Dorio clutched her head in her hands as the pupils of her optics shrank to the size of a needle.
This couldn't be happening!
She was just supposed to take out a traitor and start a new chapter in her life—things had genuinely been getting better since she lost her parents. It was different from the numbness she had felt during her time with Vanesa.
But then the boss had gone and died helping her!
Not just her own boss—Aunt Galina's too!
Now neither of them had a job!
How was she supposed to expect that a fixer like Vanesa, who hid from everything in fear and had probably never held a weapon in her life, would be so ruthless when dealing with intruders in her own home using military-grade explosives?
"Cough, cough—this smoke is so annoying!"
Unbelievable, she could still hear her voice…
She hadn't expected to grow so attached to him in such a short time, not enough to be having auditory hallucinations.
"What are you standing there for?" Faelan snapped as he stepped out of the black smoke, waving a hand and coughing. "Come on, go get her!"
Dorio.exe has encountered a fatal error.
[Uh, what was that? Looked like a bomb.]
[You've got twelve minutes before the NCPD arrives.]
Faelan was about to reply, but the smoke shifted beside him, and with an instinctive move, his right hand expanded, muscles thickening and sprouting hair as it morphed into a bear-like claw. He swiped at seemingly empty air with enough force to show he'd been startled.
"Ah!"
A female voice cried out as a silhouette flickered digitally amid the remaining smoke, revealing a previously invisible figure now slumped against the wall, one arm twisted at an unnatural angle and a deep claw wound across her forehead bleeding into one eye.
Faelan figured that must be the target, but what surprised him more was recognizing the Optical Camo Vrs.3 implant on Vanesa—cheek and limb markings gave it away.
This full-body optical camouflage implant only had version 2 available on the market. That meant Vanesa had either acquired the next version before release or had installed a prototype.
"At least now we know why she's always broke."
Even the older model, Vrs.1, cost a small fortune—most corpo employees couldn't afford it. Faelan figured that between the implant, the encryption gear, and that damned bomb that just went off, Vanesa had blown through almost all her savings to boost her personal security.
No wonder she lived in a place like this, with takeout packaging littering the floor.
That level of paranoia was almost respectable—almost.
"How are you still alive?!" Vanesa screamed, terrified and utterly baffled. "What ARE you?!"
It wasn't like he had barely survived the point-blank explosion of a proximity mine, clinging to life—he didn't even have a bruise! If it weren't for his dirty clothes, she'd have thought he was a hologram.
Realizing the situation wasn't in her favor and she couldn't make sense of it, she immediately turned invisible again and tried to flee through the still-open door.
She could think things through later—rebuild, replace the lost gear another time and place. Her top priority was her own safety.
Even if they ended up blowing up the whole megatower just to find her, she didn't care how many died in the process—as long as she survived.
The next thing she knew, she crashed into the reinforced apartment wall. The intruder's arm had undergone some sort of impossible biological mutation, breaking her arm, her grasp on reality, and leaving her with a nasty open wound.
If not for the medical bioimplants in her organs pumping emergency stimulants into her bloodstream, she'd likely already be unconscious.
The worst part was that Vanesa was completely sure she had never wronged or even seen this… kid.
Because yes, despite the cover-up, she'd seen and lived enough to recognize he was a boy—twelve or thirteen at most. The height gave it away. One of his arms was now as long as his leg, swollen with muscle beneath its new fur, tipped with fifteen-centimeter claws gleaming like alloy blades.
Which only made the situation even more surreal!
Dorio's brain seemed to have rebooted, but she was also staring half-confused, half-frightened at Faelan's bear arm. She could swear she heard the bones cracking and realigning during the transformation—it sounded painful.
"Dorio, let's not waste time."
The familiar name snapped Vanesa out of full-blown panic for a moment.
"Dorio?"
Seeing the "dead" merc walk through the door, finally registering her presence, for a moment Vanesa thought she was dreaming some kind of guilt-induced nightmare.
But that couldn't be—not for two reasons: she didn't feel guilty for abandoning a sinking ship… and her body hurt like hell.
She probably had a couple of broken ribs—maybe even a dislocated right leg.
"No, this isn't possible," Vanesa muttered, shaking her head, her long, straight black hair falling to shoulder-length. "There's no way you survived that encounter!"
She had even monitored her accounts for days as a precaution to confirm inactivity.
This wasn't a nightmare—it was revenge.
"Oh, but I did," Dorio said, stepping toward her, cracking her knuckles.
As the two women were about to catch up on old grievances, Faelan grimaced as he reverted his arm to human form, then moved toward the room Vanesa had come from—knowing their time was limited.
He hadn't been particularly interested in looting Vanesa's place before.
But after eating that explosion?
If it hadn't been for her third trap, he'd be dead—reduced to meat paste.
To hell with her!
He was going to get that expensive cipher Dorio mentioned as compensation, even if the one who ended up using it would be Kiwi or Sasha.
"[Kiwi, connect to the Pip-Boy and tell me if there's anything worth taking.]"
Installing the optics into the Pip-Boy was simple. He managed to get an unpaired optic from Vik at cost price and installed it in the device in half an hour, along with a tab to block vision. Now, he could ask Kiwi to connect to the optic after removing the tab and help him scan the place.
"[Connection established. Let me see…]"
Faelan held his wrist up at chest level as the optic rotated.
"[Aside from the cipher resting on the tower, most of this stuff is so mundane it's not worth the effort. The only things that catch my eye are the monitor mat on the right and the box of blank chips in the open desk drawer. Small items, not cheap, and really useful.]"
"[Want me to connect you to the computer?]"
The Pip-Boy might not have had the capacity for that, but Faelan had chips and USB drives that Kiwi had given him to facilitate remote hacks for situations like this. They were designed to self-destruct once their purpose was fulfilled—by remote order, tampering, or forced removal.
"[Sure. For this level of equipment, plug in the blue chip with red lines. Grab what I mentioned earlier and get the hell out of there! You might get out easily, but Dorio won't.]"
"[Also, I think you should hurry. Some tattooed guys—probably Tiger Claws or agents from some fixer—are coming to check out what happened.]"
Faelan pulled a chip bag from his pocket and, after a few seconds of digging, located the correct one and plugged it into Vanesa's computer. He grabbed the rest of the items and left, only to be met by the image of a very swollen-faced Vanesa, her makeup ruined by tears.
"Dorio, we need to delta out of here right now," he reminded her.
The muscular woman took a couple of deep breaths—those punches had helped clear some of the resentment from her soul. She grabbed her weapon, and before Vanesa could beg for her life, a bullet was received between her brows. And two more.
"Better safe than sorry," Dorio muttered as they left the apartment, directing a question to the team's netrunners.
"[Any recommended route?]"
Faelan rolled his eyes, and as they passed by the body, several implants could be seen visibly deteriorating, including the optics.
"[Nothing fancy needed, actually. People are already fleeing the megatower in panic—just join the crowd with a worried face and I think you'll be fine.]"
"Will do." Dorio glanced at the stairs with a pained expression—she really didn't feel like going down on foot, but she doubted she could use any of the elevators in this situation, and at least it wasn't in the opposite direction.
"Wait," Faelan handed her two wooden bottles containing invisibility potion. "To disappear if necessary."
"See you at home, boss," Dorio nodded gratefully and said goodbye as she started down the stairs.
Faelan looked back one last time: the apartment was marked with explosive damage on every wall, and in the middle of it, the swollen and rusted corpse with not one, not two, but three bullet holes in the head.
"Pretty normal for Night City," he dismissed it without much trouble, heading toward the nearest ventilation shaft and vanishing.
Next step?
Dinner at Gordon's restaurant and seeing what the chef with a severe attention deficit was plotting.
…
The NCPD agents cordoned off the apartment and did a quick inspection of the place according to protocol—after all, they had to do something if they wanted to earn the pittance they got paid.
Better a covered location like this than being out on the streets, where some gang or cyberpsycho might do something to them out of spite. Being a cop in Night City was tough…
"Sub-inspector Charles, you need to see this," a stocky, short-haired officer named Alex approached with a puzzled expression. "Something doesn't add up."
"What are we dealing with?"
"The victim is Vanesa Doofenshmirtz. We've just confirmed she was a rookie fixer who had been active for less than a year with the data center crowd," Alex explained while reading notes projected onto his eyes. "We checked the cameras, but someone covered the lens. Footage is unrecoverable. We also confirmed the explosive was one of ours..."
Charles sighed—he'd have to teach logistics a lesson; he already warned them not to sell soon-to-expire gear to just anyone.
"The computer was hacked remotely, the data was stolen, and nothing could be salvaged. It's expensive scrap now," Alex lifted a scorched chip inside a small sealed evidence bag. "At first glance, it looks like the fixer messed with the wrong person and got zeroed. Typical silencing case… or it would be, but we've got three unknowns we can't figure out."
"And what would those be?" asked the sub-inspector.
"One: besides the bullet wounds to the temples, the victim had animal wounds on her body, especially above the left eyebrow." Alex pulled out another small bag containing a few strands of brown hair, so little it almost slipped past the scanners. "Preliminary analysis is insane—it says this is bear hair. Specifically, a species that went extinct seventy years ago."
Charles's expression changed, as if wondering if he was being pranked.
"Yeah, that was my reaction too..." Alex put the evidence bag away. "Two: the lack of a body."
"There was another victim?" Charles's eyes flickered with light for a moment. "According to the registry, she lived alone and never had visitors beyond takeout deliveries."
"That's the weird part, sir." Alex pointed to one of the explosion-marked walls, where a human silhouette was projected by the absence of grime. "According to that mark, the explosive did hit someone at point-blank range... but they're just not here." He gestured slowly around the room. "No blood, no guts, no oil, no bones. An explosion like that should have turned whoever it hit into a mess of meat and screws—but there's nothing."
Which left only two possible conclusions.
It was as if they'd been reduced to nothing... or hadn't been damaged at all.
Charles shook his head at the ominous thought.
"What's the last unknown?"
"Actually, it's more like a combination of two..."
Alex lifted another bag, this one appearing to contain some kind of plant material.
"We found this, a shredded straw doll," Alex explained, his hands trembling slightly. "Right where the missing victim should've been. And the state of the implants on the victim... it's too similar to those cases."
The sub-inspector's expression hardened.
"Are you absolutely sure?"
Charles understood which cases his subordinate was referring to—they'd been both a blessing and a curse for the NCPD as a whole.
The reduction in scavenger activity had saved them a lot of work and resources, but at the same time, higher-ups had practically grabbed them by the collar, demanding to know who was behind it.
Seeing the state of the eliminated scavengers, Charles could understand their anxiety. They were probably dealing with megacorporations breathing down their necks.
But no matter what they did, after all this time trying to find even a shadow of a clue, they still didn't even know whether the person behind this was a man or a woman.
If it weren't impossible, Charles would've said someone was using magic!
"The only difference is there are no plant sprouts growing out of the victim, but otherwise it's exactly the same. Maybe whoever did it was in a hurry to leave before drawing too much attention?" Alex guessed.
Yeah, that was a viable possibility.
"Fantastic." Charles didn't even try to hide the weariness in his voice. "So, in short, you think the victim found out about or pissed off this person and ended up like that?"
Because if that were the case, the importance of the incident would skyrocket. He wouldn't be surprised if he ended up pulling overtime to dig into the victim's last few months of activity just to find clues.
"Did you compile all the information and send it to HQ?"
"Not yet, sir," Alex said, shaking his head as he picked up the case with the evidence. "I was planning to send it on my way back when I drop off the samples."
Charles looked at Alex for a long second.
"If I'm not mistaken, isn't tomorrow your wedding anniversary with your husband, Kurt?"
"Uh—Eh? Yes, that's right," Alex said, surprised by the abrupt change of topic but answering honestly. "We're celebrating five years of marriage, and after saving up a bit, we're thinking about adopting," he admitted shyly.
Perfect.
"You know what? Take the rest of the week off and make some good memories. Take it slow, have a deep talk about it. I'll authorize the vacation," Charles said as he casually took the case and patted the officer's shoulder with a look of understanding. "Enjoy your youth. Don't worry, I'll handle the report and everything else. You earned a bonus today for the excellent work."
"Sir..." Alex was touched by the sub-inspector's sudden generosity. He'd rarely seen him be so kind to anyone. "Thank you!"
Charles waved it off like it was nothing and dismissed Alex so he could leave early and surprise his husband. Only after the young officer's figure was gone did Charles' face return to normal. He glanced at the case in his hand and headed to a discreet corner, lighting up a cigarette as he looked out.
His optics lit up as he initiated a call.
[I'm listening.]
[Ms. Wakako, it's Charles.]
[Oh? I suppose you have news for me, about what happened in the megatower.]
[I'll send you the details in an hour, but I can tell you now it's not connected to the Tiger Claws in any way.]
[Good. The payment will be made as usual.]
[About the payment—this time, I only want half. And a favor. I've got two "fresh cuts" that might interest Mr. Yoshida Kameshito. I heard he's looking for material for his next human art piece...]
The conversation lasted only as long as it took the cigarette to burn down. Once the rest of the NCPD had gathered their gear, they all dispersed to return to their homes.
"I don't get paid enough to deal with this crap," Charles muttered, satisfied as he checked Wakako's payment arriving in his account. "Sorry, Alex. It's good to have capable people, but those who are too capable... are a pain for the rest of us," he murmured as he hummed a tune on his way home.
As for the case, it ended up vanishing in the flames of some trash incinerator.