The pachinko machines filled the floor with noise, all of them running at once, and the room felt smaller than it was because of it. Finn moved past the rows toward the back, where two guards stood in front of a door. Both of them were built wide, with cyberwares running up their necks and across their jawlines, the high-end kind that cost more than most people in this city made in a year. The three of them walked up and the guards didn't move.
One of them said something that all of them didn't understand.
Ciri didn't react. Finn caught enough of the tone to know it wasn't a greeting, and that it was Japanese.
"Sorry," Finn said. "No auto-translator. Could you speak in English?"
The guard glanced at his partner the way people do when they want to share a thought without saying it, then looked back at Finn. "What do you want?"
Finn pulled the pouch out of his bag and held it up, letting the weight of it show. Gold coins, each one stamped with a mark that hadn't been minted anywhere in Night City. "I need Wakako Okada's help. I need someone to cash in this amount of gold."
The guard's expression didn't move much. "You stupid? You think I'm going to believe some guy who walked in off the street is carrying that much real gold?"
"Bite one," Finn said. "See for yourself."
The guard took a coin and bit down. Gold is soft and the coin gave a little, which seemed to bother him more than convince him. He turned it over once, then put it in his pocket.
"If you really believe it's real," Finn said, "you can keep that one."
The second guard reached over without a word and helped himself to one as well. The first crossed his arms again. "Who are you? You dress weird. Even one of your friends here has pointy ears. You guys larpers or something?"
"You don't really have to know that," Finn said. "I just need to turn this amount of gold to cash, which I can't do at a bank, and if Miss Wakako Okada would do it, find us some place to stay."
The guard told him to wait, disappeared through the door. The other one shifted across to fill the gap.
Ciri moved up beside Finn and kept her voice down. "I don't like where this is going."
"We have an elven sage on our side. We'll be fine."
The guard came back and waved them through. The second one stepped in behind them to cover the way they'd come.
---
Finn could see red lacquered panels on every wall, a wide desk, and behind it an old woman with a cigarette burning between her fingers. The gold coin from the guard's pocket was already sitting on the desk in front of her. She took her time going over each of them before she said anything.
"So. You want to trade a lot of gold for cash?"
"That is my intention here…" Finn said.
She tapped some ash off into a tray. "How do I know that the gold you're about to trade won't give us any trouble?"
"If you dump it to the market at once then it'll surely catch some trouble," Finn said. "But no, it shouldn't be much trouble. I understand the shape is a bit… unconventional. It's not a historical artifact, I assure you, it's just some dumbass minting it into weird coins."
"I was going to ask if this is a historical item… if it is, then I would've refused instantly." She picked the coin up and turned it over, feeling the edge of it with her thumb. "But… I didn't think you'd be so stupid, Mister…"
"Finn. Finn Wegner."
"Mister Wegner." She set the coin back down. "You brought a lot of gold to me for someone who is unarmed."
Finn smiled. "I had thought that you were a respectable fixer. But I assure you, if you try to do anything funny, it's not going to end well."
"Very confident, are we?" She pulled a slow drag off the cigarette and breathed it out toward the ceiling. "I can turn this gold into cash for you, if you want. But I am going to need a share."
"I'm fine with that. As long as you also give me a nice place to live in this city using the money. As a courtesy… how about forty to you, sixty to me?"
She was quiet for a moment. Something shifted at the corner of her mouth. "You are a naive young man."
"Call it good will," Finn said.
She hummed. "It will take a couple of weeks at least to convert this amount of gold to eddies. However, once I can get confirmation that all this gold is real and an estimate evaluation, which can be done in a couple of hours, I can pay you upfront using that nice place you want. A good will from me as well, Mister Wegner. Is that understandable?"
"Can I get some small amount in cash as well?" Finn said. "If so, you can go ahead and write the contract. Again, I don't have cyberware, so we need to do this the old fashioned way."
"I like the old fashioned way." She laughed, short and dry, then said something in Japanese to the guards. Both of them gathered the coins and left the room.
"New to the city, I assume?" she asked.
"You can say that. Any tips?"
"Don't do anything stupid." Her attention moved past Finn to Avallach, and stayed there. "You dress strangely. Would you want to browse our nearest boutique to replace that odd robe of yours?"
"This clothing is perfectly suitable to me," Avallach said.
"Suit yourself. You can wait outside. I'm sure you can find the entertainment of Jig-Jig Street… pleasurable."
"Thanks," Finn said. They filed back out to the noise of the pachinko floor.
---
One of the guards drove them through the city, and Ciri spent most of the ride pressed close to the window, watching the streets move past, then turning to run her hand along the interior of the door.
She leaned toward Finn. "Do cars like this exist in your world as well?"
"Not as advanced as this," Finn said. "But my world is pretty similar to this one, more or less."
"Is this not the world you have been looking for, then? One similar to yours?"
"Yes."
She studied him for a moment. "You don't seem excited."
Finn scoffed. "It's useless even if I found it. I didn't come here through the doors I usually use. And I don't think Avallach would explain the intricacies of world travel that he knows to little old me."
Ciri snapped her fingers. "Right…"
Outside the window, a building filled up the view ahead and kept filling it as they got closer, the upper floors disappearing somewhere above the haze. The base of it stretched far enough in both directions that Ciri couldn't see where it ended.
The guard spoke from the front without turning around, said they'd arrived, and passed back a case and a card. He said that the card can be used at the elevator so it would take them to the right floor.
"And the apartment number?" Finn asked.
"Look at the damned card."
Finn turned it over. 3306. He opened the case and found it stacked with eddies. "Thanks. Do you know where I could find a gun store that doesn't ask questions? Or a ripperdoc that accepts anyone?"
"It's a megabuilding," the guard said. "They have everything here."
"Right…" Finn muttered. "Any news on when I'll get the rest of my money?"
A pause from the front seat. "We'll contact you once the process is finished. Until then, you can get the hell out of the car."
Ciri's brow went up. "Rude…"
Finn opened the door without arguing and stepped out onto the walkway. The others followed.
Ciri coughed almost immediately, her hand going to her face. "The city might look majestic, but the smell… it's horrible…"
"This world is dying, much faster than ours." Avallach stood with his hands behind his back, his eyes moving across the towers, the smoke sitting between them, the sky above the city that had given up being any particular color. "Most of it is due to the ignorance of the people of this world, where they exploit their homeland until there is nothing left. In our world, we do everything to avoid the end. In this world… they quickened it."
Finn hummed at that. "Let's just find our place first and get the essentials…"