The air reeked of ionized blood and scorched chrome. Blanca stood rigid by the stairwell, her polished boots avoiding the pooling fluids seeping from bisected Maelstrom corpses. Carl knelt beside a sparking cybernetic arm, its fingers still twitching with residual neural impulses, and wiped his face with the back of his hand. The gesture smeared gore across his cheek like war paint.
"You should wipe your face first," Blanca said, her voice tighter than a sniper's trigger spring. She tossed him a monogrammed handkerchief—Militech-issue, Carl noted, the embroidered eagle half-drowned in someone else's dried blood.
"Looking like what?" Carl smirked, catching the cloth mid-air. A jagged shard of mirrored windowpane leaned against the wall, its surface cracked but still reflective. He tilted it, studying his reflection: blood matted his hairline, flecks of synthetic bone clung to his stubble, and a single Maelstrom optic lens—vibrant crimson—was lodged in his collar like a grotesque brooch. "Ah. Subtle."
He scrubbed vigorously, the handkerchief turning rust-red. When he tossed it back, Blanca flinched as droplets pattered against her immaculate boots.
"Thanks."
Doesn't he know basic hygiene? She stared at the sodden cloth, her throat tightening. For a woman who'd orchestrated blacksite interrogations, the casual brutality of this kid unsettled her. His hands—still unmodified, still human—had just reduced ten chromed killers to scrap, yet he looted corpses with the boredom of a clerk filing paperwork.
"What are you doing now?" she asked, watching him pry a Saratoga SMG from a dead ganger's rigor-mortis grip.
"Looting eddies and guns. Standard procedure." Carl didn't glance up. The SMG's magazine was warped from EM heat—useless. He tossed it aside, the clatter echoing in the hollowed-out building. "Unless you're volunteering to cover my retirement fund?"
Blanca's cheeks burned. Of course he'd scavenge. In Night City, corpses were ATMs with pulse monitors. But the clinical efficiency—the way his fingers danced over bullet-riddled armor, extracting credchips and neural shards like a surgeon harvesting organs—unnerved her.
Ten minutes later, Carl stood, hefting a duffel swollen with weapons and eurobills. "Let's move. Staring at dead chromefucks ain't my idea of a date."
Downstairs, the Cortes V5000 sat untouched, its obsidian finish swallowing the alley's flickering neon. Carl crouched beside the driver's-side door, tracing a finger over the biometric lock. The car hummed faintly, a predator purring in its sleep.
Carl stepped off, keeping the engine on, might as well let a poor gonk take it, no point risking myself in Maelstrom's ride.
Blanca's optic flickered gold. A sleek Villefort Cortes V5000 Valor glided into view, its armored silhouette cutting through Watson's smog like a shark through oil.
[Villefort Cortes V5000 Valor]
The crown jewel of corpo pragmatism. Bulletproof panels hidden beneath "tasteful" matte plating, self-sealing tires guaranteed to outlive your marriage, and an AI that'll narc on you to Militech if you sneeze wrong. A status symbol for people who expect to be shot at.
The driver's door hissed open. Blanca slid inside but paused, one boot planted on the pavement. Her scarred eyebrow arched. "Need a lift? Consider it… an investment in future collaborations."
Carl shook his head. "I'll walk. Fresh air's good for the soul."
"Your soul's pickled in synth-whiskey and gunpowder," she muttered, but the door sealed shut, drowning her in sterile aircon and the tinny hum of corpo newsfeeds.
The walk back to South Watson was a gauntlet of holographic despair. Neon billboards screamed promises of escape, their flickering light painting the streets in garish hues.
A skeletal joytoy with neon-green hair leaned against a burnt-out trash bin, her voice modulator glitching as she called out, "Half-price BD chips! Live your corpo fantasy!" Carl tossed her a 5€ coin—a reflex, not kindness—and kept moving.
Overhead, a drone buzzed past, its cargo net sagging with All Foods soy-paste packets. The ads plastered across its hull pulsed aggressively:
"DREAM OF THE STARS?
LUNAR GETAWAYS NOW 25,000€!
^(Settlement packages start at 5,000,000€. Financing available!)"
Carl snorted. A flick of his neural interface pulled up the fine print: One billion eddies for a "luxury" crater-view condo. Two thousand Maelstrom kills. Twenty thousand corpses. He'd need to depopulate the Combat Zone twice over to afford a bathroom stall on the moon.
Fuck that. He'd rather invest in a Ripperdoc upgrade.
His stomach growled, a reminder that even cynical mercs needed fuel. He pushed open the door to a neon-lit diner, its flickering sign promising "RIBCAGE STEAK—20€!
Twice the protein, half the guilt! (Synthetic bone included!)"
The restaurant's interior smelled of burnt soy oil and broken dreams. A lady in fishnets slouched at the counter, her neon-blue eyes glazing over as Carl slapped a eurobill on the laminate.
Two minutes later, a grayish slab arrived, impaled by a glowing hydroxyapatite "bone." The meat quivered under his knife, oozing translucent gel. The chef—a hulking man with a Tyger Claw tattoo peeking above his grease-stained collar—grunted, "Eat fast. We close soon."
Carl took one bite and gagged. Tastes like a Biotechnica lab experiment gone wrong—all chemical aftertaste and synthetic despair. The "bone," glowing faintly under UV lights, seemed to mock him with its holographic sheen.
"Problem?" The chef glared, his meat cleaver thunking into a cutting board.
Carl forced a smile. "Just… nostalgic for real beef."
The man snorted. "Real beef's for corpos and ghosts. You look like neither."
Pushing the plate away, Carl watched a droplet of grayish gel slide off the synthetic bone. Another 20€ lesson learned. In Night City, even disappointment came with a surcharge.
[ACCOUNT BALANCE: 59,980€]
Next time, stick to noodles.