The House of the Reaper has opened its arms to welcome:
Novices MikeyB3Mikey, elph, and RavenSystem.
Their contributions and dedication to our cause will be honored through the Net and through the Stars.
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"Business is business."
- Common proverb
---
Santi was in the middle of working on the Mustang's transmission when his agent pinged with an incoming call from Padre. Santi's eyes flickered yellow as the Agent interface opened, and he answered.
"Ghost," Padre said with an underlying warmth. "It has been a long time since we last spoke."
"Yeah, I've been busy, Padre," Santi replied, continuing his work.
"So I've heard," Padre said. "The Afterlife speaks well of you these days. A young man with a reputation, running with fixers who operate in circles considerably more elevated than my own... I am glad to hear you are prospering, mijo. Truly. It brings me joy to see the young succeed in a city that offers them so few paths to success. I am also glad you still answer my calls."
Santi exhaled through his nose and shook his head. "What's the gig?"
"Think of it more of a favor you're doing for me," Padre said. "Don't worry, you will be compensated handsomely for it. Just come to the court. We will speak when you arrive."
As soon as he finished speaking, Padre ended the call. Santi looked at the half-finished transmission in front of him, cleaned his hands, and stretched. He then took a shower and called a cab to drop him off at the basketball court in Vista del Rey.
The place looked exactly the same since Santi had come here almost a year ago, though it sure as hell felt like a lifetime. The same cracked asphalt, rusted hoop with no net, damaged chain-link fence, and the same ambient sound from a neighborhood everyone with the power to improve it had left alone.
Santi practically arrived alongside V, and they entered the court at the same time. He hadn't worn the mask this time, having taken Dino's words to heart: nobody really gave a fuck who he was. He'd left home with it on and only decided to take it off on the drive over. But it felt a little awkward to go to a meeting with a fixer with his face uncovered, with only black-rimmed glasses sitting across the bridge of his nose. His white hair caught the afternoon light as his eyes scanned his surroundings.
Time had done things to him. At sixteen, he had been six-foot-six but had not yet grown into his own body. His shoulders were wide because his bone structure was wide, and his arms were long and thin. Those boyish features had been rapidly retreating.
Part of it was age. Seventeen had brought with it the hormonal changes that turned boys into men, and his body had responded accordingly. Another part of it was the physical work he was doing. After all, he'd spent months hauling heavy metal, working on the Mustang by hand, wrestling AR550 plates onto a CNC bed, and more.
Part of it was his chrome, since the subdermal armor across his chest and ribs had added mass to his torso, and the reinforced tendons in his legs had changed his walking and posture. The last part was simply that he ate like a man who had money for the first time in his life. This, in part, let him train even harder to ensure that the next time somebody put him on the floor, he'd be harder to keep there.
The result was a body that had filled out into its own dimensions. Chest and shoulders that now carried real physicality, a back that had broadened enough to strain the seams of jackets he had bought six months ago, forearms thick with functional muscle that came from working with tools rather than weights, and his waist had stayed on the narrower end, giving him a natural V-taper that many men aspired to achieve. And last but not least, his face had lost the last of its adolescent softness. His jawline had sharpened even more.
Image of Santi
He did not look lanky anymore, and V noticed.
"Huh," she said, looking up at him as they walked. "So that's what's under there."
"I guess so," Santi shrugged.
"I always figured the big lanky Ghost had some real nasty scars he was hiding. Chemical burns with half a face missing, you know, something tragic," she said as she looked at him a moment longer, her eyes tracking from his face down across his shoulders and back up again. "Turns out you're just easy on the eyes. And when the hell did you stop being lanky? Last time I saw you, you looked like one of those old-era cartoons where they had two kids pretending to be an adult in an oversized coat."
"I've just been working," Santi shrugged again.
"Yeah, clearly," V said, shaking her head. "That's disappointing. I had a whole backstory built for you."
Santi rolled his eyes. "I'm seventeen."
"Yeah, and that doesn't make what I said any less true. Facts are facts, choom." V shrugged and shoved her hands in her jacket pockets. "And how about you take a chill pill? I'm not interested in you. I'll have you know, I enjoy fucking the brains out of other women, and last I checked, you don't really qualify."
"I didn't need to know that," Santi said while closing his eyes and taking a deep breath as they reached the bench.
Padre was already sitting down, wearing the same dark clothing and the same expression he had worn when he and Santi had first met.
He stood up slowly and deliberately, his eyes settling on Santi's uncovered face with an interest that was warm and assessing in equal measure.
"Well," Padre said. "It is a pleasure to finally put a real face to the not-so-elusive Ghost. And a considerably larger body than the one I remember. Seems as if you've changed your hairstyle as well."
"Yeah, I guess I kinda had a growth spurt," Santi said, scratching the back of his head.
"Mm," Padre hummed, smiling softly. "Sit. Both of you. We are waiting on one more."
They sat.
"Where's Clarita?" Santi asked.
"Clarita is out of the picture for the time being," Padre said, folding his hands in his lap. "She is running a personal favor for me, and handling a handful of matters for the Valentinos that require her... particular sensibilities. She sends her regards."
"Huh, I hadn't heard from her in a bit, too," V chimed in. "She's fine, right?"
"She is Clarita, mija. She is always fine," Padre said while maintaining that soft smile. "It is everyone in her immediate vicinity who should be concerned. Though her absence means I had to bring in someone else to stand in her place for this job. He is a new face, and new to this city, though considerably older and more experienced."
As he finished speaking, a vehicle turned onto the street beside the court and pulled to the curb.
It was a Thorton Colby, and the years had not been generous to it. The paint had faded a lot, though at least three different colors were still identifiable. One rear quarter panel had been replaced with a mismatched piece, and the rear bumper was attached with what looked like industrial adhesive. There was also a rattle that let Santi know that it had a problem with a manifold gasket that had probably been leaking for months.
"Holy shit," V said. "That's the saddest ride I've seen all week."
"The wise do not look at the exterior," Padre said. "The wise look at the man inside it."
The driver's door opened, and the man inside it got out... and kept getting out.
The man was seven feet and four inches tall. Standing next to it, he made the Thorton Colby look less like a vehicle and more like a toy.
His arms were fully chromed from the shoulder down. Santi ran a passive scan and noticed they were mil-spec cyberarms once rated for structural demolition work, repurposed by whoever was wearing them into something considerably more personal.
"He's built like a tank," Santi said quietly. "Subdermal armor, full torso, Projectile Launch System, cyberlegs, EMP Threading, Linear Frame, and a Neuroport. He's packed."
"He is," Padre agreed. "And more importantly, he is reliable. His record in this city is a rather short one, yet consistent. He delivers heavy firepower without any unnecessary complications, earning himself a reputation among the fixers he has worked with as a man who finishes what he starts."
Maine reached the bench and looked down at Padre, V, and then Santi. His expression, once neutral, slowly gave way to disgust, and he lifted his shades to rest just below his golden-white hair.
"You've got to be shitting me, Padre," Maine said.
"I am not," Padre said.
"These are kids," Maine argued.
"One of them is," Padre acknowledged.
"I'm not looking to do any work with kids," Maine sighed.
"Then it is fortunate that today you will be working with professionals who happen to be young, rather than with kids," Padre replied calmly. "Allow me to make some introductions, since your objection suggests you have not been paying attention to this city's rising talent."
Maine folded his arms across his chest.
"This is V," Padre said, gesturing to her. "One of my own. She has been running my work since she was about twelve, and she has survived jobs that put men twice her age in the ground. She has never once failed to deliver."
V blew her bubble gum so big it hid her whole face from Maine and gave him a two-fingered salute that carried zero respect.
"And this," Padre said, gesturing to Santi, "is Ghost. You can say he is a prodigal son of mine, whose recent stardom in the Afterlife appears to have made him forget the fixer who gave him his first worthwhile paycheck."
Santi coughed.
"Do not be embarrassed, mijo," Padre continued without looking at him. "It happens to all of them. The young rise, the young forget, and eventually the young come back when they remember that the fixers who took them seriously when they were nobody are worth more than the fixers who take them seriously now that they are somebody."
He turned back to Maine. "Ghost is a netrunner. He has quite the experience and has even extracted classified data without leaving as much as a footprint. I am told he has done other things that I am not privileged to know about."
Maine looked at Santi again, his gaze lingering longer than before.
"Ghost," he said.
"That'd be me." Santi nodded, and he watched as something shifted in Maine's expression. It was as if he recognized Santi, not personally, but from word of mouth.
Maine finally unfolded his arms and looked down at Padre.
"Alright," he said, sitting down on the far end of the bench. "What's the gig?"
"The NUSA continues to mobilize near the border," Padre began. "You know this. Everyone knows this. What most people do not know is that the mobilization has created opportunities for certain individuals to profit from the gaps between what Militech ships and what the NUSA receives."
"Skimming," V said.
"Skimming. Diversion. Siphoning, if you prefer a more evocative word," Padre said as he produced a data shard from his coat and held it in his hands. "The target is a man named Johnathan Thumbart. He is not important. He is, in fact, so unimportant that his ability to accomplish what he has accomplished is genuinely impressive."
"What'd he do?" Maine asked.
"He has connections with certain Militech officers who sign requisition forms and approve shipping manifests," Padre said. "They had discovered that a small percentage of a very large supply chain is still a considerable amount of money, and therefore, Thumbart has been coordinating with them to divert weapons and cargo that were destined to reinforce NUSA forces, and selling that materiel into Night City's black market."
"Good," Santi said. "Militech and the NUSA can steal from each other all they want. Not our problem."
"That is a reasonable position," Padre said. "It is also, in this instance, incomplete."
"How so?" Santi frowned.
Padre was quiet for a moment, looking out at the pickup game at the far end of the court, where a kid who could not have been older than eleven was attempting a jump shot with no chance of making it.
"Business is business," Padre sighed at last. "In our line of work, morality is a luxury that must occasionally be set aside, not discarded, and then picked back up afterward, if you still remember where you left it. Most people who do this work forget where they left it, which I consider a danger."
"That's very pretty, Padre," V said. "But taking a gig that cleans up a Militech problem is real out of character for you."
"It is," Padre nodded.
"So why are we here?" V pressed.
Padre considered the question for a moment.
"Thumbart sold a weapon," he said. "A Militech prototype sidearm that should never have left a testing facility, yet it ended up in the hands of a nobody, and that nobody used it to flatline a friend of mine. A man I had known for thirty-one years and who had eaten at my table and at the baptisms of children I hold as my own... So while this gig is business, and while the client's motivations are their own, my motivations are somewhat more... personal."
"And let me guess, Clarita's handling the shooter," V said.
"Yes, Clarita is handling the shooter, among other things," Padre confirmed. He then held out the shard toward Santi.
"Thumbart operates out of a warehouse in Arroyo," Padre said. "It's a standard facility with security. However, in addition to his stolen inventory, Thumbart is in possession of a server drive that contains structural vulnerability data for Night City's automated defense grid."
Santi took the shard, his hand pausing halfway to his port.
"The automated defenses?" Santi asked.
"Perimeter turret placements, sensor coverage maps, response protocols, the works," Padre said, his expression staying neutral. "Militech does not know he has it, and Thumbart does not fully understand what he has. He acquired it as part of a larger data package he was reselling and has been sitting on it without realizing that he is holding the only document in this city that would allow an invading army to walk through the front door."
"And if Militech finds out he has it," Maine said slowly.
"Then Militech gives it to the NUSA, since they are basically one and the same," Padre said as he leaned back against the bench. "The drive must be secured. I'd prefer if it were not destroyed and delivered to me, so that it can be placed in hands that will use it to keep the turrets firing rather than to shut them off."
Santi slotted the shard into his port, and the briefing package unfolded across his overlay, populating with warehouse floor plans, subnet architecture diagrams, security rotation schedules, and a photograph of a man in his fifties with a receding hairline.
"There are three Objectives," Padre said. "Ghost breaches the subnet and extracts the perimeter defense data. I want every file Thumbart has on the grid, including the physical drive. V will handle infiltration and recovery. And Thumbart himself does not leave that warehouse alive."
"When?" Maine asked.
"Tonight," Padre said.
V whistled softly. "That's fast."
"It is necessary," Padre replied. "Thumbart has a buyer meeting scheduled for tomorrow morning. If that meeting happens, the drive leaves the warehouse and goes somewhere I cannot follow it. And if that happens and the NUSA decides that its patience has expired, they will walk into this city through a door we handed them."
He stood up from the bench, smoothed his coat, and looked at the three of them.
"Due to the extrigent circumstances and our trying times, the payment is to be four hundred thousand, split evenly," Padre said, pausing to look at Santi. "And Ghost. Should you find anything in that subnet beyond what I have asked for, I would consider it a personal kindness if you brought it to me before you brought it to Dinovic."
Santi met his eyes.
"Sure," Santi said. "I can do that."
"Qué bueno," Padre said, smiling as he turned and began walking toward the street. "Vayan con Dios, mis hijos. Or without Him, if He is busy. Either way, go."
The three of them were left sitting on the bench, and Maine turned to look at Santi.
"So, Ghost," he said again.
"Yeah?" Santi replied.
"I've heard of you," Maine said.
"Oh, yeah?" Santi asked. "From who?"
Maine looked out at the street where his ride was parked. "A mutual friend."
---
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