Vash dipped a little lower, just enough to shave altitude without ever breaking the cover of the night.
Every aerial surveillance net in Heywood came up empty. Radar, cameras, signal sweeps — nothing could lock onto him. The nanoparticles flowing over his suit shifted tone in real time, borrowing the flicker of neon billboards and the cold wash of streetlights until he was just another smear of darkness moving through the sky.
As long as he didn't get too close, nobody on the ground would notice a thing.
Below him rose a high‑rise in Heywood, its rooftop crowded with storage tanks and patched‑metal service sheds. A ring of armed sentries paced the perimeter.
From Vash's angle, the whole place was a schematic: routes, blind spots, the rhythm of each guard's turn. Even when two bodies crossed behind piping and HVAC units, thermal imaging painted them clean and bright, as if the night itself couldn't hide heat.
"Friday." Vash murmured, voice barely more than breath, "Think you can paralyze their neural reception units?"
In 2077, almost everyone had a brain interface — an always‑on doorway for data, ads, and control. Those with cyberware ran even deeper: reinforced neural tissue, auxiliary processors, proprietary safeguards. The cleanest way to take a weapon from someone like that wasn't brute force.
It was to make their brain stop listening.
「No problem.」
Friday's reply came like a private wink in his skull.
A moment later, invisible fingers crawled across the rooftop's network — probing, mapping, slipping past cheap corporate firewalls and the half‑awake security protocols the sentries trusted their lives to. One by one, Friday found the neural reception units tied into their interfaces and snapped them shut, severing input like yanking a cable from the wall.
Thud!
An armed guard folded soundlessly to the concrete. Then another. Then another, in different corners of the roof, bodies dropping like marionettes whose strings had been cut.
「Mr. Vash, you have thirty seconds.」
"That's plenty."
He dove! The wind howled once in his ears and then fell away as he hit the rooftop in a crouch that barely cracked a whisper from the concrete.
Without hesitation he moved straight toward the center, where a reinforced storage box sat bolted to the ground — corporate gray, ugly, and expensive. The sort of thing that pretended to be unbreakable because nobody ever tried breaking it the smart way.
He laid a gloved hand on the switch.
The box fought back with layered encryption, biometric locks, and a handful of lethal surprises… for anyone who wasn't running a predatory AI in their shadow. Friday dismantled the defenses, disarming each trigger before it could even think about firing.
Click.
The lid released.
Inside, nestled in foam, lay a Mantis Blade — sleek, predatory, edges so sharp the metal seemed to drink the light around it.
「Mr. Vash, ten seconds left. The targets will wake up.」
Friday's warning tightened in his head.
Vash didn't waste a heartbeat. He took the blade, and the night swallowed him again.
Moments later, the rooftop sentries stirred. Groggy, blinking, each one with the nagging feeling they'd just nodded off for a second. They checked their comms, cursed the cold, adjusted their grips, and never once noticed the missing box's new emptiness.
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With the prize secured, Vash climbed until the city became a grid of lights beneath him. Up here, the air was thinner and quieter, the noise of Heywood reduced to a distant murmur.
He looked down at the rooftop, then at the weapon in his hand, letting the satisfaction settle.
Integrating it into the cyberware suit was the easy part.
He gripped the Mantis Blade, and the nanoparticles flowed, crawling over the metal in a living tide. They tested its surface, matched its weight and geometry, then split and reknit themselves around it, feeding the weapon into the suit's interface slot as if it had always belonged there. For a second, cold data ran across his vision — calibration, motor mapping, safety locks being politely ignored.
Then a new weapon slot flickered into existence inside his HUD.
⌜▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹▹⌝
" Cyberware: Mantis Blade "
" Grade: Rare "
" Description: The Mantis Blade is swift as the wind, with extremely fast attack speed, capable of combo attacks, dealing devastating damage to single targets!" ⌞◃◃◃◃◃◃◃◃◃◃◃◃◃◃◃⌟
"Not bad." Vash opened and closed his left hand.
The suit translated the motion into a phantom sensation — like the blade was already resting under his skin, eager, waiting for the command to unfold.
He didn't linger. Tonight still had a second stop.
Compared to the heavily guarded Mantis Blade, the Monowire might as well have been gift‑wrapped. Vash crossed the city in silence, then landed near a gutted warehouse that leaned into the darkness like it had been abandoned by the world.
He powered down the cyberware suit, let the nanoparticles fade into inertness, and walked inside like a shadow.
A few quick minutes later, the new weapon was his. No alarms. No drama. Just another tool added to the arsenal.
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The next day, noon light cut through the dusty windows of Sunshine Estate, and Vash was dragged out of sleep by the harsh insistence of a call.
「Incoming call: Jackie Welles」
"Hey, V. I'm almost at Sunshine Estate. Roads out here are rough — hard to find my way, too, choom."
The line crackled with bumps and rattles, as if the phone itself was being shaken.
"You'll be coming here often." Vash said, voice rough with sleep, "You'll get used to it."
He'd contacted Jackie the night before — asked for clothes, and to swing by Lizzie's Bar on the way to grab the computer equipment Judy had gifted him. One trip, one delivery, no wasted time.
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At the entrance to the complex, Vash spotted the dust‑coated car crawling in from the distance, suspension protesting every pothole. Jackie rolled up, killed the engine, and climbed out with that familiar grin.
"V." Jackie bumped shoulders with him. Then he popped the trunk and whistled at the pile inside, "Give me a hand, mano. This stack of old comps is heavy as hell."
They hauled the equipment up to the top floor together, leaving their arms strained. By the time the last piece was dragged inside, Jackie straightened and took in the place with a slow, appreciative look.
"V, this place is nice." He said, spreading his hands as if measuring the space, "Big enough to throw parties. Like… real parties, choom."
"The rooms nearby are empty." Vash replied, "Pick one if you ever want to stay."
"No, no, no." Jackie shook his head hard, both palms up in surrender, "It's spacious, yeah, but there ain't a single smart device in here. Not one. How the hell you live like this?" He snorted, "I don't got your survival skills, V, no way."
Even now, he still couldn't wrap his head around it — why Vash would rent someplace so far out, where the city felt like an afterthought and convenience had died years ago?
Vash only smiled and steered the conversation away before Jackie could spiral into a lecture, "By the way — how's the job from Wakako Okada?"
Jackie's eyes lit up instantly, like someone had flipped a switch.
"Locked in!" He said, thumping his chest with pride, "Operation's set for tomorrow night. Details and plans? Our people are still cooking that up." His grin sharpened, turning serious around the edges, "But I gotta warn you, choom — this time we're dealing with Scavs… and Trauma Team."
"No big deal." Vash said, calm as ever.
Jackie burst out laughing, "Hahaha. Yeah — no big deal." He echoed Vash's tone, teasing. Then he leaned in, shoulder still pressed close, and grinned, "After all, we're the best partners, right, choom?"
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T/N: Comment, give me Power Stones, like and favorite, it all supports me and makes me go foward with this. Appreciate my other stories as well, I guarantee the good work!
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That's it and happy reading! (-‿◦)