Chapter 9 — Shooting Rebecca
Dogtown's walls were a nightmare to cross.
Manholes flooded and capped, tunnels collapsed and mined — every path had been tried before by "criminals" running from NCPD or corps.
The few usable routes were either full of landmines, or ended at the river where Militech-grade explosives had been dumped. Those mines were over ten years old and could still go off like thunder.
Everyone complained about Dogtown's ridiculous walls.
No one knew what exactly Militech had buried under this place — only that the war scars were deep, and the fortress still stood.
But Dorio's plan worked.
The four of them slipped into Dogtown inside a construction debris truck, after paying a fixer 1,000 eurodollars.
Sasha stayed back in her small Japantown apartment, jacked into the Net, guiding them remotely and trading blows with the opposition hacker.
"That's the route. Once the job's done, pull out through that gap in the wall," the fixer who sold them the entry said, opening the back hatch. "From the first gunshot, you've got thirty minutes. No more."
Rebecca clicked her tongue.
"Thirty minutes? And what if that slippery little punk runs? Tch."
Just then, Sasha's cute cyber-cat avatar popped up on everyone's shard displays. She adjusted her gear, taking a slow breath.
Maine frowned slightly.
Out of the whole crew, the one that worried him most wasn't Rebecca.
It was Sasha — the one who never said what she was really feeling.
"Something wrong, Sasha?" he asked.
Sasha shook her head. "Hackers on the other side are decent. Once I have the Ghost Hound data, you handle the mess on-site and then get out."
Her voice softened for a second.
"Be careful."
They exchanged quick nods as the truck swayed its way deeper into Hansen's territory.
Rebecca sighed and looked out through a crack in the truck's side, her pink cybernetic eye flickering softly.
For some reason, she had a bad feeling about today.
Normally she'd be hyped — full of jokes, itching to dump whole mags of ammo and brag about it afterward. Instead, she just rolled a shotgun shell between her fingers, silent.
Dorio patted her shoulder.
"Relax. We're just here to clean up our own mess."
"Smile a little."
Strong, compact, short blonde hair — Dorio had that quiet, lethal kind of charm.
She could shatter a sandbag with a punch and still go easier on Maine's face when he got too handsy.
Maine liked her.
And Dorio, without making a big deal of it, always did everything she could to cover him on missions.
In short — she was the kind of woman you could love and die for.
Maine twisted a piece of rebar off a broken concrete slab, then casually draped an arm over Dorio's shoulders. Rebecca could feel Dorio's hand on her own shoulder grow heavier.
"I'm thinking," Maine grinned, "once this gig's done, we all go blow some eddies. Huh? Dorio—"
His hand wandered again.
CRACK.
His sunglasses tilted, and blood started trickling from his nose.
Rebecca's eyes sparkled with pure entertainment.
Finally, the tension in the truck eased. Rebecca flicked shotgun shells into the air and caught them in a smooth motion, loading them into her huge gun.
Since they were entering Dogtown, only heavier weapons were allowed. After some thought, Maine had given her a powerful shotgun.
Rebecca's small hands moved fast, feeding shells into the chamber like she'd been born with the gun.
She loved that weight — the thunder in her grip. With her green twin-tails and oversized sleeves, she looked like a runaway kid… until you saw the size of the gun.
Pira was the most annoyed of them all.
He'd been in the middle of a new "project," and now he had to drop everything to babysit this job — mainly because it involved his sister.
When the truck finally stopped, everyone went quiet.
The back door creaked open, and a Ghost Hound soldier came face-to-face with:
A massive man.
A muscled woman glowering.
A tiny gremlin of a girl carrying a gun too big for her.
And a long-armed man with a maniac's grin.
The Ghost Hound swallowed, stepped aside, and walked away without a word.
"Move, people," Maine said.
The setting sun poured over Dogtown, turning the sky blood red.
Light slid down over ruined concrete and rusted metal like a wound slowly closing.
---
> [Caller: Hamster]
"Hey. If your voice still works, say something."
Rox replied, "Loud and clear."
"Good. Now shut up and find a position. Your voice pisses me off."
Rox ignored the insult and climbed to the top of the abandoned building where Hamster had his lair. Nekomata in hand, he scanned the rooftops.
He almost wanted to lean into the mic and say, Your chip is actually pretty useful.
But he didn't.
Through the scope of his tech sniper, the rundown motel glowed in faint green lines. The optic highlighted firing lanes and tagged any moving human presence nearby.
Rox checked all the weapon parameters again — breathing steady.
In just half a day of sim training, the former Ghost Hound rifleman had become a functional sniper.
"My darling… it's all on you now."
His cybernetic hand synced with the gun, feeding all the weapon's metrics into his prosthetic eye. The more Rox learned about Nekomata, the more he loved it.
This rifle might become his sharpest fang.
Night crept in.
On the hills behind Dogtown, residents burned piles of trash, sitting on stained couches, drinking cheap cold beer. Laughter and arguments echoed in the dark.
Down on the streets, groups on motorcycles cruised past — organ harvesters and small-time fixers looking for clients or victims.
Once they had eddies in hand, they usually stopped dealing with anyone who didn't have chrome. Flesh-only jobs weren't worth the risk.
They preferred corpo dogs and cyber-psychos.
In the distance, Hanz stood on top of the pyramid, lost in thought. A green laser shot into the sky from Heavy Hearts, cutting through the night and revealing a thin crescent moon.
By 2075, the lunar port should have been finished.
Rox couldn't help thinking — if he ever earned 250,000 eurodollars, he wanted to buy a ticket to space and see the moon with his own eyes.
His thoughts were cut off by Hamster's voice.
"They're here. Data breach just started."
"I don't know what that old bastard Hanz told you, but here's how it works: at exactly 20 minutes, the system auto-uploads data. You'd better help with defense before that."
Rox lay prone on the rooftop, fingers resting lightly on the trigger.
"My location's been tagged," Hamster added, voice tight. "They're coming for me."
With ZetaTech auto-turrets plus himself, twenty minutes didn't sound too bad.
But this wasn't a game.
These were Edgerunners.
Especially Rebecca — Rox still remembered her marksmanship. If not for the reinforced windshield on the Ghost Hound's vehicle last time, those rounds would've put his face on a memorial wall.
Headlights carved a path through the darkness.
A car roared up the hill and drifted hard in front of Hamster's hideout.
"RATATATAT!"
The ZetaTech turret opened up without warning, tearing through the door and outer wall like paper, rounds spraying fire into the car's chassis.
Maine and the others bailed out instantly, guns blazing back.
The motel exploded into chaos.
Dogtown residents scattered.
Ghost Hound comms came alive with reports of a firefight on the back mountain.
Rox inhaled slowly, his sniper scope zeroed in on Maine's head.
Then he slid the crosshairs to Dorio, then to Pira—
And finally onto Rebecca, who stepped out from behind the pickup, hefting a heavy machine gun that looked like it had been ripped off a Dogtown mech.
Muzzle flash lit up her face — wild, alive, feral.
Panels flashed in Rox's HUD one by one.
These were the people who, in another line of history, would stand against Arasaka and carve their names into legend.
Was he really about to erase them up here, from the shadows, with one pull of a trigger?
Rox's forehead beaded with sweat. His crosshair held steady.
Hamster's voice shattered the hesitation:
"You useless bastard! Rox, shoot! That crazy woman's gonna shred my turret!"
He was clearly locked in intense net combat — talking through gritted teeth.
"Damn it…"
Rox cursed under his breath.
Veins stood out on his neck. He twisted the muzzle, locking the crosshair on Rebecca's center mass without another thought.
Bzzzz—BOOM!
The rifle charged, then unleashed a burst of blue-white energy.
The high-velocity tech round tore through the night —
— streaking straight toward Rebecca, still laughing behind the machine gun's blaze.