Nightshift Avengers (Cyberpunk 2077)

[WestOrEast]

Nightshift Avengers Chapter Eleven​

"See, girls?" Lily asked, waving her arms back and forth and slapping the rest of the crew on the back. "What did I tell you? That's how you're supposed to listen to music, not just on your phone."

"Yay, crammed in with a lot of sweaty bodies all rubbing up against me," Madison said with a roll of her eyes as they stepped out of the club. "There's an experience that can't be beat."

"I think after your fifth threesome, you don't get to complain about a lot of bodies pressed up against you anymore," Grace said with a chuckle. "And it was some good music, sis."

"Yeah, really good," Lily said, agreeing with her own good taste. "They know how to play and they know what's worth playing. 'The hope of man is no machine, it's there in hands of skin and bone', it just makes sense, you know?"

"Um, no?" Reiko asked, rubbing her forehead. That had been some bright lights and some loud noise and she had downed quite a few drinks with everyone else. "What does it mean?"

"That we can't just trust in technology to save us all on its own," Lily said, hopping from foot to foot as they clustered around the exterior elevator that would take them down to the streets of Night City. "That if it's going to mean anything, it's going to have to be us that goes out and does it."

"For better or for worse," Grace said, leaning against a railing and looking up at the black night sky. "Militech and all them aren't exactly Luddites." She frowned as she tilted her head further up. "That's a lot of Avs up in the sky."

Reiko followed her gaze. Her eyes were just normal organic eyes, the ones she had been born with, but she could see a lot of white-blue dots of light up above the skyscrapers. Four thrusters per AV… yeah, that was about a dozen craft, coming in from the west, down to the south, near Corpo Plaza.

"Looks like they're in formation, too," Grace said, squinting as her cybernetic eye zoomed in. "Can't see the markings on- oh holy shit!"

Reiko could see what caused that just fine. Streaks of light had flashed out from further in the city and impacted against the AVs. There were already fireballs forming as the flying cars started to fall out of the sky and the survivors broke off their formation and swirled around.

"What the fuck," Lily asked, her mouth hanging open as she shaded her eyes. "What the hell was that?"

"Someone's attacking Arasaka," Grace said, just below a yell. "They're the only people in Night City who have SAMs built into their tower." She laughed long and loud. "God damn, who the fuck would even try something like that, huh?"

"We might be able to do something about it," Lily said, jumping into the elevator and waving everyone else in as well. "Come on, let's go!"

"What are you thinking about?" Reiko asked as they piled in.

"Not sure just yet," Lily said with a frown. "Everyone, start scrolling the news, pirate and corpo. What are people saying?"

Reiko just managed to get online with the elevator hit the bottom. As they stepped out onto the sidewalk, a wave of hot air and exhaust fumes rolled over them. Reiko coughed and waved a hand in front of her face as a long line of black trucks and vans rolled past her. Trucks with the Arasaka logo on them, too.

"Hey, this might be bigger than I thought," Grace said, looking after them as the convoy turned a corner and kept on going. "There's some kind of coup or something happening. Arasaka Tower is sealed off and 'Saka units are trying to blow their way in." She tapped her fingers against her sides. "Watching a live broadcast right now- holy shit!"

"What?" Reiko asked, tugging on Grace's arm. "Don't keep me in the dark!"

"A bunch of drones just strafed the plaza! Lots of burning cars there now." Grace shook her head and glanced at the rest of the team. "God damn, something serious is happening there right now!"
"Right, I'm betting that's not the only convoy heading to Corpo Plaza," Lily said, pumping her fist into her other hand. "Who wants to make some money, huh?"

"What are you thinking?" Madison asked as they piled into Lily's old beater of a car.

"Sounds like Saka is stripping themselves bare to feed more men into the fire," Lily said, peeling out onto the street and gunning the engine. "They've got all those warehouses down along the docks. Lots of guards normally but right now…"

"Sounds like a plan," Grace said. "Wish we had time to get my guns and armor, though."

"Well, there's the goodie bag in the trunk," Lily said, twisting the wheel around as the car drifted on the pavement as she took a turn. "But who knows how long this is going to last, right? We've got to grab what we can while this is still going on."

That made sense to Reiko and she nodded. Madison seemed agreeable to the idea as well. She just really hoped that whatever warehouse they hit wasn't going to have crate after crate of HiStar t-shirts and band merch or whatever.

Lily cut the engine and they glided to a stop in yet another of the many back alleys that Night City had to offer. At least this one had a chain link fence running along one side, with razor wire on top of it. As Grace got out to pop the trunk open and grab whatever Lily kept in there, Reiko and Lily took the bolt cutters and started getting to work on the chain-link fence, severing enough links to allow a person to fit through. The complex on the other side was dead and empty, the bright lights shining down on empty sidewalks and deserted posts.

Madison scurried over to the door and started fiddling with it, connecting a cable buried in her forearm to the interface port. Reiko looked around once more, seeing nothing moving at all. Man, that attack really was drawing absolutely everyone off, huh? Well, they'd never have dreamed of pulling something like this off normally.

"Damn, this is a piece of shit gun," Grace said with a sigh as she looked down at the undersized assault rifle in her hands. "Why'd you keep this around and not something better, sis?"

"Because the price for that was so low it wasn't worth me getting it out of the trunk to carry into the shop," Lily said as she fitted her mask over her face. "Be glad that it still has ammo."

Grace grunted and stowed a few mags in her pockets. Reiko patted her own pistol, which was small and light and non-lethal enough that she carried it everywhere, just like her wallet.

"Okay, that's done," Madison said, straightening up and opening the door. "Let's see what's in here."

Grace took point, sliding inside and pointing her rifle this way and that. Then the rest of them followed. Reiko looked around the dark, gloomy confines of the warehouse, seeing the racks of shelves stretching up a good twenty feet into the air.

"Office over there," Grace said, pointing.

"Start pulling up an inventory list," Lily said, slapping Reiko and Madison on the shoulders. "I'll go find a forklift and crack some of these bad boys open."

Reiko nodded and hurried over to the office. It was locked but a solid kick to the handle popped the latch open and they stepped inside. Madison sat down in front of the computer while Reiko rifled through the paperwork, looking for anything of use. Through the windows of the office, she could see Grace hustling to the main doors that led out to the port and taking up a post by them, watching out through the small, dirty window.

"Okay, Reiko, these look like medical drugs," Madison said, tapping the screen. "They worth anything?"

"Um…" Reiko leaned over Madison's shoulder to study the screen. "No, not these. They're precursor compounds. Probably heading to somewhere in the city to get turned into useful pills or injections. I couldn't do anything with them."

"Well, there's still more to look through," Madison grumbled.

Reiko left her to it and used another computer in the room to tune in to N54 News. They had a reporter she didn't recognize broadcasting live, right outside Corporate Plaza. Behind him, Reiko could see fires burning in the windows of Arasaka Tower and black-clad figures scurrying around armored cars and trucks.

"-chaos here in the heart of Night City," the man was saying, staring dead into the camera. "My sources have been giving me conflicting reports but it seems that an unknown netrunner hacked into Arasaka Tower defenses and unleashed them on the workers still inside at this late hour."

"That must be some hacker," Madison said, glancing up before focusing on the inventory again. "Saka's top tier stuff is really top tier. I'd just bounce off it if I didn't have a week or so to worm my way through it."

"Well, they sure seem to be doing some major damage," Reiko said, watching as three drones the size of a van did a strafing run on the assembled security forces. "Holy shit, I didn't know Arasaka had this kind of metal."

"They'll have a whole lot less after tonight. Hey, LILS!" Madison lifted her voice to a shout that made Reiko wince and cover her ears as Madison got Lily's attention. "Row Three, Bay Fifteen!"

Lily gave a thumbs-up and started driving the forklift around. She was decent enough on a straightaway but banged the side of the lift pretty hard against a metal strut. And then had to try backing in and out a few more times as she attempted to get the machine down the aisle. Reiko found it kind of funny, though she certainly wasn't going to go out there and show Lily how it was done.

"What did you find?" She asked instead.

"Some cyberware," Madison said with a smirk. "A whole crate of it, actually. Should be lots of good stuff, if it's from Arasaka's Gold Star line."

"That's fairly decent chrome, yeah," Reiko said, glancing at the line that Madison tapped at. "Yeah, that's real good."

Out in the warehouse proper, Lily had gotten the crate down off of the rack and dumped it into the middle of the floor. She hopped out of the forklift and started to pry the door open. She laughed and held up some limbs in plastic casing.

Reiko hurried out to meet her. The shipping container wasn't all that big but it wasn't like there had to be a lot of space to hold a bunch of limbs. She peeked inside and smiled at the rows and rows of metal hands and legs, wrapped up in protective plastic.

"Oh yeah, this is a good haul," Reiko said, picking one up and examining it through the semi-clear casing. "You know what these go for on the white market?"

"Well, I'd say the price on the black is about to drop from the glut in supply," Lily said with a smirk. "Do we haul all this out to my car or do we try to find a truck to load the container up on?"

"Auntie wouldn't be glad to have a stolen Arasaka truck's locater beacon coming by our clinic," Reiko said, holding an arm in one hand and trying to decide just how many of these they could stuff into the trunk of Lily's car. It was a good thing that Frankenbot had been left at home tonight! "And I think I could hold about a dozen of these on my lap in the car."
"Right, get everything back into the crate and seal it up," Lily said with a clap of her hands. "We'll bring this around back and start shoving everything that will fit into the car. And start thinking about the other clinics and chopshops that would buy some of this off of us."

Reiko nodded as Lily hurried off to brief everyone else. Yeah, there was no way that Auntie could use all of these limbs. But a good half dozen of each type on display should be shifted in short order. Reiko knew which one of them was going to be assigned to getting rid of the serial numbers, though. Actually, maybe before they left, Madison could insert some buggy orders into the system to make it look like Auntie actually had bought these legitimately.

First things first, they had to get away with all this stuff. Reiko took a deep breath and climbed up into the driver's seat of the forklift. At least the controls weren't very complex. Also, Lily had never slid the tines of the forklift out from underneath the crate, so all Reiko had to do was start it up, lift the box up into the air and (slowly and carefully) drive forward, aiming for the door that Grace had slid open.

Man, normally, the docks would be teeming with life as people shifted inventory around on ships and warehouses. It was dead, dead, dead right now, though. Reiko still felt awfully conspicuous underneath the bright sodium lights, though, as she inched the forklift around the wall of the warehouse to the back. And, confirming her thoughts, she banged the side against the wall, leaving a dent in both the forklift and the wall.

And just like how she had done with Lily, Grace pointed and laughed at her. Reiko flushed and made sure that the next turn around a corner left plenty of space between her and the wall. She even managed to avoid mashing the far end of the container into the chain link fence, stopping with a good yard in between.

Then it was time to hop out of the seat and start unloading stuff as the rest of the team arrived. And there was still no sign of anyone else coming by. Heck, even on the streets and roads, things were awfully quiet. It wasn't even that late at night. People hunkering down to avoid the fallout of whatever might be happening to the south? Reiko wouldn't be surprised.

She also wasn't surprised when the silence was split with the loud roar of some heavy trucks and the sharper whines of bikes. Grace cursed, her hand going down to grab the stock of her rifle as she looked up.

"Is it Saka security?" Lily asked, shading her eyes at the headlights that were burning further down the street.

"I don't-," Grace was interrupted with a loud crashing sound as one of the trucks must have driven right through the gate separating the docks from the streets of Night City. "Yeah, I don't think so. Betting it's a gang with the same idea we've got."

"This part of town, Maelstrom would be my bet," Madison said nervously. "I'm not looking to tangle with some chromed-up cyberpsychos. How much more stuff we got in here, huh?"

"Uh," Reiko peered into the shipping container, even as gunfire started to sound from further into the yards. Was there someone there fighting back against the gangers? Or were they just shooting for the pleasure of the sound of it? And would they like to switch their aim to living targets instead of concrete? "I'd say we've got about half."

"I'll start the car," Lily said, hurrying around to the front of the car and sliding into the driver's seat. "The trunk is looking awfully full anyway."

Yeah, Reiko wasn't thinking that they'd be able to get everything from the container. Oh, on the plus side, the fuss Maelstrom was kicking up would be doing way more to cover their tracks than anything that the team could have done. Arasaka might not ever know that anyone but those chrome fiends had ever been here.

And some of them were coming here, loud and swaggering as they laughed and shouted at each other. Grace looked down at her rifle and made a face before grabbing one last arm and stepping through the hole in the fence.

"Okay, that's that, let's go," Grace said, waving at Madison and Reiko. "Unless you want to make some new friends?"

Reiko made a face at that and ducked through the hole in the fence. She twisted around to see the gangoons shouting and one of them lifting her pistol. And firing, even. Reiko couldn't see where the shots went but she still cringed down and hit Lily's shoulder.

"Come on, come on!" She shouted, sliding around on the arms and legs that had been thrown into the back seat of the car. "It's time to go!"

There was a squeal of burning rubber as Lily floored the CHOOH pedal, the old car lurching forward as she pulled out of the alley. Madison was laughing and sagging backwards against the seat, grinning like a loon as they sped away.

"Well, that went well," she said, glancing out the rear window and waving goodbye. "How much do you think this all will be worth, huh? Six figures?"

"Maybe more," Lily said with a grunt. "Okay, everyone, start drawing up a list of every chrome shop you know of that's willing to buy under the table stuff. We can start flogging this tomorrow once they wake up."

"I don't suppose your aunt is going to want to buy all of this?" Grace asked, twisting around to look at Reiko.

"All this would almost double the amount of arms and legs she has in stock," Reiko said, shaking her head. "But she'll want some of it, I know that much."

Reiko would have to figure out how all this would work, too. How the money would flow around between the crew and her in particular and selling to her aunt and what price that should be versus what they'd quote it at to all the other clinics they'd offload this haul to. Reiko rubbed her temples and thought about it for a moment, before Madison laughed again and slapped her shoulder.

"God damn, we did good, huh?" Madison was smiling from ear to ear. "We walked right in and we walked right out with all this sweet chrome." She picked up one cybernetic arm and shook its hand. "What a haul, what a fucking haul!"

"I'll start laughing once the eddies are in my pocket," Grace said. "And at least we'll be able to turn this stuff into money, not like all that Orion intel."

"Hey, I'm getting a lot of use out of that stuff, even if we couldn't sell it off," Madison said with a smirk. "It was worth it."

Grace rolled her eyes but didn't start that argument up again. Instead, she shifted around and settled into the car seat as Lily drove them away from the docks, deeper into Night City. And staying well north of Corporate Plaza, too. Reiko pressed her face against the window but there were too many neon lights to see any smoke or flames coming from there.

God damn, who would try something like that, huh? Reiko had never been inside of Saka Tower herself but she had heard that it was a fortress in the form of a skyscraper, with a small army of goons and mechs inside, with cyberspace just as heavily locked down with elite netrunners standing guard. Never mind the rest of the corporate security that Arasaka had throughout Night City. Not even Militech had tried an attack this big all through the Fourth Corporate War.

"Hope that the city's still standing tomorrow," Reiko said nervously as she looked south.

"Even if another nuke gets lighted off, we're too far north to be affected by it," Grace said, glancing out the window. "Don't worry, just think about how much money we'll be making with thing in chaos. Lots of room for some bright young things to rake in the cash, right?"

Reiko nodded and sat back. She would still be glad to be back home, though. Watching the news and trying to figure out just what was going on, at the very least. Seriously, how many people would you need to manage an attack like this? And not just your average street solo, it would take some seriously top-tier talent to manage something like this.

Reiko really had no idea at all just who could ever do something like this or what they were after. Well, she wished them luck. They must have balls of steel to try something like this, win or lose.

"You know, if the fighting is still going on, they must be chewing through plenty of guys," Grace said, looking at her sister. "Won't be getting new guys in tomorrow morning, you know what I mean? Bet that we could hit some other sites and get some more loot."

"Other people will be thinking the same thing," Lily said, sounding unsure. "And we haven't even sold off what we've got, yet. I say… I say that we find some buyers for this haul and then look out for making even more."
"Arasaka won't be the only ones reeling after this," Madison chimed in. "Everyone in the city's going to be off-balance, at least for a while. I say that we look further afield than just Arasaka. Got to be a lot of places out there we could hit."

"Got somewhere in mind?" Lily asked, skepticism clear in her voice. "Orion?"

"Well, since you mention it, yeah," Madison said, leaning forward and gripping both seats in her hands, the claws on her fake hand digging into the padding. "We got their client list, we could hit some of the businesses they're guarding, shoot the security and run off with a whole heap of money."

"I'll consider that just like with more hits on Arasaka but let's focus on turning what we've already got into money, alright?" Lily said sternly. "We can all use some extra cash, I know that."

She wasn't wrong there. Reiko nodded and sat back, looking at the limbs filling the car and wondering just how much they could go for and what a quarter of that would come out to. It was a pretty nice figure, all told. More money than Reiko actually needed right, even. Boy, she could spend that on a lot of stuff, huh? Good times or some better chrome or, well, it was a whole lot better to be rich than poor, wasn't it?

Reiko looked out the window again and smiled. She had no idea who was out there or why they were doing what they were doing. But she did feel awfully well-inclined to them. Maybe if they lived through this and Reiko ever found out who it was, she'd buy them a drink or something.

After all, taking Arasaka down a peg or two like this was good no matter what their motives might be. And the fact that Reiko was looking to be making a lot of money off it just made it all that much better.

That was like morality, right? Well, no, it wasn't. Reiko still wasn't feeling bad about it.

She was just glad that this night had ended up even better than she had expected it to.

 

[Kylia Quilor]

So this is part of the endgame takedown of Araska Tower in 2077? Or at least, is that what is happening that gives our protagonists a chance to come in and do their thing at the warehouse?

 

[WestOrEast]

So this is part of the endgame takedown of Araska Tower in 2077? Or at least, is that what is happening that gives our protagonists a chance to come in and do their thing at the warehouse?

Click to shrink...

Yep. V's doing a solo assault and kicking ass with Alt hacking the tower's defenses to give her time.

 

[WestOrEast]

Nightshift Avengers Chapter Twelve

​

​

There hadn't been any wind the past few days and that meant that the smoke and smog from the factories was settling in thickly, choking the life out of Night City. And it was hot, so damn hot thanks to the greenhouse effect. Reiko was sweating like a pig underneath her mask but it was still better than taking a deep breath of unfiltered air.



It was a real relief to duck inside the building and hear the door close behind her. And it was a rich enough building that it came with its own air filters built in, too. She could take the mask off, though Reiko could still smell a faint acidic taint to the air. She winked her nose at that but it was at least better than being cooped up inside of that mask.



Madison was hanging around in the lobby and made a beeline over to Reiko once she recognized the other woman. She was showing a lot more skin than Reiko was, obviously not planning to step outside into the wonderful Night City summer like this. Reiko appreciated the view quite a bit though she tried not to stare for too long.



"Good to see you," Madison said, smiling at Reiko and taking her hand, gesturing her towards the elevator at the back of the lobby. "Welcome to my place."

"All yours, huh?" Reiko asked with a snort as they stepped inside and the doors closed.



"Well, one small apartment, at least," Madison said with a shrug. "But hey, it's a place of my own and the only people who come by are the ones I want to have over."

Reiko felt rather jealous over that, really. It would be nice to have her own place, to get some privacy for herself. Even just a bedroom for herself would be nice. Living with Auntie was nice and all but did Reiko want to spend the rest of her life sleeping on a convertible couch in the main room of the apartment?



"And thank you for having me over," Reiko said belatedly. "I've never seen your place before."

"I like it," Madison said as the elevator slid to a halt. "Maybe not super big but hey, it's a place."

It was rather small when Reiko stepped inside. One main room and what looked like a bathroom off to the side. And the main room wasn't that large, especially with so much space taken up by a workbench filled with… junk, really.



"So this is all…" Reiko said in a leading voice as she bent over the table.



"Odds and ends," Madison said with a shrug. "There's a lot of different systems out there, you know? They don't all talk to each other so nice and I need to do some fiddling to get my gear to work with it all. Never mind the arms race between corpo IT and the free agents."

Reiko glanced at the half-dissembled circuits and casings again and nodded before turning around to properly look at Madison. The white girl was smiling as she sat down on the bed (which took up most of the rest of the room in the apartment) and looking pretty seductive as she lifted her hands above her head and stretched, twisting her body this way and that.



It was the kind of thing to get a girl's heart racing and blood pumping and Reiko swallowed hard as she stared in naked lust. Madison knew exactly what kind of effect she was having on Reiko as well and smirked.



"Pull up a chair and take a load off," Madison said, waving her hand. "Or go and take a shower if you want." Her nose twitched. "It's a really pungent soup out there today, isn't it?"

"Yeah, it is," Reiko said with a frown, looking down at her clothes.



She supposed she could leave them in the bathroom and then they wouldn't have to smell it. But whatever would she wear for the rest of her visit here? It wasn't like Madison's clothes would fit Reiko's. Reiko thought that over a bit more and a big blush appeared on her face. She wasn't seeing any downsides here!"

She quickly scurried into the bathroom, stripped down and took a short enough shower to wash off anything that might have stuck to her skin. It would be nice to take a longer shower but it wouldn't be nice to make Madison have to pay for that. Anyway, Reiko was pretty sure she'd be taking another shower just before leaving here.



What a pity the shower wasn't big enough for two. Heck, it was barely big enough for one and Reiko had to keep her arms at her sides as she twisted and turned underneath the lukewarm spray. After a few minutes, she was back in action, stepping out into the main room of the apartment with as much confidence as she could muster.



The clear look of interest in Madison's eyes helped a lot with that, at least. She sat up straight on her bed, staring right at Reiko with a smile on her face. Reiko smiled back and tried to assume a sexy pose, leaning against the side of the bathroom door. She could feel the heat burning on her cheeks right now, though.



"Nice," Madison said with a smile. "Hey, that tile doesn't feel great against bare feet. Why don't you come over here and get comfortable?"

Reiko did as she was told, sitting quickly down on the bed and with an effort, keeping her hands at her sides instead of trying to cover herself up. At least her arousal was starting to rise up inside of her and replace the embarrassment that she had been feeling.



Madison kissing her helped a lot with that. Reiko moaned into the kiss as she reached over to stroke Madison's thigh, sliding her hand up and down along it and feeling the bare skin and fishnet leggings underneath her skin.



"You own any lingerie?" Madison asked as she kept on touching Reiko, making her gasp and squirm.



"No, that stuff is too expensive," Reiko said with a blush. "And would it really look good on me, anyway?"

"Oh yes, it most certainly would," Madison said with a chuckle as she leaned to the side, bringing Reiko down to the bed and looming over her. "Though, of course, it would look even better off of you."

Reiko blushed and smiled. And then gasped as Madison started to kiss her again though not on the lips. The other woman worked her way down along Madison's neck, plating kiss after kiss on her body and making Reiko squirm in all sorts of ways. Especially once she arrived at Reiko's breasts. Her tongue started getting involved then and Reiko was helpless in the face of it. She could only mewl and whimper, twitching around as some really wonderful pleasure started to spread through her.



She did her best to return the sensation but Madison wasn't interested in working with that. She just kept on doing these wonderful things to Reiko and keeping her down and in place. Reiko could only whimper and whine as she felt Madison taking charge of the situation.



Which wasn't something that Reiko had a problem with, of course. It was pretty nice, actually. She just wanted to do something for her lover and make sure that she got to feel good as well. There were ways to make that happen! A kiss here, a stroke there but it was still pretty clear that the real satisfaction that Madison was getting from all of this was her being in control over what Reiko was feeling and how she was exploiting the other girl.



Not that Reiko had much of a problem with being exploited. Madison was making it feel awfully good, after all, as she kept on getting touched and played with. Reiko mewled and gasped as she felt the heat bubbling upwards between her thighs, the wetness starting to leak out of her.



And Madison hadn't even focused any attention on her pussy yet. This was all just happening to her boobs and upper body and it was still enough to get her so very worked up and feeling so fine. Reiko whimpered again and tried to reach up to Madison.



"You keep on using your hands like that and I'll have to get rid of them," Madison said with a smile, grabbing Reiko's wrists. "A pity you've only replaced the one hand," she continued. "I could just hack into both of them and leave them dead for a while." Reiko shivered at the idea of Madison having that level of control over her. "Well, there's always handcuffs."

Handcuffs with pink fur on the inside of them, in fact. Reiko swallowed and squirmed when Madison produced them, feeling the heat inside of her take on a sharper tone. One that Madison noticed really easily, too.



"Wow, that's really getting you worked up, isn't it?" She asked with a chuckle as she slid the cuffs around Reiko's hands. "You spend a lot of time lurking in the sex shops, looking at the bondage gear?"

"They have catalogs, I don't need to go there," Reiko muttered, still feeling the heat on her cheeks as she said that.



"So yes, just in a different way than what I said," Madison said, which Reiko couldn't really deny. "Well, I'm sure you'd look good in most of what they offer, baby."

Reiko liked the sound of that. Of all of that. She nodded and then moaned as Madison got back to work, moving all over Reiko's body and making her just melt as she got touched and toyed with. The heat was rising really quickly inside of Reiko's lower body and she could feel the pleasure mounting as Madison's fingers and tongue kept on working her over, making her feel amazingly good and erotic.



It was clear that Madison was getting a charge out of this as well, which at least helped Reiko feel good over not being able to do much for her teammate. She shivered as she looked up along Madison's body, seeing it all and liking it so very much. Her friend was just so hot. Especially now, with that revealing outfit clinging to her body and showing off her boobs and her legs and her stomach.



"Maddy," Reiko said, getting a frown from Madison.



"Just Madison, thanks," Madison said, shaking her head. "Never cared for any of the nicknames you get from Madison."



"Oh, uh, sorry?" Reiko said sheepishly.



"Nah, it's alright, just don't do it again," Madison said. "At least not in bed, alright?"

Reiko would have agreed to that but Madison's fingers stroked her pussy and that took up way more focus. Reiko squeaked and then smiled from ear to ear as she felt herself getting touched like that. It was really nice. Really, really nice and she was sure that Madison could have slid her fingers a lot deeper inside of Reiko, instead of just running back and forth along her lower lips.



Reiko's hips rolled back and forth and she took several deep breaths as she panted. It felt nice but it could feel a whole lot better. She knew how it could feel a whole lot better and she gave Madison a longing look, trying to get the other woman to step up the pace and give her what she wanted.



Madison didn't and when she glanced up, Reiko could see a light in her eyes that said she knew exactly what Reiko wanted. And she was still doing it like this, still just gently toying with Reiko's pussy while refusing to take things all the way and really make Reiko feel good.



Reiko wasn't going to beg for it, though. At least, she wasn't going to beg for it yet. She was feeling good but she wasn't feeling so good that she needed more. She just took several deep breaths, trying to calm down as she kept on getting touched and kept on feeling very, very good from this. It still made her tingle and shiver and the feeling of Madison's hands, one 'ganic and one metal were very nice on her body.



"Oh," Reiko moaned as her breast was cupped, the fingers sliding back and forth against her curves and one trailing across her stiff nipple, "you're, ah, good at this, Madison."

"Believe me, when you get the chance to practice something like this, you should take it with both hands," Madison said with a giggle, planting a kiss on Reiko's neck. "It would be a crying shame not to do that, right?"

Reiko eagerly nodded in agreement with that. And she kept on moaning as she felt herself getting more and more turned on. She looked at Madison, seeing the other woman and just how sexy she was. Reiko longed to return the favor. Return the exact favor, too. If Reiko was just getting turned on without being allowed to cum, well, it was only fair that the same thing be done to Madison, right?

That was a thought that sounded good in her head but the way that Madison brushed her thumb against Reiko's clit made it way too hard to hold that thought in her head. Reiko lurched and squirmed on the bed, moaning heavily. And her hands drifted down towards her own body before Madison moved them out of the way.



"You know, that's Grace's thing more than mine, tying up a cutie and keeping her still," Madison said, her breath puffing against Reiko's neck. "But if you can't let me play with this instrument," Reiko would have objected to that phrasing but she was too busy moaning at that moment, "I'll need to do something or other to keep those hands out of the way, hm?"

Reiko couldn't really bring herself to object to that. Not as strongly as she wanted. She let her hands get lifted up and placed above her head. There was nothing there to keep them there, no binds or cords or anything but Reiko still kept them in place. It just felt… it felt pretty pleasant to do as she was told as a pretty woman took care of her. There was that submissive side rearing its head again, after all!

Feather-light touches kept on going over Reiko's body and she kept on enjoying them a great deal. She shuddered as she felt the heat passing through her, rising higher and higher inside of her body as she kept on getting touched. She could hear the sounds that she was making as Madison toyed with her and it was a bit embarrassing to hear that but it was far more arousing.



Though nowhere near as arousing as what Madison was doing to her. Reiko's body was burning up with arousal right now as she got touched and she mewled as she rolled back and forth on the bed as much as she was allowed to. She could feel the heat rising, rising, rising inside of her and the fact that Madison wasn't allowing it to rise too quickly or let her feel too good was just more proof of how skilled the other girl was.



With a whimper, Reiko rocked her hips back and forth, staring up at Madison with a pleading expression. Madison giggled and leaned down for a kiss, the two of them locking lips with one another. It was really nice to kiss her and Reiko could feel herself relaxing into the embrace, feeling the pleasure growing and growing inside of her. She wanted to feel more of it. She wanted to give that pleasure back to Madison. There was just so much that she wanted to do right now and it was really hard to just wait for it all to come in its own time.



"You're just so cute like this," Madison said in a heated voice as her hands kept on toying with Reiko's body. "It makes me want to do even more to you."

"More like making me cum?" Reiko asked in a hopeful voice.



"All in good time," Madison said with a giggle, stroking Reiko's body. "We wouldn't want to just jump to the finish line right away, would we?"

Madison wasn't the one feeling like her skin was burning from the gentle torments. Reiko's pussy was a sopping wet mess and her nipples were just so hard. Every single touch made her feel better and better and she panted and whimpered and whined as Madison kept on playing with her and toying with her, dragging it all out, bit by little bit.



"See how much I like seeing you like this?" Madison asked, pulling her pants down and showing off her own pussy to Reiko. "You made me like this," she continued as Reiko stared at the wetness, at how the lower lips had opened up slightly in arousal. "And I'm going to make sure that you take care of the mess you made, too."

"I," Reiko panted, her chest rising and falling as she felt the hot need burning inside of her. She nodded several times. "I'll do it. In exchange, though, okay?"

"In exchange for what, hm?" Madison asked with a giggle, tracing her fingertips back and forth along Reiko's pussy, making her mewl as she felt herself getting touched like that, her hips bucking as she tried to get more. "What is it you're wanting so very badly?"

Reiko would have been willing to say what she wanted if her lungs had been working better right now. As it was, she had to take several deep breaths to try to get herself under control and her words lined up right. Madison laughed as she watched the show on Reiko's face and then leaned in for a kiss. And that scrambled Reiko's thoughts all over again.



Especially when Madison slid her tongue into Reiko's mouth. Reiko moaned loudly as she got Frenched and she squirmed around, feeling Madison claiming her like this. It was hot and did a great job of getting Reiko really, really worked up.



Her eyes were fogged when the kiss was finally broken and she was staring off into the distance, her heart hammering in her chest as her shoulders rose and fell. She moaned softly, staring at Madison and seeing the smirk on the white girl's face.



"You are just so damn subby, aren't you, Reiko?" Madison asked with a giggle as she squeezed Reiko's breasts, digging her fingers into the mounds. And digging her nails into the skin, which really made Reiko whimper. "It's really hot."

Reiko blushed at that and squirmed a bit more, panting for breath as she felt herself getting felt up and turned on beyond belief as Madison continued to toy with her. It was just so much fun. She was just loving this so much and she knew that she'd love it a whole lot more if her pussy started getting the attention that it wanted.



Though maybe not that it needed. If Madison was going to drag this out and keep on making Reiko feel like this… oh, that was a thought that was wonderful and awful in equal measure. Reiko blushed as she considered just what that would be like and what she could be made to feel. And for how long she could be made to feel it as Madison kept on toying her and teasing her and never quite letting her reach that edge.



"Now that's an expression I could just eat up," Madison cooed, pressing a kiss against Reiko's cheek. "Do you have any idea how darling you look like that, Reiko?"

Reiko shook her head, feeling even more blood pouring to her cheeks as Madison laughed. The other girl stroked her cheeks and then went down to her breasts, kneading them again and making Reiko shiver and shake as she felt the pulsing wetness and heat inside of her pussy.



"Please, can you make me cum?" Reiko asked softly, staring at Madison.



"Of course I can," Madison said with a smile, her hands wandering back and forth and not going anywhere near Reiko's pussy.



"Will you make me cum?" Reiko asked after a moment.



"Now those are two very different things, aren't they?" Madison asked with a smile. "Sure, you'd enjoy cumming but I enjoy seeing you like this." She took a step back to run her eyes up and down along Reiko's naked body. "So desperate and needy." She smiled and kissed Reiko on the lips again. "Maybe if you're a good girl, I could give you what you're looking for. What you need so badly."

Reiko shuddered and bit her lip as she stared into Madison's eyes. The other woman was smiling ear to ear, just so clearly loving what she was doing and the power that she had over Reiko. And Reiko would be lying if she said that she wasn't loving it as well. It was kind of embarrassing to admit, but doing this sort of thing… it really got her wound up and going. Having to beg was so embarrassing and humiliating but would Reiko really be satisfied if Madison gave in and let her cum right now?

Or would the eventual pleasure be so much better if it was dragged out for a while, allowed to build and fester and reinforce itself until it finally washed over Reiko like a tsunami? Reiko shuddered at that and spread her thighs a bit more, feeling the wetness dripping down them.



Madison smirked and got down between them, running her hands up and down along Reiko's thick thighs. She moaned, shivering at the pressure. And then feeling really, really good as Madison leaned in and started eating her out. Reiko was feeling really good and really sensitive but she wasn't so worked up that it would instantly push her over the edge into an orgasm. It wouldn't take much more than that, though.



Madison knew it, too. Her tongue ran back and forth a bit more and then it slowly drew away. Reiko moaned, shaking her head and trying to find the right words to convince Madison to get back to it. Madison smirked from ear to ear as she stroked Reiko's thighs, staring up at her with this smug, smug expression.



"Something you'd like to say to me?" Madison asked sweetly, in a teasing lilt.



"Please," Reiko moaned, her hips rolling back and forth. "Please let me cum. I need to cum."

"Oh, don't worry, Reiko," Madison said with a smirk as she stroked Reiko's thighs, drawing her fingers right up to Reiko's pussy, "you will." She winked at Reiko. "Eventually."

Then she leaned back in and Reiko could only whimper some more in denied pleasure as she felt the heat flowing through her. Dealing with this was all just so much. It was too much, even. Too much for a girl to hope to bear and the fact that she had to keep on dealing with it didn't really make it all that much better.



And Reiko thought that she was going to have to be here for a long, long while. Or she could push Madison away, finger herself to a very quick orgasm and be done with it but where was the fun in that?



No, Reiko thought that it would be much better if she just stayed here for a while longer. For a lot longer, maybe. Feeling all of this, enjoying all of this, just letting it all happen. Getting as much pleasure from it as she could, as much pleasure as she was allowed to by Madison.



And sooner or later, Madison would show her mercy and take her over the edge. Reiko was certain of that and she was really, really looking forward to when that happened.



Something that Madison clearly knew, as she carefully studied Reiko and kept an eye on just how good she was feeling even as she continued to eat Reiko out. Reiko panted and shivered, staring down at Madison as Madison's tongue flicked back and forth along the wet, horny pussy that was making her feel so damn great. Though not quite as great as she knew she could feel.



Or as great as she could make Madison feel, she knew. If she just got the chance to go down on her friend and make her feel as good as Reiko herself was feeling… no, even better than Reiko was feeling, that would be the sort of thing that Reiko would really like to do. That she could take a whole lot of pleasure in doing. She knew herself and she knew what sort of stuff could satisfy her just as much as playing with her pussy might.



If that was going to happen, it didn't seem to be happening soon. Madison was taking far too much pleasure in what she was doing to Reiko right now and Reiko couldn't do much other than allow it to happen. She tossed her head back and forth, moaning as she felt Madison's fingers stirring her up, constantly pushing her forward without ever pushing her over. It was a delicious, awful sensation for her to deal with and she panted for breath as she kept on feeling herself getting toyed with like this, over and over and over again.



Madison was taking a whole lot of enjoyment out of this and the smile on her face was the sort of thing that made Reiko blush hard as she stared into it, glad that she could give this kind of satisfaction to someone else. And glad that- oh. Oh. Reiko whimpered as she felt an orgasm rising inside of her, only for it to be stolen away as Madison moved her hand back away.



Reiko sagged downwards, every part of her body going limp. She stared up at Madison with a betrayed expression that made Madison giggle and kiss her on the lips.



"Don't worry," Madison said with a smirk. "I'm not completely heartless. You'll get that orgasm you want. Sooner or later."

"Sooner, please," Reiko said with a pant.



"Sorry, I don't take requests," Madison said with another giggle as she kissed the side of Reiko's neck. "You'll just have to take what you're given."

And there was a lot that she was going to give Reiko. Reiko really hoped that would be the case, at least. Madison was certainly looking very… fine right now. Very, very fine and with the smile on her face… Geez, Reiko just liked it a whole lot. She licked her lips some more and then gasped as Madison sank back down between her thighs, getting back to work with a tongue that seemed devilishly skilled.



Reiko hoped that when the time came, she would be able to do just as good of a job in returning the favor to Madison. Though she did think that when it was her time to do so, she would just… give the other woman an orgasm. No dragging it out, no amazingly awful edging, she'd just get to work and make it happen.



Though she had no idea at all when that would be as she twitched and gasped and moaned, feeling so good and feeling so denied as Madison kept on working and working. But that was alright. Reiko could wait. In fact, she really didn't mind waiting right now. Not when it kept on feeling so very good to have this tongue move back and forth against her, to feel this pleasure bubbling upwards inside of her and getting closer, closer and closer to the surface.



Not when this was all just so pleasant and so good and she was just feeling so generally great. Reiko tossed her head backwards and moaned again, rolling her hips back and forth. Trying to get that little bit more and knowing that it wasn't going to happen.



Not yet, at least. Not until Madison had gotten her fun from Reiko and made her feel just as good as desired, as many times as desired. Reiko looked down into Madison's eyes and saw the gleam of amusement there, the smile that said that this was only the start of what was going to happen.



And Reiko really couldn't mind that at all.

 

[WestOrEast]

Nightshift Avengers Chapter Thirteen

​

"So what's the situation?" Reiko asked, sliding in next to Grace and getting a fist bump from the broader woman.



"It's another Orion job, discovered by yours truly," Madison said with a gleam in her eyes as she looked at Reiko. "Want to do the honors, Lily, or should I?"

"Hanako Groceries," Lily said, passing Reiko a photo of a rather anonymous looking storefront built into the ground floor of a tower. "Whoever Hanako was, it is owned by Micheal Rodriguiz now. A bad part of Night City," she spoke over Grace's muttered comment about that being every part of the city, "he does a lot of work in cash instead of e-deposit. And that means that he's hired an Orion guy to stand inside of the grocery store during opening hours and watch over things."

"So we're robbing a grocery store now?" Reiko asked with a frown, glancing at Madison and seeing the smile on her face. "As a cover for a murder or something?"

"Firebombing the place and shooting the uniform would make people think about just how useful Orion really is, you know?" Madison said with a chuckle. "It would cause quite the commotion."

And kill some guy who had only done 'wrong' in hiring someone to help keep his money safe. Reiko didn't like the sound of that at all and she frowned as she sat backwards, looking at the others. Madison seemed quite fond of the idea, though at least both of the Dawson sisters were looking far less enthused about the idea.



"That's one possibility, yes," Lily said with a nod. "But where's the pay, Mads? I know I keep on harping on it but that's because my landlord keeps on harping about it as well."

"The store itself should have some eddies in the register," Madison said. "Pop it open, split it four ways, we're good."

"Ugh, convenience store robbers?" Grace said with a frown. "I have standards, you know. And anyway, a lot of cash for a grocery store probably isn't going to turn out to be a lot of cash once we split it four ways. Especially if we need to kill a man to get it."

"You might be surprised," Madison said in a wheedling tone of voice, before taking another look at the expressions both Dawson sisters were wearing. "Ugh, come on, at least think it over, alright?"

"I am and I'm thinking no," Lily said in a very flat voice. "Just because it hurts Orion doesn't mean that it's automatically a good idea, alright?"

"Ugh, fine, be that way," Madison said, outright sulking as she sat back in her seat. "Anyone have some other leads on some gigs?"



"I do, actually," Reiko said, holding her hand up and blushing as everyone looked at her. "It's kind of informal," as if there was an organized system for this sort of thing, "but you know Moria and the Sunstones?"

"Hell yeah, I know them," Lily said, perking up. "Got to see the last of their real performances before they sold out and signed onto a label. What about them?"



"One of Auntie's new clients yesterday spent pretty much the entire surgery yelling into his phone about some counterfeit merch of theirs. Or real merch that had been stolen and was being resold or something?" She shrugged. Both she and Auntie had been more focused on working on his cyber-dick that he wanted upgraded than listening to his private (if that was the word for the volume he had been shouting at) business dealings. "I know his number. We could call him and say that if he pays us, we can get it back for him or destroy it or whatever."

"That… sounds doable," Lily said with a nod, her eyes unfocused as she stared off into the distance. "Is he the Sunstones' agent or something?"

"He's in their orbit somehow," Reiko said with a shrug. "That's about all I can say for him."

"Well, you've got his number?" Reiko passed over the scrap she had jotted it down, copying it from his medical records. "Thanks. Madison, there anything on the local net about this guy? Loius Brandon, huh? Fancy name."

"Let me see," Madison said, slumping backwards as her eyes unfocused.



She looked dead as she worked and it was kind of creepy. Reiko shuddered and twisted her body around so that it was easier not to look at the other woman as she dove into the outer layers of the net. Lily looked a bit distracted, her mouth silently forming words. Running through ideas on how to have the conversation?



Grace had nothing to do and just smiled and nodded at Reiko. She reached over and patted Reiko's shoulder.



"Good job on getting us a lead like this," Grace said. "And if Lily scores some a shirt or whatever from the merch pile, you'll really be on her good side."

"Thanks," Reiko said with a blush and a happy squirm. "I just grabbed the chance when it came, you know?"

"Hey, recognizing an opportunity when it presents itself is a big part of what we do," Grace said with a nod. "Good work."

"Okay," Madison said, abruptly stirring and making Reiko jump in her chair. "I've got something. Brandon isn't the agent for the Sunstones but he works with the various agents to make and distribute brand band merch here in Night City. All under the Diamond Melody label, which in turn, is owned by Arasaka."



"Hell, bet's he worried about having his job this time next month," Grace said with a chuckle. "Spending his pay on a new dick instead of saving it up, geez. Corpos, am I right?"

"Makes sense that he might not be able to handle this in-house, though," Lily said with a nod. "Their security has a lot bigger fish to fry than, what, some mugs going missing? Some unauthed replicas of t-shirts?" She smiled. "Yeah, it's time to place a call and see what we can squeeze out of him."



"Let's make it quick, though," Grace said with a nod. "I've got a date tonight with a dancer from the Sakura nightclub." She winked at Reiko. "And you know what they say about Asian ladies."

"No," Reiko said, crossing her arms underneath her chest. "What do they say about Asian ladies?"

"They're bipedal," Lily offered, not making much of an effort to hide her smirk.



"Just the way I like them," Grace said, lewdly licking her lips and then laughing as Reiko rolled her eyes and flipped her off.



Lily sank into a phone call that, since Reiko could only hear half of it, wasn't very interesting. Instead, she just sat back and waited for the call to wrap up. She could tell how well it went by the smile on Lily's face, though.



"Well, that went well, I'd say," Lily said finally, nodding in satisfaction as she placed both hands on the table. "We've got ourselves a job, ladies. Go grab some stolen goods and deliver them to Arasaka for destruction."

"Who's holding them and where?" Grace asked.



"Well, Maelstrom is, in fact," Lily said with a wince. "Just another reason that he can't call on Arasaka, right? They ain't sticking their dick in that blender again, not unless they need to."


"Wait, some stolen 'Saka goods held by Maelstrom?" Madison asked, a sick grin appearing on her face. "You think that it was grabbed that night their tower melted down? By the same guys who chased us off from that warehouse?"

"Hell, you mean we could have been the ones grabbing a bunch of concert merchandise?" Grace asked with a stifled giggle. "Instead of the electronics we got, it could have been a bunch of cheap t-shirts and codes to download singles?" She covered her face in her hands and shook her head back and forth. "At least that would make it really easy to bring it all back to him, huh?"

"So are we getting a duffel bag of stuff or a cargo container?" Reiko asked.



"The latter, yeah," Lily said with a nod towards her. "So, Grace, feel up to driving a truck?"

"I… could give it a go," Grace said doubtfully. "Nobody's going to notice a few smashed walls and dented corners in Maelstrom territory, right?"

"Okay, we can take a taxi to the block and then I can drive the truck we steal out," Lily said with a wince.



"Or you can drive the truck and I can sit in the driver's seat of your car for once," Grace suggested.



"…We can take a taxi to the block and then I can drive the truck we steal out and away," Lily said, making a face a Grace sat back in her seat and rolled her eyes.



"Sounds like a plan," Madison said, sliding out from her spot and standing up. "And how much are we pulling in for this?"

"Four thousand each," Lily said, flashing a smile. "That ain't chicken feed, huh?"

Reiko liked the sound of that, quite a bit. She nodded along and took a deep breath. Okay, time for some more… well, Grace called it fun while Reiko just called it the job. Either way, it was time to get down to business.

***

​

Reiko was sweating even more than the sun beating down on her would demand. She had thought that Maelstrom wouldn't bother with a lot of guards for a bunch of cheap crap. And they probably wouldn't, but they weren't leaving the crate on its own. It was mixed in with a bunch of stuff that the gangoons obviously cared a whole lot more about.



The one good thing that could be said was that it seemed that guard duty was something that the more experienced and chromed-up members of the gang could get out of. All she was seeing was just a bunch of low-rankers, barely any more cybered than Reiko herself was. There were a hell of a lot more than four of them, though.



"Remember, the container's number is Apple Delta Seven One Five Seven," Lily said in their ears as she sidled over to a row of old, battered cargo haulers. "And start praying they haven't broken the load down and tossed it all over the place."

Yeah, that would just really make this job great, wouldn't it? Reiko grumbled to herself and tightly gripped her stun gun, peeking around the edge of the burned-out car she was hiding behind. Grace was at the other end of the car, clutching the assault rifle she had tuned up. And Madison was… somewhere else, that was about all Reiko could say right now.



Grace looked up at the sky, took a few deep breaths and grabbed a syringe from a pocket, flipping the cover off and jamming it against her neck. She pressed the trigger down and almost instantly, Reiko could hear her breathing starting to change. She couldn't say if that was because the drugs were already working so quickly or just because Grace thought that they should work that quickly, but the real effects would be known really soon.



"Right, I've got a target," Grace said, resting her gun on the edge of the car and sighting down it. "Let's get this party started!"

She squeezed the trigger two times and a man across the street and down the block collapsed. Some of the other guys around the cargo lot fence stared around in mute wonder but others were obviously not drunk or high and were taking cover and popping shots off at anything that moved.



With a wild yell, Grace broke from cover and started charging down the sidewalk, her rifle still chattering as she sprayed down the area in front of her. Reiko whimpered and forced herself out from behind the car as well, tightly clutching the rubberized grip of her pistol and sprinting as quickly as she could for the next bit of cover.



She still couldn't see where Madison was, but with how a gangoon clutched his cybereye as he fell out from behind cover, she was busy doing something. Grace pumped a few rounds into him before skidding to a stop behind some more cover. Reiko managed to join her as the bullets finally started converging on their position instead of being fired every which way.



She cringed as she saw divots appearing in the concrete next to her and drew herself deeper behind the crate, listening to the sounds of gunfire popping off all around her. Reiko trembled and realized that she was close enough to the cargo yard to actually see containers now.



"Alpha Delta…" she twisted her head back and forth but couldn't see much of anything from here. Nothing that matched, at least. "We're going to need to get into the yard, Grace!" She shouted, jostling the black woman's leg as she snapped off a few more rounds.



"Really wish I had those spring-loaded legs to get up on top of there," Grace muttered, glancing at the cargo containers looming over them to one side. "Okay, here goes!"

She grabbed one of the two grenades on her belt and tossed it down the street. There was some shouting and Reiko could see some thugs springing out from behind cover (one of them flopping back down as Grace's rifle cracked) and then an explosion, a really loud explosion, ripped through the street.



Grace was on her feet and charging down before the thunder even died down, though Reiko needed another moment or two to hype herself up enough to follow after. She whimpered as she rose to her feet and ran down the sidewalk.



The roaring of an engine behind her made Reiko look over her shoulder, though she was relieved to see that it was just Lily behind the wheel of a truck. Going pretty fast, too, fast enough to run over a Maelstromer who was dazed by the grenade.



There were still a few more of them on their feet but they were running. Running pretty fast, too. Reiko lifted her stun gun, as if the electrodes could possibly carry that far and then let her arm sag back down. Grace sent them on their way with a few more shots that didn't hit anything and then cheered long and loud.



"Hell yeah!" Grace shouted, hopping up onto the truck runner and hammering the door with a fist. "Damn nice work, sis, fucking good job!"

"Thanks," Lily said, cracking the door open as she hopped out from it. "Now, where's a computer with an inventory list?"

"No need for that," Madison said, appearing from… somewhere and putting her pistol back in its holster. "We're looking at Row Three, Block Three, Level One."

Reiko glanced around and saw some numbers and letters painted on the pavement. Lily saw them as well and kicked the truck back into gear, driving into the yard. Grace trotted after her, her rifle panning left and right as she looked for… well, anything.



If there were any gangoons left inside the yard, they were hiding away from the four of them. It was easy enough to find the right container and to pop it open. It wasn't packed to the brim with stuff and Reiko didn't know if it should be, but there was certainly a lot of it. Way more than three-quarters full. Reiko nodded and slammed the door shut again, turning to give a thumbs-up to Madison as she jerked a forklift back and forth in starts and stops.



Before she could get the tines underneath the container, Reiko heard the screeching of rubber on road and the roar of an engine. Grace cursed and slammed herself against a container, sighting down her rifle at the far end of the corridor the boxes formed.



Reiko had been expecting to see something big and proud and loud in Maelstrom colors appear but what actually came into view was just a car. A rather nicer car than what Lily drove but not the convoy of thugs that Reiko had thought she'd see.



"Thank you, ladies!" A man called out, stepping out from the back of the car and smiling widely. "We'll take things from here!"

"Who the hell are you?" Lily shouted, her head hanging out from the truck window.



"We are true stars of retro-thrash on the West Coast, the one, the only Livespark," the man said, throwing his arms apart like he was expecting cheers.



"God damn it, Rufs, you don't give out our real names!" The driver's door popped open and another man appeared, with enough gleaming chrome that Reiko had to shield her eyes from the reflected rays. "We're nobody, that's what matters, we're nobody and we want you to just turn around and go away."

"Livespark?" Lily asked with a contemptuous tone to her voice. "I've heard of you. What do you want? We're working girls, here, we can't just sit around talking all day."


"Damn right we can't," Grace muttered, still sighting down the barrel of her rifle and looking twitchy.



"When we heard that our would-be competitors in the musical scene would be arriving in Night City for what they call a concert, well, we thought that we could show them up," the first man said, still gesturing quite wildly, "but if their leash holders are going to keep them nice and safe like good little lap dogs…"

"We're signed on with the same label, man," the other guy said with a shake of his head as a third man climbed out from the car. He was short and squat and was actually carrying a gun in his hands, unlike the other two. "Hey, there's no need for that, Lems."

"You're using the wrong language talking to these street rats," the man said. "The only tongue they understand is lead."

"What do you guys even want, huh?" Lily called out as Reiko reached over to grab Grace's shoulder and gesture for her to relax a bit. "What's this about?"

"Now that those cyberfreaks are out of the way," for now, at least, and Reiko didn't want to spend too long talking in case they came back, "we want to destroy the contents of that container you've got. Lame-ass concert that uptight bitch will be throwing, with no merch to buy or whatever." The first man smiled widely and swayed back and forth a bit on his feet as he looked down the corridor at them.

"Christ, this is some petty band rivalry?" Madison asked with a groan. "And you aren't even going after them, just their stuff?"

"Yeah, when the Seventy-Sixers got pissed off at the Broken Bone Bar for withholding their fees, they had the guts to firebomb the place," Lily agreed from her spot in the cab of the truck. "Hell, Saumrai's legend is a lot bigger than their reality but look at the shit that they pulled."



"Shut up," the man with the shotgun snapped. "Get out of the way or else."



"Or else what?" Grace asked, switching her aim to the man and placing her finger on the trigger. "What do we get out of it, huh?"

"Yeah, we'd need forty thousand eddies before we'd dream of walking away from here," Lily said instantly.



"Forty?" The driver spluttered. "Are you out of your mind? I wouldn't pay forty thousand for all four of you to join me in my trailer after a concert!"


"I'd need forty just for myself before I'd even dream of that," Madison muttered underneath her breath. And Reiko would need a hell of a lot more than that before the faintest idea of sleeping with a man appealed to her. "We're professionals and we need a professional's wage here!"

"How about an autograph?" The driver counter, flashing a beaming smile that would have seemed more genuine if his attitude hadn't flipped like a switch. "A personalized autograph for each of you from all of us."

"All of us counting your backup singer who isn't here?" Lily countered. "The complete set might be worthwhile," for resale, at least for Reiko, "but just three-quarters of you, not so much."



"Okay, fine, we trash the crap here and you come back with us to our hotel for the full round of autographs, how does that sound?"



"Lily, how much would a custom autograph from the four of them go for?" Reiko asked in an urgent hiss.



"Don't know, I don't keep track of that market," Lily answered back, keeping her eyes on the men and her hand on her pistol. "Couple thousand probably, but closer to one or ten thousand, can't say. And their hotel would have private security they could turn to, too."

Reiko practically jumped out of her skin as several loud shouts rang out. She wasn't the only one startled by it and heads snapped around as people pressed themselves up against containers or against the ground. Then Reiko saw a plume of white smoke or steam rising from the band's car, right in the middle of the front hood.



"That just ruined your engine block!" Grace called out, her voice raw and primal. "You aren't driving anywhere now! So you'd better start thinking about how you want to spend your time before Maelstrom comes back, pissed off about their guys being shot! Dealing with us or finding a ride out of here."

God damn, that actually made sense and wasn't too violent. With the combat drugs Grace was on, Reiko would have figured that even one of the two would have been a long shot, never mind both of them. She glanced over at the black woman, feeling impressed.



The band, whatever their name was, were feeling a whole lot less impressed. They sent some nasty glares at Grace before starting to whisper to one another in heated tones. Reiko took a deep breath and glanced at Madison, who was already back in the driver's seat of the forklift and grabbing the container in its tines.



With some muffled shouting and curses, the three men took to their heels, flipping off Reiko and the others as they rounded the nearest corner. Reiko let out a breath that she hadn't even realized she was holding. And she was still feeling pretty damn tense and that probably wouldn't stop until she and her friends were safely out of here and counting the cash that would get forked over.



"Shit, running off through this part of town?" Lily asked with a shake of her head. "Maybe I should have gotten an autograph from them. Last thing they did before dying should jack the price up."



Reiko couldn't help but giggle at the dark humor and then realized that Lily wasn't laughing. She shook her head and tried to think of a better response but nothing came to mind. Instead, she just felt the truck sag down a bit as the container was put into place.



A few minutes later, it was secured and the truck cab was pretty damn cramped with how many women were in it. Lily pressed the pedal down and the truck started to roll forward, pushing the band's car out of the way with a horrible sound of crunching metal.



Maelstrom hadn't responded yet, which was good, because there was no way that this truck was going to outrun any special babies that they had. Hell, a good pair of cyberlegs might be able to keep pace as it slowly, slowly, slowly built up speed, only to loose it all at the first red light.



"Right, so where are we dropping this sucker off at?" Grace asked, reloading her rifle and slamming the half-used magazine into a slot on her vest.



"Somewhere we've been before, as a matter of fact," Lily said with a chuckle. "By the way, good thinking with that shot." She glanced at her sister. "I was… damn, Grace, you feeling alright?"

"Just the comedown from the injection," Grace said, waving her hand back and forth as sweat started to run down her face. Reiko made a sound of concern and opened her medical bag, grabbing a hypospray. "Fun stuff, you know?" Reiko pressed the tip against Grace's neck and injected it. "Ah, yeah, I can already feel it working."

She most certainly could not. It didn't work anywhere near that fast. But it did work and it would help flush at least some of the chemical residue from her combat cocktail from her system instead of leaving it to get soaked up by her kidneys or liver. Reiko looked around. Nobody else had been hurt, either, which was good. Very good.



"Pity that Arasaka is benefitting from this, at least a little," Madison said, sitting back in her seat as best she could with how crowded all four of them were. "Maybe we could have found a way to still get paid without letting them do this concert or whatever they were planning to sell the merch at."


"Yeah, but there's a difference between giving corpo data over to Saka and a concert," Lily said. "Also, the doc," she nodded at Reiko, "has set aside some preem chrome for me and I need the eddies to pay for it. We can fuck Arasaka up later, once I've healed from the surgery."

"Might want to do it even before," Grace said with a chuckle. "Way things are going for them, they might not be around much longer to mess around with."

"Yeah, I went to Corpo Plaza the next morning and man, they still didn't have the fires under control," Reiko said with a nod. "There was this one spot, about seven stories up, where the outer wall was just sagging down like soft plastic. No idea what could have caused that."

"Think any of us will ever be an edgerunner like V was?" Madison asked.



"Like she is," Lily said firmly, shaking her head back and forth. "Someone who can hit Arasaka Tower that hard, all by herself, wouldn't have died in it. They just said she did because they need some way to salvage the mess that she made. She's alive out there somewhere, I just know it."

Reiko glanced at Grace and shrugged. She had no idea about that but about Madison's question… Yeah, deep down, she knew the answer to that.



"I'm not cut out to be like her," Reiko said, shaking her head. "I just don't have what it takes."

"Hard to see you stacking up bodies, yeah," Grace said with nod, rubbing Reiko's spikes of green hair. "I don't know, maybe I could end up like her."

"I don't know if I can aim that high," Lily said, whistling through her teeth. "There's good and then there's that good and that's one hell of a high bar to climb up through."

"I hear that," Madison said. "I could see myself becoming some great netrunner, though." She nodded and looked around for support. Reiko flashed her a smile. "Get my name out there as someone who can make the data dance to her tune."

"Like a new Big Bad Bartmoss?" Reiko asked. "Though for you, it would be Mean, uh, something else M, Madison."

"Now that just rolls off the tongue," Madison said with a snort. "Oh, is this it?"

It seemed that it was. Lily slowed down and hauled the truck into a gated-off parking lot. There were a few workers in hard hats and reflective vests standing around and one guy in a suit. Lily parked in front of him and hopped out, stretching and smiling as the rest of the crew exited behind her.



"Mr. Brandon," Lily said with a big smile as she walked over to the man, who was already walking towards the rear of the container. "One batch of goodies, exactly as requested."

The man in the suit grunted at that, staring at the doors as a worker climbed onto the truck bed and hauled the container open. When he saw what was inside, he relaxed more than a bit and turned around, actually looking Lily in the eye.



"So it seems," he said, in a voice that sounded much nicer than the one he used to rant and rave as Auntie and Reiko had inserted that new metal dick onto him. "I have to thank you for a job well done. Any trouble?"

Was he just as responsible for Livespark as he was for the Sunstones? If he was, his good mood wasn't going to be lasting for long, Reiko figured. Still, no reason to ruin his day just yet with that kind of news.



"Nothing a team like us couldn't handle," Lily said with a smirk. "When you pay for us, you get quality and you get results."

Brandon grunted at that but a few minutes later, Reiko got a popup telling her that her money had arrived in her account. That put a smile on her face and a bounce in her step and pretty soon, they were all walking away from the lot without a single problem.



"That went easier than I thought it might," Grace said. "You made him sound like a real jackass, Reiko."

"He was," Reiko said with a scowl. "Insisted on only local anesthetic and wouldn't let us put that screen over his neck to stop him from seeing what we were doing. Most people don't like seeing us taking out the scalpels and the screwdrivers, you know?"



"So what did you guys put into him?" Madison asked, jerking a thumb back at Brandon.



"Well, he'd be able to use it to go all night and he could use it to go every night but I sure would know," Reiko said with a quick giggle. "I've just never liked solid gold coloring on limbs, you know? Especially not the shortest one a man has."

"What?" Grace blinked a few times before starting to laugh. "Oh ew. Thanks for that image, Reiko!"

"Hey, she asked!" Reiko said, fending off the swatting hand Grace threw her way.



"And you should have known better than to answer," Lily said with a chuckle. "Oh well, what's done is done and now we can go on dates," she nodded at her sister, "or whatever else it is that we plan to do tonight. Sounds good?"

"Sounds real good," Madison said with a nod. "And I'll find some Orion job that pays more and doesn't bother people so much." There was more than a hint of a roll of her eyes to that last bit but Reiko made herself not mind. "See you all when there's some more work for us to do."


"I'm off to pick up my date," Grace said, looking herself up and down. "Well, get cleaned up and then go pick her up. See tomorrow morning, sis."

"See ya," Lily said with a wave as Grace split off. "Well, Reiko, you got any plans tonight?"

"No," Reiko said, perking up a bit. "So if you do, I'm wide open."

"Right here on the street? Damn girl, save that for the bedroom," Lily snickered as Reiko crossed her arms. "But maybe we can work up to that, huh. I know a bar that has a good band playing close to us. Want to head over there and see where things go?"

"Sounds fun to me," Reiko said, reaching down and grabbing Lily's hand, feeling metal against skin. "Just so long as we don't see any faces from earlier there."

Reiko hadn't meant that to be a joke but it still got Lily laughing as they headed out through the city.

 

[WestOrEast]

Nightshift Avengers Chapter Fourteen

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Reiko looked back and forth out the car windows. She hadn't seem much of the outside of Night City since she had arrived and for good reason. Endless cliffs and valleys and plains without a scrap of life or water to be seen, just dirt and stone baking underneath the sun. It was hot inside the car, especially with four of them in here but it would be a hell of a lot worse outside of it.



"Wonder if we're going to run into anyone out here," Madison said, pulling the front of her tank top away from her body to try and fan some air down there. "That we don't want to run into."

"Hey, if we run into nobody at all, all the guards off on holiday, that's fine with me," Lily said as her car bumped and bounced along the potholed road, kicking up sand drifts that had covered it in stretches. "Who needs a body count, right?"



Madison just grunted at that and pressed her forehead against the window, looking out at a whole lot of desert. Reiko twisted around to look behind herself, seeing the towers of Night City looking small in the distance, only a few gleams of color showing off the holographic advertisements that dominated the city streets.



"Any of you ever met the Raffen Shiv?" Reiko asked.



"Yeah, but she was selling some stuff so she was on her best behavior," Lily said. "And since I'm not outrunning a three-legged tortoise in my car, let's hope we don't renew the acquittance, alright?"

"I hear that," Grace muttered. "Looks like the place should be just over the next rise."

"Right," Lily said, yanking the steering wheel off to the side. Everyone grunted and yelped as they were bounced around inside the car as it plowed it way over some rough rocks. "Okay, this should be far enough out."

At least it would be once they spread the tan-colored tarp they had bought over the car and tied it down. No colors shining that you could see from the road, at least. As Reiko straightened up, she wiped her hand across her forehead. She was already sweating pretty badly and the 'fun' hadn't even started yet.



"Okay, everyone, remember," Lily said, pulling out a photo from her pocket and unfolding it. "We want Rosa Bridger from here. Anyone else they're holding for ransom, that's nice but we're getting her in the car."


"Got it," Reiko said, glancing down at the photo. A middle-aged woman in the upper quarter of a suit stared up at her. Skin that could have been Hispanic or could have been white with a light tan. Artificial black hair holding a style that only synthetic materials could have managed. Pure green eyes that just looked creepy. Should be easy enough to pick out of a crowd. "Um, if we have the time, I'd like to at least tend to the health of anyone there."

"If we've got the time, you can do whatever you want," Lily said. "But Hubby's only paying out if we bring her back and he's only paying for her."

The others glanced at the photo but only briefly. They had all already seen it, after all. Frankenbot, able for the first time in what seemed like forever to be deployed, was also given the chance to look at it and made a whirring sound. Then Lily was tucking the photo away again and motioning everyone up along the draw.



It was a scramble up along the slope and the robot, especially had trouble making it. But they all got to the top of the rise eventually. And there beyond, tucked away in a little divot in the hills, was the compound.



It was not very impressive. Not at all. A two-story building with a flat roof, some sheds scattered around it, all enclosed by a chain-link fence with barbed wire strung across the top of it. Reiko could see one Orion guard, sitting inside a booth next to the one and only gate but there weren't any signs of anyone else.



She didn't actually believe that but it was nice to think that might be the case. Reiko waited for her turn as the rest of the crew slid down the hillock, Grace in front. She dashed across to the sentry booth and the man in it only looked up when the door opened. And since grace was already swinging a club at his head, it was far too late for him to do anything.



"That was pathetic," Madison said, shaking her head as she stared down at the groaning man as Grace cuffed him to his chair.



"All the cameras in the world don't mean much if you've got some low-pay wage slave drinking coffee and pissing instead of watching them," Lily said from the outside. "Come on, let's go."



They went, streaming into the inside of the fence, which was still just dusty rocks, only pressed flat by trucks driving over them. As they crossed, Reiko turned to Frankenbot.



"Full engagement, leash to me," she stated as clearly as she could, letting it shoot anyone that wasn't the four of them and keeping it within three meters of her at all times.



The up-armored robot made a chirp of understanding and flicked off the safety on the rifle it had been given. Reiko gave the multi-colored robot one last glance and then looked around the inside of the compound. Nobody gaping at them from the door of an outbuilding. Maybe they could-



"This is an Orion Security restricted zone!" A female voice called out an unseen loudspeaker. "This is your only warning! Remain here and be fired upon!"



Wow, actually giving a warning before opening fire. That was a level of restraint you didn't often see. They still ignored it and kept on advancing. Sprinting by now, really, Grace grabbing a grenade from her vest and lobbing it in through the door of the squat building.



There was a bright flash of light and a bang so loud that Reiko felt it inside of her chest. Then Grace was poking her head around the door and lifting her gun, firing a few shots before she stepped inside.



If Reiko had let herself stop to think about just what she was doing, she might not have been able to follow Grace into the firefight. As it was, she was already running, so it was 'easy' enough to just tumble through the doorway and throw herself down behind a desk as the rest of the crew got in behind her.



Reiko could see a whole squad of Orion goons pouring out two interior doors, black armored vests over their blue and black uniforms. And they had guns, which was the more important thing. She cringed further behind cover and tightly gripped her stun gun in her hand, kind of glad that she could no longer sweat in it and risk dropping it.



Grace was already sighting down her rifle and opening fire, the loud bangs from the gun drowning out the comparatively softer sounds of Lily's and Madison's pistols. Then Frankenbot opened up and craters started appearing in the walls as the heavy rounds chewed through anything in their way. It wasn't even trying to take cover, just standing there and letting rounds bounce off of its armored carapace as its shot chased one of the Orion goons, a woman in a black, visored helmet who threw herself back through the doorway she had come through.



One of the other guards clutched his eyes and cursed, sagging to the side and out of cover as Madison laughed. Then he took two rounds from Grace and collapsed onto the floor, a pool of red starting to cover the tiles underneath him.



Reiko stared at him for a moment before shaking her head to try and clear it. She looked around and made sure that there was something nice and thick between her and the Orion troops, something that could catch a few rounds and keep her from ending up like him.



Grace, on the other hand, was surging forward, bouncing from desk to console to vending machine, constantly on the move as she kept on squeezing off shots at the enemy. Lily was taking a few shots from where she was and Madison did as well, though it was clear that more of her focus was on hacking the other guys. And keeping them from getting any warning signals off, hopefully, as per the plan.



Frankenbot was taking a lot of the fire and Reiko could see sparks flying off of it as it ate round after round. It was still upright but she thought that the armor plating was going to have to be tossed after all this was done. Well, that wasn't a problem. Reiko would much rather it take a bullet than her.



Even better would be the Orion goons taking bullets. And they did seem to be winnowing their way through the squad. Even as smoke and dust filled the room, Reiko was seeing fewer and fewer muzzle flashes from in front of her and she wasn't hearing strange voices calling out orders.



It wasn't over yet, though. There was someone in a doorway deeper into the base still firing and Reiko cringed behind her desk, ducking her head back down to avoid drawing attention. Then she heard a loud grunt and a clatter.



Grace was down on the ground, weakly cursing as she grabbed at her torso. Reiko blinked several times, seeing the red pool starting to form underneath her before finally kicking herself into action. She patted her medical bag on her hip, steeled herself up and then dashed across the space to slide into cover next to Grace.



"Shit," Grace moaned, trying to press her hands against her upper stomach, just below her breasts. "Oh shit, shit, shit."

"Don't talk," Reiko said, swallowing hard as she called on the medical knowledge in the skillsoft she had in a chip in her head and what she herself had learned how to do working under Auntie in the operating room. "Just keep pressure there until I tell you to, alright?"

Her hand rustled around in her bag until she found the hyposprays. Pulling out a handful, she grabbed the local anesthetic and sneaked it in underneath Grace's shirt, pressing it against bare black skin and depressing the trigger. There was a faint hissing and then Reiko tossed it away.



Then it was time to cut the straps to Grace's armored vest and then cut the shirt itself away. And all the while, Reiko kept on hearing bullets flying overhead as Lily and Madison kept on fighting the remnants of the Orion squad. Frankenbot was stomping forward, shells arcing out the side of its gun as it poured the fire into the doorway.



Reiko felt hyper aware of everything that was going on around her as she bent over Grace. She made herself focus on just the other woman, just on getting her to be safe and sound and to not fuck up like she had a month and a half ago with that other edgerunner.



The fingers on her cyborg hand split apart into several thinner fingers, perfect for sliding into a wound and finding a bullet. The sight of her doing that, pushing into Grace and feeling the blood and warm meat around her hand… didn't disturb her as much as she thought it might. She was just a lot more focused on finding the slug.



Then she got it and was lifting it out. It didn't look like much to have put a strong woman like Grace flat on her back, just a small, misshapen lump of metal covered in red. Reiko shook her head and dropped it before turning back to what mattered.



"Alright, I don't think," Reiko flicked on a light as she peered into the wound, picking up some tools of the trade, "that it hit any organs. Damn lucky there, Grace."

"Feel lucky," Grace said with a spasm of a smile and a shiver that ran through her entire body.



"Need some more painkillers?" Reiko asked as she got to work at the severed veins inside of her friend, doing the best that she could to stop them from leaking into Grace's body.



"Nah," Grace said with a pant. "I'm tough. Don't want to get addicted."

Reiko nodded at that and kept on working. She could hear the gunfire dying down behind her but a simple acknowledgment of that fact was all that she could really manage right now. She was much more focused on repairing the damage done to Grace as best as she could and as quickly as she could.



"Don't think that you're going to need to replace anything in here," Reiko said as she managed to stop the flow of blood from the major sources. "Just stay on your back for a few days and have extra iron in your diet, alright?"

Grace nodded weakly and part of Reiko wondered if she was actually taking in what Reiko was saying to her. The rest of her was more focused on fixing her friend. And hell, she could always repeat these instructions to Lily when things were over. She was sure Lily would make sure her sister followed doctor's orders.



"Okay," Reiko said, starting to seal the wound back up, spraying foam on the skin. "I really would like to get you hooked up to some blood bags but…" she looked around the smokey room, realizing just what a slaughterhouse it was with so many dead bodies in it, "maybe not in here."

"How's she doing?" Lily asked, appearing out of nowhere, still holding her pistol in both hands.



"She's going to live but I don't," Reiko took Grace's hand in her own and squeezed down on it, "want to see you doing anything more energetic than climbing a single flight of stairs for the next two weeks, got it?"

"Feel like I could sleep for the next two weeks," Grace complained, slipping her hand free from Reiko's and pressing it against her forehead.



Well, that would be the shock dump of the combat drugs that Reiko had done, at least in part. Grace's headache and nausea might not have hit yet but they were coming and Reiko would not envy her friend when they did. But for now…



Holy shit, for now, she had actually kept Grace safe and alive from a bullet that would have killed her if Reiko hadn't been on hand. That was going to be the kind of thing that hit Reiko like a truck later on, she had a feeling. For now, she was thinking it in her head and not feeling it in her gut.



Taking a deep breath, she started to wrap up, putting everything back in her medic bag and making a half-hearted effort to clean up the blood that had leaked out from Grace as she had worked. There was a lot more of it than she was used to when doing a surgery or replacement with Auntie and she shook her head as she looked at the red painting the floor and smelled the metallic scent, made worse by the gunpowder smoke filling the room.



"Did we win?" Reiko asked, looking around.



"Nobody's shooting at us any longer," Lily said. "Hey, Mads, got a line into their cameras yet?"

"Working on it… done," Madison muttered from where she was bent over a computer. "Cameras saying… there's one guard left, upstairs in the break room and I think she took a bullet to the arm. Prisoners are in the basement and…" she typed on the keyboard, "right, all the doors are open."

"Okay, Frankenbot, no shooting, guard that point," Reiko said, fishing the laser pointer from a pocket and shining it at the staircase.



"Be back in a bit," Lily said, pulling the photo of their target out of her pocket and holding it in her hand as she trotted down the staircase. "Keep on digging for anything useful here, Mads!"

"As if I need to be told," Madison grumbled.



Reiko looked around and saw some bottled water sitting on a desk. Well, it was no sterilizing agent but it would certainly do for a start in cleaning herself off. She set to work on that, glancing at Grace as the black woman slowly breathed in and out, still laying there on the floor.



Then she started checking on the Orion team. They were all either dead or so close to it that there was nothing that Reiko could possibly do to keep them alive. She was really glad that all of the mortally wounded were wearing visored helmets so she couldn't see their faces as they bled out.



"What the hell?" Madison asked, bending over the terminal she was poking at. "That's…"



"What's up?" Reiko asked as she grabbed a collapsible stretcher from Frankenbot's back and helped Grace crawl onto it. The older woman grunted in pain and her face was tightly drawn. She still shook her head when Reiko reached for a painkiller. "Something wrong?"

"I'm seeing some weird notes on the files of the people they were holding here for ransom," Madison said, grabbing a chair with a bullet hole punched through the backrest. "Some of the people, at least. They were part of a bigger project or something?" She frowned. "Project DG in the notes. Teams from Orion HQ would come out and meet with them?"



"Why?" Reiko asked as she fussed over Grace before the gunslinger shooed her away. "Does it say what for?"

"Maybe behind some of these barriers I haven't cracked yet," Madison said with a frown. "Kind of tricky to get into. But maybe…" she trailed off and leaned back in her chair, staring up at the ceiling.



There were a lot more people coming up the stairs than just Lily and Mrs. Bridger. Reiko frowned as she heard Lily's voice floating up, even over the sounds of all those feet on the steps.



"-cause there's only room in the car for the person we were hired to get!" Lily shouted as she made an appearance, driving the middle-aged woman they were after in front of her and looking over her shoulder at one, two… five other people in all. "There's a phone in here you can use to call someone to pick you up or you can head outside and see Night City from the road and start walking!"

That didn't go over very well and Reiko glanced at Madison. The white woman frowned and twisted around, her hand going down to rest on her pistol as she stared at the group of haggard, pale men and women that were spilling out into the main room.



"Just look at all those friendly people, happy they've been saved," Madison muttered as Lily turned around to face the entire group. Now that Reiko paid attention, it was just two people yelling, the rest of them looking a lot more grateful to just be out of their cells and in… well, you really couldn't call this fresh air. "Need some help?"

Lily grunted as she kicked an Orion gun underneath a desk. Reiko sure hoped that things wouldn't devolve badly enough for that to be a concern! The black woman hopped up onto a desk and for a moment, Reiko was worried the entire thing was going to collapse as it took her weight.



"Shut up and listen!" Lily shouted, stomping her foot down on the desk. "Stop talking and start thinking! You all got grabbed because there was someone out there willing to pay out to get you back, so call them! You can be with your friends and family in a fraction of the time it would take for us to ferry you all back to Night City!"



That actually got the two shouters to calm down and start looking around. Reiko shook her head as she glanced at Rose Bridgers. She had looked a lot prettier in the photo her husband had handed over than she did now but she wasn't dead-eyed and shuffling like some people Reiko had seen around. She stepped over to the Hispanic woman and started running down her vitals, checking to see what kind of condition she was in and getting a few murmured responses for the questions she asked.



"Hey, any of you people know anything about Project DB?" Madison asked, turned back to the console she had been working at. "Especially… you, Josiah Miller. You got a few sessions with someone after you came here, right?"

"Uh, me?" A rather fat and old man asked, blinking as he rested against a wall, panting and sweaty even with the AC working in here. "What about it?"

"Well, what was it about?" Madison asked impatiently. "What did they do?"

"I, I don't know," the man said, wiping his forehead. "They took a bunch of readings for blood pressure and weight and asked me a bunch of questions and then the guards shoved me back downstairs!"

"Who's they?" Reiko asked. "Who were the ones doing this?"

"I never got their names, they were just wearing white lab coats," Miller said, shaking his head. "Listen, I don't care what they were doing, because as soon as I get out of here, everyone in Orion is going to learn what happens when you mess with an Arasaka third-party affiliate!"

"Oh, haven't heard the news, huh?" Madison asked as she turned back and typed away. "If your last name isn't Arasaka, then Saka doesn't have much time for you."



"What news?" Miller asked, bulling forward and grabbing for a terminal that had survived the gunfire. "It doesn't matter," he said, even as he started clicking, "they'll look out for their own!"

"This is your brain on corpoism, huh?" Lily said underneath her breath before turning on Reiko. "How are things looking?"

"We can move whenever you're ready," Reiko said with a nod.



"Good," Lily said, a nasty look settling on her face for a moment before she took a deep breath. "I want you coming upstairs with me. I've got some questions for that bitch."



"Wait, was she even the one who shot Grace?" Reiko asked to Lily's back as Lily headed for the stairs. She groaned and rubbed her forehead before following after the black woman, patting her medical bag and the reduced contents within. "Coming."

Reiko kept herself plastered to the walls as she climbed the stairs but no shots rang out. She could see Lily ahead of her, staring down the barrel of her pistol and muttering into her link with Madison.



Then, all of a sudden, she charged forward and jumped over a crate that had been left in the hallway. Another woman shouted and Reiko could see Lily leaning forward to throw a punch and then hold her gun on an unseen target. Taking a deep breath, Reiko hurried down the hallway, arriving at the scene.



The uniformed woman was going to have one hell of a shiner in the next few days but unless Lily pulled the trigger, that was the worst that she'd have to deal with. One hand was against her face and the other was up in the air as she shook her head back and forth, staring into Lily's eyes. And god damn, did Lily look pissed right now. Reiko hadn't gotten a good look at her face before now and now that she had… yikes.



"I'm in a bad mood, bitch, so you'd better be very fucking helpful," Lily said, pressing the muzzle of her pistol against the woman's head. This was just her threatening the woman, right? She wasn't going to go through with it, was she? Reiko swallowed hard and tried to think of how she could play good cop to this Latina woman laying there on the ground. "I want to know some things."

"What?" The guard squeaked. "God, what is it?"

"Let's start with the easy one," Lily said. "Did you people get an alarm off before we kicked your asses?"

"No," the guard said, casting a beseeching look at Reiko. "We aren't supposed to bother HQ over every little thing. I can't believe you killed everyone else!"

"Good," Lily purred, keeping her pistol pressed firmly against the skin. "Now, onto another question. What's Project DB?"

"That? You're here about that?" The woman asked before gasping as her head was pushed backwards by the pistol.



"We're here about a lot of stuff," Lilly purred in a way that the woman would be a fool to think represented safety. "So how about it?"

"I don't know, I just watch the cameras and deliver the food and pills," the guard said, looking like she was about to start crying. "They just come here with a van full of instruments and take some of the inmates to a spare room for a few hours! That's all! I've never talked to them!"



"So you're saying you're useless to us?" Lily asked. Reiko swallowed, though not as hard as the woman was as she stared up at the muzzle pressed against her forehead. "That's disappointing."

"No, wait!" The guard said, tears starting to run down her pale skin. "Please, I have a husband, we want to have a kid, please don't!"

"Why not?" Lily shouted, pressing the pistol forward and making the woman's head hit the wall behind her. "Lots of people die, you think you're lucky enough to avoid that?"

"Site B!" The woman screamed, tears streaming down her face as she recoiled. "They talked about Site B once!"

"Now that's better," Lily said, the anger subsiding but still lurking in her voice. "Where is it and what goes on in it?"

"I, I don't know what happens there," the guard said, panting for breath, "they were just complaining about all the other clients in the tower making privacy hard to manage but at least they could see the ocean!"

"There, that wasn't so hard," Lily said with a smile, slipping the pistol back into a holster. "I knew you'd think of something if you tried." The woman jerkily nodded, tears still running down her face. "Cuff her, Wasp, and let's get out of here."

Reiko took a second to realize that Wasp was supposed to be her before lurching into motion. She gave Lily one hell of a side-eye as she passed by but didn't say anything in front of the guard. The woman didn't resist the zip-ties going around her wrists and just sagged back down, twitching and shivering as she hung her head between her knees.



Once they were at the far end of the corridor from the guard, Reiko leaned in to whisper to Lily.



"What the hell was all that about?" Reiko asked in an urgent hiss. "Were you really going to shoot her?"

"Nobody hurts my sister and gets away with it," Lily said, an ugly expression appearing on her face. "Grace would do the same for me. If she had actually been the one pulling the trigger, no amount of info would have kept her alive. But if it was just one of her friends…" Lily kicked the wall. "I can see why people cut bodies apart."

Reiko made a face and swallowed hard as she followed Lily down the stairs. The main room stunk even worse now with cooper and smoke after Reiko had been parted from it for a bit. And it was a bit emptier, some of the kidnapped people having vanished to other rooms or outside or wherever.



"There you are," the target said, standing up from a bench, her pocket bulging awkwardly from what had to be a pistol slipped in there. "Can we go now?"

"I think so," Lily said, a thin mask of friendliness appearing as she talked to the VIP. "Everyone good here?"

Madison ran down what little she had found on the site's computers as Reiko lifted Grace and her stretcher up with Frankenbot's help. Grace was still looking stable but Reiko would feel a lot better when she got her on a proper table and could get some proper transfusions and the like set up.



"Okay, Madison," Lily said, as they all stepped out into the burning sun, "I want you to start looking for any Orion properties on the west side of buildings that are close to the ocean and have other renters or whatever in them as well. I think we've got a target."

"Music to my ears," Madison said with a nod as she looked around. "I'll get started as soon as we're back home."



"Oh yeah, they're going to regret shooting Grace," Lily said, looking down at her sister as they trotted down the asphalt, out between the gates. "Just you wait and see."

"She's going to live," Reiko felt the need to point out. "She'll even be running in less than a month."

"I don't care," Lily said, shaking her head. "After seeing her get…" She shook her head. "No, we're not back there anymore and we're not going to be treated that way. Sucking it up and hoping that tomorrow's better. You fuck with us, we fuck with you right back. Isn't that right, Grace?"

Grace made a moaning sound that might have been agreement or might have been in pain as the stretcher bearers dropped off of the road and onto the rock and sand of the desert. Lily took what she wanted from it, though.



Well, this mission might not have been as successful as most of them, but Reiko supposed it had still gone well all in all. She could only hope that the next job would go even better, returning to form and getting them paid without getting them hurt.



Though if they were, at least she could fix them!

 

[WestOrEast]

Nightshift Avengers Chapter Fifteen

​

​

"It feels really weird to be doing this without Grace," Reiko said, tugging at the blue jumpsuit she was wearing and trying to get comfortable in what was essentially a big blue sack with pockets sown onto it. "I don't think I've ever been on a job with you without her along as well."

"Well, even if she could get on her feet, I wouldn't want her actually with us, with us," Lily said, smoothing her hair down before putting a baseball cap on. "Four strangers would be a bit too obvious and it's not like she could bust out any techie skills to impress with."

Reiko grunted, unable to think of a counterargument. But she still had a bad feeling about all of this. Maybe it was because they were doing it without Grace, maybe because they were doing it without a client paying them, the only hope of profit in all this whatever they could grab. Maybe it was just the fact that she was being asked to act convincingly.



Whatever the reason might be, there was still a leaden lump sitting in her stomach as they all piled out of Lily's car in the alley behind the WesTek building. She glanced at Lily and Madison. They were both wearing the blue uniforms of building maintenance and were holding bags and boxes of tools, just like Reiko was.



The tower loomed above them, a good twenty-five stories of glass windows looking out at Night City, if that was your idea of a good view. Though, yes, the west side was looking out over the ocean, which was far better to look at than to be in. And up there, according to Madison, on floor eighteen, was a division of Orion Security. It was called Logistics and Transfers, which innocuous enough, except that the actual Orion HQ's public directory already listed Material Transport as their logistical division.



So all three of them felt pretty confident that whatever was going on up there was connected with Project DG, whatever that might be. And now it was time to get in there and see just that was.



The alley door opened easily enough and the three of them filed into the grimy back hallway that it opened up on. Nobody else was in sight, though with these uniforms, they should just blend into the faceless working masses that the rich were too good to notice the details of. From there, it was easy enough to find the freight elevator and then it was right up to the desired floor.



And they were just in time, too. As the banged-up doors slid open, Reiko's nose wrinkled at the scent of burning electronics, the stench of charred rubber and plastic the kind of smell that really quickly filled up an area. And sure enough, on the west side of the building, there was a cluster of people standing around the doors, peering inside. Lily took a deep breath and started on in.



"What's going on, what's going on here?" She groused, as if she didn't know exactly what was happening.



Madison had done some really good work, slowly worming her way into the WesTek's systems. She couldn't touch Orion's data, sadly. Whatever it was, they were keeping it under a close guard. But WesTek put way less care into the building's systems. Maybe if she had tried to touch their financial programs, she would have been caught, but this? No problem.



And so, systems had run too hot for too long or had shut down or had jammed themselves opened or closed. Whatever they did, they made it a bigger or lesser inconvenience and finally, something had caught fire.



Though it hadn't burned too hotly, obviously, as a man staggered out of the door, coughing with soot on his cheeks and a fire extinguisher in his hand. He looked up and brightened as he saw the three jumpsuited women pushing through the crowd of on-lookers and displaced workers.



"There you are," he grumbled. "We've been calling you people all morning."

"It's a big building," Lily said smoothly as she stepped up to the door and peered inside. "What's the problem?"

"A box on the break room wall melted and whatever was inside dripped down onto some paper," the man said, waving a hand in front of his face as if it would banish the smell.



As Lily and the man played their parts, Reiko looked around. Most of the crowd were rubberneckers from the other offices on the floor or obvious paper pushers. But there were two guards, rendered bulky and anonymous in their uniforms and visored helmets. And a woman who was obviously a netrunner, twitching and rubbing her hands against each other as she shifted her weight from foot to foot.



Reiko wasn't the only one who was a fan of a tall, slender woman in a tight, black bodysuit going by the looks she was getting but Reiko made herself look away and keep on studying the crowd for any signs that they suspected that these three were more than they seemed. Nothing so far and then Lily stepped forward, tugging the respirator hanging around her neck up onto her lower face.



"We'll take a look and see what's wrong in there," she said, her words a bit muffled. "Stay out here until we make sure that this smoke isn't toxic."

That got most of the crowd to take a few steps back. Then the three of them were ducking into the offices and looking around. At first glance to Reiko, it just looked like any other corporate hellhole where boredom was a worse enemy than pain. A few rows of desks, some fake plants, glowing lights that bathed everything in a sterile light.



Well, all this stuff could be seen from the front door, so Reiko wasn't expecting too much in here. The three of them efficiently bustled to the rear and stepped through another door, where the secrets hopefully would be.



Stepping into there, Reiko instantly noticed the large numbers of doors that had keycard locks on them. That was a good sign, she thought. Madison had pulled open her bag and revealed the portable netrunning equipment she had stashed inside, mumbling to herself as she started to paw through it and grab something.



Sadly, all the doors were locked except for one that, sure enough, was the break room, with a table against one wall covered in foam and char marks. Reiko shook her head and glanced at the wall-mounted box hanging above it, wondering just what Madison had overloaded or melted or whatever to get that kind of result.



More importantly, Madison made a triumphant sound as a door hissed open. All three of them stepped inside. Madison made a beeline for the computer on top of the desk sitting in the middle of the room, while Lily and Reiko started looking for hard copy files.



"Ugh, I think this is HR's office," Reiko said, looking down at some of the files she had sorted through. "It's all just names and… wait."

Even really restrictive megacorps wouldn't refer to their employees as having escaped. Reiko took the time to read through the documents a lot more carefully.



"But was retrieved by a snatch team before contact was lost," she read off of the page. "At no point did she manage to contact anyone outside of the Orion family, so secrecy has been preserved."

"Does it say why she was being held?" Lily asked, looking over her shoulder. "Who is she, anyway?"

"Uh, Linda Jackson," Reiko said, glancing at a photo of a plain white woman attached to the file. "And… Project DG! She was part of it." Reiko sat down on the edge of the desk as she started flipping through the pages of the report. "Looks like we hit the jackpot after all."

"Good thing, too," Madison said with a grunt. "This is actually pretty good security. Wouldn't want to try it with that corpo chick running overwatch."

Reiko grunted at that and kept on scanning the documents. Lily was taking a different approach and just grabbing handfuls of paper to stuff into the bags to look over later. Reiko idly lifted one packed bag with one hand and grunted and sagged to the side as she had to put a lot more effort into lifting it than she would have thought.



"Okay," Lily said, zipping up one bag and looking up at Reiko. "What are we looking at here?"

"I think… I think Project DG is Project Doppelganger," Reiko said, flipping through the pages and, well, guessing about the missing context but still feeling pretty decent about her odds. "There's a whole lot of words here about the coerced interviews and behavioral modeling they did with Ms. Jackson and apparently she's really, really rich and well-connected. And there's a note here at the end that says to consult File LJ1-D for an overview of her replacement."

"Holy shit," Lily whistled. "They're running a kidnap and replace scheme?" She shook her head. "I knew some guys who tried that but they just needed to get through the front door before they could start blasting."

"This is looking to be way longer-term," Reiko said with a shake of her head as she grabbed another file and flipped through it. "And way bigger. How many of these files are about people they grabbed, huh?"

"Screw that, just how big of prisons is Orion running, if they've got a bunch of people locked up to study behavior?" Madison said, looking up from her screen with a frown. "Unless…"

"Yeah," Lily said, making a face. "I could see someone getting kidnapped, replaced and then with the ransom is paid, any strange behaviors or slowness to respond is just the trauma of getting snatched and grabbed. All while the real person is rotting in some desert grave."



"Nasty," Reiko said. "Really nasty. How much do you think they're spending on this?"

"Less than they're taking in from having so many different sources of information, I bet," Madison said. "And I'm betting that Orion's scored some really prime deals for security ever since they started this."

"Hell, what are we even going to do about this?" Reiko said, rubbing her forehead with one hand. "I mean, this kind of information… what's the next step?"

"Getting out of here with all this, that's what we do next," Lily said, zipping up another bag. "Mads, what are you finding on their systems?"

"Well, main thing is that their security in-person is almost as good as their security online," Madison said. "But… yeah, not quite as good." She flashed a smile and leaned back in her seat. "Okay, what should we look for?"

"Whatever you do, do it fast," Lily said. "There's still an entire crowd out there, waiting to get back to work."

Reiko nodded in agreement, glancing at the door and wondering what was behind all those other doors in the hallway. Interrogation rooms were people were peeled apart to get a perfect model of how they worked? Hypnosis centers or whatever was used to get these doubles, wherever they came from, to act like the originals? Reiko shuddered.



"Okay, fast it is," Madison said with a grunt. She glanced at the bulging bags of paper documents that the other two had. "I won't even try hiding the fact that I was here, but…" she flashed a grin as her chrome claws danced over the keyboard, "they won't be able to find where I went." She paused in thought. "Think I should send some of this off to N54 News or something?"

"I don't know, maybe?" Lily said. "You'd think Orion would be really interested in getting someone on the inside there."

"Well, what the hell, can't hurt," Madison said with a shrug. "A copy for them, a copy for me, a copy for a guy I know and that's that." She paused and looked down at the computer. "Sure wonder what the hell is in all of what I just sent off."

"Lots and lots of porn and whining about coworkers," Reiko said, crumpling a document up and stuffing it into a pocket. "We going to hit the other offices here or what?"

"I think so, yeah," Lily said with a nod. "How are we looking outside?"



"Oh shit," Madison whispered underneath her breath. "Guys, I think we have a problem." Both Lily's and Reiko's heads snapped to look at her. "There's a team at the doors."

What?" Lily asked, leaning over just like Reiko to look at the screen Madison was staring down at.



And sure enough, there were two people in blue jumpsuits and carrying bags of tools talking to some of the office workers. And even through a small screen, Reiko could see the confused body language.



"Okay, time to wrap things up," Lily said, grabbing her bag and shoving a few odds and ends into it. "Let's scram. Let me do the talking and just don't stop walking, alright?"



Reiko nodded and swallowed hard, reaching up to touch her mask and make sure that it was still fitting right onto her face. Then she took a deep breath as she lifted her bags up, grunting underneath the weight. Yeah, it would be really nice to have a solo running point right now. For Grace's heavily-muscled arms, if nothing else.



It took all too short of a time to cross the main office space and get near the door. Which still had a crowd there, even if the people from the other offices had wandered off back to their own jobs by now. Reiko could feel sweat breaking out on her body as she saw the two guards, heavy pistols still hanging on their belts. And she could see the two actual building workers talking to the office supervisor.



"Well, there they are," the man said, waving a hand at the trio as they appeared. "You know them?"

"Sure we do," Lily said, not slowing down her stride at all as she made a beeline for the door. "What the hell kept you two, huh? We've already fixed the problem."

"Yeah? What was the problem?" One of the blue-suited workers asked, folding her arms across her chest. "Who are you, anyway?"

"We're on the night shift, just putting in some overtime," Lily said. "Hey, if you didn't want to lose out on resolving a ticket, you should have gotten up here sooner."

"Night shift?" The other worker asked as Reiko brushed past him. "Didn't I see you clocking off in the basement this morning?"

Reiko was sweating bullets by now and walking even faster. She stared straight ahead, focusing on the elevator that was just a few yards away.



"Alright, why don't we sort this out with a call to your supervisor?" The office manager said, a note of suspicion entering his voice. "We can figure out just what's going on here."

Reiko pushed the elevator button and refused to look back, just staring at the double doors as her stomach felt like it was going to erupt inside of her at any minute.



"Yeah, yeah, I'm sure he'll be real pleased to hear that the night shift's metrics are looking better than the day shifts because we're willing to put in the extra work."

"Both our managers are women," one of the actual workers said, his voice rising to a shout. "Who the hell are you?"

"Fuck," Madison swore as the elevator doors slid open. "Fuck it."

Reiko dashed into the elevator and hit the ground floor button. She looked up to see the two guards running towards them, pulling pistols out of their holsters. Lily and Madison slammed into the elevator as well and then the gunfire started.



Reiko hit the deck instantly, covering her head with her arms and cringing as the noise of the shots filled the space. She only looked up when the doors closed and the elevator started downwards.

And gasped in horror at what she saw. Lily was slumped against the back wall of the elevator, her eyes wide as she pressed a hand to her throat. A lot of blood was leaking out from between her fingers, running down along her hand and staining her blue clothes. Her gaze met Reiko's and stayed locked on for a few horrible seconds.



Then they glazed over and she slumped to the side. Reiko made a whimpering sound in her throat and finally started digging deep into her bag, looking for something that she could use. Madison was looking at Lily with a shocked expression on her face, her shoulders slack as she stared.



"Get some pressure on there!" Reiko said, her voice squeaking and breaking. "Now!"

Madison jerked and leaned forward, placing her hand against the big, ugly wound almost in the center of Lily's neck. But Reiko could already see how little blood there still was flowing out of the hole. She didn't want to believe it, even as she found the medical kit she had buried in her bag but there was already a whisper at the edge of her mind that it was too late. That it had been too late as soon as the bullet hit Lily.



She refused to listen to that and instead leaned in to slap a bandage soaked in coagulants over the wound. And looked for any sign of life, any movement in Lily's eyes or any twitch of her fingers. There was nothing and Reiko felt like vomiting.



"No," Madison was whispering softly. "No, no, no, do something, girl!"

"I'm, I'm trying," Reiko said weakly as the elevator lurched to a halt and the doors opened behind them. She looked over her shoulder, seeing the corridor that had a straight shot to the alley and the car. And in the other way would lead to the personnel elevators that Orion was probably using right now. "Grab her feet!"

Reiko went for the shoulders and lifted. And couldn't manage it. She tried again, her entire body straining and not able to get Lily up. She swore in a high-pitched, worried tone and started shrugging out of some of the bags, pulling some others off of Lily's- shoulders. Not her corpse.



"Okay, three, two, one, lift," Madison said in a grunting wheeze.



This time, they managed to get Lily up off of the ground. There was no stirring from her at all, no signs that she was feeling any of this. Reiko felt like throwing up.



At as quick of a pace as the two of them could manage, they started staggering down the corridor, the few bags that they hadn't dumped banging against their legs as they went. Reiko looked over her shoulder but the hallway was still empty at least. For now.



Madison kicked the alley door open and they got out into it. The car was still there and there was a horrible moment where Reiko had to search Lily's pockets for the keys. She tossed them to Madison and then they all piled in, Madison in the driver's seat and Lily and Reiko in the back. Reiko leaned over Lily, grabbing her bag again and trying to think of something that she could do.



Something that anyone could do, even if they were ten times as skilled as Reiko and in a proper operating suite instead the back of a bouncing car squealing down the alley. That was getting shot at, too, as the Orion guards finally made it down to the ground.



Reiko cringed and leaned over Lily's body, feeling glass shards sprinkling into her hair as she heard the rear window shatter. Then her body swayed to the side as Madison took a corner, before gunning it and screaming down the street.



"Fuck!" Madison swore, her voice full of anger and worry and fear. "How is she doing, Reiko?"

"I…" Reiko swallowed, staring down at Lily and not seeing a single sign of life. Just the white bandage standing out against black skin and red blood. "I think she's dead."

"No, no, no! Keep working on her!" Madison shouted as honking horns came from the other cars she was passing by. "Do something!"

Reiko shook her head, not sure what there was that she could do. Her metal fingers poked at Lily's neck and found an exit wound, so she was at least able to put another bandage over that, but she was sure it didn't matter. She pinched Lily's cheek, slapped her face, tried to get some kind of response from her friend at all. And there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. Lily's eyes stayed half open, seeing nothing. Her face stayed slacked. Her arms were limp, swaying back and forth as the car raced through the streets of Night City.



And that was all. There was nothing more to her. Reiko realized that she was crying and she wasn't able to stop. She buried her head in her hands and started screaming into them as she took in what had happened.



Eventually, the car came to a halt. Reiko didn't even look up, just staring down at Lily's pain-filled features for a while longer. Then Madison shook her shoulder, making Reiko start and look up at her.



Madison looked like she barely had it together anymore than Reiko did but she still managed to get out of the car and open a rear door. She looked down at Lily and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.



"We're going to need to tell Grace," Madison said slowly. "Tell her…"

Reiko didn't even want to think about what that would be like. What they'd have to go through in telling Grace what had happened. And, and everything else that they needed to do. Take care of the body, for one. That was important, deciding how to bury her or whatever else they were going to do with her.



Or with the documents that they had recovered. Reiko couldn't even bring herself to think about those right now. It was just one thing too many for her to try and wrap her head around and she just couldn't muster the mental energy to consider them. She just kept on staring down at Lily, lying there, her glazed eyes staring out into the distance and not seeing anything.



Reiko kept on sobbing, her shoulders heaving as she stared down at the dead body of her friend. She- it couldn't have been this fast. It shouldn't have been this fast. Or at all! There was just so much more that Reiko wanted to do with Lily, there was so much that was so good about the older woman and now she was dead and, and there was nothing that Reiko could do about it.



Nothing at all.

All she could do was stare at the limp corpse and feel empty inside. She let Madison draw her away from the body but she didn't do much on her own. She just kept on staring down, feeling her mind turning over and over again inside of her head, waiting for a few thoughts to rise up and make sense.



What should she had done differently? How should this have gone? What was Grace going to say? What was her life going to be like without Lily in it? All of these questions kept on flowing through Reiko's head and she didn't have an answer to a single one of them. There was just the reality that her friend was laying dead in the back seat of an old car.



Was it worth it? Was what they had gotten worth Lily dying? Reiko just shook her head and sank down to the garage floor, holding her head in her hands as Madison said something or other to her. She couldn't keep track of what it was and just kept on sitting there.



Waiting for it all to make sense.

 

[WestOrEast]

Nightshift Avengers Chapter Sixteen





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Reiko sat by Grace's bedside, holding the other woman's hand in her own. Grace's face was turned to the wall and Reiko couldn't bear to try and look at her. She just kept on staring down at the floor, tears pricking in her own eyes as she stayed there in silence.



She felt the urge to apologize once again, even though she already several times over. And even though Grace had already made it clear that she had heard all of the apologies that she could handle. She hadn't told Reiko to leave, though, so Reiko stayed here, sitting and waiting for… something. She had no idea what it might be but she was still going to stick it out.



Reiko had been spending a lot of time with Grace over the past two days. Part of that was that she still needed a medtech to look after her and make sure that she was healing properly, of course. But there was also the fact… well, who else could Grace be with right now? Madison had stammered out an apology while looking like she wanted to vomit and then she had run out the door. Reiko hadn't seen her since and the few calls that had been returned had just said that Madison was doing alright and that she was busy with work.



So Reiko kept on sitting by Grace's bed until pretty late in the night, getting her food and water and checking to make sure that the wound was healing properly. It was… it was a lot. In terms of effort, it was barely anything at all but the sheer weight that kept on pressing down on top of Reiko's mind and the black cloud that had wrapped around her heart… it was tough to bear. Really, really tough. And it wasn't even her sister.



Reiko reached out and grabbed Grace's shoulder, lightly squeezing down on it. Grace didn't respond to that, she just kept on laying there. She only stirred a bit when Reiko rubbed her some more, her metal fingers gliding over the black skin.



"Don't," Grace said with a soft sigh. "Just… don't."

"Alright," Reiko said, resting her hand back in her lap. "And Grace, I'm…" could she really apologize any more deeply than she already had? She sure didn't think so. She just let cradled her hand with her other one and kept on staring down at her lap.



"What are you going to do after you're up from the bed?" Reiko asked instead, glancing at Grace as she lay there.



"Am I going to grab a gun and start shooting up Orion?" Grace asked with a tired sigh.



"Well… yeah," Reiko said with a nod.



"No," Grace said with an even heavier sigh than before. "I'm not going to try anything like that." She turned to look at the wall, hiding her face from Reiko. "What good would it do? Lily's still dead."

Reiko glanced at the urn that Grace had told her to put by the window. She wasn't sure what was going to happen with it, if Grace was planning to keep it with her or scatter the ashes into the sea or buy a spot in the col… column… in the not quite a cemetery on the eastern outskirts of the city.



"You're not going to go for revenge?" Reiko asked, finally processing the words and feeling pretty shocked by them. "Really?"

"What's the point?" Grace said, her voice wobbling a bit as she held a hand up to her face for a moment before speaking again. "Whenever someone messed me up, Lily would make them pay. Or vice versa. Let everyone know that you couldn't just beat us up or steal from us without paying a price. And get our money back or whatever. But with her dead," Grace's shoulders twitched and Reiko clearly heard a sob from her. "There's nothing. Those goons didn't even know who they killed, they can't learn a lesson from it."

By the end of her little speech, Grace was panting pretty heavily. Reiko stood up and leaned over the bed, guiding Grace's head back down to the pillow and staring at her. The other woman had beads of sweat standing out on her face and her eyes were pretty wide and white in their sockets. She took the bottle Reiko handed her and drank several gulps from it before making a face and setting it to the side.



"I mean, I'm not saying you're wrong in this," Reiko said. "If Auntie died, I don't know what I could do about it."

"That's because you're also kind of a wimp, Reiko," Grace said with an unconvincing chuckle. "I like you but you're not exactly Two-Gun Jane."

If Reiko was supposed to know who that was, she didn't. She shrugged and decided that Grace's commentary didn't hurt that much, especially because it was pretty true. Still, though, Grace was a lot tougher than she was and a lot more willing to do the old violence. For her to just be willing to lay there…



"So really, no shootout with Orion at all?" Reiko asked. "I'm kind of surprised."

"It's not like I'm the next Morgan Blackhand or V anyway," Grace said with a shake of her head. "No, Orion killed my sister and they didn't know what they did and trying to make them care…" she slumped further down into the bed. "I just want to get away from this shithole, Reiko. Leave it all behind me and never have to think about my sister again."

Her voice wobbled a lot on that last and almost broke. She pressed a hand against her face again. Reiko was left sitting on the edge of the bed, biting her lip and trying to think of what she could do. In the end, it was just reaching over and taking Grace's other hand in her own, squeezing down with her fingers.



"I'm sorry I couldn't save her, Grace," Reiko said, her own tears welling up, hot and wet in the corners of her eyes. "I'm supposed to be a doctor and people just keep on dying on me or getting shot and…" she shivered, hugging herself tighter before reminding herself that Grace had to be hurting way more than she was right now and she didn't need all of Reiko's worries dumped on her. "I'm sorry I failed you and Lily, Grace," she ended weakly.



Grace just nodded at that and sighed, not looking at Reiko. Reiko squeezed her hand once more and then let go. Silence reigned for a good long while between the pair of them. Then Reiko jerked as a chime broke the gloomy stillness.



It was a group call from Madison. Reiko sat up a bit straighter as she accepted it. Grace took it a moment or so later, still not looking up from her position.



"Hello, you two," Madison said, her avatar looking very serious and composed. "I just wanted to talk to you two one last time."

"What do you mean one last time?" Reiko asked, her eyes going wide as her heart started to hammer inside of her chest. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm sorry about what I did, Grace," Madison said, ignoring that. "I'm sorry that Lily's dead because of me." She winced and Reiko thought that if this had actually been a recording of her face, she would have seen tears in the white woman's eyes. "It's all my fault that we went after Orion like this and that she was the one to pay the price for it. But I'm going to make things right."

"What are you talking about, Madison?" Reiko asked, her heart starting to beat very quickly inside of her chest as a nasty taste of fear flooded her mouth. "What do you mean?"

"I'm going to balance the books, Reiko," Madison said with a firm nod of her head. "I'm going to make up for Lily's death and I'm going to make sure that this whole rotten pile comes tumbling down. Trust me."

"Trust you to do what?" Reiko asked, standing up. "Where are you? What are you planning?"

"I had to borrow Lily's car," Madison continued, speaking over Reiko's protests. "And Frankenbot, too. I'm sorry but hopefully you two can get one or both back in decent enough condition." She flashed a tight smile. "I'm not the driver Lily was but hopefully I should at least be able to go fast enough to throw Orion's netrunners off my trail, right?"

Grace had finally heard enough to stir, painfully sitting upright and rubbing the bandages on her torso. She winced as she did so and then turned her head to stare out the window, though from her angle there could only be a slice of the Night City skyline out there.



"Madison, if you've ever loved me, tell me what you're doing, damn it!" Reiko's voice cracked as she pushed herself to her feet and started for the bedroom door.



"I'm going to let everyone know what Orion's been doing," Madison said. "I've made tons of copies of the paper stuff we grabbed and I'm going to be uploading everything we got to anyone on Night City's net that I can find. Someone's going to find out about this and be pissed enough to send a kill team after Orion's C-Suite."

"And Orion's going to send someone after you!" Reiko protested, trying to think about where Madison would be right now and how Reiko could get to her. "What are you thinking?"



"Don't worry," Madison said reassuringly. "They can only find out about what I'm doing after I've started doing it."



"Where are you?" Grace asked with a moan, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and trying to stand up, before sinking back down with a pained gasp and clutching her wound. "Fuck."

"I'm going to be going all over the city," Madison said with an airy laugh that didn't sound right. "Every in-box, drop point and group chat I can hook into is going to be getting a copy of this! All the nasty little details about that kill and replace scheme."

Grace waved Reiko to try and help her up. Reiko slung an arm over Grace's shoulders as the black woman grabbed onto her side. With a grunt, they managed to get upright and Reiko half-dragged, half-guided Grace over to the window. Grace pressed her forehead against it, staring down into the city streets below them.

There was no sign of anything strange going on out there right now, no angry people waving banners or cop cars screaming along the road. Reiko kept on looking around before she looked down at Grace. Even this had gotten a tight look on Grace's face and her eyes had gone a bit unfocused as she stared out.



"I can't- fuck it," Grace swore, sagging against the wall, grabbing onto the window ill to help herself stay upright. "Mads, don't do anything stupid, alright? Killing yourself isn't going to fix a damn thing, you got that?"

"Too late to stop now," Madison said, sounding a bit apologetic. "I'm already getting some heat on me and- oh shit!" There was a pause for a second or two as Reiko's heart rose into her throat. "Orion netrunners are picking up the scent. Got to go!"

"God!" Grace pressed her forehead against the wall and took several deep breaths. Reiko could feel the lines on her own face growing tight as she felt her heart hammering in her chest and the cold sweat on her skin. "Madison, if you…"



Madison was already off the line and only Reiko could hear her friend. Reiko swallowed hard, trying to figure out just what she was supposed to be doing now. Okay, find Madison, that was easy to decide. But where was she? And if Reiko did find her friend, what was she supposed to do then? That was a lot harder to come up with an answer for.



But just staying here wasn't an option, either. Reiko made a start for the door before looking at Grace. Grace had a tight, drawn look of pain on her face and Reiko was sure it wasn't just pain from her gunshot wound.



"Damn it," Grace muttered, trying to stand upright on her own two legs and failing. "Reiko!" She coughed a bit after the bark. "Please go and make sure I don't lose my friend and my sister over the same weekend, alright?"

"I'll… try," Reiko said with a jerk of a nod. "Somehow. Um…"

"Orion HQ, maybe?" Grace said, limping over to her bed and sagging back down into it. "This city's rioted over corps before."



"I can't see Madison as the next Silverhand," Reiko said, patting her medical pouch to make sure it was there, just in case.

"Yeah, she's going to live," Grace said with a grunt as she looked at Reiko. "Get to it."

Reiko nodded and took a deep breath, tugging on her hands and trying to get herself to feel brave enough for this. Then she was heading out of the apartment as quickly as she could, trying to think of someplace better to look for Madison than the front door of their enemy.



She had placed a call to Delamain Taxi in the elevator and one of the most basic models was pulling up in front of the building even as she arrived. Reiko flung herself into the back and looked at the screen mounted on the back of the empty driver's seat.



"Orion HQ, please," Reiko said, pressing her chip against the payment processor. "And, um, is there any ongoing shootouts happening with Orion right now?"

"Preemptive rerouting around possible conflict spots is not part of this vehicle's service package," the electronic, automated voice said. "If you would like to upgrade," a list of prices replaced Delamain's head on the screen, "I can use some runtime to look for the requested criteria."



Damn it, she was going to have to pay extra to save her friend's life? Of course she would, this was Night City. Reiko groaned and then pressed her chip against the processor again, wincing at the thought of how much this was draining her balance when she already had little enough to spare.



"Thank you," Delamain said. "One moment." Reiko sat back in the faded, stained, ripped seat and realized that her foot was bouncing against the floor as she looked at the blocks rolling by her. "There is only one car-based firefight Orion is currently involved in," the voice said after a few minutes. "At the south side of the city, proceeding along I-9 eastbound through Santo Domingo. It is not on the current route."

"Madison," Reiko moaned, rubbing her head. "Okay, change of destination. Can you bring me to that car chase?"

"I run a taxi service, ma'am," the calm voice said. "With this car and with this level of service, I will not willingly expose my assets to gunfire."

Reiko groaned and pulled up a map of the city. Okay, so if Madison was on I-9, that probably meant that she was heading east and if she didn't pull off, that would mean… Reiko's fingertip traced a route in the air in front of her.



"Okay, fine, then drop me off at the I-9 exit 177," Reiko said, pounding the back of the seat in front of her as if that would get her there faster. "And step on it!"

"Reroute in progress," the calm voice said. "Estimated time of arrival, five minutes."

Reiko sagged heavily and rubbed her forehead, hoping that this was going to work. She didn't have the cash to constantly be chasing Madison around Night City, never mind how long her friend's luck could last against a hail of bullets. She swallowed hard and tried to get comfortable, staring out the windows of the taxi as Night City flew by.



Then she shook herself and started accessing Night City's net, heading right on over to the news sites. Her heart started to beat faster as she saw that N54 News had a Breaking Report and she could hear her breathing get fast-pitched and shallow as she saw Orion's logo with a flame graphic underneath.



A quick skim through what little was already up mostly told Reiko what she had already known about Project DG. But there was a note at the bottom that there would be more updates as the story developed, so Reiko could only guess what that would mean. That the corpos would actually face some justice, that sure would be nice to think about.



Also, she tried to figure out just what she was going to do when she got to I-9 and Madison would go roaring by at well over sixty miles an hour. A bit much to ask Reiko to hop onto the side of the car, she thought.



She still hadn't come up with a plan when the taxi came to a halt, just next to the on-ramp. Reiko took a deep breath and climbed out of the cab, barely remembering to wave a hand at it as the voice thanked her using Delamain services today.



Oh man, if Reiko was a solo like Grace, she could shoot out the car that was chasing Madison. And if she was a netrunner like Madison herself, she could somehow hack the car or its crew and cause them to crash. Or if she was a smooth talker like Lily, she could somehow get people to help her. But right now, Reiko's understanding of medicine made her feel pretty useless.



She still made herself hurry up the on-ramp, feeling waves of hot air washing over as cars sped on by her, some of them honking at her as they did. She got up the Interstate and looked west along it, biting her lip as her mind chased itself in circles, trying to decide what it was that she could possibly be doing here. Nothing really came to mind and Reiko just got more and more worried as she waited.



Then, in the distance, she could see two gleams of silvery light that were really booking it, tearing down the pavement way faster than any of the other cars or trucks on the Interstate. Reiko swallowed and stood up straighter, her mind working overtime as she tried to think of something that she could do.



As the two cars got closer, she could see that one of them was Lily's car, with Frankenbot hanging out the passenger's window, firing a gun. And behind it was a massive truck in Orion's colors, with armored figures hanging onto the sides and firing out the windows. They were both closing in fast and Reiko was still at a loss about what she was supposed to do here to help out her friend.



Then it all became too late, in the blink of an eye. Madison lost control or the tires got shot out or something happened. Whatever the cause was, the car started to spin out along the interstate before hitting the concrete dividers separating the west and east bound lanes. Reiko could hear herself shouting as the car flipped up into the air and then slammed right into the truck as it kept on barreling along.



In less than two seconds, the truck went skidding out of control as an explosion washed over the upper surface. Reiko cried out and threw herself to the ground, hearing the scream of shredded tires all around her as the rest of the drivers saw what was going on. Some godawful crashes and booms shook Reiko's head and left her gasping as the truck skidded along the interstate before coming to a stop, the crumpled and burning upper half hanging off the embankment with a steep thirty foot slope in front of it.



Reiko stared with open eyes and a wide mouth for a few seconds before she snapped herself back into motion. Plenty of other cars and trucks had come screaming to a halt and she dodged past opening doors as people started to stare at the ruin in front of them. Sliding across the hood of a parked car, Reiko got in front of Lily's car.



It was really obvious that Frankenbot was ruined, good for nothing now. The head was missing and the torso was so caved in that Reiko could actually see the insides where the casing had split apart. She might feel bad about that later but right now, Madison was more important.



The airbags in the car had worked and Madison was slumped against a giant white pillow as she limply lay in the driver's seat. Reiko swallowed hard and glanced at the Orion truck. It didn't look like there was going to be any trouble from- even as Reiko watched in shocked silence, the truck creaked and tipped forward a bit more before starting to slide down the embankment towards the ground thirty feet below. She didn't go to the edge to look at what happened afterwards but Reiko felt sure that she didn't need to worry about anything happening from there.



Which was good, because Madison needed a lot of help. The broken nose was just the most obvious of the problems that she had and Reiko gingerly stroked the side of her face, trying to get a response from her before moving her out of the car.



"Madison, can you hear me?" Reiko asked in a loud voice, speaking right into the white woman's ear. "How are you feeling?"

"Reiko?" Madison muttered, her eyes fluttering open as she stared at Reiko. "The hell you doing here, choom?"

"My job," Reiko snapped, patting her medical bag. "For a friend."

Madison chuckled at that and then winced, her hand jerking upwards before sagging back down to her side. She panted for breath several times and there was a tight, drawn look of pain on her face as she stared up at Reiko.



"It's like my bones are grinding against each other inside of me," she whispered, wincing again as she tried to move. "It really hurts."

"I'm sure it does," Reiko said, opening her pouch and grabbing a pain patch. She slapped it against Madison's neck. "Where does it hurt inside of you?"

"My ribs," Madison whispered. "Everywhere, from top to bottom. Fuck, it's-" she started to cough heavily. And cough red, flecks of blood splattering on the airbag. She stared down at it with almost as much shock and fear as Reiko. "Oh God."


Reiko was inclined to agree. She glanced at the front of the car, but at least it didn't seem likely to catch on fire. She looked around at the crowd that was starting to gather. Some of them were talking on their integrated phones but were they calling an ambulance or just gossiping with their friends about what they were seeing?



"You, call the paramedics," Reiko said, pointing at one of them. "And tell them to hurry!"

Because Madison had coughed up even more blood. She was going pale and Reiko swallowed. She didn't like moving her friend right now, but Madison clearly didn't have the strength to move on her own and Reiko couldn't do any good with the other woman slumped against the airbag like this. She unbuckled the seatbelt and carefully got Madison out and onto the highway, looking down at her.



The blood wasn't just leaking out from Madison's mouth. Her blue blouse had a dark spot high on it, just below her breasts, that grew in size even as Reiko looked. She shook her head and grabbed a pair of scissors, cutting it away and then touching Madison's torso. It was all too clear that she had several broken ribs and the thought of those sharp points of bone moving around inside of her torso… it made the broken leg she obviously had seem like much less of a priority.



"I did it, Reiko," Madison moaned, her eyes closed and her breathing soft. "I got the word out."

"I'm sure you did, Mads," Reiko said, her chrome fingers moving with more ease and dexterity than her meat and bone ones ever could have as she started to tend to Madison, worried that nothing she could do would make a difference here. "N54 News is already running a story on it."



"The right story," Madison breathed. "About them kidnapping people, not," she broke off to pant for breath, her eyes getting wide even as her pupils contracted. Reiko slapped another pain patch to the other side of her neck and then got back to work, doing as much as she could with just the contents of one bag. "Some bitch slandering them."

"Nobody's going to think that," Reiko said soothingly as she worked as quickly as she could, all too aware that she wasn't pulling ahead of the damage that the crash had caused. "Just stop worrying about it and relax, okay? Stressing out right now isn't going to do you any good."

"Yeah, I bet," Madison said, tilting her head up a bit to look down at the ruin of her chest. "Oh shit."

"You don't need to see that!" Reiko snapped, guiding Madison's head back down with maybe more than a bit of force. "Just stop talking and let me work, alright?"

Madison didn't say anything for a while longer, though Reiko wasn't sure if that was because she was obeying her orders or if it was because Madison was getting too weak to say anything. It sure wasn't good, certainly, and Reiko swallowed as she kept on suturing and clamping and working, really wishing that she had some blood on hand to start replacing everything that Madison was losing right now.



"Netrunners must have given up by now," Madison said in a soft voice. "Should have found me by now."

"One less thing to have to deal with," Reiko said with a grunt, really glad that she didn't have to worry about something that she couldn't see or touch messing with her efforts to keep Madison going. "And stop talking, you can't afford any more stress."

And where the hell was the ambulance, huh? Reiko looked around for a second before turning back to her work but there was still only a crowd of people standing on this half of the highway staring at the scene. A few more were at the top of the embankment staring down at the crashed truck.



"I did it right, Reiko," Madison whispered, her voice even quieter now than it had been before. "Orion's doomed because of this."

"Mmhm," Reiko muttered, swallowing hard as she saw just how much red was coating Madison's skin and covering the pavement. "That's right, Mads, and just think about the interviews and the cred you're going to get, alright? You just need to stay alive until the requests start pouring into your inbox, got it?"

"Nice dream," Madison said, her voice so small by now that Reiko could only tell she was speaking by how her lips moved. "Real nice…"



Her eyes were sinking shut and Reiko swallowed hard, snapping her fingers in front of Madison's face and shouting at her to open her eyes in between putting in more work on Madison's ruined torso. Neither did much good and all too soon, Reiko had to sink back and look at the corpse of another friend.



Tearing her bloodied gloves off, Reiko held her head in her hands. She felt sobs hitching inside of her, felt her body trembling and shaking as she stared down at Madison's body, laying stiff and still underneath the hot sun. She could smell the blood and oil and smoke and, and it was all just too much. Too much for one woman to be expected to deal with.



And there was still the crowd of people staring down at what had happened, talking to each other or on their phones as they watched the show. Reiko wanted to feel pissed about that but she just couldn't manage it. She could only keep on staring down at her friend and trying to get one thought to go from beginning to end inside of her head.



Was it worth it? Was all this worth it, in the end? Reiko swallowed hard, unable to come up with any kind of answer to that. She just couldn't say, she had no idea at all. Lily dead, Madison dead, Grace wounded and barely able to walk…this was what happened when you hit at a corporation, Reiko knew. She tried to get angry over that, as well, to muster up a sense of outrage and nastiness but she just couldn't. She could hope that the information Madison had put out there would be enough to hurt Orion or maybe even kill it, but… it would have to happen on its own. Reiko just wasn't up for doing anything more to them.



That was Night City for you, Reiko supposed. All that talk in Lizzie's about how they were going to clean up the streets and the boardrooms and half of them were dead just trying to take out one mid-size corp. Was it worth it? Could something like this ever be worth it?

Reiko just had no idea at all.

 

[WestOrEast]

Nightshift Avengers Chapter Seventeen and Final

​

​

The hot sun beating down on Reiko's face was cooled by the breeze blowing off of the harbor. Though with the stench coming from all the waste dumped into it… Reiko couldn't decide if the trade-off was worth it. Well, whether it was or not, she was still going to keep on waiting out here, watching the massive bulk of the ship as the sailors onboard did whatever it was that they did to get it ready.



"Portland, huh?" Grace said, shifting her bag from one hand to the other as she leaned on a railing. "What do you think that's going to be like?"

"Supposed to be cooler, at least," Reiko said, tugging the collar of her shirt away from her body to try and get some air blowing down against her overheated skin. "That will be nice."

"And it's not here," Grace said, twisting around to look back at Night City, the steel towers and neon signs rising high into the sky. "That's going to be a big plus."

Reiko could agree with that. Really easily, too. She nodded and rolled her shoulders, starting to get uncomfortable with the weight of the stuffed backpack hanging off of them. And the bags at her feet, as well. The collection held pretty much everything that she owned in the world, just like Grace was carrying everything that she hadn't sold off.



"Thanks for coming with me, by the way," Grace said, flashing a smile at Reiko. "It's going to be nice to have a familiar face in a new place."

"Yeah," Reiko said with a deep breath and a soft sigh. "And… it's time."

Grace glanced at the gangplank to the ship, which was still closed off with a chain before realizing that Reiko meant a different kind of time. She nodded, a troubled look passing over her face for a moment.



"I still can't believe that the solo made it out when the nethacker and the sweet talker got zeroed," Grace said quietly, rubbing her stomach where she had been shot. "It's not right."

Reiko sidled to the side and rested her hand on Grace's shoulder, giving it a firm squeeze. Grace smiled at her, though it looked both small and fake. She sighed and shook her head.



"Well, I won't be a solo any longer," she said, sounding very convinced on that, at least. "Time for Grace Dawson the courtesan to make her debut. Anyway, it's not like Portland is as violent as Night City. Not as much call for a gunslinger, right?"

"Active war zones aren't as violent as Night City," Reiko said, deciding to focus on that instead of the chances of Grace getting her dream job. "But yeah, I'm sure you can use those eddies you got for selling most of your guns more than you could use the guns themselves."

"And hey, a good ripperdoc is always useful no matter where you go," Grace said with a smile and a pat on Reiko's side. Reiko smiled back, certainly hoping it was true. "And in Portland, you won't be working for your aunt until she's gotten too old to hold a scalpel."

That was not a thought that had ever occurred to Reiko until Grace had brought it up when trying to sell her on the idea of leaving Night City and going with her to somewhere, anywhere else. But it did have a certain sense to it, something that Reiko couldn't deny. And she was tired of this place as well. Maybe not as much as Grace but leaving it all behind her did sound good.



Grace's eyes got a bit unfocused and Reiko nudged her in the side. Grace came back to reality quickly and smiled down at Reiko.



"Don't worry, I wasn't checking the news," Grace said with a chuckle. "Just wondering how long it will be before we can board."

"Alright," Reiko said, giving her friend a smile and a nod as well.



Ever since Orion had blown up on the news, Grace had been checking the different news sites and feeds a lot. Reiko couldn't blame the impulse, wanting to see what her sister and her friend had died for, but there were other things that could be done during the day and it wasn't like either of them could do anything to change or affect what was going on. It sure wasn't like either of them were going to be giving interviews on how they had conned, shot and stolen the information that Madison had released.



And it had turned out well enough anyway. Orion HQ had been raided by the NCPD, as covered by N54 News, which Reiko had watched a live broadcast of. It had only been a few days and Reiko had no idea how things were going to shake out in the future from all of this, but at least some corpos were behind bars. And who knew? Maybe this would be serious enough to ensure that they couldn't bribe their way out.



Or maybe they'd just get shot, as a couple of the imposters had been already, by the loved ones of the people they had replaced or by their unknowning business partners. Reiko had felt a smidgen of sympathy for them but not any more than that small amount. Just so long as the CEO and whoever signed off on it met the same fate or had to stare at a concrete wall twenty hours of the day, that would be fine with her, give her the closure that she wanted.



And if she got that closure in another city, that would be so much the better. Portland had to be better than Night City, after all. Even if the pair of them couldn't get past the West Corpo border legally, they could slip past it illegally. And from there, well… there'd be something that they could get up to. The both of them together.



It might not be as good as the four of them together but it was what Reiko would have to settle for. She hoped that she'd be able to make some new friends in Portland. And that Grace would, too.



The sailors unhooked the chain at the top of ramp and waved down at them. Reiko grabbed what stuff she was taking with her and started up the ramp, feeling it bouncing and swaying underneath her feet. At the top of it, she turned around and looked out at Night City one last time.



From here, it actually looked kind of good. If you just stared at the skyscrapers and didn't look down at the streets. She sighed and then stepped aside to let Grace up onto the deck of the ship.



"That's that," Grace said with a blank look on her face as she looked past the pier and out at the city. "I'm going to be happy if I never see it again."


"Portland's got to be better, right?" Reiko said, sure hoping that was true.



"It's not going to have Orion, that's for sure," Grace said with a heavy sigh. "Nowhere's going to have Orion anymore. And as for all those other corps that are just as bad…" she sighed again and shook her head. "Someone else can sacrifice their sister to take them down. I'm done." She turned to Reiko and smiled, or at least tried to. "It's time for the two of us to start living for ourselves, right?"

"Right," Reiko said, smiling more widely and hopefully sounding more convinced of that than Grace herself was sounding. Or looking. "And I know we'll find something great up north for the two of us. We can build something up there that we can live in."

"Yeah," Grace said, stepping back from the railing as the crew hurried around the deck of the ship. "Let's go find out what it is."

 

[Calico J]

I've read more than a few stories in different settings where I've thought at the characters, "Well, that place seems like shit. Why the hell are you still there, doofus?" Fun to see that idea occur to the characters too.

Thanks for the story!

 

[WestOrEast]

I've read more than a few stories in different settings where I've thought at the characters, "Well, that place seems like shit. Why the hell are you still there, doofus?" Fun to see that idea occur to the characters too.

Thanks for the story!

Click to shrink...

Thanks for liking it. I've had a vague idea almost from the beginning that it would end with Reiko and whoever survived leaving Night City, I just had to figure out how to get there and who would survive. My next free writing project is going to be an entirely original story with magical girls, so I hope people come and read that, too.