Get comfortable, turn the page, and let’s see what this story has been hiding 🔥 ✦ “Now do you understand what’s going on?!” Cade shouted over the gunfire.
Something clicked in Maine’s head too.
He finally realized the whole thing had been a setup.
“Dorio!
Barghest wants us dead too!” Only a thin wall separated them now, so their voices carried with brutal clarity.
Cade’s pistol rounds slapped uselessly against the armored drone.
He backed up fast, hauled the sniper rifle into position, and pulled the trigger through a storm of incoming fire.
The Nekomata’s penetration did its job.
The drone dropped hard, burst against the ground, and threw fire across the dark.
“Good shot!” Maine barked a laugh and praised him for handling the drone, then kept yelling for his crew to pull back.
‘Good, my ass.’ “Barghest sold you out too, idiot.
How does that feel?” Cade pressed his lips tight and did not answer.
His heart was hammering so hard it felt ready to split his ribs.
He secured the weapon, turned, and sprinted in the opposite direction without looking back.
This was no longer about whether he could spare Maine’s crew.
He could barely keep himself alive.
‘What the hell is happening?’ [Incoming Call: Mr.
Hands] [No Answer] Red call-light flickered across Cade’s cybereyes again and again.
As he ran through the night, he forced the whole chain of events through his head.
Mr.
Hands had hired a Dogtown fixer to check the shipment.
Cade had been ordered to stop the edgerunners who came sniffing around the cargo.
Then Arasaka and Militech runners had entered the board.
Where had it gone wrong?
Wait.
Mr.
Hands’s smiling question cracked through Cade’s memory like thunder.
“You know her?” Was it Sasha?
Cade thought he had covered himself cleanly.
Why had Hands been so sure he knew that crew?
His stomach sank.
He still did not know why Militech’s netrunner had burned Hamster, but one thing was clear.
This was corporate water, black and deep.
He was bait.
Once bait hit the water, big fish and little fish alike tore at it until the pond turned red.
In the end, the corps stirred everything into mud and called it strategy.
No one answered the call.
Cade finally understood the lesson.
Night City did not do trust.
His arrogance had almost killed him.
He had thought he understood Mr.
Hands.
Worse, he had thought of himself as a “player” standing on the same level as the fixer.
Plenty of mercs died under a fixer’s hand in Night City.
That was the blood-soaked truth.
“You played me?” Cade glanced back at Heavy Hearts, at the green laser knifing into the sky.
Right then, he wanted to throw the rifle into Hands’s face and empty his pistol into him for good measure.
Reason won.
It usually did.
Cade clenched his teeth, balled his hand into a fist, and kept running.
He knew one thing: if he stopped, the worst possible ending would catch him.
From the start, he had focused too much on the panel and its attribute gains.
He had forgotten that this entire world ran on its darkest side.
Human motives could not be predicted by any stat sheet.
Rewards could go to hell.
Staying alive mattered more than anything.
As far as Cade was concerned, he had done more than enough for Maine’s crew.
Before long, several more figures appeared in the distance, running in the same direction.
Cade was so angry he almost laughed.
Heroics could win a struggle, maybe, but only when the hero had the power to back them up.
He had tried to warn them and failed.
It was Barghest, not him, that had finally knocked some sense into their skulls.
Idiots.
Every last one of them.
Cade was done worrying about them.
He vaulted over a half-finished Dogtown level and slid down the side on a rusted iron brace, sparks biting at his clothes.
His target was the right side of Dogtown, where the Voodoo Boys often gathered near the hill.
From there, he could cut toward other parts of the district.
Barghest raising hell nearby would stir up gang trouble, and Cade planned to use that confusion to disappear, lie low, and breathe.
On the other side, Maine’s crew was running in the same retreat direction.
Ditching their vehicle had been their only choice.
The roads through Dogtown were crawling with Barghest.
“What did Sasha say?” Dorio asked, her voice low.
Rebecca snapped a shot over her shoulder and staggered a drone for half a second before turning back to run.
“Maine, what about the fixer?” Maine shook his head.
“Can’t reach him.
That kid was bait, same as us.
Sasha says Militech and Arasaka are tearing into each other.” “So someone wants to wipe out the whole chain,” Dorio said.
“The intel was fake.
Arasaka’s runners are hitting the data.
Nobody touches it now.” Pilar shouted, “Drone on us!
Fuck!
I told you staying home and working on my new build was the real job!” “Quit whining, asshole!” Rebecca fired and clipped the drone off his back, cursing her cheap brother the whole time.
She also noticed the young man dropping off the distant ruin.
Something strange moved through her expression.
She still did not know why that guy had known her name, but they had all fallen into the same pit tonight.
Even Maine had not expected this job to drag them into Night City’s true giants.
The fixer had sold it simply: some client wanted to poke Dogtown, make them sweat, and pay well for it.
Six months of food money.
Nobody said no to that.
“Ahem.
This is Colonel Kurt Hansen.” The public speakers scattered through Dogtown crackled to life.
Hansen’s voice rolled through every corner of the district.
“Dogtown is the home we survive in.
We arm ourselves because no one else will protect us.” “But now those Militech and Arasaka bastards want us to lay down our weapons and take orders like good little dogs.” “There will be no compromise here.” “People of Dogtown, pick up your weapons and deal with the scum that entered our paradise.” “I, Kurt Hansen, swear this: every Dogtown resident’s rights will be protected.
Let those corporate whores burn.” “The corporations violated our interests.
I will make sure all of Night City sees their true face.” ‘Nice.
Redirect the disaster and let someone else drown in it.’ Cade understood Hansen’s play.
It was simple: Dogtown had been wronged, so every bucket of filth got dumped onto corporate heads until the corps started biting each other.
Before his old life ended, Cade had never fully understood how Dogtown could squat inside Night City without anyone daring to move on it.
Even the NUSA and Night City’s own authorities avoided taking a public stance.
In theory, Militech, Arasaka, Kang Tao, and the rest had the power to confront Dogtown directly.
The NUSA could flatten this private little fortress with Militech if it wanted.
But reality played out like a hostage problem.
Whoever moved first exposed the most weakness.
Someone else would always be watching from behind, waiting for a gap and a profit.
When two predators tore each other open, the scavenger walked away full.
The corps also had to keep their distance from this powder keg of a district.
Hansen wanted them snapping at each other.
The more they fought, the more he could sit back and watch the damage spread.
And behind Hansen there were still Havana-linked “pharmaceutical” interests.
Whenever a cigar was lit in Havana, someone somewhere seemed to die for it.
That was why Hansen lived so comfortably in Night City.
The reasons finally locked together in Cade’s head.
Cade’s clearest knowledge of this world covered only 2076 to 2077, and even then mostly the stories of several legends.
Whether the world would follow the route he remembered was unknown.
Night City’s first lesson was more than he could afford to swallow.
It slapped the fog out of him completely.
✦ ✦ ✦ Ready for more?
CREATORS’ THOUGHTS EmberHollow Thank you for reading.
I hope this chapter pulled you deeper into the story.
Stick around, because there’s still a lot waiting just ahead.