Get comfortable, turn the page, and let’s see what this story has been hiding 🔥 ✦ “Good morning, Night City!” “Yesterday’s final Body Count Lottery came to a nice, clean thirty.” “Thanks to nonstop gang shootouts, Heywood alone gave us ten.” “But an officer bought it too, so I say all of you owe damages…” Cade lay face-down on the bed.
His fingertips twitched.
Outside the window, an AV roared past, and the television kept chattering.
This was Cade’s home.
Compared to the half-finished ruins scattered through Dogtown, it was not a bad little bolt-hole.
Now that he had fully merged with the original owner’s memories, everything around him felt both familiar and strange.
He pushed himself up from the bed, his whole body sore.
“Heh.
A new day in Night City…
no.
Dogtown.” Cade moved his cyberware through a quick check, grabbed a Gold Medal burrito from the table, and took a few bites.
Once he confirmed all his physical indicators had returned to normal, he finally relaxed.
The phone rang.
When he answered, Otto’s exaggerated face appeared on the other end.
“You little shit.
Yesterday you burned through three of my Bounce Backs.
I’m telling you, Mercer, you need to save some real eddies and swap out that ancient cyberware.” Cade nodded.
Otto was not wrong.
Then again, Otto had smoked plenty of Glitter Cade had paid for.
‘Please don’t tell me he is calling to collect.’ “Relax, choom.
I’m not some debt collector knocking on your door.
If you’ve got time, swing by the camp next to the checkpoint.
Hansen said our soldier should get his gun back.” “And a friendly reminder.
Keep the colonel’s business in mind.
Don’t start chasing random noise.” “Later, choom.
Drinks when you’re free.” After Otto hung up, Cade fell into thought.
Yesterday, Hansen had told him to go to Heavy Hearts, one of Dogtown’s best-known landmarks, but Cade still did not know who he was supposed to meet.
A hoarse voice surfaced in his mind, attached to a man whose whole face hid in shadow.
‘It can’t be Mr.
Hands, can it?
Pacifica’s famous fixer?’ It was 2075.
Cade was not sure whether Mr.
Hands had already become a major name in the district.
If it turned out to be someone he did not know, handling this would get a lot more troublesome.
His biggest advantage right now was his rough understanding of these people’s personalities.
Fixers moved between every power in Night City.
It was a high-risk, high-reward profession.
Plenty of edgerunners thought a job was just a matter of passing goods from one hand to another, so why let a fixer step in and take a fat cut?
The truth was that fixers with reach in every corner always attracted big clients, and they could smooth over most of the trouble for the people doing the dirty work.
Without fixers working both sides, most jobs that could not survive daylight would never happen at all.
Cade left the maze of stacked shacks, stepping down a creaking makeshift ladder toward ground level.
In the distance, the large tree covered in candles stirred up a flood of hot, vivid memories of this world.
In another life, he had controlled V and spoken with Johnny beneath that memorial tree.
Maybe, like him, V had been lost then too, unsure where to go next.
And now all of it had become real.
The regrets, the friendships, the fire in people’s blood.
None of it had reached the tracks it was supposed to follow yet.
‘Wonder what V is doing right now.
Man?
Woman?’ Cade made himself a small joke, and his heavy mood eased a little.
The phone rang.
[Incoming Call: Unknown] “Hello, my friend.
This is Mr.
Hands.” Cade felt steadier at once.
At least he knew this man.
He nodded.
“The famous Mr.
Hands.
An honor.” The mysterious fixer on the other end, his features hidden, sounded faintly surprised.
Then he gave a soft laugh.
His voice was elegant and easygoing.
“Rare that Colonel Hansen can pick out such a charming subordinate.
Come to Heavy Hearts Club.
I heard you were badly hurt yesterday, so I gave you time, my friend.” “Of course, I won’t wait too long.
There are matters we need to discuss face-to-face.” Cade nodded.
Mr.
Hands wasted no time and ended the call as soon as he finished.
Cade headed toward the road outside the unfinished Dogtown high-rises, the broken stretch that connected the district’s major buildings.
Then spit landed perfectly by his foot.
“Fucking Barghest.
Useless now too.
Pah.” A vendor crouched beneath a scaffold, selling a mess of odds and ends while cursing nonstop.
Only then did Cade remember that yesterday, he had still been one of Colonel Hansen’s tools for pressuring Dogtown’s residents.
Now, apparently, Barghest had kicked him out.
‘Don’t panic.’ The next second, Cade’s hand clamped around the vendor’s jaw.
Passersby stopped around them, drawn in by the shouting.
Some looked afraid.
Some looked excited.
A few even urged the vendor to fight back.
“Hey!
Easy, choom.” The vendor had not expected a soldier kicked out of Barghest to still have cyberware.
Cade’s hand squeezed like an iron vise, hard enough that the chrome in the man’s face seemed ready to crack.
The vendor folded immediately.
Barghest’s crimes were not Cade Mercer’s, and Cade had no intention of swallowing the fallout alone.
His survival instincts gave the man a lesson at once.
“I hope you can keep that mouth a little cleaner.
Whether I am Barghest or not is one thing.
It doesn’t mean I won’t deal with you.” “Be smart, yeah?” Cade knew that if he walked away with his hands in his pockets and pretended nothing had happened, the trouble later would not be any smaller.
Fortunately, his cyberware was more than enough to handle a foul-mouthed stall owner.
“I live here.
You run your business.
OK?” The owner nodded frantically, and Cade let go at once.
The crowd watched him leave with his hands in his pockets.
People muttered friendly little greetings about the parents of Barghest soldiers, then scattered.
Time passed quickly in the game, but reality was different.
Dogtown was huge, and the road behind the unfinished high-rises was long enough that Cade was panting by the time he got through it.
Blame this body’s previous owner.
The moment military pay hit his account, it went into Glitter mixed with harder shit, or into gambling.
Either way, the man had not even owned a broken-down car.
After two hours on foot, Cade entered the camp.
The moment he came through the gate, the Barghest soldiers stopped whatever they had been doing for fun.
Every one of them stared at the young man who no longer looked like a Barghest soldier at all.
Since the guards had let him in, though, none of them bothered with it.
“Your rifle.
And some money Hansen sent you.
Oh, I took a cut.
Call it my fee.” A female soldier with a mohawk had her uniform jacket tied around her waist.
A rose tattoo climbed her arm, and a cigarette hung from her lips as she tossed Cade’s rifle over.
Her eyes lit up.
Cade’s nearly dry account gained one thousand eddies.
“How much did you take?” “Three hundred.
Don’t like it, tell the colonel.
Now get lost.” Cade blinked.
He did not move.
“Give it back.” The woman clicked her tongue and was about to flare up when a soldier beside her exhaled a harsh cloud of Glitter.
“Give it to him, girl.
No need.
Otto already…” “Fine.
Tough guy.” Only after the remaining three hundred eddies entered his account did Cade ask the male soldier about Otto.
“Where’s Otto?
Didn’t he say he was handling my gear?” The man stood, grabbed Cade by the shoulder, and pushed him toward the exit.
“Who knows?
Dead in some girl’s room, probably.
Either way, get the fuck out and stop asking.” Cade called Otto, planning to tell him he had picked up the gear.
It was a matter of courtesy.
The call rang for a long time, but no one answered.
Cade could only give up.
He looked toward the Heavy Hearts Club in the distance, shining under the sun like a transparent pyramid, and took the next step of his life in this world.
The…
how many steps had it been now?
Forget it.
It was a good start, wasn’t it?
✦ ✦ ✦ 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.