Task (Security) Completed. Reward: Composure + 0.05.
Jax leaned his shoulder against the damp concrete of the sub-level warehouse, the phantom notification fading from his mind's eye. He felt a subtle shift in his pulse—a cooling of the blood, a sharpening of the focus. He checked his internal tally.
Body: 9.05
Reflexes: 8.06
Technical Ability: 9.02
Intelligence: 4.1
Composure: 8.25
It was a solid spread. As long as the "system" didn't dump points into his Intelligence—a stat he rarely relied on for anything beyond basic neural links—he was satisfied. Composure was a hidden killer in Night City; it was the measure of how much pain you could ignore and how much chrome your psyche could handle before snapping.
He didn't have the eddies for high-end cyberware yet, but he knew where to go when he did. Viktor Vektor. The only ripper in the city who treated people like human beings instead of walking ATMs.
SLAM.
The heavy steel door to the main office shuddered. Jax straightened up as a woman stormed out, her boots clicking angrily against the metal grate. Her short hair was a violent shock of purple and green, glowing faintly in the dim yellow light of the passage. The silver neural ports at her temple caught the glare as she turned.
"Judy," Jax called out.
Judy Alvarez stopped, her chest heaving with frustration. She saw Jax and let out a sharp, jagged breath. "Perfect timing. Susan's waiting for you. Go get your lecture."
She walked toward him, the smell of solder and ozone clinging to her clothes. "For the record, Jax? I'm with you. What you did to those Claws? They deserved worse. But Susan..." She waved a hand dismissively at the office. "Cowardly. Always so damn cowardly. If she keeps playing it safe, the Moxes are going to be nothing but a memory by next year."
She was spiraling, her loyalty to her friend Evelyn and her own high-minded ideals clashing with Susan's cold pragmatism.
"Little Ai was right to leave," Judy muttered. "Susan has zero foresight."
Jax offered a small, knowing smile but kept his mouth shut. He liked Judy, but she saw the world in high-contrast—black and white, right and wrong. She didn't see the warehouses, the repair shops, or the underground radio stations Susan had quietly acquired to keep the Moxes solvent. Susan wasn't just a gang leader; she was a survivalist.
"Go on," Judy sighed, waving him off. "I'm going home. I've spent enough time in this tomb today."
"Take care of yourself, Judy," Jax said softly.
He watched her walk away toward her studio. She was the heart of the Moxes, the genius behind their braindances, but she was also a dreamer in a city that ate dreams for breakfast.
Jax turned and knocked on the office door.
"Enter," Susan's voice rasped.
He stepped inside. The room was a cramped fortress of screens and weapon crates. Susan sat in her swivel chair, her metal legs crossed, a heavy pistol resting in her hand. The silence between them stretched, thick and suffocating.
"When?" she asked finally.
"Today," Jax replied.
The line of her jaw tightened. "No need to be so dramatic. Tomorrow—the day after—it wouldn't matter."
"Decisive is better," Jax shrugged.
Susan let out a dry, rattling chuckle. "You little bastard. Trying to make me feel guilty?" She lifted the pistol and tossed it.
Jax caught it mid-air. It was her personal sidearm—a custom-tuned Lizzie. Pink-coated, but with a lethal, high-capacity charge mode that could turn a single pull of the trigger into a wall of lead.
"The Omaha was Kolina's. This is mine," Susan said, her chair spinning as she faced him. She reached out, adjusting the collar of his jacket with a surprisingly steady hand. "Being a merc takes more than one gun, Jax. You're strong—give you some high-end chrome and you'll be a god on these streets. But you've got a leak in your armor."
She tapped his forehead with a chrome-tipped finger. "Empathy. You have too much of it. You meddle where you shouldn't. It'll keep you from going cyberpsycho, sure, but it'll also get you killed."
Jax looked at her, searching for the mask of the cold leader, but for a second, it slipped.
"What?" she snapped, seeing his expression. "Fed up with my nagging already?"
"I just... didn't think you had those words in you."
"Don't get used to it," Susan grumbled, leaning back and regaining her impatient edge. "Half the time I don't even know which part of me is still human. Now, before I lose my temper—get out. Get out of Watson, find a real bed, and wait for my call."
Jax tucked the Lizzie into his waistband and offered a sharp, final nod.
The air outside Lizzie's Bar was the usual cocktail of rot and exhaust, but it felt different tonight. It felt like the start of a long fall. He stood on the sidewalk, wondering which cheap motel would be his home, when a familiar roar of an engine cut through the street noise.
"Jax!"
A two-meter wall of muscle and white hair stood by a parked Thrax. Maine waved a bottle of synth-whiskey at him, a wide, predatory grin on his face. In the passenger seat, Dorio loomed like a mountain, while Sasha's small hand waved frantically from the back window.
Jax blinked, then a slow, tired smile spread across his face. He walked over.
"Kolina said you were a free agent as of five minutes ago," Maine shouted over the engine. "If you're looking for a bunk, come with us. Tomorrow, we're a crew. Might as well start tonight."
"Maine," Jax said, looking at the bottle. "You're driving drunk."
"Cops'll have to get in line if they want to arrest me for that," Maine laughed, extending a hand the size of a shovel. "Welcome to the big leagues, kid."
Jax reached out. His knuckles bumped against Maine's massive fist—a collision of meat and metal.
"I just hope the 'big leagues' don't bore me," Jax said.
He climbed into the car, leaving the neon pink glow of the Moxes behind. His life in the shadows was over. The game had finally, truly begun.