“Padre,” Tony said as he greeted the balding old man and shook his hand, recalling a highly significant and important proverb:
“Beware of old men in professions where men usually die young.” This was more than characteristic of his new acquaintance.
Sebastian “Padre” Ibarra was an old fixer, a skilled informant, and an extremely cunning and influential man with connections all across the city, but most importantly, he was respected on the streets.
Strikingly, he belonged to a vanishingly rare breed of gangster with principles—something that had gotten him into trouble more than once, yet he still maintained his own vision of nobility.
Because of this, many mercenaries still chose to turn to him for work, ignoring shadier characters.
But perhaps the most distinctive thing about Padre was his extremely large influence over the Valentinos—a Latino gang with incredibly tight connections to cartels all over the world.
Quite literally, a great many of their gang members either leave to work for the cartels or previously served in them, which gives them global connections and access to practically any chemicals, drugs, and allied muscle.
This unimposing old man, on the contrary, was one of the prime predators of Night City, on par with the fixer Wakako Okada—a similar old wreck, only she associated closely with the Tyger Claws and did not inspire such trust.
An old woman sitting in the most depraved district of the city, adorned with tattoos that even closed clothing couldn’t hide, and bearing a predatory look in her eyes, inspired far less trust than a kind grandfather who constantly quoted the Bible.
But Tony wasn’t fooled; Ibarra would easily put anyone under the knife if the profit was worth it.
“Tony,” he smiled quite warmly at Stark.
“Good to see you. Come, sit,” he gestured with his hand toward a spot next to him on the outdoor basketball court.
It was unclear why Padre preferred to conduct business here—maybe it was playing into his image, maybe it was something connected to his past, or maybe it was just standardly easier to defend this place rather than an office in a building.
But facts were facts: Tony had never once been invited to conduct business in any other location.
“My friends from the Valentinos highly praised your work, asking when they could give you weapons for modernization again,” he immediately began leading into business, making Tony grimace.
“We are here for a different matter, aren’t we?” Tony tried to wriggle out of it.
“Or has something changed?”
“No, everything stands, but we need to wait for a certain person from the Valentinos’ side,” the old fixer reassured him.
“But Tony, your work was appreciated by one of the group’s captains, and that’s entirely different money, you understand. Even I am interested here.”
“I see,” Tony sighed tiredly.
Tony didn’t really like working with weapons—an old moral trauma.
And even though he had overcome it long ago, the scar remained, reminding him of itself especially sharply when he was forced to hand guns over to criminals.
Had the situation been different, Stark would have never gone for such a thing, but here, as always, the nuances mattered.
Tony wanted to establish a reputation in the solo community as quickly as possible so he wouldn’t have to get his hands dirty with overtly foul jobs, and getting access to one of the most prominent fixers in the business was the best and practically only option that allowed him to cut corners.
But what could interest a shadowy big shot in one of the most crime-ridden cities in all of America?
His skills?
The chrome-plated top-tiers of the Afterlife would crush Tony like a flea, despite his parents’ entire inheritance and his brain optimization procedure.
Touch him with a story about how he had majorly screwed over Arasaka?
Not funny.
Fixers can play the part of independent figures all they want, but they exist precisely for as long as they are convenient to the corps…or at least not harmful.
New technologies?
Alas, Padre simply doesn’t work with that kind of stuff; his maximum in that area is helping with the sale by acting as a guarantor of the deal, nothing more.
That left only his father’s craft: weapons manufacturing.
So Tony, without thinking twice, took the trophies of the gangsters’ guns—obtained just like his baby—and reworked them into something far more useful and valuable than the production models.
Now that was something that interested a former solo who knew his guns.
A young, talented mechanic capable of turning assembly-line products into something truly devastating was always valued even by military units, to say nothing of large, yet still street-level gangs.
Not to say that Tony was pleased with this state of affairs, but he was comforted by the thought that such firearms were given only to the gang’s elite fighters, who were simply above going around and tyrannizing ordinary people.
“But I’m only ready to talk about this upon payment,” Tony returned to the conversation, surfacing from his thoughts.
“Everything will be taken care of,” Ibarra assured him.
“I spoke with the boys; the new owners of the guns are currently away on a trip and will return in four days. At that time, upon receiving their go-ahead, they will transfer the remaining funds.”
“Good,” Tony nodded with relief.
It would be a shame to lose a contact like Padre, but having received a concrete timeframe, Tony calmed down.
“We’ll talk then.”
“Deal,” the old man smiled.
And, as if waiting for this exact moment, a guy bearing Valentino markings approached them.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, with rugged facial features, but surprisingly kind eyes for a gangster.
“Hey, you’re Tony?” he extended his hand after greeting Padre.
“I’m Jackie.”
Jackie was a little nervous.
He had been with the Valentinos for a relatively long time, and in general, he often walked under bullets, deservedly considered a veteran of the street wars, but this was his first assignment where he would be working with an outsider.
Not a pal he grew up with on the same street, not a gang comrade, not a casual drinking buddy, but a complete stranger from whom you didn’t know what to expect.
And the assignment itself…was stressful.
A new gang of Scavengers had appeared in the district controlled by their gang.
Who they were, the names of their leaders, their approximate composition—they managed to get all of this from Padre, but there was an issue that made his captain move his ass.
In short, this particular gang of Scavengers had been driven out of their previous spot by the Tyger Claws, having bled them heavily before that and unleashing genuine lawlessness right on their turf.
It seemed like nothing special—there are dozens of such stories in Night City every week—but then two things happened.
First, the Tyger Claws failed to finish off the bottom-feeders of the Night City underworld.
They thinned them out, yes, and even then not by much, but that “terrible and horrific” slaughter they promised never happened, and that was already damage to their reputation, which would hurt even worse if the Valentinos finished the job for them.
The second point was that these specific Scavengers completely lacked boundaries; they didn’t care who they chopped up for chrome and organs, as long as the butchery brought in money.
They had only been in Heywood for a week, but during this time they had managed to kidnap about three important big wigs, bringing this problem into THEIR district, thereby escalating tensions with other factions.
Worse still, they had already received a far from subtle hint: either the Valentinos deal with this problem in the shortest time possible, or it would be done for them by deploying outside fighters onto their territory—something the gang elders wanted to prevent under any circumstances.
But the trouble was that their forces were currently almost completely occupied, locking horns with Maelstrom, and those who were free were guarding their property; they were only able to detach Jackie along with a rookie solo on the streets of Night City attached as reinforcement.
Jackie glanced at this Tony guy and once again tensed up against his will.
Having grown up on the streets of Night City, associating with gang members since childhood, and being the son of people who weren’t nobodies in Heywood, he had seen all kinds of people and had learned to read them well.
And this Stark fellow…seemed out of this world. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
To start with, his appearance.
His temporary partner was dressed in a black suit jacket, clearly tailored to his figure, with a burgundy shirt, a black tie, and red sunglasses.
In the second half of the twentieth century, when technology gave people vast opportunities to alter their own identity, everyone who actually follows their appearance or tries to be on the same wavelength as global trends looks extremely original.
The more details, the brighter the colors, the more unusual the shapes, the more individualistic you are…
and meanwhile, you completely blend in.
The only exception was the corps, to a man clad in business suits of various price tags, but in fact, it was the same uniform as any other gang.
Tony, however, wore his business suit loosely, relaxed, and with an air of complete indifference.
Jacket unbuttoned, tie loosened, an ironic, amused smile on his face, and his eyes behind the glasses looking as if he were looking down on the whole world, like a wise elder watching the foolishness of children.
How this was possible, Jackie didn’t understand, and it was dangerous on the streets.
Corps aren’t liked, and even the police might well drag a corporate employee into a dark corner to count his ribs (at best).
But that was the thing—Stark didn’t look like a corporate.
Jackie had seen suits up close and from afar, on the TV screen and in person; over there, they all wore their suits stiffly, like uncomfortable collars.
Stark, though…
you could feel a sense of pedigree in Stark.
What it was and how it worked, Jackie didn’t understand himself, but his brain was literally itching with the realization that this specific man could be dressed in brand-name clothes costing as much as a sports car or in total rags, and he wouldn’t give a damn either way; it wouldn’t even cross his mind to behave differently because he is who he is.
And the younger Welles was forced to admit it was true.
His colleague’s clothing today was just the tip of his eccentricities—the first thing that caught the eye, so to speak.
Next came his looks.
Looks…
in the modern world, people grow tails, install implants to connect each other’s thoughts, grow fur, scales, or feathers; some completely replace organic matter with biometal.
A delegation from a gang that roleplayed as Aztecs had visited them once; the fighters there down to a man had green scales instead of skin and yellow eyes with vertical pupils, and against their backdrop, Stark should frankly get lost…but he didn’t.
Welles was a man of normal orientation and understood frankly little about male appearance.
In his mind, the taller and more muscular, the better.
And he could admit to himself that he wasn’t a handsome guy, far from it, but he wasn’t ugly either, and with girls, his charm and those very muscles helped him out.
However, even a layman like Jackie could tell that Stark was insanely good-looking.
Not with that effeminate beauty where, without seeing an Adam’s apple, it’s hard to tell if it’s a chick or a guy, but with the masculine, mature beauty of a self-assured man.
Impossibly blue eyes (natural ones at that, which was already a rarity), slicked-back thick black hair, a light stubble, and a toned physique could make even a nun spread her legs, to say nothing of less steadfast individuals.
But the main thing lay in his facial features, regular to the point of slight nausea; no modern surgeon could replicate them because it was all natural, genuine, and you could feel it.
And the final oddity was his manner of bearing himself.
Stark was confident, conversing easily with the likes of Padre as if with an equal, carelessly ignoring his armed-to-the-teeth security and demonstratively disregarding attempts to test his mettle, expressing with his entire demeanor that no street thug was going to measure pants-sizes with him.
Even his car—a sports car repainted in gold and red colors, an extremely rare combination for Night City—demonstrated this delightfully arrogant attitude toward everyone else.
When one of Ibarra’s guards tried to make a joke about the color, Stark easily turned it into a jest, and Jackie saw that he wasn’t offended by the gangster’s words; he felt absolutely zero emotion about it, and the answer was granted solely due to Tony’s own good mood.
Usually, young solos, on the contrary, are extremely sharp in response to such baiting, but here there was absolute calm with a complete disregard for anyone else’s opinion.
And the last thing that stood out was his education.
The moment Stark opened his mouth, it practically reeked of a higher education institution and high erudition.
And this at a time when more than half of the US population hadn’t even gone to school!
Why did all this bother Welles so much?
Simple: this was the man who would be covering his back in the upcoming shootout, and this was the man he would have to give a assessment of to the Valentinos.
“What are you brooding about, big guy?” the source of Jackie’s headache broke the silence.
“About the upcoming fight,” he decided against speaking the truth.
“Is something serious expected?” Stark lazily arched an eyebrow.
There!
That was exactly what he was talking about.
A young solo without proper chrome should have tensed up, latched onto his slip of the tongue like a vice, and as a result, either turned down the gig or demanded extra pay.
Here, it was a complete dead calm and even boredom.
“Unlikely,” Welles admitted honestly.
“The info from Pedro is verified and solid, as far as these things go. The bastards got chewed up pretty bad during their escape from Tyger Claw territory; they picked up a few pieces of fresh meat, but that’s about it. They didn’t have the eddies to fix up their combat readiness, nor the time, so the two of us should be enough.”
“So you’re thinking so intensely about a shootout that’s going to go off without a hitch?” Stark asked, dripping with irony, as if inviting him to confess some shameful secret.
“Is that how it turns out?”
“Turns out that way,” Jackie nodded.
“But generally, this is Night City. You can catch a bullet even on your way home, so it’s better to treat even a drunken brawl with maximum seriousness.”
“Well, I’ll trust your experience, big guy.”
“Seriously? An abandoned toy factory? Couldn’t they find something less cliché?” Tony asked as he stepped out of the car, leaving it parked right in front of the entrance, and walked over to the trunk.
“Cliché?” Jackie didn’t get it.
“Yeah. You know, old broken toys, blood stains on the floor, and a psychopath hunting a group of mentally challenged kids or not-so-bright horny teenagers,” Stark added, rolling his wrist for emphasis.
“In short, a horror movie classic, all looking like carbon copies because of the formula.”
“Never liked horror movies,” Welles shared, checking his pistol and rifle.
“Me neither, but in the company of a lady, it works,” he agreed, pulling out his own submachine gun and several flying drones.
“Are those toy drones?”
“I improved them. Silent flight, increased operational time up to three days, boosted speed, and a pistol caliber with ten rounds.”
According to the data from Padre, there were only about a dozen Scavengers.
Not a whole lot, considering their crowd almost completely lacked chrome, but characters like them were total clinical psychos who rarely expected anything good from anyone outside their little circle of ripper-maniacs, and as a rule, they didn’t try to secure their hideouts even minimally.
Cameras, traps, a couple of automated turrets, sometimes mines—you shouldn’t expect anything more from Scavengers, but even the listed items could be enough for an incautious solo.
And the drones would either detect all of this in advance or take it out entirely, making the clearing of the den significantly easier.
“Useful,” Jackie nodded respectfully, casting a new look over Stark.
He knew the guy had modified guns for some of the gang’s hitters, but he hadn’t guessed his partner’s true level.
“Alright, let’s go.”
The smart machines flew forward, projecting the feed onto the screens of his glasses while Stark and Jackie moved quickly.
They had no intention of making noise; the drones kept close to the ceiling, so they shouldn’t be noticed given the near-total absence of light in the corridors.
“Let’s begin.”
The old children’s toy factory was a grim place.
Primarily because its owners back in the day hadn’t just gone bankrupt, but had died; the heirs staged a literal legal war and dragged the situation out to the point where there was simply no longer any sense in inheriting said factory, since over the years of litigation all the equipment had broken down or been stolen, and the staff had quit.
Moreover, it carried a debt for years of idleness to the tax office and an undelivered batch of children’s toys that had long since grown to a seven-figure sum.
The heirs did everything they could to avoid receiving this factory, while the factory itself was used to the fullest by gangs, junkies, rapists…and Scavengers.
Naturally, all the warehouses with merchandise had been broken into by the very first uninvited guests, scattering generally good, clean toys across all the rooms; then the next ones repeated this, simultaneously staining them in cheap booze, blood, and other bodily fluids, creating an atmosphere of a children’s fairy tale abruptly turned into a gory horror film due to an abundance of blood that looked like it had used up all the red paint in Hollywood.
And the smell topped off the picture—an unrepeatable mixture of stale shit, urine, sour beer, blood, and male semen, all creating an unmistakable aroma.
Only unhinged thugs or military men who had survived worse shit could stay in a place like this.
The new uninvited guests of the factory entered the dark maw of the main entrance at a calm pace, but keeping their weapons at the ready.
Leading the way was the sleek man in an expensive business suit, holding a monstrous revolver in one hand and a submachine gun in the other.
His entire appearance screamed that he should be anywhere but here.
In an expensive restaurant that gangsters are about to burst into, in a casino searching for information that the whole world depends on, negotiating with terrorists, but definitely not preparing to storm an old building soaked in despair.
The second man already fit the place better.
Tall, broad-shouldered, with rugged facial features that looked as if they were hacked out of stone, he frowned and cast his brown eyes from side to side, as if expecting the enemy to leap out of a hidden niche at any moment and try to take his life.
A sturdy rifle of an unknown model, but well-maintained, lay in his hands like an extension of his own body, and his left shoulder remained tense, ready at any moment to draw the machete protruding from behind his back.
The pair of intruders saw the first inhabitants of this grim place through the cameras.
A trio of drones, flying like silent shadows into the large hall where toys used to be assembled, rose to the very top, dispersing into the corners and scanning the entire area with their gaze.
The place was bleak: mountains of corpses, clothing, containers with organs and cyberware lay in large piles, and among them walked people with vacant eyes.
Over there, an older man with a burn scar across his entire neck was placing a container with a fresh batch of organs with the rest, wiping away sweat.
Over there, a young guy without pants, unashamed of anyone, was desecrating the corpse of a young girl, enthusiastically moving his hips and letting out vile squeals every time the dead girl’s chest shuddered under his greedy gaze.
And over there was a third one, taking his first bite of a heated pizza, lazily tinkering away on a blood-stained laptop.
There were five Scavengers in total in the room, occupied with their own affairs and paying little attention to the surrounding world.
They were completely confident in their safety, relying on a camera system and a turret positioned opposite the main entrance.
Both guests, without a word, grimaced.
Jackie couldn’t see what Tony was seeing in his glasses, but from around the corner of the main entrance, the picture of one specific individual satisfying his lust was perfectly visible.
However, having been distracted, Welles didn’t notice how Stark suddenly bolted from his spot, running right into the view of the cameras onto a well-exposed area…
after which, executing a full spin, he mowed down all the Scavengers with his submachine gun, which turned out to have an integrated silencer.
A second and a half—that was exactly how much time he needed to put three bullets into the skull and heart of each of the bastards.
Jackie’s eyes widened impressively, but he had far more indignation than awe.
Risking like that, rushing forward without warning your partner—that was a lousy tactic, easily capable of leading to injuries.
But he filed his opinion away for later, until things were quieter.
The path forward continued.
In total, the gang had up to ten people with extremely shitty weaponry, a minimal amount of chrome, and not even armored fabric clothing.
Stark had just zeroed out five; there were as many left.
‘Hope the rest of it is just as easy,’ Welles thought, gripping his piece more comfortably.
Night City Police Officer Olivia Rose.
Ten minutes later.
Olivia Rose, an older woman with a heavy build and the gaze of a dead fish, was melancholically sipping her coffee, staring boringly at the monitor.
The Black police officer, whose job had consisted of taking calls for a good dozen years now, had survived the rotation of seven captains and three mayors, managing to hear plenty of the most impressive, strange, insane, or simply surreal police calls that this damned city generated with enviable consistency every single day.
She remembered a call where a huge Black guy standing nearly two meters tall, with biceps like her thigh, was calling the police on his own wife, a five-foot Asian woman with a boyish figure.
The dispatched patrol laughed it off, gave a lecture along with a couple of photos, and left.
And then three days later, she received a new call from the same neighborhood, only this time from neighbors complaining about loud noise and screams of pain.
Well, she sent a patrol again.
And what do cops, hardened by life and lacking faith in this world, expect upon arriving at a domestic violence call where the husband is a massive brute and the wife is a fragile slip of a thing?
In any other city, it would have been a beating of the wife by the husband, which, given their difference in weight classes, could have ended in serious injuries or even death.
But this is Night City!
Nothing here is like it is with normal people!
In the end, the arriving patrol saw the corpse of the brute with a neck so riddled with holes that it was holding on solely by the spine, and that very same tiny Asian girl, completely drenched in her husband’s blood and holding a kitchen knife in her hands.
And not a big one meant for cutting meat, but the smallest one in the set.
That psycho bitch had practically severed the head of a guy with a bull neck using a knife you could barely cut bread with!
So Olivia made a vow to stop being surprised by calls in this insane city, just quietly and calmly doing her job, at which she was quite good.
After all, decades of experience were hard to wash away with liquor (and she tried), and against the backdrop of rookie dispatchers, she stood out favorably, regularly receiving bonuses.
But today surprised even her.
“Hello, Night City Police dispatch listening,” she answered yet another call for today with a phrase practiced to the point of automation, in an utterly dry, lifeless voice.
“…”
“Gunfire at the old factory?”
“…”
“Insane laughter?”
“…”
“Explosions??”
“…”
“A fire made of white flame???”