Chapter 4 — A New Life Begins Today
[Mission (Security) Completed]
[Reward: Composure +0.05]
A small ping echoed behind Adrian's eyelids as the system logged the night's duty. In the basement of Lizzie's, he leaned his back against the cool concrete and felt the little satisfaction that came with a completed task. The holo-panel faded, then blinked open again — black and red script etching itself across his vision like a private sigil.
> [Mission (Security) Completed]
[Reward: Composure +0.05]
He thumbed the confirmation away and pulled up his stat screen, the numbers scrolling like a scoreboard for survival.
Name: Adrian
Physical: 9.05
Reflexes: 8.06
Skills: 9.02
Intelligence: 4.10
Composure: 8.25
Not bad. He'd never chase intelligence boosts—books and bright ideas didn't keep a roof on your head in Watson. Strength, reflexes, skills: those were the ledger lines of his life. Composure was nice, and the extra point mattered; it would mean he could handle another implant or two without his head snapping. But implants cost eddies—and the Mox didn't hand out eddies like candy.
He idly considered surgeons. Victor's name surfaced in the back of his head, whispered in the alleys where fixer deals and organ promises matched breath for breath. No one knew Victor personally in a way that mattered—only by reputation. The "Daddy" of the scene, the one whose clinic had saved more broken people than the city had funerals. Maybe one day. For now, it was enough that the system's little numbers ticked upward. A tiny victory; a tiny margin of safety.
A box slammed somewhere overhead.
Adrian blinked, shoved his hands into his pockets, and moved toward the sound. The door burst open and Judy stormed out like a violet flare. Her hair was cropped short, dyed a purple that caught the underground fluorescents and threw them back like challenge. One side of her head was shaved close, the curve of a surgical scar gleaming silver where the metal had been fused beneath the skin. Her neck bore tattoos—thin lines of ink that told stories she didn't need to say aloud.
"Adrian!" she snapped, breath fogging the stale air. "You're just in time. Susan wants to see you. And don't take this wrong—she's right about some things. But God, she has no idea how to handle people sometimes."
Adrian watched her, amused and a little tired. Judy could complain with the best of them; it was a survival tactic. When Susan had scolded Judy earlier, it had been for mixing with Xiao Ai—someone Susan felt would bring heat. Judy's temper flared like a match in response; she'd blustered and paced and now was ready to leave the bar two hours late, grip still on offense.
"You think Mox is doomed because of Susan?" Adrian asked quietly.
Judy snorted. "I'm telling you—short-sighted, stubborn. If she keeps bossing people around, someone'll stab us in the back sooner or later. Mox needs vision, not just grit."
Adrian smiled with the kind of patience you afford to old friends. "She's kept us alive this long, hasn't she?" he said. "We used to barely have Lizzie's. Now we've got warehouses, a patchwork of storefronts, a ragged radio station broadcasting from Dogtown's undercrofts. Susan did that."
Judy half-sulked, half-grinned. "Yeah, but at what cost? She's turning us into a business and not a family. There's a difference."
There was truth in that. The Mox had shifted over the years—charity had been rewired into survival, survival into enterprise. They helped their own, but they did it like a corporation now: ledgers and leverage, favors with strings. It was the city's pressure—grind enough of it and even the warmest hands get calloused.
Adrian knocked gently on Susan's office door. A voice called, "Come in."
Inside, Susan lounged in her swivel chair like she owned gravity. One leg was crossed, the other planted, her pistol resting in her hand as casually as someone else might toy with a lighter. The metal legs beneath her were visible—the cut of corporate-grade prosthetics, efficient and unapologetic. Her eyes tracked Adrian as he closed the door and sat on the iron crate opposite her.
Silence held for a beat, heavy and glassy. The warehouse hummed far away; people moved outside like tides. Susan exhaled and asked simply, "When are you leaving?"
"Today," Adrian said.
She raised an eyebrow. "…Today?" Paper rustled somewhere; she rotated the pistol in her grip. "You sure? I could've just—kept you at Lizzie's. Safe. Less heat."
Adrian shrugged. "If we're gonna move, might as well move. Waiting doesn't make it safer."
She leaned back, amusement flickering. "You little bastard. Always so calm when my blood boils. Here." She handed him a pistol with a practiced flick of her wrist—pink-painted metal with Lizzie's emblem stamped into the frame. "Korna gave you one already. This one's mine. Consider it a loan." The gun was pretty in a way that made him uncomfortable, lethal and sugary at once. The Lizzie's design packed a trick: a charged shot burst that could send a cluster of pellets in a single, brutal spray.
Adrian felt the weight of it in his hands, the cold of honest metal. "A pistol alone won't make me a merc," he said. The little theatrics of swagger hid a serious edge: getting the kit was half the battle, but wards, implants, and training were the other half—and all of it cost.
Susan nodded. "I'll get you patched. Not with the cheap stuff. I'll source something decent. But there's something else." She tapped her temple, slow and deliberate. "You got empathy, Adrian. Too much now. It's what makes you who you are. It lets you keep some humanity with implants and chrome. But it also drags you into other people's chaos."
Adrian watched her carefully. He knew what she meant. Too much empathy had a cost: you endanger yourself protecting others. He'd felt it when he'd stepped into the fight for Shanna. There'd been no calculation—only muscle memory and an ugly, tender refusal to stand down. It had saved a friend and nearly burned them both alive.
"You speak like you know me," he said. "Like you've lived inside my head."
Susan huffed a laugh. "After all the times I've hauled you out of fights you didn't need to pick, I've got a file on you, kid." She leaned forward, voice softer. "It's not a crime to care. But it's a liability. You survive better with a little steel in your soul."
"Fine." He let it rest. "I'll try not to treat strangers like they're sisters."
She rolled her eyes, already annoyed. "Don't get cute. Listen—get out of Watson for a bit. Lay low. Eat. Sleep. I'll call you when the team's ready."
Adrian slipped the pistol into his waistband, feeling ridiculous and safe at the same time. He pushed back, the weight of new choices pressing in like a hand on his throat. "I'm not running," he said. "Just… recalibrating."
"Whatever you call it." She waved him off. "Now go—before I lose my temper."
He rose, opened the door, and stepped into the morning. Night City's air greeted him like a slap—half-smoke, half-sour trash-scent, cold and real. He took a breath that tasted of rust and neon.
A voice called his name, deep and easy. Mann stood across the street, a bottle of cheap wine in one hand and a grin that belonged to men who never learned caution young enough. Dolio squeezed into the passenger seat of a beat-up ride; Sasha leaned out the back, a cigarette smoke-stencil around her lips, waving a hand like she'd done this routine before.
"You leaving with us?" Mann called. "Korna said you were packing up."
Adrian crossed the puddled street. Mann's car smelled of engine oil and a hint of spilled liquor. He extended a massive hand, the kind that could palm a skull. Adrian bumped knuckles with him.
"Korna told me," Mann said. "If you need a door to start, you've got ours. Tomorrow we get to work."
Adrian glanced at Sasha, who winked and pulled a thumb across her throat in a joke that was half warning. Pila—he'd heard the name—would arrange their tech, kit, and walkways. They were a motley crew: brute force, shadow fingers, and one girl with circuitry in her breath.
Mann laughed. "Welcome to the merc life, Adrian. It's messy, loud, and pays well. Hope you like both."
He bent and offered the bottle. "Drink?" Mann winked.
Adrian shook his head, fingers brushing the e-cigarette in his pocket—the one Susan had pressed into his hand. He'd sworn off smoke after the dizzying first time, but the taste of new danger made the bottle's offer unnecessary.
"No thanks," he said. He felt small birds of tension fluttering in his chest—anticipation and the old fear of being useful and disposable at once.
Mann clapped him on the shoulder. "Good. Keep your head. Don't get attached to soft things. Out here they eat that for breakfast."
Adrian considered the words as he turned away and climbed the steps toward Lizzie's. He'd made a choice; a path stretched out thin and bright ahead of him, threaded with danger and paydays. He'd chosen to let the city take him further into its guts.
At the top of the stairwell, Rita caught him by the arm. Her pink jacket smelled faintly of peach vapor. She looked at him, something like pride and worry braided together in her gaze.
"You finally took this step," she said softly.
He let out a breath like a laugh that barely formed. "Yeah. I did."
"Don't get yourself killed," she said, half-joking. "And don't drag the Claws into our front yard. If they come sniffing, I'll gut them." She flashed a grin, the bat slung over her shoulder like a ritual.
"Family," Adrian said again—a word that carried all its debts and protection and heavy, stubborn love.
Rita bumped him, letting the contact linger. "Go do your thing. Come back with pockets full of eddies or at least a good story."
He half-smiled and pushed through the doors into the bar's heat. The night would call him to guard and pour and listen to confessions. Tomorrow they'd train. The day after, he would meet Pila. And the caper—Biotech's prize—waited like a mouth in the middle of the city, full of teeth and rewards.
He checked his reflection in the mirrored liquor shelf: bomber jacket, hat brim low, eyes a little sharper. The HUD in the corner blinked its silent confirmation: Mission accepted—this time not a small basement task but a larger thread that braided him to mercs, corporate shadows, and the glint of real money.
The city took no vows. It swallowed choices and spit out chances. Adrian stepped into the hum and felt the new skin of a life start to stretch taut around him.
Tonight he finished his shift at Lizzie's. Tomorrow he packed lighter and readier. The day after that, he walked into the teeth of Biotech. The path had begun. There was no turning back.