Chapter 32 - Chapter Thirty Two

The boardroom was silent as the footage of the fight replayed for the fourth time, executives leaning forward in their seats, frozen on frames where Adam Smasher, Arasaka's own iron monster, clashed with a single defender of Black Mesa and came out with a severed forearm and melted chrome, and no one in that room missed the fact that the security forces hadn't even deployed their full arsenal, just one fighter sent to meet him head-on; analysts paused the video on the knife Smasher carried away, the jagged saturnite blade, running chemical scans and material tests, only to come back with the same baffling conclusion again and again: this wasn't any alloy in their databases, no Arasaka, no Militech, no Biotechnica archive could identify it, and the nearest description they could produce was "unknown composite with properties resembling ultra-dense ceramic and heat-resistant metal," but none of them could explain how such a thing had been made, whether it had been mined from the ground, forged in a secret lab, or pulled from some resource nobody else had access to, and that uncertainty made every executive at the table twitch with unease; the plasma gun fragments were no less concerning, the weapon that had slagged Smasher's arm tested and tested again, its inner mechanisms fused beyond repair but still showing signs of tech a decade ahead of anything currently on the market, stable plasma discharge with minimal overheating, compact design that could theoretically be mass-produced if the manufacturing method were known, and the implications were simple enough that no one had to say them out loud—if Black Mesa could build one, they could build a thousand, and if they could arm one guard strong enough to stand against Adam Smasher, then they could field an army of them; the boardroom filled with overlapping voices, some shouting to pull resources immediately and others warning that a direct confrontation would risk disaster, and in the end the consensus was clear even if it left a bitter taste—Aperture Science and Black Mesa weren't to be touched until more was known, because the last thing any corpo wanted was to start a war with an enemy that could field weapons they didn't even understand. Across Night City, away from the boardrooms, Maine was back on his feet after recovery, standing with his crew in a warehouse lot as he rolled his shoulders, subdermal mesh glinting faintly under the skin when light hit just right, bone reinforcements shifting with solid weight as he lifted a crate twice the size he used to struggle with and tossed it aside like it was nothing, laughing at the look on Pilar's face when it thudded into the dirt; Rebecca whistled low and said, "Damn, boss, you're finally catching up to me," Dorio smirked and shoved her lightly, and Kiwi stayed silent as usual, but everyone could see Maine was sharper, stronger, sturdier, his frame moving with more balance than before, the cybernetics integrated smoothly without the jitter or lag most installs carried, and even Maine had to admit he felt better than he had in years, less strain in his back, less ache in his knees, and none of the buzzing edge that came with pushing too much chrome. The crew put him through their own tests, sparring drills, live fire runs, simulated convoy hits, and the results spoke for themselves—he could take more punishment, dish out heavier blows, and recover quicker between moves, exactly what a leader in their line of work needed, and for once Maine let himself feel satisfied, because after all the suspicion he had thrown at the clinic and its contracts, the chrome held up clean. Later that same evening David sat quietly at his mother's bedside, the monitors beeping steady as Gloria stirred more each day, still weak, still pale, but awake enough now to talk with him in longer sentences, her hand warm in his as she asked questions about what she had missed, about the air outside that smelled like fresh grass instead of smoke, about the animals she'd heard about from nurses wandering into the city, about how he had been living while she slept; David told her about the deliveries, about the crew he had fallen in with, about Maine's recovery and Rebecca's antics, leaving out the dangerous parts but giving her enough to smile at, and he admitted that things were changing, not just for them but for Night City itself, with food and water becoming easier to find, with people laughing more openly in the streets, with hope creeping back into lives that had only known survival, and Gloria squeezed his hand tighter and said softly, "Maybe this time will be different for us, mijo," and David, thinking about everything from the clinic to Lucy to Maine's grin under fresh chrome, nodded and told her, "Yeah, maybe it will."