Strong Enough 4.5

Shot Caller 4.5

<Target is move-moving>

Taylor straightens, hand ghosting to her new revolver. The grip feels sinful in her palm, a shame she only now has cause to use it.

“Is he leaving?” Taylor asks.

Sasha doesn’t reply for a long second. Then she sighs over the call.

<Negative> Lucy says. <Just taking a shit>

Taylor groans, leaning back in her seat.

“Stakeouts never lasted this long in the sims,” Emma grumbles. She’s ‘driving’ today.

“Never thought you would pick the counter intel track,” Taylor replies.

It’s good that she did, because this job has been all intelligence gathering. They wait now for the culmination of a month and a half of effort. They’ve run down leads and hacked into servers. They’ve threatened people and killed them. All that remains is the final task, the culmination of all the effort that led to this moment.

Except Aaron Lombard won’t go to the whorehouse.

Emma sighs. “This would be easier if we could just hack Ruby Dreams and see his appointments.”

<Do-do you want to piss off the Tyger claws?> Lucy asks.

“It would still be easier,” Emma replies.

Ruby Dreams is Lombard’s favorite doll house. He goes there once or twice a week, and spends more than Lucy’s entire rent each time. The amount of money the man siphons out of one building to pay for fake love and neo-kitsch suites amazes Taylor. If he regularly did anything else at all, Taylor’s crew wouldn’t have to deal with this ridiculous stakeout.

Taylor adds two more people to the call with a blink. “David, Becca. How’s your spot?”

<Cozy-cozy, choom!> At least Becca sounds happy. <Course, me ‘n Dimples could just bust into the guy’s apartment…>

Taylor sighs. “You know why we’re not doing that.”

<Yeah. Don’t-don’t wanna traumatize him>

They don’t have a jammer that can stop Lombard’s biomonitor from calling Trauma Team, like the ones Maelstrom used during the Storm. That’s the type of thing Taylor might be able to get from Wakako, if they had the money.

Taylor sighs. “I know you want—”

<Target is leaving the penthouse. Repeat, target is leaving the penthouse!>

 Taylor snaps up. “Drive.”

Emma pauses, hands on the steering wheel. “…Taylor.”

Taylor’s eyes slash towards her friend. “Whatever it is, later. Go—go!”

Emma goes. Her fingers are clenched tight around the wheel but she goes, eyes flicking towards Taylor all the while. Their Quadra peels out of their illegal parking spot beneath the overpass and zips up onto the highway.

Taylor can feel the thrumming engine push up through her feet, eager and sharp. It mirrors the beating of her heart against her ribs. Fingers squeeze tighter around her gun.

Taylor can feel Emma’s eyes on her, desperate to talk, bright green reflected in the glass. Taylor doesn’t say anything, because now isn’t the time and Emma should know, but they’re a minute away from Lombard’s exit when Emma decides to break the silence anyway.

“Are you sure?” she asks.

“Of what?” Taylor doesn’t even look away from the windshield.

“Taylor, this isn’t some job from the Lady of fucking Westbrooke, okay?” Emma shakes her head. The car shivers slightly, sharing her anxiety. “Even if we pull this off, it will follow us forever. This type of hit, without a fixer, on the son of a C-Level employee?”

“Lombard’s a CEO too,” Taylor replies.

“Of his own shitty housing company!” Emma huffs. “Don’t be obtuse, it won’t be Lombard’s lawyers coming after us.”

It will be wet-work teams.

Lombard’s father is part of Civenti, a European CHOOH2 giant, but like every corp they’ve drifted into arms dealing. As far as targets, Civenti is much softer than Biotechnica and doesn’t have as much presence on this side of the pond. As far as reprisal, taking a swing at the kings and queens of the world will never go unpunished if they get sniffed out. But Emma doesn’t believe they’ll get caught. She’s the one that set up the shell corps, she’s the one that bribed admins at the tower. In many ways, this job only went forward because Emma gave the all clear. She’s not worried about the punishment.

That can only mean one thing.

“You’re worried about the message.”

Emma stiffens in a way that means confirmation. “God dammit.” Her voice comes out in a soft hiss. “I forgot how good you were at reading me.”

‘Pour some soda in my hair,’ Taylor thinks but doesn’t say it.

She wonders, as the car tears away from their old lives and into something entirely new, if she’ll ever stop thinking those words. Will her first response always be to hit back twice as hard? Maybe it will.

Maybe, that’s fine.

Taylor isn’t thinking about Emma Barnes right then. Something far greater has taken far more from her.

“You’re worried about what will happen when we take something back from Night City,” Taylor says.

Emma bites her lip. “Becca was right about the last time we had rent riots. Was part of the Mox ones, when the Tyger Claws killed Lizzie Borden. I know now everyone just talks about the Moxes, but it got bigger than that. And the City is…”

Tense. Taylor hears it.

“Lizzie Borden took an axe,” she says. “And gave the Tyger forty whacks.”

Emma swallows, finishing the rhyme. “And when they saw what she had done, they came and gave her forty-one…” She takes a breath. “It could be more this time.”

Did she really smash the three claws at her bar forty times total? The Claws believed it, because when they came back, they killed forty patrons at the bar, plus one Lizzy, to make it even. Business as usual.

Night City always takes. It takes and takes until it’s scraping the ligaments from your bones, plucking at little bits of sinew between your joints, more and more and more until someone finally screams too much. Taylor looks out the window and she thinks she can hear a scream building, rumbling even louder than the engine of her Turbo-G Quadra.

The first gig she ever ran herself was stealing a car, now she’s stealing a company. Emma had a problem with both of those things.

But the problem isn’t the stealing, just like it’s not the danger.

“You don’t care about forty whacks,” Taylor says. “Are you worried about you?”

Emma’s fingers tighten on the steering wheel.

She’s Arasaka born and bred, enmeshed with the towering monolith of corporation in ways Taylor still doesn’t understand. An attack on that structure threatens the very foundations of Emma’s existence.

Emma swallows, her eyes trace Taylor’s face, reading her own expressions just as easily. “I know it’s too late to stop the car, but…”

But Emma never had to fear for her life, until Maelstrom came and plucked her out of it. Now, she has a reason to feel that fear all over again. Maelstrom cracked the edifice of corporate invulnerability, and now Emma stands with her hand on a sledgehammer, ready to give it one more blow. It’s not about the rent going up, it’s not even about Aaron Lombard. It’s about an idea.

If a group of nobodies, kids with guns and one and a half adults’ supervision, can reach out and touch someone like Aaron Lombard, what does that mean for Emma?

Will the City’s poor and teaming masses claw for her neck just like Maelstrom did? Any sane person would be afraid.

Taylor isn’t

The only thing she feels is the cool metal of her revolver beneath her fingers. A thumb spins the cylinder like click-click.

“There’s our target,” she says.

Emma swallows again. “Right.” She turns, eyes catching Lombard’s rear bumper as it pulls on to the highway. He drives a toxic green Caliburn, another ostentatious display of wealth, with a cracked autopilot that weaves through traffic like Lombard wants to meet god.

Today, Taylor plans to answer that prayer.

To Emma, she says. “I’ll keep you safe.”

Emma laughs. “Safe as this?”

“Safe as diving into the eye of the Storm,” Taylor replies. “Now hit the gas.”

Emma pressed down. Her eyes flash as her agent reconnects with the team call. “Sash, take the wheel. We’re following the target.”

<In position> Lucy replies.

<Ready when he pulls up or when he pulls-pulls out!> Becca chirps.

Emma takes her fingers from the wheel as Sasha’s pilot program takes over with the netrunner’s guidance. They follow in Lombard’s wake, cutting close enough to other cars to catch someone’s fingers. Taylor could drive with the Sandevistan, but she’s not a racer. She has another role to play.

Her hands leave her revolver for the first time since the car took off. She flips up the lock on the door.

<Ten seconds till the tunnel> Lucy says.

Taylor unclips her seatbelt.

<Nine. Eight.>

She ties back her hair.

<Seven>

<Six>

“Good luck,” Emma whispers.

<Five>

Taylor laughs.

<Four>

“The only thing I need—”

<Three>

“—is right here.”

<Two>

Taylor’s finger’s trace the metal of her Sandy. Ahead, around a tight bend, the mouth of a tunnel gapes wide over the road.

<One>

Lombard’s wheels cross into the shadow of the tunnel.

And then fire races down Taylor’s spine and tear all the colors away. The door, already unlatched, slides slowly—gently, open to her touch. The cars stand still, frozen tail lights leaving contrails in the air. An affectation, a trick of her mind.

Taylor steps out of the car, and into the road, faster than even Lombard’s souped up Caliburn can go. Into the shadow of the overpass, where the graffitied neocrete cuts off the rest of the city for one long moment, and all of the traffic cameras are smashed to bits.

She reaches into her mother’s coat and pulls out a slim metal disk with spikes covering one of its faces. She slides forward, stepping around a burst of thick exhaust that hangs shroud-like in the air. Then she bends down and slips that disk beneath the car’s rear bumper, right below the tail lights. The spikes push into the body of the car like a finger passing through water.

Caliburns boast a very robust set of security protections. Unfortunately, human error—or in this case human intervention can cut through the many myriad layers of security and deliver a virus right into a system’s most protected networks.

Right now, Sasha and Lucy have complete access.

Taylor relaxes the Sandevistan ever so slightly. The cars edge forward, letting her slide back to the passenger door, still open in the wind. With graceful, almost dainty steps, Taylor slips back into her seat. She pulls the door after her, bringing it to a complete stop just ever so slightly open.

Beyond the window, she sees a city frozen in black and white.

Taylor lets go.

The wind pushes the door shut, and the chair creaks beneath her as it settles back into place. Color crashes into the world, the vibrant green of Emma’s eyes almost shimmering as she stares at Taylor from the driver’s seat.

“What?”

“I thought I saw you flicker, on the road,” Emma says.

Taylor smiles. “He didn’t see.”

<Is the jack in place?> Lucy asks.

“Yeah.”

<Accessing. Man, this guy never updates his wheels. I’ll be through the ICE in forty seconds.>

Sasha chimes in. <Peeling off for the rendezvous now.> Taylor hears the smile ringing in her voice.

Sasha takes the Quadra off the highway while Lucy compromises Lombard’s auto pilot to send him off course on the way to Ruby Dreams. With the car compromised, it would be easy to for David and Becca to tranq him and get him from the rendezvous to the warehouse where Lucy was waiting with the rest of their setup.

After that, only the extraction remains, and they have two of the best Netrunners in NC waiting to crack open Lombard’s skull. This time tomorrow, they’d be the new owners of one (1) run down, overpriced apartment block.

Then Lucy says <His car missed the exit>

Taylor sits up. “What?”

<I’m in the system. He’s continuing past the-the exit to Ruby Dreams>

<Must be goin’ to Clouds today?> Becca said <Men, never reliable>

<Hey!>

Becca ignores David. <We gonna reschedule?>

“We can’t,” Emma says. “Clouds takes privacy seriously. Much more seriously than Ruby Dreams. They’ll scan the vehicle and he’ll know we’re tracking him.”

Sasha giggles nervously. <Whoopsie, what do we do, boss?>

Taylor grunts

<I can still divert his car> Lucy says. <It will just take longer for him to get to the pickup point>

“He’ll call security. Fuck.” Taylor shakes her head. “We can try to find a place near Clouds? We don’t have the camera coverage mapped out, though.”

Her prints are probably on that disk too.

<Better I crash him into a wall> Lucy says. <Still fixes my rent-rent>

Taylor almost gives the go-ahead.

<Hey, Scar> Sasha says. <Can you do the-the thing you pulled on our first job?>

“The thing?” It takes Taylor a second to catch up with what Sasha is suggesting. Then she remembers her very first job with Maine’s crew, and how she saved it. Taylor sucks in one last breath and puts her thoughts in order. “Lucy, slow him down, but try not to make it obvious. I need one minute.”

“The thing?” Emma asks.

Taylor turns to her. “I need your blazer.”

“What?”

“No time!” Taylor’s back flares hot, and she races through the same half remembered updo from the last time she had to intimidate someone. When she drops back into real time, the car jolts, running a red around a tight corner as Sasha takes control. Three other cars blare their horns, a jacked up six wheeled pickup that cannot be street legal almost flattens the hood of Emma’s car.

Taylor starts blinking through the interior lighting menu. “Does this thing have a conference call mode?” Her eyes flick to gob smacked Emma, still frozen from the near miss. “Emma!”

<Leave the call to me, nya!> Sasha says. She tints the Quadra’s windows, and a second later the internal lighting changes color to a sharp, almost actinic white.

Emma has finally started to take off her corpo-chic blazer even as Taylor tosses her lab coat into the back seat. “Becca, I need you to grab me something that looks offensively Arasaka for me and bring it to the rendezvous.”

<On it, boss!> Becca giggles. <Oh boy, are we doing the Scarlet Special again?>

<Scarlet Special?> David sounds almost as confused as Emma.

<Just watch-watch, Dimples. You’re in for a hot show!>

“Becca, today,” Taylor says. The two of them drop off the call to find an overpriced boutique. Fortunately, they’re the closest to the rendezvous; Taylor just has to get Lombard there before he realizes something is wrong.

Emma hands over her jacket, leaving her only in a thin white blouse. “Let me fix your hair.” She reaches out without waiting. “You always mess this one up.”

“Ten seconds.”

Emma rolls her eyes. She does work faster.

She is also better at this hairdo than Taylor.

Taylor shrugs into the blazer, ignoring Emma’s practiced fingers smoothing tucking away stray hairs, pulling the loops into a more symmetrical shape. Somehow, she coaxes Taylor’s hair into another inch of height before the time runs out.

Then Emma pulls off her own elaborate jade hairclip and affixes it to Taylor’s hair so that the three circles of Arasaka are clearly visible.

Taylor jolts.

Emma grabs her by the back of the neck, holds her still. Taylor stiffens in an entirely different way. “Don’t ruin my hard work!”

Taylor swallows, nods. Then she says, “Lucy, start routing him to the rendezvous. Can you hack his agent?”

<No-no interior cameras> Lucy says.

“Got it.” Taylor’s eyes flick over. “Done?”

Emma smiles. “You look ready for the boardroom.”

Taylor huffs, looking away from Emma and from the odd flutter in her chest. She squeezes her eyes shut, trying to drag her focus back to the mission, not to…whatever that moment was.

“Lucy, send him our way. Sasha, set up the call. We’re gonna need to be more convincing this time.”

<Don’t worry, Scar> Sasha replies. <You’ll be-be picture perfect>

Fortunately, their car does have a camera. They spend a few frantic minutes fixing the passenger seat of the car so it can pass as the backseat of a corporate limo. Then Lucy calls again.

<He’s getting annoyed. Half a minute before he stops paying attention to my error pings and calls someone dangerous>

Taylor lets out a breath and straightens. When she does, her eyes are red. Not just the iris like she prefers, but once again a flat marble of brilliant scarlet. She pulls her lips into a displeased mou and says, “Put me on his car’s holo display.”

<Why would it have a display for calls and no camera?>

Taylor’s lip twitches. “Because it’s a Caliburn.”

Lucy sighs, but she must find it because she doesn’t contradict Taylor. Once more, she counts down from, <Three>

“Counting on you Sasha.”

<Two>

Sasha sends an affirmative ping, as well as the dossier they put together on Aaron Lombard.

<One>

Taylor’s call goes through. She can’t see him so she doesn’t pretend or prevaricate. Instead she looks directly forward, bored and displeased, the ur-counter intelligence grunt, making yet another work call outside of normal business hours.

At this, she has far more practice than she’s proud of.

“Mr. Lombard,” she says. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

She can’t pull any ticks from his expression, or the way he might shift in his chair. All can get is his voice, filtered as it is through Night City’s own special brand of high quality VONP—voice over net protocol.

So she’s surprised when Lombard’s first words are.

<Fucking cock sucking whore. Does Yorinobu have a ping set to my car?>

Taylor flash-freezes the world so she can gape in surprise. She spends a full two seconds of relative time getting her expression under control and making sure she didn’t actually move before she can listen.

Lombard continues with <Tell him to just fucking marry the bitch for me, yeah? Maybe the Emperor will have a stroke>