Blood Money

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It was a good dream.

Cade had not slept that deeply in a long time.

He opened his eyes. Vik's clinic was dim. Yesterday, after hiding the faceplate cyberware at his Dogtown hideout, he had rushed straight here to have his chrome inspected.

Cade felt the lightness in his body and instantly felt alive again.

No wonder players liked Old Vik. It was not only his sincerity. More importantly, Vik's work was meticulous. He could not tolerate flawed cyberware installation or bad system tuning, and he always worried that the people who came to him might have something wrong with their chrome.

"Awake?"

Vik walked over. The Valentino tattoo on his arm had a rough kind of beauty.

Cade nodded and pushed himself upright.

"Thanks, Vik. Really. Calling you that might be a little forward, but Dogtown is rough, my chrome had a lot of problems, and you worked all night because of it."

Vik adjusted his black-rimmed glasses and smiled warmly. "I hope that when your cyberware goes wrong, you think of this old doctor right away."

Cade looked at the system inspection data. Everything was orderly. The rough spots had been carefully repaired. Vik had even grafted fresh synthetic skin over sections where the cyberware's outer layer had weakened.

Wait.

Pain Editor. Legendary?

Cade stared.

His cyberware capacity had not changed, but the cyberware itself had become legendary-tier. What was going on? A legendary Pain Editor could flatten pain and reduce damage by ten percent.

But the cyberware code was still the same as before.

"Uh, Vik. Why is my Pain Editor..."

Cade did not know how to describe it. People like Vik would not actually label cyberware with game-like tiers.

Vik nodded. His chair rolled toward the operating table, and he lowered the computer screen for Cade to see.

"You got lucky. Plenty of street kids dream about this thing. They count on the immune-system boost to let them eat a few bullets. Most doctors use cracked versions of the corporate program already inside the cyberware."

"I happen to have an external loader for reinstalling the program. Now it is actually doing what it was built to do. Otherwise, you would have kept using it like a trial version."

Old Vik?

No, no, no.

Father Vik now. Why else would someone work this carefully?

Cade's nose heated, and he felt awkward under the sensation of being cared for.

"Since you know V, you are naturally someone I should treat seriously. No worries. No extra charge."

Cade did not want to act too sentimental. He scratched the back of his head and smiled stupidly.

"Get down and walk around. If you want to stay a while, sit. If you have things to handle, go handle them. I need to watch the latest boxing replay."

As he spoke, Vik sat at the computer and watched two fighters hammer each other on the screen.

Cade flexed his fingers and looked around. On another surgical bed, he noticed an electric guitar.

"Vik, you repair instruments too?"

Vik glanced at the guitar and smiled. "A rockerboy got shot yesterday by fans from another bar's band. The person did not make it. The instrument was left here."

Cade rubbed his hands together with some excitement.

It had been a long time since he had played. Back in university, he had been in an arts troupe and had played in a rock band. A group of hot-blooded young fools had played domestic rock and whatever songs interested them.

He bent down, plugged in the power, connected the pickup, wiped blood from the electric guitar, and plucked the strings.

Vik paused.

"You can play?"

Cade's fingers moved, producing a short, simple electric-guitar solo.

Vik raised his brows and clapped. "Whoa. I'd bet you are the most suicidal rockerboy I have ever met. You should not have stopped."

Cade smiled. It was not that he had stopped on purpose. Rook's number had received a call. Cade could only helplessly put down the instrument, point at his phone, and thank Vik with a gesture before answering.

Vik nodded and went back to his boxing match.

"Hello?"

Cade thought Angie might be calling to press him. Instead, the hologram showed a woman in her fifties.

"God bless. Someone finally answered. It took me a long time to get the number of this new fixer."

Cade's face was hidden in the dark. "How should I address you, ma'am?"

"Mrs. Celias. The neighbors all call me that."

Cade said, "Tell me your problem. Cargo seizure, rescue, dispute cleanup. Those can all be solved."

"No. Mr. Rook, I wanted to ask whether you can help me investigate someone's cause of death."

Cade paused. "More details?"

"My son. A Barghest soldier. Otto Celias. Someone killed him and left him in a Dogtown drainage channel. And one of the neighbors nearby... a woman, a widow now, was drowned in her bathroom yesterday."

"Her husband, Zilf Ceno, was a junior officer. He has been missing for a long time too."

For an instant, Cade felt as if lightning had struck his brain.

The feeling was more like a dull knife grinding across his heart. Although Cade's soul now lived inside the body of some unlucky man, the memories involving those two useless friends were vivid.

He could not call them good. He could not call them bad.

It simply felt awful.

When he had called to ask where Otto was, Cade had already had a faint bad feeling. He had thought Barghest was locking down information because it no longer acknowledged him.

Now it seemed Hansen had cleaned up everyone connected to that shipment.

People died over profit. That was how Hansen's kingdom in Dogtown operated.

The only reason Cade could still move around Dogtown was because Mr. Hands had no choice but to protect him, afraid Cade would drag the problem up to the colonel. If Cade was exposed, Hands would be exposed too.

"Do you know why something happened to them?" Cade asked.

The woman answered, "My son told me, 'Ceno screwed me.' Ceno had asked him to prepare for some business. Then that day he sent me one sentence, 'The boss found me,' and went dark. Damn it. I still do not know what happened."

When Cade did not speak, the woman became even more anxious.

"I have three thousand eurodollars. Can you find a reliable merc to help me settle this? I only want an explanation."

Three thousand eurodollars.

The bitter irony was that Ceno had also died over only ten thousand.

Cade had not expected Ceno to have tried dragging Otto into it too.

The price of a life in Dogtown had never seemed high.

Cade stayed silent for a long while. Then he adjusted his mood, took a deep breath, and said, "Ma'am, something went wrong with a Barghest shipment. They were probably swept into it. You know the man who runs Dogtown is good at cleaning up loose ends. That is as much as I can tell you. As for Zilf Ceno, what was he to you?"

"Ceno was my son's good brother. They were all young men who had been driven out of Night City gangs. Oh, right. There was another young man named Cade who disappeared too. He had a decent relationship with Otto."

Cade's voice lowered slightly. "I suggest you stop asking about this. Keep your money and continue living your life. Barghest was never safe work."

"Is that so..." The woman gave a helpless laugh, as if something inside her had broken and settled. "Thank you for the information. May I ask how much this costs?"

Cade sighed so softly it was almost inaudible.

"No money. Take care of yourself, ma'am."

The woman said in Spanish, "May God bless you, sir," then ended the call.

Cade sat on the surgical bed for a long while. Only then did he gather himself, pick up his weapons, and smile as he said goodbye to Vik.

After leaving, he found a place in Little China to withdraw cash. He took ten thousand eurodollars and tossed it onto the van's passenger seat.

Driving Maine's battered van, Cade stared blankly at the city of blazing colors.

Here, endless resistance seemed to beat inside the city's pulse.

Dogtown.

Mrs. Celias wrapped her clothes tight around herself. A cold pistol was hidden inside.

She took a deep breath and slowly walked to the place where her son had been found. On the road nearby, a Barghest patrol stood guard.

'Otto, my young boy. You caused trouble in Night City, but your mother never blamed you.'

'Your work with Barghest made people spit at us and curse us, but I knew you had grown up. I knew you wanted to build something for yourself.'

'The world is too small. There is no place for people like us.'

'The world is also too big. Everywhere is the same.'

'All right, Otto. Close your eyes and sleep.'

'May God bless you.'

She pulled the pistol from her coat.

In her sights, a young Barghest soldier with a cigarette in his mouth froze in place and met the desperate woman's eyes.

Her finger pressed lightly against the trigger.

Then she hesitated.

He looked so much like Otto.

Mrs. Celias lost her final chance. She closed her eyes.

The older squad leader beside the stunned rookie kicked him away. The shotgun in his hands fired. The powerful blast sent the woman flying several meters.

A battered van screeched to a stop.

The woman slammed into the passenger door. Bright blood splashed into the vehicle, dripping onto the pale eurodollars and slowly spreading across them.

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