Caitlin, Deputy Director of Arasaka Special Ops, could no longer afford to worry about the consequences of going all out.
No matter how many people died tonight, she had to bring down Maine and his crew and recover that military-grade Sandevistan to report back with results.
Otherwise, she would never survive Susan's fury.
Someone had to take the blame for this.
Caitlin knew there was a high chance that person would be her, but as long as Susan was willing to keep her, she would still have a chance to survive inside Arasaka.
So in Caitlin's eyes, the deaths of Arasaka tactical personnel barely mattered. At worst, it would be written off as her own command error.
But if she disappointed Susan, then her entire career at Arasaka would be over.
Caitlin could not even imagine what that kind of ending would look like.
Her clothes, her housing, her food, the premium implants inside her body. Every part of her life had been given to her by Arasaka.
If she got fired, she would lose everything.
So she might as well gamble with her life one more time.
Once she made up her mind, Caitlin stopped holding anything back. After ordering the Arasaka tactical teams to launch a full assault, she threw in all the drones and heavy artillery she had left and began a final wave of brutal suppression against Maine's crew inside the wrecked workshop.
"You're all dying here tonight! Even if I blast this entire factory into rubble, none of you are getting out!"
Maine's group had no idea where Maelstrom's secret escape tunnel was. Outside, there was almost no cover, and stepping out would just get them focused down, so they could only stay inside the workshop and keep struggling against Arasaka's tactical teams.
Just when they were running out of options, the battlefield changed without warning.
The Arasaka tactical teams attacking them suddenly began pulling back in a hurry.
But before Arasaka could react, they were already being cut down by someone else's assault.
Kiwi seized the chance and scanned the situation outside.
"Militech moved! They hit from outside. Arasaka's armed personnel have all been taken out!"
The moment Maine's crew heard Militech had stepped in, they finally felt like they had escaped Arasaka's grip.
Only then did Maine have time to help Dorio back up and say to the others, "Looks like Faraday worked something out with Militech. We need to get out now. Maelstrom stole the implant. We deal with that later!"
No one hesitated. They all moved at once.
Outside the workshop, Militech's two armed AVs had opened up from above, and five Arasaka armed vehicles on the ground were blown over almost instantly.
The massive heat and shockwave swept the whole area.
Caitlin, who hadn't even seen it coming, was thrown off her feet and slammed onto the ground. By the time she forced herself upright through the dust and pain, a pistol was already pressed against her forehead.
Her pupils contracted violently. She had never imagined Militech would attack at a moment like this.
This entire operation had been conducted in secret, and according to all available intelligence, Militech had never intended to recover that implant in the first place.
So why were they here now?
And why had they abandoned the unspoken rules between the companies and openly used heavy firepower against Arasaka personnel inside the city?
Ever since the Fourth Corporate War, both Arasaka and Militech had been badly damaged to different degrees.
That was why, on the surface, the two corporations had entered a ceasefire and peace arrangement. But as both sides slowly recovered, a new round of large-scale competition and conflict had already begun.
Even so, both companies had still maintained one quiet rule. They could threaten, pressure, and undermine each other all they wanted, but they avoided open exchanges of heavy fire.
Tonight, Militech had thrown that rule away and launched a direct armed attack on Arasaka tactical teams.
If this ever got out, it could easily become the excuse both sides needed to start shooting openly, maybe even the spark for a much larger war.
What shocked Caitlin even more was that the officer leading the Militech strike was Meredith, head of Militech Special Ops.
As Meredith strode toward her, Caitlin saw the golden hair swept back behind her and the leather field gear clinging to her body. Her trademark Militech tactical gloves and her cold expression made the whole thing feel even more unreal.
"You dare launch an open attack on Arasaka management. That's an act of war!" Caitlin roared through a mouthful of blood.
"Arasaka won't let you get away with this!"
Caitlin began frantically calling for support, but every signal in the area had already been completely blocked by Militech.
Everyone on-site had Trauma Team coverage. Caitlin herself was a platinum member.
But without a signal, there was no way to call for help.
Meredith casually waved a hand, temporarily sparing Caitlin's life, and sent her people to finish off the surviving Arasaka tactical teams.
Militech's armed operatives raised their heavy machine guns and began executing the remaining Arasaka personnel one by one.
Caitlin watched as the tactical teams she had brought were blown apart and scattered, and then she watched the ones still lying on the ground get shot in the head.
All three Arasaka Special Ops teams died here.
Not one survived.
The fury drained out of Caitlin and turned into helplessness. She knew she was completely finished.
Three Special Ops teams wiped out on a single mission. An incident on that scale would have to be brought before the board.
The result was obvious.
Her face went gray with despair, but survival instinct still forced the words out.
"You can't kill me! I'm Deputy Director of Arasaka Special Ops! I'm senior Arasaka management! If I die here, you won't walk away clean either!"
Meredith smiled with contempt.
"Who said we killed you? Weren't you and your people killed by those edgerunners in there? Don't worry. I'll avenge you and your Arasaka colleagues very soon."
Caitlin's eyes bulged wide, the whites bloodshot with panic.
She knew she probably couldn't escape this, but she still wanted to live, even if it meant leaving Arasaka and leaving Night City behind.
"Director Meredith, please! Please spare me! I swear I won't say a word about what happened tonight!"
She struggled across the ground, reaching for Meredith's leg and begging for mercy.
Meredith kicked her in the face, denting the expensive facial chrome and exposing the fine spiral synthetic components in her mouth, which began twitching with little sparks of electricity.
"You think I'd trust garbage like you? Arasaka never tells the truth."
"You worked for Arasaka. You should have known this day would come sooner or later."
"The one after the runtime data from our military-grade Sandevistan is Tanaka in R&D, isn't it?"
"Don't act like we don't know what Arasaka's plotting. That bitch Susan just hid in the back and refused to show herself. Otherwise, she'd be next."
Meredith was arrogant to the core. As Militech's head of Special Ops, she held enormous power in Night City.
Under normal circumstances, she wouldn't have had a chance to touch someone like Caitlin, an Arasaka executive.
But today Arasaka had delivered the opportunity to her.
Her intelligence for this mission had indeed come from Faraday, and she also knew it was Maine's crew fighting Arasaka inside the workshop.
But none of that mattered to her.
She only had one goal.
Leave no living witnesses and close the operation cleanly.
In Meredith's eyes, even a powerful fixer like Faraday was just another dog raised by her own company.
As for the edgerunners down there, people who belonged to the bottom edge of Night City, they were disposable. If they died, more could always be found to do jobs for the corps.
This world never ran out of labor.
So Meredith turned her attention to Maine's crew still inside the workshop and had one of her people shout into it.
"The people inside are to drop their weapons and surrender immediately!"
"Drop your weapons and surrender immediately!"
"Militech is conducting a special operation. The area is fully sealed. Failure to comply will be met with lethal force!"
The armed strength Meredith had brought tonight was more than enough to wipe out five stubborn edgerunners.
And with the AVs watching the entire workshop and the surrounding factory grounds, Maine's group had no path left to escape.
Inside the workshop, Maine and the others had just regrouped and were thinking about using Faraday's connection to get Militech to let them go.
But the moment they heard Militech demanding that they drop their weapons and surrender, they knew things were not that simple.
Dorio rested one hand on Maine's shoulder, wincing through the pain.
"Militech isn't planning to let us live. We can't surrender!"
Kiwi frowned, and even her voice under the mask had lost its usual calm.
"That's right. Militech wants all of us dead to keep this clean. If we go out there and surrender, we're just walking to the slaughter."
The twin-tailed girl heard that and immediately understood they were being set up.
"Then we fight them to the end! Nobody's scared of them! Those worthless bastards don't keep their word!"
Maine said nothing.
He knew the team's situation too well. Everyone was injured, and their firepower and ammo were almost dry. They had no chance of surviving another straight-up fight against a well-equipped Militech force.
But throwing down their guns and begging was definitely a dead end too.
"Shit. We can only ask him now."
Kiwi reacted right away.
"You mean the Arasaka guy?"
Maine nodded.
"Yeah. This whole setup was built by him. But he still hasn't made a move. Right now, he's the only one left who can balance against Militech."
The twin-tailed girl grew even angrier.
"That Arasaka trash is no better than the rest! Counting on him? I'd rather go out there and die fighting!"
Kiwi said grimly, "We could try reaching Faraday again. He knows Militech's side. He was the one who passed the intel on to them."
Maine gave a bitter laugh.
"I already called him. The signal isn't getting out. I can't even reach Lucy."
That bad news drew a vicious curse from Kiwi too.
"Shit."
Maine spoke in a tired voice.
"This started because of me. I'll go out and talk to Militech. If it doesn't work, I'll at least buy you some time."
The others were stunned.
From the sound of it, Maine was planning to face Militech alone and use his own life to buy the rest a way out.
Before anyone could stop him, he continued.
"I know none of you want me going out there to die. But this is on me. I'm the one who owes you. I'm the boss. Making sure you live is my responsibility."
"Pilar, get ready to blow the back wall. Make an opening."
The twin-tailed girl was the first to object.
"Maine, I'm going with you! I don't give a damn about Militech! You're not dying here!"
Pilar raised his half-destroyed cyber hand.
"Maine, you're our boss. No way you're the one who dies here. Let me go instead. I can blow them up all day. Just remember to avenge me, all right? Ha."
Dorio's expression turned pained.
She absolutely refused to accept Maine going out there alone.
They were people with no place else in Night City, who had gathered together and kept each other warm just enough to keep moving.
Without Maine, Dorio didn't think there was anything left in this city, or in this world, worth caring about.
"Maine! I'm coming with you!"
Maine looked at Dorio and at the siblings and felt the ache of their loyalty all over again, and it only made him feel even guiltier.
Kiwi, meanwhile, stayed focused on the battlefield, still trying to break the signal blockade and get a distress call out.
She believed that if she could reach Lucy, Lucy could find Mr. Kai from Arasaka, and maybe that would be enough to drag them out of this.
"Damn it!"
Kiwi pressed a hand to her temple, her cyberoptics spinning furiously as she poured everything she had into trying to break through Militech's jamming.
But the jamming was coming from a signal blocker aboard an armed AV.
The only way out was to destroy the jammer itself.
At this point, no matter how much they hated it, and no matter how badly they disagreed with Maine's plan, Militech had clearly run out of patience.
Maine's expression hardened, his voice more serious than it had ever been.
"Thank you. Really. But this can't be where Maine's crew gets buried."
"I'm the boss. This time you're listening to me."
"When Sasha went on that job back then, I watched her fall from the Biotechnica building with my own eyes."
"I won't let that happen to anyone else in this crew."
"Otherwise what the hell did I put all this chrome into my body for?"
As he spoke, his arm cannon glitched again and popped out by itself.
He slammed it back into place with a punch and gave a helpless laugh.
"It's got its problems, but the old thing's never let me down when it counted."
"Pilar, get ready to blow the wall."
"Kiwi, get Dorio out."
"Rebecca, if somebody gets on your tail, don't look back."
"I've got this. I'll hold them all!"
"And if any of you still remember me after this, stop by the plaza outside TURGO sometime."
That was the end of it.
Ignoring their attempts to stop him, Maine turned and walked toward the workshop entrance alone under their furious, helpless stares.
His huge frame looked unbearably solitary and heavy in the dark.
In the end, he had chosen to trade his own life for his team's chance to get away.
Even knowing how slim the odds were, he was still willing to bet himself on it.
Dorio clenched her jaw so hard it hurt.
Reason told her this was the best option left to them, but she could not accept Maine facing Militech alone.
Kiwi stopped her before she could rush out.
"Dorio, don't let Maine throw all this away for nothing!"
Even Pilar had gone quiet.
For once, there was no joke in him.
The twin-tailed girl, Rebecca, stared at Maine's back so intensely that she was shaking with anger, but couldn't get a word out.
The night grew darker.
Outside the workshop, Meredith waited a moment longer. When no one surrendered, she finally raised a hand to order her people in for the cleanup.
Then a figure slowly emerged from the dark, smoky workshop.
Militech operatives instantly swung their weapons toward it.
Meredith focused and saw a large dark-skinned man walking out, his body overbuilt to the point of grotesque bulk from excessive cyberware.
Thanks to Faraday's intel, Meredith recognized him as Maine. But no one else had come out with him, and her eyes turned colder.
What none of them noticed in the dark was that something was terribly wrong with Maine.
His cybernetic eyes trembled unnaturally. His face had gone stiff, and he walked forward as though the world around him no longer existed.
One of the Militech operatives shouted a warning.
"Stop moving immediately! Drop your weapons and get on the ground!"
But not only did Maine fail to stop, he kept walking straight toward Meredith.
Meredith narrowed her eyes.
"Maine. Where are the others? If you cooperate and surrender, you can lay down your weapons and live."
At the sound of her voice, Maine suddenly stopped and muttered to himself.
"Too hot. Too hot."
He found that somehow he was standing in the middle of a blazing desert, a lone runway stretching endlessly ahead of him.
The heat scorched his throat dry, but he only had one thought.
"Forward. Forward. Keep going. Don't stop."
Maine stood there in the desert runway, dazed, unable to tell whether what he was seeing was memory or reality.
"The others..."
"Wasn't it always just me?"
He looked around. In the endless gold heat and drifting air, there was no one there.
So he started forward again.
Meredith watched his dazed, puppet-like state, the way he ignored everything around him as he kept moving, and something clicked in her head.
"Cyberpsychosis?"
She wasn't certain yet, but under that much fear and neurological pressure, it was absolutely possible to trigger latent cyberpsychosis.
She had seen plenty of heavily augmented edgerunners like Maine tip over the edge before.
Meredith prepared to order his execution at any moment.
"Maine!!!"
Suddenly, voices called from behind him.
It was Dorio and Rebecca and the rest.
That familiar shout cut through Maine's daze, and he turned as if waking from a dream.
His teammates had come out of the workshop after him.
Rebecca was carrying her machine gun and aiming it at Militech. Pilar was wrapped in explosives from head to toe. Kiwi was supporting Dorio as they walked out.
Maine looked at them in disbelief.
"What are you doing out here?!"
Rebecca flashed him a defiant grin.
"We all decided Maine's crew can't exist without Maine!"
Meredith's expression hardened.
"So you still haven't given up. Understand this. There was only ever one way out for you. Drop your weapons and surrender."
"I can let you live, but the implant comes with us."
Maine had stopped holding himself back too.
"The implant was already taken by Maelstrom. Hah. You don't seriously think we're willing to die over that piece of chrome, do you?"
Meredith's face darkened.
"Don't choose death for yourselves."
Rebecca immediately shouted back.
"Shut up, old hag! Even if we had it, we still wouldn't give it to you! If you've got the guts, then do it! Stop talking so much!"
Meredith was furious and was just about to give the signal when a huge red square of light dropped from the sky above.
Everything inside it was washed in red.
All firearms within the field were seized by magnetic force, and every electronic device inside it started to fail.
Militech operatives watched their guns tear free from their hands and shoot upward toward the AV overhead.
Projected text appeared suspended within the red grid, accompanied by a broadcast warning.
"Arasaka is carrying out a special operation. All weapons are to be dropped immediately."
"Any hostile action toward Arasaka will be treated as malicious aggression and will be eliminated at once."
(End of Chapter)
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