I'm dragging by the time I reach my floor, boots scuffing the hallway tiles. Pepe let me clock out right after the karaoke crowd thinned, but six hours of bussing tables on half-mended ribs still fucking sucked.
Keypad beeps, door seals, silence. Lights come up on low amber; the place smells faintly of cleaner and steel (thank you, all-day incense). I sling Jackie's bomber over the back of the desk chair, kick off my boots, and peel down to nothing on the way to the shower.
rinse/reset
The water pressure is decent. I brace my palms against the tile and let the hot stream needle my shoulders until the day's grime and beer splash swirl down the drain. Bruises have already yellowed at the edges, and the internal ache is more memory than pain.
Still damp even after drying off, I pad back into the main room, drop onto the hammock, and open the small holo-projector in my palm. The client-list file hovers, rows of names, drop-points, and cred-tag strings I ripped from those Maelstrom datapads. I attach a quick note:
To: Rebecca
Sub: Public Post
Attach: maels-buyers_clean.csv
Finger-tap send. It pings out into the city's lattice of cracked data lines.
Almost immediately, my holo buzzes. Rebecca: "On it, choom."—followed by a tiger-flame emoji and a gif of a lit match. I grin and fish clean PJs and an oversized tank top from storage. Gray sweats, black shirt, they hug warm skin, and leave enough room to breathe.
Now for round two. I exhale, pop open the small compartment behind my ear, and thumb out the Tinkerer shard from storage. Polished casing catches the cel-lamps, etched with those tiny circuit glyphs I still haven't deciphered. Second nature by now: align, feel the click into the neural slot, wait for the brief sting—
Boot sequence complete…
Energy prickles along my optic nerves. The room flickers, edges sharpening as a translucent wireframe overlays the air. A silhouette coalesces near the workbench, a short, wiry man with half-moon spectacles and a permanent oil stain down one sleeve, Phineas Mason, the Tinkerer himself.
"Evening, Miss Reyes," he rasps, voice full of dusty attic boxes and half-finished inventions. "I trust you haven't forgotten our lesson."
"Not a chance, old man," I answer, stretching my shoulder. "What's on tonight's syllabus?"
He adjusts phantom glasses. "Miniaturized capacitive discharge pack. You promised me a prototype after the smoke-pellet refinement, remember?"
Right, a compact EMP puck, enough to fry someone's eyes, without torching my own. I swing my legs off the hammock and gesture. Storage UI blooms. I pull:
one gutted Kiroshi optic battery
two strips of mil-spec copper foil I lifted from a busted NUSA comm array
a thumb-sized charge capacitor (scavved from a toy drone)
and my battered toolkit roll.
Tools clink onto the desk: micro-welder, fiber cutters. Tinkerer paces through the hologram display, marking measurements in mid-air.
"Remember, containment ring first," he says, tapping an invisible ruler. "You skimp on the spacer gasket, you'll arc right through the shell, and you will set it off."
"Got it." I pull the copper, snip a ribbon, and start bending it around the capacitor base, thumbs smoothing tiny crimps. The workbench lamp pools warm light while the rest of the room fades to quiet focus. Only the rhythmic snick-snick of cutters and Tinkerer's occasional throat-clears fill the air.
"You've steadied," he murmurs after a minute. "Hand tremors gone."
"Been training," I reply, twisting a micro-screw into place. "Kitrina's regimen."
"Ah, the Falcone template. That explains the fresh bruising under your collar. Do keep ribs intact; they house essential organs." Ha, I hadn't told him about me going off and doing the raid yet....
"Thanks, Doc."
We work. I solder leads, he projects schematic tweaks: rotate the battery ninety degrees, seat the capacitor deeper, crimp the foil tighter. Sweat beads at my hairline despite the cooler night air. The little device begins to take shape, the size of a bottle cap, weighing maybe twenty grams.
Tinkerer steps back, arms folded, watching like a proud but prickly professor. "Now, induction coil. 0.4-millimeter wind. Clockwise. No overlap."
I grab the spool of micro-wire, start winding around the tiny core, with steady, even tension. Thirty loops. Forty. "You ever get tired of barking orders?" I tease.
"Only when students know as much as I do." A ghostly chuckle. "Unlikely in my lifetime or yours."
I clamp the final turn, trim the excess. "Cap seated, coil wound. Testing?"
"Testing," he echoes. "But do stand clear of your optical implants. We don't fancy a self-inflicted flash-blindness incident."
I place the puck on the metal tray, grab a junk datapad from the scrap bin, a model half-melted, and set it five inches away. Flip the micro-switch.
Fzzzz-POP! A blue spark arks, the datapad's holo sputters and dies. Just the sweet ozone smell of shorted circuits.
I exhale. "That'll do."
"Acceptable," Tinkerer concedes, though I catch the glint of satisfaction. "If you plan to use these, make sure to make more, but be careful not to blind yourself." Since I was able to make it once I could now make it with the system, though it never was at the best grade, for that id have to do it by hand.
"Copy." I tag the puck in storage with a fresh icon, EMP_MICRO_P1, and slide tools back into their slots.
As I clean, the old man's figure lingers by the window. "Busy day, I gather? Your vitals show elevated cortisol."
"Just work." I shrug, wiping a smear of flux off my fingers. "Made rent slinging mezcal, sent Rebecca a blacklist, dodged a guilt-trip from Jackie. Typical Thursday."
"Careful, Miss Reyes," he says softly. "Entanglements are trickier to navigate than any toy we make."
I pause, meeting his translucent gaze. "People matter. Even in this city."
A long beat. Then he nods, almost imperceptibly. "Indeed, they do. Just remember: a craftsman keeps her tools sharp, and her distances measurable."
"Noted."
I power down the bench lamp, stretch until my vertebrae pop. The clock says 02:17. My eyes blur at the edges, a cocktail of adrenaline crash and bone-knit meds. Time to sleep.
"Good work tonight," Tinkerer says, voice quieter. "I'll catalog the schematics for Version Two."
"Night, Phin," I whisper, touching two fingers to the shard slot. He fades, leaving the room one shade darker. The UI dissolves.
I kill the main lights, crawl into my bed, and tug the blanket up over my shoulders. Outside the shutter, sirens wail somewhere in Pacifica. I passed out.
08:00, The Holo TV clicks alive with a low bzzzt. It woke me up just in time to get a face-full of headline ticker:
N54 MORNING DESK · "CLIENT LIST FROM HELL" GOES VIRAL · CITY OFFICIALS REACT
Volume's at 20 %. Just loud enough to drag me upright in bed, hair everywhere, blanket tangled around one ankle. I fumble for the remote, but the anchor's already leaning into the camera, lashes thick as tire tread.
"Names have now been confirmed by multiple Net security analysts, tying dozens of well-known Night City executives, politicians, and private citizens to illegal child 'recreation parlors' formerly operated by the Maelstrom gang. The files appeared overnight on open-access mirrors, including full transaction logs, biometric IDs, and chat transcripts."
A side panel rolls old footage of the warehouse raid: TXD drones swooping, a charred door sporting a red cat silhouette before cutting to a montage of cops loading pale, blinking kids into EMT vans.
Coffee. I need coffee for this. I swing out of bed, bare feet padding to the mini-kitchen. Single-serve boiler whirs. Steam curls up while the anchor keeps hammering.
"Authorities confirm that it could have come from a vigilante assault two nights ago. NCPD spokesperson says the operation, quote, 'compromised ongoing investigations'."
I snort. Compromised their kickbacks, more like. Mug in hand, I flop onto the couch, tucking one leg under me. The anchor introduces a guest panel: on the left, Alicia Narayan, the same reporter who covered the Maelstrom bloodbath. The center box shows a silver-haired City Council aide; the right box frames some slick-looking doctor in a spotless med-lab.
Alicia tries to steer.
ALICIA: "—focus on the victims, the evidence, and how these children were trafficked—"
DR. EMMET COLBERT (Neural-Psych Institute): "—and yet we keep glorifying a masked sociopath! Chishio Neko leaves bodies, and you call that justice?"
ALICIA: "Doctor, respectfully, we're discussing corroborated data that implicates—"
COLBERT: "—data obtained through vigilantism, Ms. Narayan. That makes it inadmissible in any real court. If we condone this, we invite chaos, today it's Maelstrom, tomorrow it's a misdiagnosed Cyber-psychotic gunned down in Heywood—"
I blow across my coffee, watching him gesture like he's swatting flies. The Council aide tries to interject about "ethical chains of custody," but Colbert steamrolls.
COLBERT: "And let's remember she—we assume it's a 'she'—executed twenty-three individuals without trial. Trauma Team logged thirty-six ballistic kills and five torsos literally torn apart. This is pathology, not heroism."
Funny: no one cared when those torsos belonged to children strapped to gurneys.
Alicia flicks to split-screen with the viral site, my CSV lines scroll past in neon red. She keeps trying.
ALICIA: "Doctor, the list shows high-profile donors paying Maelstrom to kidnap minors. Isn't that the larger issue?"
COLBERT: "Then let law enforcement handle it, not some alley-cat butcher with a spray-can!"
I sip, brow twitching. Alley-cat butcher, gonna add that to the résumé. Meanwhile, anchor #2, Devon Lasky, cuts in from studio B.
DEVON: "Polls show sixty-four percent of residents support the Vigilante's actions. Public trust in NCPD is at a historic low—"
COLBERT: "Because hacks like you sensationalize murder! This, this is why my clinic built the Vigilante Trauma Index. We warned you about the contagion of copy-cats—"
I choke on coffee, laughing. Contagion? What, am I a virus now?
The off-camera producer must be waving because Alicia pivots hard.
ALICIA: "Let's stick to facts. Detective Morales said the files are admissible under the Child Exploitation Statutes, vigilante source or not."
COLBERT: "Irrelevant if the chain is tainted. Any half-competent lawyer will bury it, and those men walk."
Men? I set the mug down before it cracks. Cold anger prickles, but it's drowned by the next graphic: mug-shots of three city-council donors, all names from my list, now suspended "pending investigation."
Somewhere between graphics, my agent pings: Rebecca.
REBECCA: 😎 Site's trending #1 on holoTwit. Shit's on fire, choom. Sasha says three corporate PR firms have already issued denials.
I grin, thumb a quick reply.
ME: Let the denials roll. Evidence is evidence.
Back on TV, the anchor corners Colbert: "Should we ignore a crime because the messenger isn't polite?" He splutters about the civic process. The Council aide finally gets words in edgewise, explaining how public outrage is forcing a special session. Alicia smiles victoriously, and the doctor looks like he swallowed a bug.
The weather tease never makes it to the radar graphic.
The anchor's forced smile glitches, the studio lights shift, and the crawl across the bottom of the screen swaps to a bolder red:
BREAKING • COPY-CAT VIGILANTES SURGE AFTER "BLOOD CAT" RAID • NCPD REPORTS MULTIPLE FATALITIES OVERNIGHT
Alicia reappears, headset askew, clearly mid-page-flip. They bumped the segment while she was still in makeup, I think.
ALICIA: "We're getting word of at least seven separate incidents in the last 12 hours—individuals or small crews attempting 'citizen crackdowns' on gang territory. Sources inside Trauma Team confirm four DOAs, two critical, one missing."
The side panel rolls shaky phone footage:
• A skinny kid in a hoodie sprinting down an alley, neon cat stencil half-finished on the brick, Maelstrom lead spatters chasing him.
• A middle-aged Corpo in an armored sedan ramming a Valentino low-rider—window shatters, a chrome arm drags him out, muzzle flash cuts the clip.
• What appeared to be two joy-toys in mismatched masks were killing some scavs, before running as sirens were getting close.
DEVON (studio B): "Doctor Colbert, you warned about 'contagion.' Is this what you meant?"
COLBERT (still on remote, looking smug): "Precisely. Vigilante mythology romanticizes lethal action. These… copy-cats lack the skill, the hardware, the psyche-shielding—they end up body-bags, and emergency services foot the bill so enough."
ALICIA: "But Doctor, isn't the real problem the gangs—"
COLBERT: "The problem is amateurs with guns thinking they're holo-heroes!"
I let the mutter of the studio argument fade to background hiss and stare at the montage looping left screen.
A little guilt needles between my ribs. I didn't ask for sidekicks. Still, the city saw spray-paint and corpses and decided justice was suddenly a group project.
Another pop-up graphic:
COPY-CAT HOTSPOTS
Watson • Santo • Arroyo
Watson's circle pulses twice—right where I torched that rat-nest last week. Of course. The map wipes to show a grim tally card:
Copy-cat Ops seen: 18
Fatalities: 8
Still at large: 10
Rebecca pings again, text only:
REBECCA: U see the feed? Idiots getting smoked trying 2 cosplay u.
ME: Watching now. Not thrilled.
REBECCA: Told Pillar if he paints a cat on *anything* I'll kneecap him myself. :-P
I exhale slowly, eyes still glued to the screen, half-listening as Alicia finally wrestles control back from Colbert and hashes out timeline details. They cut to Detective Morales, dark circles, tactical vest half-unzipped, giving a dawn presser in front of a body bag.
MORALES (recorded): "We urge citizens not to engage criminal elements directly. If you have information, contact NCPD. Leave enforcement to trained officers."
Devon jumps in with poll numbers: support for "Chishio Neko" holds. The graph spikes, dips, and climbs again.
I kill the volume but let the images roll, rubbing the bridge of my nose. The irony is thick enough to drown in: I killed a could of freaks… and some stupid kids decide to play hero until it eats them alive.
Outside the window, sun glare creeps over the neighboring megatower, catching dust motes in gold spears of light. Somewhere down on street level, sirens start up: NCPD, most likely.
I swallow the last cold sip of coffee, set the mug down with a soft click, and pull the battered bomber jacket on. Got to go find those that killed those dumb ass copy cats.