What They Want I

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The battered iron gate beside the street entrance to Vik's clinic was pushed open. High heels clicked sharply against the ground.

"Fuck. Corpo dog... shit."

A few drifters, half-stoned and lying on the ground, scrambled up the moment they saw the woman walking in. They tucked their necks down and hurried out.

V glanced at those idiots and did not bother with them.

Cade had just finished his cigarette. When he saw V enter like she was clearing a room by existing, he gave a helpless smile.

A high-Intelligence corpo V really was hard to get along with. That cold distance around her pushed people away. She always had a habit of blurring the most important information inside whatever she said.

Compared with V, Cade would almost rather deal with the criminals in Dogtown.

"Going down together?" V lifted her chin, arms folded.

It was a closed posture, the kind that kept the world at arm's length.

Cade quietly glanced at the Arasaka logo on her suit. Her animated holo-badge flashed with an employee number.

"Yeah."

Inside Vik's shop, V visibly relaxed.

"Super... super... super recommended."

The first line of the man in the TV ad sounded like he was trying and failing to take a shit.

"All the pleasure comes from All Foods, with three point three times the daily recommended vitamin content."

V's brows tightened. Clearly, she had no patience for the terrible ad either. She lifted one hand, and the television shut off.

Vik looked up. "I was just listening to it, V."

His tone was helpless.

"Vik, how is she?" V smiled. She showed no guilt over making that decision for him. Vik spoiled her too much for that.

Vik rubbed the dark purple-red blood from his gloves and sighed.

"Her arm cyberware is modified, but the workmanship is rough. She has probably been using heavy firepower for a long time. Add poor strength calibration on top of that, and the structure is in bad shape. The neural network through the whole arm is a mess. Right now, we can only install cyberware that matches what her body can actually handle."

Cade frowned. "Can you be more specific, Vik?"

"Say your arm does not have much sensation. You lose any real estimate of how much weight you can lift. When you try to move something heavy, torn muscle, stretched bone, swelling, pain - those are all warnings telling you not to lift it alone. Understand what I mean?"

Cade's brows locked tighter.

"And the other arm?" V asked.

"What? Replace only one arm? Trying to make her a rockerboy?" Vik shrugged.

Cade swore he did not want to laugh. But Vik making that kind of joke during a serious surgery felt incredibly dark.

"She is... not my subordinate. A merc I work with," Cade said. "Please see what you can do. Is replacement the answer? How high is the risk?"

Vik adjusted his glasses. "Arm cyberware is one of the lowest-risk categories. Forgive me for being blunt, but if a merc cannot tolerate this level of chrome, that merc is basically saying goodbye to the profession."

Cade thought of Maine's hands shaking after installing the Projectile Launch System. He silently shook his head.

"Replace it," Cade said. He knew Vik was waiting for him to make the call.

Maine and the others were with other ripperdocs. Cade was the only one in decent condition at the moment. Those recovery perks were no joke; they helped enormously after a fight.

Vik nodded. "There is a colleague not far from here. He has a set of Gorilla Arms that should fit her proportions well enough. Last question. She is an adult, right?"

Cade scratched his head. "Yes. She just looks a little..."

"Kawaii," V said, her expression ice-cold.

Cade nearly lost it.

Arasaka was a Japanese corporation, so of course V knew some Japanese. But that one was... difficult to evaluate.

Vik smiled. "I will make the call. Surgery should be ready tonight."

V pointed outside. "Walk by the river with me. I need to tell you something."

Cade stood and followed like a student.

Wait.

Were they not supposed to be the same rank now? Why did this woman still talk like his boss?

Cade straightened and quietly sped up until they were walking shoulder to shoulder.

Outside Vik's clinic, densely connected buildings pressed against one another in a blur of color. City rail trams slipped between towers.

They crossed the street and reached the concrete guardrail by the river.

In the distance, a cylindrical skyscraper rose at the end of the winding waterway. Holo-ads flashed above it. Ring-shaped billboards crowded each floor. AV engines hummed overhead. A woman with three mouths smiled from the side of a transit ad.

After all the trouble in Dogtown, Cade finally felt Night City's appeal in a real, physical way.

Dogtown was a decaying fortress. Night City looked endless and prosperous from the surface, but it was still a place where people ate people. The only difference was whether you wanted to die in the flowers or in the trash.

A gunshot sounded behind them.

Cade turned and leaned against the rail to watch. Across the street, NCPD officers knelt on a drifter who had been provoking them and shot the resisting man's limbs apart.

Pedestrians scattered. Some screamed. Some pretended not to see. A few kept lying on the ground watching braindances, twitching as if this had nothing to do with them.

Night City, all right.

"Did you come here from the company just for this?" Cade asked casually, watching it happen.

"On the way, more or less," V said. "I handled something for my boss today. Some problems. Some people. Company car will pick me up later."

Cade nodded.

V noticed he was still watching the NCPD mess across the street. "They say NCPD changes early next year. City Hall cuts funding. They have to fund themselves. Once they become a private company, this will get worse. They will have more power to remove anything they decide is a threat, abandon the Pacifica mess and gang territories like Maelstrom ground, then manufacture the bullshit illusion of public safety for City Hall and the citizens."

It was the most V had said about anything outside corporate business since Cade met her.

"And the corporations?" Cade stood downwind as he smoked. This cybernetic beauty did not like the smell.

V shrugged. "What else? Control weapons, control armies, control everything. We need to see it clearly. That is how the world works."

Cade said nothing.

As someone from Dogtown, he knew that broken place was full of addicts, criminals, and gang armies. But corporate pressure there never felt as direct as Hansen's hounds.

Night City was different. Corporations held the city's lifelines. Either you lived as an ordinary person with no promise of tomorrow, waiting for a stray bullet to take you, or you climbed inside a corp. Or you built something of your own by force.

"Do you know how your crew connects to that Arasaka shipment?" V asked quietly.

Cade's face stayed calm. "Yes. Barghest had an insider. Bomb hit the convoy. The people hired your merc crew to damage the cargo."

"Then why not investigate who hired them?" V sounded curious.

Cade asked, "Do you know why I chose to become a fixer?"

V shook her head.

"You understand fixer work better than I do. A fixer is a transfer point. They do not need to know the client. The merc crew does not need to dig into who hired the job. Everyone listens to the fixer. The broker creates an information wall. Money speaks. Client and mercs do not know each other, the risk drops, and people can act without hesitation."

V listened and nodded slightly.

Cade continued, "How many fixers are white gloves for corporations?"

"My crew almost certainly did not know the fixer's background."

"If you find the fixer, odds are he is backed by some other corp. Which means there is no point."

He crushed out the cigarette. "I chose this identity so I could keep myself clean, stand firm in Dogtown, and separate my hands from the worst of it. That is also why I am cooperating with you."

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