Jack Welles looked at several flashing clips on the screen. "How many times has this been just this month."
"More and more lunatics."
Oliver stared at the screen and noticed that Carl beside him had stopped eating French Fries.
Carl fixed his eyes on the restaurant shown on screen and frowned.
"I was just there buying food not long ago."
"Carl, the place you bought food from is the one on the screen?"
"The pattern on the packaging in the bag is still there. It's this place, no mistake."
After answering Oliver's question clearly, he picked up another French Fries and stuffed it into his mouth. "Judging by the timing, it was almost right before or after me. If I had walked slower, I would have run into that cyberpsycho."
"That counts as good luck?"
Jack Welles looked at Carl's slightly dissatisfied expression and did not quite understand it.
"Good luck for me, I guess."
Carl thought about the service staff and cashier who had been polite enough. "Just a shame. That restaurant won't be a place to go for a while."
In Night City in 2075, that was just how things were.
"Beep."
As he was thinking, a call from an unfamiliar number came through Carl's comms.
'Spam?'
Not wanting to be disturbed while eating, Carl hung up without much thought, but the call immediately came again.
The second time made it unlikely to be spam. Carl answered, and the next second, a steady voice came through.
"Is this Carl? My name is Faraday. I have a job you might be interested in."
"Got a job?"
That was Carl's first reaction, followed right away by his second. "Faraday, who are you supposed to be?"
"Faraday?"
Hearing the name from Carl, Oliver found it familiar. He said he remembered a Fixer who drifted around City Center, Watson District, and Santo Domingo, and that when he was still with 6th Street, someone there had taken one of that guy's Contract.
Jack Welles lowered his voice and asked, "How's his skill level?"
"Bottom tier mercs matched with a bottom tier Fixer."
Oliver's quiet tone made it clear what he thought of that Fixer's ability. On the call, though, Carl was not overthinking it, and once he knew the other side was a Fixer, he already understood the purpose.
"A Fixer, huh. You planning to hand me a job?"
"An old client from the company recommended your number to me, said you're capable. Want to warm up your hands a bit?"
"An old company client."
Among the Corpo Rats that Carl knew well, there was only Blanca. It sounded like Blanca thought his service had been good enough to recommend him to others.
"What kind of job is it? Give me the details."
A job was still a job, even if he had just finished a big one earlier that day. He was not about to dismiss it without hearing more.
"Just a small warm up task. Go to the kidney harvesters' side and save someone. Don't treat it as a formal Contract. Before real cooperation, I like to test the other party's ability first, so the pay won't be high. Six thousand Eurodollars. You don't mind, right?"
Six thousand Eurodollars.
Hearing that number, both Oliver and Jack Welles felt a strange sense of being treated like fools.
Talking about testing skills before a big deal was something only idiot mercs believed. What it really meant was that there would be plenty of future jobs that could get you killed, but before that, he wanted you to try a small job where most of the money had already been swallowed.
Still, this was the first Fixer to come knocking, and neither Oliver nor Jack Welles planned to speak up to refuse. In their small team, Carl handled taking jobs and negotiations, and they would follow his call and wait to split the money afterward.
"Saving someone from the kidney harvesters."
Carl thought for a moment, then spoke again. "Send me the details. What's the time limit?"
"I'll send the details right away, along with a fifteen hundred advance. As for timing, it's up to you. Go early if you want, or later if you're busy. The minimum expectation from the Contract client is that you can at least come out holding a body, and the money matches that bottom line."
What Faraday really meant was that the client's money was only enough to retrieve a corpse.
"Understood. Send it over first. I'll decide after I look."
"Alright, I'll hang up then."
On the other end, the Fixer Faraday clearly treated this as a minor matter. Within ten seconds of the call ending, a file was transmitted, and Carl used the built in programs on his Cyberdeck to scan it, confirmed there were no common viruses, and opened it.
"So a Fixer just grabs a few desperate idiots off the street, pays them scraps they can't even use to buy decent implants, and sends them with guns to fight the Scavengers. I thought that was just talk. Didn't think I'd really run into it myself."
Jack Welles glanced at the bag of chips he had just opened and not yet eaten, sighed, and picked up the Saratoga. He looked like he already knew how this would end.
"Yeah, no kidding."
From Carl's expression, Oliver could tell the job was probably accepted. He sighed as well and stood up to start preparing, thinking that working right after a full meal might make him throw up later.
"I'm still reading here, and you two already started getting ready?"
After finishing the file, Carl looked at Oliver and Jack Welles as they prepared. "Wasn't today supposed to be a rare day off?"
"You really think you want to rest?"
Oliver checked his gear and spoke. "Let's go. Finish it early and come back to eat more. Call it digestion."
"Not resting a bit more?"
"Come on, Carl. You know us."
Jack Welles raised his middle finger at Carl. "Killing those kidney cutting trash, and you're still pretending to ask questions. Move it. If we're late, whoever sold everything to make this Contract might really end up only getting a corpse back."
"Didn't expect you to be so kind, Jack Welles."
Carl smiled and stood up from the couch, setting the full bucket of French Fries on the table to eat later. "Those bastards shouldn't be allowed to keep doing disgusting things anyway."
When it came to scum like the Scavengers, even without a Contract, Carl, Oliver, and Jack Welles would still clean them up if they ran into them. Nobody wanted to imagine someone they knew getting grabbed off the street and emptied out like that.
The three went downstairs and squeezed into Oliver's beat up car. The space was tight, and shoulders pressed together as they settled in.
"Why are you complaining about my car again? Keep it up and I'll make you walk back yourself, Carl."
"I just thought it in my head. Didn't realize you'd hear it."
"Bullshit, you were saying it out loud. Whatever, if you hate it so much, I'll get it modified later and see if I can stuff you into the engine."
"Enough, stop moving around. We're all squeezed in here. My face is practically glued to the window."
Jack Welles complained about Oliver and Carl fidgeting, then brought up the Fixer again. "So about this job, six thousand Eurodollars. How much do you think that guy Faraday skimmed off the top?"
"He treats us like idiots, so he probably didn't leave much. I'd guess he swallowed at least half."
Oliver thought about the complaints from people in 6th Street who had taken Faraday's Contract. He had heard that taking half just for showing up was standard behavior for those Fixer types.
"I think it's more than half. I'm worried the real payment was thirty or forty thousand, drained straight from the client's savings. What they get back might still just be the corpse of a friend or relative who was drained the same way."
Jack Welles shifted his body to the side to make space. "I'll scoot over a bit. Carl, where's the location? Tell Oliver to speed it up."
"Alright."
Since it was important, there was no point fooling around anymore. Carl quickly gave the address.