its tail, and waited for Haezy to do her magic. Alright, close-range connectivity is active.
The moment connection was established, I activated Overclock and quickly applied emergency brakes, and within that fucking second got brake-checked hard. "What the-?!" The only reason I pulled out was that Haezy activated all the time-dilating cyberware at once, which gave me enough time to do a Scandinavian flick... Or something like that, and with a screech I slid out of danger, but not without scratching the back of the car badly. 'Holy fuck, the brakes on that thing!'
Getting out of the car, I slammed the door shut and saw that while trying to save myself, I clipped the back of the Porsche with the Yaiba a bit and badly scratched the back fender and the bumper. Thankfully it'll buff out easily.
Now angry at the damage, I turned my attention towards the two Maelstromers stepping out of the Yaiba, and it was quite clear that the driver of the car was cyberpsycho, just the way he was breathing, staring…
Taking out Johnny's gun, I started blasting as fast as I could, while leading them away from the cars so that they wouldn't be damaged any further.
"These guys are fucking sturdy!" I growled out as I emptied my entire clip into the fuckin' psycho. Obviously he had no sense of pain anymore, so despite being turned into a fucking cheese grater, he was still fighting, if you can even call it fighting, the guy was flailing around with a Sandie and a machete. Uploading a Cyberware Malfunction in him, I quickly dashed behind him, and stuffed a GASH grenade into a big bullet wound on his back and quickly dashed away from him, and watched as multiple red lasers burst out of him, completely dismembering his upper body into finely chopped pieces of meat. Once he was dealt with, I turned towards the other guy who was standing a few steps behind me, the guy was shivering and whimpering with fear, and tried to shoot me, but because his hands were shaking so much all his shots missed. Uploading a Reboot Optics in him, I activated my knockoff Sandie and dashed over to him, and with as much speed and force as I could, kicked him in the stomach, and watched as he flew and with a loud thud hit the concrete railing of the highway.
'God damn borgs. They may be sturdy, but sturdiness is no substitute for skills,' Johnny said with a whistle, as I slowly walked over to the pile of metal and flesh that was wheezing and groaning with all of his strength.
Walking over to him, I reloaded the gun in my hand and once I reached him, I slowly aimed it at his head. "You feel that? That's the barrel of a Malorian Arms 3516, pressing on to your optic mount, and a bullet will tear through your brain within a second if you make any gonk moves. The same thing will happen if you were to outlive your usefulness to me, and the best way to make sure that doesn't happen is by answering my questions. Do you understand?"
Jerkily nodding, he gasped out, "...I understand." The guy was so afraid that if his tear ducts were still functional, then he for sure would've been crying in fear right now, but sadly the only thing he could do was snivel and shiver.
Looking around me, I saw that a lot of people were stopping and staring at the scene, I knew that badges would be coming here any second. I have to make this quick. "Where did you get this car?"
"T– two cops…" he uttered in a wavering voice. "We klepped it from them… we were planning on entering in some races with it…" Makes sense. The car was tearing through traffic like a tracer bullet, it would've been amazing in a fucking race. Speaking of race… "The engine is close to calling quits on itself," I said inquisitively, noticing how hot the fucking engine bay was, I can still hear the metal parts of engine contracting themselves back in their place. "How long were you running this thing for?"
"Too long…" he whispered out and went quiet again. Irritated, I pressed the barrel of the gun harder on the optic mount, almost hard enough to crack the glass. Getting the message, he began in a hurried tone, "Nova went cyberpsycho behind the wheel… I tried to stop him, but nothing I did worked…" Slowly he trailed off and I watched as the visor of the optic mount blinked back to life, as the hack wore off, and he finally got a good look at me. "Oh god… it's you…" he whispered to himself in a frightened and almost broken tone, looks like he recognised me. Good. Before I could say anything else I heard off-key wailing of police cars coming towards us. And in that very same second the guy in front of me started begging for his life. "Please… please let me go…"
It was his lucky day it seems, because I was out of time, and his death wouldn't have gained me anything. Holstering the gun, I simply said, "Run," to him, and walked towards the Yaiba.
Sending Johnny's car to the nearest parking spot, I went to the back of the Yaiba to see the damage, but honestly? It was "Nothing that couldn't be repaired easily." Nodding to myself, I quickly got into the car, and drove away before the police got there. Pulling off of the highway, I drove into Watson and pulled into an alleyway so that I could give the car a thorough inspection. Connecting my personal link to the car, I started scanning the soft of it, while admiring the interior of the car when I noticed something sticking out of the glove compartment. Reaching over, I pulled it out and saw that it was a wrist-mounted datapad. "This is good stuff."
'What is it?' Johnny asked, appearing in the passenger seat.
"This, Johnny boy, is an Arasaka datapad, specially made for their netrunners and assassins. God knows how those Maelstromers got their hands on it." This thing was actually very handy when it comes to real-time code-based hacking, it can act as an external cyberdeck, used for executing hacks, and you can type in custom scripts on it too, plus it looks like this particular one was jailbroken, so I can also use it as a phone. Putting it on my left hand, I connected the device to a small port on my wrist, and let Haezy run a scan on it. Better she dealt with any sort of virus now.
While all of this was happening, the scan I was running on Yaiba was also complete, it seems this car had a very rich history, and due to that, it was upgraded and tuned to the max. I mean, that is what it looked like to my untrained eyes. Someone like Claire or Muamar would be able to glean more from it, but I could still tell, this thing was a beast. But there were still some problems with it, like, "The crystal coat isn't active. The tech is there but the software is not." It seems I have two options here, either I could try to hunt down the original owner of the car, if they're even alive, or I could get Haezy's help with this. "Haezy? Could you write a custom soft for this mess?"
It'll take a while but sure. Do you want me to connect the car to Night City subnet too?
"The call-on feature wouldn't work properly without it." With a quick thought I gave Haezy go-ahead with it and let her work on it in the background. No need to stress myself with it, right now, I need to get to No Tell Motel. I really wonder who I'll find there.
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Alright guys! first of all thanks for reading! second of all, I was wrong!! I really do need powerstones it seems! please guys give me powerstones!!! give me 50 powerstones or 10 reviews, and I'll drop another chapter!