"Here we are. The Electric Orgasm." I used to think that this was just a normal bar, run by a fixer. But actually, it is an enforcement meeting joint. Usually NCPD, Militech, NetWatch, and a few other agencies come here to meet, swap info, or to report to their supervisor. All non-official, of course. There are many different bars and meeting spots like this, but this one became a major NetWatch UC meet-up in early '70s.
'You sure about this?' Johnny asked as I was staring at the bar's sign like it was his own personal doom.
"We've got no other choice, Johnny." The problems we would be facing by not meeting him are astronomically more than sucking up and facing him. "Time to meet the director."
…Ma'am?
"Yeah?"
I'm scared…
Walking to the back door, I pushed it open while gently trying to console her. "I'll try my absolute best to save you both, Haezy…"
I could tell that my words were not working as I intended, to be fair, nothing would placate me either if I had gone through her experience. Slipping into the bar, I slinked through the shadows toward the private booths and saw four people huddled together, talking slowly amongst each other. "There he is."
'Which one? I see four,' Johnny asked, appearing beside me. Sighing, I nodded towards the oldest at the table and quietly said, "One in the purple coat."
'Dude looks ancient.'
He wasn't wrong. Lucas Fleck must be pushing at least 80 by now. He's one of the oldest NetWatch directors, which is really impressive if you think about it. Before him, NetWatch directors usually died by their 50s and early 60s, because of corps or government trying to create problems for NetWatch, but Lucas is in a league of his own, he can sense someone coming from miles away. Hell, he could've hacked the entire USSR while sipping his coffee, in his bed, in his pajamas, he's that fucking skilled.
Slinking silently in the dark, I slowly walked up to the table and caught a small tail end of a conversation. "—get on my ass about this, talk to Beverly…" Beverly Johnson, she works in the scouting department. Some kids out there must be stirring up trouble again, now they'll get two options: prison or join NetWatch. Not much of a choice there, really.
Reaching out behind me, I grabbed a chair from a different table and noisily dragged it towards the four huddled men, grabbing their attention. "Oh, and I believe this is the woman of the hour?" Lucas' eyes immediately lit up when his gaze landed on me. Before I could even place my chair, my vision glitched and daemons started uploading in me.
Ma'am… he's hac—
"Let him." I murmured to Haezy, cutting her off instantly. I knew that the moment I stepped in front of him, I would be pumped full of daemons and hacks, but there's no point in resisting. To be fair, it is nothing malicious, they are some personal quickhacks that Lucas keeps on him at all times. The main one connected both of us, meaning at this moment Lucas has full view of my biomon, he could see everything, including both Haezy and Johnny, and he'll be able to see every time I lie. Standard interview stuff really… for a netrunner.
Sighing, I quietly nodded to everyone in greeting and placed my chair next to Moseley. "Director, Sam, Moseley." There was also another guy, practically a kid, sitting there, but I didn't know him, so I just nodded to him before turning my eyes to Lucas.
"Please! Sit, sit!" Looking at everyone present in front of him, Lucas simply cracked his fingers and smiled. "Now, from what I understand, we have a very important situation, and it needs to be dealt with urgently. In fact it's so urgent that it should've been dealt with weeks ago." The sentence was directed towards Sam, the head of External Affairs and Undercover sector. He coordinates any and all active agents in Night City, but considering the fact that I've been doing whatever the fuck I want for the past few weeks, it raises a few big flags, and Sam knows it too. But instead of worrying about it, he just waved his hand dismissively at him, before sulking back in his chair. A forty-year-old man sulking like a child.
Shrugging his shoulders, Lucas simply looked back at me before saying, "But like I always say, water under the bridge. Now, why doesn't someone tell me what they think is going on?"
Apart from Lucas and me, everyone was looking at each other nervously, nobody wanted to speak up, but a single glare from Sam, which clearly spelled out, 'You got us into this mess!' and Moseley quietly started speaking. "Um… sir, as you know, a few weeks ago I was condu—"
"Not the story, Mr. Moseley, just the facts. In fact, you know what? I would like to talk to the girl in question." Turning towards me, Lucas smiled at me and leaned back in his chair. "So, Ms. Holloway. Why are we here?"
'Holloway?' Johnny asked with a big shit-eating grin on his face as he looked at me with undisguised glee. Mentally flipping him off, I turned to answer Lucas. "First of all, it's V." The fucker just slowly nodded his head and gave me a smile, as if saying, 'I'll humor you.' Disregarding that, I continued on. "And to answer your question, we are here because as of right now I could be classified as a rogue NetWatch agent."
"Hmm… interesting. Anything you want to add, Sam?"
Sam, who was just staring at me up until this point, just shrugged his shoulders and leaned back in his chair, slowly sipping his beer. "Can't say I do, this is the first time I'm meeting this girl, didn't even know her until Moseley submitted his report a few weeks ago."
Clearly Lucas was not happy with that answer, or his carefree attitude. "So a UC agent has been moving throughout Night City, and somehow you had no knowledge about it."
Glaring at Lucas and me, Sam slammed his bottle down and exclaimed, "How is this my fault? This girl doesn—" but he didn't get very far. Cutting him off in the middle, Lucas gently placed his hand on his shoulder and looked him in the eyes, and very slowly asked, "Remind me again, what is your role?"
'What a power move. A corpo through and through,' Johnny whispered, standing behind me, and to be honest, yeah. It is a power move on a different level, but I don't agree with the corpo part. People like Jenkins and Abernathy only ever tried to intimidate people, and succeeded because they had the illusion of power, i.e. their post and position in the hierarchy of the company, but Lucas does actually have the power to completely shut down Sam without blinking an eye. It's probably the reason why Sam backed off so easily and started sulking in his chair.
"Now, back to you, Ms… V? Ms. V."
"Sir?"
"A NetWatch agent, acting with impunity, making chaos wherever she goes, while flouting the principal rule of our agency." There it is. I was just waiting for him to acknowledge Haezy and Johnny.
"What do you mean?" Sam asked, leaning forward in his chair, and both Moseley and the other guy mirrored him too, all three looking at me with interest.
Before I could even answer, Lucas simply shrugged his shoulders and in an obviously fake, unbothered voice said, "I mean that Jones and McAvoy's little project is back on this side of the Wall again."
Hearing those words, Haezy's icon pulsed quickly and erratically in my HUD, as if she was offended, and to be completely honest, I get it. "Okay, don't call her a pet project, she is very sensitive. Call her Haezy."
Raising his hands in a surrendering motion, he smiled at me as if humoring me, and softly nodded his head before asking, "Hmm, and what about the other one?"
Quickly glancing at Moseley, I hid the grimace on my face, and simply shrugged my shoulders. "Broken Relic."
"Wait! You said Yorinobu destroyed it!" Moseley exclaimed from the other side of the table. Hearing his betrayed cries, both Lucas and Sam snorted and started laughing.
"And you just what? Believed her?" Sam asked with an amused expression, but we all could tell that there was an undercurrent of disappointment in there too. "I'm assuming that you don't have a lot of time left then?" he asked, turning towards me.
"The Relic is not functioning anymore, I stopped it." My answer seemed to either surprise or impress everyone at the table, except for Moseley, who was still wallowing in his self-pity over me lying to him. To be fair I can understand why they would be surprised by the fact that I had stopped the timer on the Relic. From their point of view, I was just a merc who had a gun in her hand and a cyberdeck in her head, not a winning combination when it comes to people who were capable enough to even begin to scratch the surface layers of the Relic. To get to that level of proficiency you need to spend every waking moment buried in a computer terminal. Which is not something you would expect from a top-tier merc of Night City.
'Well, then it's a good thing they are not wrong in their assumptions then. Because you didn't do shit.' Of course Johnny dropped in to give unneeded opinion. Ignoring his amused expression, I slowly sipped my drink and kept my mouth shut.
"Alright, I think that's enough pleasantries. So then, let's hear it. Your story?" Sam leaned forward, with interest clear on his face. At that moment his expression reminded me of those old movies with those big grey fishes… the one with those big and sharp teeth.
'They're called sharks, V.'
"Yeah, them."
But in any case, I do need to give them something that will appease both Lucas and Sam. "Malik recruited me."
"Richard, huh?" Lucas asked almost playfully, but his eyes were anything but playful. They were looking at me with suspicion and scrutiny. "And I'm assuming he was your handler as well?"
Shaking my head, I continued with the lie. "Actually, Darcy Clarckson was my handler."
Looking at me with disbelief, Sam snorted and asked, "You serious? Malik recruited you, and Clarckson was your handler, coincidentally both are dead so no one to collaborate your story, huh. Pretty lucky."
Well, he's not wrong there, if this was a true story then my luck would've been strong enough to consecutively win 20 lotteries. So now I just need to make them believe this little white lie, so now we are gonna see if I'm really cut out for the performance side of life. "Fuck you calling it luck. I was in the middle of a 'Saka board meeting when Clarckson went down, you can't even imagine what a shitstorm that was."
Clearly Lucas still had his suspicions, but he and I both knew that this line of enquiry would not exactly bring him any semblance of truth. So he pivoted and started playing along. "Why didn't you make contact again?"
"I was about to, but then Jenkins started breathing down my neck," I said in an exasperated tone. "He was a senior executive in Counter Intel," I added for clarification.
"I know that, thank you," he said with a condescending tone and a light glare. It's actually astounding how much time can change you as a person. It used to be so easy sitting in front of corpos and talking my way out of any situation, but now, sitting across from Lucas, I can clearly feel how I'm now more comfortable with a gun in my hand than sitting in a meeting on a cushy chair. "So, what are you doing now?" Sam asked slowly, breaking the silence. "You wouldn't have fallen in the middle of an active NetWatch operation if you were not doing something important."
"I'm still chasing the 'Saka lead actually, the Relic problem is a little bigger than one might think."
"Yes, I've been reading up on it actually," the guy sitting next to Moseley chimed in. Now I don't like to make assumptions in my line of work, but I could tell that this guy was a proper corporate code jockey. He probably doesn't go into the field often. "Your fears do have some weight, but I doubt they have enough corpses to fill with engrams. We're looking into it, but there are pretty extensive requirements to this stuff, you know."
Nodding my head, I agreed with him there. "You're right, Arasaka doesn't have enough corpses, but Biotechnica does." They've had the bodies required for this shitshow since 2004. The only reason why we are not already seeing ghosts of dead people among us is because Arasaka and Biotechnica can't agree on a price. Both are already in talks for this joint venture of theirs, but coincidentally they both are trying to stab each other in the back. Arasaka is trying to somehow make their own in-house clones, whereas Biotechnica is trying to perfect their version of the Soulkiller program. And that is why both are dragging their feet when it comes to this deal.
"...ing about?" Catching the tail end of the question from Moseley, I looked at the four men ahead of me. Clearly they were asking for details about this small bomb that I've exploded under their chairs.
"Bruce Partington Program." I simply gave them the name, and watched as Sam and Moseley both turned towards Lucas, who in turn stayed completely still, except for his eyes. His eyes instantly turned glassy and unfocused, as he stared at the wall behind me. No lights, and no glow, and the fucker was breaching and hacking into Biotechnica at that very moment.
After a few seconds, he sighed deeply and blinked his eyes, and with a troubled expression on his face, he leaned back in his chair and turned to look at Sam and the other two. "Basically, Biotechnica has successfully created clones," Lucas said without any fanfare and simply turned back to his drink.
Looking at Lucas in disbelief, he turned towards me, but seeing my serious expression and me not refuting Lucas, his composure instantly shattered and he slammed both his fists on the table in frustration. "Are you serious?! No, are you fucking serious right now?! God, this—! Now I consider myself an open-minded person, but this is taking it too far!"
I would've let him stew in his thoughts for a while, but I really had places to go, so I again chimed in. "This is a pretty well-known fact among Arasaka, Kang Tao, Petrochem, and others. Granted that it is only the top players who know about this, still. The clones are a good alternative for human experimentation, plus, free labour."
"How come we don't know about this?" Moseley asked both Sam and Lucas, in a confused and a sort of defeated tone.
Raising his head, Lucas looked at Moseley and in a tired voice gave an answer that highlights a lot of problems with NetWatch. "We don't have a horse in this race." That there is the reason why there are so many fucking breaches in the Blackwall every year, why programs like Cynosure have been able to go on for such a long time. "We never really cared about stuff like this, but it seems like this might have been a mistake." Even with NetWatch's impressive track record of fucking up, that was the understatement of the fucking century. "In any case, we'll begin looking into this… better yet, have Angel look into this, he and his team can deal with this. Make sure the—"
Okay, this is officially crossing into pure corpo talk now, and I don't want any part of this. "Okay, talk about this after I'm gone. I don't wanna hear about this."
"Okay, alright." Lucas relented quite easily, but the look he gave to Sam was enough of a message that this conversation was far from over. With a deep sigh, Lucas shifted his attention from his cronies to me, and I could tell that he was in no mood to continue this conversation anymore after the major headache I just gave him. Well, lucky for him, I'm about to give him a gift as a sort of apology.
"In any case, you'll report to Sam tomorrow and we'll get you on a—"
Yeah, that's not gonna happen. "Not gonna happen," I said with a firm voice, making it known that it is final and not something that I'm gonna budge on.
Looking at me with amusement and a little surprise, the only thing Lucas said in return was, "Oh really?"
"I'm doing some important work that I can't walk away from just yet. And more than that, I can't afford to tie my name to NetWatch officially just yet."
"Alright, why don't you tell us about this important work of yours." Lucas asked, once again getting comfortable in his chair, while pouring himself another drink from a bottle that he took out from fuck knows where.
Disregarding that, I focused on the task at hand and leaned forward in my chair. "Arasaka and Biotechnica are long-term problems, you can deal with them in future too. I'm focusing on a much bigger and nearer problem. The NUSA."
Looking around at both Moseley and Lucas, Sam turned to me in confusion. "What about them?"
Lowering my voice, I looked around and tried to make a big show of checking the surroundings to make sure no one was listening in. "I've got evidence that the president of NUSA has been forcing her netrunner to breach the Blackwall to execute hacks and intrusions."
"Get the fuck outta here!" was Sam's immediate knee-jerk reaction, which he expressed very well by slamming his hand on the table, again, like a toddler.
The guy sitting next to Moseley chimed up again, pushing his glasses up his nose bridge, he quietly said, "We would've caught it. I mean, I've been monitoring the flow for the past three years, I would've caught it!"
"Not necessarily…" Lucas said, calming him down. "There are some netrunners so skilled that you would never be able to catch them, unless they want you to catch them."
Nodding my head in agreement, I leaned back in my chair and said, "This is not a new development, kid, this has been going on for years."
"Who? Who could be that skilled?" Moseley asked with the same confused and frustrated expression on his face. At his question, both Sam and Lucas looked at me, as if to confirm if we were on the same page, and it seems we were, because in the next second all three said the exact same name.
"Songbird." "Songbird." "Fucking Songbird…" except for Sam of course, who said it with a bit more colour.
Clenching his teeth in his mouth, and his fist on the table, Sam mustered all the hatred he could in him just to say, "Of course it's her… that kimchi-huffing riceba—"
"Whoa!" "Hey!" both Moseley and the other kid exclaimed together in surprise, while Lucas just tightly clamped onto his shoulder, trying to calm him down. "Alright, calm down now." Standing up from the table, Lucas dragged Sam up with him and gently pushed him towards the bar, and turned back to the other two cronies of his. "You, Moseley and… what the fuck is his name?" he asked Moseley when he completely blanked on the kid's name. Looking at his expression, it took almost everything in me not to burst out laughing at the scene.
"Seth," Moseley said quietly without looking at the kid, Seth, behind him, knowing that he'll only find embarrassment and disappointment on his face.
Nodding his head, Lucas quickly dragged both Moseley and Seth too, and pushed them towards Sam. "Moseley and Seth, take Sam to the bar and get him a drink."
Looking at their backs as they both dragged him to the bar, Lucas shook his head in disappointment and with a heavy sigh sat down. "What an asshole. If he wasn't so talented, then I would've fired his ass years ago." Turning towards me, Lucas shrugged his shoulders and in a tired voice said, "Kid's a star, you know. Just need to get his temper and racism under control."
"He is good at what he does," I said carefully, trying and failing to hide my obvious uncomfortableness with the guy. I obviously never interacted with him in the LF, due to my condition I never qualified for any sort of field job, I was a glorified desk jockey, so I never crossed paths with him. But from what I had heard about him, it looks like the rumors were true, the guy was a rampant racist, but the other thing that I heard quite a lot about him was that he was excellent at his job, which is probably why Lucas tolerated him.
"So, Songbird. The one who got away," Lucas said in a sort of solemn voice, pulling me out of my musings. "All that talent wasted there."
"I share your bitterness too." Seriously, she would've done so much good in NetWatch… instead she joined the enemy faction. To be fair it's not like she had a choice, it's always either join us or die sort of situation. "In any case, give me time and I'll give you the opportunity to make an example out of the president of the NUSA."
"Hmm…" Lucas hummed without commenting, still mulling things over in his head. To be fair, it is a very delicate situation, if you don't know the future. But luckily for us, not only do I know what's to come, but with the time I've had to think about things now, I'm confident that this time I won't be a pawn, but a fucking player at the table. But clearly Lucas had some doubts. "I don't know, Ms. V, this isn't your average problem, this is a big fuckin' deal. If you're right, then that means that a very powerful netrunner has been fucking around with the Blackwall, and that is not something that we can just let go."
"Listen, NetWatch can't just go and accuse the figurehead of a fucking nation of netcutting, we need to be smart about this, we need to catch them in the act!" Okay, I think I need to explain this situation to him in a way that a five-year-old can understand. "This whole situation has the power to become a monumental example for the entire world. Think about it like this, there is a house burning down right in front of you, and I'm offering you fire insurance on it! This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!"
"Alright, if I agree to this, then what is our next move?" Lucas asked, finally relenting to my line of thinking.
"We go our separate ways," I said with an infuriatingly simple shrug.
"Are you being serious?" Lucas asked with an incredulous expression on his face, which of course I can understand.
"Yes, we can't have any contact, otherwise my plans would be in ruins." If Songbird found my name in any sort of law enforcement agency, then I'm one hundred percent sure that she won't even look at me.
"It doesn't sit right with me, leaving a UC to work without supervision, plus letting you run with two unmonitored AIs is just the cherry on the top." Lucas said with a tired and sour expression. I guess I was the only one who could actually see this entire thing play out, courtesy of my future knowledge, of course, but in anyone else's shoes I can understand why they would be hesitant. Not only am I making assurances that I will bring down the president of a very powerful country, but while also keeping two artificial entities in check.
With a deep sigh, Lucas grabbed onto the table and slowly stood up. "One misstep. One red signal from any of them, and I will vaporize not only you, but also your ripper Viktor, that airhead Misty, and your dead friend's mother, Guadalupe Alejandra Welles… I hope I've made myself clear here?"
Snorting, I also stood up from my chair. "What, reciting their names is supposed to scare me or something? So you can read a dossier, big fucking deal… but I understand. You won't have any problems from this side…"
"Good." With that he grabbed a datapad lying on the table and his jacket from the chair. "Now, I'm sure that this is a good stopping point for today."
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Alright guys! first of all thanks for reading! second of all, please comment! Comment and let me know what you guys think of the story, line and jokes. I don't know if you can tell yet, but I'm a bit of a attention whore. So now I'm going to do a extremely cliché shit here, if i receive 15 comments or 2 reviews, then I'll drop another chapter!