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"Yeah, who is it?"
"David, hey, it's V…"
"Hey, V…"
I smirked, greeting the girl who was still indebted to me. We didn't talk much, except for a few rare occasions… so the fact that she was calling me meant she wanted something from me.
"Listen, are you busy right now?"
"Nah…"
I shrugged.
"…I just finished up a couple of hours ago. What's up?"
And it was true. I had just finished the second job for Rogue a couple of hours ago. Both jobs were pretty difficult, but they were doable for our crew. The only problem was that we didn't get any extra profit from them because both jobs involved corporate interests.
The first one was related to Biotech. We had to steal data from one of their servers. Of course, we also managed to get some intel for ourselves, mostly about what happens to nomad clans that decide to work with this corporation.
We got that intel to try and knock some sense into Saul, since he was literally obsessed with Biotech.
The second job was with a small Serbian weapons company called Rostovic, which makes low-quality weapons. We had to plant a virus in their system.
There was a ton of security at both places…
But the girls and I handled it, and now I was completely free. Well, if you don't count the fact that I had to make some pork ramen for Becca… and not just for her, because if I was going to cook, I was going to cook for the whole crew.
"Got it, can we meet?"
"Why not… tell me where and when."
"As soon as possible, in Megabuilding H10. There's a gun shop there called The Second Amendment…"
"Robert's shop? I know it. It's a very good shop. I used to buy everything from him at the beginning of my career."
"Uh-huh, right in front of the shop."
"Alright, I'll be there in about an hour… going alone?"
"Yeah…"
The connection was cut, and I got up from the chair, in which I had dozed off before V's call.
"Hmm? Where are you going?"
Panam looked up from the TV she was fixated on and gave me a serious look.
"V just called me… she wants to meet."
"Need a ride?"
"Well… I'd appreciate it…"
"Judy, are you coming with us?"
"Hmm?"
Judy came up from the first floor. She was a little dirty but looked very happy.
"Where to?"
After that question, Panam looked at me, and all I could do was smirk and tell her where we had to go.
"Megabuilding H10."
"Hmm… no, I'm staying home… I have a couple of ideas for some braindances. I want to change them and turn them from regular deep immersion films into something like educational programs. I need to test a lot of things and get some data…"
I shrugged.
"Alright, Panam, let's roll?"
"Uh-huh…"
Cherry and I went down to the first floor and then left the apartment…
We got to our destination in forty minutes, but that was only because we weren't in a hurry. Panam admitted she could have gotten us there in twenty-five minutes.
I calmly went up to the right floor and saw The Second Amendment shop. V was standing in front of it, leaning her back against the wall.
"V…"
I walked up to her, and she smirked, greeting me with a nod.
"David… Panam…"
"Alright, what did you want?"
"Let's just say… I was asked to arrange a meeting…"
I snorted.
"And who was it?"
"Dexter DeShawn…"
V gave me a slightly condescending smirk. I, in turn, closed my eyes, took one slow breath, and then slowly exhaled.
"Thanks, but I'm not interested."
"Huh?"
V blinked in confusion.
"David, what are you talking about? He's the major leagues! The biggest jobs! The Afterlife!"
I shrugged.
"Well, I go to the Afterlife anyway, and I do jobs for Rogue every now and then…"
V's eyes widened in shock, but then a hint of a smirk appeared in them. She probably thought I was joking.
"Yeah, right… no need to talk like that. I get that you're nervous, but working with Dexter is a great honor, and…"
"V, just between us…"
She raised an eyebrow in surprise, but seeing my serious gaze, she nodded.
"DeShawn is not the kind of person I want to work for. Do you even know what kind of fixers there are?"
"Huh?"
"There are two main types of fixers. The first type is fixers like Rogue, Regina, Wakako… all the fixers who work with permanent crews. They value professionalism and reliability. The second type of fixers are like Dexter DeShawn. He doesn't have permanent crews; he relies on intuition and looks for anyone who catches his eye, if you will."
"And you don't want to work with him because of that?"
"No…"
I shook my head.
"It's just that DeShawn, specifically, has a rather… questionable reputation."
"Hmm?"
"On the one hand, he really is a major league fixer. Rogue wouldn't have let just anyone into the Afterlife. On the other hand… he really likes to get rid of crews when something doesn't go according to plan."
"Huh?"
V blinked in confusion.
"People don't talk about it openly, but… you work with Wakako, right?"
"Well, yeah…"
"Ask her for some info on Dexter… especially the statistics on the crews he's worked with, and you'll see that maybe thirty percent of them make it out alive. What's more, more than half of the crews that didn't make it still completed their jobs and were eliminated after the fact…"
V frowned.
"Listen, maybe you could at least meet with him, huh?"
I sighed.
"Alright… I'll meet with him…"
"Good."
"But only because you asked me to…"
I looked at V thoughtfully. Hmm, I hadn't seen her in person in a while, and she had changed her style a little. Before, she looked more like a corpo, which she was, but now she even looked like a solo.
"…but I doubt he can offer me anything to change my mind and make me agree to work for him."
"Well, that's his problem. I'm just the middleman, and I'm just arranging the meeting."
"Uh-huh… by the way, since we're here…"
"Yeah?"
"I remember you mentioning a couple of times, when you were still giving lectures, some mega-advanced shooting ranges where corpos train…"
"Hmm… yeah, there are some like that. What about it?"
"You don't happen to know if people who aren't corpos have access to those, do you?"
"Well… probably… I was never interested in it… I didn't need it before, and even now, I'm fine with regular shooting ranges."
I smirked and nodded.
"Got it, thanks… when and where do I meet DeShawn?"
"He'll be here in about ten minutes and will park right in the megabuilding's parking lot."
"Well… we'll wait…"
With that, V and I parted ways. I then thoughtfully called Regina.
"David, hey… is something wrong?"
"Hey, Regina. No, I just have a gut feeling…"
"A gut feeling?"
"Yeah, DeShawn reached out to me through an acquaintance… and as you know, his reputation is…"
"Yeah…"
There was some kind of emotion in Regina's voice that I couldn't quite place.
"But I'm not really calling for that… although letting you know that he's trying to recruit me is part of the reason. The main reason is… I need to buy some intel… I need a shooting range, but not a normal one. I heard when I was at the corpo academy that they have some mega-advanced one where everything is almost like in reality…"
"Hmm… I'll look for some intel… I assume you need one like that, but not affiliated with corpos?"
"You know me well…"
"Uh-huh, and be careful with DeShawn… he might use a more clever approach than just recruiting you… let's say he'll offer you a small job, after which you'll learn too much, and you'll have a choice to make…"
I smirked.
"Regina, you know I'm good at saying no…"
"Uh-huh…"
"In short, I gave you some info, and I ordered some info… so, talk to you later…"
"Talk to you soon…"
"So?"
Panam looked at me and raised her eyebrow in a questioning way. I just shrugged.
"Well, I learned some things, and I also confirmed that I have to be careful with DeShawn. Although it's easier for us now. We have a reputation, so we can just refuse to work for that big guy."
"Well, that's true…"
Panam nodded, after which we started to wait for our supposed employer, who would never become our employer. I was sure of it. I wasn't going to get involved in the canonical story. It could bring too much shit down on our heads. And if I hadn't been able to get along with my girls, I probably would have considered it… it would have given me a chance to meet them…
Who am I kidding?
Letting Johnny's construct into my head?
No way in hell!
In the game, he was a charming bastard, and that was mostly because a very good actor played the main role. If it weren't for him, the whole story of that terrorist would be viewed from a completely different angle. And here, Keanu Reeves did the impossible and shared his charisma with a character who took the first version of his appearance from him.
In reality, all that is bullshit… The info I have, and I've really dug deep into the network to find everything I could, right down to the rumors and recordings of Samurai concerts, says that he wasn't at all like he was in the game. He was just as crazy… he could just start shooting on stage, he could start a concert under the Arasaka tower, knowing that it would cause riots and deaths would be unavoidable. He could do a lot of things, even nuke it, just like in the canon, he could and did.
But despite all that, he was definitely not that charming guy. He didn't have charisma, at least not the kind that Keanu Reeves demonstrated.
And letting an asshole like that into my head, and there's no other way to survive the canonical situation, and then hoping that he doesn't make a deal with Alt, with whom he was screwing around when she was alive, to get her to put his consciousness back into his body and erase me to hell…
No way in hell!
I'd rather just put a bullet in my own head than count on everything going exactly like it did in the canon.
So I had no desire to get involved in all that crap. I would have tried to talk V out of it, too, but she was already completely sold on the idea of working with DeShawn. She seemed like a smart girl, she used to be a corpo, but the peculiar freedom and romance of the solo life had broken her.
"So, where is he?"
Panam looked at her watch and shook her head with a little annoyance.
"Well, considering his reputation, he's probably already in the parking lot, but he'll call me about five minutes before the meeting time V gave me. So I'll be a little late for it."
"So you'll feel guilty?"
"Uh-huh…"
"Bastard…"
"Just clever. But we know all about his cleverness, so it won't work on us. And we don't need any of this anyway, so we'll just wait…"
"Alright… should I go into the meeting with you?"
"I don't think you should."
"Well, then I'll go eat for a bit…"
I glanced at a small greasy spoon nearby and, shrugging, went in with Panam. It was there that DeShawn's call found me…
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