*Author Note: Gloria Martinez Age: 25. David: 10. Lucy 13*
(Gloria Martinez POV — Five Minutes Earlier)
The Villefort Columbus handled like a dream on the highway back from Rancho Coronado, its boxy frame cutting through traffic with the kind of reliable steadiness that made it perfect for family trips. The dark gray exterior might not have been flashy nothing like the chrome-plated monsters the gangers drove but beneath its shell, Gloria had made certain modifications over the years. Reinforced armor plating hidden beneath the paneling. Bulletproof glass that looked factory standard. A few other surprises that most people would never expect from a suburban family van.
Old habits died hard, especially for someone who had once been known as one of the best Fixers.
Gloria glanced in the rearview mirror, her tired eyes softening at the sight of David and Lucy in the back seats. David had grass stains on his knees and a smear of something that might have been ice cream on his chin, while Lucy sat with her legs tucked beneath her, that characteristic distant look in her multi colored eyes as she stared out the window at the passing industrial landscape of Santo Domingo.
"Mom, did you see how high I went on the swings?" David's voice cut through the van's ambient hum, bright with the kind of enthusiasm that only ten year olds could muster. "I bet I went higher than anyone else in the whole park!"
"I saw, mijo." Gloria smiled, keeping her eyes on the road as the suburban tract housing of Rancho Coronado gave way to the industrial sprawl of Santo Domingo. The power plants loomed on the horizon, their smokestacks belching chemical clouds into the perpetually hazy sky. "You're going to be a pilot someday, the way you were flying."
"Or an edgerunner!" David pumped his fist in the air, nearly knocking over the half-empty soda cup wedged in the seat's cupholder. "Like the ones in the stories you tell, Mom! The ones who fight the corpos and save people from the gangs!"
Lucy turned from the window, her pale eyes settling on David with that particular intensity she sometimes displayed. "Edgerunners don't live long" she said quietly. "Most of them burn out before they hit thirty. Cyberpsychosis, corpo hits, or just bad luck. The legends are the exceptions, not the rule."
Gloria's hands tightened on the steering wheel, though she kept her expression carefully neutral. The synthetic leather creaked under her grip as memories flooded unbidden through her mind faces of young men and women who had burned too bright, too fast, their flames extinguished in alleyways and corporate towers and the backs of speeding vehicles.
Marcus "Quicksilver" Chen, who had been the fastest solo she'd ever worked with. He'd taken a contract against Militech and lasted exactly forty-seven seconds after breaching their perimeter. Yuki Tanaka, the netrunner who could crack any ICE in the city until Arasaka's countermeasures fried her brain while she was still jacked in. Tommy "Ironside" Kowalski, who had laughed at the idea of cyberpsychosis right up until the moment he turned his Gorilla Arms on his own family.
The Gilded Rose had worked with them all. She'd set up their contracts, negotiated their fees, provided them with intel and extraction plans and safe houses. For five years, she'd been one of the most connected fixers as she negotiated contracts between Night City and Coruscant, operating out of the shadows while the corporations and gangs tore outsides apart with reliesh. Her network had stretched from The Glen to Vista del Rey, from Wellsprings to the edges of the Badlands.
And then David had been born screaming and red-faced in the back of her own ambulance while she finished suturing a merc's arm and everything had changed.
The Gilded Rose had retired that night. Gloria Martinez, EMT and single mother, had taken her place. The transition hadn't been easy there were debts to settle, contracts to honor, enemies to appease but she'd made it work. Ten years of careful distance from her former life, ten years of pretending to be just another struggling Night City resident trying to make ends meet.
The scavenging wasn't ideal. Taking cyberware from the dead and selling it to some crews felt too close to her old operations for comfort. But it paid for David's tuition and kept food on the table and unlike fixing, nobody was actively trying to kill her for it.
Most days, anyway.
"You both have plenty of time to figure out what you want to be" Gloria said, injecting warmth into her voice to mask the tightness in her chest. "Right now your job is to be kids. To play at parks and eat ice cream and not worry about corporate politics or gang territories."
"But Mom" David began.
"No buts." Gloria caught his eye in the rearview mirror and softened her tone. "I'm not saying you can't dream big. I'm saying you have years to figure out what that dream looks like, maybe you'll be a pilot. Maybe you'll be a doctor, or an engineer, or yes—" she paused, the word catching in her throat, "—maybe even an edgerunner. But whatever you choose, you're going to be ready for it. Prepared. Not some gonk who stumbles into the life because he doesn't know any better."
Lucy's eyes met Gloria's in the mirror, and something passed between them a recognition of shared understanding that went deeper than words. The girl knew things about the world that no thirteen year-old should know. Gloria still didn't have the full story of where Lucy had come from before that alley two years ago, but she'd seen enough to understand that the girl carried scars that had nothing to do with her body.
"Okay, Mom" David said, his enthusiasm dimming slightly but not extinguished. "But when I'm old enough, will you teach me? You always know so much about how things work in the city."
Gloria's smile felt brittle around the edges. "We'll see mijo. We'll see."
The conversation drifted to lighter topics as they continued through Santo Domingo David's excitement about an upcoming braindance release, Lucy's quiet observations about a documentary she'd watched on pre-war architecture, the possibility of getting takeout for dinner. Gloria let herself relax into the familiar rhythm of family banter, her shoulders loosening as the tension gradually faded.
They were passing through an intersection near the edge of Arroyo when she first noticed the vehicles.
Two cars had pulled onto the main road from a side street about three blocks back. Nothing unusual in Night City traffic except that her instincts, honed by years of operating in the shadows, were suddenly screaming at her. The lead vehicle was a matte black Thorton Galena with modified suspension and darkened windows. Behind it came a Quadra Type-66 with custom bodywork that screamed gang affiliation.
She changed lanes, signaling properly like any law-abiding citizen. Watched in the mirror as both vehicles changed lanes to match. Could be coincidence. Probably was coincidence. Night City was full of modified cars and gang-affiliated vehicles.
She took the next turn, heading toward an alternate route that would add ten minutes to their trip home. The vehicles followed.
Her heart rate began to climb.
Another turn. Another follow. And now she could see details she'd missed before the distinctive red optic implants visible through the Galena's windshield, the chrome-heavy silhouettes of passengers who had traded flesh for metal with religious fervor.
Maelstrom.
The word settled into her stomach like ice. Maelstrom didn't operate in Santo Domingo their territory was Watson, centered around the Totentanz and the industrial sectors of Northside. For them to be this far south, following a specific vehicle with obvious intent...
Someone had sent them. Someone who knew who she used to be.
Gloria's fingers found the hidden panel beneath the steering column, pressing a sequence of buttons that activated systems she'd hoped never to use. Her interface flickered to life, connecting to the van's enhanced sensors and communication arrays. Data began streaming across her vision the pursuing vehicles' speed, their weapons signatures, the number of occupants in each car.
Eight hostiles. At least three heavy weapons. Two additional vehicles joining from a parallel street.
This wasn't a random attack. This was a coordinated assault.
Gloria opened a secure channel to Padre, typing a message with one hand while keeping her eyes on the road. The words were brief, coded in terminology they'd established years ago: "Rose. Package plus two. Maelstrom tail, heading east on 47th. Need extraction or intervention. Immediate."
The response came within seconds: "Acknowledged. Help en route. Holy Angels. Get there."
Holy Angels Church. Northside. Right in the heart of Maelstrom territory, but under Padre's protection through arrangements that dated back decades. If she could get there, they'd be safe. The problem was getting there.
"David. Lucy." Gloria's voice came out calm, steady the voice of the Gilded Rose, not the worried mother. "I need you both to do exactly what I say, right now. No questions."
David's face shifted from confusion to fear as he registered the change in his mother's tone. "Mom? What's—"
"No questions" Gloria repeated firmly. "There are some bad people following us. I'm going to keep you safe, but I need you to trust me completely. Both of you lie flat in your seats. There are screens in the backs of the headrests you can watch what's happening outside without exposing yourselves. Understood?"
Lucy was already moving, her body going flat against the seat with the practiced efficiency of someone who had learned to hide from danger before. She reached over and pulled David down beside her, one arm wrapping protectively around his smaller frame.
"Good. Now hold on."
Gloria pressed another hidden switch, and the van's interior transformed. Metal panels slid up from the floor, encasing the back seats in a protective cocoon of reinforced steel and shock-absorbing foam. The children vanished from sight as the compartment sealed around them, climate controlled and armored against anything short of military-grade ordnance. Small screens flickered to life inside, showing feeds from the van's external cameras.
"Mom?" David's voice came through the intercom, small and scared.
"I'm here honey. I'll always be here. Now watch the screens and stay quiet. This is going to get bumpy."
The Maelstrom vehicles had noticed the protective panels deploying. Through the rearview mirror, Gloria saw the Galena's driver say something to his passengers, and suddenly the pursuit became a chase. The lead car surged forward, closing the distance with aggressive intent.
Gloria floored the accelerator.
The Columbus's engine roared with power that no factory model should have possessed a military-spec turbocharged system she'd installed during her fixer days, kept maintained over the years out of paranoid habit. The van shot forward, weaving through traffic as other drivers honked and swerved to avoid the sudden chaos. She cut hard to the right taking the elevated on-ramp that fed onto the highway running through the center of Arroyo.
The highway stretched before her like a concrete river suspended above Santo Domingo's industrial sprawl smokestacks and crumbling megabuildings visible through gaps in the sound barriers, the perpetual haze of pollution lending everything a sickly orange tint. Traffic was thankfully not bad today, a mix of corporate shuttles, delivery trucks, and normal people all going about their business with no idea that death was racing up behind them.
The first shots rang out the moment she merged into traffic.
Bullets sparked off the Columbus's reinforced rear panel, the distinctive crack of high-powered rifles echoing across the elevated roadway. Gloria jerked the wheel left, sliding between a Makigai transport truck and a bright red Thorton Galena whose driver laid on the horn in panicked fury. Another burst of gunfire stitched a line across the transport's trailer, sending showers of sparks cascading across the lanes.
"Mom!" David's voice came through the intercom, high and tight with fear. "They're shooting at us!"
"I know darling, stay down and stay calm. The armor's holding."
She weaved through the traffic like a woman possessed, her hands dancing across the steering wheel with the practiced precision of someone who had spent years navigating Night City's most dangerous roads. She could see the pursuit vehicles in her mirrors now four cars in a loose formation, the lead Thorton Galena already pulling into the left lane to try to box her in. The Quadra Type-66 was hanging back, its passengers leaning out windows with assault rifles braced against their chrome-enhanced arms. Behind it came a modified Villefort Cortes with Maelstrom's distinctive red-and-black paint job, its hood ornament replaced with what looked disturbingly like a human skull encased in transparent resin. The fourth vehicle a heavily armored Thorton Mackinaw was the real threat, its reinforced bumper clearly designed for ramming.
Another volley of gunfire raked across the van's passenger side. Gloria heard the distinctive ping of rounds deflecting off the armored panels, followed by the sharper sound of something penetrating the outer layer.
"One of them is getting closer!" Lucy's voice came through the intercom, still sounding calm compared to David but the hitch of panic in her voice was clear. "The black one with the skull. It's trying to get alongside us."
Glancing at the side mirror and cursed under her breath. The Villefort Cortes was indeed pulling up on her right, its tinted windows rolling down to reveal the barrel of something that looked a lot heavier than a standard assault rifle.
Time to even the odds. Keeping one hand on the wheel, I reached for the touchscreen mounted in the center console and my fingers flew across the interface, pulling up a program she hadn't used in years a custom quickhack suite that was bought and developed for exactly this kind of situation.
The Villefort's targeting systems would be standard Maelstrom fare heavily modified but following predictable patterns. She found the vehicle's frequency in seconds, her neural interface syncing with the Columbus's onboard transmitter to deliver the payload.
The effect was instantaneous. The Villefort Cortes's steering locked hard to the right, its autonomous systems suddenly convinced that it needed to make an emergency lane change. The driver a chrome-heavy gonk with red optic implants visible even through the windshield fought against the wheel, his augmented arms straining against the vehicle's own systems.
He lost.
The Cortes veered across two lanes of traffic, clipping a civilian Archer Hella before slamming into the highway's concrete barrier at nearly a hundred kilometers per hour. The impact sent the vehicle airborne, its front end crumpling as it launched over the side of the elevated roadway and plummeted toward the industrial district below.
Gloria didn't watch it fall. She was already focused on the next threat.
"Whoa!" David's voice crackled through the intercom. "Mom, did you do that? That car just flew off the highway!"
"Eyes on the screens, I can show you how to do the same later."
The highway curved ahead, transitioning from the industrial wasteland of Arroyo into the more developed stretch that ran through the heart of Night City. Gloria could see the neon glow of Japantown in the distance the distinctive cherry blossom holograms that marked the Westbrook district's most famous neighborhood floating above the skyline like digital flowers.
Three vehicles left. The Quadra had pulled back slightly after watching its companion take the plunge, but the Galena and the Mackinaw were closing in with renewed aggression. More gunfire peppered the Columbus's rear, and Gloria heard the distinctive whine of rounds penetrating deeper into the armor.
She couldn't keep taking hits like this. The van was tough, but it wasn't invincible.
The highway merged with another elevated roadway as they crossed into Japantown proper, the traffic thickening with evening commuters heading home from corporate offices and tourists seeking the district's famous nightlife. Gloria wove between vehicles with desperate precision, using the congestion as cover while the Maelstrom vehicles struggled to maintain pursuit.
Then something unexpected happened.
The Quadra Type 66 the one hanging back with the rifle-wielding passengers suddenly slowed. Not gradually, like a driver easing off the accelerator, but violently, as if someone had yanked an emergency brake at highway speed. The vehicle's tires screamed against the pavement, leaving twin trails of burnt rubber as it decelerated from pursuit speed to a dead stop in less than three seconds.
The Mackinaw behind it didn't have time to react. The heavy vehicle slammed into the Quadra's rear at full speed, the impact sending both cars spinning across the highway in a tangle of crumpled metal and shattered glass. Civilian vehicles swerved to avoid the wreckage, creating a chain reaction of minor collisions that effectively blocked half the roadway.
My eyes snapped to the rearview mirror, then to the intercom panel.
She hadn't done that.
Through the protective compartment's internal cameras, she could see Lucy's face illuminated by the soft glow of the monitoring screens but there was something else there now, a faint shimmer around the girl's eyes , the telltale sign of netrunner activity.
I filed that revelation away for later. There would be time for questions and there would definitely be questions but right now survival took priority over parenting.
"Good work," she said through the intercom, keeping her voice neutral. "Both of you stay sharp."
Lucy's eyes flickered toward the camera, and for a moment she saw something that might have been guilt or maybe just acknowledgment flash across the girl's pale features. Then the expression vanished, replaced by that familiar mask of careful neutrality.
"Mom, look!" David's voice cut through the moment. "More cars!"
Her attention snapped forward, and a shiver ran down her body.
Three vehicles had appeared on the highway ahead not behind, but in front of her, driving against traffic with their headlights blazing like predatory eyes. They were spread across all three lanes, leaving no gap wide enough for the Columbus to slip through. A modified Archer Quartz in the center, flanked by two more Thorton Galenas with Maelstrom markings.
A blocking formation. Someone had coordinated this called ahead, positioned assets, turned a simple chase into a carefully orchestrated trap.
"Hold tight!" I shouted, my hands tightening on the wheel. "Both of you, brace!"
She could try to swerve maybe find a gap between the Quartz and the barrier, thread the needle at a hundred and twenty kilometers per hour and pray the physics worked out. She could try to reverse but the original Galena was still behind her, its driver having avoided the pile-up and now closing fast.
Or she could do what she had always done.
I pressed the accelerator to the floor and the van surged forward, its reinforced frame becoming a weapon as it hurtled toward the blocking formation. The Maelstrom drivers clearly hadn't expected her to accelerate their vehicles began to shift, trying to tighten the formation, but they were too slow.
She aimed for the gap between the Quartz and the left-side Galena.
The impact was catastrophic.
Gloria felt the Columbus's reinforced nose strike the blocking formation's lead vehicle at an angle, the collision sending both vehicles spinning across the rain slicked highway surface. The world became a blur of screaming metal and shattering glass as her van careened through the gap she'd created, momentum carrying her through the breach but not cleanly. The second blocking vehicle clipped her rear panel, adding a vicious rotation that sent the Columbus into a sideways skid.
The van's tires screamed against the pavement as she fought the wheel her knuckles white beneath the yellow fabric of her EMT jacket the same jacket she'd worn the night David was born, its collar still lined with that distinctive blue luminescent material that marked it as Meatwagon issue. The Columbus spun once twice, before slamming sideways into the highway's central barrier with a bone jarring impact that threw her against the harness restraints.
Silence. Relative silence, at least just the hiss of settling metal and the distant wail of car alarms from the vehicles she'd scattered across the roadway.
I could feel that my hands were shaking. They hadn't shaken like this in ten years not since the night she'd walked away from the life, from everything she'd built. She stared at them for a moment, watching the tremors run through her fingers, and felt something bitter rise in her throat.
Rusty. God, she was so rusty.
She forced herself to focus, pulling up the diagnostic display on the touchscreen. The holographic interface flickered once before stabilizing, its blue light casting harsh shadows across her face. She scanned the readouts with what she hoped was practiced efficiency, though her eyes took longer than they should have to parse the data streams. Ten years of reading medical monitors instead of tactical displays had rewired her instincts.
Engine: Online. Fuel systems: Nominal. Structural integrity: 94%. Drive systems: Standby.
The car was fine. Battered, dented, probably scratched to hell but functional. The military spec modifications she'd installed a decade ago had proven their worth. At least past Gloria had known what she was doing, even if present Gloria felt like she was fumbling through someone else's memories.
"Mom?" David's voice came through the intercom, thin and scared. "Mom, are you okay?"
"I'm fine mijo." Gloria kept her voice steady even as she tried to remember how to assess a tactical situation. It had been so long. Back in the day, she would have already catalogued every threat, every escape route, every potential asset. Now she found herself having to consciously think through steps that had once been automatic. "Lucy? Status?"
"We're okay." Lucy's response was clipped, controlled. "The compartment held. But Gloria there are more coming."
My eyes snapped to the rearview display just in time to see them two large vehicles launching off an on ramp from the Westbrook hills, their suspensions compressing as they hit the highway surface at speed. Vans she realized. Armored transport vans with reinforced grilles and blacked-out windows.
Corporate extraction vehicles. The identification surfaced from somewhere deep in her memory, surprising her with its clarity. She hadn't seen that configuration in years, but her brain still remembered the profile the kind of transport used by professional snatch-and-grab teams. Not street gangs. Not Maelstrom. Someone with real money and real resources.
Behind her, a third vehicle had caught up from the original pursuit a modified Thorton Galena that had somehow avoided the pile-up. It pulled to a stop about thirty meters back, blocking her retreat. The two vans from Westbrook split as they approached, one swinging wide to her left while the other positioned itself directly ahead.
Doors began opening simultaneously across all three vehicles.
The mercenaries that emerged were nothing like the Maelstrom gangers from before. These were operators clean kit, tactical vests, helmets with integrated optics, weapons that looked fresh from corporate armories rather than black market chop shops. They moved with the practiced coordination of people who had worked together many times before, fanning out to form a perimeter around the Columbus with weapons raised but not firing.
Gloria counted them automatically an old habit that apparently hadn't died completely. Twelve. Fourteen. Sixteen. More were still emerging from the vans.
Too many. The Gilded Rose would have known exactly how to handle this situation, would have had three contingency plans already spinning. Gloria Martinez, exhausted EMT and single mother, felt like she was drowning.
"Mom..." David's voice trembled through the intercom. "There's so many of them."
I closed her eyes for just a moment, pushing down the fear and the rust and the decade of civilian life that had softened her edges. Somewhere beneath all of that, the woman she used to be was still there. She had to be.
"Hey." She softened her voice, reaching for the calm center that had gotten her through countless extractions and double-crosses and midnight meetings with people who would have killed her as easily as looked at her. "Look at me through the camera, David. Right at me."
A pause. Then: "Okay."
"These walls around you? They're going to hold. The people who built this compartment—" She stopped herself. She had designed every specification, had overseen every weld, had tested every component personally. "They built it to protect the most precious thing in my life. You. So I need you to trust me, and trust the armor. Can you do that?"
"...Yeah." His voice was steadier now. "Yeah, I can do that."
"Good boy."
The mercenaries had finished their deployment. They stood in a loose semicircle around the Columbus, weapons trained on the vehicle but holding fire. Waiting for something. I just watched them through the windshield, trying to read their formation the way she used to read gang movements and corporate security patterns. One of them stepped forward taller than the others, his tactical vest marked with insignia she didn't recognize. He approached the driver's side window with the casual confidence of someone who knew he held all the cards, stopping about two meters away with his rifle held across his chest.
"Mrs. Martinez." His voice was distorted by his helmet's vocoder, stripped of anything that might identify him as human. "Or should I say the Gilded Rose? It's been a long time since anyone's used that name."
Gloria felt something cold settle in her stomach. They knew. Of course they knew someone had tracked her down, had connected the EMT to the fixer who had disappeared a decade ago. All those years of keeping her head down, of being nobody special, of making sure David never learned what his mother used to be... wasted.
"Here's how this works" the mercenary continued. "You surrender. Come with us quietly. Your children will be released unharmed within twenty-four hours, once our employer has had a chance to discuss some... outstanding business with you."
Outstanding business. I could feel my my mind starting to race through possibilities old enemies, broken deals, debts she thought had been settled years ago. The world had long memories, and she had made plenty of people angry before she'd walked away.
"Alternatively" the mercenary's tone hardened "we breach this vehicle and extract you by force. Your armor is impressive, but it won't hold forever. And accidents happen during forced extractions. Children get hurt." He tilted his helmet slightly. "So what do you say? Want to make this easy on everyone?"
Gloria looked at him through the cracked windshield really looked at him. She saw the way he held his weapon, the way his weight was distributed, the subtle tells that marked him as experienced but overconfident. She raised her hand and extended her middle finger.
The mercenary stared for a long moment. Then he stepped back and made a sharp gesture to his team. "Light it up."
The barrage was overwhelming. Automatic weapons fire from every direction, the distinctive crack of high-powered rifles mixing with the deeper thump of shotgun slugs. Rounds hammered against the Columbus's armored panels from all sides, creating a deafening cacophony of impacts that made the entire vehicle shudder.
The automated car's voice cut through the chaos with clinical precision: "ALERT: External weapons fire detected. Glass integrity at sixty percent. Armor integrity holding. Offensive countermeasures recommended. Authorization required."
"Hold fire. Do not engage."
"Acknowledged. Offensive countermeasures on standby."
The gunfire ceased as suddenly as it had begun. Gloria could see the mercenaries conferring they'd expected the opening salvo to do more damage. Her armor was better than they'd anticipated.
Small comfort.
Two of the operators were moving toward one of the vans now, pulling something large from the vehicle's rear compartment. Watching through the side cameras as they wrestled the equipment into position a massive device mounted on a collapsible tripod frame, its barrel thick and black, with a cylindrical magazine assembly that connected to a heavy power cell via reinforced cables.
Recognition sparked in certainty. Electronic battering ram. Military grade. She'd seen them used during the corpo wars, watched them tear through hardened bunkers like paper, had even arranged the acquisition of a few for particularly difficult clients.
The operators positioned it directly facing her driver's side window, its barrel less than a meter from the glass.
"Last chance, Rose" the lead mercenary called out. "Come out now, or we come in."
Gloria's hands moved across the touchscreen, pulling up the navigation system. Her fingers found the coordinates that Padre had sent Holy Angels Church, The Glen district. The interface was familiar and foreign at the same time, like returning to a childhood home that had been remodeled in your absence. She entered the destination into the autopilot queue, making two mistakes before getting the sequence right.
"Vehicle" she said quietly, "when I give the command 'drive' engage autopilot to the preset destination. Maximum speed. Do not stop for any obstacle."
"Autopilot route confirmed" the AI responded. "Awaiting command."
The battering ram's power cell hummed as it charged, a rising whine that Gloria remembered from operations she'd rather forget. Blue-white light began to arc along the barrel's surface, electromagnetic coils building toward discharge before finally it fired.
The electromagnetic pulse struck the driver's side window with concentrated fury, the force reverberating through the entire vehicle frame. The glass military-grade transparent armor that she had personally specified a decade ago didn't shatter. But it cracked. Deep, spiderwebbing fractures spreading from the point of impact like frozen lightning.
"Glass integrity at thirty-five percent" the AI announced. "Structural failure imminent within two to three additional impacts."
I was already moving, muscle memory finally kicking in as adrenaline burned away the rust. She unclipped her harness and scrambled across the center console toward the passenger seat not as smoothly as she would have done it in her prime, catching her hip on the gearshift and banging her knee against the dashboard but fast enough. She pressed herself against the far door just as the battering ram's capacitors began their second charge cycle.
Five seconds. The whine was building again, those electromagnetic coils drinking power from the heavy cell. Through the fractured window she could see the operators making adjustments, ensuring the second shot would hit the exact same spot.
Four seconds. My eyes locked onto the center console specifically the innocuous panel between the front seats that looked like nothing more than a standard storage compartment. Her fingers found the hidden release, a sequence of pressure points that she was surprised her hands still remembered.
Three seconds. The console panel slid open with a pneumatic hiss, and the weapon rose from within on a motorized mount, locking into position at chest height.
Staring at it for a fraction of a second the gun was exactly as she'd commissioned it a decade ago a brutal, boxy thing of black metal and industrial purpose. Three barrels were mounted on top in a tight triangular cluster, designed to fire simultaneously for maximum stopping power. Below them a larger tube served as an underslung grenade launcher, its bore wide enough to swallow her fist.
She hadn't fired a weapon in anger since before David was born. Hadn't wanted to. Had built an entire life around never having to touch this part of herself again.
Two seconds. The battering ram's whine reached a fever pitch.
I wrapped my hands around the weapon's grips, feeling the targeting systems sync with her neural interface an interface she'd kept updated out of paranoid habit, even as she told herself she'd never need it again. Crosshairs appeared in her vision, painting targets across the mercenary formation outside.
The weight of the weapon felt wrong in her hands. Too familiar. Like greeting an old friend she'd hoped never to see again.
One second. Then the battering ram fired again.
I felt the impact in my bones a thunderclap of concentrated electromagnetic force that slammed into the driver's side window with enough power to crumple steel. The glass screamed, hairline fractures spider-webbing outward from the point of impact until the entire window looked like shattered ice held together by prayer and military-grade polymer bonding.
But it didn't break. Not completely.
"Glass integrity at twelve percent" the AI announced with infuriating calm. "Structural failure imminent. Offensive counter—"
I squeezed the trigger.
The triple barrels roared to life, all three muzzles flashing in unison as they spat armor piercing rounds through the fractured window. The remaining glass finally gave way, chunks of transparent armor spraying outward as the weapon's recoil hammered through my arms and into my chest. I heard David cry out a sharp, terrified sound that cut through the gunfire like a knife. Lucy made a noise too, something between a gasp and a strangled shout.
I couldn't stop to comfort them. Not yet. Not while there were still people trying to kill us.
The mercenaries on my driver's side were scrambling for cover, but they'd positioned themselves too close, too confident in their battering ram's ability to breach my armor. The first burst caught the operator who'd been manning the device three rounds punching through his tactical vest before he could even register what was happening. He went down hard, blood spraying across the highway surface.
My aim was off. Ten years off. The second burst went wide, stitching impacts across a concrete barrier instead of the cluster of operators diving for cover behind it. I overcorrected, forced myself to breathe, and let the old instincts take over even as they screamed at me that I was doing everything wrong.
The Gilded Rose would have cleared this entire formation in under five seconds with surgical precision. This act just kept pulling the trigger and praying the overwhelming firepower would compensate for her rust.
It did. Barely.
Bodies jerked and fell. Not clean kills messy, brutal, the kind of work that would have gotten me laughed out of any serious fixer circle back in the day. But effective. The mercenaries on my side of the vehicle were down or scattered, and that was all that mattered.
I swung the console mounted weapon toward the first van the one they'd pulled the battering ram from and my thumb found the secondary trigger. The underslung launcher coughed once, deeper than the triple barrels, and a 40mm high explosive round streaked through the evening air.
The detonation was immediate and spectacular. The van's fuel cell ignited in a secondary blast that turned the vehicle into a rolling fireball, flames licking across the highway surface as debris rained down around the Columbus. I was already pivoting, the weapon tracking toward the second van. Return fire snapped past my position, rounds punching through the space where my head had been a second earlier. I ducked, adjusted, and fired the second grenade.
The explosion blew out every window in the van simultaneously. Bodies tumbled from the open doors, some on fire, some not moving at all.
"DRIVE!" I screamed. "DRIVE NOW!"
The Columbus lurched forward as the autopilot engaged, tires spinning for purchase before finding traction. The console weapon retracted automatically, folding back into its hidden compartment as the vehicle accelerated through the wreckage. Behind us, twin pillars of fire marked the burning vans, their ammunition cooking off in staccato bursts.
I slumped against the passenger door, my arms shaking, my breath coming in ragged gasps. The adrenaline was still coursing through my system, but the immediate danger had passed. We were moving. We were—
The radio crackled to life.
"All units, all units. We have a 10-31, shots fired on the elevated highway near Japantown. Multiple explosions reported. Suspect vehicle is a modified Villefort Columbus, dark blue, heading east on the primary freeway. Vehicle is armed and extremely dangerous. All available units respond. NCPD air support requested. Repeat, all units"
I killed the radio feed with a thought the last thing I needed was to hear exactly how screwed we were.
"Mom?" David's voice came through the intercom, thin and shaking. "Mom, what's happening? Who were those people?"
"Bad people, people who want to hurt us." Looking at the rearview display my stomach dropping as I saw movement in the carnage behind us. "But we're getting away. Just stay down and—"
"Gloria." Lucy's voice cut through, sharp and urgent. "Behind us. The third vehicle."
I looked at the rear camera feed and cursed.
The Thorton Galena the one from the original pursuit that had avoided the pile-up was still operational. As I watched, surviving mercenaries piled into and onto the vehicle, some climbing into the cab while others took positions in the truck bed with weapons braced. The Galena's engine roared as it accelerated after us, closing the distance with terrifying speed.
And they weren't alone. More vehicles were emerging from side streets and on ramps Maelstrom colors visible on several of them, chrome heavy gangers leaning out windows with assault rifles ready. The coordinated hit had apparently called in reinforcements.
"How many?" I asked, already knowing I wouldn't like the answer.
"Six vehicles," Lucy reported. "No seven. More coming from the west."
Seven. Against one battered van with a mother and two children inside.
I reached down and found the release catch on the console weapon. The triple barreled monstrosity detached from its mount with a pneumatic hiss, suddenly feeling much heavier in my hands without the support system to help manage the weight. But I couldn't use the mounted position anymore the angle was wrong, and I needed mobility.
"Keep driving" I told the AI. "Maximum speed. Evasive patterns if you have them."
"Acknowledged. Engaging evasive driving protocols."
I hit the control for the passenger window, letting it slide down into the door frame. Night City air rushed even more into the cabin even more the smell of exhaust and ozone and distant fires mixing with the copper tang of spent ammunition. I leaned out, bracing myself against the frame, and brought the weapon up to my shoulder.
The Maelstrom car was closest a modified Quadra with gang colors splashed across its hood and chrome-encrusted gangers hanging out the windows. The driver had pushed ahead of the pack, eager to be the one to bring down the fleeing target.
I waited until I could see the writing of his tattoos then squeezed the trigger.
The barrels roared, the recoil nearly tearing the weapon from my grip. My first shot went wide Night City rushed past at a hundred and forty kilometers per hour, and shooting from a moving vehicle at another moving vehicle was nothing like the ranges I'd practiced on. But the second burst found its mark, punching through the Quadra's windshield and turning the driver's chrome enhanced head into a spray of metal and meat.
The Quadra veered hard clipping an automatic garbage truck before slamming into the highway barrier.
Police sirens began to wail in the distance NCPD finally mobilizing in response to the dispatcher's call. I saw the distinctive blue and red lights of patrol vehicles joining the pursuit, though they seemed to be hanging back, unwilling to engage directly with the armed convoy chasing us. Smart cops for once. They'd wait for the criminals to wear each other down before moving in to clean up the survivors.
A call request came in from an unknown number and for a moment I considered whether I shouldn't answer. But thinking about it, nothing worse could happen and that made tapping accept easy. The display flickered to life in a corner of my view and I found myself staring at a woman's face. Young couldn't have been older than twenty-five with striking features framed by waves of black hair streaked with unusual highlights. Her eyes held something in the back that made me want to look away, and there was something in her expression a sharp, predatory quality that reminded me of someone I haven't talked to in years but might need to after this to keep his son safe.
"Gloria Martinez" she said, and her voice carried an accent I couldn't place. Not Night City. Not anywhere I recognized. "I'm Vaylin. Padre sent me."
Another burst of gunfire peppered the Columbus's armored rear, and I ducked instinctively before responding. "Kind of busy here!"
"I noticed." There was amusement in her tone actual amusement, as if the chaos unfolding around me was entertainment rather than mortal danger. "I need your location. Where are you heading?"
"Watson!" I shouted over the roar of the wind and the crack of gunfire. "Holy Angels Church in the Glen! Padre said"
"I know what Padre said." The woman Vaylin tilted her head slightly, those pale eyes studying something off-screen. "You're on the elevated highway approaching the Japantown interchange. You need to take the next exit toward Watson, then cut through Little China to reach the Glen."
"I know the route!"
"Good. Then take the turn now."
I fired at the closest van while slamming my foot across the car into the steering wheel, yanking the Columbus out of autopilot and into manual control. The van responded sluggishly the damage from the earlier collision had affected the steering response but I managed to cut across two lanes of traffic and hit the off ramp at speed. The tires screamed in protest as we drifted into the turn, the van's rear end swinging wide before the stabilization systems caught up and pulled us back into line. The pursuing vehicles followed, but the sudden maneuver had bought us a few seconds of breathing room. I pushed the accelerator to the floor, weaving through the surface streets of Japantown as the highway gave way to neon-lit urban canyons.
"Good" Vaylin said through the phone's speaker. "Keep heading north. Watson border is three blocks ahead."
The Columbus tore through an intersection, narrowly avoiding a delivery truck whose driver leaned on his horn in furious protest. In my mirrors, I could see the Galena still leading the pursuit, with Maelstrom vehicles fanning out behind it to cover potential escape routes.
"There are too many of them," I said. "I can't—"
"Look forward."
I did, and my heart sank.
More vehicles were appearing ahead of us two more vans and what looked like a small convoy of Maelstrom cars, positioned to cut off our approach to Watson. They'd anticipated the route, called ahead and set up another blocking formation.
"I see it" I said, despair creeping into my voice. "I see it, but I can't"
"Now look left."
I turned my head toward the left side of the street, where a towering apartment complex rose against the Night City skyline. For a moment, I didn't understand what I was supposed to be seeing just another megabuilding, its facade covered in flickering neon advertisements and the dull glow of countless windows.
Then something launched off the building's roof.
It was a vehicle no, a speeder bike, like nothing I'd ever seen outside of corporate R&D footage or military prototypes. The machine seemed to hang in the air for an impossible moment, its sleek frame silhouetted against the neon glow, before angling downward in a controlled dive that brought it screaming toward the street below.
The rider was the woman from the phone call. Her black hair streamed behind her like a banner and even at this distance I could see the sharp smile on her face the expression of someone who was exactly where they wanted to be.
The speeder bike hit the roof of the Galena at an angle. The effect was immediate and catastrophic. The speeder bike slammed into the Galena's roof with the force of a falling anvil crushing the vehicle's frame inward and sending the entire truck careening sideways. The driver lost control completely, the steering wheel wrenched from his hands as the Galena's tires left the pavement. The truck hit the wall of a nearby building at nearly a hundred kilometers per hour, crumpling like a tin can against the reinforced concrete. The mercenaries in the truck bed were thrown clear some into traffic, some into the building's facade as the vehicle tore itself apart in a shower of sparks and twisted metal.