Just seconds after Haelos went to work, the quickhack finished uploading.
The heavy Scavenger’s vision went completely dark.
Blinded, he could no longer maintain targeted suppressive fire and began spraying wildly toward where he remembered them being.
Jackie, hunkered behind cover, was about to lean out and take aim during the opening, only to see Loki sprint out from the other side.
Pinned behind a small freezer while taking heavy machine-gun fire had pissed Loki off immensely.
Now that the Scav’s optics were rebooting and his line of fire had gone erratic, Loki wasn’t about to miss his chance.
Loki whipped a glowing green booster out from his belt and jammed it straight into his neck.
A rush of lightness flooded his entire body.
Sheathing his pistol, his heightened neural reflexes under the booster’s influence allowed him to spot the gaps in the wild gunfire.
Darting out from the left, he slipped around the spray of bullets, hugging the wall as he closed the distance at terrifying speed.
The sightless Scavenger couldn’t react in time.
Loki closed in from the side at absurd speed and delivered a brutal shoulder check, sending the machine gun flying.
As the heavy gun tumbled away, the Scav realized someone was right on top of him, but before he could react, a heavy fist buried itself into his gut.
His installed subdermal armor failed to absorb the impact.
The cold metal punch hit with massive force, folding him over as he nearly vomited stomach acid.
Having landed the first hit, Loki showed no mercy.
Following up with his muscle-bound right arm, he landed a hard right hook straight across the Scav’s face.
Accompanying the crunch of shattering facial bones and a spatter of teeth, Loki revved his left arm’s Gorilla Arms to full power and delivered a crushing uppercut.
The fist smashed square into the Scavenger’s chin.
Bone shattered, and the terrifying momentum launched his heavy frame straight off his feet.
Mid-air, the Scavenger’s optics finally rebooted, restoring his vision.
But after such a brutal sequence of hits, he couldn’t muster an ounce of resistance.
All he could do was roll his eyes downward toward Loki, catching the last sight he would ever see.
Loki’s torso twisted, his legs planted firmly, and his right fist pulled back, every muscle coiled like a crouching tiger ready to pounce.
The exact moment the Scavenger’s boots touched the ground, Loki’s right fist exploded forward.
“Taste my Haymaker!”
A pro fighter’s fully charged strike slammed directly into the already ruined head, instantly shattering every bone in the skull and splattering a spray of red and white across the room.
Under Loki’s devastating combo, the Scavenger collapsed like a sack of bricks, thoroughly dead.
“Damn, that felt good.”
Catching his breath as he looked down at the corpse, Loki sighed in satisfaction.
Behind him, Jackie was still crouched behind cover, gun trained in the Scavenger’s direction.
Seeing Loki sprint right up into the guy’s face and beat him to death left Jackie momentarily speechless.
Wasn’t the standard script supposed to be exchanging a few rounds first?
How did he end up rushing in to use his fists—and what was with that crazy speed?
“Holy shit, L, you’re fucking crazy!
You just charged right in!” Jackie groaned, exasperated.
Loki clenched his fists, taking stock of his physical condition.
The booster made his body feel nimble and his movements razor-sharp.
The buff was comprehensive.
If he were using guns, it would only offer a slight mobility bump.
But in melee combat, his striking speed surged noticeably, accompanied by a significant boost in power.
It was practically tailor-made for him.
“Scavengers are all clear.
No other hostiles detected on the local net,” Haelos reported over the comms.
“Time to sweep the place.”
Loki and Jackie began searching the corpses in the apartment.
“Hey, this is our guy, right?”
The scanner installed in Loki’s right eye scanned a corpse hanging by the wall of the operating room.
The gory body was somewhat mangled, but the system still identified it.
“His cyberware hasn’t been ripped out yet.”
Jackie looked at the bloody corpse with a mild headache, wondering how to haul it back to hand in the gig.
“Don’t worry about it.
I’ve got this.”
Loki shoved the original corpse off the operating table and hauled their target onto it.
Picking up the surgical instruments with practiced ease, he began harvesting the implants.
“Ah, my bad.
Forgot I was working with a ripperdoc!
Looks like I don’t have to get blood all over my bike this time.” Jackie gave him a thumb-up.
Loki’s hands moved deftly with the tools.
In no time, he stripped all six implants from the body.
Every piece was top-tier—clearly, the guy had been a high-ranking Valentino.
Handing the harvested chrome over to Jackie, Loki proceeded to strip the remaining bodies in the room, including the dead Scavengers.
Free cyberware was free cyberware; consider it a bonus perk of the gig.
Besides, he could use them for his shop.
Fixing and tweaking them to sell back to gangers would fetch a pretty penny.
Harvesting these Scavengers was just giving them a taste of their own medicine.
Loki felt zero remorse.
Unluckily, these Scavs had painfully few implants, and what they had was complete junk.
As the cold scalpel carved through their skin, the Scavenger Loki had knocked out earlier suddenly jolted awake from the sharp pain.
“Agh!
What the hell are you doing?!
Damn you!”
The Scav watched the man methodically slice open his flesh, intense pain shooting through his nerves.
He screamed hysterically and tried to thrash, but Loki had already securely tied down his limbs.
“Oh, you’re awake?
Nothing much.
Just doing what you guys usually do—ripping out some cyberware.”
Loki glanced at him, his face completely impassive.
Loki kept working, swiftly plucking out the few implants the Scav possessed.
Driven mad by pain and blood loss, the Scavenger’s mind began to slip into delirium.
Staring at the man above him, he felt deep, overwhelming terror for the first time in his life—though whether he felt any regret for his own past actions was anyone’s guess.
Before long, the Scavenger closed his eyes forever under Loki’s cold, relentless work.
The final vision stamped into his mind was Loki pulling a heart from his chest and smiling down at him.
“Wrap it up, bro.
Those gunshots probably leaked out; someone might’ve alerted the NCPD already,” Jackie urged with a sigh, watching Loki’s morbid torment.
“Alright, fine.”
Tossing the heart aside, Loki popped out the Scav’s cybereye.
Out of consideration, Loki had thoughtfully left the cybereye for last so the Scavenger could watch himself get chopped up.
With the clean-up done, the two left the apartment building and brought the retrieved cyberware to the fixer who had handed them the gig: Padre.