"David... David..."
Muttering under her breath, Lucy walked with her head down toward the cyberware container she had spotted.
Her pale pink short hair was already coated with dust, and under the sunlight, it no longer gleamed as brightly as before.
Yet somehow it looked livelier, bouncing against her shoulders with each movement.
The moment her hand touched the container door, time seemed to freeze.
Her pale throat tightened as she tensed her arms and yanked the door open in one motion.
"Don't move!"
The words rang out just as the door swung open, just as her emotions threatened to overwhelm her.
A familiar, gravelly voice sounded behind her, thick with murderous intent, rolling toward her like a tidal wave that could stop the world in its tracks.
But it was clear all that killing intent was aimed at the enemy. Realizing this, Lucy snapped her head up and looked ahead.
David's pale body was strapped tightly to a stretcher. Beside him stood a bloated middle-aged man, a gun pressed squarely against David's head.
"Who are you!"
Lucy's eyes narrowed, locking onto the man.
"Put the gun down!"
Her voice came out sharp, as if her throat were being squeezed shut.
Seeing her expression, the middle-aged man sneered. A smug grin spread across his face.
"You're the ones who should be putting your guns down..."
He pushed the muzzle forward another few inches until it dug into David's skin, as if ready to smash through his skull.
"Otherwise, I'll kill him."
Behind Lucy, Arthur said nothing. He simply lowered his gun slowly.
There was no need to overthink it. He wasn't afraid the man would turn the weapon on them—but he couldn't be sure he'd shoot him before he pulled the trigger on David.
"You... let him go! I'll take his place!" Lucy shouted.
"Compared to a lively hostage..." the man snarled back, his grip steady as stone.
"I'll stick with this useless cripple who can't move."
He shifted his bulky frame, retreating behind the stretcher.
"You want this useless lump, and I want to live. Looks like our goals don't clash, do they?"
Tanaka had no intention of making a deal. He was only stalling.
Arasaka reinforcements would keep arriving. In the end, he would be the one laughing.
Arthur, seeing Lucy losing her composure, stepped forward and pulled her behind him.
He spread his hands in a deliberately casual motion, moving them farther from the revolver at his waist.
It was bait, meant to provoke the man into acting first. But Tanaka didn't bite.
The muzzle remained buried in David's scalp.
"You're right about one thing," Arthur said evenly. "We do need an agreement... Something like—you let him go, and I let you walk."
Arthur narrowed his eyes, reading every twitch of Tanaka's body.
"I'm not that stupid..."
Tanaka sneered, completely unfazed.
"Either it's life for life, or we sit here until the end.
Or, there's a third option—you walk out that door, and I swear I'll let the kid go."
The situation had reached a stalemate...
But with every passing second, Tanaka's bloated face twisted into a wider grin.
Outside, the gunfire grew fiercer. He could already see his victory in sight.
As for these damned mercs—better they died in the firefight than fall into his hands.
Even the dust in the sunlight seemed to settle, as if watching the frozen scene.
Then, in that unnatural stillness, sparks suddenly burst from an overlooked corner.
The frail figure strapped to the stretcher—the Sandevistan sealed away for so many days—
suddenly came alive.
It was like someone tearing free of their chains, even if it meant severing their own limbs.
Sparks erupted from David's back as he forced out a desperate punch.
It was weak, too weak to reach his enemy's face. More like he was dragging a whip with his shoulder, lashing it into Tanaka's gun hand.
Two gunshots cracked almost at once.
Compared to the ceaseless battle outside, they were nothing.
But for the four inside, they fell like the final hammer of fate.
Arthur's right shoulder dipped, his revolver steady at his waist. Even with a Frontier revolver, wisps of smoke curled from the muzzle.
Across from him, Tanaka's massive head drooped, eyes fixed downward. He never even saw the dark hole in his chest.
He tried to twist his lips into a smirk, but the strength drained too quickly.
He caught a glimpse of the woman rushing toward him, and the man holstering that strange pistol.
And then, he lost even the chance to close his eyes.
"How is he?"
Stepping forward, Arthur didn't spare the corpse on the ground another glance. He'd stepped over too many like it before.
"Damn it, it's a cutoff cable. How could he even use Cyberware?"
Lucy's lips were streaked with blood, her voice rasping out between clenched teeth.
As she yanked free the cables plugged into David's back, tears streamed unchecked, splattering against the floor.
David's condition was far from good.
Sparks still flickered across his back, and his limbs twitched in jerks.
Arthur moved closer, steadying David's shoulders as he tried to help pull the dense cables free.
They were scorching hot, carrying faint tingles of electricity.
The sensation made Arthur uneasy.
Each cable burrowed deep into David's flesh. The Sandevistan was wired directly into the spine—who knew how much damage it had done already?
Still, the fact that David's body was convulsing suggested his spine wasn't completely destroyed...
"Ugh... hah..."
David's mouth released meaningless syllables. His head hung low, swaying limply with every tug at his back.
Faintly, he could sense what they were doing behind him. It felt like someone chiseling straight into bone.
But the pain itself felt far away now. Distant.
Almost cold.
...
(70 Chapters Ahead)
p@treon com / GhostParser