Cyberpunk Edgerunners: The Rebel Path - Chapter 49 - Axumas365 (2024)

Chapter Text

It didn’t take Adrian long to get home and grab the rest of his iron. Though he’d only kept Calamity and Reckoning on him the night before, today he was taking everything. Eastwood, Elliot, Adversity, Glory, Daybreak, Eventide, even Muramasa. All of it was either packed into the back of his trunk or shoved into the backseat of his car. He was sure to keep his katana near the front, though. He wasn’t sure if he would be getting into melee combat on the drive over, but it was still Night City, and sh*t could always go down at the most inconvenient of times.

Maya sat next to him, a nervous silence between them. Despite Adrian’s consistent visits to M, either to shoot the sh*t or to continue his gruesome, brutal training, Maya had never actually seen the man face to face. Well, she technically had, but she hadn’t exactly been mentally present, at the time. She knew M, knew who he was beyond his moniker. She’d even heard the same stories about him from their mom. But still, she had never actually met the man, and the prospect was more than a little nerve-wracking. The fact that she was nervously fiddling with her monowire wasn’t helping.

“Stop that – you’re gonna cut yourself,” Adrian said, lightly tapping his sister’s wrist as he slowed to a stop at a red light. Could he ignore Night City traffic laws? People did it literally every day, to the point that you could technically speed past most cops in any district that wasn’t the central city. But he wasn’t taking any chances. Given the fact that a Maelstrom gang car started to tear through the street in front of them, chasing some poor bastard who’d gotten on their bad side, he’d made the wise choice.

“Sorry. Just… kinda terrified of meeting the guy,” his sister replied, letting the wire slide back into her wrist before she ran her hands through her matte black hair, same as his own, though a lot longer and much straighter. “Weird to think that this is the guy who saved us and also… y’know. Him. From the stories.”

“Certainly was when I first met the man,” Adrian agreed, eyes flicking to hers for a moment before he focused back on the road, keeping an eye on her. Maya’s eyes were both still ‘ganic, the same steel grey that their mom hadn’t shared. Adrian thought it had come from their dad, but that was a guess on his part. He didn’t remember much of the man, and didn’t like to. He missed the man. And the memories of his loss felt almost as raw as the ones related to their mother. Strange to think that they were both gone now. Strange and surreal all at once. “Like literally meeting some hero from a myth. Only a lot more down to earth.”

“Sounds nova as all hell,” she said, clearly trying to focus on something, to keep herself from her nervousness. “… how do you think he knew mom?”

“Like, how did they meet? Isn’t that what we’re going to find out?” Adrian asked, taking another turn. he was glad he’d made sure to secure all of his guns and turn on all the safeties.

“I mean, yeah, but if you had to guess.”

“… I have my theories.” Only one theory, really. Related to that sniper rifle he had in his trunk. It was really the only clue he might have. But it was enough to get him thinking. “But I don’t think we should go in with too many expectations. We’re here.”

The car pulled up just outside of the abandoned warehouse where he and M usually met up, and he promptly turned off the car. Adrian wasn’t sure how they were going to get out of Night City airspace without attracting attention from someplace like Militech, but he had a feeling that the company might actually be involved in smuggling them out, given their history with M himself. He turned to Maya, nodding briefly as he stepped out of the car, and she did the same. Maya offered to carry some of the lighter firearms inside, which Adrian obliged, the young woman carrying both Glory and Daybreak under her arms with some effort. Honestly, it looked kinda cute from where he was standing.

“Shut up,” Maya said, straining against the weight of the heavier weapons.

“I didn’t say anything,” Adrian replied, holding his hands up in surrender, both Eventide and Adversity in his arms while Muramasa hung from his hip.

“No, but you were thinkin’ something gonk,” Maya countered, as though she could read his mind. “Deck, was he thinkin’ something gonk?”

Despite the fact that she couldn’t hear the AI fragment respond, he decided to do so anyway. [Indeed, he has thought something rather ‘gonk,’ as you put it. Though I would simply prefer to use the term idiotic.]

“… I hate you both.”

His sister’s gremlin-esque snickering continued until they got to the entrance proper, where Adrian opened the large, metal door slightly, to let the both of them in, the sunlight peaking over the horizon telling them of the coming dawn. The warehouse itself rarely had a set outline, as M tended to change the place out to fit with whatever training regiment he had in mind for that wee. He had no idea how the man managed to switch things out so fast, but it wasn’t as though he was unconnected. He probably knew a few people who could help with that.

Still, the few consistent things that seemed to remain in this place were the table and chairs sat near the entrance, the workbench off to the side – now devoid of both weapon parts and the implements to augment and fit them back together, the wide, open space and roof of the warehouse, and the chill. There was no way to regulate the air in this place, no way to warm things up or cool things down. But the chill, the cold, metal place was always present, at the edge of things. It reminded him, in no small way, of cold blood. Of frost crawling through him, of chilled, sharp steel against his throat.

And then, of course, there was the man himself. M. He was far older than he looked, though his salt and pepper hair and the lines in his face had begun to hint at his true age. He was a tall, broad man, even while sitting, his dark trench-coat almost shrouding his figure, not allowing you to get a full view of his profile. In front of him on the table was a rifle – Malorian-made, a prototype that Adrian had only ever heard of. It looked like he had just finished putting the thing back together after cleaning it. His cyberarm – black, sleek and made for combat, was no less masterfully made than his own, though it had been repaired and remade over the years.

“Ah, good. You’re here,” he said, giving Adrian a stiff nod. “Guess… it’s time, then. Well, pull up some chairs. This might take a while.”

Adrian couldn’t really blame the man for being tense. This wasn’t exactly something he was comfortable with. The fact that he had offered to tell Adrian about it all earlier was because, for a time, he had felt at least okay with the prospect. That had been a while ago, though, just after they’d figured out that Dead-Eye was a lot more complex then the initial plans indicated. He and Maya took up seats, a bit of awkwardness persisting before M turned to his sister and giving a stiff smile. To be fiar to the man, he rarely seemed to have reason to practice the expression.

“Maya Walker. Pleasure to meet you in… better circ*mstances,” M said, his Brooklyn accent softer than usual. “I’m sorry I wasn’t… should’ve been faster. Gotten there sooner.”

“… it’s already set in stone. Let’s not think about it too much. I know I have,” Maya replied, shaking her head, her Netrunner wetsuit and heavier overcoat letting her resist the unusual, metallic chill of the warehouse. “I know… enough. Who you are. But I don’t know why you know our mom, or why you were willing to come back to Night City just because she called out about a pickup.”

“… all valid, wise questions to ask,” M said, giving her an approving nod, turning fully to the two of them and taking the rifle off the table, clearing the space. “But it’s a long and somewhat complicated story. We’ll be here for a while. Should be done before we’re due to leave, but still. You’re absolutely certain that you want to hear this?”

“Yes.” The siblings answered, simultaneously. There was no hesitation, no doubt. No matter what the real story was, they needed to hear it. If for no other reason than to come to their own form of closure.

“Okay. Good answer. Let’s hope you don’t regret it.” M pulled a cigarette out of his trenchcoat’s inside pocket, lighting it up with a simple, button-activated lighter. Not the Zippo-style ones that most preferred. Convenience and function over style. That had always been M’s way, to the point that it had become it’s own sort of style. He leaned back in his seat, letting the cloud of grey pour out from his lungs in a long, steady stream. “… it began like a lot of these stories do. In the rain, and with the kind of tragedy that made things like weather an afterthought…”

M stood on the edge of this place, and struggled not to curse. He failed.

“f*cking animals. All of ‘em.”

The rain pattered, beat and poured down around him, soaking through his hair and the top of his shirt, his trench-coat managing to keep the rest of his body somewhat dry. He didn’t feel the mild, building chill of the water as it ran down his face, made his slowly graying hair stick to his head, made his lips and cheeks start to go mildly numb. None of it mattered in the face of this.

The town was burning. People were burning. The sky, despite the downpour, was burning in the gloom of approaching night. It was a poor place – not very large, but not particularly small either. Somewhere with corner stores, a single mega-chain that was slowly turning unprofitable, and a slew of local businesses that were dying in their own, slow ways. It was a sleepy place, with all the casual cruelties of everywhere else in the world. But still, this… no one deserved this.

M knew what the perpetrators of something like this were called, the ones burning and raiding the place with sad*stic glee on their faces; Santiago had once told him in one of their few, brief meetings. Raffen Shiv. Not a collective group of Nomads, but a term used ubiquitously by all the Clans and Nations to label the worst of the worst, to set themselves apart from them. Serial killers, rapists, cannibals, the violently insane; people like that. Sometimes they were killed on the spot. Other times, some Nomads would show mercy in their own way, banishing them from their Clans and Nations. The Nations mostly did it to spare the ammo. Which led… to scenes like this.

Much of the old USA – the places uninhabitable without modern technology, like places out in the deserts of the Midwest or deep in the bayou's of the south east, were slowly dying off. The Nomads knew it better, many of them either learning the ways of the open road over years of hard experience or through the knowledge that Native members of the Clans recalled and still utilized, albeit in a far different manner than their ancestors.

This was no such place, and these were no such people. These were simple folk, many of whom had lived, worked and died in this tiny little town in the middle of nowhere. M had seen towns like it before, and had come back years later to see them husks – shells of their former selves, without a soul in sight. That was how towns died. Slowly, with whimpers and prayers to deaf or negligent gods. Either that or, rarely, if you were truly unlucky… violence and brutality.

M was not a god. He was quite a formidable man, but he was also not a fool. He had not survived decades of war and mercenary work because he walked into a situation half-co*cked. No matter how angry the sight made him feel, he blocked it all out, forced himself to think coldly, logically. Truth be told, he wasn’t even supposed to be here at all. He’d wanted to take a break. To feel human again, for a while. Just his luck that humanity decided to rear it’s ugly head, show it’s fullest nature to him. And M was disgusted at it.

He waited. He watched. He planned. For hours, tracking their raiding party back to their camp. Raffen Shiv, for sure. And slavers at that. M was known for his mercy, back in Night City. For being able to get jobs done without killing anyone unnecessarily. Not out of some sense of morality, but rather out of what he saw as necessity. It was one thing to kill when you were told to. It was entirely another to bring someone in alive. Even with chrome, humans could be quite fragile.

These Raffen Shiv would not find that man in their midst that night. Instead, all they would find was the machine of efficient violence that he had become over the many, many long years of fighting a number of enemies. He stood victorious, outliving them still. All but a few.

He approached with his rifle activated, the prototype a gift from old man Malorian, something that many an Edgerunner would kill for. The Assault Cannon. It fired two homing grenades per pull of the trigger, latching onto designated targets and honing in on them like heat-seeker rockets. One could call it a precursor to true smart-weaponry. And unlike the 3516, his was the only one to have ever been finished, larger production halted in the wake of the Fourth Corporate War. A truly one of a kind weapon.

And he used that weapon to bring mayhem onto the Raffen Shiv. To instill in them the same fear that they had put in those townsfolk – caused them to pray to half-remembered, oft forgotten gods. Deaf, silent and uncaring, like all the rest. Their prayers did not save them, after all. Not a one. Not from him.

It had been a long, brutal fight, and he’d ended up down to his last magazine in his Liberty model pistol, the one that he had used long before the Overture was developed. Five bullets left. And at the end of that fight, over two hundred Raffen Shiv laid dead. All at his hands. And he felt not a spark of guilt for it. These people – these things walking in human skin, were worth being proud of killing. He radioed in. Got transport set up. Offered a few favors that he probably shouldn’t have.

M was not a kind person. Before the Night City Holocaust, and the Time of the Red that came after, many who knew him, and many more who didn’t, would call him a cold, brutal pragmatist out for his own self-interest. And he still was that man, to a degree. But he was still a man. He still had a heart. And seeing people packed into cages like spare meat – like animals – awoke in him an anger that he hadn’t felt since his earliest days in the army.

But still, as the people were lifted out of that hell, there was one figure who refused to go. A girl, no more than eleven, black of hair and brown of eye, stabbing a Raffen Shiv who had somehow managed to survive everything. She made him… suffer. M didn’t judge her. The man deserved no less, for participating in what he had. But he grabbed her arm with his cybernetic one. She was covered in blood. Some of it was her own, several weeping cuts across her face and arms saw to that. But most of it wasn’t. This girl was a fighter. Someone who would not go gently into that good night.

“He’s dead, girl. You’ll find no satisfaction mutilating a corpse,” M said to her, releasing her when she tugged back from his grip. She looked as though she wanted to get right back to it. Like the man hadn’t suffered enough. He probably hadn’t. But doing the rest was just a waste of energy. And a waste of anger.

“… he killed mom. He killed dad. He doesn’t deserve the dignity of a corpse,” the girl said, mutely, almost blankly.

“Perhaps not. But you waste yourself on him nonetheless,” M said, placing a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t throw him off. “I think that energy would be better spent giving your loved ones a proper burial. Don’t you?”

“… yeah,” she agreed, meekly. “Yeah. I guess.”

She was repressing a lot. M could tell. He had done it more than once, when he hadn’t felt safe. And he rarely ever felt truly safe. But she held herself together – forced herself to remain stone-faced. Until they returned to that nameless town in the middle of nowhere, America. Until they came face to face with her parent’s corpses, hunched as though shielding someone. Her, perhaps. Maybe that was where all the blood had gotten onto her. Then… then she started crying. The tears of someone who had lost the only people in their life who’d given them a place of belonging. That place of familial love.

M could never – and would never – say that he was unmoved by the sight. Faint though they were, he had memories of his parents, back in Brooklyn. Before New York had become the hellhole that it was today. But instead of crying, he delicately picked up their bodies, and helped the girl to dig through the mud and soaking earth. There was a shovel in his bag, the one that he had packed to camp. Really, he’d only brought so much ammo along with his weapons because he liked to be prepared. And by the time they were done, the bodies were far beneath the ground, and his shovel was damn near broken from all the dirt he had moved.

Then, a grave marker, such as it was. A simple little cross of scavenged wood that he helped the girl carve. Tamara and Milo Chehkov. Russian immigrants, if only by lineage. Their given names were rather distinctly non-Russian. But he could see the ancestry. Saw it in their daughter. Saw it in her tenacity as well as her determination. And also in the deep, painful sadness she carried with her now. It was a cruel land, where they hailed from. Crueler now than ever it had been before. But still, here she stood. Alive. And aimless.

“… what will you do now, girl?” he asked uncharacteristically curious. And concerned. M normally would’ve left her to her fate, taking her to the transports and never see her again. To keep things nice, simple and clean, for the both of them.

“I don’t know,” she admitted, arms clutching each other as she shook. “Nothing makes sense anymore. I’d thought… that my life would start, continue and end in this small little town, where everything made sense. Now the world is larger and… and it’s scary. I don’t want to be scared.”

…

“… then I’ll teach you not to be.”

M placed his trench coat over her head, covering her like a cloak of liquid darkness. He let the rain soak his skin, his clothes, like a cleansing stream. His cybernetic right arm was exposed to the world. The sleek design, beneath smooth, rolling trails of raindrops almost shone in the little light that remained. “I am not a kind teacher, but I’m not a cruel one either. My profession is a deadly one. But if you come out the other side of it, then I promise you this. There will be few things that will frighten you ever again. If that’s what you want.”

She looked up at him, brown eyes glaring into grey, full of fire and spite and determination to be stronger; to be better. To never let something like this happen to her ever again. “… I want that. Teach me. Teach me to not be scared.”

“Okay then. What’s your name, girl?”

She pulled herself taller, stood a little straighter backed, her jaw clenched in anticipation. “Wendy Chehkov, sir.”

“Well, Wendy… I won’t promise this will be easy. You may well curse my name to the grave by the time we’re done. But you’ll be alive to curse me as such, so that’s good enough for me. And you’ll be able to kill just about anyone who even dares to cross you. You got all that?”

“Yes, but… what is your name?”

He told her. She didn’t believe him, for a few moments. M wouldn’t have believed himself either. But then again, it was his name. Might as well wear it, and all the glory and sins that came along with it. The fact that he had just slaughtered two hundred Raffen Shiv slavers probably helped the prospect sink in for her.

M had kept his promise, and Wendy had ended up cursing him many times over the course of her training. It made him laugh, sometimes; the creative insults she could come up with to show her displeasure. It really did.

In the intervening seven years since he had picked her up, they had been all across the country, and sometimes outside of it. Most of the time, it was as insurance, to make sure that things in certain cities were developing as the top brass wanted them to, with him as their insurance policy to make sure they did just that. Other times, they sent him to perform darker, shadier deeds. Deeds that left Wendy worried, and beside herself.

It was a strange bond they had. They were closer to master and student than father and daughter, but he could still feel those paternal feelings rise up within him when she had first been approached by some of the younger engineers. She’d been sixteen at the time, damnit! They could’ve at least waited two more years, when she was old enough to make that kind of decision on her own.

Nevertheless, he taught her as much as he could as fast as he could. General combat, heavy weaponry, stealth, wide-scale tactics, assassination, marksmanship, tailing, and most key and enjoyable of all, demolitions. His specialty. She took to sniping more readily, but he made damn sure she knew how to blow sh*t up. His old mentor would be proud.

Wendy had gotten taller over the years – a lot taller. Not quite as tall as he was at six foot two, but still, she was only three inches shorter than he was. Her dark hair was now in a short, straight cut that barely came down to her chin, her features turning to a blade-like mix of danger and beauty. It was half the reason they had to beat of those younger men with a stick. She often did it herself these days, but he still kept an eye out.

As the day’s training started to wrap up, M called Wendy over to where he sat, recovering his breath. She had already worked up a sweat, and seemed confused that they were canceling training early, but he spoke before her mind could wander too far. “Today’s gonna be your first solo mission. I know you’ve been lookin’ forward to this day for a long time, but I still want you to emphasize caution. Go ahead and shower off. Briefing’s in ten.”

“Sir!” Wendy replied, snapping into a quick, excited salute with a smile on her face, nervous energy causing her limbs to shake a little before she peeled off to wash the sweat away. M stood, and walked over to the briefing room: a simple, almost boring looking place that seemed to half resemble a classroom. Damn, he hadn’t been to school in… almost seven decades? Or was it eight now? Did his military enlistment count? God, he was f*cking old…

A few minutes later, Wendy walked into the room with the dark fatigues of special ops. A long-sleeve, heavy black shirt and matching pants adorned her figure, along with the boots that most special operatives wore off-duty. A point of pride, like the jumping boots from the airborne platoons. There was no full organization, no chain of command except a direct line to President Kress herself. Essentially, they were her personal death squad. And some of the people they were sent after really needed killing.

He briefed her on the target; a standard attempted defector to foreign powers. An older engineer called Halligan. He was not well liked, even by the people who had worked with him, and had no friends or close family relations, thanks in no small part to a messy divorce. M couldn’t say he had ever been interested in that kind of thing, but seeing results like that made him glad to spare himself from all the headache it often seemed to cause.

“Recapture is preferable, but lethal force has been authorized as well,” he said, looking to his student to make sure she understood. “That mean no sniping. You’ll get the job done a lot more quickly and quietly with a silenced pistol and a good disguise rather than that beast of a rifle you love so much.”

Wendy blew out a snort of dissatisfaction, but also didn’t object to the point he’d made. “Yeah, I know, I’ll be careful. Still, how’s that facial mapping cyberware coming along? Is it still in testing?”

“Yeah, and unless you’re keen to get your whole face ripped off, I’d hold back on volunteering for it, for now,” M said, shivering. He could remember the last time he’d gone in on one of those test installations. It was a ghoulish and nauseating sight, to see the flesh beneath the skin of one’s face. Like an anatomy book brought to gruesome life. M was far from the list of volunteers, that was for damn sure. If Wendy decided to sit in on one of those surgeries, she’d probably be right there along with him.

They went over the rest of the details – where the man was heading, and why he was being killed. Most of the time, assassination jobs didn’t include the latter details, but M preferred to know why he was doing what he was doing these days. He’d long made the mistake of following orders without question, and in the end, it had gotten a lot of his friends killed. He didn’t want that for Wendy. At the very least, knowing the ‘why’ could go some way to steeling herself for the job at hand.

“Any questions?” the man asked, hands behind his back as he looked to his apprentice. The first he’d had in years. Before, teaching Edgerunners had been a matter of course, a way to earn some extra scratch and bolster his own reputation, in the most pragmatic sense. These days, he tended to be a lot more selective.

“Nothing that comes to mind. Though I’m kinda pissed that you’re not letting me use Eventide,” Wendy admitted with a sigh.

“Feel free to use the thing next time you get an assignment that needs you to pop someone’s head off from three miles away, little bird,” M said, walking over to Wendy and ruffling her dark hair with his left hand – the normal one. His other wasn’t exactly made with such soft things in mind. “And I told you to stop callin’ it that. Givin’ a weapon a name is arrogant in the extreme, and I won’t have you gettin’ picked off because you were arrogant. Do the job, do it well, and get paid. Alright?”

“I know, dad,” she said. Then froze immediately. And so did M. It was the first time that she’d actually called him that. The fact that it had simply slipped out, that she hadn’t really thought about it when she said it, was telling in and of itself. What felt instinctual often said far more about a person than deep thought ever could.

And with that little slip… sh*t. How was he supposed to handle that? He hadn’t planned on being a father – he’d always known he’d be sh*t at it. The only things he was really good at were fighting and blowing things up. He knew how to control damage, how to control the carnage, but he was just as capable of mass violence as a certain Borg in Arasaka’s employ. He just never saw the point in causing so much death when no one, least of all himself, would benefit from it.

“… I’ll get ready now,” she said, awkwardly standing up and giving M a crisp, stiff salute that was almost robotic in it’s movements. sh*t. She was usually a lot more cheeky about it than this. Wendy had never learned to trust this place, or many of the people in it. Which was honestly quite justified. She liked the engineers, some of the people in communications and operations, but never any of the other actual operatives. Other than him, at least. And he imagined that was because he had taken her in when she’d had nothing – less than nothing.

“Wen… Agent Nighthawk.”

She stopped at the use of her codename. Then, awkwardly, Wendy turned back to him, eyes fixed on the ground, refusing to look up at him. Like a child who thought they were in trouble, and were about to be punished for it. M had no such punishments in mind. He wasn’t that kind of man – needless cruelty was for narcissists and unhinged sociopaths. So…

“You be careful out there. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. I’ll be watchin’ things as they develop, help on over-watch duties as I can, but as far as the field goes, you’ll be on your own for the whole of the operation,” he said, starting with some basic formalities, something that a mentor would say to his student.

“I know, sir. Thank you for the reminder,” she replied, voice stiff.

“… and… I’m proud of you,” he continued, placing a hand on her shoulder. Firm, but not constricting. He squeezed it lightly, letting her know that it was genuine praise. She looked up at him, surprised. And for the first time in a long time, an unironic, unsarcastic smile made it’s way across his face. “I’ve gotta say, of everyone I’ve trained in my long years… you have been my favorite. And you mean a lot more to me besides. I know it’s been a tough seven years. I’ve put you through hell, and you’ve cursed me for it with growing creativity. It’s always entertaining to hear. I’m not askin’ you to call me dad or anythin’ like that. But… I think… sh*t, I’m not good at this.”

“I know,” Wendy said, grasping the hand on her shoulder with her own, lightly peeling it away. His heart sank. Had he-

Then she dove into a tight, fast hug, one that allowed for little movement of his torso. Her stance was made crystal clear, in that moment, and the words that came after only cemented it for her. “… I know you’re not my real dad. And thinking about my parents still hurts. But… you’ve been there for me for all this time. And you are my dad, where it counts. I don’t think we can do an adoption or anything like that – I’m a little old for it, but can I… call you that?”

“… yeah,” he replied, simply, shortly, as he returned the unexpected embrace. It was the warmest that he had ever felt. “Feel free. Just make sure Kress don’t hear ya talkin’ about me like that. She’d a mean ol’ bitch, and she’ll use it to control you.”

“I consider it a risk worth taking,” she said beaming at him as she disentangled herself from the embrace. “… love you, dad. See you when I get back.”

“… love you too, little bird,” he said, ruffling her hair with his left hand one last time. “Now get goin.’ Wheels up in thirty minutes.”

The operation went off without a hitch. She brought the engineer in alive, while having to fire a single shot. Extractions could suck at times, especially if the subject of it was unwilling, but she’d managed it just as he’d taught her. Even improvised her way out of what might have been a death-sentence for any other operator. Still, the fact that Elizabeth Kress, President of the NUSA as it stood and queen bitch of NUSA Black OPs, had taken such a keen interest in his protege was telling. And concerning.

“Kress. What the f*ck is this?”

M had never been anything but polite to the former president of the NUSA. Despite the fact that the woman had no official presence in the new government anymore, she still held quite a bit of influence, even in her advanced age. Though she had made a show of her retirement earlier in the year, everyone who knew the woman also knew that she wasn’t content to let someone else make a mess of the system that she had labored so long to perfect. So, a puppet, rather than a real president, to make sure her house of cards didn’t fall over so soon. Bullhead Betty was persistent, vigilant, forward thinking and utterly ruthless. He used to admire those things about her.

He felt no such admiration for her, the order she’d given to him clutched in his grasp, all the control in his body the only thing keeping him from crushing it in his cybernetic black hand.

“Exactly what it looks like,” she said, tone cold, flat, but still as sharp as a blade. She had not grown senile in her old age. Which meant that this was not some flight of fancy on her part. “I don’t trade in bullsh*t, Mo-”

“Don’t you f*cking dare.” His own tone was just as flat, just as sharp, just as cold. But behind it all was a seething rage so hot that he could feel his mental workings start to frost over. “You just lost any right to say my name. Call me somethin’ else, or don’t call me anythin’ at all.”

“You are reacting poorly to all of this, Mor-”

“Do not f*cking test me right now, Kress. I’ve got half a mind to shoot you where you stand. And don’t think for a moment that those turrets in your ceiling will kill me before I kill you.”

.

..

…

“… very well, Hammer. You are quite fortunate you’re such a valuable agent. If you weren’t, I could’ve had you court-martialed just for saying that,” she said, an annoyed sigh escaping her lips with the address. Her office was only a smaller part of her larger mansion, the one that she lived in now that she was officially in ‘retirement,’ but it was a reflection of the woman herself. There were military accolades on one wall, and rows of books printed on real paper on the other, on a genuine mahogany shelf. Expensive even before such things had become corporate commodities. In the center was a simply carved desk of the same wood, in front of a window that revealed the DC skyline.

It was this window she stood in front of now, back to M, her graying hair shortly cut just beneath her chin, with simple, comfortable clothes draped over her figure. You’d never think her to be one of the most powerful people in the world these days. Then again, no one had really taken the NUSA into account since it’s founding. A mistake many corporations were making. And a mistake that Kress and her proper successor would exploit ruthlessly. But that was a future, distant plan. This was… different. Personal.

“I don’t give a sh*t about any f*ckin’ court martial. You’d have me back out in the field within weeks,” he pointed out. The fact that Kress didn’t immediately refute the point only confirmed the truth of it. “So again, I ask… what the f*ck is this?!”

He held up the document responsible for all of this – an order Kress had given to him because of his own ruthless, pragmatic nature. An order that he had no wish to follow. The first in decades. The ex-President sighed. Heavily. Like she was tired of long carrying the weight that was the NUSA on her back. He felt no sympathy for her plight in that moment.

“The FIA has only been newly established, Hammer, and while we’re off to a great start, and people are being trained quickly… it’s not quickly enough. Not for my liking. We have a few who are standouts, who have taken to this with relish. Solomon Reed, in particular. You’d like him. Or you would’ve, back in the day. But not all of our recruits are Solomon Reed. And we need to shore up our training. Make people better far faster than normal learning patterns would allow. Braindance technology can close that gap, if we play our cards right, utilize it properly. It has been growing in complexity by the day, and simulating that kind of training, so that what takes weeks might only take hours, is not something I will scoff at. No matter the methods needed to achieve it.

“Truth be told, the original plan was to have the template for the accelerated training be you. I argued against it rather vigorously. You are far too valuable an agent, even in your old age, to be reduced to a training program. So… a compromise, of sorts. Unpleasant as it is.”

“Use my protégé. Without my say-so. Without her consent,” M snapped back, gritting his teeth to hold back the seething rage behind his eyes. That still didn’t stop some of it from slipping out with his next words. “And you’re not just talkin’ about recording her teachin’ for your program – you are talkin’ about using f*cking Soulkiller. Makin’ her into an engram – a shadow of herself. The one line. The one. f*cking. Line. That I asked you not to cross. That I begged you not to cross. Do you not remember? Or do you just not care anymore?”

“Not particularly, no.”

The cold efficiency of that reply stole all the fire from him. The shock of it was just… this woman. This person. She had just thrown her word to the side. For her idea of what the NUSA needed to be. What lengths were required to ensure it’s protection.

“Then use me-”

“I will do no such thing. Did you not hear me? You are too valuable. Too good of an operator. And quite loyal besides. She is… less vital. Expendable, really. Why did you think I let her tag along with you all these years? Do you really think it was just a whim on my part, giving my approval to training an eleven year-old girl in all the ways you know how to kill people?”

“… you planned this. You cold hearted bitch, you planned this,” M realized. He was seriously tempted to just shoot her now, consequences be damned. He still might’ve… if he hadn’t thought of Wendy in that moment. It was all that held him back. He needed to get her our of here. Away from… this. Away from Kress. And he couldn’t do that if he was dead on her floor. Even if part of him wanted to take the bitch down with him so, so badly. After… she would get what was coming to her. One day. If not by his hand, then by the cold, relentless march of time.

“Not all of it. I couldn’t have predicted that she would be such a good student. Or that she would become one of our most accomplished operators in less than a decade. But still, they were happy surprises. All the better, really,” she shrugged, as though it were as banal as the weather, rather than a young woman’s life.

“… why?”

“Because if I can sacrifice one Nighthawk to gain two hundred – a thousand, even, think of the lives we could save. The order we could bring. I’m too old to unify the States as they once were. I’m not sure I’ll live much longer than another decade. Maybe two, if I’m stupidly lucky. Which I rather decidedly am not. But given the right tools, the right guidance, and the right mindset, someone else could. And I might have such a person in mind. But that only matters if we can make the FIA more than what it is – more than a bank account with lofty ambitions. It needs to be an organized machine of information, espionage and tactical operations. And despite many strides in that area, it’s not that. Not yet. And anything that gets us closer to that faster, anything that shores up it’s weaknesses is a necessary evil, in my eyes.

“So, Hammer… will you follow orders? Or am I going to come to regret sparring you from your protege’s fate?”

…

M said nothing. He snapped a quick salute – a disrespectful, sloppy thing that Johnny Silverhand would’ve been quite flabbergasted and amused to see, and turned out of the room at a quick clip, leaving the mansion entirely, thoughts racing at a thousand miles a second.

sh*t. The whole thing was sh*t. M had been a soldier his whole life, had followed orders without questioning them more times than he could count. Maybe he c should’ve thought a little harder about this kind of stuff. He had been following orders. But then again, that was the excuse that many who’d partaken in atrocities had used. Even if he understood it – had been in that position himself more than once… he wasn’t sure he could justify it any more. Not for them, and not for himself either. Especially not for himself.

But this was one order that he knew he wouldn’t be following. He couldn’t. He was too entrenched to go with Wendy – too many ties. To Kress, NUSA Black OPs and the growing FIA, and they could probably track him through his cyberware besides. Some of that stuff wasn’t the kind of thing you could just cut out. Especially at his age. But he could still get her out, before someone else got the order, rather than him. Kress would rake him over the coals. Have him imprisoned, lock down his cyberware, keep him isolated for as long as possible without breaking him. But she would not kill her favorite attack dog, such as he was.

There was another question he had to wonder about too. How in the f*ck did she manage to get her hands on Soulkiller? It must’ve been a recent acquisition, otherwise she’d have been using it long before tonight. He could see that clear, now. She was more than ruthless enough to do such a thing. To do many such things. His request of that promise of her had been an insurance policy, after seeing and hearing too many horror stories about Arasaka’s brutal work with that program. But if it was a recent acquisition, it also likely meant they hadn’t had a chance to sift through the data yet, to copy it fully. It was a complex program, as he understood it. So complex that Arasaka had kidnapped Alt Cunningham to recreate her unintentional masterpiece from scratch. And tested it on her, just to make sure she’d made the real thing. It had worked. And the world was still feeling the consequences of that tragedy.

That meant that they were trying to either adapt or copy it to do specific things. Both of those processes would take time. Which also meant that their ‘master copy’ likely only existed on one piece of hardware – a single drive or server. Which also meant that now was the only chance he would get to make sure that no one in the NUSA would be able to use it. Bad enough that Arasaka had the f*cking thing. If the NUSA ever got it in their heads to start another Corporate War via Militech, and it went into the Net, which was a near certainty… the world as they knew it would f*cking end. He’d have to call in an old friend. She would relish the chance to wreck their copy of Soulkiller, and to blow the place it was stored to shredded chunks of data while she was at it.

And all of that paled in comparison to the fear he felt for Wendy. There had never been an adoption, never been anything official. Something like that would’ve given people a paper trail, and in public they were very careful to keep their relationship as master/student as clear as they could. But in all the ways that mattered, and many more that didn’t, Wendy Chehkov was his daughter. And he would not let them take her. He wouldn’t.

He rode fast for where she was staying. M technically had a place of his own in DC, but it was bugged and monitored to hell and back. He really only lived there for the sake of appearances these days. Wendy had an apartment of her own, one that was no less bugged or monitored by Black OPs and the FIA, with the former slowly but surely being integrated into the latter. He really hoped she wasn’t with her output right now, or things were going to get way more complicated than they already were. Or was it input? She was dating a guy, but he couldn’t remember which term was right these days, and the slang seemed to change every other week.

He pulled up outside of her building, leaping out of the car and checking to make sure that he had at least one weapon with him. The Assault Cannon was back at his place – no time to go and grab it, and it was too conspicuous besides. All he had with him at the moment was his Overture, the lone model of weapon that Malorian had made in years. It was a popular gun, and a reliable one too. They didn’t do things by halves, and his had been modified for higher caliber use. It was almost a Borg weapon, honestly. If he didn’t have his black cyberarm, he didn’t think he’d be able to use it properly. Which was all the better reason that he was such a damned good shot.

The ride up the elevator and the walk to the apartment itself was quiet, in a tense, bated sense. The hallway felt narrower than it should’ve, even though it was a decently wide thing. With one hand under his trenchcoat, M crept forward, slowly, glancing at every door, noting every sound. It was entirely possible that Kress had gotten wise and was already planning to send people to the place to take Wendy in for Soulkiller. f*ck, he couldn’t even think about that without trying to wretch.

When he came up to his protege’s door, he knocked softly against the wood, hand still gripping the revolver. M listened, trying to make out the shuffle of footsteps, the movements inside. It was soundproofed, so it quickly proved a fruitless effort, but M’s old habits would die when he did, at this point. That he was already treating this place like a battlefield only spoke to how dire the circ*mstances were.

Still, eventually, the door slid open, revealing Wendy in a slightly rumpled shirt and comfortable pants, suitable for a night in. Given that her hair was mussed and messy and there was a slight smear to her makeup along the edge of her lip, she and that partner of hers had been in the middle of… something rather intense that he would not examine any further than that. There were more important things to worry about besides.

“Dad? What’s wrong?” she asked, her demeanor going from blue-balled annoyance to concerned when she saw his expression. It was not a happy or welcome sight, he knew.

“A lot’s wrong,” M said, brushing past her and into the apartment, silently signaling her to close the door behind her. Wendy did so without hesitation, the complete trust in him only further cementing his decision. He noticed her partner on the couch, clearly coming down from whatever the two had been doing before he’d arrived. His hair was short and brown, a little taller than Wendy’s considerable height, and his eyes were a steely, metallic grey that reminded him of someone from a long time ago, back when Night City had been his regular haunt. He was not examining that. Wendy was a grown ass woman and they had more important things to worry about.

Slowly, methodically, M started to switch off all the cameras in the apartment that he knew about, and the bugs as well. Hopefully, Kress would just see it as setup, as him getting prepared to ‘follow his orders.’ And if not, it would still buy them some time, at the very least.

“How much do you trust him?” M asked, looking to her partner with a raised brow. He hadn’t gotten to know Wendy’s romantic partners very well – he kept himself far away from that part of his daughter’s life, but these two had been dating for almost two years now.

“With my life,” she said, without hesitation. “Rhys is a good guy. A little scatterbrained for his own good, but he’s done right by me more than once.”

“… I feel like I should be offended at the scatterbrained comment,” her partner, Rhys, said from the couch, leaning forward as he started to sense how serious things were getting.

“Hon, you once went on an hour long tangent on the differences between bio-engineering and mechanical engineering and that the latter was superior in several ways,” Wendy deadpanned. A trait that she’d picked up from him.

“And in all the ways that matter, it’s kinda always been the more vital of the two. Especially when it comes to cyberware and all the functions…” Rhys trailed off as he almost started to go on one of those aforementioned tangents. “But, uh, I can talk about bio-engineering and how it’s related to cyberware later. Uh… don’t worry, sir. I know to keep certain sh*t to myself if I don’t want to get shot.”

“Good,” M said, giving the man a stiff nod. “Basic rundown: sh*t’s startin’ to hit the fan, and you’ve got about three hours to ditch DC and get you somewhere safe.”

“That… is not enough information to go off,” Wendy said, crossing her arms. “What the f*ck is happening? And why us, specifically?”

“You, specifically. Rhys can stay if he wants, but you’ve gotta leave.”

“Again, if you could tell me why-”

“Wendy. Kress has Soulkiller.”

That statement sent the whole room into a dead silence. Everyone in there had heard horror stories about what had happened to those poor Netrunners and prisoners who’d died at the hands of that program. And M had even witnessed more than one diving Netrunner fry their brains when they encountered the thing.

“They have it. And they plan on using it. On you, specifically.”

“… what?” her face had turned utterly pale, so great was the shock to her system. “But… no. No, they can’t, they…”

“Most wouldn’t. Kress… she would. I just got the order not even half an hour ago. Delivered by her personally. She clearly wants this kept close to the chest. And I’m not gonna follow a f*ckin’ order that puts you into the sights of that f*cking thing. But for the third f*ckin’ time, that means you gotta leave tonight. If your partner wants to come with, he’d best decide now.”

“W-wait, what?” Rhys spoke up for the first time since the conversation had started. Of all of them, he had been most shocked to learn about Soulkiller. Probably a sign that he was the most normal. “I can’t… I mean, how…”

“This ain’t a fair choice, but you do have one. Either you stay with Wendy, if she wants you along, you head out on your own to give the both of you less of a chance of being found out, or you stay here and keep your f*ckin’ mouth shut tighter than a cat’s asshole. I’d prefer not to dwell on option four.”

“Dad, do not threaten my input,” Wendy said, her voice hardening to steel.

“I don’t like it either. But if it keeps you safe… ugh,” M said, rubbing his hand against the back of his head. “Let’s keep it off the table, for now.”

“… I… things have been getting weirder for a while now,” Rhys said. M raised a brow at that. He couldn’t remember where the kid worked, though he seemed to recall it was for some form of the NUSA’s old Black Ops weapons engineer corps before they’d been phased into the FIA. “They’ve been practicing with certain prototypes. I know that the facial mapping one is an open secret, but it’s not the only one. Targeted EMP rounds, ICE so complex it might be able to stand the wider reaches of the Net for just a little bit, sh*t like that. They’re prepping for… I dunno what.”

“… si vis pacem, para bellum.”

“What?”

“When you want peace, prepare for war. That’s the basic logic of the whole thing, as I understand it. Kress doesn’t know what fight’s comin, and it doesn’t matter which one it is. All that matters is that she thinks the other shoe is gonna drop – and it f*ckin’ will with this country’s luck – and she is willing to do anything in the name of preparing for that threat. Anything.”

.

..

…

“Okay,” Rhys replied, as though M’s words had set something in stone for him. “Okay. I’ll go with you. If you’ll have me, Wendy.”

“Always,” she said, lacing her fingers through his and kissing his left temple. M felt a little awkward at the display, so he just turned a bit and gave the couple what little privacy he could. Hm. So, Rhys wasn’t the type to turn tail and run, even from sh*t as terrifying as this. That was good. They’d need that kind of trust to get away from Kress, and the NUSA as a whole.

M took her and Rhys out of the city. The order for her death was still on the down-low, and the guards didn’t try to stop him when he left DC using the front gate. He made a joke that Kress had finally convinced him to take that vacation she’d always been nagging him about. And she had nagged to him about it more than once. He just hoped that Kress would be making certain assumptions regarding his actions. And as if things hadn’t been gloomy enough, it started to f*ckin’ rain. Damnit.

“I can take you to a ripper in old New York I know. Decent guy. He’ll rip your old stuff out and give you medical grade replacements so good you won’t be able to tell the difference from real biology. Can’t say it’ll be a pleasant experience, but I can’t imagine at least one of your implants doesn’t have a tracker in ‘em. Best to rip ‘em all out, just to be safe.”

“That’s what I was thinking. And… sh*t, I can’t ask you that,” Wendy said, letting a hand trail over her face as she groaned.

“What do you mean?” Rhys asked.

“Well… after we go to the ripperdoc, how the hell are we gonna get away? We can’t stay so close to DC. New York might still be a hellhole, but they’ll still look,” Wendy pointed out.

“And none of the usual methods I got ‘ll help on that front. I got an old Netrunner friend that might help you out there, but she’ll be busy with takin’ out their copy of Soukiller ASAP. It’s the first thing she’d want to do. Only reason she hasn’t gotten to Arasaka’s copies yet is because their ICE is patched hourly and there are just too damn many copies of it in their system these days. I could drive you-”

“No dad,” Wendy refused immediately. “You’re already risking a lot by doing even this much. I know that you think Kress won’t kill you, but I still think she just might if you pulled us out from under her personally.”

It was a distant possibility, in his mind, but M also acknowledged that it was still a possibility. Well.. damnit. Were the sh*t outta luck?

“… I know some people.”

Surprisingly enough, the answer had come from Rhys. He started squirming in his seat when father and daughter both turned to look at him, the looks of confusion mirrored perfectly on both their faces. “Damn, that’s uncanny. B-but, uh… I… I know some people in a Nomad Clan. They tend to come east around this time of year, trading supplies and offering labour where they can. I can talk to them, get us passage to… wherever’s out of the NUSA’s reach.”

“Only one place I can think of,” Wendy said, grimly. “That’s within reach, anyway.”

…

“… are you sure? That place… it might not be a hellhole, but it’s not a nice place to live. Certainly not a place to live a peaceful life,” M said, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to discourage her. She was his daughter, after all. She was stubborn in all the same ways that he was.

“No. But it’s the only place that they can’t enter overtly, and the one place they won’t think to look. If your Netrunner can scramble us new identities, and we cover our tracks really, really well… then we’ll have a chance. Slim though it might be, it will be a chance at something. Better Night City than Soulkiller.”

“… true enough.

“Hey, Rhys? How do you know this Clan, anyhow?” M asked, confused on that point.

“Oh. Er… it’s a long story, but I used to ride with them. I was born to ‘em,” Rhys admitted.

“Not a whole lot of techies there. At least not any that don’t also deal in vehicles almost exclusively,” M replied. “Which Clan?”

“The Aldecaldos. Why?”

.

..

…

“… somewhere up there, some god is laughin’ at me,” M deadpanned. “Your last name wouldn’t happen to be Santiago, would it?”

“How’d you know?”

“f*cking son of a bitch!” M slammed his palm against the steering wheel, voice audibly annoyed.

There was little small talk the rest of the way to New York. Well, the outskirts of it, at least. It still took them over three hours to get there, even when he blew through speed limits. Yeah, Kress was gonna have his hide over this, for sure.

Still, they reached his ripper contact, who took the job and got to replacing all of her cyberware with medical grade stuff. When she was done a few hours later, still a little groggy from the anesthetics, Rhys went in and had the same done to him. It would put them at a disadvantage, to be sure. But at least this way there was no possible way for them to be tracked.

And now, he and Wendy were waiting curbside while the ripper finished up on Rhys, a cigarette in the former’s hand. His daughter abstained. She’d never really liked vices, even drinking, which she only partook in on celebratory occasions. The fact that she was a proven and historic lightweight had nothing to do with it, he was sure.

It was still raining. A bit more lightly now, but the drizzle was enough to remind him of that first night, when he’d placed his trench coat over that shivering, scared little girl who’d just lost her parents. Their story had started in rain. And it seemed that the world saw fit that it would end in rain as well.

“… there’s someone I can call who owes me a favor. She’ll help you get settled in. You’ll probably never meet ‘er in person, and she’ll want to keep it that way. She ain’t exactly a people person.”

“One of your mercenary contacts?” she asked, twisting the toe of her boot against the concrete beneath her foot.

“Something like that,” he admitted.

“… then I’d best keep it that way too,” she said with a long, tired sigh. “If I’m gonna be done with this, then I need to be done with it. I can’t well ‘die’ and then suddenly appear in Night City with the same skills and gear that you trained me to use. It’d draw too much attention. That means… a normal job. f*ck, how am I gonna hold a normal job? All I know is how to kill people.”

“… I’m sorry. I wish I could’ve-”

“Don’t be sorry, dad,” Wendy said, shaking her head in disagreement. “I agreed to learn how to kill. And I did. You taught me well. We just… f*ck, this sucks.”

“It does,” he agreed. He trusted Wendy. He knew, logically, that she would be fine on her own. But still, he couldn’t shake the worry. He didn’t think he would ever shake the worry.

“… I, uh… learned something else, while I was in there,” Wendy said, seeming a lot more nervous than she had been just a second ago. M raised a brow at that. It wasn’t like her to get nervous about anything. sh*t, if he recalled correctly, she was the one who’d asked Rhys out. Not what most would consider appropriate, but it was quite the reflection on the kind of person she’d become. That she was so nervous at all was strange. “Something the doc told me. Might make things a bit more complicated. Not for you. It’s a problem for me and Rhys.”

“Well, go ahead and spill it. I ain’t talkin’ to no one,” M said, taking a long drag on of his cigarette.

“… I’m pregnant.”

The older man sputtered and choked on the smoke in his lungs, practically hacking them out with the fit he sent himself into. He dropped the deathstick on the ground, hands on his knees before he finally managed to take a breath, crushing the dropped deathstick under his boot. God, that was a surprise and a f*ckin’ half. And really, how else was he supposed to respond to the fact that his daughter just told him she was pregnant?

“How… *ahem* – how long?” he asked, clearing his throat mid question.

“Uh… almost a month now?” Wendy said, not quite sure herself. “It’s not like we weren’t active during those months. Guess it’s just as well I don’t like smokin’ or drinkin’ and all that stuff.”

“Hm. You got a plan? Does Rhys know?” M asked, trying to get a full grasp on the situation. “And… what do you want, in relation to that development?”

“I… might. And no. He just went under. I’d like to tell him the news when he can process it fully. And, well… I’m not sure it’s a good idea, carrying this kid to term. Especially on the run,” Wendy said, her hands crossing over her stomach. “I have no idea how long it’ll be before we reach Night City. So many things could go wrong, and I… f*ck, would I even be a good mom? All I’ve ever known how to do is be a little brat and kill people. That’s… what if I f*ck up? What if I can’t protect them?”

“… those are all maybes, little bird,” M said, placing a comforting hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “And they’ll stay that, for now. You’ve got more time than you think. But you didn’t answer the question. What do you want, now that you know about this?”

“… I felt kinda excited, y’know,” Wendy admitted, a slight, embarrassed flush coming to her cheeks as she continued. “The idea that I might be a mom, that someone like me could bring a life into this world instead of taking from it… and then everything that could go wrong just sort of… sprang to mind. All the ways I could screw up. But part of me still wants to try. And I don’t know if that part of me is bigger or smaller than the part that’s scared.”

M let the silence hand between them for a brief time, trying to gather his own thoughts on the matter. He’d never given much thought to whether Wendy would want kids of her own. It had never really come up with them, and he wasn’t particularly involved in that part of her life. But still, she needed advice, and ill-equipped as he was, he was going to f*cking try, damnit.

“I won’t pretend to have all the answers. And I can’t pretend to know what you’re gonna be going through while your term develops. I haven’t lived the experience. I didn’t much want a kid of my own – never had the interest. But then I found you. And while I’ll be the first to admit these situations are quite different in their circ*mstances, I can say that takin’ you in was probably the best decision I ever made and one that I have never regretted. I won’t tell you to keep the kid or not. It ain’t my place, and I won’t be carryin’ ‘em. As long as you’re sure you won’t regret your choice, then I’ll support you no matter what. So long as it is your choice.”

It seemed to be enough, for Wendy. She didn’t answer him right away, but she did nod to him, firmly, which was all M needed to see to feel reassured. Whatever decision she came to, it would be her own. That was all he needed to know.

“Since Rhys and I are gonna be ‘dead,’ we’ll be in the market for new names. Think your contact could help us out with that?” Wendy asked.

“Probably. You got one in mind?” M questioned back, wondering what she would choose. He still had to contact his Netrunner friend, still had to face the music with Kress. But he’d stay here with her as long as he could. He had no idea when, or if, he would see her again.

“… I’ve always liked trees. Maybe I could take some inspiration from my favorite one,” Wendy said, turning to M with a great, big grin on her face. “How does Willow Walker sound?”

“Seems to suit you perfectly.”

“After that, the two got on an Aldecaldo convoy, rejoined the main Clan, and a little over nine months later, got to Night City. In the meantime, my Netrunner friend purged a few dozen state secrets along with the NUSA copy of the Soulkiller program. The rest is… well, history,” M said. He’d gotten stiffer as the story had gone on, the telling bringing up old, scarred emotions that the man clearly hadn’t let himself process. Adrian wondered if, with this context in mind, this was the reason he’d been able to keep himself together after his mother’s death. If he had just buried it under all of that. Or maybe he had mourned in his own, private way. One that he preferred to keep to himself.

“… mom was Black Ops?!” Maya asked, confused and surprised all at once. “And dad was an Aldecaldo?! How?! How did we never learn about this?!”

“I mean… it certainly explains his opinions,” Adrian said, recalling some of the things his father had tried to instill. The man had a certain contempt for corps that wasn’t learned, but experienced. And given just how quickly Nomads were tossed to the side once proper supply lines had been restored, he could understand where that dissatisfaction came from. “And if they were running from the actual NUSA government, then they would probably wouldn’t be spreading that stuff around. It’d draw attention. Uh… also, was she…?”

“Pregnant with you? Definitely. The timeframe matches up to around the date you were born,” M said, leaning back in his chair.

“But… you said it took them a little over nine months to get here. And mom already pregnant for a few weeks,” Adrian said, confused. “Was I born in an Aldecaldo camp?”

“Maybe. I never got the details on the birth, only that she had ya, and she was happy she kept ya,” M said, smiling. “And it seems to me she never regretted that.”

“No. She… she was the best.” Adrian couldn’t help the fond, wistful smile that crossed his face. Willow had done so much for him and Maya – more than they had ever known, in truth. Then, he looked up at the man, and asked something else. “So… does that make us your grandkids or something?”

“… or something,” M said with a long sigh. “I wasn’t exactly involved in your lives before your mom died. I ain’t earned the position. I’d be honored, but… let’s leave that for another day, yeah?”

Maya spoke up then, though this was no less pleasant a topic. “If you trained mom as well and as thoroughly as you claim, then… why did…”

“… three reasons,” M said, no less stiff no that the topic had shifted. “First… she was nearly twenty years out of practice. That’s a lot of time to spend not training, not fighting, all that stuff. I’d imagine she remembered a lot of what I taught her; I make damn sure my lessons stick. But still, I don’t think it’d be enough to escape a situation like… like that. Second was that she had no combat cyberware. Not implants at all, really, if what you told me is true. Can’t blame her paranoia. It’s part of the reason she survived Black Ops so long. Third… she was exhausted. Tired. Everyone can be caught by surprise. Especially when they’re asleep.”

“… dad’s last name was Santiago?” Adrian asked, trying to change the subject to something a bit more tolerable.

“It was, yeah. But I guess he and your mom decided to get hitched pretty soon after they left New York. She chose the name, and he opted to adopt it. It was cute, all things considered,” M said with a smile.

“What’s the name mean? I think you mentioned a Santiago earlier in the story, but was that a first name or a last name?”

“Yes.”

“… that doesn’t answer the question,” Adrian deadpanned.

“I know, but it’s the only answer I’ve got for ya. The guy only ever went by Santiago, or sometimes Nomad Santiago, if he was feelin’ fancy,” M answered with a shrug. “And the reason I started swearin’ up a storm is ‘cause Santiago was the leader of the Aldecaldo Nomad Nation for several years. The ones that parked outside Night City are a smaller contingent of ‘em. Aldecaldos are fairly widespread, though a lot of ‘em try to meet up at least once a year.”

“… wait, does that make me and Maya Nomad royalty?” Adrian asked, the thought spurred by a couple of bad fantasy novels he’d read as a child.

M just barked out a short laugh. “Nah, but you are related to the man, I think. Nomad Clans and Nations are meritocracies by necessity. If you can’t pull your weight out there, you’ll bring down the whole Clan, and they can’t have that. They’re a sort of pseudo-democracy with how they choose their leaders. Whoever gets the most votes becomes leader. That doesn’t always lead to the best results, but they’re still standing. I don’t know the wider state of Nomad politics either, so you’ll have to find someone else.”

“I mean, I know some of the Aldecaldos in the camp, but I don’t think they’d believe me if I said me and Maya were Santiago’s grandkids,” Adrian said.

“Of course they wouldn’t – it’s an insane coincidence! I still don’t really believe it,” Maya said, running a hand through her coal black hair. “I mean, I know it’s true, but it still seems… pretty surreal.”

“It does,” M said, looking at something out of the corner of his eye. “Well, I’d stay for more questions, but we really do need to get goin’. Can’t have our ride leavin’ without us.”

“Wait!” Maya said, rising from her seat suddenly and placing her hands on the table. “If you never left the NUSA, then… are you… do you work for the FIA? For Kress?”

“The FIA? Yes. Kress? Pretty hard to work for a dead woman, I’ll tell ya,” M said with a wry shrug. “And she is very dead. Croaked in her bed a couple years back. Don’t worry. No one’s gonna find out that Adrian’s related to your mom. I made sure o’ that.”

“Your Netrunner friend?” Adrian asked, a smirk on his lips.

“The very same,” M said with a singular gesture of his finger. “But, in the meantime… I’ll let you two say your goodbyes.”

Adrian turned to Maya. She turned to him. The siblings smiled at each other. No need for anything complicated, or sappy. There was a confidence there, if one born partially of nothing but hope.

“Hold things down while I’m gone?”

“You know it. Just make sure to come back – I can’t be the responsible one for too long.”

“Don’t I know it,” Adrian said, pulling his sister into a headlock and mussing up her hair while she let out a squeak and a giggle of surprise. “Love you, sis.”

“Love you too,” Maya replied, managing to slip out of his grasp and walking towards the exit of the warehouse, spinning the keys to his car on her finger. “I’ll be sure to tell Becca to send you somethin’ to tide you over.”

Adrian was about to object when he got a text on his holo. Briefly looking it over, he saw that it was from Rebecca. And, as though his sister had seen the future, it was a nude. A… rather sizable album of them.

“… don’t think you’ve gotta worry about that. Also, don’t go askin’ my output to do sh*t like that. People are gonna get weird ideas,” Adrian said.

“They’ll get weird ideas anyway, choom,” Maya replied with a grin, which slowly faded as she gave him a serious, stern look. “Seriously though. You come back alive, alright?”

“Always,” he said, holding out his fist towards her. She responded in kind, bumping her knuckles against his before she exited the warehouse fully, driving his car off into the rest of Night City, to parts unknown.

“… wheels up in twenty,” M said, walking up beside Adrian now that their goodbyes were done. “There’s a private airport that Militech owns a few blocks from here. It’s how the NUSA smuggles stuff and people into the city. Arasaka hasn’t caught on yet, but they’re thinkin’ of changin’ tactics on that front soon. Gettin’ out and comin’ back are probably gonna be some of the last non-corporate flights the place sees.”

“Got it, M,” Adrian replied, stepping towards the car. “… do you really think I’m ready for this?”

“Not sure. But that’s never somethin’ you’re gonna be sure of. Not until it’s done,” M said, climbing into his car and opening the door of the sleek, black thing, subtle and sturdy in it’s design. “But personally? I think you’re ready. Also… feel free to use my name. I probably won’t be around too much, once we get you back here. Gotten a little too complacent. Need to disappear from this place for a while. I’ll be in touch, but… yeah.”

“Well…” Adrian said, climbing in as he smelled something on the wind. The scent of distant rain on the horizon. “Let’s survive this, then…

“Morgan Blackhand.”

Adrian closed the door behind him, and master and student rode for the airport, the job and all it’s uncertainties awaiting their arrival.

Adrian Walker’s Status:

LEVEL: 20

SREET CRED: 23

€$: 50531

Stats and Skills:

BODY: 8

Athletics: Lvl 8

Annihilation: Lvl 7

Street Brawler: Lvl 9

REFLEX: 10

Assault: Lvl 10

Handguns: Lvl 10

Blades: Lvl 10

TECH: 8

Crafting: Lvl 9

Engineering: Lvl 8

INTELLIGENCE: 4

Breach Protocol: Lvl 1

Quickhacking: Lvl 1

COOL: 11

Ninjitsu: Lvl 8

Cold Blood: Lvl 11

Notable Cyberware:

FRONTAL CORTEX: None | None | None

OCCULAR SYSTEM: Dead-Eye Optic

CIRCULATORY SYSTEM: Biomoniter | None | None

IMMUNE SYSTEM: None | None

NERVOUS SYSTEM: None | None

INTEGUMENTARY SYSTEM: Military Grade Subdermal Armor | Nano-Plating | None

OPERATING SYSTEM: Dead-Eye Combat Analysis Regulation & Assistance Device [Mrk 0]

SKELETON: Dead-Eye Heatsinks | None

HANDS: None

ARMS: Military Grade Arasaka Cyberarm

LEGS: Reinforced Tendons

Adrian Walker’s Weapons:

Power Weapons:

Pistols/Revolvers:

- Reckoning (Modified Constitutional Arms Liberty)

- Eastwood (Modified Malorian Arms Overture)

- Elliot (Modified Malorian Arms Overture)

Rifles:

- Daybreak (Modified Militech Ajax Assault Rifle)

Shotguns:

- Glory (Modified Constitutional Arms M2038 Tactician)

Tech Weapons:

Rifles:

- Adversity (Modified Militech M-179 Achilles Precision Rifle)

- Eventide (Modified Tsunami Nekomata Sniper Rifle)

Melee Weapons:

- Muramasa (Katana)

Borg Weapons:

- Calamity (Original Model Malorian Arms 3516)