Bryce stood in the office, feeling a little lost.
Rhyne's office was one massive "locked room."
In the Glen, the sales divisions and office towers of the various corps were more or less evenly distributed. Everyone kept tabs on everyone else, and everyone kept tabs on the mayor's office too, never letting a single clue slip by, all hoping to get intel and read their rivals' next move in time.
Second, he had purchased Arasaka security services. Not close-protection detail, but Arasaka's security teams were stationed around the office building and never left their posts.
Third, Militech had a distribution point directly across the street, with agents on site twenty-four hours a day.
Finally, Rhyne was a major investor in NetWatch's Night City branch. With his help, NetWatch had practically become the NCPD's net support division. A huge chunk of their power in Night City was tied directly to Rhyne.
But this nearest defensive line—
NetWatch flat-out claimed they had observed nothing unusual!
Bryce's colleagues kept laying out forensic gear, adjusting the data, running holo-models to reconstruct the scene.
But the results were vague.
All they could determine was that Rhyne had fallen in front of his computer, that the computer had burned out during the rogue AI incident, and that afterward he had switched over to backup hardware.
The backup system was still locked.
Bryce's colleague shook his head.
"Our mysterious mayor is a real piece of work. Someone forces the door open, he leaves without a word, and dumps the mess on us..."
Honestly, Bryce understood why his colleague would think that.
Rhyne had brought NetWatch into the city, provided a lot of resources and support for establishing the Night City branch—
but he still maintained plenty of private networks.
Those private networks did not interface with NetWatch, and they were tiny, like the line he had used to send Bryce that message.
It was a purely mechanical, one-way signaling route. The information would hit Bryce's personal terminal, even bypassing NetWatch's monitoring software for corp agents.
On the terminal, the message just looked like an ordinary cyberware deviation report—the kind of variance you could get from having a drink.
The real information could only be decoded by a second person, which meant Bryce himself didn't even know what Rhyne had said to Leo.
That was important.
"I think Rhyne was kidnapped."
"By who? Don't tell me Peralez. He's the only one who came here today."
While they talked, the colleague had already restored the building database. The latest visitor on the access list was Peralez—Mr. Speaker of the Night City Council, and in the next election, Rhyne's opponent.
Peralez?
No wonder NetWatch hadn't reacted at all...
Bryce was just about to lock onto Peralez as the culprit when his colleague got another result.
"Hm. Cameras picked up Rhyne leaving the building. Drove out in his own car. Arasaka let him through.
Probably just got spooked. Maybe whoever breached the door was his private security, huh? Arasaka ninja type?"
Bryce understood why the guy would think that.
But he didn't think NetWatch would stop there so easily.
Based on how NetWatch operated, even if Rhyne had a habit of keeping secret networks, they should still be using every advantage of their position to investigate a partner like him as thoroughly as possible.
They should be digging deeper on their own.
Unless—
the company no longer cared.
Didn't care about the support Rhyne could provide anymore.
Didn't care about the favors he could deliver.
Bryce's thoughts accelerated.
Rhyne's distress line had been one-way and covert. Bryce knew Rhyne had definitely been abducted.
But the company's attitude made him alert.
NetWatch simply did not care about Rhyne.
And Rhyne's office was right next door, yet the NetWatch staff hadn't reacted in the slightest. That was way too weird.
"What car?"
"A Jefferson 388. His favorite one, same as always. You good now? So what about your assignment? Why'd you suddenly come running back?"
"Negotiations broke down." Bryce immediately adjusted his expression. "Rhyne had some kind of commission agreement with that merc. I was thinking maybe I could make use of it."
"Heh. Merc trying to jack up the price. Typical. If I were you, I'd line up a backup plan."
"You're right." Bryce casually moved toward Rhyne's desk. "I really should line up a backup plan."
While his colleague was busy packing up equipment, Bryce immediately started typing at the terminal—
Rhyne had locked the database containing the hidden data, but he hadn't locked the communications functions.
At least, for Bryce, it might as well have been unlocked.
Just enough to let him bypass company surveillance.
[Recipient: Leo]
[Bryce: Rhyne vanished. The company's attitude feels off.]
[Bryce: All I know right now is that the latest building access record belongs to Peralez, but that's the only lead left. Everything else got burned.]
[Bryce: Arasaka let a Jefferson 388 through. The one you'd recognize from TV.]
[Bryce: Fuck... it's gotta be Militech. But Arasaka's not even curious what Peralez was doing here?]
"Rhyne's been taken. There's still time."
The Mackinaw rolled slowly down the road.
Except no matter how slowly it moved, it still drew corpo eyes.
"Why?" V asked.
"Why what?"
V raised one finger, brain working at max speed—then gave up. "Lotta whys. I'll start simple. What happens if Rhyne gets snatched or flatlined?"
"New mayor takes office. Policy changes hard."
"Changes into what?"
"Good question. That's why we're doing this gig..." Leo thought for a second, then decided to put it plainly. "Rhyne's a balancer. A damn good one, too. I won't deny that.
Especially the way he kept Militech and Arasaka strung up nice and tight. But flip the angle—if you were one of those corps, would you really think it was a good thing to be hung off both sides by some little Night City mayor, pouring in resources for a drawn-out war of attrition?
And all that burn? The corps pay the cost. Night City gets the gain."
"Turning the place into a cesspit counts as gain?"
"At least it got richer." Leo answered V while also running through possible situations they might hit. "And think about Atlanta.
If Rhyne dies, the next mayor comes down to Holt or Peralez. Doesn't matter which one—it means a clear tilt toward one corp.
Holt's Arasaka's dog. Peralez's biggest backer is Militech, and at least on paper, he's strongly in favor of closer ties with NUSA."
Holt and Peralez were the tools Rhyne used to communicate with the corps. A lot of the time, he didn't need to say anything himself. Those two would do the thinking and talking for the corps.
That was balance.
That was layer one.
Jackie looked like he half got it.
V got it.
"Hearing you explain it like that... feels like both Holt and Peralez had a reason to ice Rhyne."
Leo nodded approvingly.
That was the key.
Rhyne was exactly the kind of politician corps hated most—
they backed politicians to get things done for them, not to get played dizzy and dragged into endless wars of attrition!
Even setting aside all the other conspiracies, whether it was Militech or Arasaka, before their preferred candidate took office, they shared one goal:
Rhyne had to go.
In theory, they had a common objective.
In practice, they were enemies, which meant they absolutely would not team up over Rhyne's life.
Unless an opening appeared.
If all it took was one shove to kill him—
everyone would do it.
Everyone had done it.
Now was exactly that moment.
"Okay..." V raised a second finger. "Then why not just waste him on the spot? Why bother kidnapping him?"
"That part's trickier. Maybe the mastermind wants to get something decisive out of Rhyne—something that helps their candidate win the election."
Jackie, who hadn't fully followed earlier, smacked his forehead. "The data in Rhyne's head's gotta be worth crazy eddies!"
"That's one way to look at it," Leo said. "But based on what Bryce told me, I'm guessing... the mastermind's thinking something else."
The mastermind wanted to create an illusion.
An illusion that said:
Everyone else did something.
It didn't.
Because it couldn't survive being investigated. It needed to stay low-profile. It...
was an AI.
Even with a rough count, too many people could've been making a move on Rhyne.
And when the number of killers becomes plural, the difficulty of investigating the case goes up exponentially.
The whole thing turns into a maze.
Right now, all of this was still just theory. Leo wasn't some mystic who could instantly divine the full truth of the matter.
But the objective stayed the same.
Finding a Jefferson 388 on the street was usually hard.
Not today.
Today the streets were practically empty of cars—
and full of gang boys.
[Padre: The Valentinos spotted the car.]
"Hold tight."
V clicked her tongue. "Knowing we're about to go save a piece of shit like Rhyne makes it kinda hard to feel good about this."
"Then let me put it another way," Leo said. "We're about to decide this city's future."
"That's got a better ring to it."
Jackie, sitting in the back, said nothing. He hurriedly opened a fresh section in his little notebook to record the moment—
[This might be a little advanced for you.]
[But a top-tier merc has to do at least one job in their life that decides the future of a city.]
[—Jackie Welles, 2076...]
[Written before doing exactly that kind of major-league gig.]