The Jefferson 388—favorite ground ride of corpo upper management.
All the luxury went into AVs. For ground vehicles, most people only cared about safety.
A stretched, low-profile sedan weighing over five tons was pretty damn conspicuous tearing through empty streets, and Heywood was the kind of place where—
for the Valentinos, at least—
word traveled fast.
The sound of the car cut clearly through the night. Without intel, the locals and the gang boys posted along the streets would've just assumed some big shot was out on another routine pleasure run.
Inside the car, Rhyne had been completely stripped of consciousness. His personal link was connected to some hacking rig, the equipment continuously trying to crack the storage in his head.
The driver's movements were clean and efficient. He wore goggles, his expression completely hidden.
His destination was a nightclub called the Red Queen's Race.
Info was being sent through the hacking gear in the back seat, disguised under Rhyne's cyber-signature and frequency-shifted to his assistant—
the deputy mayor currently on "medical leave" in an Arasaka medical facility.
Holt always arranged Rhyne's "relaxation" trips.
That signal was guaranteed to be intercepted by Arasaka, exposing Rhyne's route.
Assume Rhyne had been badly spooked.
Assume he was sneaking out for another incognito pleasure run.
Assume it was on a night this chaotic.
Then this was the perfect time to make a move.
The people behind this knew one thing:
If Arasaka knew it had a chance to take a shot at Rhyne, it would take it.
What they hadn't expected was that not long after the Afterlife doors opened, all of Night City's gangs started moving again, and a vehicle came screaming down the empty roads!
The conspiracy had already started turning.
No matter what happened now, Rhyne had to die with dignity.
At Militech Tower, the special ops team that thought their shift was over suddenly got kicked right back into work mode.
While Leo tore down the road, he received a call from Militech—
[Stout: The Glen wasn't part of tonight's agreement.]
[Leo: So it was you who got into the mayor's office building using Peralez's identity.]
[Stout: I have no idea what you're talking about. The Glen doesn't just have Rhyne's office in it. It's an important district.]
[Stout: Listen. You already won. A corp has never shown this much tolerance to a merc—or a gang boss.]
[Stout: You said you're dying, so go back and get some rest. Tomorrow morning both the city and the corps will have business to discuss with you. By next week, you could be in Dogtown, and you'll find what you're looking for there.]
[Stout: Don't do anything stupid.]
[Click—]
In Militech Tower, Stout's expression turned ugly.
"He cut the call."
The AV on the rooftop immediately powered up—
Sending people from the ground now would be too slow. Armored vehicles were fast, but not that fast.
Better to handle this as a special case.
Beep beep—
NCPD sirens suddenly started screaming all across the district!
The pigs, quiet all night, snapped into motion.
[NCPD Dispatcher: Attention all NCPD personnel and subcontracted units. Criminal elements have been detected approaching the Glen.]
[NCPD Dispatcher: MaxTac is preparing to take over the area. All units are to cooperate.]
Inside a patrol car, River froze.
Because as the dispatcher assigned units over the channel, he got the target image too—
It was that armored giant pickup that was supposed to be parked at the Afterlife.
People called that thing a Mackinaw—
but nobody on Earth would confuse it with a normal Mackinaw.
What the hell was Burger King doing now? He'd been behaving just fine a minute ago!
[Bzzzt—]
[File transfer in progress]
[River: What are you doing? This is the Glen! It wasn't part of our deal!]
[River: MaxTac will be deploying here any second!]
[Leo: Hard to explain, but buy me a little time. Rhyne's been taken.]
[River: Are you fucking kidding me? The car came straight out of the office building! Arasaka already cleared it!]
[Leo: I'm not kidding. I sent you a data pack. Put it into the NCPD network. The corps want Rhyne dead. A lot of corps want Rhyne dead—and dead under suspicious circumstances.]
[River: You're seriously—]
[Leo: Upload it. I'd really rather not get the shit kicked out of me by MaxTac. Help me out.]
[Leo: And one more thing—Mrs. Peralez is in my hands. NCPD should stay careful.]
"Fuck!"
River slammed a hand against the steering wheel so hard it made Old Han in the passenger seat jump.
"Preem. One minute we're saying we made big eddies and we're gonna become respectable people, big shots—next minute we've kidnapped a councilman's wife."
V looked at Elizabeth, bound tight in the back seat—
The woman had been hit with a heavy sedative, and Leo had shut down her internal chrome. She was in a deep coma.
One second they were about to step into high society—
the next, they'd kidnapped the very woman who was supposed to build that bridge for them.
One second they were on friendly terms with corps and cops—
the next, AVs were mobilizing across the city, armored vehicles were pouring out in force, drones were blotting out the sky—
a real full-city manhunt.
In Leo's vision, the route assembled from Valentino lookouts lit up before his eyes.
And in his head, River had finally decided to help.
Leo could now siphon data from the NCPD network.
The NCPD's tactical network couldn't reverse-infiltrate MaxTac's own combat net—
but it could absolutely help a skilled netrunner physically break into MaxTac's office.
First get into an NCPD station.
Then get a maintenance worker ID with the right permissions.
Then get into the office.
After that, it was all skill.
And lucky for them, NetWatch agents had skill for days.
[Bryce: I've got the data. What do you want to do?]
[Leo: Make them crash, obviously.]
All Leo needed was a little time.
As long as Rhyne was confirmed alive, the corpo pursuit and the NCPD pursuit could both be called off.
[Bryce: You thought about this? Rhyne may already be dead. They may just want to pin it all on you.]
[Leo: Very possible. But until we see the scene, we'll never know the truth.]
[Bryce: So the best outcome for you is to turn around and walk away. If I were you—]
[Leo: That's why you're always the last one to know anything.]
That one hit Bryce right in the gut.
That was why he was a diligent corpo employee.
He had decent pay, decent status, got to travel the world on business, see different landscapes, stay in the same expensive hotels—
but he'd never know whether his hometown really had a generation of golden children.
Never know how many of the people he'd caught...
had just been the butt of somebody else's joke before getting pushed onto a road they could never come back from.
Bryce had been about to ask—
if Leo went silent, he'd ask: Then what are you going to do next?
But now he suddenly felt that question didn't matter anymore.
His fingers flew over the terminal. Data was altered. Networks were masked.
NCPD and MaxTac were about to run around in circles.
[Bryce: I still don't get it. Even if Rhyne dies, Peralez—]
[Leo: You still don't get it. You should probably start thinking about how you'll explain being away from your post for these past few minutes.]
[Bzzzt—]
The drones overhead, running layered surveillance, all started glitching.
The Mackinaw's route deviated inside the network.
In electronic systems, that impossible-to-miss giant pickup vanished—
for a little while.
Every cop in the city got fed bad intel!
MaxTac in the air deployed in the wrong direction, while the street cops below—most of them not especially chromed—could only stare in confusion:
The Mackinaw's engine was loud enough for half the district to hear, so why the hell was MaxTac heading the wrong way?
The corps, meanwhile, were moving under the table—
but it wasn't exactly practical for them to deploy forces openly and at scale into the Glen.
So they could only send something small.
Like one private AV.
A Benson civilian AV with a rounded civilian shell came screaming in through the air—
straight toward them.