Chapter Text
“Gooooood morning, Night City! Yesterday’s body count came out to an impressively mediocre fifteen—only six from Heywood, but don’t let that fool you, the Chembarons and the Firelights are just as heated as ever! Westbrook’s Pilties took down two officers, and I’d steer clear while the NCPD does their best to hunt the culprits down one by one! City Center’s Bolbok Industries got hit with another outage, netrunners popping vulnerabilities in their tech like it’s bubble wrap! And down in Pacifica—well, you know, Pacifica is still Pacifica. As always, this has been your man, Stan! Join me for another day in our City of Dreams!”
The radio show host’s voice disappeared into the rhythmic synth beats being played by 92.2 Night FM, and Vi tossed in her bed, her groan getting lost in the stiff pillow she buried her face into. Her holey sleep shirt was sticking to the sweat on her back, the surprisingly harsh sun glaring through the windows doing nothing to help the usual already warm temperature of her apartment. “Fuck me,” she grumbled, peeling her face out of her off-white pillow case. Immediately, a wave of nausea came over her and her head pounded. Last night came back to her in flashes of tequila shots downed, strippers flaunting their asses, and sweaty bodies massed on a crowded dance floor.
Not for the first time, Vi swore that she was never going out again as she dragged herself off of her bed and beelined it for the bathroom to empty her stomach.
She was standing in the shower, tepid water barely even trying to wash away her sins, when her phone rang horrendously from the main room. Hoping whoever it was would settle for a text or a voicemail, Vi didn’t even move other than to tilt her head up and let the water slam directly into her face. The phone stopped ringing, but a beat later, it started again, and Vi huffed as she slammed the handle for the shower to turn it off.
Not caring that she was dripping onto her already stained linoleum floors, Vi padded to where her phone sat charging, unplugging it and sighing with relief when she saw the caller id. “What’s up?” she asked as soon as she tapped the button to answer.
Her sister’s voice immediately burst out from the speaker as Vi finally moved to go towel off. “Guess what I just got delivered!” Jinx asked, clearly trying to tempt her, although it was way too early for Vi to have any clue what she was trying to get Vi to think of.
“Uh, lemme guess,” Vi said, scratching the towel over her pink undercut, across her neck, reaching around to her back as best as she could, “new chrome?”
Jinx snorted with a mix of humor and discontent. “Wow, Vi, sharp as ever. Do you even remember what we talked about last week, or did your weekend off wipe your memory?”
Doing her best to ignore her aching head, Vi shut her eyes and thought back to last week, sitting in Jinx’s clinic. She remembered leaning back in Jinx’s rolling chair, her sister talking animatedly. Vi had been looking at her hands, clenching and unclenching them into fists. “Oh, shit,” she murmured, recalling, “those new gorilla arm things?”
“So she does have a working memory!” Jinx chimed, pleased. “Tell you what, sis, I’ll give you a discount if you let me test ‘em on you today!”
Vi snickered, tossing her towel into the laundry hamper and going over to her lacking closet. She only had a few options to actually consider, so it was easy to select a black tank top with a huge middle finger on it and a pair of black and purple motorcycle pants. “You always give me a discount anyway,” she reminded her younger sister, tugging the clothes on, followed by boots that hadn’t seen better days in years.
“Oh come on, you know you’re excited to get out there and punch things even harder than normal! Maybe tear open some doors, skip the sleuthing?”
“Wasn’t really planning on going under for half the day, though,” Vi responded. She pressed a flickering button on her coffee machine, the only proper appliance in the depressing excuse for a kitchen that her apartment sported, and watched it stutter out a cup of brown-black sludge.
She was cringing as she threw it back like a shot, chugging and trying her best to ignore the taste. “Oh yeah?” Jinx was asking. “And what exactly were your grand plans today, oh sister of mine?”
“Probably make back all the eddies I spent this weekend,” Vi muttered, picking up her phone and switching it off of speaker before she grabbed the small backpack that she never went anywhere without and left her apartment. The busy sounds of Megabuilding H7 might’ve overwhelmed her if she didn’t face them day in and day out. It was all too easy to tune out the bickering of neighbors, the cops questioning a handful of stupid teenagers lingering near the entry of the apartments level, and the market sounds of the services area.
“You can spare a few for your sis, though, right? I’ll even let you pay me back later! I’ve done all the prep I can without just trying it out, and I seriously doubt my daily clientele is going to want these monsters.”
“What if you fuck up?” Vi asked, knowing that there was no way in hell that her sister would ever mess up a cyberware installation bad enough that she couldn’t just fix it before her patient woke up.
“Then you’ll owe me nothin’!”
Vi chuckled and rolled her eyes, sidling up to a small food stall and making eye contact with the brunette working it. With a smile, a wink, and a wave of her hand, Vi transferred her a few Eurodollars, and the younger woman giggled before offering her a paper wrapped sandwich made with whatever synthetic meat was all the rage these days. Vi never paid attention. She gave the woman an appreciative nod and started into her sandwich as she continued toward the elevator down to the street.
“Oh, also,” Jinx said, either giving up on convincing Vi or having determined that she’d already done so, “Clagg says we should all go to The Last Drop tonight, see Vander. Guess the chaos of Vista del Rey is grindin’ on him.”
“And Claggor thinks the lot of us crowding his bar will help with the chaos problem?” Vi asked through bites of her sandwich.
Jinx huffed. “Can you not talk while you chew, Vi, seriously?”
“As if you don’t do the same fucking—”
“But anyway, Claggor, Mylo and I will be there, and y’know he’d love to see you. Always complains that you don’t come around enough. Would actually save me a headache if you showed, even for ten or fifteen minutes.”
Vi sighed, chewing through the tough synthetic meat of her sandwich as she leaned against the wall of the elevator taking her down many floors to the street. The sounds of the busy service level faded and she enjoyed a brief moment of quiet before the noise of the street took their place. “Fine, ‘s long as you’re buying me a drink.”
“Deal! And the gorilla arms?”
“Guess since I don’t have anything in my inbox, I can spare another day off. I’ll just hit up Finn or Benzo tomorrow.”
Jinx practically squealed on the other end of the line, and Vi grimaced, pulling the device away from her ear. In moments like this, it was actually really nice to not have a holograph communication implant. Sometimes she wanted the speaker of her phone to be far the fuck away when on the phone with her sister. “When will you be here?”
“Gimme an hour or so. Need to work off this hangover.”
“By drinking water or by punching shit?”
“You really gotta ask?”
Jinx snickered. “Alright. Well don’t take too long, I’m closing up shop so I don’t get any other customers, but if you no-show me—”
“An hour, J,” Vi said, rolling her eyes. “See you.” She ended the call and pocketed the device, rolling her shoulders, tilting her head back and forth with a crack. The elevator gate slid open at the street level, and Vi headed in the direction of her favorite boxing gym.
Her attempt at a shower was rendered useless by the time she left forty minutes later, tank top sticking to her abs, biceps glistening, hair a little damp. She would’ve rinsed off in the gym’s locker room if their water wasn’t out this week. The receptionist cited routine maintenance, but Vi was pretty sure the gym’s owner was slipping into debt. Again.
She kept her eyes peeled for other gym options, just in case, as she walked the twenty minutes from Rancho Coronado into Arroyo where Jinx’s hole in the wall clinic was nestled at the corner of a busy intersection. It was next door to a shop that Vi knew sold mostly worthless junk, and across the street from the latest factory to have been bulldozed. Even as the rubble was being cleared, something else was already taking its place. Vi barely spared it a glance as she dodged a group of factory workers taking up the whole sidewalk and then slipped into her sister’s clinic.
“We’re closed!” Jinx’s voice echoed from the back room, the door to which was propped open across the tiny waiting room. Vi smirked and crossed the space, pushing open the door to glimpse her sister’s look of annoyance before she realized who it was.
Jinx was surprisingly good at glaring down the assholes of Night City despite her slender, pale frame and long blue braids. She was on the short side, multiple inches shorter than Vi, but she was Heywood born and raised, and no one could question it. Like Vi, she was inked all across her pale skin, except where Vi’s tattoos were all black, cogs and factory imagery, Jinx’s skin featured blue clouds intermingled with obscure figures and images. Jinx had done all her own tattoos, for the most part. Vi’d had hers professionally done, although she’d meticulously designed them during her teenage years.
As soon as Jinx realized who her client was, she relaxed, threatening frustration being replaced by bemused annoyance as she glanced at the digital clock. “An hour and ten,” she noted, “not bad. You stink, though.”
“Gym’s water is busted,” Vi explained with a half shrug, dropping her backpack next to her sister’s desk. “Can I—“
“Ugh, yes, just make it quick. This ain’t gonna be a simple implant swap, you know?”
Vi didn’t bother to answer, going straight for the door labeled “No Entry” and taking the stairs behind it two at a time to get to Jinx’s apartment. She tapped the digital screen in the intercom, the tech recognizing her identity instantly and unlocking the door.
Jinx’s place was a little more cramped than Vi’s, a kinda funky shape thanks to the fact that it was the upstairs to her little clinic. Its single window had a shitty view of the destroyed factory, but it was actually a less noisy and chaotic feeling than Vi’s megabuilding apartment. It was also much more nicely decorated, with posters on the walls and a synthetic plush rug sprawled in the space between the nook for the bed and the nook of the kitchen. The bathroom was the same size as Vi’s, though, and she made quick work of undressing, rinsing off for the second time today, and drying herself. Jinx got better hot water at this place than she did, at least.
Jinx was visibly impatient when Vi returned back downstairs, all of her tools already lined up perfectly on the sterile metal table standing next to the reclined patient chair. “Finally!” She sounded even more exasperated than she looked.
“How much these gorilla arms going for, anyway?” Vi wondered, sliding comfortably into the familiar seat. Jinx was the only Ripper Doc she let touch her chrome at this point. Of course, her younger sister hadn’t done her initial implants, but Vi had seen enough docs by now to know that Jinx was the best.
“Eh, twenty thousand or so,” Jinx answered, prepping a vial of anesthetic and grabbing an alcohol pad.
The cold alcohol rubbing on her skin made her shiver. “Shit,” she muttered, “how do they work, exactly? Must be a big deal?”
“So, the main implants will be sub-dermal, almost meshing with your armor plates. You’ll truly have forearms of steel, sis.”
Vi smirked. “You said the main implants? What’ll be visible?”
“Some around your fingers,” Jinx answered, pausing to trace her own index finger over Vi’s to show her where. “Reinforcing the bone structure. You really will be able to rip a heavy ass door off its hinges with these things.”
“And aesthetically? Gonna fuck with my tattoos or anything?”
“Nah. Like I said, slightly robotic fingers, other than that just a few visible bits around your wrist. And if you hate it, we can always do synth skin over it.” Jinx shrugged and Vi copied the movement.
It’d been a while since she got any completely new cybernetic implants. Usually, Jinx was updating the operating system chip in her head, or patching her optics, or occasionally reinforcing her sub-dermal armor if it got damaged. Vi didn’t really love the idea of externally visible chrome—both aesthetically and tactically. It was better that she look as fleshy as possible, helped her get the drop on people who might underestimate her.
But she’d looked into the gorilla arms implants quite a bit, and Jinx had been trying for months to get all the shit she needed to install them herself. This would make a world of a difference in Vi’s line of work.
“Alrighty, see ya on the flip side, sis,” Jinx told her with a lopsided grin as she pressed the anesthetic injector into Vi’s arm.
“Don’t fuck up,” Vi joked, before her eyelids got heavy and she drifted off to sleep.
When she woke up, Vi immediately noticed the soreness in her fingers, and she groaned as she wiggled them, feeling the new metal pieces clicking a little. It took a second for her to blink her eyes open and look down at the matte black metal lining her fingers. It was impossible to tell how exactly they worked just by looking at them, but her hands definitely looked a lot more robotic than they did earlier. Just as Jinx had explained.
Speaking of Jinx, her sister was sitting in her rolling chair, feet propped up on her desk, eyes glowing red-violet as she engaged with some tech in her head.
“You didn’t fuck me up, did ya Doc?” Vi asked to draw her sister’s attention.
Jinx blinked, eyes settling back to blue as she looked over with a proud grin. “Who d’ya think you’re talking to? Everything went smooth. Sore?”
“Just a little.” Vi flexed her fingers, bending them carefully, and rolled her wrists. She could feel how reinforced they were. “Feels like I could punch through a brick wall.”
“Can’t guarantee that won’t still hurt like a bitch, but you probably could,” Jinx told her goofily.
“What’s the time?”
“Almost five. Took a while, these things are no joke. Your phone pinged a few times.” Vi grunted, getting up and going over to her backpack to grab said device. “Y’know, I’ve got plenty of holos, including old cheap models I could practically give you for free. Honestly, your chrome’s probably good enough I can just install one quick and easy.”
“I’m good,” Vi insisted, though free tech was always tempting, pulling out her phone and checking her messages. She had a couple from some girl whose name she didn’t recognize—probably someone from her outing last night—and one of actual interest.
Benzo
Vi, got a job for you. Gimme a call.
Benzo always texted Vi first, and that was one of the many reasons that she loved getting jobs from him.
“What time we meeting at The Last Drop?” Vi wondered, slinging her bag over her shoulder with a little more strength than she meant to. The new chrome would take some getting used to.
“Eight-ish?” Jinx shrugged.
“Cool. I’ll be there.” Jinx looked pleased to hear it. “How much I owe you?”
“We’ll call it 8k?” Jinx offered.
“Sure,” Vi agreed, and with a thoughtful look and a flick of her wrist, she sent half the cost over to her sister. “I’ll get you the rest in a week or two?”
“Works! Thanks, Vi.”
“Nah, thank you. I’d never get new chrome like this if it weren’t for you.”
Jinx grinned. “See you later, sis.”
As Vi started her walk home, she tapped Benzo’s contact and listened to the call ring twice before he picked up.
“Vi, thanks for calling.”
“As if I’d ghost my favorite fixer,” Vi told him charmingly, dodging a stumbling passerby who seemed to have started their drinking a bit early today. “What’s up?”
“Need a merc for a sensitive job,” Benzo started. “Client is high profile, doesn’t wanna talk much via holo. They’re looking to meet tomorrow morning, give the details then. What I can tell ya now is that they need someone… well rounded. I know you don’t got netrunning on your resume—“
“No worries,” Vi interrupted, “I got Mylo.”
“Great.”
“High profile, highly sensitive—what kinda eddies we talking?”
“Twenty five thousand, at least,” Benzo told her. “Your cut, anyway.”
Vi nodded to herself as she rounded a corner, crossing into her subdistrict and eyeing the massive megabuilding that housed her apartment. “Sounds good. Tomorrow morning?”
“Yep, don’t bring Mylo. Client wants as little exposure as possible. I’ll flick you the coords.”
“Cool, thanks, Benz.”
“Keep me in the loop after you meet with them. No texting, calls only.”
“Got it.”
The call ended and Vi received a location transferred straight to her neural system, giving her the instant knowledge of where she was supposed to meet the client tomorrow. Some kind of office building on Corpo Plaza, which tracked for a high profile client wanting discretion.
Deciding to try to enjoy her bonus day off as much as possible, Vi settled into her stiff couch and clicked through some programs on TV. After determining that most of her usual channels were currently riddled with news about the upcoming mayoral election, she let it become background noise and grabbed her laptop to click through some pages on the net—browsing listings for new bikes, mostly.
She did end up on an article talking about holos versus phone usage in Night City, tempting her a little bit to consider Jinx’s offer. Not having to carry around a physical phone would probably help with her jobs, and every other merc she knew had the holo implant. And the more she read about it, the less invasive it sounded.
Ugh. Maybe it was time she get with the program. She should’ve just let Jinx install the firmware when she was in the chair earlier.
Vi
Still got time to install me a holo before drinks?
Jinx
Hell yea!
Your hardware is already good for the tech, so it’ll be quick!
Drop by asap!
Vi smiled to herself, grabbed her stuff and left her apartment. After her familiar walk through the megabuilding, she made her way to the garage, found her slightly beat up black and silver ARCH Nazaré, and swung her leg over it. It took barely more than half a second before she was zooming out of the garage on her bike.
Her stop at Jinx’s place was brief, her sister slotting a chip into the base of her skull. Vi saw the tell tale software interface floating in her vision, watched the data upload and sync with her neural system, then blinked her vision clear when the text disappeared. Jinx walked her through using the holo and Vi found herself pleasantly surprised about how simple it all was. Jinx also assured her that since it was linked directly into her system and synced perfectly, sisterly squealing and other such loud noises would adjust automatically so that it wouldn’t overwhelm her.
“Huh,” Vi said at that, Jinx snickering, “guess it might be a little bit of an improvement, then.”
They left Jinx’s place with their respective vehicles, Vi on her bike and Jinx in her extremely personalized and revamped Thorton truck. Jinx was well versed in pretty much every kind of tech—from prosthetics cyberware, to neuralware, to cars. Vi always said her little sister had gotten the smarts from the parents that they could barely remember, while she’d gotten the drive and the physical strength.
Her musculature was really her biggest source of pride. She’d worked hard her whole life to stay in peak physical condition. It started as a means to protect herself and her younger sister, purely a defensive measure, but became the central component of her reputation as a merc when she reached her teenage years. Now, pushing thirty and with nearly fifteen years of experience under her belt, Vi was well known among fixers as a merc who was not only quick on her feet with steady nerves, but as one who could punch her way out of any job gone sideways if need be. One way or another, whether because of a smooth job done or cuts and bruises on her knuckles, her clients ended up happy, with both her and her fixers’ pockets lined thick with eddies.
Vi pulled her bike into the dilapidated parking lot down the street from The Last Drop, situated in the center of Vista del Rey, the poorest subdistrict of her home district of Heywood. She’d grown up between here and the Glen, living in a small apartment somewhere when her parents were still alive, in the streets with Jinx once they weren’t, but under Vander’s roof after he took them in when she was about eleven years old.
Part of her had been hesitant to leave Heywood. No other part of Night City was exactly the same as the streets she was intimately familiar with. The Firelights, the gang that dominated in the district, had always been friendly with her as a kid—as friendly at people got in Night City, anyway. She felt safe even in the worst parts of the district simply because she knew it inside and out. But she’d moved out from Vander’s place almost a decade ago, to get some space from her adoptive father, moving two subdistricts away, into Rancho Coronado, the residential area of Santo Domingo. She’d had plenty of time to get familiar and comfortable with her new home district, and the militaristic Void gang who ruled its streets. Jinx had sort of followed her when she’d gotten old enough to get a place of her own too, ending up in SanDom’s Arroyo subdistrict.
Vander disapproved of them leaving Heywood, though, and his inability to drop his grudge over it was one of the reasons that Vi rarely stopped into his bar these days.
Jinx parked in the spot next to Vi and the two walked over to the bar through the busy streets. Cars honked in the dense traffic as pedestrians jaywalked between the too small sidewalks. Some NCPD officers were huddled on one street corner, and Vi spotted a group of Firelights on a balcony above them, trying to act casual as they leaned over and eavesdropped. They’d almost reached the bar when a bulky car zipped through a red light, causing three cars to slam on their breaks, its Chembaron occupants hooting and hollering as one of them stuck an assault rifle out the window and pointed it right at the Firelights on the balcony.
Vi barely even flinched as the rounds fired off, the Firelights ducking with precision, one of them pulling out a pistol and firing a perfect shot at the car’s tire, causing it to spin out of control. It slammed into another vehicle which then smashed into a light post. The pedestrians on that side of the street screeched and broke into runs as the NCPD officers whipped out their guns and started firing at the Chembaron goons. From everything Vi had been hearing on the radio, the Chembarons—the biggest gang in the southernmost district, Pacifica—were making a very big push to take control of the streets in the neighboring districts.
The gang members were apprehended by the officers by the time Vi and Jinx reached the entrance of The Last Drop, the Firelights on the balcony having already disappeared inside. Vi exchanged a look with her sister. At the same time, the two of them agreed with matching shrugs, “Heywood.”
Claggor and Mylo were already perched at the bar, the former with an arm slung over a skimpily dressed, blonde woman that Vi didn’t recognize, and the latter laughing at something being said by a third man sitting next to him. He was easily identifiable by the white dreads gathered atop his head, and before Vi could even think, Jinx was scoffing with a muttered, “Of course Ekko had to be here too.”
Vi chuckled. “Thought you two had buried the hatchet… again.”
“It got dug up again,” Jinx huffed out, although as they walked up to the bar, she plastered on a nice enough smile as she slotted herself between Mylo and Ekko. “Hey, boys. Ekko, figured you’d be at your clinic still, tryna figure out how to install mark one Subdermal Armor.” Vi easily recognized the most basic type of cyberware for the integumentary system.
Ekko smirked at her with a clap on her back. “Jinx, if I’m ever staying late at the clinic, it’s cuz I’ve got customers lining up outside my door. I’m sure you’ll know what that’s like one day.”
Jinx didn’t bat an eyelash. “Guess this turf war is good for your business, seeing as the Firelights don’t got any other gang sponsored options to choose from. If any of your chooms ever feel like getting some real quality chrome, you know my address.”
Vi snickered and rolled her eyes at their bickering, slipping between Mylo and Claggor and swinging her arms over their shoulders. “Sup, guys?” She eyed Claggor’s girl, plastering on her most charming smile. “Don’t think we’ve met, gorgeous, I’m Vi.”
The woman blushed and tucked some of her golden locks behind her ear, revealing silver strips along her jawline, indication of whatever cyberware she had on deck. “Lena,” she introduced back as Claggor glared dryly at Vi, who promptly ignored him.
“Pretty name for an even prettier girl,” Vi purred.
Claggor grunted, shoving Vi off of him and looking apologetically at Lena. “Flick me your contact info,” he told her, “and I’ll let you know when I’m free of these hooligans.”
Lena gave a slight shrug and a small smile, green eyes glowing gold for a split second as she sent the requested data to Claggor. “Nice meeting you,” she said, gaze starting on Claggor and then shifting to Vi, whose new holo saw its first action as a new contact appeared. Vi smirked and winked as Claggor released his loose grasp on the woman and she sauntered off.
“You’re a dick, Vi,” Claggor grouched, Mylo cackling next to him as Vi took Lena’s abandoned spot at the bar, leaning on one elbow to look down the row at her little found family.
“Eh, if she’s lookin’ for love, she’ll end up in your arms,” Vi told him with a shrug, “even if she makes a pitstop in my bed, first.”
“As if I would date someone you’d slept with,” Claggor scoffed.
Smirking, Mylo chimed in, “Damn, better cross off half the girls in Heywood and another half in Santo Domingo.”
“What can I say, boys? When you got it, you got it.”
“Well, look who it is.” Vi looked up at the hulking, scruffy man who’d taken her in two decades ago, smiling at her with a surprising warmth. “Been a few months since you had time to drop in.”
“Yeah, well, figured I should pay my old man a visit,” she told him playfully, “since he’s actually getting real old now.”
Vander just snickered, grabbing some glasses from behind the bar and starting to pour two drinks for the arrival of his adoptive daughters. “How’re things, Vi?”
“Good,” she answered, purposefully as vague as possible, knowing that Vander didn’t want to hear about either her work or her nightlife. Not unless it had something to do with finally agreeing to work with him, learn to take over running The Last Drop. Bussing tables and mixing drinks and keeping the peace between everyone who entered its doors, regardless of their affiliation.
“Keeping busy?” Vander asked, just as vague, proving Vi correct.
“Yep. Jinx got me some new chrome today,” she said, extending her hands and flexing her fingers, showing off the matte black of the gorilla arm implants. “Arm wrestling with me just got a whole lot more dangerous.”
“Oh, shit, preem.” Claggor leaned closer to inspect it.
Mylo raised an eyebrow. “Remind me not to piss you off, shit.”
“As if she couldn’t have knocked your scrawny ass out before,” Jinx butted in, apparently done squawking back and forth with Ekko, who was now sipping something bright blue in a glass.
“Always with the bickering,” Vander said with a heavy laugh, setting two new glasses on the counter. Vi took hers, recognizing her favorite bourbon by sight and smell alone, and took a long pull from it. “Sometimes, it’s like you’re all still a bunch of immature teenagers.”
“These four might’ve aged out of teenager, but they never got the memo on maturity, Vander,” Ekko snarked, getting a sharp elbow in the side from Jinx in response. He barely flinched and Jinx seemed not to care either way as she sipped her own drink.
“You’re telling me, kid,” Vander laughed out. “Always a nice surprise when you all stop by to see me, though. Makes an old man feel appreciated.”
“Aw, gross, you getting sentimental on us, Vander?” Jinx teased, shaking her head and causing one of her braids to smack Mylo, who scoffed and swatted at it with annoyance. “If that’s what maturity does to someone, thank fuck I’m avoidin’ it!”
Vander gave her a pointed look. “If you all dropped in more often, maybe I wouldn’t get all choked up.”
Mylo cleared his throat and looked over at Vi, who braced herself for whatever bullshit he was about to spew. “Huh, Vi—maybe you should stop by the next time you finally get a few days off. Oh no, wait, you didn’t have any work this weekend, did you? And two weeks ago, didn’t you get a couple days to rest, too?”
“Alright, don’t act like you didn’t have those same days off,” Vi shot back.
“I was here two days ago, and two weeks ago,” Mylo countered, and Vi clamped her mouth shut, grunting and looking down at her bourbon for a second before throwing the rest of it back.
Vander chuckled quietly, although Vi could easily read into his wrinkled face, identify the way his smile wasn’t quite as wide as it should’ve been. He had to know already that Vi was avoiding him, but hearing it aloud probably didn’t help. She knew it hurt him. Still, he hid it well as he collected her empty glass and quickly replaced it with another full one.
“Thanks,” she muttered, “but no more for me after this. Got a meeting the morning.”
“Anything interesting?” Claggor wondered. The smile he gave her told Vi that he was trying to be helpful, changing the topic, but Vi thought talking about work around Vander was even worse than talking about her avoiding him.
“Not sure yet,” she admitted. “Haven’t got all the details. But oh, Mylo, don’t make plans. Gonna need your ‘running expertise.”
Jinx audibly spluttered, the latest sip of her drink almost spewing out of her mouth as she held back a laugh. Once she swallowed, with Mylo already glaring at her, she said, “Expertise? Please, Ekko could figure out netrunning better than Mylo.”
Ekko scoffed. “What’s that supposed to—”
“I’m not a shit netrunner,” Mylo growled out. “Do I still got things to learn? Duh, but that’s only cuz of the pressure. You get a nice little isolated office to work from, meanwhile I gotta get shit done hunched behind a counter in a warehouse full of gangoons while this one is barely holding back from running in fists swinging.” He jerked his head at Vi, who fought a smirk.
“Mylo’s a great partner,” she insisted, although she didn’t have experience working with many other netrunners. She was more than experienced getting jobs done without having to hook into the net or hack anything, but when it was needed, Mylo had always gotten the job done.
“Thank you!” Mylo huffed out. “So, you need me tomorrow morning, then?”
“Nah, client wants to meet one on one. I’ll call you once I have more details afterward, though.”
“She’ll call you on her new holo,” Jinx interjected, swiftly moving on from pissing off Mylo. “Finally talked some sense into her about getting one.”
“Oh sweet, so she can’t ignore my calls anymore?” Mylo asked with an excited grin.
“I’ll still ignore them if I’m busy, jackass,” Vi told him.
Mylo had his mouth open to bark something back, but Vander’s laugh interrupted, and they looked over to see him shaking his head with fond amusement. “Always a circus when you’re all together.”
They moved to a table after a while, Vander insisting that they were scaring away paying customers. He brought them some pizza with their refills a while later, bringing a cola for Vi, and the five of them caught up on the goings on of their lives, interspersed with a healthy dose of teasing and shit-talking. Ekko was the first to excuse himself, citing Firelights business, and Vi made herself the second about ten minutes later. If she stayed too late, Vander would undoubtedly catch her with a long conversation before she could escape.
Somehow, he managed to do so anyway, calling her name for the brief moment she was in his line of sight on her way out the door. With a sigh, she found herself navigating back to the bar, resting her elbows on its top and leaning forward. “I really gotta delta, Vander, early morning meeting across the city. What’s up?”
“Your thirtieth is coming up.” Vi grunted, looking down at her hands. “You know well enough how many up’n’coming mercs are taking to the streets, rivaling the experienced with their impassioned youth.”
“I’m in my prime still, Vander,” Vi argued, looking back up at him with as steely a gaze as she could muster. “And chrome these days keeps you younger than ever. I’ve got a good thing going, a great thing even. I’m saving up to get out of my megabuilding place. Thinking about Japantown, not too far and nicer than Rancho Coronado. Lots of business over there, of all kinds.”
Vander frowned. “Lots of business down here too, Vi,” he told her pointedly. “Heywood needs help right now. You could do a lot of good with all your skills, help keep the peace—or bring it back, more like. The gang wars are only getting worse, half the NCPD officers are paid off to let it happen and the other half can barely hold their own when street violence breaks out. Even closer to City Center, things are getting rough, it’s not just the Vista. I don’t got it in me anymore to get in between people, calm ‘em down when things get heated. I can keep The Last Drop a safe, neutral space, but it’s not getting easier. Could really use you here.”
“I’m happy to help, honest,” Vi assured him, “it’s just—I gotta pay the bills.”
“You could move back in with me. No bills.”
“Vander…”
“Please, just think about it.” Vi was adamantly avoiding his gaze as she felt it bore into her. “I know I can’t pay you like those fixers can, but you’d be doing good by helping me out around here.”
Vi let out a long exhale, debating what to say, whether to lie and say she would consider it, or be honest in that she wouldn’t. She wasn’t ready to give up her life. She liked her work, liked the fast and intense life she lived, raking in the eddies and building a solid reputation for herself. Her own youthful ambition hadn’t gone anywhere. She knew the names of every Night City legend, yearned to be among them. She wanted to drive up to Little China in Watson, be let into the Afterlife club without a second glance, see a drink on the menu with her name by it. She wanted to be one of the legends, as naïve a dream as it might’ve been. Finally, she said, “I really gotta delta. Nice seeing you, Vander.”
She didn’t let him get another word in before she turned on heel and practically bolted out of the bar.
As soon as she was back at her apartment, she buried her face in her pillow and wished she’d just gotten plastered so sleep would come easier.
Corpo Plaza was an impressive place to say the least. The skyscrapers that towered over the wide, well maintained streets glimmered with sleek, modern designs. There were hardly any graffiti tags visible, and the only ads on the plaza billboards were boasting about mayoral candidates. The cops patrolling the streets didn’t appear nearly as threatening as most other parts of the city, even deigning to smile at some passersby dressed in stiff suits. The cars on the road were spotless and shiny, and the morning’s urban ambiance was pleasantly lacking in gunshots.
Vi stuck out like a sore thumb in her plain black t-shirt and baggy grey pants. She’d limited the street paraphernalia that some of her clothing sported, but with the tattoos snaking up her exposed arms and the one displaying her name under her left eye, it was clear that she wasn’t exactly a corpo employee.
Still, she walked with her head held high, only one hand stuffed in her pants pocket as she made her way to the building where her meeting was supposed to take place.
The front door was a thick and solid glass thing that slid open as soon as she approached, leading to a wide lobby with a desk in one corner, manned by a woman in a fitted but respectable black dress and her hair in a ponytail. She looked up as soon as Vi walked in, already assessing.
“Can I help you?”
Vi gave her a confident smile. “Hey, got a meeting on the sixteenth floor.”
“Elevators are just around the corner. Mind the scanners.”
Vi nodded and followed the woman’s direction. A camera mounted high on the wall flickered on with blue light as it scanned her, and Vi didn’t pause in her stride to the button to summon the elevator. Since the scanner didn’t make any heinous noises, and the receptionist didn’t call out to her, she assumed she’d passed whatever inspection it’d done.
Inside the elevator, she punched the button for floor sixteen, leaned back and basked in the unfamiliar quiet. It was kind of peaceful, if not a little unnerving.
On the sixteenth floor, there was a singular door off of a small sitting area, guarded by a man with solid metal hands and a visor over his eyes, although Vi knew better than to assume he couldn’t see her. She stayed confident as she approached him. “Hey, got a meeting on this floor.”
“Your name?”
“Vi.”
He nodded, looking down and off to the side a little for a second before saying, “Right this way.” The door behind him slid open and he guided her through a maze of hallways. The floor seemed to be filled with individual offices and meeting rooms, not one cohesive theme or purpose tying them together. She couldn’t help but observe the hallway, noting all of its cameras, the doors labeled for emergency staircases, and the occasional window. Not that she was expecting anything to go badly at a meeting with a client, but it never hurt to be prepared.
They reached one door in particular and the man rapped his knuckles on it before it slid open and he gestured for her to go inside. The door promptly closed behind her, leaving Vi alone in an office with a desk and computer setup at one end and a small conference table filling the rest of the space. Seated at the conference table was a pair of well-manicured people, one a man with blue-black hair and slanted eyes, the other a woman with a familiar, narrow, and pointed face and a pout that was somehow professional. It only took Vi a second to place where she’d seen the woman before—on the billboards, on the news. One of the mayoral candidates for the upcoming election.
High profile, indeed.
“Good morning,” the woman greeted, standing and offering a hand in greeting. Vi gave her a half smile, approaching the other side of the table and shaking the proffered hand politely. “You must be the merc Benzo contacted.”
“That’d be me,” Vi confirmed, pocketing her hand again and sliding into one of the chairs as the other woman sat back down. “Vi. And you—Kiramman, right? Running for mayor.”
The woman gave her a thin smile. “Yes, Cassandra Kiramman, pleased to meet you. This is my husband, Tobias. Apologies for such an obscure meeting place, this is an office of a friend of a friend. We—well, we wanted to keep this…”
“Under wraps,” Vi finished for her, nodding with understanding. “No worries, I get it, it’s part of the biz. What’s this about?”
Cassandra and Tobias exchanged a look, and the husband was the one to sit up a bit straighter and start speaking, “As I’m sure you’re aware, former mayor of Night City—Heimerdinger—passed away last month, hence the last minute election.”
Vi nodded, recalling the incident thanks to how much it had been on the news and talked about on every radio station. She wasn’t really one to follow politics, but that event had been unavoidable. “Sure, I remember. Bad heart or something, right?”
“The official report cites it as a heart attack,” Cassandra confirmed.
Vi quirked an eyebrow. “That you saying you don’t buy it?”
“NCPD arrived on the scene along with Trauma Team and they confirmed it was a heart attack,” Cassandra clarified, “but… well, you see, I was quite familiar with the former mayor, we often joined him for dinner, and he had never had any health problems. Wasn’t even very old, even if you don’t consider the tech extending his life.”
Vi nodded slowly. “So… you think it was an unnatural heart attack? Like, something caused it on purpose?” Cassandra and Tobias exchanged another look before they both nodded tentatively, like they were worried about admitting it to someone else. Vi understood—it wasn’t nothing, suggesting that someone might’ve murdered the mayor. “Alright… mind if I ask why you care? You’re gunning for his seat, aren’t you?”
Cassandra blew out a breath, looking like she was recalling a prepared answer. “I am, as it was always my intention to run in the next election just as I ran in the previous one. The reason I care how the mayor’s seat was vacated however…” Her body language seemed nervous, stiff posture, her hands fidgeting in her lap where she thought Vi might not notice, even though her face stayed hard, focused. It read like she was used to talking to people through a box showing only her face, which, Vi didn’t know, maybe virtual meetings were the norm for politicians. “Are you familiar, Vi, with the other candidates in the mayoral race?”
Vi thought back to the news and the posters, remembering a few faces vaguely, another couple of names coming to her after a second. “Medarda and Hoskel?”
Cassandra nodded, her frown deeper. “Ambessa Medarda, former CEO of Medarda Banking, is a recent newcomer to the Night City political landscape, and she’s made quite a commotion amongst voters. She appeared to have a very good relationship with Heimerdinger, even ending up in his cabinet within the last year. However, I believe that this was all a front, and that she had the late mayor killed in order to run for his seat.”
“Huh.” Vi chewed her bottom lip thoughtfully. “If she supposedly had a great relationship with him, was already making the big strides, what motive would she have for that?”
“A wonderful question,” Tobias spoke up, producing a small electronic chip from his pocket and sliding it across the table to Vi. “If you would?” Vi accepted the chip and slotted it into her neural port. Immediately, a visual appeared in her view, a series of documents and then a few recorded conversation, accounts of Ambessa arguing with Heimerdinger over funding, specifically a large portion of the city’s money being funneled into Night City University. Ambessa seemed to want to repurpose it for a new military mission with the goal of reincorporating Dogtown, a combat zone district practically seceded from Night City and controlled by a militaristic separatist regime. Heimerdinger would not budge on his stance that Dogtown was a lost cause, and the recorded conversation and written correspondence made it clear that Ambessa was not happy with that.
“Alright,” Vi murmured, “so she wants to invade Dogtown with—what, the NCPD? They can barely even keep the streets they actually control in check.”
Cassandra nodded in agreement. “Hence the need for funding. It wouldn’t be a short-term project, that’s for sure. Ambessa has always been vocal about her fears that the NUSA want to reacquire Night City, and getting Dogtown under control, reorganizing the police department into a city sponsored military, that’s what she thinks will help keep the city independent.”
Vi just blinked. She never thought twice about this kind of thing, barely even thought outside of the two districts she’d lived in for her whole life. Fighting and death was the everyday experience of folks in the streets of Night City, it was already a constant war, and she knew better than to think any governmental shifts could really change that. “Okay,” she finally said dumbly. “So, okay, the job. You want me to find out what happened to old Heim. Lemme just ask, why not go to the NCPD with this?”
“Trust us, Vi,” Tobias said, “we have tried every avenue with the NCPD and the corporate council, as well as with the interim, and former deputy, mayor Hoskel. We would not have gone to Benzo if we believed there was any legal avenue that could and would properly handle it,” Tobias explained.
Vi nodded, lips twisting a little in thought. The cops either didn’t care or were covering something up, based on how Tobias was speaking. Corrupt cops were common in the streets, so Vi supposed it made sense that it’d be no different even for the rich and powerful. If the enemy was wealthier, plenty of cops would turn their jackets in a heartbeat. “Right,” she finally mumbled, tapping a finger on the table. “Okay. Got any idea where I might start looking? I’ll figure it out if not, but anything else that might be helpful?”
“I have an access card to Heimerdinger’s old office,” Cassandra said, producing said card from a pocket hidden in her blazer. “From talking with Hoskel, it sounds like it hasn’t been cleared out yet. I can send you the location of the office within City Hall, and this should get you into the room itself, but the building does have high security, of course.”
Vi nodded, taking the access card and not worrying about the security bit for now. “Cool, thanks.” Detecting that this was the end of their meeting, Vi stood up and slid the card into her pocket, where she left her hand to fidget with it. “I’ll get to work, then, let you know whatever I find.”
“Thank you, Vi. And—I’m sure Benzo mentioned, but discretion is very important to us.” Tobias was looking at her pointedly and Vi just gave him her best reassuring smile.
“No worries, sir, Benz told me. I’m good at what I do. Nothin’ will point back to you.” The couple nodded, and Vi gave them a slight wave before heading for the exit. Two new contacts popped into her holo as she left, each of the Kirammans, and she sent hers back. Despite the maze of hallways, she managed to backtrack to the elevator herself, nodding to the guard on her way out.
She used her fancy new holo to call Mylo on the ride down, and he picked up on the first ring. “What?” he snapped, clearly cranky first thing in the morning.
“City Hall, meet me there tonight—ten-ish. I’ve got an access card for the office we need into.”
“City Hall?” Mylo asked back with a groan.
“What, your netrunning skills not up to it?”
“No, no, we’ll be fine,” Mylo muttered. “See you tonight.”
Vi leaned against the fence surrounding the City Hall, waiting on Mylo to finish his loop around the building, scanning with his fancy cyberdeck to find entry points, determine what the security looked like, and all the other stuff a netrunner was good for. Vi peered up at the huge building that towered over most of the rest of Heywood. She’d walked past this place countless times, but had never even thought to go inside, had never had a reason to. Political figures didn’t often get involved with mercs.
A scuff of a boot drew Vi’s attention as she started, only to relax when she realized it was Mylo. “Service entrance in the back,” he said, “probably our best bet. Not sure I can hack it open but you might be able to brute force it. I already shut off the cameras back there.”
“Cool,” Vi said with a quick nod, “let’s get going then.”
They moved with quiet steps around the building, avoiding the security guards patrolling the front part courtyard and the entryway. Hopping the fence behind the building was easy for Vi, and with her help, Mylo managed to clamber over easily enough as well. They ducked behind a dumpster as Mylo pointed out the service entrance, the camera above it powered off. A single security guard was leaning near it, clearly unfocused as he read something on a tablet in his hand.
“I’ll take him out,” Vi murmured, getting a nod from Mylo. Crouching low, she silently made her way around the dumpster, sticking as close to the fence as possible. If the guard looked up, she’d be right in his line of sight, but he was clearly distracted, and the cover of darkness helped.
Once she was past him, she made her way right behind him, and in a single, swift, practiced movement, she grabbed him in a tight chokehold. He tried to gasp for breath, one hand flying toward his holstered gun, but Vi used her other arm to immobilize him for the few seconds it took for him to go limp in her arms.
She dragged his unconscious body over toward the dumpster, propping him up against it as Mylo eyed him warily. “Let’s go,” Vi said, nudging him and heading back toward the door. The digital keypad next to it awaited a code to slide the door open, but Vi just cracked her knuckles. “Time to see if these gorilla arm things are worth the price.”
They were, in fact, very much worth the price. Vi slid her fingers into the slit where the sliding door butted against its frame, her implants locking them into place securely, and the effort it took to force it open was minimal. She opened it just wide enough for Mylo to slip in, then followed him quickly, letting the door snap shut behind them. Immediately, Mylo was scanning the room they’d stumbled into, his eyes glowing a little red as he used the tech in his head to do… something or another. “We’re clear of cameras,” he told her.
It took them about twenty minutes to navigate through the building, crouching low, avoiding security guards, Mylo shutting off cameras as they came close to them. When they reached the main elevator, Mylo was able to hack it to let them in and up to the top floor. And when they finally reached the door to Heimerdinger’s old office, Vi procured her access card, scanning it over the keypad. It flashed a pleasant green and the door slid open to let them in. Within a second, Mylo had the room’s security camera shut off, and they were safe to explore.
Despite it being about a month since the former mayor’s death, the office looked as though he might’ve been using it just earlier today. A news tablet was sat on the desk in front of two huge computer monitors that were prompting for a password, and a few old school paper booklets were stacked next to it. Shelves lined with unidentifiable tech and boxes were messily lining one wall of the office. A sleek, faux leather couch sat on the other wall, a blanket strewn messily over it. The only thing that indicated the place had been untouched for a while was the layer of dust over some of the surfaces.
“This the old mayor’s office?” Mylo asked in realization. “What exactly are we doing here?”
“We’re looking into his death,” Vi explained, grabbing the tablet off of the desk and turning it on to see it was just displaying a collection of month old news articles. She set it back down with disinterest. “Client thinks that one of the running candidates—Ambessa Medarda—was somehow behind it, that the heart attack wasn’t natural.”
“Alright,” Mylo murmured, hunching over in front of the computer. He grabbed the interfacing plug of his personal link from his wrist, pulling out the small cable and jacking it into the device. Vi busied herself with rifling through the papers on the desk as the netrunner hacked into the computer, but after a few seconds, the login screen was bypassed. “Take a look,” he said, disconnecting his plug and stepping back.
Vi clicked through various emails between the former mayor and people whose names she didn’t recognize, skimming for anything related to Ambessa, the funding she wanted to use for Dogtown, and anything else that might be relevant. She found one email thread between the two of them, only to recognize it as some of the same correspondence that the Kirammans already had in the chip they’d shared with her. She clicked away from the emails to look through Heimerdinger’s files instead.
“Anything good?” Mylo wondered, poking around in some of the boxes on the shelves. Vi glanced over and rolled her eyes when she noticed him pocketing something or another he’d found in one of them.
“Not much yet,” she muttered, clicking on the first file in the list, finding a signed memo about some NCPD official’s retirement. The next file was equally irrelevant. Seeing the third, she quirked an eyebrow. “Looks like Heim kept a pretty meticulous day to day itinerary. He had quite a few meetings in the days before his death.” She looked at the day of his death, noting that there was only one meeting scheduled that day. “Do you know what his time of death was?”
Mylo scanned through whatever data was in his head before he said, “News broke at three, about half an hour after he was pronounced dead.”
“Looks like he had a meeting at two that day,” Vi murmured.
“Trauma Team would’ve been a bit late to the scene, and since it was a heart attack, he might’ve been alive a little longer after it happened?” Mylo offered, following her train of thought. “Who was the meeting with?”
“Doesn’t say. Most of the meetings he has documented have clear locations and people listed, but this one isn’t labeled at all.” She straightened up a little, pulling her own link from her wrist and plugging it into the computer, initiating a download of the itinerary in completion. She quickly queued up a search through the data. “Looks like he’s got this same sort of unlabeled meeting in his calendar regularly, once every three months or so.”
“Maybe an appointment with a doc or something?” Mylo offered. “If he was having heart problems, maybe he was getting some kind of treatment?”
Vi hummed thoughtfully. “Maybe. Impossible to know from this, though.”
“So what, dead end?”
“Here, maybe,” Vi agreed, jacking out from the computer now that she had what she needed. “But if Ambessa did have something to do with his death, and he died right after or maybe even during a meeting, I definitely wanna see if she had any awareness of it.”
“So, next step, we gotta—”
A thump outside the door shut Mylo up in a second, and Vi blinked, looking over at it in alarm. The door was still firmly closed, but— “Shit,” she hissed, “the camera.”
Mylo’s eyes widened as he realized what she’d just realized—the office’s camera was back on. Mylo quickly shut it back down and whispered, “If that was City Hall security, they’d be all over us by now.”
“Who else could it have been?” Vi demanded, moving to peek out sole window in the room and confirming that it was not a feasible escape route.
“No fucking clue, I’m just saying, we passed what, three guards between here and the elevator? They’d be on us already!”
Vi made her way back to the door, clenching her left fist. “Well, something’s out there, we heard it,” she whispered. “Stay behind me.” Mylo followed her instructions without complaint, moving to the side of the door, safely behind her. She took a breath, hovered her hand over the trigger to open the door. When she opened it, before it had even slid all the way open, she darted out of the room. She almost sensed the person before she saw them, crouched next to the door, and she quickly apprehended them, forearm pressing against their jugular, holding them firmly against the wall.
Wide, intense, and surprisingly unfazed blue eyes stared at her from the slim face of a woman with dark blue hair, a scarf covering the bottom half of her face. She was dressed in nondescript, black clothing, no indication of her affiliation anywhere. Vi blinked in confusion at how unstartled she was, only to realize that the barrel of a gun was pressed against her abdomen, between the two of them.
She didn’t flinch, even as her heart sped up. “Who the fuck are you?”
The woman just raised an eyebrow into a perfect arch and said, “Your netrunner could use some practice.”