JohnnyZ
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[Demons of NC] Chapter 56
🕑 Added 2024-12-21 17:19:08 +0000 UTCHere’s how it probably went down: the NCPD planted someone in the casino or flipped an employee. The snitch had some device sending out constant signals, and when we cut communications here, the cops got tipped off. Now they were here—at the absolute worst time.
Falko sent me a photo showing three patrol cars and one SWAT van. A bunch of cops were already spilling out. How many? At least twenty, probably more than the Claws they were planning to raid.
"V, we’ll grab what we can from the accounts and bounce," Lucy suggested.
Damn it. We were so close to the vault—just a few more meters, crack the lock, and the loot would be ours.
"Let’s grab the pick and crack it," I said, moving toward the vault. "They’ll have to bust down the doors anyway."
Then an explosion rocked the building. Looked like the cops were busy dealing with the barricaded door. How long would that buy us? Who the hell knew. The clock was ticking—seconds, not minutes.
"You done yet? Delta the fuck out of there!" Falko’s voice crackled over the emergency channel.
He wasn’t wrong.
This little escapade was my own dumb idea, and diving into a suicide mission wasn’t worth it. We didn’t have some psycho fixer breathing down our necks. It was supposed to be a chill safari for the two of us. But there was no way I could’ve anticipated a snitch in the casino crew. We didn’t even set up external surveillance. For once, the cops played it smart. Now, we had no choice but to pull back instead of going out in a blaze of glory.
"We’re leaving," I announced reluctantly.
Lucy nodded, and we bolted back toward the tunnel. Behind us, another explosion echoed, followed by gunfire. The cops had broken into the casino. Either the remaining Claws were putting up a fight, or the cops were firing warning shots. Cops in Night City could do that kind of thing.
We moved fast—past the cut-open grates, the graffiti masterpiece by the Tyger Claws, another grate. The humid heat from the steam pipes hit us as we got closer to the thermal system, but then—
Lucy froze. She gestured for me to stop. Shit. The cops knew about the tunnel too?
We crept forward, ears straining for any sound. The pipes groaned with steam, but further ahead, I caught a faint whisper. Too quiet to make out words, but someone was definitely lying in wait.
Estimating the distance, I pulled an EMP grenade from my rig. The ambush was about fifteen meters ahead. The tunnel curved just enough to keep us out of sight for now. I switched the grenade to my cyberlimb and activated a basic trajectory-calculating program.
The grenade clanged off the wall, bounced along the floor, and then—
"Freeze! NCPD—" barked a commanding voice before cutting off mid-shout. "Ah, fuck..."
Blue light from the EMP flash drowned out their flashlights, plunging the tunnel into darkness.
I rounded the corner to find three cops still reeling from the EMP. I hit the furthest one with an overload quickhack, jabbed the closest in the neck with my cyberlimb’s needle, and watched as Lucy took out the third. A kick to the solar plexus, followed by a hack, and he was down for the count.
One more cop waited topside by the manhole. Instead of climbing up immediately, I tossed a frag grenade. Once it went off, I pulled myself up and fired three suppressing shots to keep the guy pinned behind cover. He responded with a flashbang, but Lucy and I were already slipping away behind a nearby building.
Falko’s car screeched up to the corner, and we dove in.
"So that’s it? We’re just bailing?" Rebecca asked from the front passenger seat, clearly annoyed.
"Going toe-to-toe with cops ain’t worth it," I replied. "Keep at it long enough, and you’ll end up dealing with MaxTac. Lucy, what’s the haul?"
"About twenty grand," she said, scanning the data from the accounts we siphoned.
"Decent catch," Falko nodded.
"Decent, my ass," Rebecca grumbled. "That psycho Jack got hundreds of thousands."
"Funny how quick you forgot borrowing two or three grand from me," Falko shot back.
"Pull over for a sec," I said, turning to Lucy. "You didn’t wipe the casino’s system yet, did you?"
"Nope. It’s a simple little bug, won’t lead back to us."
"Think we can tap into their security cameras from here?"
"Need to set up a bridge. There’s a city network relay across the street. Why? Wanna watch the cops scarfing donuts and bitching about pay?"
"Exactly. Haven’t watched a cop drama in ages," I said, though my real motives were different.
For the next half hour, I monitored the Night City Police Department at work.
By 5 a.m., Officer Eugene Scott finally returned home. The door to his rented apartment slid open to reveal a tall, dark-skinned cop with a worn government-issued cybernetic implant gleaming dully in his head.
"Laura!" he called out hoarsely.
No response. Cursing under his breath, Eugene shut the door, balancing a paper bag of groceries in one hand.
"Drunk again, huh?" he muttered, dropping the bag next to a few pairs of synthetic sneakers by the entryway. "Laura, you useless bitch! Your goddamn husband’s home!"
He kicked off his boots, slid on some rubber slippers, and stormed into the kitchen to confront his wife. Laura—a hefty Latina—was slumped over the table, head resting on her arms. Eugene quickly realized something was off. She wasn’t just drunk; she was completely out.
"Laura! Goddammit, don’t tell me you OD’d... Hang on—"
"Relax, no OD," I interrupted, aiming my pistol at him. "The dose was measured perfectly. She’ll wake up in six hours. Don’t believe me? Check her pulse—unless your implant has thermal imaging."
The cop instinctively reached for his gun but stopped, realizing how badly outmatched he was. I stood to his side, weapon ready, face hidden behind a pitch-black mask.
"You working for Hideo?" he asked immediately.
"No."
"Zbyszko?"
"Let’s skip the guessing game," I said, my voice distorted beyond recognition, a smirk curling under the mask. "Half an hour ago, you pocketed something at work. A certain device. Put it on the table."
“Ah…” The cop nodded slowly, his expression sour. “So, you’re the ones who hit the casino.”
“I need the device, officer, not your detective insights. I’m being quite lenient with you here. Put the device on the table and then take that pill over there—next to your wife’s head.”
The officer let out a heavy, irritated sigh, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. I could see the anger simmering inside him. He was probably already counting the payday he’d imagined from fencing the corp tool he’d swiped. Sucks to be him. Guess what? I wasn’t exactly thrilled when the cops crashed the casino we were halfway to raiding. But I dealt with my frustration.
"People like you always think the law doesn’t apply to you and everyone else is a dumbass," he growled through clenched teeth, carefully placing a bundle containing the corp tool on the table. "But life’ll screw you over in the end. You’ll get what’s coming."
I barely stifled a laugh. Pocketed evidence, now preaching about justice. Typical. No doubt Officer Scott had a laundry list of reasons justifying his behavior—crap pay, asshole bosses, everyone’s doing it. Sure, the system’s rotten.
And yeah, he wasn’t entirely wrong. The system’s a mess. It acts like a magnifying glass, amplifying and focusing humanity’s flaws into a searing, corrosive beam. But the locals haven’t come up with anything better, so whining about it is pointless.
The cop picked up the pill, rolling it between his dark fingers, flaring his nostrils.
“Take it,” I said, giving a small flick of my Apparition. "Trust me, I wanted to tear into your lot earlier tonight, but I decided to be reasonable. No unnecessary bodies. Let’s keep it that way, yeah?"
He shot me one more venomous glare, then popped the pill and washed it down with warm beer from an open bottle on the table.
“Good. Now, we wait a little,” I said, still keeping my aim steady.
"I don’t know who you bastards are, but we’ll find you," Scott promised, sitting heavily on the bed. “You reek of Afterlife, buddy. Think that old hag Rogue’s gonna cover your ass? Think you, you chrome-fuck—” His words slurred as his tongue started to tangle. “Chro… chrro… hrnn…”
Yeah, I wasn’t worried about him causing problems. He wasn’t about to file a report about stolen evidence he’d nabbed himself. And even if he spun some story, good luck tracking us. The virus had already wiped the casino’s surveillance records. We hadn’t even killed any cops, and Night City’s lazy-ass justice system wasn’t going to bother us over a couple of roughed-up officers. They’ve got bigger fires to half-assedly put out.
I waited until Scott was fully out, checked his implants for recordings, wiped everything clean, and left his apartment with the loot. The hard part was yet to come—talking to Lucy. She was waiting downstairs in the car. Falco and Becca were already home. No more fights ahead. Time to drink, unload some stress, and, maybe, scrape a little weight off my shoulders.
I made my way down, pulled my mask off in the narrow gap between the building and some industrial lot, and got back to the car. Lucy was slouched in the passenger seat, her legs propped up on the dashboard. Everything looked the same, yet it wasn’t.
“Let’s blow off some steam,” I suggested. “Drive out to the dam’s overlook, have a drink.”
“Sure,” Lucy agreed, but her tone carried the weight of someone heading for a terminal diagnosis instead of a casual hangout.
The car rolled forward—another rented ride. I’d thought about buying my own, but I guess I wasn’t a nomad at heart. Cars were tools to me, disposable. In our line of work, you had to swap them out constantly.
“I got the corp key,” I bragged. “Didn’t put my faith in the cops’ ‘honesty’ for nothing. They’d already skimmed half the vault before the detective showed up. Bet he’ll pocket the rest.”
“Great,” she muttered, her tone flat.
"Tequila? Or whiskey?"
“I brought absinthe.”
“Bold choice. Enough for me too?”
“Plenty for both of us.”
The car sped through the predawn haze. A faint mist blurred the streets. Night City never really slept, but around six or seven in the morning, it seemed to drift off a little. A short, restless, junkie’s sleep, filled with nightmares. But by noon, the city would gulp down some California sun, munch on a crunchy handful of shattered dreams, and drag itself to another night of madness.
The ride to the overlook was quiet. We passed the absinthe back and forth, its buzz dulling the sharp edges of our thoughts. My head felt heavy and warm, my body detached—ironic for someone like me.
I stared out the window, trying to imagine Night City as a person. A deranged but calculating psychopath, obsessed with blood, fame, and the wreckage of other people’s dreams. It looked like Jack Mauser. Or maybe David Martinez, torn between a quiet dinner at home and a slaughter at work, tearing heads off for Arasaka’s eddies. Or maybe… it looked like me.
When we stepped out at the overlook, the cool breeze cut through the absinthe fog just a little.
“I wanted to talk.”
The words felt like a boundary crossed.
“We need to talk,” Lucy agreed, leaning against the dam railing, gazing at the city below.
I could feel the weight between us. Lies and unspoken truths hung in the air like a toxic haze.
“You start, or should I?” she asked.
“I’ll go. Remember when we talked about this thing in my head?”
Lucy nodded.
“It’s… more complicated than what I said before.”
“I figured as much.”
“Okay… How about you tell me your version first? Just curious.”
“That thing’s growing,” Lucy said, taking a long pull from the bottle before tossing her words at me like a punch. “It’s becoming you, and you’re becoming it. And—” She paused for another drink before throwing the next blow. “And you’re not even trying to fight it.”
“Well… makes sense,” I admitted. “But the truth is even crazier. You know what an engram is, right?”
“Yeah. A memory snapshot. Arasaka’s pushing that immortality BS to the rich. Digital forever and all that.”
“Right. Do you believe in digital immortality?”
“No. It’s not life. Engrams are just recordings. Fancy virtual tombstones.”
“It’s a bit more than that, Lucy. The AI they plugged me into—it was built off the engram of a dead person.”
The girl’s face shifted, her expression turning serious, almost like she sobered up instantly.
“You’re… serious?”
“Yeah. I’ve got two sets of memories. In one, I’m Vincent Price. In the other, I’m a completely different guy who lived about thirty years, then died from lung problems. And it’s not just raw data, Lucy. Not some dry facts stored on a shelf. Emotions, desires, pain—all of it came with him.”
I paused for a moment, taking a sip of absinthe, and wrapped it up with:
“I died alone… a long, long time ago.”
The line practically mirrored a verse from “The Man Who Sold The World.”
Ten long seconds of silence followed. The wind and the distant hum of a waking city filled the gap. Night City’s uneasy slumber was giving way to its painful awakening. Like ants scurrying over the skin of a giant, the city's inhabitants rushed off to whatever grind awaited them.
“I figured I’d hear some shit from you tonight…” Lucy finally spoke. “But this…” For a brief moment, a crooked smirk twitched on her lips. “This sounds like a fucking ghost story or a horror flick, but I believe you. You’ve got no reason to make up something like this.”
“Just don’t hit me with something like, ‘Why didn’t you tell me earlier?’” I sighed, setting the half-empty bottle on the stone railing. “This sounds insane. Like a one-way ticket to a padded cell or some Corpo lab. I can’t even say how old I really am. Twenty? Fifty? Maybe older. That engram didn’t become an AI overnight, and it spent a long time in limbo.”
“Wait…” Lucy’s face lit up with realization. “The Russian language… That’s why you know it?”
“Yeah. Exactly.”
Lucy exhaled deeply and pulled out a cigarette.
“I should’ve guessed,” she said. “You once told me the Corps didn’t know about your second language. I thought it was weird back then but didn’t dig into it. Young Corpo hotshots always try to show off to their bosses, and here you were, sitting on a whole-ass language like it was nothing.”
“Exactly. That other me lived in Moscow. Studied, worked, and then… I remember the thoughts he had as he died. All that regret, anger, envy, and missed chances. It’s like a soul-deep hunger. Like withdrawal, but worse. That’s why I really left Arasaka. I’d already wasted one life chasing an illusion of success. I’m not giving up this one so easily. I want to live. To enjoy it. To be free.”
Another stretch of silence. Lucy was clearly processing the first batch of my confessions. Not that I was serving her the pure, unfiltered truth. This was still a mixed drink—just stronger than the sweet lies I’d been pouring before.
“That thing in my head can’t take me over. It is me. What I became, once upon a time. And the other me? You never knew him.”
“Maybe I didn’t…” Lucy replied bitterly. “Or maybe I thought I did. I need an answer, V. To one question.”
The way she said it made it clear this was make-or-break. Our lives and this conversation hung on her next words. I braced myself for some deep existential query: Am I human or AI? Or maybe about Abernathy’s death and my secret deal. But her question blindsided me, like a cold, calculated shot in the dark.
“V, tell me… our second meeting. At the Ho-Oh Club. Was it you who fed Kiwi or Faraday info about me?”
