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"Still making jokes? Jax, you look like you're on death's door right now."
Seeing Jax could still laugh, Jackie breathed a huge sigh of relief. He looked at Jax, annoyed but clearly relieved, and shook his head.
The room was a slaughterhouse. If a casual observer walked in, they'd swear a pack of Maelstrom or Scavengers had been hosting a gala. But Jackie's eyes weren't on the blood—they were on the chrome. He walked over to Krisfen's bisected corpse and bent down. With a grunt of effort, he pried a silver metal component from the man's shredded spine. It was stained with blood and slightly dented, but the high-end circuitry was unmistakable.
"I said, Jax... did you really take down a guy with a Sandevistan and Gorilla Arms all by yourself?" Jackie asked, turning the experimental tech over in his hand. If he took this to Viktor, it could be refurbished. It was a ticket to the big leagues.
Then, his gaze drifted to Boett's slender, headless frame, where the Mantis Blades were still partially extended.
"There's another one," Jax coughed, taking a deep, ragged puff from a Restorall inhaler. "Dynalar Sandevistan Mark 4. Better than the one you're holding."
The Restorall began to work. It wasn't the instant, violent "up" of a MaxDoc; it was a slow, numbing wave of analgesia that started knitting his internal bruising. The liver shot from Krisfen had been the worst of it—if Jax hadn't possessed the physique of a natural tank, that punch would have turned his internal organs into a slurry.
Jackie's expression became profoundly strange. If this story hit the Afterlife, people would call it a gonzo tall tale. A "natural" kid beating two high-tier augmented bosses? It was the kind of thing that turned into street legend.
BOOM!
Another explosion rocked the foundation, dust raining from the ceiling. Rebecca stomped her small feet, her face turning a bright shade of crimson. "Stop fucking chatting! Get Jax to the car, and then we go help Maine! Are you both glitching?!"
Jackie just grinned. "Easy there, sis."
He picked up Boett's severed head by the hair. "I know these wastelanders. They talk big about 'family' and 'clans,' but the second the head of the snake is gone, the body stops biting."
Jackie walked to the edge of the steel catwalk on the second floor. He held the head high like a grim trophy and let out a roar that drowned out the gunfire below.
"EVERYONE! STOP FUCKING FIGHTING!"
CLANG!
A stray bullet whined off a steel pillar inches from Jackie's ear, but he didn't even flinch. His face turned fierce, a mask of pure Heywood masculinity. "LOOK WHO THE HELL THIS IS!"
He hurled Boett's head into the center of the first-floor melee.
"YOUR BOSS IS DEAD! If you want to join him, keep shooting! If you want to live to see the sunrise, get the hell out of here NOW!"
The silence that followed was heavy. The Nightwalkers looked at the head, then at each other. The spell of the battle was broken.
"It's... it's really Boett. He's gone!" "Screw this, I'm not dying for a dead man!" "Run! Get to the trucks!"
The Nightwalkers scattered like roaches when the lights flick on. One squad leader tried to stand his ground, shouting for unity, but a single bullet from Jackie's Golden Big-Ass pierced his forehead before he could finish his sentence.
"Anyone else?" Jackie shouted, his voice echoing in the rafters.
The factory cleared out in seconds. Maine and Dorio slumped against a shipping container, breathing hard. Maine's chest plate was in tatters, sparking wires exposed, but he looked up at Jackie and Jax on the balcony and raised a thumb.
Jackie mirrored the gesture, a broad, bloody grin on his face.
"We're rich! We're actually fucking rich!"
"Pilar, shut up. We're rich because of the mission payout, not your junk-collecting," Rebecca snapped, watching her brother frantically strip parts from the fallen.
"You don't get it!" Pilar shrieked, his hands moving with mechanical precision. "The black market value for these two bosses alone? Six hundred thousand eddies! This Mantis Blade? Eighty thousand easy! And look at this gun locker—each piece is worth ten grand!"
The atmosphere shifted from the desperation of combat to the fever of a gold rush. Even Lucy felt a bit breathless. She walked over to Kiwi, who was leaning against a pillar, looking uncharacteristically cheerful.
"How much do you actually get?" Lucy whispered.
"Even split," Kiwi replied, winking through her mask. "For a job like this? Between the Rogue payout and the salvage? I'm looking at over two hundred thousand eddies."
"Two hundred thousand..." Lucy's eyes widened. That was "leave the city and never look back" money. It was "buy a high-end apartment in North Oak" money.
She looked over at the center of the room. Rebecca was clumsily but tenderly bandaging Jax's side. Jackie had produced a bottle of pre-war whiskey, took a massive swig, and handed it to Jax. Jax drank, winced at the burn, and passed it to Maine.
They were laughing. Amidst the corpses, the blood, and the ruins of a factory, they were genuinely happy.
"Let's go," Jax said, standing up with a grunt of pain. "Collect the trophies, find that Arasaka box, and let's get back to Night City. I think we've earned a drink at the Afterlife."
"OH!" Rebecca cheered, pumping a fist into the air.
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