Chapter 70: The Crew's Future
Having been more or less dismissed from the sanctum by Joric, Maine's crew found temporary shelter in a relatively intact, derelict building on the edge of the desert town.
The building had once been a small auto-repair shop. Its thick concrete walls blocked most of the wind, but the years had left deep scars. Paint had peeled away in large sheets, revealing the dark red bricks beneath. The empty window frames were poorly covered with heavy, rattling tarps that billowed and snapped in the desert gusts. The ceiling leaked, and dark water stains marked the corners.
Rebecca had done a cursory cleanup when she'd stayed behind to watch over Sasha, so it was their only viable foothold in the wastes. She had swept decades of sand and debris into the corners, and while the floor was far from clean, it was at least clear of sharp metal and broken glass.
The space was small. A few crooked, broken tables salvaged from other ruins and several sleeping bags tossed directly on the cold floor constituted the only furniture. The air was thick with the inescapable smell of dust and the dry, metallic tang of the desert. Compared to their lived-in, gear-stuffed warehouse back in Watson, it was a hellhole.
The oppressive silence stretched for several minutes, finally broken by Rebecca.
She slammed her fist onto a metal crate with a loud CLANG! that made everyone jolt.
"Scrap! Militech! Biotechnica! They really think we're big-leaguers now!" Rebecca's voice was shrill with leftover adrenaline, her green cyber-eyes flashing in the dim light. "Sending AVs, mechs, and that Sandevistan-psycho! All for a few street-running gonks? That's delta-insane!"
Pilar, rubbing the spot on his chest where his heart had nearly stopped, chimed in. "No shit! We used to scrap with gangers, maybe some corpo-sec. That... that was a goddamn army! They treated us like a military op!"
Falco, leaning against the wall, slowly wiped his shades. His voice was calm, but his eyes held a strange, new light. "The scale was... unusual. It wasn't a simple revenge hit. It was a planned capture operation. They wanted us alive."
"Alive?" Maine's brow furrowed, his thick fingers drumming on the tabletop. "Why? For the convoy? For Sasha's run? Seems thin. Not enough for two corps to team up and deploy that kind of hardware... especially that bio-augmented 'Scalpel' soldier."
Dorio crossed her arms, her voice steady and analytical. "Their target probably wasn't us at all. Think about it. Their fire was heavy, but... pulled. They were trying to pin us. It wasn't until we used the Boss's Galvanic Rifle on their AVs that they really lost their shit."
Her words lit a fuse. Rebecca's eyes went wide.
"Exactly! It's the Boss! They're after the Boss! They're after his tech!" She was practically vibrating, a manic grin on her face. "Did you see it? My plasma pistol slagged their APC! Maine's rifle dropped two delta-ing gunships! And Dorio... you parried a Mantis Blade with your bare hands!"
The sheer, absurd reality of it—that they, a small-time merc crew, had not only survived an encounter with an elite corpo death-squad, but had won—sent a wild, intoxicating rush of adrenaline through all of them.
"Ha!" Rebecca crowed, planting her hands on her hips, her street-rat arrogance back in full force. "Those corpo-dicks kicked a steel wall! Tried to bag us? And what happened? Their AVs are scrap, their mech is scrap, and their preem 'Scalpel' psycho is now the Boss's new project! We're gonna be delta-ing legends! The Edgerunners... the crew that went toe-to-toe with the corps and won!"
Even Maine couldn't suppress a small, grim smile. In Night City, fighting a corp and living... that was a status all its own. It was proof. Proof of their strength, and proof that tying their fate to Joric, while lethally dangerous, was the path to a level of power they'd never even dreamed of. Falco and Dorio, though silent, felt it too—the instinctive, primal thrill of challenging an untouchable power and walking away.
But in the corner, Kiwi was an island of cold.
She was huddled in the shadows, her red jacket collar pulled high, arms wrapped tightly around herself. Her knuckles were white. The crew's celebration was grating to her. She hadn't been through the slow build-up with Joric. For her, the ambush, the military-grade op, and then the Boss's god-like counter-hack... that feeling of her own mind being colonized... it wasn't power, it was pure terror. That wasn't 'tech' as she knew it; it was a violation on a fundamental level. She was a 'runner, a ghost. She feared this kind of open, high-stakes warfare.
"...Being 'famous' isn't always a good thing," Kiwi's voice, quiet and trembling, cut through Rebecca's hype. "It means we're a high-priority target. We won't be able to move freely in Night City anymore."
Her words were a bucket of ice water, extinguishing the high. The room grew heavy again.
Maine took a deep breath, the smile gone. "Kiwi's right," he said, his voice flat, all business again. "The party's over. We just humiliated Militech and Biotechnica. They will not let this go."
Falco picked it up, his tone grim. "Exactly. The official bounties will skyrocket. The unofficial ones will be worse. Fixers... we'll have more Faradays lining up to sell us out. For the short term, at least... Night City is off-limits to us."
(End of Chapter)