Three hours earlier, in the Glen, Heywood—Rhyne's office.
Rhyne was a big man, seriously overweight. There was an external signal antenna mounted at his left temple, and beyond that, there were barely any visible signs of chrome on him.
Dark skin, Latino features, very few implants, a heavy body—
honestly, in the political world of 2076, even in the whole rich-people scene, the mayor was an oddity.
Memorable, too.
Because in a high-tech year like 2076, the rich no longer needed disciplined routines or carefully planned exercise regimens to stay healthy.
All you needed was eddies.
With enough money, you could lie in bed all day, drink sugar like water, and still have a healthy body and a supermodel figure.
Anything money could buy was a symbol of power.
Anyone with status usually chose to maintain whatever appearance pleased them, or picked cyberware aesthetics that flaunted their wealth.
Rhyne, on the other hand, looked unusually...
real.
Approachable, even.
Maybe that was part of his election strategy too.
Unlike the vast majority of Night City's poor bastards, Rhyne's view came through multiple camera feeds.
Militech. Kang Tao. Arasaka. NetWatch.
Any corp worth naming had its own media programming, its own TV channels, and Rhyne had VIP access to all of them.
The Centaur mechs formed a defensive line across the main road. Railguns, heavy machine guns, particle cannons—so many flashy weapons were aimed at that giant pickup that, at first glance, anyone would think a genuine corpo army had blocked the route.
But Rhyne judged in an instant that they were just a rabble.
"Heh. Looks impressive enough. That AI's definitely got some tricks. Shame—even just watching the feed, I can tell these mercs are damn near pissing themselves."
Big spectacles weren't an everyday thing.
People who could afford full-body chrome or pilot powered armor—even quasi-military mechs like the Centaur—mostly ended up inside corp structures.
There were plenty of desperados in the world.
But not every desperado had the aptitude to use lethal hardware like this.
The mercs under Muramasa were decent enough, sure.
But putting them side by side didn't give them any real bonus in coordination.
Even thinking that, Rhyne's left hand holding the drink still stopped in midair. The glass reached his lips, but he didn't take a sip.
No matter how solid your judgment was, when the moment actually came—
people got tense.
Anything could happen.
The red-hot particle cannon fire sliced through the air. Amid the storm of bullets, the massive pickup didn't back off an inch—
The shells were practically about to hit. Metal rounds and explosions formed a violent storm that rocked the truck from side to side. The armor began to deform, blacken, groan—
as if its limit had finally arrived.
Had it?
Sure looked like it.
Out of the smoke of the explosions, a glowing-hot greatblade got hurled through the air by a giant of a man, like the scythe of death, and instantly blew apart the lead Centaur mech.
That female merc was absurdly fast. Under cover of the frontal assault, she punched straight into the defensive line.
Just like he thought—
the mercs' seemingly solid defense was nothing but a paper tiger.
"Beautiful!"
"Holy shit!"
Rhyne threw his glass outright, both arms swinging hard through empty air.
When life-and-death bloodsport got this intense, sometimes the audience went even crazier than the people in the arena.
All across Night City right now, TVs were getting smashed—
like a shocking upset at the World Cup.
Not that Burger King had been some underdog.
It was just that there were always gamblers willing to go all in.
As the big pickup smashed into the defensive line, the explosions shifted from the front of the formation to deep inside it.
Tyger Claws bikes entered the fight too, and the foreign mercs started breaking ranks and running!
They were terrified.
Brand-new gear, power they'd never felt before flowing through their bodies—
and yet teammates with the exact same gear and strength were getting blown apart with ease.
Fear punched right through their mental defenses.
After all, they'd already gotten the equipment. Abandoning the job to save their own skin was hardly uncommon.
Watching that rabble scatter instantly, while the gangs—who were supposed to be the real rabble—returned to the course in orderly fashion behind the big pickup, Rhyne dropped heavily onto the couch.
"Preem."
And after that rush came the emptiness.
The race didn't seem to have any suspense left.
Time to get back to work.
As mayor, Rhyne had a lot to do.
Especially today—those "gang elements" had just demonstrated a lot of extremely high-performance tech, and that was bound to give plenty of corps ideas.
As mayor of Night City, of course he had ideas too—
He genuinely wanted a crew that badass working for city hall.
But surprises hit just like that.
Rhyne stood up, ready to head back to his computer and start making preparations—while also sounding out the corps' attitudes—
Bzzzt!
The moment his hand touched the computer, an enormous flash of electricity erupted outside the window!
The entire Watson district had been hit by an EMP attack!
And this wasn't just some chaotic electrical surge. On the contrary, electromagnetic signals hacked into the electronic control systems across the entire district in a way no human could ever manage, then dumped all that current into the nearest electromagnetic devices!
Electricity and magnetism shifted rapidly through the air, energy and information exchanging in perfect sync—
Something enormous in cyberspace had descended into reality.
The sheer scale of the electromagnetic shock instantly punched through his computer and triggered the home defense system. Blast-resistant armor plates snapped into place, turning the room into a steel fortress.
In the darkness, Rhyne switched on backup power and began checking and making first-pass repairs to the system.
People on the outside didn't care about his degree, but he had actually been an excellent student—a technical one, too. He studied networking technology at Richard Night University.
"Fantastic. This rogue AI can hit nearly half of Night City's power infrastructure in one shot. Add in that Santo Domingo incident and it really is half the city... NetWatch, your assessment metrics are behind the times."
Rhyne repaired the computer and switched to a backup line.
He wasn't worried that anyone would exploit this exact moment to make a move.
Outside his office, he had Arasaka security, a small Militech unit, a Kang Tao factory not far off, and even a NetWatch office right downstairs—
In short, as the man who had built this warped balance in Night City, he was standing in the eye of the storm.
Conflict raged around him—
but the eye of the storm was always calm.
Click.
Current flickered. Personal link connected.
[Rhyne: I'm heading out.]
Suddenly, his vision filled with static gibberish!
He'd been hacked!
The nausea and vertigo from cyberware desync made him lose control of his body instantly. His limbs twitched, and he hit the floor on the spot!
Bang!
And the moment he fell, the door was breached!
The good news was that this extremely high-spec blast door had only been forced open a crack. To fully open it, somebody would have to bring in breaching gear in person.
"Ugh..."
Rhyne struggled to roll over. The distorted current had thrown every endocrine gland in his body into chaos.
He only rolled once, but during that roll, it felt like he'd spun over and over—
and also like he hadn't moved at all.
It was almost impossible for a human to do anything useful in a state like that.
But Rhyne—
he had only one thought left in his head:
The storm was out of control.
He had to reach that place.
The final security measure.
The final distress signal—
"Fuck... good thing I recorded that..."
Two hours later.
"Rhyne's gone!"
The NetWatch office was right below the mayor's office. Bryce had reached the office immediately, hoping his colleagues could offer something useful.
Instead, all he found was an empty room, and—
"You didn't hear anything? Didn't see anything?"
"Rogue AIs are tricky. Looks like that merc made a few mistakes after all."
His colleagues went through the motions, deploying forensic analysis gear in the empty office.
But Bryce found it unbelievable.
The office door right above your heads got breached—and you didn't even hear it?!
"Forget that. Your assignment lately was capturing a rogue AI. Where is it?"