[INCOMING CALL]

  Caller: Encrypted

  Time: 16:25 | Tuesday, June 29, 2077

  ? ANSWER ? DECLINE ?? SILENCE

  Will answered the call. The line crackled.

  “You’ve been a very busy boy, Will.”

  The voice on the other line was heavily modulated, probably run through a high-end voice scrambler. The caller had gone through a lot of work to make sure they couldn’t be tied to this call. Will took one guess who it was.

  “You find anything on Big Red yet? How about Ringer?”

  The voice on the phone went silent for a beat. “How the hell did you know?” Winter asked, still using the voice scrambler.

  “Who else would be calling me on an encrypted line? Now, the info I paid for.”

  “Fine, you’re no fun. Listen up. I’m only going to say this once. Stay away from Ringer and his crew. He’s a small-time Somali fixer who runs a scav crew, but he has racked up an insane body count in a short period. Report says he came to Night City in 2075, crew’s twelve guys, over on Longshore North and Eisenhower. They took over the basement floor of an apartment building. They’re chromed up with Kerenzikovs. Killers, Will. Not the kind of gonks you normally run into. At least fourteen murders linked to Ringer alone. Don’t go looking for trouble.”

  “I’ll take it under advisement. What about Red?”

  “Red, that one was actually hard. Fog made him hard to track, but we finally got a match. He rode up to the No-Tell Motel in Kabuki at 11:04 AM wearing a motorcycle helmet, but his forearms were bare. Tattoos matched to ninety-nine percent certainty. Your choom is probably still partying in his room.”

  “You should have been a detective.”

  “I am a detect-”

  Will hung up before he could finish and punched the address of the No-Tell Motel into the cargo van’s Auto Drive. A few things stuck out to Will. Big Red had taken the truck to pick up the cargo at 9:00 AM,then turned off the tracking fifteen minutes later. Where had he gone between 9:15 and 11:04? Then there was the matter of his motorcycle. Neither Mick nor Don had seen him riding it in months. Where had he stashed it? His storage unit? Was that where the truck was? It seemed probable that wherever the bike had been stashed, the truck was now sitting. What he couldn’t figure out was the reason why Red had driven all the way to Kabuki to grab a motel room. Could have been a late morning session with a joy toy or something else. Problem was ‘something else’ could be anything. A meet with Ringer or a buyer seemed likely.

  There wasn’t much left to do but prepare. The cargo van was making its way through the torrential rains, barely dodging the few schizo pedestrians who were stupid enough to stand in the road under low visibility conditions. With a little luck, he might catch Red before he departed from the motel and the cargo vanished forever. Will had just dropped nearly nine thousand dollars buying Red’s debt off a sociopathic cage-fighting serial killer. The least he could do was stay in one place.

  [SOUTH KABUKI – TITAN STREET]

  Tuesday| 29 JUN 2077 | 17:02

  [MAYOR PERALEZ CALLS TEMPORARY STATE OF EMERGENCY. ORDERS ALL AERODYNE TRAFFIC TO HALT UNTIL CONDITIONS IMPROVE.]

  When Will pulled into the backlot of the No-Tell Motel, the motorcycle was already gone. He called Winter’s burner to tell him the news.

  “Back so soon are we?” came the scrambled voice.

  “I need to know when he left and where he’s going. Don’t have time to joke around.”

  “Okay, fine. Don’t hang up on me again though. I hate that.”

  Will had two guesses where Big Red was heading. “Check the routes to Ringer’s apartment and the Megapax Export storage facility on Leru Street.”

  “Okay, looks like he just left about ten minutes ago. I pulled the motorcycle’s IP earlier, just bounced it off Eisenhower heading North. Will, don’t underestimate these guys.”

  The cargo van engine began to hum again as Will entered the new address. He would have taken the wheel himself, but the rain was coming down so hard he could barely see a few feet in front of him. A pair of cybereyes would come in handy right now, he thought to himself. The Gibson Battle Phantom suit he’d already spent fifty-seven hundred eddies on would have been even more useful for what he was headed into. He wasn’t oblivious to the irony that he might very well die before his custom-sized stealth gear was finished. There was no use crying, so Will pulled on his Arasaka techgogs and the black balaclava over them. The mental checklist was next. Finding Big Red was a priority, but the truck and the cargo were worth more. He could head straight for the Megapax Export storage facility and leave Red to the fate he’d decided for himself. That option didn’t sit right for some reason. Will owed Big Red exactly zero favors. He’d lied, cheated, and stolen from the only people who still cared about him and yet…

  Then it dawned on Will that the reason Big Red bugged him so much was that Big Red reminded him of himself. He let out a tired laugh at the realization. It seemed as if the universe wasn’t done screwing with him yet. So Will decided at that moment to save Red if he could. There was no telling how much danger he was in working with Ringer. Scavs were unpredictable at the best of times. Deals went sideways more often than not, and that’s when bodies usually started dropping.

  When the cargo van finally stopped a block away from the scav apartment building behind the huge cylindrical fuel storage tanks on Eisenhower Street, the punishing rain had still not abated. Will could see the bike’s heat signature through the wall of water. If there were any lookouts, their visibility would probably be just as limited as his. That is, unless they had cyberware that could see infrared, his heat signature would still stand out even in the storm. It was in the realm of what was possible that the scavs had peeled one off a dead merc or a corpo agent and had it installed. Possible, just not likely.

  Will stuck close to barbwire fence around the perimeter of the fuel storage tank, stopping just before crossing Longshore North. He looked to the left and then to the right. Satisfied that no reckless AI drivers were approaching, he crossed the street to the apartment building. Big Red’s bike was standing beneath the fire escape on the side facing Eisenhower Street. It was a Yaiba Kusanagi CT-3X, cherry red with yellow borders. The rims glowed with a pulsing red neon under-light that made it look like one solid circle of light when the wheels were moving. He had to admit it, Big Red had taste.

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  Will had the external Agent connected in a few movements. Regina’s gift had been extremely helpful in breaking standard ICE in situations like this. Will himself was no techie and had an aversion to connecting his personal link to unknown systems. The external Agent was his magic wand. All he had to do was plug it in and let it do its thing.

  After the navlog data was downloaded, Will wiped it clean and forwarded it on to Regina to analyze. He knew what she’d find, but Red’s betrayal wasn’t his focus. One way or the other, the Twins would have their cargo back. Right now, finding Big Red was all that mattered.

  The sound of a grenade going off somewhere inside the building was loud enough that Will didn’t even need his bioware-enhanced hearing to detect it. He had a sick feeling in his gut that he’d just found Red.

  [WATSON NORTHSIDE INDUSTRIAL DISTRICT- LONGSHORE NORTH AND EISENHOWER]

  Tuesday| 29 JUN 2077 | 17:52

  [STATE OF EMERGENCY: STAY OFF THE STREETS UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE]

  When you want to find the location of a recent explosion, all you have to do is follow the smoke. That’s what Will did, keeping low, stepping carefully through the lobby of the deteriorating building. What few people who had been loitering in the area were now scarce after the detonation. It wasn’t a particularly big explosion. The building hadn’t shook and the foundations were more or less as unstable as they had been. Will moved forward, sweeping the space with his eyes for a route to the basement. To his left was a stairwell, to his right was an empty elevator shaft with a sign that read ‘Temporarily Unavailable’. He chose to descend the shaft into the basement rather than risk the flimsy-looking steps.

  The landing was soft thanks to Will’s catlike reflexes. The elevator shaft was missing most of its walls at the basement level, but the nearest light was several yards away, and Will crouched silently in the shadows. The smoke was already starting to clear up. Will exited the elevator shaft and began his search for Red. As he crept through the scav base, he could hear voices talking, fast, frustrated, and in broken English. The scavs sounded angry. He listened and moved further into their lair, hiding behind crates and utilizing the darkness of the windowless basement to remain mostly invisible.

  At one time, the basement of the apartment building must have been used for storage for maintenance parts. Now, a metric ton of trash was strewn about, and the scavs had turned it into a base of operations with sleeping quarters, a kitchen, a living room, and a designated space for ‘work’. There were six scavs in the kitchen area, all of whom appeared shaken, and their clothing was blackened.

  “Ringer he dead. Now me in charge,” said one voice in a thick Somali accent.

  “You’re too dumb, bro. You can’t even speak good English,” came another calmer, more reasonable voice. “We don’t have time to argue. You want to live or not?”

  It was a convenient moment to have a power struggle, Will thought as he continued his search. He let his nose lead him to the smoky backroom they had been using for the meet. Will counted five dead. Four appeared to have been bludgeoned to death by the massive form between them. It was impossible to mistake Big Red for anyone else. He sat against the wall, slumped over with a cell phone in one massive, blood-covered hand. Will could see the shrapnel embedded over his heart from across the room, blood blooming across his white xxx-large button-up shirt. Will rushed over and felt for a pulse, despite knowing that even if he was alive, he wouldn’t be for long. Will couldn’t hear the sound of any nearby Zetatech Atlus flying through the air, so it didn’t look like Big Red had a Trauma Team card.

  When Will’s hand touched him, Red jerked his head up. His eyes were wide open, staring at him like he was looking at a ghost. Will pulled down his mask and pushed the techgogs up from his eyes, and looked Big Red in the face. Nobody wanted to be watched over by their killer as they died. Will wanted the dying man to know that he wasn’t with the scavs. Red was close to death now, but he reached out with a bloody hand and gripped Will’s forearm, then placed a cracked cell phone in the palm of his hand before his eyes turned to glass and a death rattle escaped his lips. Big Red had survived his mortal wounds longer than seemed possible, and his last dying act was to hand Will his personal cell phone. It was perplexing. Will closed the man’s eyes with two fingers and donned his face coverings. He was ready to leave.

  Just as he was headed to the door out of the backroom, he heard the footsteps coming. He would have to hide and quick. The ‘meeting room’ had a storage closet with an old hinged door, so Will slipped in quietly and positioned himself behind an ancient, rusted file cabinet. The smell of musty papers and mold was strong here, almost overpowering. He focused on staying hidden as the two scavs entered the room.

  “I would be careful with Crazy Boy, Dheere. He cut off Baby Mane’s penis last week. No one knows why.”

  Will’s eyes went wide just then. What the hell was wrong with these people? He couldn’t imagine purposely associating with a person who would castrate another human being, much less a member of his own gang. It was just another reason to despise scavs for Will. The two continued talking.

  “He will not cut off my penis. It would destroy him if he tried,” Dheere laughed.

  “Perhaps so, my brother. Help me with the Animal, we must hurry.”

  The temptation to peek out from his hiding spot was great, but Will didn’t want to blow his only advantage. He could push his Sandevistan hard for about six to eight seconds before it crashed. Any longer and he’d fry some neurons and end up curled up in a ball at the worst possible time. He wasn’t sure he could get back to the elevator shaft in that timeframe. Besides, he still didn’t know what their plan was from here. They’d killed Big Red and apparently had no idea where the truck was.

  Electric bonesaws began to hum, and Will realized what the scav had meant when he asked for ‘help’ with the ‘Animal’. They were going to cut him up. Will’s hand was on the butt of his Lexington. He had three magazines, sixty rounds of armor-piercing ammunition, and six chromed-up psychopaths to deal with. He didn’t like his chances, but he wasn’t going to let them chop up Red for parts if he could help it.

  That was when Will’s heightened senses detected the sound of a car screeching to a halt outside the apartment building. It was loud enough that the scavs, who were struggling to drag Big Red’s body into the center of the room for cutting, stopped and listened. Seconds later, the basement door was blasted open with what sounded like military-grade breaching explosives. The scavs were speaking their Somali tongue, quickly, issuing orders. The next two minutes were a barrage of machine gun fire and angry yelling, followed by the sub-sonic swing of a blade and the grisly plop of a human head being severed from the body. Will could hear screams of terror followed by a large BOOM from a power shotgun. More sub-sonic swings of metallic murder, more severed limbs, more screams, another BOOM…and then silence. The world became utterly still in that moment.

  Someone had sent a professional hit squad to wipe the remaining scavs on Longshore North and Eisenhower off the map. Will was still hiding in the storage closet. He’d seen nothing, but heard everything in explicit detail. If they found him, he was as good as dead. So he focused on breathing so quietly he could barely hear himself. He could feel his heart rate slowing. Who knew what kind of tracking cyberware these guys employed? He had made himself as undetectable as he possibly could, and now his best bet was to stay completely still and pray they didn’t find him.

  “Bann charoya. Bann salopri voras.”

  Sounded like French Creole. The only people who spoke it fluently were the Haitian refugees in Pacifica. Voodoo Boys. Which meant these were Punishers. The ones they sent when their target absolutely, positively had to die. No questions asked. No excuses.

  “Jwenn lajan an. Nou pral chèche kamyon an pa lòt mwayen.”

  “Mwen konprann.”

  “Bon travay!” one of the Punishers said happily.

  Will couldn’t get over how casually they conversed after annihilating six men in the span of two minutes. It was like they were shopping for clothes or discussing the latest episode of The Big Eat Show. Either they were mental or just didn’t see scavs as human beings at all.

  As they began to exit the meeting room, one stopped loudly and sniffed the air. “M panse m pran sant yon moun.”

  Will wondered if they could smell him. His immediate surroundings were highly odorous, with mold and musty papers that would confound the noses of most people. However, if the Punisher had bloodhound cyberware installed, it was possible he could make out Will’s distinct scent even over all the gore and smoke. This was getting better and better every minute. He held his breath.

  The Punishers’ footsteps were getting closer.

  -Bob