[Bryce: NetWatch picked up a special signal set right after you cleared the Badlands stage. Evidence suggests it came from an unidentified agent.]
[Bryce: Not Arasaka, not Militech, not Petrochem, SovOil, or any usual corp with high-grade agents. And obviously, not yours either.]
[Bryce: This agent also seems to have been investigating Holt, but we still don't know what connection he has to that netrunner called Dante.]
Good thing Bryce did not act like a rabid fan demanding to see Leo in person. Leo was quite interested in what he said.
Before entering Dogtown, he needed time to gather more intel and clear up some doubts.
The biggest doubt was Dante. NetWatch was clearly targeting Arasaka, and Dante was one investigation point on that chain.
But Leo did not know the specifics. At the time, his main attention had shifted to Muramasa, and then he somehow had to clash with Night Corp.
Looking at the whole situation through a conspiracy lens, Leo had a very bad guess:
The initial focus was Arasaka's Soulkiller, and NetWatch had won a partial victory.
But the follow-up investigation suddenly turned to Muramasa, then directly connected to Mr. Blue Eyes. The confrontation came fast and sudden, like realizing halfway through a roller coaster that the ride was actually bungee jumping.
And no matter how much Blue Eyes wanted to control humanity, Night Corp was still one of Night City's municipal backbones.
Land was a city's most basic productive resource. Whoever wanted to control Night City would have to clash with Night Corp sooner or later, Arasaka included.
So from a conspiracy angle, Arasaka had successfully slipped away from a string of investigations, gained breathing room just when NetWatch had the advantage—
And heavily wounded an obstacle that would definitely block its path to Night City sooner or later.
Whoever benefited most was the most suspicious.
And Arasaka just happened to be the corp best at schemes. From outside this world's native perspective, Saburo Arasaka was also one of the top players in the entire Cyberpunk series, the canon driving force behind the world becoming the busted state it was now.
Leo had a feeling the intel on that agent would be a key piece of the puzzle.
But…
[Leo: You're not asking me to turn around right now, are you? I might need to prep a few more nukes for that.]
[Bryce: You still have more?!]
[Leo: Haha, joking.]
[Bryce: ?]
Bryce's displeasure was so obvious Leo could almost feel his blood pressure spiking through the line.
[Bryce: Our agents lost contact after being sent into the Badlands. I was thinking, don't you have a few chooms out there?]
[Bryce: NetWatch will issue an official gig, directly. But I want—]
[Bryce: The corp doesn't like me handling gigs involving other corps, but I want the truth.]
[Leo: Not bad. Growing a rebellious streak.]
Bryce did not reply.
Was that supposed to be praise?!
[Leo: Fine. I'll tell them to screw up NetWatch's job.]
[Bryce: Huh?]
[Click—]
The live call ended, and Leo pulled out of the van.
The Grand Imperial Mall, another massive unfinished building Pacifica had in no short supply. Its interior was huge and barren. Moonlight poured through the open skylight in the center, shining over the muscles of a group of Animals bruisers.
Greasy sweat reflected the moonlight, making those bald heads shine brilliantly.
A massive woman, pumped full of steroids and bioware, was straining under the moonlight, trying to move the arm in front of her.
She was no ordinary bruiser.
First, she was a woman with black hair.
Second, she looked over two meters ten, her muscles hard as steel. Blood vessels and tendons bulged beneath her skin like Maelstrom wiring.
As she exerted force, those muscles and veins swelled crazily. Looking at any single part of her made it feel less like human muscle and more like some alien organism.
Her muscles were tough as steel cables, pulling bones dense with excess iron. Her entire body was like a crane running at high speed, even making faint creaking noises when she exerted force.
This was an arm-wrestling match.
Across the table from her was Jackie.
That's right. She was having a full-blooded arm-wrestling contest with Jackie.
"Hah! Hah! Hah!"
The other Animals roared rhythmically. Those with nothing better used concrete chunks as drums. Those with better tools picked up rebar and beat abandoned machinery. The sounds mixed together, making blood run hot.
[Sender: Bryce]
[Bryce: Also, how did you handle the Animals?]
[Leo: Money. And higher muscle content.]
[Bryce: Huh?]
Bang!
The woman's arm slammed down hard, cracking the concrete block used as a table and sending dust flying.
The visual impact was ridiculous. Jackie was already a big man by normal standards, but Sasquatch was a chemically grown giant. Her palm looked almost as big as Jackie's head twice over.
But…
Jackie was still eating.
His face was flushed red as he wolfed food down—pink tacos, loaded tamales, tofu tuna—
The place fell silent. Only Jackie's frantic chewing remained.
Excessive Lizard serum and absurd eating had visibly changed Jackie's jawbone. Any biologist would instantly see that this chewing range was no longer human, but in the uncultured eyes of the Animals…
At most, they thought it was some kind of implant.
And one driven purely by muscle power.
"Holy shit! This choom's the Desert Cook NCPD talked about!"
A bald guy in the crowd suddenly shouted. Jackie looked at him with a burger in his mouth, and the bald guy instinctively shrank back.
V patted Jackie on the shoulder and teased, "Guess that nickname's official now."
Jackie's opponent, known on the street as Sasquatch and effectively the temporary boss of this group of Animals, stared blankly at her hand smashed into the concrete, bloodied and mangled.
What the hell?
At first, this choom was only kind of strong. She had mocked him with, "Didn't eat breakfast?" and he had nodded.
If the opponent admitted it, and she had already said it, she couldn't exactly stop him from eating.
Then he started eating while pushing.
And the more he ate, the stronger he got!
Sasquatch was a pure Animal. Aside from a neural interface and some comms gear, she had no cyberware. She could not precisely remember what she had just seen.
But she felt…
Was Jackie bigger than he had been a few minutes ago?
Those muscles… grew in minutes?
Jackie did not care. He grabbed another whole box of burgers and swallowed the cardboard packaging with them.
"Burp."
Jackie patted his belly and gave Leo a thumbs-up.
Good. Jackie's condition had recovered too.
They had the comms van. They had the AI. Jackie had recovered to basic combat readiness. As for the Animals—
The Animals had been working for NetWatch for money. Now NetWatch was gone, Leo was pretending to be NetWatch, had taken over the van, and promised to pay them.
No reason to start shooting on sight. They could even do some work for him.
Of course, all of that depended on Sasquatch truly being an uninformed savage.
She might not even know the network collapse was caused by a nuke.
Watching her embarrassed and furious expression, as if nothing mattered except losing with her own muscles, Leo suddenly thought:
She might not even know what a nuke was.
"This isn't fair! Rematch!"
"What's unfair about it? My choom arm-wrestled you while dragging a bunch of busted implant weight. Look at this arm…"
Leo lifted Jackie's arm. The Gorilla Arms entered maintenance mode at the slightest touch, all their components popping open and revealing them as cyberware.
The electronics were fried. The cyberware was no exception.
That made the win even more legit. Theoretically, Gorilla Arms did not contain native muscle fibers.
Even if they did, it would only be a tiny bit.
And that tiny bit still crushed her.
Leo pulled out something that looked extremely delicate and said, "He only used a bit of drug assistance and an auxiliary injector. Once this job is done, I can leave one for you. Just prepare the money."
Sasquatch stared at it.
The device was made of different colored metals, seemingly implying some extremely advanced function, so advanced each section's metal strength had to be carefully planned.
Its screws and rivets looked firm and orderly. The edges were smooth, without burrs, almost comfortable to look at.
Several thin wires and fiber lines wound neatly beneath a membrane, occasionally glowing faint blue like breathing. In the core, she could see some pale green solution.
High-end. Very high-end.
Especially that green solution. She vaguely remembered Leo injecting Jackie with a small tube of it before he started eating like crazy.
Sasquatch's eyes rolled. "Trying to fleece me? Free. I want it free."
Leo pretended to laugh in anger. "This thing costs hundreds of thousands! It's corpo lab gear! We risked our lives stealing this little bit!"
Sasquatch sneered and stood up. Her two-meter-plus height was genuinely imposing, especially with a crowd of huge bruisers behind her.
Jackie and V also stepped forward, and the atmosphere seemed to tense.
After acting angry for a moment, Leo waved his hand and walked up to Sasquatch—
The scene was a little awkward. Leo was even shorter than V. Standing in front of Sasquatch was really…
So he took a step back. "Fine. But I'm hiring you long-term. Around ten days. Also, I may need to go into Dogtown. Consider this thing your pay."
Sasquatch brightened.
Ten days for tech worth hundreds of thousands!
Profit.
She really was fucking smart. A negotiating genius.
Keeping her face steady, Sasquatch smiled like she had won. "That's more like it. Bosses should drop more eddies."
Leo shook his head and returned to the comms van.
He almost burst out laughing.
[Muramasa: Is she stupid? She doesn't want wages, but wants a pile of handmade polished junk?]
What it really wanted to say was scrap.
That "black-tech implant" was only real in the tiny bit of Lizard serum. Everything else was decorative junk Leo had assembled from scrap picked up along the way.
Leo shut the van door and finally could not hold back his laughter.
Too smart, Sasquatch.