“Just like that?” Jake Quinn scratched his head.
“Is getting gear really this easy?” Was it a bug or a game mechanic?
He recalled the entire process of grabbing the cyberware and quickly realized what had happened.
Before the rewind, he had stumbled around the apartment searching for the cyberware, making a ton of noise.
After the rewind, he had gone straight to the target with zero wasted movement.
So…
Gloria had been woken up by his noise last time?
The storyline of this game actually changed based on tiny player actions like that?!
“Sweet.” Jake sat up straight, his expression turning serious.
He had gotten lucky this time.
Without a walkthrough, who knew how many tries this stage would take…
He picked up the heavy black tote bag and walked over to the elevator at the end of the floor.
The elevator doors creaked open.
The interior was cramped.
Through the glass curtain wall, he caught a glimpse of the city bathed in early morning sunlight.
He pressed the floor button.
around, the elevator slowly descended, the floor numbers ticking down one by one.
To install the Apogee Sandevistan, he needed a reliable ripperdoc—someone like Viktor Vektor.
Vic’s skill went without saying.
However, getting him to install cyberware would still cost a pretty penny.
And cyberware wasn’t the only issue.
He also had to fix the BD headset problem.
If he didn’t eliminate the threat posed by the faulty headset, David wouldn’t be able to go to school normally.
The moment he set foot in Arasaka Academy, it would likely trigger the car crash event that led to Gloria’s death.
As for fixing the headset, Jake already had someone in mind.
But that required money too.
“How am I gonna make a big pile of eddies fast?” Jake muttered, staring at the screen.
Dogtown had supply drops, but in his current state, David was no match for Barghest soldiers…
After mulling it over, an idea quickly took shape.
*** The elevator vibrated slightly as it came to a stop at the ground level.
David stepped out of the lift, crossed the main entrance of Megabuilding H4, and entered the streets of Santo Domingo.
The morning sun filtered through holographic advertisements, and floating AVs zipped across the skyways overhead, making the city feel intensely busy and chaotic.
“Santo Domingo to Watson North is pretty damn far,” Jake muttered, opening the map to plan a route.
“No fast-travel points, don’t know if the NCART subway is accessible…
Looks like stealing a car is the easiest option…” *Stealing a car?* David froze.
Almost everyone in Night City carried a gun.
Trying to steal a car unarmed was practically suicide!
Jake looked around, selecting a suitable target, when he noticed the pedestrians along the road walking hastily, as if fleeing from something.
Looking toward the direction they were running from…
A few figures were gathered under an overpass not far ahead.
David recognized the jackets and military-grade implants they wore.
6th Street.
The local overlords of Santo Domingo.
They called themselves patriots and claimed to restore the glory of the Old USA, but in reality, they were just thugs collecting protection money, smuggling arms, and doing Militech’s dirty work.
They were one of the nastiest local gangs in this district.
Cornered in the middle was a man in a rumpled, cheap suit—by the looks of it, a low-level corporate drone.
The man was pale, hands raised high, stammering out an explanation.
A heavily built 6th Street member kept poking the man’s chest with a metallic finger, forcing him backward step by step, while his crew stood nearby with arms crossed, watching the show.
Seeing this, David felt a strange sense of relief.
Compared to poking these psycho thugs, hijacking a car didn’t sound so bad after all…
Before the thought could fully form, he heard that voice speak up again, sounding distinctly amused: “Oho, an NCPD scanner event?” Jake’s mouse hovered over the 6th Street members, who now had yellow exclamation marks floating above their heads.
*Good time to test the combat system and damage models…* Without a second thought, his finger pressed down on W.
David’s body moved uncontrollably toward the overpass.
Jake maneuvered David close to the wall, using abandoned vending machines and construction debris as cover to loop around to their rear flank.
“…overdue!
Three weeks late, huh?!” The burly gang member, Jack Barnes, poked his metal finger into the suit’s chest.
“That money goes to pensions for our veteran brothers!
You don’t support them, you’re unpatriotic!” “Night City is a free city, it doesn’t belong to the NUSA—” *Smack!* Barnes delivered a heavy backhand.
“Shut your trap!” “Boss,” another skinny gang member leaning against a graffitied wall spat on the ground.
“Looks like his organ implants are worth a few bucks.
How about…” Listening to their conversation, David’s heart pounded like a jackhammer.
He knew all too well how ruthless 6th Street was.
In this district, even the NCPD wouldn’t bat an eye if 6th Street beat a poor student to death in broad daylight.
Was he really going to fight them?
David could already envision his own bloody end and instinctively wanted to close his eyes.
Yet he couldn’t even manage that.
He could only watch helplessly as his own hand clamped over the mouth of the lookout on the perimeter and violently twisted the man’s arm.
*Crack!* With a sharp snap, warm blood splashed onto the back of David’s hand.
*I…
I killed someone?* Every hair on his body stood on end, his stomach churning violently.
“Execution feel is decent,” the voice remarked lightly in his head, as if David hadn’t just broken a man’s neck, but snapped a pair of disposable chopsticks.
He bent down, picking up the smart pistol off the ground.
*Bang!* A second shot—a precise headshot.
The skinny guy leaning on the wall didn’t even realize an enemy was there before flopping straight onto the ground.
Gunfire immediately exploded.
The remaining four gang members reacted instantly, bullets sweeping toward him like hail.
David was terrified out of his wits.
He could clearly hear the whistling wind as rounds zipped past his ears, expecting to be turned into a sieve at any moment.
Jake, however, remained cool as ice.
His fingers danced across the keyboard—sliding, taking cover, popping out to shoot.
The fluid sequence of movements was flawless.
He even timed the enemy’s reload cycles, peeking out to drop two more with headshots.
In less than thirty seconds, only the leader, Barnes, was left, ducking behind a car and firing wildly while spitting profanities.
David pressed his back against a concrete pillar, his entire frame trembling.
Those thirty seconds felt longer than an entire semester at Arasaka Academy.
Yet Jake acted as if he were taking a casual stroll in the park.
“Pretty soft…” Jake fired another precise round, tearing right through Barnes’s wrist as he raised his gun.
“Argh!” Barnes screamed in agony, dropping his weapon to the ground.
Jake didn’t give him an opening.
Controlling David, he strode over, scooped up the dropped power assault rifle, pressed it against Barnes’s chest, and pulled the trigger.
*Bang!* Barnes collapsed against the rusted frame of the car, blood spurting from the hole in his chest.
“Who…
the hell are you…” Barnes wheezed.
“Did we…
cross you?” *Right!
Why did we have to pick a fight with 6th Street?!* David wanted an answer to that question too.
Unfortunately, Jake didn’t bother answering Barnes.
He lowered the rifle and shoved the hot barrel straight into the man’s mouth.
The dying gang leader stared wide-eyed at his killer, but David’s brown eyes were completely hollow.
Barnes understood.
There was no reason—or rather, the reason didn’t matter at all.
*Bang!* Barnes’s head slammed back against the pavement, going completely still.
A sudden silence fell over the scene.
Only the corporate employee remained, slumped in the corner a short distance away, his pants soaked through.
Jake adeptly searched the corpses, gathering useful gear.
Finally, his hands pulled a set of vehicle keys from the belt of one of the bodies.
David stood up and walked toward the bullet-riddled motorcycle parked under the overpass.
“Bikes are great.” “Finally got a ride…”