*Author Note: Rebecca's age = 13. Pilar = 21)*
(Rebecca POV)
The zip-ties bit into my wrists like angry metal teeth. I rocked back and forth on the grimy floor, my shoulder bumping against some rusted pipe that probably hadn't been cleaned since before I was born. The whole place stank a nauseating cocktail of blood, chemicals, and the sickly-sweet smell of discarded organs rotting in the heat. Just another day in a scav den, right?
"This is your fault, Becca!" Pilar hissed from beside me, his golden cybernetic hands flexing uselessly against his own restraints. Those fancy extended fingers of his—the ones he was so damn proud of—weren't doing him any good now. His mohawk was all messed up, flopping to one side, and his cybernetic goggles had a crack running through the left lens. "If you hadn't gotten distracted"
"MY fault?!" I twisted my head to glare at him, my pigtails whipping around. "Did you SEE that puppy? It was ADORABLE! Those big eyes, that fluffy tail—"
"It was a distraction!" Pilar's voice rose, his face flushing red beneath his cyberware. "The scavs probably PLANTED it there to lure in idiots like—"
"Like ME? Is that what you were gonna say?" I thrashed harder against my bindings, ignoring the way the plastic dug deeper into my pale skin. "You know what? Screw you, hermano! That puppy needed help! It was limping!"
"It was BAIT!"
"Well how was I supposed to know that?!" I shot back, my voice echoing off the stained concrete walls. "Maybe if SOMEONE hadn't been too busy showing off his shiny new upgrades to watch my back—"
"Oh, so NOW it's MY fault for getting quality chrome?" Pilar's golden fingers curled into fists. "You're the one who ran into a dark alley chasing a mangy dog!"
"He wasn't mangy! He was a good boy!" I could feel my face heating up, that familiar rage bubbling in my chest like overheating coolant. "And he was scared! What was I supposed to do, just leave him there?"
"YES!" Pilar nearly shouted. "That's EXACTLY what you were supposed to do! We had a job to finish, Becca! Wakako's gonna have our asses for this!"
"Wakako can wait! That puppy—"
The rusted metal door screeched open, cutting me off mid-rant. A scav stepped through typical specimen, really. Greasy tracksuit in faded stripes, the kind that screamed "I harvest organs for a living and I'm proud of it." This one had a shaved head covered in Russian prison tattoos, the kind that told stories I didn't want to know. His cyberoptics glowed a sickly yellow in the dim light, and he had that distinctive smell all scavs seemed to carry like he'd been rolling around in a dumpster full of medical waste.
"Заткнись!" he barked, his accent thick and harsh. "Shut up! Both of you!" He stalked closer, and I could see the crude cyberware poking out from his sleeves the kind of budget chrome that made my skin crawl. "You make so much noise! Like little birds, tweet tweet tweet!" He made a mocking motion with his hands. "But birds in cage don't get to fly away!"
I pressed my lips together, feeling my jaw clench. Every instinct screamed at me to tell this chrome-junkie exactly where he could shove his threats, but I knew better. For now.
"You sit, you be quiet, or we harvest from you NOW instead of waiting for buyer." His smile was all teeth and menace, revealing a set of cheap dental implants that didn't quite match. "We got good money for young chrome like you." His eyes swept over Pilar's golden arms with unconcealed greed. "Very good money for fancy tech boy arms. And little girl..." Those yellow optics fixed on me, making my skin crawl. "Small body parts always in demand. Very popular on black market."
He laughed, a wet, ugly sound, and muttered something else in Russian.
Neither of us said a word. We just stared at him, and I could feel Pilar trembling with rage beside me or maybe that was fear. Probably both. The scav seemed satisfied with our silence, giving us one last threatening look before turning and stomping back out. The door slammed shut with a screech of protesting metal, and I heard him bark orders at someone outside in rapid-fire Russian.
The moment his footsteps faded, I spat in the direction he'd gone, the saliva landing pathetically on the concrete floor. "Dick" I hissed under my breath.
"Shazbot" Pilar added at the same time, and despite everything, I almost wanted to laugh. We might fight like cats and dogs, but we'd learned all the best curse words growing up on Night City's streets.
For a few seconds, we just sat there in angry silence, listening to the muffled sounds beyond the door. Then Pilar let out a long, shaky breath.
"Okay" he said quietly, his voice losing that confrontational edge. "Okay, we need to get out of here. Like, now."
"Ya think?" I muttered, but my heart wasn't in the sarcasm anymore. "Any brilliant ideas, or are those fancy hands just for show?"
Pilar shot me a look but didn't take the bait. His golden fingers flexed again, testing the zip-ties for the hundredth time. "These things are industrial-grade. I can't get enough leverage to snap them, even with the chrome."
I twisted my own wrists, feeling the plastic bite deeper. A thin line of blood was starting to form where I'd been struggling. "Great. Fantastic. So we're just gonna sit here and wait to become spare parts?"
"I'm thinking!" Pilar snapped, then took a breath, forcing himself to focus. He squinted. "Let me see... there's gotta be something we can use in here."
I followed his gaze, scanning our prison for the first time with any real attention. The room was classic scav décor all rust, dried blood, and discarded medical equipment. An old operating table sat against one wall, its surface stained with substances I didn't want to identify. Surgical tools lay scattered on a tray, but they were way across the room, might as well have been on the surface for all the good they did us.
Through the holes in the crumbling walls because of course this dump was falling apart, I could see into the adjacent rooms. Shadows moved in the flickering light, and I caught glimpses of our captors going about their disgusting business.
In the room to our left, one scav was bent over a workbench, sorting through a pile of cyberware that still had bits of... stuff... attached to it. Fingers, arms, optics all jumbled together like some nightmare jigsaw puzzle. He was muttering to himself, occasionally holding up a piece to examine it under a harsh industrial light before tossing it into various sorting bins. Premium chrome in one bin, budget stuff in another, trash in a third. Efficient. Disgusting, but efficient.
To our right, through an even bigger gap in the wall, I could see what looked like their main operations room. Three more scavs lounged around, playing cards on an overturned crate. One of them was cleaning a nasty-looking Carnage shotgun, the kind that could turn someone into chunky salsa with one trigger pull. Another was scrolling through his phone, probably checking black market prices or planning his next "harvest." The third was eating something from a foil wrapper, and I really, REALLY didn't want to know what.
None of them looked particularly alert. Why would they be? They had us trussed up like holiday geese.
"Becca" Pilar whispered, pulling my attention back to him. "The guns. Where are they keeping our stuff?"
I shifted carefully, trying to get a better view through the doorway. "Can't see much from here. But..." I strained my neck, ignoring the protest from my muscles. "I think I saw something in the far corner when they dragged us in. Looked like a pile of gear."
"Can you see your pistols?"
"No, but..." I squinted, my cyberoptics adjusting automatically. "Wait. Yeah. I see something pink. Might be my holster." My heart did a little jump. Those pistols had been Papa's once, then Pilar's, and now mine. No way was I leaving them for some scav to sell.
Pilar nodded slowly, his mind clearly racing. I could practically hear the gears turning in his head. "Okay. Okay, so here's what we know: we're zip-tied to pipes, our gear is maybe twenty feet away, and there are at least four scavs between us and freedom."
"Five" I corrected, jerking my chin toward the sorting room. "I saw another one through the wall. Ugly bastard with a neck tattoo."
"Right. Five." Pilar's jaw clenched, his goggles whirring as he processed. "So we need to get free, get armed, and fight our way through five armed scavengers in their own den."
"When you put it like that, it sounds hard" I said dryly.
"That's because it IS hard, Becca!" But there was a hint of something else in his voice now. "But not impossible. We've been in worse spots."
"Name one."
"That time with the Tyger Claws and the exploding noodle cart?"
"Oh yeah." I couldn't help the tiny smirk. "That was preem. But also, I had BOTH my pistols then, not to mention, you know, the use of my hands."
"Details." Pilar shifted, trying to angle himself to get a better view of what we were attached to. "These pipes... they're old. Really old. The whole building's falling apart."
I tested my restraint again, this time focusing on the pipe itself instead of the zip-tie. It groaned slightly, flakes of rust drifting down. "You think we can break the pipe?"
"Maybe. If we work together." He looked at me, really looked at me, and for a second, the constant antagonism between us faded. We might fight like hell, but at the end of the day, we were blood. "But we gotta be quiet about it. If those gonks hear us—"
"Yeah, yeah, we become organ donor specials." I took a breath, steadying myself. "Okay. What's the play?"
Pilar glanced around again, his expression sharpening with focus. "On three, we both pull. Not fast steady pressure. These pipes are corroded; if we can stress the joints enough—"
"They'll snap" I finished. "Got it. But what about after? We're gonna make noise when this thing breaks."
"Then we move fast." His golden fingers curled, readying. "Soon as we're free, you go left toward our gear. I'll go right, grab whatever's closest for a weapon. We meet in the middle and paint these walls with scav blood."
"Now you're talking my language." I could feel that familiar electricity building in my chest, the pre-combat jitters that always made me feel more alive. "Think you can keep up, old man?"
"I'm twenty-one, Becca."
"Yeah, practically ancient." I grinned despite myself. "Okay, let's do this before that gonk decides to come back and start sampling the merchandise."
"Ready?" Pilar positioned himself, his muscles tensing. "One..."
I braced my feet against the floor, leaning back to create opposing pressure. My wrists screamed in protest but I ignored them. "Two..."
*BOOM.*
The explosion was distant but powerful enough that I felt the shockwave through the concrete floor. The whole building shuddered, dust raining down from the ceiling in clouds. My head snapped toward the sound, eyes wide, and I caught Pilar's equally confused expression.
"The hell was that?" I whispered.
From the adjacent rooms came immediate chaos. The scavs who'd been lounging around playing cards scrambled to their feet, shouting in rapid Russian. Through the holes in the wall, I watched them grab their weapons—that nasty Carnage shotgun, a couple of beat-up rifles, and what looked like a Militech pistol that had seen better days.
They stampeded toward the source of the explosion, boots thundering on metal stairs. Even the scav who'd been sorting cyberware abandoned his workbench, snatching up a compact SMG before running after his crew. In seconds, the adjacent rooms were empty, leaving only the scattered remains of their card game and the disturbing piles of harvested chrome.
"Becca!" Pilar's urgent whisper cut through my distraction. "Focus! Now's our chance!"
He was right. Whatever the hell just happened, it was the distraction we needed.
"One" Pilar counted again, his voice low and urgent. "Two—"
The sound of gunfire erupted in the distance. Not just one or two shots, but a full-on firefight. I could hear the distinctive crack of scav weapons mixed with something else cleaner, more precise shots that spoke of better equipment.
"Three!"
We pulled together, synchronized perfectly the way only siblings who'd grown up fighting side-by-side could manage. The corroded pipe groaned in protest, flakes of rust cascading down like toxic snow. My shoulders burned with the effort, muscles straining against both the restraints and the stubborn metal.
"Come on, you piece of shit" I hissed through gritted teeth.
The firefight was getting louder, more intense. I could hear the scavs screaming some in rage, some in pain. The distinctive sound of someone's weapon jamming was followed by panicked cursing in Russian, then an abrupt, wet gurgle that made my stomach flip.
The pipe shifted. Just a millimeter, but I felt it.
"Again!" Pilar commanded. "Pull!"
We threw our weight into it, and this time I heard the blessed sound of metal separating from the wall mount. The pipe tore free with a screech that probably alerted every rat within three blocks, but I didn't care. My hands were still zip-tied, but now they were zip-tied to a piece of loose pipe instead of the wall.
"Yes!" I crowed, already working the pipe through the plastic restraint loop. It was awkward as hell, my wrists screaming in protest, but after a few seconds of manipulation, the pipe slipped free. I was still zip-tied, but at least I could move.
Pilar was having similar luck with his own restraint. The sound of gunfire was getting closer now maybe only a room or two away. I could hear what sounded like multiple attackers, their weapons firing in controlled bursts rather than the panicked spraying the scavs were doing.
"Door" I said, jerking my chin toward our prison's exit.
Pilar nodded, getting to his feet. Despite still having his hands bound together in front of him, he raised one leg and kicked. The door was cheap probably hadn't been maintained since before I was born and it flew open with a satisfying crash.
The corridor beyond was dim, lit only by a couple of flickering industrial lights that cast everything in sickly yellow. The walls were covered in that distinctive scav graffiti, letters mixed with crude drawings and what looked like territorial markings. The air tasted like copper and chemicals.
"Weapons" I breathed, already moving toward where I'd glimpsed my gear earlier.
We crept down the corridor, our bound hands making us clumsy but not stopping us. The gunfire was definitely closer now I could hear individual shots, the sound of ricochets, and the meaty thump of bullets finding flesh. Someone screamed, the sound cutting off abruptly in a way that suggested they wouldn't be getting back up.
The room where the scavs had dumped our gear was barely more than a closet, packed with stolen equipment and personal effects from god knows how many victims. I spotted my distinctive pink holster immediately, half-buried under a pile of jackets that still had blood on them.
"There!" I hissed, practically diving for it.
My pistols were still there, both of them the weight of them in my still-bound hands felt like coming home. I worked frantically to check the magazines, cycling the actions as best I could with my wrists zip-tied together. Full loads, thank fuck. The scavs hadn't gotten around to stripping them yet.
Pilar was rummaging through the pile, looking for his own gear. "My SMG should be here somewhere....got it!" He pulled free a compact Kang Tao weapon, checking it quickly. "Still loaded. These gonks are sloppy as hell."
"Their mistake" I said with a grin that was probably more feral than friendly.
The gunfire was right on top of us now. I could hear it through the walls, the distinctive sound of different caliber weapons mixing together in a symphony of violence. Then came a sound that made both of us drop instinctively bullets punching through the thin walls of our hideout, leaving neat holes that streamed dust and the occasional spark from severed wiring.
"Down!" Pilar shouted, unnecessarily since I was already on my stomach, my pistols held awkwardly in my hands.
More rounds tore through the walls, tracking across the room at chest height. Whoever was doing the shooting wasn't aiming at us specifically they were just engaging targets on the other side. But that didn't make the bullets any less deadly. I pressed myself against the floor, the cold concrete rough against my cheek, and waited for the barrage to pass.
In the sudden lull, I heard boots running toward us heavy, fast, panicked. Someone was retreating, and they were coming our way.
The door to our equipment room slammed open, and a scav burst through. He was one of the ones I'd seen earlier through the wall gaps shaved head,tats, wearing that same greasy tracksuit that seemed to be the uniform of choice for organ harvesters everywhere. His eyes were wild, pupils dilated with whatever combat stim he'd been jacking, and he was bleeding from a shoulder wound that had soaked through his jacket.
But he wasn't looking at us. He was twisted around, facing back the way he'd come, his cheap Militech pistol raised and firing blindly behind him even as he stumbled backward into the room.
His legs exploded.
I mean that literally. One second he was standing, the next his knees just... came apart in a spray of blood and bone fragments. The shots had come from outside, precise and devastating, targeting his legs with surgical accuracy. He went down hard, his screaming reaching a new pitch of agony as he clutched at the ruined stumbles that used to be his lower legs.
Then I saw it. A blade spinning through the air like something out of a martial arts BD. It wasn't a vibroblade or any kind of chrome I recognized. It looked almost... primitive? Like an actual metal sword, except it was moving through the air on its own, spinning horizontally at lethal velocity.
The sword took the screaming scav in the throat, nearly decapitating him. His shrieking cut off with a wet gurgle, blood spraying in an arc across the already-stained floor. His body twitched once, twice, then went still.
For a moment, there was silence. Just the ringing in my ears and the distant crackle of something burning deeper in the building.
Then she stepped over the body.
At first, all I could see was her silhouette framed in the doorway, backlit by the flickering emergency lights in the corridor beyond. She was wearing an expensive-looking cloak the kind you saw on corpo executives or rich tourists slumming it in the wrong part of town. The fabric was dark but caught the light in ways that suggested quality materials, real fabric instead of the synthetic crap most people wore.
As she moved into the room, I got a better look at her face, and damn if it didn't make me do a double-take.
She was young maybe a year or two older than me at most. Her features were sharp and angular, with pale skin that had an almost translucent quality to it, like she'd never seen natural sunlight in her life. But it was her hair that really caught my attention: shoulder-length black with blonde highlights streaked through it in a pattern that looked deliberate, styled in a way that was both elegant and somehow... wrong. Like the colors didn't quite match what they should be.
Her eyes swept the room with cold efficiency, taking in me, Pilar, the dead scav, and probably cataloging every detail in the space of a heartbeat. They were pale too I couldn't quite catch the exact color in the dim light, but they had an intensity that made my skin prickle.
The sword that had killed the scav lifted from the corpse and flew through the air to her waiting hand like it was on a string. Except there was no string. The blade just... moved. Hovered for a second, then settled into her grip as naturally as if she'd been holding it the whole time.
I'd seen netrunners do crazy shit with quickhacks, and I'd watched street samurai move faster than the eye could follow thanks to Sandevistan reflex boosters. But this? This was something else entirely.
"What the actual fuck?" The words slipped out before I could stop them.
The girl stepped fully into the room, moving with that same fluid grace that spoke of absolute confidence. She reached back without looking and pushed the door shut behind her with one hand, the latch clicking into place. The sword was still in her other hand, held casually at her side despite the fresh blood dripping from its edge.
Her pale eyes swept over both of us really looked at us this time, not just a tactical assessment. Her head tilted to one side, and for a second I saw something flicker across her face. Recognition? Confirmation? Then her expression sharpened and she snapped her fingers, the sound crisp in the sudden quiet.
"Yep" she said, and there was something almost satisfied in her tone. "Looking for you two."
That made Pilar move. My brother stepped in front of me before I could even process what she'd said, one golden hand dropping to rest on the grip of the Kang Tao SMG he'd recovered. His other hand was held out to the side, keeping me back. Classic big brother protective stance, the one he'd used a thousand times when we were kids and someone bigger tried to mess with us.
"Why?" His voice had that edge to it, the one that said he was maybe three seconds from pulling that trigger. "And who the hell are you?"
I wanted to tell him I could handle myself, that I didn't need him playing bodyguard, but honestly? This girl had just murdered her way through a scav den using what looked like literal magic, and she'd been looking for us specifically. That was worth a little caution.
The girl if I could even call her that, given what I'd just seen her do didn't seem bothered by Pilar's aggressive posture. If anything, she looked almost amused, a hint of a smile tugging at one corner of her mouth.
"Wakako sent me" she said simply, like that explained everything. "To rescue the two of you. She noticed you'd been trapped here for a while." She paused, and that small smile grew just a fraction wider. "And who I am? I thought it was obvious. I'm your rescue."
"Wakako?" Pilar scoffed, though I noticed his hand didn't move away from his weapon. "Auntie Wakako sent some kid with" He gestured vaguely at the floating sword, apparently at a loss for how to describe what we'd just witnessed. "with that to pull us out?"
I elbowed past him, ignoring his protective stance. "How does Wakako even know you? No offense, but you don't exactly look like her usual hired muscle."
The girl didn't answer right away. Instead, she did something completely unexpected and she started bouncing. Like, literally bouncing on her toes, a little hop-skip motion that made her expensive cloak swirl around her legs. Her free hand reached behind her back, and when it came forward again, she was holding... headphones?
No, wait. Two pairs of headphones.
She snapped them both one in each hand now, the sword having vanished somewhere I didn't see and they kind of popped up, expanding from compact forms into full-sized over-ear sets. The kind with noise-canceling tech that usually cost more eddies than Pilar and I made in a month.
"Here" she said, still bouncing slightly as she held them out to us. "Put these on."
Pilar and I exchanged another one of our wordless sibling conversations. This one basically amounted to: Is this chick nova or just completely gonked?
The girl seemed to pick up on our hesitation because she stepped closer to me close enough that I could see her eyes weren't just pale, they were almost colorless in the dim light. She went down on one knee, bringing herself to my eye level, and held out one pair of headphones.
"Make sure to play it loud," she said, and there was something in her voice now excitement, maybe, or anticipation. "I'm going to make some noise."
Before I could respond, she reached up and patted my head. Actually patted my head, like I was that adorable puppy that had gotten us into this mess. The gesture was so unexpected, so weirdly affectionate from someone who'd just casually slaughtered five guys, that I just... took the headphones.
As she stood back up and handed the other pair to Pilar, I got a closer look at the set in my hands. They were high-end Zetatech, unless I missed my guess with custom modifications that definitely weren't factory standard. And were those... cat ears? Little triangular protrusions on top that would stick up when I wore them?
Fuck it. If this was how I died, at least it would be weird.
I pulled the headphones on, adjusting them over my hAIR. The moment they settled into place, music hit my ears loud, driving, with a beat that made my heart want to match its rhythm. It had that kind of infectious, upbeat energy that made you want to move, to dance, to do something crazy. The bass was heavy enough to feel in my chest, and the tempo was fast, aggressive, celebratory all at once.
And the girl—our mysterious rescue—was bouncing to it. Like, full-on vibing to the beat, her shoulders moving, her whole body swaying slightly. She wasn't just listening to the same track; she was feeling it.
I looked over at Pilar, who had put his own headphones on with significantly more skepticism than I'd shown. But even he was starting to nod along to the beat, his golden fingers tapping against his thigh in time with the music.
The girl looked at both of us, seeming to confirm we were properly synced up, then turned and walked back toward the door with that same bouncing energy. She pressed herself against the wall beside the frame, then reached out and cracked the door open just enough to peek through.
Bullets immediately started flying.
I saw the muzzle flashes through the gap in the door, heard the distinctive crack of scav weapons firing even through my headphones. But the girl? She laughed. Actually laughed, this bright, delighted sound that somehow cut through the music and the gunfire.
More rounds punched through the walls of our room, tracking higher this time. I dropped instinctively, my pistols coming up even though I didn't have a target. Cheap construction was a bitch when people started shooting and these walls wouldn't stop anything bigger than a harsh word.
The girl pulled back from the door, letting it swing shut again, and started tapping her hand against the wall. Not random tapping, though. She was keeping time with the music, her fingers drumming out a rhythm that matched the building intensity of the track. The song was climbing toward something I could feel it in the way the bass was getting heavier, the way the tempo was tightening up.
A drop was coming.
"Stay close" she called out, loud enough to be heard over the music and the intermittent gunfire. Her pale eyes were bright with something that looked an awful lot like excitement.
She turned to face the wall not the door, the actual solid wall between us and where I assumed the scavs were positioned. Both her hands came up and pressed flat against the stained concrete. Then she started moving her shoulders, wiggling them in time with the beat, her whole body getting into the rhythm of the music.
The bass was building, building, building—
"Let's get loud!"
The wall exploded outward in a devastating spray of concrete, rebar, and dust. The shockwave hit like a physical force, making my ears pop even through the headphones. Chunks of debris the size of my head flew across the room like shrapnel from a frag grenade, and I watched in horrified fascination as three scavs caught the full brunt of it.
The first one just ceased to exist from the shoulders up. A piece of rebar took him through the skull with enough force that his body stood there for a full second before collapsing like a puppet with cut strings. The second scav took a cinderblock-sized chunk of concrete to the chest that caved in his ribcage with a wet crunch I could hear over the music. He went down screaming, blood frothing from his mouth as his punctured lungs tried and failed to draw air.
The third had been lucky enough or unlucky enough, depending on your perspective to be standing further back. He caught the edge of the blast, got his face redecorated by smaller debris, and was now staggering backward, one hand clutching at where his left eye used to be while blood poured between his fingers.
But there were more. Way more.
Through the massive hole where the wall used to be, I could see at least six more scavs in what looked like their main garage area. They'd been working on something probably stripping chrome from some poor bastard when the wall exploded. Now they were scrambling for weapons, shouting in panicked Russian, their cheap Soviet cyberware glinting in the flickering emergency lights.
The shooting started immediately. Muzzle flashes lit up the garage as the scavs opened fire with everything they had pistols, SMGs, that nasty Carnage shotgun I'd seen earlier, and what looked like a jury-rigged machine gun mounted on a workbench.
I started to dive for cover, my pistols coming up, but then something impossible happened.
Two objects came flying through the air not thrown, not launched, just floating and positioned themselves directly in front of me and Pilar. At first, I thought they were riot shields, the kind NCPD used for crowd control. But as they settled into position, hovering maybe a meter off the ground with no visible support, I realized they were something else entirely. Durasteel panels, maybe salvaged from a ship or a security door, each one big enough to cover a person and thick enough to stop small arms fire.
Bullets slammed into the shields with sharp metallic pings, and I watched in stunned disbelief as the impacts left barely visible dents. Whatever these things were made of, they were way tougher than standard riot gear.
"What the" Pilar started, but I couldn't hear him over the music and gunfire.
I looked past my floating shield to where the girl stood, and what I saw made my brain do a complete system reboot.
She wasn't just standing there. She was orchestrating.
Around her body, like she was the center of some deadly solar system, objects orbited in smooth, controlled paths. That sword from earlier was there, spinning lazily through the air. But it had company now two more blades, different sizes and styles, all moving in synchronized patterns. A fourth object that looked like another shield, smaller than the ones protecting us but just as solid. And a gun. An actual fucking gun, floating barrel-first and tracking targets like it had its own targeting AI.
As I watched, frozen in place by the sheer impossibility of it all, one of the orbiting swords suddenly shot forward like a missile. It covered the distance to the nearest scav, the one with the ruined eye, in less than a second, taking him through the throat. The blade punched clean through and out the other side, then yanked itself free and returned to orbit around the girl like a loyal pet.
The floating gun fired. Three precise shots, so fast they almost sounded like one. A scav who'd been trying to flank from the left went down with neat holes in his chest, his tracksuit smoking where the rounds had burned through.
"Move!" the girl shouted, and even though I was still processing what I'd just seen, my legs got the message.
Pilar and I surged forward, staying behind our floating shields as they advanced with us. The girl moved with us, that same bouncing energy matching the beat of the music, her hands conducting the deadly symphony around her like some kind of deranged maestro.
A scav popped up from behind an overturned workbench, his Militech pistol tracking toward us. Before he could fire, the girl made a casual gesture with her left hand like she was swatting a fly and a fucking trash can lifted off the ground and launched itself at him like it had been fired from a cannon.
The heavy metal container hit him square in the face with enough force to snap his head back. I heard the wet crunch of breaking bones even over the music as he went down in a heap, the trash can rolling away with a dent in its side shaped suspiciously like a human skull.
"Holy shit" I breathed, and this time I couldn't stop myself from grinning. This was the most nova thing I'd ever seen, and I'd once watched Pilar take on three Tyger Claws using nothing but a tire iron and pure spite.
I leaned out from behind my shield and squeezed off a few rounds at a scav trying to reload behind a concrete pillar. My first shot went wide I was still getting my aim back after being tied up for hours, but the second and third caught him in the shoulder and side. He went down cursing, and one of the orbiting swords finished the job before he could recover.
We kept advancing, a bizarre parade of violence and telekinetic impossibility. The shields moved with us, always maintaining position between us and incoming fire. More scavs appeared from deeper in the building, drawn by the sounds of combat, but the girl's floating arsenal was relentless.
One of the orbiting blades caught a scav in the gut, the tip punching through his cheap body armor like it was tissue paper. The gun fired again, taking down another gonk who'd been trying to line up a shot with that mounted machine gun. A third scav made the mistake of getting too close, and the smaller shield suddenly shot forward like a discus, its edge taking him across the throat with surgical precision before returning to orbit.
Pilar was firing too now, his Kang Tao SMG chattering in controlled bursts. His golden cyber-hands gave him stupid good recoil control, and I watched him drop two scavs in quick succession, both with tight groupings center-mass that would have made Papa Sunrise proud.
"Elevator!" the girl shouted, pointing with her free hand toward the far side of the garage.
I could see it now a cargo elevator built into the wall, the kind used to move heavy equipment between floors. The gate was open, the platform visible inside, and it represented our ticket out of this concrete nightmare.
But between us and freedom stood at least four more scavs, and these ones looked like they'd gotten over their initial panic. They'd found cover behind a stripped-down cargo hauler, its chassis providing them with a solid position to fire from. The one with the mounted machine gun was still alive too, and he was swinging that heavy weapon around to track us.
"Down!" Pilar shouted, grabbing my shoulder and pulling me into a crouch behind my floating shield.
The machine gun opened up with a sound like the world ending, and even the shields couldn't completely stop that kind of firepower. I watched rounds punch through the durasteel, leaving ragged holes that glowed red-hot around the edges. One bullet made it all the way through, passing close enough to my head that I felt the heat of its passage.
The girl didn't duck. Didn't flinch. She just raised both hands, her fingers splaying wide, and pushed.
The cargo hauler the scavs were hiding behind flew backward like it weighed nothing. All several tons of metal and machinery just lifted off the ground and shot across the garage, taking the four scavs with it. They didn't even have time to scream before the hauler slammed into the far wall with a crash that shook the entire building. Metal crumpled, concrete cracked, and when the dust cleared, none of the scavs were moving.
The gonk with the machine gun was still a problem though. He'd abandoned the mounted weapon and grabbed a Rostovic shotgun instead, and he was charging toward us with the kind of stimmed-up aggression that said he'd jacked way too much combat drugs.
All three of the orbiting swords shot forward at once, moving in perfect synchronization. The first took him in the right leg, hamstringing him and dropping him to one knee. The second pinned his gun arm to the workbench beside him, the blade punching through flesh and bone and deep into the wood. The third hovered at his throat, the tip just barely touching skin.
The girl walked up to him, still moving to that infectious beat, and looked down at the pinned scav with something like curiosity. He was cursing at her spitting and snarling despite the sword at his throat.
She tilted her head, considering, then made a sharp downward gesture with her hand.
The sword at his throat punched down and through, ending the cursing abruptly.
"Clear" she announced, like she'd just finished sweeping the floor instead of murdering her way through a dozen armed men.
We made it to the elevator with no further resistance. The remaining scavs—if there were any left alive in this dump—had apparently decided that discretion was the better part of valor and fucked off to whatever holes they'd crawled out of.
As we reached the elevator gate, the girl turned back toward the way we'd come and placed both hands on the wall beside the entrance. She closed her eyes for a second, swaying slightly to the music still pumping through all our headphones, then pushed.
The entire wall and I mean the ENTIRE wall, like five meters of reinforced concrete and steel support beams just collapsed. It fell inward on itself, creating a pile of rubble that completely blocked the corridor we'd just come through. Dust billowed out in a cloud, and I heard the groaning of stressed metal as the building tried to adjust to suddenly missing a load-bearing wall.
"Insurance" the girl said with a satisfied nod. "They won't follow."
I looked at Pilar. He looked at me. We both looked at the girl, who was still bouncing slightly to the beat of the music, her pale eyes fixed on the elevator's control panel.
"Uh" I said eloquently. "Are we... waiting for something?"
The girl didn't answer. She just kept watching the controls, patient as a cat at a mouse hole.
The whiplash was real. One second we'd been in the middle of a running gunfight, watching this psycho murder a dozen scavs using what I could only describe as fucking magic, and now we were just... standing in an elevator. Waiting. The music was still playing in my headphones, still driving and energetic, but the context had shifted so dramatically that it felt surreal.
I pulled one side of my headphones back, letting in the sounds of the building—distant groans of stressed metal, the hiss of a ruptured pipe somewhere, small fires crackling in the garage we'd just left. "Seriously, what are we—"
Ding.
The elevator chimed, bright and cheerful, completely at odds with the carnage surrounding us. The mechanism engaged with a mechanical whir, and the platform started to descend.
My pistols came up automatically, both barrels tracking toward the elevator gate as it opened. Years of Night City survival instincts screaming that anything coming through that door was a threat until proven otherwise.
The elevator doors slid apart, and I found myself staring at a woman.
She was older than the girl late thirties, maybe early forties but she carried herself with the same kind of absolute confidence. Her armor caught my attention first: pristine white and cream colored plates with gold accents that looked like something out of a corpo executive's wet dream, the kind of gear that cost more eddies than most people saw in a lifetime. Not practical armor, the kind meant for actual combat, but ceremonial stuff that still somehow managed to look functional. The plating covered her shoulders, chest, and forearms, while the rest appeared to be some kind of reinforced bodysuit in darker tones.
But it was her expression that really sold it arms crossed, one foot tapping impatiently against the elevator floor, lips pressed into a thin line of maternal disapproval.
She looked at the girl our mysterious, impossibly powerful rescue and raised one eyebrow.
The girl's whole demeanor changed instantly. The bouncing stopped. The confidence wavered. She pulled off her headphones with a motion that could only be described as sheepish, her pale eyes suddenly very interested in the floor.
she said, and her voice had gone from commanding to defensive in record time. "I can explain—"
"Can you." It wasn't a question. The woman's voice was crisp, controlled, with an accent similar to the girl's but somehow more refined. She stepped out of the elevator, her eyes sweeping over the destroyed garage, the pile of bodies, the collapsed wall, and finally landing on me and Pilar with our weapons still raised. "Because from where I'm standing, it appears you've caused significantly more destruction than was strictly necessary for a simple extraction."
"They were shooting at me!" the girl protested.
"After you announced your presence by destroying an entire section of the building" the woman countered. "We discussed subtle approaches, Vaylin."
Vaylin. So that was her name.
"You must be Rebecca and Pilar" the woman said, her attention turning to us. Her gaze was sharp, assessing, the kind that made you feel like she was reading your entire life story in the space of a heartbeat. "Wakako sends her regards and apologizes for the delay in your extraction. She's been attempting to locate you for the past six hours."
Six hours. We'd been tied up in that room for six fucking hours.
"Who—" Pilar started, but the woman was already moving, gesturing for us to enter the elevator.
"Explanations can wait until we're clear of this location" she said with the kind of authority that made you want to obey without questioning.
We stepped into the elevator. The doors slid shut, muffling the sounds of the burning building, and the platform began to rise with a smooth mechanical hum.
The elevator continued its ascent, and I found myself holding my breath, waiting for whatever came next in this completely gonked situation we'd somehow stumbled into.
But at least we weren't zip-tied in a scav den anymore.
That had to count for something.