Kai and Jackie found the destination for tonight's deal.
An abandoned steel factory in the old industrial zone.
The abandoned steelworks stood in the northern industrial district, known as NID.
This whole area had once had everything.
But after the Unification War ended and Arasaka returned to Night City, the company carried out a massacre across Watson's commercial, manufacturing, and financial sectors in order to seize control of the city's best harbor industrial access.
One factory after another shut down, and Arasaka finally took Watson's waterfront industrial park for itself, formally renaming it the Arasaka Waterfront.
Then came the old earthquake damage and the financial crisis, which finished off what was left.
Most of the factories could no longer operate and were simply abandoned.
Now NID had become synonymous with trash, disorder, and chaos.
It was home to the lowest-tier factory workers and territory overshadowed by Maelstrom.
NCPD's threat assessment for northern Watson was simple:
Extremely dangerous.
Dusk was settling in.
Taking advantage of the remaining light, Kai and Jackie used the map they had prepared in advance to recon the rough layout of the abandoned steel factory.
After a careful comparison, they confirmed that only one place was really suitable for the deal.
The steel forging workshop.
The old workshop rows had wide interiors, with all kinds of machinery platforms and shipping containers that could serve as cover.
Kai and Jackie moved around to the west side of the abandoned steel factory, where a chain-link fence formed the perimeter.
The western side had once been an open-air work zone, with flat concrete and steel plating laid across the ground.
Because no one had used it for so long, wild grass and weeds had swallowed the surface. The overgrowth had become thick and lush, nearly up to their knees.
The chain-link fence was rusted through and in terrible shape. Jackie simply tore open one damaged section.
"This place is creepy as hell. If somebody told me it was haunted at midnight, I'd believe it. I seriously don't get how those Maelstrom freaks can stand living around here."
Jackie kept talking while cutting and pulling the metal fencing aside, and the two of them slipped through without trouble.
Kai activated the scanning functions on Dragon Fist, the smart glasses Vik had made for him, checking the area ahead to make sure no active electronic equipment was watching or tracking them.
After a scan, he found nothing in working condition across the open lot except knee-high weeds, rusted and broken light posts, and scattered containers.
After crossing the patchy open field between the containers, they reached the warehouse area. Still no sign of anyone.
The two kept moving toward the core factory zone.
As Kai scanned through Dragon Fist, he explained the situation to Jackie.
"Tonight is a little special. I didn't tell you the full details earlier because I didn't want the information leaking."
Jackie waved a hand and answered without worry,
"Brother, you know I trust you. When the time comes, you just tell me what to do and that's it."
Still, Kai wanted Jackie to understand what they would actually be facing, so he explained that Arasaka Special Ops would be moving in to seize the implant and that Militech would also be launching a follow-up strike.
After hearing that, Jackie kept shaking his head.
"This whole thing is way too complicated. Honestly, if Militech doesn't show up, that implant probably just ends up in the hands of those corpo dogs."
Kai answered with complete certainty.
"Militech won't miss this chance. Because I know them well. Or more exactly, I know their Special Ops chief pretty well."
Jackie clearly had no idea who that was. Coming from Heywood, he had always hated corpo types on instinct, and his knowledge of corporate higher-ups was almost zero.
"Some distant aunt of yours?"
"Not exactly. If I had backing like that, I wouldn't still be working for Arasaka."
The "auntie" Kai was referring to was just a nickname.
He meant Meredith Stout.
Back then, while she was investigating the Militech convoy hit, she had once hired Kai to deal with Maelstrom.
At the time, Kai, V, and Jackie had all been broke as hell. After squeezing Meredith hard for extra money, the three of them tore through Maelstrom, and that had earned them a fair amount of her respect.
Later, Kai dealt with Meredith several more times, and the two became fairly familiar.
Eventually he even got a decent pistol from her, though he had barely used it and had mostly forgotten about it.
Kai thought Meredith's style was a little too wild. He could not keep up with her pace, so in the end he had simply cut contact.
What he had not expected was that Meredith later climbed even higher and became Militech's Director of Political Affairs, showing up constantly in major Night City news reports and enjoying quite a stretch of fame.
The key point was this:
Meredith had very strong execution.
She liked handling things personally, and her attitude toward Arasaka was extremely aggressive.
So Kai was sure that as long as Maine followed the plan and sent the information through the proper channel to Militech, once Meredith heard it, she absolutely would not let the opportunity pass.
After all, she and Susan had always been true enemies.
The two men crossed the warehouse zone and entered the core production area, where rows of production buildings stood, though only one of them was currently being used by Maelstrom.
Maelstrom's presence in Watson spread wide, but their members usually operated in small groups.
Some groups had over thirty people.
Others had as few as five or six.
Kai estimated that no more than ten Maelstrom members would be involved in tonight's trade.
To them, one military-grade Sandevistan was not all that important.
Kai and Jackie found a concealed spot and activated Dragon Fist's thermal scan, checking the row of workshops one by one.
Through the heat data layered over the lenses, Kai's vision darkened, and he quickly found colored human heat signatures moving inside the workshop in the center.
Six people.
Kai turned the scan off and told Jackie,
"They're in the middle workshop. Six Maelstrom bodies."
Jackie carefully checked the old reliable piece in his hand.
A Militech-built power pistol.
The Lexington.
Also known on the street as Glory and Justice.
That nickname did not come from its overwhelming firepower.
It came from the fact that almost every street kid and edgerunner in Night City started with one.
Every ordinary NCPD officer carried one to deal with gang punks.
If you lived that life, then sooner or later you'd either been shot by it or watched it at work.
Because the guns were so badly tracked and managed, a huge number of Lexingtons had leaked into the market and found their way into gang wars.
The death toll from that gun across Night City stayed absurdly high.
It was also compact enough to hide easily in a jacket or pants pocket for protection.
Back when Kai first became an edgerunner, the Lexington had been his starting gun too.
Seeing the one in Jackie's hand now filled him with a strange nostalgia, so he pulled out his own JKE-X2 Kenshin and offered it over.
"You want to try this one instead?"
Jackie looked at the Kenshin in his hand and did not seem especially interested.
"It's a good gun, sure. But when it comes to hardware, you're better off with what you know."
Kai did not argue. He simply shoved the Kenshin into Jackie's hand and took the Lexington in exchange, giving the older pistol a quick, practiced check.
Then he ran through a few aiming motions and found that the old feel was still there.
Even without a Ballistic Coprocessor assisting the aim, the sensation of a gun you'd used before was never something you forgot.
"A little paint worn off, but you've taken good care of it. Why'd you keep this old thing so long?"
Jackie's expression turned slightly odd.
"You're really starting to sound more and more like my mom. You've got that whole 'been there, done that' tone now."
But the way he looked at the Lexington made it obvious how much he cared about it.
"I'm just sentimental, I guess. My mom's always asking me why I keep so much old junk in storage."
"Secret between us. I even still have the belt my dad used to beat me with."
At that, Kai fell silent again.
He had seen that belt during Jackie's wake, when Misty had taken him through Jackie's garage. That was also when he learned about Jackie's violent drunk of a father.
Kai put the cheap pistol back into Jackie's hand and looked at him seriously.
"All the more reason to treasure what's in front of you. This time, we've got to make sure things with Misty finally happen."
Jackie: "..."
(End of Chapter)
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