Chapter 60: In the Face of Class, Talent is Dogshit
"My neighbor?" Rhys stared at Maine, pressing him. "Wait, Maine, are you talking about Gloria Martinez?"
"Yep. Didn't see that one coming, did you?" Maine nodded.
He'd been just as surprised when he found out. How'd he learn her identity? She'd revealed it herself. Maine was a well-known buyer on the darknet forums, known for paying fast and never haggling, which gave him a solid rep.
And she was even more famous.
Her identity was a mystery. She always used dead drops and automated lockers for delivery. You had to wire the eddies to her designated account first, then she'd send the locker code. Despite this high-risk model, she was one of the top chrome dealers on the net.
Because of this, speculation about her was rampant. Some said she was a black-ops agent for an arms manufacturer. Others thought she was a smuggler from another city. Some even guessed she was a corrupt NCPD officer. All the theories pointed in one direction: she was powerful, connected, and using her position to get her hands on all this salvaged chrome.
Who the hell would have guessed she was just a hospital EMT?
As for how they really found out... Lucy. It only took Lucy a few seconds to pull Rhys's entire life story. So, when Maine paid her to do a deep dive, it took her all of ninety minutes to slice through the encrypted networks and trace the dealer's digital footprint. The trace didn't lead to a photo, but it did expose a name—Martinez—and a suspected occupation: medical staff.
Normally, no one would believe that. Anyone else who'd dug that deep probably dismissed the "medical staff" hit as a false identity. But Maine... he immediately thought of Rhys's good neighbor. The kid living in Santo Domingo but attending Arasaka Academy.
"That lady is slinging chrome on the net? No way. She seemed like a normal person to me. Just like my mom," Jackie said, completely baffled.
Dorio, sitting nearby, rolled her eyes. Your mom? Normal? Jackie's mom ran a bar in Heywood. A BAR! In Night City, places like bars, clubs, and joytoy parlors were all controlled by gangs. They were low-tech, high-profit cash cows, not the kind of business a "normal" person could just open. Jackie's mom, that friendly, ordinary-looking woman... she probably had connections deep enough to drown in. Dorio was pretty sure that was the real reason Jackie had been allowed to leave the Valentinos in one piece.
Meanwhile, Vick, who had been in deep discussion with Pilar about Rhys's weapon, instinctively started listening in. It wasn't that he was slacking; the custom weapon was really Pilar's project. Vick was just supplying materials and analysis. When it came to the actual fabrication, he was just an observer.
"A 'normal woman'?" Maine scoffed. "Why would you think she's normal? From the first day Rhys moved in and I saw her, I knew she was something else."
"Think about it. How does a 'normal woman,' working a low-pay EMT job, get her kid into Arasaka Academy? Is that a joke? Most corpo-dogs can't even get their kids in there. How does an EMT pull it off?"
"You really think she did it on that paycheck? Or maybe you think David Martinez is just that gifted?"
Maine's voice was dripping with cynicism. "Talent? In the face of class, talent is a steaming pile of dogshit. This city is full of talented people. How many of them actually manage to climb out of the gutter?"
The crew went silent. Maine had a point. How did a normal woman send her son to Arasaka Academy?
Rhys's mind flashed back to the anime. It had been implied. Just like the corpo EMTs who'd considered harvesting David after his Sandevistan freak-out, Gloria, a loving mother, had a dark side hustle. That Sandevistan David used... hadn't she stripped it from the body of a cyberpsycho soldier she was supposed to be recovering? How she'd managed to snag it when everyone knew the soldier had it... that was a mystery. She was just that damn good, apparently.
"So, does this mean we can work with her?" Kiwi asked, her eyes narrowing. After hearing Maine's analysis, she saw a new opportunity to fence the gear they'd lifted from the Wraiths.
Why not just sell it? Because it was hot, that's why. It had been two days, and they still hadn't been able to move it. In Night City, you couldn't just sell high-end illegal goods on the street. Everything had to go through a fixer. Buyers, sellers, everyone needed a middleman. Trying to cut them out to save on the commission? That was how you got ambushed. Black-on-black crime happened more reliably than your daily shit.
"That's exactly what I'm thinking," Maine said, grinning. "We can use her established online rep to sell the weapons and implants."
Gloria Martinez had a list of trusted clients. They'd pay her a fee, she'd move the gear, and everyone would get paid. In this city, connections were everything.
But just as the crew started brainstorming how to approach Gloria, Rhys shot to his feet.
Fuck!
That was it! That was the memory that had been bugging him when David was talking! Now that Maine had brought up Gloria, it all came flooding back.
Taking pirated software to school... that was the very first episode of the anime.
Because he'd saved Sasha, and Kiwi and Lucy had joined the crew, the timeline had gotten muddled in his head. But now... it seemed like things were snapping back to the "original" script.
2076 was just around the corner. And at the end of 2076... David Martinez, barely an adult, would die and become a Night City "legend."
His edgerunner story... was it starting now?
"What's wrong?" Maine asked, seeing Rhys's abrupt movement.
Rhys was about to answer when his agent chimed. A call was coming in.
[Incoming Call: David Martinez]