It was almost certain that Ivan was after something—and whatever it was, it couldn’t be good. He worked under Regina, yes, but there was no way she’d approve of this. Not like this.
Nova needed more intel. Something solid to back up what he suspected. He noticed Rina had the same espionage implant as the one they pulled from the spy handed to Padre. That gave him an idea.
While she slept, Nova carefully slipped a custom chip into her neural slot. He’d coded it to interface directly with the Zetatech GhostCache hidden inside her. Accessing her memory banks wasn’t hard.
And then he saw everything.
The way Ivan treated her. The orders she got. The augmentations they forced into her body without consent or context. Rina had no idea what most of it was for—just missions, kill orders, no questions asked. That alone was enough proof that Ivan was running black ops under Regina’s nose.
But Nova needed more.
After digging around for a while, Rina suddenly stirred. She jolted upright, instincts kicking in fast, posture tight and defensive.
“You had a nightmare?” Nova said calmly. “Relax. I'm not gonna hurt you. There's food on the table.”
She didn’t buy it. She paced the room suspiciously, eyeing every surface before turning to him.
“Don’t lie. You did something to me. Tell me what it was.”
Nova sighed. No point hiding it.
“Fine. I hacked your neural implant. I needed info on Ivan. I saw some stuff—valuable, yeah—but not enough to actually help you yet.”
Rina blinked, surprised. “Help me? You keep saying that like it makes sense. Ever since yesterday, you’ve been spouting bullshit.”
“I’ve lived in this city long enough to know how brutal it is to the wrong people,” Nova replied. “And like I thought—it’s been brutal to you. You saw it, didn’t you? What I fought for yesterday. I want to help you like I helped them.”
“What, you gonna go around Night City helping everyone like some brain-dead superhero? How old are you—five? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Uuugh! Stop asking for reasons or I’ll get all sentimental,” Nova groaned. “Look… before all this, I was just another nobody. Wake up, work, eat, sleep. Repeat. Thought that was life. Then something happened. I got a second chance. And even then—I was doing the same shit. But that thing... it forced me to change. To do something.”
He paused. He wasn’t sure if telling her about the Sandevistan was a good idea. But he needed her trust. If he wanted to get closer to Ivan’s real game, Rina was his best shot.
Nova peeled off his shirt and turned around. On his back were sleek, unnatural “Y”-shaped metal implants—thin, organic-looking, like they’d grown there instead of being installed.
“This… this is a Sandevistan. Organic. Alive, even. It implanted itself when I had an accident. I don’t know where it came from. Don’t know if someone’s gonna come for it. Don’t know if it’ll kill me one day. All I know is… it was the push I needed to stop sleeping through life.”
Rina stared in silence. She understood. He hadn’t chosen this either. But instead of letting it break him, it drove him.
“…Alright,” she said quietly. “I believe you. Still sounds stupid. But I’ll back you up. Just promise me you’ll get me out of Ivan’s leash.”
Nova raised an eyebrow. “Eeeeh… that was already the plan?”
Rina smacked him on the back, somewhere between embarrassed and pissed.
“You’re supposed to just say yes, idiot!”
Once things cooled down, they started working together. Nova asked her about Ivan—anything she could remember—but nothing new came up. Everything she knew, he’d already seen in her memories.
That meant he’d have to dig deeper himself.
To keep Rina covered, Nova suggested using the same ghost chips he’d developed for Padre—this time to create a false memory profile. The story? She’d killed Nova. Hid the body. Made sure Padre’s network wouldn’t find a trace.
Nova even gave her a few spare cyberware pieces to make the scene look like a scav job.
She played the part well.
When she returned to Ivan, blood on her gear and data in her head, he bought it without question. She was back in his good graces. Trusted again.
And thanks to the memory sync, Nova had a full feed: Rina’s location, her audio logs, even glimpses of Ivan’s ops—all funneling into his drive.
It didn’t take long before Ivan handed Rina another job. The objective was vague—extract data from some corpos. No names. Just a location. Rina didn’t waste time. She moved fast, heading straight for the coordinates to scope out her target.
Once at the building, she lingered in the shadows, observing. She waited for the corpo to arrive, scanning for patterns—arrival times, connections, anything that could give her an edge when infiltrating the place.
“Nova, you copy? The corpo’s car is pulling in. If we can ID this guy, we might get a lead to move against Ivan.”
“Loud and clear,” Nova replied over comms. “If Ivan’s poking a corpo without cover, we can use that. Bring it to Regina’s desk, and she’ll crush him herself. For now, give me everything.”
“Alright… fancy suit, just like every other corpo. Three optics on the right side of his face.”
A chill shot down Nova’s spine.
Three optics. Right side.
There was no mistaking it. Faraday.
If Ivan was targeting him, things were about to get messy. Faraday had influence. Reach. A wrong step here could mean game over—for both of them.
“Nova, I’m going in through the ducts—”
“No! Wai—”
Before he could finish, something wire-like tightened around his throat.
He froze.
“I let you go last time because your friend needed help. Don’t think you can slip away that easily. You know something—and I need to hear why.”
Nova didn’t have to turn his head. He recognized the voice instantly.
“Not the friendliest way to visit someone, Lucy.”
“I’m not much for visits.” Her tone was cold, precise. “Now start talking. How the hell did you know that bum was gonna go psycho? And why save Pilar? Who sent you?”
“Nobody sent me,” Nova said, calm as ever. “I was just passing by and noticed something.”
“You expect me to believe that? If you were just passing by, you wouldn’t have sprinted straight for your ‘friend’ afterward. And she was hurt. You moved directly to help Pilar. That’s no coincidence.”
Nova smirked faintly, his voice light.
“Fair enough. You’re right—I went straight to help them. But no one sent me. Let’s just say… I’m a bit of a fortune-teller.”
“I’m not in the mood for jokes.”
“Woah, woah—relax. I am not one of those guys Faraday sent to hunt you.
That stoped her cold, her eyes wide open in surprise.
Lucy pulled the wire tighter against Nova’s throat, this time her voice edged with venom.
“Who told you about that?!”
“Gagh—hey! Wai—wait a sec—” Nova struggled to get the words out, fingers clawing at the wire.
Incoming Call: Dorio.
“Lucy! The job went south—they’ve got David!”
“What?!” Lucy snapped, her composure cracking for the first time.
“Listen, Lucy,” Nova rasped out quickly, “I’ll tell you everything I know. You’ll get it all, I swear. But you don’t have time right now—you need to save David. He’s… important to you, isn’t he?”
She hesitated, knuckles white around the wire.
“Tch! Fine! But don’t think you’re off the hook. I will find you—don’t even think of running.”
As she turned to leave, Nova called out.
“Wait—here.”
He tossed her a small chrome chip module.
“It’s a speedhack booster. Patch it into your deck; it’ll cut your netlag. Might give you an edge.”
Lucy caught it, staring at the sleek device in her palm. She didn’t say a word, just gave him a hard glare before vanishing into the dark.
Nova exhaled, rubbing at his bruised neck. That was too close.
But there wasn’t time to dwell. He patched into his comm and called out:
“Rina! Rina, do you copy?”
A long, static-filled pause. Then her voice crackled through.
“Yeah, I hear you. Faraday’s got files on netrunners… something big, but I can’t tell what exactly. I’ll wait until he steps out and jack in to grab the data.”
“No! Don’t do it!” Nova cut her off sharply. His mind raced. “Listen—just grab visuals. Video, photos, anything you can get from your optics. But do not touch that system. You’re not equipped to ghost their ICE without being flagged.”
Rina froze. She was used to following orders and reluctantly nodded, even though he couldn’t see her.
“Fine. Give me a sec.”
She ghosted into the shadows, using her optics to record a quick sweep of Faraday’s terminal. A moment later, she slipped out undetected and met up with Nova outside the zone.
She yanked her mask off, irritation flashing in her eyes.
“What the hell was that? Why didn’t you let me finish the job?”
“That was Arasaka tech,” Nova said flatly. “High-level ICE, maybe even blackwall fragments. The second you touched that system, alarms would’ve hit the Net and the street. I don’t have the tools to pull you out if it went bad.”
Rina crossed her arms, scowling.
“So? What was all that then? How the hell are we supposed to figure out Ivan’s plan without digging deeper?”
Nova was quiet for a moment, gears turning in his head.
“If it’s about Faraday and netrunners… then it’s probably tied to a project they had long ago.”
“A project?”
“Yeah. Pre-DataKrash blackbook op. They kidnapped kids—wired them, trained them to ghostwalk through the old Net before it burned. Most of them didn’t survive. But if Ivan’s after one of those netrunners… and he’s using them to breach the old grids?” Nova shook his head. “We can’t let him get that kind of leverage. No telling what he’d pull if he had his own god-tier netrunner on a leash.”
Rina’s frown deepened.
“Ivan works under Regina. She’s got the connections, the rep. If he’s trying to pull a coup and spin up his own corp, this is how he’d do it.”
“Exactly.”
“But even if we know, how the hell do we expose him to Regina without evidence?” Rina asked, tightening her arms across her chest.
Nova’s lips pressed into a thin line. His mind was already cooking up the next step.