Kiwi received the mission details through her neural link.
She didn't say anything. A small nod, and her fingers began tapping a quiet rhythm against the outside of her thigh under the table — her habitual thinking motion. Her cybernetically modified eyes flickered with a faint red glow as she connected to the Net.
When she'd finished, she spoke.
"No issues. Is that everything you need from me?"
Vito nodded.
"That's it. I like to break jobs down. Everyone handles their own piece."
What the client had asked for and how the rest of the job was structured, Vito didn't tell her. Kiwi didn't ask. It fit her credo exactly: don't trust anyone.
"Good. Eat up. Then we work."
Vito turned his full attention to the ramen in front of him. Jackie was tearing through a plate of pan-fried dumplings at a pace that suggested he had personal grievances against them. Kiwi didn't eat. She pulled out her cigarette case, lit one, and settled back.
After the meal the strike team moved to the target location. The netrunner went back to prep the intrusion.
The job: extract a doll who'd been sold by the owner of the club where she worked.
She'd been employed as a doll at a low-end pleasure house, squeezed for everything she earned day in and day out. On top of that she had to handle her own cyberware maintenance. Then her regular ripperdoc closed up for a few days without much warning. The alternatives in the area were all priced out of her range. She had no choice but to wait.
Her owner decided that a doll waiting on a ripperdoc wasn't earning him anything. He packaged her up and sold her to an underground BD operation running cannibal content.
She'd built up good relationships with the other dolls over the years, and a few of them quietly pooled money and found Vito, hoping he could help.
Vito ran surveillance on the club's people for a few days and traced it back to a Tyger Claws hideout.
In the car, Jackie asked.
"You sent me a complete brief. How come you left her out of the rest?"
Vito was running his weapon check.
"First job together. She had what she needed. And remember — your side is a feint. Draw their attention. Leave no one standing."
Jackie nodded. Vito passed him a box of shells.
"Graphite Dragon's Breath. Give those Tyger Claws something to think about."
They reached the destination. A fish processing shop in North Oak, Westbrook. Jackie set himself up at the front entrance, playing a loud drunk who'd arrived at completely the wrong address.
"I am not wrecked. I'm here to buy Braindances!"
With the attention pulled to the front, Vito hacked the back door, found a control panel inside, and slotted a Puppet hack into the system.
"Kiwi. Puppet's in."
He put the call through on the shared channel.
"Confirming network environment. Physical LAN isolation. Three seconds." Kiwi's voice came through the earpiece. "I'm on their backup line. Security is minimal — two surveillance cameras, one electronic lock. But I'm reading three high-performance servers running inside. Four seconds. You're clear to breach the basement."
Vito drew a Darra Polytechnic DS1 Pulse SMG. The gun was smaller than most weapons in its class, but the firepower was another matter entirely. Darra's engineers had never been afraid of a bad idea, and the DS1 looked like proof: somewhere between a disassembled standard machine gun and whatever you got after handing the pieces to a blindfolded kid with a talent for unconventional assembly. Devastating when it connected. Notoriously impossible to control.
Vito had taken the cheap slum legend apart down to its components and rebuilt it from scratch. More power. Recoil brought to heel. Full configuration. The rounds had been replaced with higher-power rifle ammunition. The result was a genuine miniature machine gun.
He named it Captain. A tribute to a legendary short guy.
Vito moved down into the first basement level and found a dead corner to hold. A handful of Tyger Claws were gathered near the foot of the stairs, passing Flash between them.
"Jackie. Go."
Jackie got the signal and drew.
"Playtime's over. Wrapping this up."
Bang bang. Reason sent two shells into the two nearest Tyger Claws and put them both off their feet.
"Boss says there's a lunatic up front. Move out before we pull NCPD!"
"Damn it, I just started."
Seven or eight Tyger Claws members filed up the staircase.
"First level clear. Second level is open."
Kiwi's report was immediate.
"Copy."
Vito had barely stepped into the second basement level when a voice reached him.
"Please. Please let me go."
"Expression! I want desperation! Come on, scream louder!"
A pause.
"She's worthless. Forget it. Get the next one in. Send this one to the cannibal shoot. With quality like this, how are we supposed to compete with the Moth?"
Vito's face-spoofing equipment flickered once.
"Kiwi. Cut the power. Jackie. All in."
A dull thud from above. Electrical short. The warehouse lights dropped out instantly, leaving nothing but the sickly green of emergency strips along the floor.
"What the hell? Power's out?"
"We've been breached! Guns!"
Vito came through. Captain put rounds through skulls.
"Intrusion confirmed. Three cameramen, one director. My electromagnetic short locks them for seven seconds. Two more in cyberware failure."
Vito's boot took the door off its frame. His Kiroshi swept the room: three figures sparking with electrical arc. He put them down in sequence.
"Who are you?"
A Tyger Claws boss — gorilla arms, slight everywhere else — stared at him.
"Delivery. Here for a pickup."
The gun stayed on him.
"Pickup of what?"
The boss's expression went blank.
"Doesn't matter. I forgot. If I wasn't worried about what you'd do to the hostages on your way out, I'd have turned this room into powder ten minutes ago."
Bang bang bang bang bang bang bang.
Half a magazine across the face. The boss's skull came apart.
Electromagnetic short ended. Host dead. The gorilla arms malfunctioned and deployed on their own. Vito looked at the chrome hanging off the wreckage.
"Small man. Big install."
He scanned the room. Thirty square meters of filth and rot. Blood on the walls long since turned black with mold. A bed in the center piled with things he wasn't going to name. A girl sitting in the middle of it, not moving, expression gone somewhere else entirely. Another girl slumped against the far wall, eyes flat with shock.
"Vito. Clear. No survivors. Coming down."
Vito tightened his fist.
"Yeah."
Jackie came down to the second basement level, stopped, and started swearing.
"These freaks make scavs look professional. At least scavs just want your chrome. Killing them quick was letting them off easy."
"Jackie. Get these two out first."
Vito found the main control computer. But this time he didn't do what he'd always done before — he didn't pull the accounts for eddies. He went into the main network instead, pulling every email thread and every list he could find.
"Kiwi. I'm billing this part separately on the side. Help me sort through this data and lock down locations. I want to add a new service line to the Medical Dispute Resolution Group."
Kiwi's voice stayed level.
"Tonight works. Good luck with the expansion."