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"Good morning, Regina."
"Hey there, workaholics."
The girl openly smirked. However, she wasn't trying to offend me with that statement; rather, she was stating a fact. After all, Panam and I really did work much more than other solos. Even Becca's reaction to our schedule showed that.
Well, what can you do when solos in this world usually spend all their free time drinking and only get to work when they run out of money? Panam and I, on the other hand, had a slightly different point of view when we first started working together. I didn't want to live from binge to binge—I don't even like drinking—and Panam was used to being more responsible in her clan. That's why she gave her excess earnings to Scorpion or Mitch. And I, wanting to make an impression on the girl, started offering to sell my trophies to her clan's armorer.
"What do we have today?"
"There's a job… A good friend of mine called. He's a former director. He used to be quite popular, but after his last film, he vowed never to shoot even a short film again. He lives off what he wins at cards. But he was unlucky, and in one of the games, he even had to put up his optics as collateral… Fortunately, the Tiger Claws weren't interested in standard optics, but an eye with a built-in professional camera caught their eye…"
"What's our task?"
"I'll send you the address of the place where my friend was playing. You need to go there and retrieve his eye."
"Got it. What if the eye has already been moved somewhere?"
"Then find out exactly where…"
The image of Regina shrugged.
"Got it. Go ahead and send the details."
A couple of seconds later, I nodded my head.
"The message came in. We're starting the job."
Opening the message from Regina, I gave Panam the coordinates of our destination, and with a roar of the engine, we took off. We had to drive across the city for a bit to get to one of the apartments where the card games were happening.
My hand automatically rested on Panam's knee, to which she just smirked.
"Don't distract me from driving…"
"Am I?"
She shot me a sidelong glance.
"Not now. But if you get any ideas…"
"I won't. I'm horny, sure, but not enough to be crawling into the pants of a girl who's currently driving. But after you gave me permission to hit on you…"
I smirked.
"…I just can't deny myself such a small thing."
Pfft!
But her scoff was not one of displeasure; rather, she was more than satisfied with what was happening.
"So… Becca, right?"
I shot a teasing look at Panam.
"Well, you saw her… And you saw how I interact with her."
"Yeah…"
She sighed and shook her head.
"She's a real clinger. I really don't want to send her away, though. She's so positive."
"That's for sure…"
Panam sharply pulled the steering wheel, veering away from a car that tried to ram us.
"We're not alone!"
"Fucking Claws…"
I pulled out my pistol and, activating my Sandevistan, looked out of the car to make exactly two shots. The first one in the front tire, and the second one at the driver.
The Claw's car swerved, but they kept it on the road, even managing to slow down.
"That's not all…"
I glanced at the monitor in the middle of the dashboard, which was now showing what was happening behind us. A second later, shots from some kind of automatic weapon hit our car.
"Go, go! As soon as we get to a secluded enough place, I'll deal with them."
"Yeah, if we fight back now, civilians could get hurt…"
Panam floored the gas pedal, and the car, roaring its engine, quickly picked up speed. To someone who didn't know the technical specifications of the bikes the Claws usually rode, it might seem like we could just get away from them.
But we both knew what kind of tech the Claws rode and understood that this was just an illusion. An illusion that would disappear in just a few seconds, which is exactly what happened.
One of the Claws decided to overtake us…
"Well, you shouldn't have done that…"
I activated my Sandevistan, leaned out of the window, and shot a perfect shot at the front wheel. Or, not exactly at it, but at a spot where a hit would definitely lock it up, and as a result…
"It's flying low, probably means rain…"
"Yeah, good thing there were no other drivers on this side of us…"
With a wild screech, our car activated its brakes, and the Claw riding behind us crashed right into our rear bumper, his body hitting the closed tailgate of the pickup. And with a spin of the wheels, Panam drove on.
"Looks like that's all of them…"
I looked at the screen and looked around myself, then took out the magazine and reloaded it with the ammo that was in the glove compartment.
"Uh-huh… damn Claws…"
"They don't even know that we're going to be robbing one of their bases yet."
"Yeah…"
Panam smirked, and when I put the pistol back in the holster, she gave me a stern look.
"Put your hand back where it was."
Smirking, I placed my hand back on my girl's thigh and gently stroked it with my fingers.
"Nuh-uh-uh!"
"Alright, alright…"
I smirked and stopped bothering the driver, but I didn't remove my hand from her thigh. And this suited us both.
"We're approaching the location."
Panam drove past the house where the Claws' underground casino was located—the same one where our client had lost so much that he had to put up a good implant to save his life. This was actually a pretty common story in this city. The details change, but the essence of what happens stays the same.
The car slowly turned into a courtyard, and then parked.
"I'll wait here?"
"Yeah…"
I nodded my head and, putting on a small faceplate that completely hid my face from cameras and optics, as well as from normal sight—if you could even find someone with real eyes in this crazy city—I got out of the car.
Then I took the harpoon gun from my belt, and, aiming, I shot it at the edge of one of the nearest roofs. A thin cord capable of holding ten guys like me unspooled with a quiet whistle from a small reel, and the harpoon, crashing into the wall, went right through it. Small, stone-like crumbs fell to the street.
"I'm going."
Panam didn't answer me. I calmly walked up the side of the building, holding myself perpendicular to the wall. Thanks to some small retractable spikes, I had no trouble climbing this way.
A couple of minutes later, I was on the roof.
One press of a button on the harpoon, and it folded up, allowing me to easily pull it out and put it back in the gun. The gun then went on my belt. I walked across the roof, surveying my future area of operation.
Spotting a place where I could cross from one roof to another, I looked around carefully, then got a good running start and pushed off the edge of the roof with my feet. Taking a couple more steps in the air from momentum, I landed on the other roof. I again spent a little time looking around, but this time I wasn't looking for a way to get to another roof, but for a place to get down to the fire escape that would take me to the apartment where the Claws were holding their card games.
There wasn't a suitable fire escape, but I was lucky that Regina had given me the exact coordinates of the apartment. So I took out my harpoon gun again, and, shooting it at the edge of the roof, I decided to just go straight down the side of the building.
Night City is a city that never sleeps, and in which no one ever looks up. And, in fact, in other cities, people rarely look up, so I calmly descended to the seventh floor out of ten and activated my optics, switching them to a mode that allowed me to see through walls.
On the sixth floor, there was no one but three Claws. And the room I was planning to enter was completely empty, so I descended a little lower and used an 'open' daemon for the metal blinds that covered the window. There was still the glass, but quietly cutting a small section of it near the handle, and sticking my hand through to open the window was the least of my problems.
Before climbing into the apartment, I looked around carefully again. Two Claws were sitting in a chair with their heads back, probably watching some braindance, or maybe they had just hit a pipe and were high. The third one was sitting in a small room, probably the bathroom, and he could be a big problem.
Sighing, I climbed into the room and looked around.
I saw the safe right away; it was in a prominent place, and I was able to open it quickly. The same 'open' daemon made the simple electronic lock—designed for a beginner who hadn't bought quality daemons from a netrunner yet—open, and I nodded my head in satisfaction.
No, the eye I was sent for wasn't there, but there were tightly rolled stacks of money and documents.
With a smirk, I scanned all the stacks of money. It was a good thing I did, because two of them had technical devices wrapped inside that were transmitting some kind of signal. So I took everything except those two stacks, as well as all the documents. Then I carefully closed the safe door, activating the daemon again, but this time to close the door.
The Claw was still sitting in the bathroom. I went to the desk, and, scanning it, I started opening the drawers, checking their contents.
I got a couple of good pistols from Militech, as well as a couple more stacks of money, which was even better than the weapons. After all, they usually didn't roll up less than five hundred bucks in these kinds of stacks.
Activating the computer, I froze because I had just had a look at the apartment, and the Claw in the bathroom was already wiping himself. I turned off the computer monitor, moved away from it, and stood by the wall where the door was. There was a convenient niche behind the cabinet that made it impossible to see me.
However, my caution wasn't really needed, because the Claw went to another room and sat down on the couch. A dozen seconds later, he was sitting just like his friends, with his head back.
Quickly returning to the computer, I turned on the monitor and checked the data on it, and now I was smirking with satisfaction.
I had an address…
I ran a program on the computer to delete all the data, then went to the window. There, I grabbed the gun I had left hanging outside, and then carefully climbed out of the apartment, closing the window and the blinds behind me. And only after that did I start climbing back up quickly.
Once on the roof, I pulled out the harpoon and quickly moved back to the other roof. Then, using the fire escape, I went down. Of course, it didn't go all the way to the first floor, ending on the third, but even so, I just jumped down, as I had the skill to do it correctly.
So I quickly got back to the car.
"Do you have the optics?"
"No, but I have a bunch of documents that were in the Claws' safe. So when we're near a drop-off point, stop; I need to send them to Regina. I also collected a bunch of cash. There was something like ten times more than we were promised."
"Cash?"
"Yeah."
"And you, of course, took all of it?"
"Not all of it. I scanned the cash and saw a couple of stacks with trackers inside. So I left those there, and the rest…"
I poured the cash from my bag into the car's glove compartment, and Panam whistled in surprise.
"That's a lot…"
"Exactly."
I nodded my head.
"But the job isn't finished yet. I found data on the computer about a bar called 'Kashyu Hanten' in Little China. It looks like the optics were sent there. So, let's go."
"Uh-huh…"
Panam nodded her head and started the car. She didn't have to start it, since she hadn't turned it off, and that was part of our strategy. Even though I work quietly, the chances of me having to retreat with a fight are not zero, and in that case, even a couple of seconds to start the car could be critical.
I was about to deal with the cash, but Panam leaned over slightly and closed the glove compartment, in which, besides the cash, were the pistols I had stolen from the Claws.
"Panam?"
She sighed and, taking my hand, placed it on her thigh. At the same time, she blushed just a little.
"Got it. I'm not an idiot, an idiot wouldn't have gotten it…"
Panam nodded her head. I gently stroked her thigh with my fingers, which caused a satisfied smirk to appear on her face. But I didn't go any further; she was driving, after all, and the job was far from over.
"How long do we have to drive?"
"Well, according to the GPS, about twenty minutes…"
"Good…"
I nodded my head.
"David?"
"Hmm?"
"Are you happy with everything?"
"Hmm? What do you mean?"
"Well, with your life? With what you're doing? With Night City?"
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