With one of the attackers taken out, their overall firepower was instantly reduced by a quarter. But even so, the Animals still hadn't fully gained the upper hand.
Gunfire continued to echo throughout the mall.
As Roqi was weighing whether he should step in to help the Animals—just so they wouldn't get wiped out before properly drawing the Voodoo Boys' attention—a piercing scream suddenly rang out from the main hall on the first floor.
"That scream… sounds familiar…"
T-Bug, also monitoring the scene, rubbed her chin. "Sounds like someone's brain just got fried. Looks like that Netwatch hacker finally made a move."
"If that's the case, then four total—one dead, one fried—the rest will be way less effective. It's not just cutting their power in half, it's much worse."
A sly grin appeared on Roqi's face.
He moved closer to the edge, stepped over the railing, and looked down toward the entrance of the Grand Imperial Mall.
Sure enough, moments later, accompanied by several explosions, two figures burst out of the building, fleeing in a panic—clumsy, desperate, as if they were about to trip over their own feet any second.
Abandoning their fallen comrade, bullets biting at their backs, they scrambled away like terrified rats.
Just moments ago they had stormed in, all cocky and confident. Now, their retreat was as pathetic as it was humiliating.
The Animals might've been nothing but slabs of walking muscle, but they weren't brain-dead. When punks like these came looking for trouble, every one of them carried something with a trigger.
Their courage was admirable. Their technique, however, still needed a lot of work.
"Follow them. Let's see where they're headed."
Hearing the situation on the ground, Pangolin immediately gave the order. He then locked in on video feeds from various recon points and began sketching out the terrain around the Grand Imperial Mall in his mind.
"They're headed north."
Roqi stood upright, watching as the two mercs, pursued relentlessly by the Animals, dashed across a parking lot and into the seaside villa district.
This area was packed with luxury ocean-view homes, each complete with their own little gardens and pools. The place was practically a solid block of rich-people housing.
Unlike the isolated mansions built halfway up mountains, spaced hundreds of meters apart, the wealthy architecture in Pacífico was far more commercialized and dense.
It was like a terraced hillside—except they'd carved up and occupied every inch of prime coastal land.
In terms of layout alone, these fancy villas weren't that different from the slums the Haitians had crammed together around the Batty Hotel. The difference was, of course, in scale, lighting, and location—these were rich slums.
"Where the hell are they going?"
T-Bug frowned. "Why are they coming toward us?"
These two mercs might've been too focused on running for their lives to worry about appearances, but they hadn't completely lost their minds.
Their route through the obstacle-packed streets of Pacífico seemed oddly purposeful. Like they knew exactly where they were headed from the start.
From the Grand Imperial Mall heading north, there was only the coastline to one side, and a denser high-rise zone further inland.
The skyscrapers here—each dozens or even hundreds of stories tall—stood out even by Night City standards.
They looked like the fossilized bones of long-dead giants, standing silently in Pacífico's coffin.
They were all unfinished shells of buildings, but even from a distance, they were massive.
But the mercs weren't heading west into the ocean or east toward the skeletal high-rises.
Their target was clear: the Haitian community up north.
As this possibility took shape, everyone began watching with anticipation. And the moment those two mercs dove headlong into the Haitian district without so much as a glance back, the truth clicked into place.
That reckless little merc squad? They'd been working for the Voodoo Boys all along.
"I knew it," T-Bug said, nodding as she saw the footage. "They were nothing more than cannon fodder, sent by the Voodoo Boys."
"They probably thought they'd seized an opportunity, with a bright future ahead," Roqi shook his head. "But the moment they agreed to work for the Voodoo Boys, they were already dead."
The Voodoo Boys were the worst. Forget trust—they used people and tossed them aside like garbage.
Evelyn Parker was the perfect example.
If they wanted to silence someone, they didn't need to pull a trigger. A remote breach, a fried neural chip—crippled or dead, take your pick.
What was strange, though, was that the two mercs hadn't been offed that way. Why?
Maybe they'd never made a physical net connection? Netwatch was formidable after all, and the Voodoo Boys probably didn't dare attempt a direct hack.
Still, that meant these two were heading back to the Batty Hotel—to die.
Roqi wasn't the only one to figure this out.
"A moment of silence for our young merc friends," he said dryly. "Voodoo Boys really are scum. God knows how many people they've tricked into dying over the years."
"Too many to count," T-Bug replied, not even bothering to estimate. "But that's for judges to care about. We're here to send them all to hell. Equal treatment for all. Not a single one of these people's worth a damn."
To the Voodoo Boys, mercs were disposable. Lure them in, get them to fight, use them once—then toss the survivors.
Roqi thought using people like that was already rock bottom. But barely ten minutes later, another squad set out from the Batty Hotel.
And their direction? None other than the Grand Imperial Mall.
"Jesus fucking Christ," Pangolin barked a laugh of disbelief. "How many people are these Haitian bastards throwing under the bus?"
He might have left the cannon-fodder ranks behind, but at heart, Pangolin was still a merc. Seeing his own kind getting duped into a meat grinder by the Voodoo Boys put him in no mood to smile.
For mercs, there's nothing more devastating than betrayal from the rear.
Just like what Dexter DeShawn did to them. That kind of betrayal could never be forgiven—it only made you want to crush the bastard's skull.
The second merc team? Seven people.
Numbers don't determine combat power, but one thing was clear—the Voodoo Boys had just racked up seven more marks on their tally of sins.
"Hey, listen…"
Roqi and Mower were stationed on the top floor of the Grand Imperial Mall, surveying the area.
"Should we give the Animals and Netwatch a hand? If this keeps up, the Voodoo Boys might send in a third or even fourth wave."
The Animals didn't have that many people. Rogue's estimate had been around thirty, but in truth, they seemed to have come prepared—at least fifty operatives were scattered through the building.
Still, that wasn't a large number. The Animals weren't exactly known for sharpshooters, and any drawn-out firefight was bound to cost them dearly.
If the Voodoo Boys managed to take the Grand Imperial Mall, there'd be no one left to draw fire and keep them distracted.
Right now, Pangolin had men scouring the Haitian district for the real Voodoo Boys' headquarters. A strike team from Afterlife was on standby at the floating pier, waiting for the moment the situation hit a boiling point—to hit the Voodoo Boys right in the gut.
But they needed time. Otherwise, they'd have to face the Voodoo Boys head-on.
"Let's play it by ear. If needed, yes," Pangolin said cautiously after a brief pause.
The Batty Hotel might not be their actual HQ, but it was clearly some kind of satellite hub. It wasn't just an empty shell—there were real operatives inside, or those mercs wouldn't have gone straight there.
Recon teams were watching the front and back doors. If there weren't hidden tunnels, then the moment there was movement between HQ and the hotel—that would be the golden opportunity to strike.
The Haitian district was crowded and chaotic.
When it got busy, it felt like a never-ending open-air market—loud and unrelenting.
The recon teams hadn't changed shifts once. Their numbers had been doubled, every spare operative dispatched. The rest were prepped as the strike force, waiting at the docks.
Honestly, if this weren't the Voodoo Boys, and they didn't have overt anti-human atrocities pinned to them…
Roqi would've tried to pin something on them, maybe enough to get a terror task force involved—summon a Medusa unit or something to storm the place.
Of course, that was just wishful thinking. No one was going to approve deploying heavy weapons in a densely populated area like this.
In cases like these, the so-called demon squads—the terror suppression units—were actually more civilized than the Voodoo Boys.
Because the former were still law enforcement.
The latter? Lawless scum.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
💘 MY GIRLFRIEND'S A CYBERPSYCHO—WHO KNEW?
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
💘 LOVE IS COMPLICATED.
Especially when your girlfriend could probably tear a squad of heavily armed mercs apart.
Welcome to Night City romance.
My Girlfriend's a Cyberpsycho—Who Knew? has 100+ chapters ahead waiting for you.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
💀❤️ ROMANCE, CHROME... AND QUESTIONABLE LIFE EXPECTANCY
💘 Romance
🤖 Cyberware
🧠 Cyberpsychosis
🔫 Night City action
😂 Chaos & dark humor
🌃 Dangerous relationships
🔥 Very bad situations getting much worse
People say relationships require patience.
Communication.
Trust.
Nobody mentioned surviving cyberpsychos.
🔥 100+ CHAPTERS AHEAD.
👉 Keep reading if you're brave enough.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🌐 SrMagnusCorp: https://srmagnuscorp.com/
🔥 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/MrMagnus
🐦 X / Twitter: https://x.com/SrMagnuscorp
⚠️ Power Stones help decide release priority!
💘 Love hurts. In Night City, sometimes literally.