As the weightlessness faded, Arthur's body slammed hard into the back seat.
It took several seconds before his mind recovered from the near-disaster.
That feeling—like the world slipping away, like the final period of his life was about to be written.
In a daze, it felt as though his soul had just snapped back into his body.
Inside the car, only David kept his focus on the wheel. The other three stared at him with uneasy expressions.
"Just now, when you took that turn...
Were you sure about it?"
Arthur finally managed to voice the question everyone else was thinking.
"Ah..."
David, too locked into driving, didn't catch his meaning right away. After a pause, he replied:
"Oh, that? It was just a last-minute plan, but hey—you've got to try, right?
Look behind us. Thanks to that move, four unlucky Tyger Claws crashed into that building."
Sure enough, smoke was rising in the distance—clearly from those four poor bastards. The others, still shaken moments earlier, hadn't noticed.
"And what if you'd failed?"
Arthur pressed further.
"Failed... failed..."
David thought it over seriously, his tone uncertain.
"Probably... we'd be dead?"
Arthur slumped into his seat, swearing silently that David would never touch a wheel again.
The car kept tearing forward, but the seven remaining Tyger Claws stayed close behind. On the narrow streets of Japantown, their bikes had the advantage, and the gap was closing fast.
Arthur managed to drop two gunners within range, but the others, after seeing his accuracy, ducked into his blind spots and denied him another shot.
"Damn pests—can't shake them, can't kill them."
Arthur cursed, then glanced at Jackie , who stared blankly ahead as if he'd already seen death.
He didn't need to ask—he already knew why.
Up ahead, the road was blocked completely by a stretched bus, leaving only a narrow gap, barely wide enough for two people.
On the other side of that gap was the Central River.
It was a dead end—or should have been. But David showed no intention of slowing down.
"Kid, we should stop here and deal with the ones behind—"
Arthur never finished.
David yanked the wheel hard. The car jolted violently, the wheels on the riverside lifting off the ground.
Jackie was thrown into Arthur. Lucy up front clung desperately to the overhead handle to keep from being tossed.
One side of the car hung suspended above the river, wheels spinning madly in the air. The whole vehicle swayed like it was floating, buffeted by the wind.
David's hands flew across the steering wheel, frantically correcting. He triggered the Sandevistan in his back, straining to keep the car balanced.
He drove it like a motorcycle, holding the center of gravity above one side's wheels through constant, precise adjustments.
It lasted only an instant, but that instant stretched unbearably long.
Their lives dangled on a tightrope, all in the hands of a kid.
At last, the moment ended. All four wheels slammed back onto the road.
Arthur didn't waste a second recovering. He exploded with anger.
"Why the hell didn't you just stop and take out the guys behind us?! Or use the other bus to balance the wheels?!"
David's only response was his head dropping straight onto the steering wheel.
Lucy reacted instantly, leaning over to grab control with one hand.
"What happened to him?!"
Arthur pulled the unconscious David back, keeping him from getting in Lucy's way.
"He overused the Sandevistan. His body couldn't take it, and he blacked out."
Without David on the accelerator, the car slowed and eventually rolled to a stop by the roadside.
Jackie hauled David into the back and slid into the driver's seat himself. Finally, the car was in reliable hands.
"So what now? Do we need a Ripperdoc for him?"
Arthur tossed David aside and asked Lucy.
"Yeah, get him to a Ripperdoc."
Lucy didn't even turn her head. Her gaze stayed fixed on the window, her face reflected in the glass, framed by the neon lights of Night City.
"When he wakes up, I'll make sure he remembers this."
And so, with the car rattling along and David's head knocking against the window with a dull thud, they drove into Little China.
Since it was late, Arthur and the others had already contacted Vik. When they arrived, they got in smoothly.
Jackie , being the strongest, carried the unconscious David inside.
"Looks like you brought me a new friend—a half-grown kid."
Dumping David onto the operating table, Jackie grabbed the glass on Vik's desk and downed it in one go.
Arthur and Lucy followed in. Hearing Victor's words, Arthur replied,
"Nineteen. He's got some kind of cyberware called Sandevistan."
Vik nodded and rolled him over.
"This is... top-tier Militech hardware. Hard to believe the kid's body can handle it."
Arthur walked over, snatched the glass from Jackie 's hand, and took a swig himself.
"So this thing's pretty badass?"
"Badass? It's the best of the best. Militech treasure.
Wait... this..."
He moved to a nearby microterminal and pulled up a dense spread of data.
"This... remember that shard you brought me? What's inside this kid is exactly the same as what was on it. Not just similar—identical."
Arthur leaned against the wall. Lucy stepped forward, stopping right in front of him.
She didn't say a word, just stood there, watching intently.
Arthur frowned, lifted the bottle in his hand as if offering it. Lucy nodded immediately.
With a helpless sigh, he handed it over and turned back to Vik.
"So? Other than being a coincidence, what's it good for?"
"It's huge! You've been with me for days now. What's the hardest part about installing cyberware?"
Arthur thought back to helping out in the clinic.
"Neural welding, obviously. I can't do it, but even just watching is a headache."
"At least you paid attention. The human nervous system has billions of connections, and we don't even know what many of them do.
Cyberware design works backward from function—but you can't design an interface for nerves you don't understand.
The bigger the cyberware, the more complicated the neural network. That means more unidentified fibers.
Cutting those unknown nerves means losing unknown signals, which always carries risk.
That's what we call cyberware neural loss. It's the main cause of Cyberpsychosis."
Arthur looked baffled, but Lucy was locked in, listening closely.
"Vik, you've been talking forever. You still haven't said what that chip does for him."
Viktor shook his head with a wry smile.
"When designing cyberware, we add speculative neural links.
With the data from that chip, I can actually connect them for him."
Seeing Arthur still confused, Vik sighed and spelled it out.
"That data will ease the strain his cyberware puts on his body."
"In other words, he won't black out so easily."
"Exactly."
Arthur glanced at Vik's exasperated expression and started doubting his own intelligence. But when he looked at Jackie , who was already nodding off, he felt better.
The guy hadn't taken in a single word.
"That theory isn't what most people believe. The immune system theory is way more popular."
The voice cutting in belonged to Lucy.
She was idly twirling the empty bottle in her hand, watching Vik with genuine curiosity.