"—I'm the daughter of Takeshi Kushinada, Security Systems Director of Arasaka Tower's Warsaw Branch in Europe!!"
At that moment in the Stone Ridge cavern, Arasaka's pursuing forces launched a fierce assault.
Dust surged with thunderous roars, gunfire echoed, and sparks scattered everywhere.
In a single instant, someone was already hit—collapsing to the ground with a pained groan.
But everyone still clearly heard the desperate cry from the hacker girl.
Amid the violent symphony woven from bullets, the air itself seemed to freeze—strangely still.
"What?"
Thrown onto the gravel floor, Rebecca lay sprawled in shock, thinking she must've misheard.
Kiwi's eyes widened—so that's it. Now she understood. This was the past Lucy never wanted to mention.
Without hesitation, the tall netrunner dashed toward the truck's modified compartment entrance. Scarlet data characters flashed across her eyes—protocols engaged, intrusion initiated, rapid decryption, daemon deployment… target: FIA agents!
"Fucking!"
Kerry, the NUSA Federal Intelligence Agency squad leader, was in mid-assault, pouring gunfire toward the Arasaka forces when he froze. The activation alert of his personal ICE defense system flared in his optics, and he cursed loudly: "Arasaka's little bitch! I'll kill you myself!"
Why was there an Arasaka executive's daughter hiding among the merc group that ambushed Arasaka's convoy? Was this internal strife within Arasaka?
Or had the entire operation been a trap set up by Arasaka from the start?
The thought sent a chill like ice flooding through Kerry's veins.
But he didn't have time to think. Rage surged through his body; his health monitor blared warnings about overexertion. He didn't care. Only one thought remained: if escape was impossible, then he'd take the Arasaka brat down with him—to deal Arasaka as much damage as possible. That, at least, would be a service to his country.
He swung his rifle around.
[Kill those three bitches!!]
The command, faster than speech, tore directly into the minds of his agents through their neural link.
While the FIA agents cursed and the Arasaka assault squad hesitated in confusion, the agent holding Rebecca as a hostage lowered his weapon and pulled the trigger—bang!
Rebecca barely had time to react before searing pain struck her cheek—it burned! The bullet had missed.
Gravel shattered alongside the bullet, fragments slicing across Rebecca's face and neck, leaving bloody scratches.
"Shit! Fucking squid!"
The agent swore, his cyber-eyes dimming as sparks burst from the neural socket behind his ear. His hand trembled uncontrollably like he'd caught a seizure.
No doubt—he'd been hacked.
[Data blockage]… [Rebooting cyber-eyes]… [System malfunction]… [Contagion detected]…
Lucy pressed a hand to her forehead, sweat streaming down her cheeks. Beneath her pale, asymmetrical pastel fringe that shimmered faintly like light, her pupils pulsed red in rapid flickers.
Her netdeck's daemon plugins—fully activated.
Fighting to carve out even a sliver of survival, Lucy coordinated with Kiwi in the counterattack, burning through her entire RAM capacity in one go.
Each side's choices and movements all happened within a heartbeat.
"Watch out!"
Barely escaping execution, Rebecca screamed toward Lucy, eyes wide with dread.
Lucy saw it too—her peripheral vision catching Kerry's sudden lunge, appearing ghost-like at the truck's rear corner, raising an Arasaka [Masamune] rifle aimed squarely at her.
Beep-beep.
[Kiwi: Damn it! He's got higher-tier ICE units on him! Cracking the defense system will take time!]
Even though Maine's crew had spent their earnings from Jackie Welles' commission to buy top-tier daemon software—and both Lucy and Kiwi had upgraded their ICE—the FIA weren't some street punks or hired guns. Without hacker chairs, without full data hubs, relying only on their personal neural decks, breaking military-grade ICE would take time.
Not everyone was a Spider Murphy or a songbird like Song So Mi.
Maybe Lucy could've been—but she was still too young, barely twenty-one, with limited experience and no real mentor. Her best years for learning had been wasted on the run.
Her talent had yet to fully blossom—her potential far from realized. She needed time for proper, systematic study and professional training to catch up.
And time was the one thing Lucy didn't have.
Rat-tat-tat-tat—
The snarling faces, the muzzle flashes spitting fire—they all reflected in Lucy's constricted pupils.
Not good. No time. It's over.
Was she about to die?
Her mind went blank. Her heart pounded, her breath quickened. Along with the helpless resignation, fragments of painful memories—like a fever dream—flashed through her mind.
A cruel father, an indifferent mother, a blood-soaked family, the hell of the Old Net, a life on the run, and those precious moments spent with Maine's team—the dream of reaching the moon…
What a mess of a life.
Lucy stopped thinking.
But—
BOOM!
A shadow shot through the stacked supply crates at high speed.
Clang-clang!
A storm of bullets raked across the EX0-1 exoskeleton armor, scattering sparks.
Shards of debris burst in all directions. Strands of Lucy's hair whipped in the turbulent air as her thoughts snapped back into focus.
Seeing the massive armored Arasaka soldier standing before her, shielding her, made her heart tremble.
[Lucy?]
A voice crackled into her comms—familiar, deep, and steady.
Not a random encrypted signal, but a registered contact.
David Martinez.
[David?]
Lucy was too stunned to speak.
[David: It's me. Good thing I made it in time. Lucy—it really is you. What the hell are you doing out here in the Badlands, and calling yourself… never mind, we'll talk later.]
Just as Lucy was shocked to see him, David—an Arasaka Security soldier hardened by countless firefights—was equally stunned to discover that the person shouting was someone he once knew from his old neighborhood days.
"Whew…"
Taking a deep breath to stabilize himself from the strain of using his [Sandevistan], David raised his Type-31 heavy machine gun one-handed, aiming at the FIA agent firing dual [Masamune] rifles—and pulled the trigger down to the stop.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM—!
Thunderous gunfire roared through the cave. Heavy rounds exploded at the rear of the truck, scattering shrapnel.
The lightly armed FIA agents were immediately suppressed.
Kerry dove for cover.
One unlucky bastard who didn't move fast enough was hit square in the chest. Flesh, bone, and blood sprayed through the air as he fell backward lifelessly.
David's other hand wasn't idle either.
He detached his compact foldable riot shield, then drew his HJKE-11 [Yukimura] smart pistol from his thigh holster and tossed it—along with two magazines—toward Lucy.
"Stay down."
With that, David kicked off, his massive frame moving with surprising agility as he charged after the squad leader—the one clearly in command.
By the time Lucy regained her senses and looked again, Arasaka had already taken the upper hand.
The NUSA scum had lost five or six men in mere seconds.
Makes sense—this FIA squad wasn't the agency's main force. Compared to corporate-grade units, they were a light ten-man assault team—great for suppressing street-level thugs in Night City, but outmatched against fully equipped military-grade opponents. And since she and Kiwi had managed to hack and disrupt them at a critical moment, it was like a full team lagging out mid-battle—total collapse.
That Solomon Reed—that was the real threat.
As her RAM recovered slightly, Lucy's gaze shifted toward Rebecca.
Good.
That iron-headed girl hadn't gone berserk this time.
Instead, she had smartly crawled behind a headless corpse for cover. The FIA agent she'd disrupted with her daemon had already been cleanly finished off by an Arasaka marksman.
Kiwi… wait, where was she?
[Kiwi?]
Lucy opened comms.
Beep-beep.
[Kiwi: I'm fine. For now. Hiding in the truck's systems cabinet. Let's hope Arasaka spares us some mercy for their executive's daughter and doesn't use rockets.]
There was a hint of sarcasm in her tone.
Lucy was just about to reply—
BANG!
A bullet crackling with electric charge grazed Lucy's cheek, striking the jagged rock wall nearby. Shards exploded outward, and the FIA tech officer hiding behind it—who had been resisting Arasaka's netrunners—had his entire arm and shoulder shredded in an instant by the electromagnetic round. Wires flailed from the torn stump as blood gushed wildly.
"Name: Lucyna Kushinada. Father: Takeshi Kushinada. Mother: Noemiel Kushinada. Based on the 'missing person' record from the Warsaw Branch database… seems to check out. I'll assume you're legit."
A man's unfamiliar voice cut in at her side.
Before Lucy could turn, the incoming crossfire from multiple angles shredded him into a mist of blood.
Tap, tap.
"…"
Lucy looked up at the approaching Arasaka marksman, calmly walking forward with an M-179 [Achilles] in hand.
His armor was lighter than David's—but his composure and tone made it obvious he was an officer. That Tokyo-accented corpo drawl gave him away instantly.
"Seems you value your civilian friends a lot."
Katsuo Tanaka glanced meaningfully at the lifeless body of the green-haired twin-tailed girl. "If not for this little incident, Miss Kushinada, how much longer would you have stayed away from home?"
It had been years since the report about the missing daughter of a Warsaw Branch executive. If Lucy hadn't exposed herself, he might never have remembered.
Bang!
Another shot rang out. One FIA agent—judging by his speed, augmented with a [Kerenzikov] implant—was hit square in the back. His uniform shredded, blood gushing.
A lithe figure darted forward—Suneo—sliding in like a predator. He grabbed the wounded agent before he could destroy his neural core, drove a combat knife into his chest, stabbed several more times, and twisted it in his heart before yanking the man's head back by the hair to glance toward Katsuo.
"Looks like David knows her…"
"Save the chatter for after the job," Katsuo waved a hand, scanning the field.
Gunfire was fading. Aside from the FIA squad leader using [Sandevistan] to hold off David, all others had been neutralized.
"Wearing SovOil's old combat gear…"
One Arasaka veteran crouched beside a corpse, chuckling. "Typical. FIA scum to the bone."
BOOM!!
A thunderous crash echoed like a car slamming into a wall.
The two armored titans collided head-on.
"Pah!"
Spitting blood, face swollen and battered, Kerry roared hoarsely, "You Arasaka bastards—take off your armor and fight me like a man!"
David didn't even respond.
He had armor—why wouldn't he use it? This wasn't some ring match. Only idiots threw away their advantage.
"Capture him alive?" David stepped back, glancing at Katsuo.
"Alive," Katsuo replied.
"Got it."
No sympathy. No emotion.
Kerry's face darkened like iron.
His plan—to drag as many down with him as possible—had failed. His [Sandevistan] speed was matched, his moves countered.
No escape. No hostages.
Even dying in battle wasn't an option—the continuous drain was killing him. His personal ICE screamed alerts. At least three Arasaka netrunners were inside his system already. He couldn't let them pull his memories out with a Black Superdream.
A sharp, helpless fury welled in his chest.
So be it. This life—he'd sell it to Rosalind Myers. Maybe that bitch would posthumously pin a medal on him and make sure the compensation reached his family.
Without hesitation, Kerry activated his [Sandevistan] one last time, triggering the self-destruct program in his neural core.
"Fuck you, Arasaka!"
He flipped them off with a bloodstained grin.
In the next instant, blood streamed from his eyes, nose, and mouth as his brain boiled from within—neurons cooked alive—then bang! His skull burst apart.
David and Katsuo remained expressionless.
They'd seen this before—high-level agents were nearly impossible to take alive. The world was rotten, yes, but NUSA and Militech didn't rise by luck.
"Wrap it up," Katsuo ordered flatly.
"Bring the three of them. We're heading to the crash site. Latest update—Director Russell has arrived."