The warehouse district of Northside was less a landscape of buildings and more a graveyard of forgotten industry. Rust, like a festering plague, gnawed at the skeletal remains of factories, their empty windows staring like vacant eyes at the polluted sky.
The air hung thick and cloying with the stench of decaying synth oil, stagnant water, and the metallic tang of urban rot. Each breath was a reminder of the city's slow, cancerous decay. A real shithole of Night City.
Apex, led the way, her movements a masterclass in predatory stealth. Her heavy combat boots barely scuffed the debris and shit stained ground. Cipher, a phantom in the dim light, flowed ahead, his form blurring as he scouted, his senses reaching out like unseen tendrils. Every creak of corrugated metal, every distant hum of an automated drone, was a potential threat.
Teo, his own breath shallow and ragged, kept close, the unfamiliar weight of the Lexington in his waistband a cold, constant reminder of the grim purpose that had drawn him here. His hand never straying far from its grip. The new armored jacket felt both comforting and oppressive, a second skin of anxiety and ambition. He needed some type of Subdermal Armor, It would make feel more comfortable.
Apex had secured their entry point, a rusted service hatch, half-swallowed by a towering stack of decaying shipping containers that smelled faintly of brine and forgotten dreams. Cipher's nimble fingers, surprisingly delicate for a man so efficient in violence, went to work. The specialized lockpicks danced in the twilight, clicking and whirring with a soft, almost intimate sound against the ancient mechanism. With a final, resonant groan of protesting metal, the hatch creaked open, revealing a gaping maw of darkness, a narrow, uninviting tunnel that plunged into the unknown. Teo felt a shudder, the dread of enclosed spaces mixing with the fear of what lay beyond the darkness, maybe an alligator or something.
The interior of "The Echo Chamber" was a chilling dichotomy to its derelict exterior. The warehouse's grime and rust gave way to a stark, sterile environment. Cool, recycled air hummed with a low, insidious drone through the ventilation system. The corridors were dimly lit by flickering emergency lights, casting long, distorted shadows that danced like mocking phantoms around them.
Every corner held an unblinking eye, security cameras, their lenses like predatory irises, mounted with an almost zealous paranoia. This was BioDyne's digital sanctum, a cold, efficient fortress built to guard its secrets.
Apex moved with the fluid grace of a seasoned merc, her hand signals were precise. She pointed left, then held up two fingers, indicating a double patrol. Cipher, his Kiroshis likely on full spectrum analysis, confirmed the rhythmic cadence of two guards patrolling a cross corridor. They were moving with a synchronized precision that spoke of countless similar takedowns, their bodies shifting in a deadly ballet of anticipation.
Apex melted into an alcove, her Militech pistol emerging from its holster, silenced and ready. Cipher, meanwhile, unspooled a thin, almost invisible garrote wire from his wrist mounted dispenser. They moved with a predatory silence that made Teo's own heavy breathing feel deafeningly loud.
He watched through the filter of his Kiroshis as the first guard, a burly figure encased in standard BioDyne security armor, rounded the corner. Apex raised her pistol. A soft thwip was the only sound as the silenced round punched through the guard's temple. He crumpled, a dead weight, before his weapon could even register the threat. The muffled thud of his body hitting the floor was swallowed by the omnipresent industrial hum.
Before Teo could process the cold efficiency of it, the second guard appeared. Cipher was on him in an instant. The garrote wire flashed, coiling around the man's neck. A muffled gurgle, a desperate clawing at the unseen wire, and then, silence. Cipher's movements were economical, deadly, a study in quiet termination. They dragged the bodies into a maintenance closet, the heavy boots scuffing softly against the grimy floor. No words were exchanged. Just grim nods.
The route to the data center was a tense, agonizing ballet of near misses and brutal, silent eliminations. Teo's heart hammered against his ribs with each close call, each shadow that seemed to move on its own. He'd never been this close to real, tangible violence before.
The clinical efficiency of Apex and Cipher, their casual mastery over life and death, was unnerving, a stark contrast to the chaotic, desperate brawls he'd witnessed in Heywood. He tasted bile in the back of his throat, swallowed it down, and forced himself to keep moving.
I mean he'd seen people dead on the streets and in bd's, but this felt different.
They reached a reinforced door, It was marked with a blinking access panel. This was it. Cipher produced a small, multi tool device, attaching it to the panel. Lines of code, unreadable to the untrained eye, scrolled rapidly across its screen. "Network access," he whispered, his voice barely audible over the hum of the ventilation. "Low level, but enough to get Teo a hardline connection. There's a guard patrol route tied to this junction box, though. If they get too close before you're in, we'll have company."
A discreet port, half hidden beneath a loose panel, was revealed. Teo's fingers, surprisingly steady despite the tremors in his gut, moved to his Subdermal Interface Pad. He snapped his interface cable into Cipher's device, the familiar surge of data a strange, grounding comfort amidst the escalating tension. His Kiroshis flickered, the sterile reality of the corridor dissolving as he plunged, headfirst, into BioDyne's network.
The network was a chilling, beautiful horror. BioDyne's ICE wasn't just code, it was a fucking sprawling, jagged landscape. Firewalls loomed like towering, obsidian fortresses, their surfaces crawling with aggressive daemons that resembled swarms of razor winged insects. Alert protocols zipped through the network like digital guard dogs, their forms ethereal yet menacing, constantly sniffing for intrusion. This was far more sophisticated than anything he'd faced before, a true corporate beast. His basic Militech Paraline OS groaned under the immense strain, the phantom heat behind his temples a constant, throbbing warning. He could feel the limits of his basic chrome screaming at him.
'Dios mío' He thought.
He initiated Mass Vulnerability, pushing the quickhack from his core. A wave of crimson code pulsed outwards from his digital avatar, rippling across the black landscape, attempting to erode the digital defenses.
It was agonizingly slow, sluggish against this level of ICE, like trying to melt an ice sculpture with a single, sputtering match. He felt the feedback, a dull ache behind his eyes. But he pushed through it, knowing every millisecond counted.
He then deployed Datamine, his digital tendrils reaching out, seeking the encrypted 'Project Chronos' packet. The search felt like groping through a vast, dark, constantly shifting labyrinth, blind and exposed. The network resisted, spitting out rejection errors that felt like tiny, digital electric shocks.
Through the straining haze of his Kiroshis, he spotted a patrol routine, a string of alert triggers cycling through the network, a guard's comms link broadcasting their proximity. They were getting too close to the main corridor access point.
"Guard patrol!" Teo's voice, strained and sharp, cut through the comms link to Apex and Cipher. "Coming up on the junction, thirty seconds!"
With a surge of adrenaline fueled focus, Teo initiated his Ghost Breach Protocol. This wasn't just deploying a daemon. It was a carefully orchestrated dance of digital deception, a technique he'd been refining since his earliest days in the Net. It was why Padre vouched for his "surgical precision." His basic Militech Paraline OS, usually a clunky workhorse, was about to be pushed far beyond its intended limits by sheer, raw skill.
First, he used his Ping daemon, not to locate enemies, but to map the internal network's routing tables, identifying the most vulnerable, least monitored data conduits. He saw them, tiny threads of weakness in BioDyne's otherwise impenetrable web.
Then, he injected a low level Neural Feedback pulse, not strong enough to harm guards, but just enough to cause a momentary, system wide 'hiccup' in the network's perception, a fleeting flicker of data corruption that would make BioDyne's automated defenses question their own integrity.
This was the opening.
He unleashed his signature System Glitch. The crimson ghost, his chaotic digital signature, materialized within the patrol routine, a malevolent giggle echoing faintly in the digital space. It wasn't just a simple jam, it was a highly complex burst of corrupted code, designed not to destroy, but to confuse and misdirect.
Alarms in the physical world began to flicker erratically, their blares cutting in and out, like a dying echo. Security logs glitched, displaying phantom intruders in distant sectors while simultaneously erasing traces of their actual presence. It created crucial, momentary blind spots in the network's awareness, making BioDyne's systems fight against themselves. He felt his deck heat up, the warning lights on his Subdermal Interface Pad blinking furiously, a phantom burning sensation radiating from his temples, as if his very brain was catching fire.
"Twenty seconds! Get ready!" Apex's voice was tight, her Militech rifle already aimed at the corner.
Using these brief, frantic openings, Teo pushed deeper, his fingers flying across his mental keyboard, lines of vivid green code cascading through his vision like a digital waterfall. He bypassed a rudimentary firewall that pulsed with predatory energy, then navigated through a series of encrypted sub directories, each one a tangled knot of defensive code.
His heart pounded in sync with the frantic processing of his straining cyberdeck, the rhythm of his own life mirroring the digital chaos he was orchestrating. Sweat beaded on his brow, the phantom heat from his deck radiating from his temples. Every nanosecond was a battle, his will against BioDyne's machine.
Suddenly, a new alert flashed in his Kiroshis, WARNING: TRACE INITIATED. A powerful trace program, unseen but felt like a predatory glare, had locked onto his digital signature. Its tendrils, like grasping, phosphorescent claws, were reaching out, attempting to pinpoint his exact location within the network. He had minutes, maybe less, before his digital footprint would be fully compromised, before BioDyne's NetWatch assets would pinpoint his physical location and send their own agents to flatline him.
Found it.
He found it: 'Project Chronos - Aura_Vision_Origins.enc'. A thrill of triumph, sharp and metallic, shot through him, quickly followed by a jolt of pure, unadulterated alarm. The trace program was gaining on him, its digital tendrils already sniffing at the edges of his defenses. He initiated the download, the data flowing onto a secure partition of his cyberdeck, then onto a physical data shard he'd kept ready in his pocket. It felt like trying to drink from a firehose while being chased by a pack of rabid cyber-hounds, every byte a desperate gulp.
Simultaneously, he deployed his drone control daemon. He found the network nodes controlling the maintenance drones, clunky, utilitarian machines designed for cleaning and repairs. He overloaded their pathfinding protocols, injecting chaotic, nonsensical instructions.
In the physical world, a distant whirring and clanging echoed through the facility as the drones began to malfunction, their movements becoming increasingly erratic, bumping into walls, setting off proximity alarms as they spun wildly, some even crashing to the ground with a shower of sparks. The cacophony of their chaos was his shield, a symphony of destruction designed to cover his escape.
As the data transfer completed, a blaring, ear splitting klaxon ripped through the air, shaking the very floor beneath them. Outside the data center door, the muffled shouts of alerted guards grew louder, closer.
"They're on to us!" Apex hissed, her voice cutting through the rising panic, already drawing her Militech rifle. Cipher was at the reinforced door, placing small, precise charges along the frame, his movements unnervingly calm.
"Data secured, drones active!" Teo yelled, ripping his interface cable free. The sterile, beautiful, terrifying digital world vanished, replaced by the harsh, immediate reality of the flashing emergency lights and the deafening shriek of the klaxon.
He felt a wave of nausea, the sudden transition leaving him disoriented and lightheaded, a mental whiplash from the depths of cyberspace to the cold, hard, dangerous real world.
The reinforced door blew inwards with a deafening roar, showering the corridor with sparks and debris. A squad of BioDyne security guards, clad in black tactical armor, their faces obscured by full face helmets, stormed through the opening. They wielded heavy pulse rifles, their muzzles spitting lethal bolts of energy.
"Go! Go! Go!" Apex roared, unleashing a volley of controlled bursts from her Militech rifle. The corridor erupted in a storm of gunfire, the air thick with the acrid smell of burnt synth flesh and ozone. Crimson streaks blossomed across the guards' armor where Apex's rounds found purchase, punching through composite plating.
Teo, adrenaline surging like raw, unchecked chrome, scrambled behind cover, the metallic taste of fear coating his tongue. He drew the Lexington, its weight a familiar, if terrifying, comfort in his hand. He'd practiced countless hours in the Coyote's makeshift basement range, sending rounds into battered old synth pads, but this was real. The thrum of the gun in his hand was different now, a live thing, pulsating with deadly intent.
The guards advanced, their weapons spitting lethal energy. Apex and Cipher returned fire, their movements a deadly dance of cover and attack, synchronized and ruthless. One guard, his helmeted face contorted in a silent snarl, broke from the main group, charging directly towards Teo's position, his pulse rifle locked on. Fear, cold and sharp as a shard of broken glass, pierced through the adrenaline haze.
He raised the Lexington, his hand shaking violently, and squeezed the trigger. The recoil bucked savagely in his palm. The guard staggered, a bloody hole appearing in his chest, a sickening gurgle escaping his vox amp, but he kept coming, a terrifying, unstoppable momentum. Teo fired again, and again, emptying the clip, until the man collapsed in a grotesque heap, his weapon clattering on the floor, his last breath rattling in his throat.
He stared at the fallen guard, the acrid smell of gunpowder filling his nostrils. The scent of hot blood, fresh and metallic, clung to the air. He'd just taken a life. Fuck, why was this so hard.
His hands trembled, his breath caught in his throat. But there was no time for shock. More guards were already advancing, their footsteps thundering down the corridor, a relentless tide of death.
They fought their way down the corridor, a brutal, desperate retreat. Apex and Cipher were a whirlwind of lethal efficiency, their movements honed by years of bloody experience. Apex's rifle spat death, tearing through armor and flesh with dispassionate precision, painting the walls with crimson. Cipher, wielding a pair of customized knives, moved with a horrifying, silent grace, appearing from shadows to silence foes with quick, brutal strikes to vital points, leaving trails of arterial spray. Teo, surprisingly, found a grim, almost feral focus.
The Lexington bucked in his hand, each shot finding its mark, spraying blood and fragments of armor. He saw the vivid crimson, the chunks of torn flesh, the sudden, blank stare of glazed over eyes as life drained away. It was visceral, horrifying, a dance with death, but survival demanded it. He was a merc now. He was fighting.
The other two, still occupied, caught sight of Teo's shots, and almost in unison thought, 'What the fuck!' stunned by his insane accuracy.
Rounding a corner, they found themselves in a small, forgotten storage room, crammed with obsolete tech and industrial waste. Crates were stacked high, casting deep, oppressive shadows. "Hold here!" Apex yelled, shoving a heavy, metal crate in front of the doorway, creating a makeshift barricade. The sounds of the firefight, though muffled, were getting closer, the shouts of the BioDyne security growing more frantic, more determined.
Teo had seen this room while jacked into the interface, almost a storage room for different cyberware the corp was producing.
"I need to check something," Teo gasped, his eyes frantically scanning the cluttered room. He spotted a large, metallic crate with blinking indicator lights, a sleek, almost pristine anomaly amidst the industrial refuse. It looked like some kind of secure, high tech storage. Ignoring the furious exchange of gunfire raging just outside their flimsy barricade, a desperate, primal urge surged through him.
He scrambled towards it, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his ribs. His fingers flew across the access panel, splicing the digital lock with desperate speed, the process agonizingly slow against the backdrop of the battle. The latch hissed open with a soft, pneumatic sigh, revealing rows of neatly organized cyberware components, gleaming under the weak emergency lights.
His eyes scanned the contents, his breath catching in his throat. There, nestled amongst other high end pieces, were a pair of sleek, black cyber optics labeled "SpecterNet - Enhanced Netrunner Interface." The description flashed in his Kiroshis, projected directly from the device's internal memory, Integrated direct neural link optimization for enhanced data processing. Substantially increases quickhack upload speed and daemon efficiency. Advanced threat detection within the Net. For professional netrunners seeking unparalleled speed and stealth. These were far beyond standard Kiroshis, a netrunner's dream, worth far more than the eddies he was making, a true piece of high end chrome. He didn't hesitate. A defiant, almost savage grin flickered across his lips. He snatched the SpecterNet optics, shoving them deep into an inner pocket of his new jacket. A trophy.
The sounds of gunfire were getting closer, louder, more desperate. "Teo! Move!" Apex yelled, dragging him back towards the makeshift barricade, pulling him from his momentary lapse into avarice.
They burst out of the storage room, the corridor now swarming with more guards, a seemingly endless tide of chrome and firepower. Cipher, who had been covering their rear, suddenly staggered, clutching his side. A dark, rapidly spreading stain blossomed across his dark coat, blood seeping between his fingers. "Got hit!" he grunted, his face pale beneath the grime and sweat, his movements faltering. Hands danceing through his pockets looking for more redstims.
They reached a final bottleneck, a heavy security door leading directly to a loading dock, their only escape route. More guards were converging from multiple directions, sealing them in. "We can't all make it, lost my last high stim awhile back." Cipher said, his voice strained, laced with a terrible, resigned finality.
He reached into his coat and pulled out a small, intricately carved wooden bird, its feathers detailed with surprising artistry, almost impossibly delicate for such a brutal world. He pressed it into Teo's trembling hand, his grip surprisingly strong. "Keep this, kid. keep it safe." His eyes, usually unreadable, held a flicker of something profoundly sad, profoundly human.
Before Teo could protest, before the wave of disbelief could fully crash over him, Cipher shoved him and Apex violently towards the door control panel. "Go! I'll hold them!" He turned, drawing a pair of heavily modified pistols from beneath his coat, his stance wide, defiant. A grim, determined look settled on his face, the face of a man ready to die.
Apex didn't hesitate. She slammed her hand onto the panel, overriding the door lock, her face a mask of steel.
"Cipher! No!" Teo shouted, voice raw, cracking with sudden, sharp panic.
Cipher turned back one last time. There was a faint, almost sorrowful smile on his lips, a genuine smile, the first Teo had ever seen from him.
Then the BioDyne guards opened fire, unleashing a storm of lead and plasma.
Teo had barely known him. An asshole, sure but not a bad guy. And now, he wished he'd had the chance to know him better.
Apex dragged Teo through the opening, her grip like iron, the heavy door slamming shut behind them with a final, echoing clang. The sounds of gunfire and Cipher's defiant shouts faded instantly into a muffled, guttural roar, then to nothing but the phantom drumming in Teo's ears.
They burst out onto the loading dock, the cool night air hitting Teo's sweat soaked skin like a shock. A beat up Thorton Galena, their getaway vehicle, idled nearby, its engine rumbling like a predator in the night. Apex shoved Teo into the passenger seat with brutal efficiency, then slid behind the wheel, her face a mask of grim determination, her eyes fixed on the path ahead.
The tires screeched as she slammed the accelerator, the Galena lurching forward with a violent shudder, leaving the chaos of "The Echo Chamber" and the memory of Cipher's sacrifice behind. Teo clutched the small wooden bird in his hand, its smooth, cool surface strangely comforting against his bloodied, trembling fingers. Cipher was gone. Flatlined. Sacrificed himself so they could escape. The weight of it, the raw, brutal finality, settled in his chest like a leaden, crushing weight. He felt sick, numb.
He looked down at the wooden bird, its intricate carvings a testament to a life, a soul, cut short. The taste of dust, blood, and gunpowder still lingered in his mouth, a bitter residue of the night's horrors.
He was alive. They had the data. But the victory felt hollow, stained with the image of Cipher's last stand, the echoes of gunfire, and the cold, sickening realization of what it truly meant to be a merc in Night City.
The eddies would be nice, he supposed, enough for those SpecterNet optics burning a hole in his pocket. But tonight, all he felt was the crushing weight of loss.
The roar of the Thorton Galena's engine was a hollow thrum, a poor substitute for the deafening silence that now filled the space where Cipher had been.
Teo felt like dead weight, his limbs heavy, his mind a battlefield of fractured code and screaming gunfire. The intense netrunning and the raw, brutal gunfight had sucked him dry, leaving him a hollow shell. He sagged against the passenger seat, almost carried by the sheer force of Apex's grip as she maneuvered the getaway vehicle through the churning arteries of Northside.
He gripped the small, carved wooden bird in his hand, its smooth surface now slick with his own sweat and the metallic tang of dried blood. "Fuck..." he muttered, the word a raw exhalation of disbelief and grief.
He slowly turned his head towards Apex. Her knuckles were white, clamped around the steering wheel, her shoulders hunched. A subtle tremor ran through her powerful frame, betraying the iron-clad composure she usually wore. He could see the tension in her jaw, the way her eyes, usually so sharp and unwavering, darted across the road, a desperate effort to keep them from welling. She's trembling.
"Apex... go to El Coyote Cojo," he rasped, his voice a low, tired whisper, strained from the screams he hadn't let out. "We can rest there."
She only nodded, a jerky, almost imperceptible movement, not daring to speak, her gaze fixed rigidly forward. The silence that followed was thick, heavy, laden with unspoken sorrow. It hit Teo then, with the force of a physical blow. Apex and Cipher. They were closer than he'd thought. More than just crew. More than just merc colleagues. He looked at her, truly looked at her, and saw the raw, exposed grief behind her hardened exterior.
He sagged back into the worn synth leather seat, trying to center himself, to find some anchor in the reeling world. His body ached, every muscle screaming in protest, and he was caked in blood, not all of it his own. The metallic tang of fear and death still coated his tongue. He hoped this gig, this blood soaked initiation, had truly meant something.
He looked down at the data shard, still implanted in the specialized port on his forearm. Just then, a soft "ping" sounded in his Kiroshi firmware, a discreet notification. Upload complete. Data integrity verified. The vital proof was secured. He didn't eject the shard yet. It felt like a small, tangible link to the horrors he'd just endured, a promise of a future, however grim.
He brought his comms online, a desperate need for connection. He rang Padre. The line rang for a bit, a low, buzzing static, before Padre's craggy, street wise face flickered into existence in Teo's optics, concern already etched around his eyes. "Teo, job finished? Status report."
Teo stared at Padre's projected face, then responded, his voice coming out raw and stripped of all pretense. "Yeah... got the data..." He paused, the words heavy, each one a stone in his throat. "Cipher... Cipher got zeroed. Flatlined. Gave us the chance to escape. Lo siento, Padre."
Padre's eyes, usually so sharp and calculating, widened, a flicker of genuine shock and grief passing across his features. The tough exterior of the fixer cracked, just for a moment. 'Fuck who was Cipher?' He thought,
"That bad, huh? Even lost Cipher... Chingado... shit. Corpo dogs." He sighed, a heavy sound that seemed to carry the weight of all the fallen mercs he'd ever handled. "I'll be at the Coyote with the client to get the shard. Good work, Teo... get some rest." The line went blank, leaving Teo adrift in the sudden, echoing silence.
He glanced back towards Apex. She was still rigid, her shoulders tight, but now her left hand was clamped over her mouth, her knuckles white, her body shaking with suppressed tremors. A single, silent tear carved a clean path through the grime on her cheek, followed by another. She was fighting it, fighting the grief, trying to hold it together in the cold, unfeeling steel shell of the car. More than friends, huh. The realization hit Teo, a fresh pang of empathy in his chest. "Fuck," he muttered, the word now imbued with a profound sense of loss, frustration, and the bitter taste of Night City's brutal realities.
He turned away from her silent agony, turning instead to the blur of Night City lights streaking past the window. The neon signs, an endless, garish assault of colors, bled across the dirty synth glass, painting the world outside in lurid greens, violent reds, and sickly blues. Holographic advertisements flickered, screaming promises of chrome, pleasure, and wealth he felt further from than ever.
The city was a predator, a relentless machine that chewed up lives and spat out legends, or forgotten husks. He saw the blurred faces of night owls, other mercs, junkies, joytoys, each a fleeting tableau of the city's ceaseless, desperate grind. Distant sirens wailed, a mournful, digital cry that seemed to echo his own internal anguish. He clutched the wooden bird tighter, the small, silent memento of a life extinguished, a stark reminder of the cost of eddies and the chilling truth that in Night City, even ghosts bled.
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A/N: holy fug, ill pick up tommorow im having some fun with this. I see you little sneaky boys... or girls! Leave some comments on stuff... I'm watching you, you fucks, little goblin lurkers. love ya tho, thanks for readin and shi.
Word count - 4505 words