Chapter Text
While she could be considered a longtime patron, Kiwi held no love for the Afterlife club. The bright glare of greens and blues irritated her eyes, and like all clubs it was obnoxious, packed, and played music that made it too loud for her to think. Worse, the club was constantly frequented by edgerunners high on the success of their latest job, or filled with the tense excitement of an upcoming gig. A more insufferable lot of people one would not find anywhere else – all with puffed chests, arrogant smirks, slinging back drinks like they were the hottest shit on the west coast.
The romantics painted the club as the heart of Night City, where the movers and shakers gathered to decide the fate of the world. What Kiwi saw was a trap, designed to bait in degenerate gamblers who were too dumb to realize how stacked the odds were. And every visit to the Afterlife with her team was a grim reminder that she was one of those gamblers. Just a roulette spin away from flatlining, and it would happen eventually. The lucky ones just got a drink named after them when it did.
“What do you mean, ‘he changed his driver’? We’ve been planning this for weeks!”
Kiwi came back from her idle thoughts to see Maine looming forwards, a hulking mass of muscle and metal. To his credit, on the other side of the booth their fixer Faraday seemed as unimpressed and unflappable as usual. He calmly fished a cigarette out of its pack and glanced over to Kiwi. She fought the urge to roll her eyes, and slid her lighter across the table over to the fixer.
A flash of sparks, and a slow inhale. Maine looked like he was about to lose his mind. Finally, Faraday spoke.
“You’d probably have learned this sooner or later, but consider this a favor. Tanaka’s usual driver, Maxim, was attacked a day ago and was heavily injured; the NCPD reports suggest a mugging. As the man is currently recuperating in the hospital, Tanaka has temporarily selected another employee in the company as his driver, and our client was kind enough to dig for some further information. The details are in these shards.”
He took out a small case, and the inside held a handful of shards cradled in soft cloth. One by one, Maine’s crew picked them up and slotted them in, with David being the last to carefully slide it into his port.
Kiwi ran a few scans over the chip before she ran it – could never be too careful. The profile of a young man expanded to fill her field of view, listing out the life details of what seemed to be a run-of-the-mill corporate suit.
“Our new fellow behind the wheel is younger and significantly less experienced than Maxim,” Faraday continued. “Middling grades in Arasaka academy, and middling performance in his cubicle landed him a pencil pusher job under Tanaka’s department. It’s likely that Tanaka just picked someone who would cause the least issues if overworked, before an actual Arasaka security person steps in as his personal driver. The vetting process for that takes a bit of time, and presents a window of opportunity.”
Vincent , read Kiwi off the bio. Classy and old fashioned corpo name. She looked over to the new driver’s most recent picture. Cute, in a haggard sort of way. Arasaka life was definitely not treating him well, which was honestly no big surprise.
Dorio folded her arms together. “You’re asking us to track down a completely unknown replacement, and jump him now? We had everything in place for Maxim, and changing all that around to fit this guy means that we’ll need more time and resources.”
“And I understand that.” Faraday took a long breath and removed the cigarette from his mouth. “Due to… let’s say, ‘uncertainties’ in what has been happening so far, the fee for the task has been raised by an additional 50%. Accounting for potential risks from this sudden change, and the extra time needed.”
A surprised gasp came from David, which was quickly cut off by a muffled thump underneath the table. If she had her faceplate on, Kiwi would have smirked. Lucy must have stamped down on his foot. But the fee raise had indeed brought up further questions.
“I don’t suppose this has anything to do with the attack on Maxim?” commented Kiwi drily. “Can’t be a coincidence that the fellow we were originally supposed to hit, was hit by another party.”
Faraday didn’t quite glare at her, but the stare was long enough to make it a close thing. “Quite. But we have received no further confirmation on whether or not the attack on Maxim was premeditated. That’s pure conjecture.”
“The fact remains that he had been attacked.” Kiwi drawled back. “Night City native for thirty-five years, should have been able to avoid the average mugging. Probably even has a Trauma Team package as well, albeit a shitty one.”
Pilar chose this moment to cut in, like the idiot he was. “Maybe he’s a gonk that’s gotten lucky so far. Things happen in Night City, not everything is a fucking conspiracy. Could just be coincidence.”
Christ, leave it to Pilar to kick their bargaining position in the nuts. The man was a wizard in tech, but too often clueless in anything else. But before Kiwi could seriously consider strangling his vocal cords with a quickhack, Maine stepped in.
“100%, rather than 50%,” the large man rumbled. “And the team’ll have it done within two weeks. Kiwi’s right, there’s a chance that we’ve got competition, and that means things could get ugly. You’ll need a good team that’s familiar with this whole mess to get in and out fast. Quiet, too.”
Faraday pursed his lips. And considered it.
“Hm. One week. You do this job within one week, and you’ll get your extra 100% fee. And if any… other parties manage to beat you to the punch, the deal is off. Acceptable?”
Maine grinned, while Kiwi groaned inwardly. Jeez, just a week? The extra hours they would have to pull would be insane.
“You’ve got yourself a deal, sir,” Maine replied.
Well, it would be fine. How hard could it be to klep from an overworked secretary?
————————
The following three days passed by in a blur of stakeouts, gathering info on subnets, and good old-fashioned stalking.
Vincent usually followed Tanaka’s schedule, which was wildly inconsistent at the best of times. But the one place the driver would regularly frequent was a dingy BBQ diner called the Chubby Buffalo , at around 9 pm. After driving Tanaka home, he would stop by the diner for a quick dinner and then speed off back to the Arasaka offices to drop off Tanaka’s company car – a high-class, 6 wheeled Alvarado. He would then work there until roughly 3 am in the morning, after which he would head directly back to his apartment on his own motorcycle. He would then return to the offices at around 7 am in the morning.
What a life. But being an edgerunner herself, Kiwi probably wasn’t the best person to start throwing rocks in her glass house. Even with all the shit Vincent was going through he was still probably going to live longer than she was.
And day by day, the plan convalesced. The goal was to klep the Alvarado shard and then download the nav data from the vehicle, revealing all the locations that Tanaka had been to, as well as his schedules. The shard would then have to be returned to Vincent, to ideally leave no trace of the heist. With all that in mind, the Chubby Buffalo was the best place to be the point of contact, as it remained the only consistent place outside Arasaka where both Vincent and the Alvarado would be, at least for a window of time.
It was also, however, the favored haunt for some of NCPD’s finest. And so Pilar and Rebecca were assigned to stir up chaos around the precinct, make sure that any officers on duty or otherwise would be drawn away from the diner.
Dorio would be behind the wheel of their own vehicle, ready to lend a hand or provide an escape route if necessary. Lucy was oddly proficient at dealing with Arasaka ICE’s and firewalls, so she’d be stationed by the Alvarado, ready to jack in when someone delivered the shard to her. She’d be able to finish the hack with time to spare.
David with his Sandevistan naturally was the prime choice for both catching the shard when it jumped out of its socket, and delivering it to Lucy. And if Lucy was going to be stationed by the Alvarado to hack it, then that meant that Kiwi was to play the hacker part of their pick-socket two person band.
Maine placed himself to play the backup muscle, overseeing the entire thing while he and David “ate” at a table nearby. Which naturally meant that Kiwi was to be on the figurative frontlines, and also the one who distracted the mark if necessary. Not her favorite position, to be honest, but Maine only laughed when he saw her expression.
“C’mon Kiwi, lighten up!” he said as he clapped her hard on the back. “The role will fit you great, you’ve got the sort of feel to you that fits in either a high class corpo place or a simple diner. A mysterious femme fatale kind of gal, you get me?”
“Where are you going with this?” asked Kiwi warily, trying not to buckle under the weight of Maine’s huge chrome arm.
“Have some fun! Wear your nose-mouth faceplate instead of that mask for once. Smile at the suit for a little bit and you’ll have him eating out of your hand, and he’ll barely notice anything wrong. Who knows, even if nothing comes out of it the practice will still be good for you. Get your game on, dig?”
Kiwi bristled at that. “I do not need practice ,” she muttered, and immediately regretted her words. God, she sounded like a drunk Lucy.
“Sure you don’t,” said Maine with a grin. “In any case I’ll be nearby and if it goes hairy with any armed gonks, I’ll be there to pull us out of it. Y’all don’t have to worry about a damn thing.”
“Don’t jinx it,” warned Kiwi. “Compared to our usual big gigs, we’ve had a frighteningly small amount of time to prepare for this one.”
And so the preparations continued. Rebecca and Pilar wound up the local Scavs and Valentino gangs enough so a single spark could set the foot soldiers off. David practiced doing more delicate movements while under the effects of his Sandevistan. Dorio and Maine got hold of a stolen vehicle with an untraceable registry. Kiwi and Lucy did multiple deep dives to see if they could gather anything more about the new driver.
And it was at this point that Kiwi started to get her first few hints of doubt.
“It just seems strange that there’s so much material on this Vincent guy, despite how… well, how boring he is,” mused Kiwi, disconnecting the cable from her neuralport. She lit up a cigarette, and sat up on the edge of her netrunning tub. Beside her, Lucy pulled herself out of her ice bath as well and quickly wrapped up in a warm towel.
“Just because he’s boring doesn’t mean he can’t have a presence on the subnets,” replied Lucy.
Kiwi ran a hand through her hair. “It just all feels… off. All NCPD citizen records, Arasaka employee records, and social subnet records line up perfectly. Barely any inconsistencies, or any typos or grammar errors. No weird hobbies or embarrassing scandals either, which is almost inconceivable for a corpo.”
Lucy lit up a cigarette as well, and set out to dress herself. “You’d know better than I, you have more experience in these background checks than I do. But maybe you’re taking your “don’t trust anything or anyone” spiel a bit too seriously this time?”
“There’s no such thing as taking it ‘too seriously’, Lucy. Remember that.” Kiwi extinguished the cig on an ashtray, and reconnected her dive port. “Mind adding some more ice for me? I’m going back in for another look.”
The uncertainty that scratched at the back of her mind remained with each dive. But each new piece of innocuous information that she found managed to temper it… somewhat.
————————
Time marched on. And finally, the plan entered the execution phase.
On the planned day, Maine entered the restaurant with David first at 8pm, the innocent image of a father grabbing a bite to eat with his son.
A good half an hour later, Kiwi walked in and took a seat at the bar. Despite herself, she had listened to Maine and put on one of her synth-skin faceplates. While the fumes and smells of the city irritated her airways without her filter, she had to admit that it felt comforting to have most of her facial features again.
It was a surprising realization. Maybe the constant dives into the subnets, and her own brand of cybernetic enhancements were taking more of a toll than she had thought. It felt kind of good to feel more human again, if only for a while. She ordered a bottle of Broseph’s beer, and – more out of habit than anything else - asked for a straw to go with it.
Time ticked on. Another 15 minutes later, Kiwi heard rather than saw Dorio’s “borrowed” muscle car pull into the parking lot. Dorio and Lucy would stay in the car until they needed to move for their respective roles. With that done, all of the pieces of the team were in place.
Despite the calm front, tension built in the diner. Kiwi barely sipped her beer, and David’s plate went untouched as well.
And finally, the man of the hour arrived. The Alvarado glided into the parking lot on excellent suspension and top-of-the-line wheels. The driver was clearly uncomfortable and unfamiliar with the size of his car, and it took several tries until he parked it successfully. But eventually, the car door opened and Kiwi caught a glimpse of the man as he walked into the diner.
He looked exhausted, that was for sure. But his stride was sure and confident, and his gaze sharp and alert. Another sliver of doubt added itself onto the small pile in Kiwi’s heart, growing heavier all the while. She ran a quick scan with her optics, and cross referenced it with the databases that she had gathered.
Yup, this was their man. Vincent, currently working overtime as Tanaka’s driver. Over the comms, she heard Maine give the go ahead for Rebecca and Pilar to finally start the show, and rustle up as much mayhem they could. From the corner of her eye, Kiwi saw a woman in NCPD uniform check some new notifications on the holo, and abandon her meal in disgust as she walked out the door.
Vincent sat at the bar two seats to the right from Kiwi, and ordered a sandwich and a NiCola. He set to work on his meal with an air of detachment, like it was an unpleasant job to him. But his head was on a swivel, observing the surroundings and guests subtly with the type of concentration only borne by professionals.
The pile of doubts biting at her had at this point grown as heavy as lead weights by now. Kiwi ran another scan, and the results came up the same. What were they missing?
You need to distract him , came a message from Maine. Fucker looks as alert as a man on the run.
Kiwi held her breath. A part of her screamed to call off the gig, escape the diner, put as many streets, buildings and continents between her and the man as she could. But she strangled its cries. They’ve come too far. Too late to back down now.
“Tough night?” she asked lightly, leaning casually over to Vincent. She laid on every inch of concern and kindness she could muster, and was surprised to find out that it wasn’t hard – he really did look like he’d gone up shit creek without a paddle.
Vincent swung his gaze to her, surprised. Surprised at her concern? Or suspicious that anyone in Night City would speak to him without an ulterior motive?
“More like a tough month. Or a tough year,” he replied, with a short laugh. He put down his sandwich. “God, do I look that bad?”
“More like noticeably frazzled.” Kiwi gestured a little at his body, and moved herself one seat closer. “You have a pretty good build, clearly take care of yourself. But aside from that… well, the rings under your eyes definitely don’t do you any favors.”
“And here I was hoping that the lack of sleep would look good on me,” said Vincent with a sigh.
Kiwi smirked. “I’ll admit, it gives you a rugged, world-weary look that some may like. But if you wanted to actually downplay your sleepless nights, have you considered makeup? Or a swappable faceplate?”
“Actually, yes. But my coworkers smell weakness like sharks smell blood. They already are circling, and if they caught wind that I was trying to hide how utterly fucked I am…” he took another mechanical bite out of his sandwich. “They’ll know for sure that I’m fucked. That’ll just bring more trouble.”
“Sounds like a difficult workplace,” Kiwi commented.
“Don’t get me started. I’ve had to pull double duty as a driver recently, and I’m not even good at driving. The one thing I’m bad at…” his voice trailed off into a sigh. “I’ll be honest, if at this point you reveal that you’re one of my colleague’s lackeys here to trip me up somehow, I don’t care anymore. I’ll fucking take someone telling me I have a ‘pretty good build’ over all the other shit they try to pull.”
Kiwi couldn’t help it. She laughed, genuinely. And for an instant she found that Vincent had placed all of his attention on her.
So like the despicable person she was, it was at this point she shot out a quickhack and ejected the vehicle shard. Her work was clean and professional, not a line of stray code to be noticed. She spied a blur move out from Maine’s table, catch the shard, and zip out the diner doors.
First phase, done. David was on his way. She breathed an internal sigh of relief.
“My name’s Keira,” she said smoothly, as if nothing happened. “What’s yours?”
“Call me V for now,” Vincent replied back. He cracked open his can of NiCola. “Long story, but my department doesn’t like us sharing names while we’re on duty if we can help it. Don’t like the policy, but it is what it is.”
His department? Tanaka’s department? But Kiwi hadn’t heard anything about employee names needing to be guarded, especially for the cubicle drones. Did Arasaka ramp up their security SOPs recently?
“Just V? Well, it definitely helps the air of mystique,” said Kiwi, taking a sip of her beer. “Let’s get away discussing work for now then, V. What’s wi–”
A series of frantic buzzes came from her holo. It was Lucy, with a stream of messages sent across the group.
Decrypted vehicle shard. Had coded user data. Faraday gave bad info.
Vincent is Arasaka counter-intel. Agnt & field operative.
Subnet sources were planted or spoofed. He has a 2 digit termination count. Not pencil-pusher
Kiwi get out of there
Kiwi felt her heart stop in her chest. Blood thrummed in her ears. She shakily tried to fold her arms together, but only succeeded in jostling her beer bottle. It rattled, and began to tip.
And with a cyberware enhanced blur, V had caught the bottle and placed it back upright. He then winced.
“Ah… shit, wasn’t supposed to do that in public. Could you forget that?”
Sandevistan , Kiwi thought faintly. Or a Kerenzikov . Either way, she was screwed. Had the flatline roulette finally come for her? Was this her turn to roll snake-eyes at the edgerunner table? Dying, from failing to spot a corpo counter ambush? Thinking back, if they had reached the conclusion that Tanaka’s car was of high enough value to warrant the interest of multiple parties, wasn’t it also logical for Arasaka to increase their security after the first attack?
Fuck that, time to collect herself up and see where the cards fell. At the edge of her vision, she could see Maine still at his table, but with his arm-cannon now discretely aimed towards V.
“Saw nothing,” she mumbled back. “Impressive though, whatever it was that I didn’t see.”
V waved off the praise. “Anyone with the ‘ware could do it. Honestly, I thought that I’d set it to only activate manually. If you could give me a minute, I’ll run a quick scan on myse–”
The man froze, then his hand flew to his shard slots on the slide of his neck. Then his optics glimmered, and Kiwi could tell with growing horror that he was scanning her with extremely high-level optical software. She felt her blackmarket cyberdeck and other cybernetics ping from under the scan, and as she locked gazes with him she could see him putting two and two together.
A lot of things happened, all at once.
Kiwi threw herself backwards, out of her seat and onto the ground. A massive blade extended out of V’s right arm, and he reached out at a lunge with his left. Maine stood up, and fired his arm cannon.
The diner exploded in screams and shouts. Through the smoke, Kiwi could see that Maine’s shot had tore V’s left arm off almost completely, and the limb dangled on a few lonely wires. But seemingly unperturbed, he reached down with his other arm before Kiwi could pick herself up, and threw her bodily against the bar.
Something cracked, and Kiwi screamed out in pain.
“Just my lucky day,” she heard V mutter. “The only time someone is kind to me this whole year is a fucking honeypot scheme.”
He deftly ducked under a punch from Maine, and stabbed his mantis blade into the bigger man’s torso. But with all the chrome in the way, it glanced off and just drew a jagged gash. Maine grunted and slugged V in the chest, and the Arasaka agent went flying into the drinks selection behind the bar. The screams and yells in the diner were for a moment joined in by shattering glass.
Maine gingerly picked up Kiwi. Over the comms, Kiwi could hear a mess of messages going back and forth.
Dorio sweetheart, need rapid extraction now - front door. Luce you done?
Only halfway, but driving controls are available. Going to have to take the car. No - no other choice.
Can’t we hold him off?
‘Saka ninja, holding him off is gonna get ugly, probably has friends comin
David you drive?
Never driven before –
Time to learn.
Kiwi ran a self diagnoses, and her biometrics monitor showed a broken right arm and a few broken ribs. She barely managed to shout a warning before gunfire rang out behind the bar, and Maine managed to duck behind a table.
She clumsily drew her own handgun with her left hand and fired a few shots back over their cover. With inhuman speed, V dodged her shots and leapt onto the bar table, readying himself for a charge. Then his Kerenzikov fizzled out with a cough of sparks.
Got you, Kiwi thought viciously. She primed another quickhack in her mind for another opportunity.
Dorio’s car screamed over to the front door, and she let loose with a long burst of machine gun fire. V was forced to dive behind the bar again to avoid the avalanche of lead, and Maine picked up Kiwi again and rushed to the vehicle.
“Go time Dorio, go go go!” shouted Maine as he packed them into the backseat.
“Way ahead of you,” muttered Dorio, and she floored the accelerator. The car wheels screeched, and they sped out of the parking lot. Maine whooped and laughed.
Then the rear windshield burst into shards of glass, and Kiwi barely managed to cover her eyes in time. Shots spiderwebbed the remaining windows, and Dorio’s eyes widened as she checked her side-view mirror.
“Gonk’s still running after us! Fast too!”
Kiwi poked her head out from behind the backseat, and looked behind their speeding car. And there he was, the madman, racing after their car with the best legs Arasaka counter-intel could afford.
Her thoughts started getting fuzzy, heating up -
“Kiwi! Shit, you’re smoking!”
She snapped back to conscious thought. Did V just try to quickhack her? Her? The gall. The absolute, fucking audacity–
Kiwi shored up her defenses and brushed away the offending hack that was trying to overheat her cybernetics. She snapped a glare straight back at V, and fired off her final quickhack of the night.
It was a sight to behold. V’s cybernetic legs locked up as Kiwi disabled them, and he was sent into a flying tumble across the asphalt. His handgun went flying, and the mangled arm that was already connected precariously to his shoulder scraped off and went flying elsewhere. He came to a rolling stop, and their gazes met for one last time before Dorio’s car sped away.
No anger, no rage, no sadness. V’s eyes only held weary acceptance, and a fatalistic sense of amusement at his defeat.
Kiwi winced as she turned away from the back of the car. Her ribs. Arm. Everything hurt. But they’d done it. Despite how badly the job turned out, they had managed to live another day. Cheated the roulette of its victim tonight. Kiwi would have cheered, but she was getting more and more tired. Speaking of which, something hurt that wasn’t her ribs and arm.
She brushed her hand against her stomach, and it came up wet. Oh. Looks like V was a better shot than she gave him credit for. Looked like the roulette was still spinning, just like the inside of the car.
“Kiwi’s hurt, gunshot wound to the abdomen. Shiiit. Dorio, help me grab the maxdoc’s and bounceback from the front of the car. Kiwi, stay with me. Let me know if…”
Maine was saying something, but the gentle rocking of the car was hypnotic. A welcome reprieve from the madhouse events of the day. And slowly, Kiwi drifted off into unconsciousness.