"West gate. Lower service entrance. I'm in."
Sasha's voice was a rhythmic whisper in the comms. She was a shadow in a black bodysuit, her pink jacket discarded or tucked away, leaning into the industrial wall of the Biotechnica park.
"I've mapped the sweep," she continued, her eyes darting behind her visor. "Hall 2 has a camera on a ninety-degree swivel. Northeast has another. I drop those, we have a clear run to the elevators. I'll need ninety seconds to crack the lift and another thirty to hit the fourteenth floor. Two minutes total, start to finish. Pilar, talk to me."
Jax squatted behind her, his eyes fixed on the perimeter. The Biotechnica campus was a sprawling forest of glass and steel. To the west, the neon fish of the Arasaka towers swam through the smog; to the east, the downtown overpass flickered with the frantic pulse of Night City. Maine and the others were out there, waiting on that bridge, five minutes away from being their only hope.
"Jammer is hot, Sasha," Pilar's voice crackled. No jokes this time. No "quack." Just the cold gravity of a techie holding a ticking clock. "Max window is five minutes. One second over and the looping footage burns out. They'll see the static, and then they'll see you. Clock starts... now."
"Enough," Sasha clipped. She killed the wide-channel comms, leaving only a private link to Jax. A small, cat-like smirk played on her lips. "Stay on my heels. No wandering, no sightseeing. Once we hit the fourteenth, you anchor the elevator. If a mouse farts in the hallway, I want to know about it. Don't worry about the scanners; I've ghosted your signature."
"Copy," Jax said.
Sasha's fingers danced across her deck. A soft click echoed in the damp air as the west gate camera spasmed and died. She didn't wait. She scaled the two-meter wall with the fluid grace of a predator. By the time she landed and turned to check her "rookie" shadow, Jax was already crouched beside her, his dark eyes scanning the interior.
She didn't waste breath being surprised. They moved.
Sasha was a blur of efficiency. At the service door, she slapped a bypass unit against the panel. Steam began to vent from her neck ports—the telltale sign of a deck running red-hot. The door hissed open. Inside, she dropped two more cameras with a flick of her wrist, her mind already navigating the building's internal nervous system.
At the elevator, she didn't bother with a keycard. Silver light flashed as her Mantis Blades slid from her forearms—not for killing, but for surgery. She peeled back the wall panel like it was wet cardboard, exposing the guts of the lift's brain. More steam. More heat.
The doors groaned open. She stepped in and tapped the silver ring at her temple, signaling Jax to open their private neural link.
Connected, her voice echoed in his head. Don't talk unless the building starts falling down.
Jax watched the doors slide shut. He was alone in the lobby, a biological ghost in a temple of silicon.
Twenty seconds later, the announcement whispered: "Fourteenth floor arrived."
Sasha moved through the fourteenth floor like a phantom. She bypassed two security patrols, her internal clock screaming at her, until she found the R&D office. One final password, and she was in.
She slumped into the swivel chair, her breath coming in ragged hitches. This was the easy part. This was home. She hummed a low, tuneless melody as she jacked in, her consciousness splintering into the Biotechnica sub-net.
R&D data... Securicine accounts... Found you.
Jax heard her humming through the link. He didn't interrupt. He stood by the elevator, his muscles coiled, feeling the vibration of the building.
Inside the net, Sasha began the data transfer. But as the progress bar climbed, her eyes caught a folder in the corner of the directory. Securicine.
The name hit her like a physical blow. Memories, jagged and sharp, tore through her focus. A younger version of herself, a cold room, a mother's face wasting away, and a bottle of "life-saving" medicine that had been anything but.
She opened the file.
INTERNAL MEMO: Securicine clinical trials. Results: Effective pain management. 88% probability of degenerative nerve lesions. RECOMMENDATION: Reject drug recall. Proceed with market rollout.
The world went silent.
"How's it going, Sasha?" Maine's voice broke into the channel, thick with urgency. "Time's up! You have sixty seconds before the jammer blows!"
"Sasha?"
"I'm sorry, Maine," she whispered.
"What? Sasha, talk to me! What are you—"
Click. She severed the link.
She wasn't just a mercenary tonight. She pulled the data cable from her port and slammed it into a secondary upload—the 54 News hotline.
"So," a voice rumbled in her mind. Jax. She'd forgotten to cut him off. "Is this the variable?"
"It's my business, Jax. Mind yours," Sasha snapped, her fingers flying as the upload bar crawled. "Get out of here. Maine's coming for you. Go."
"And you?"
Sasha smiled, a sad, beautiful thing. "If I don't make it, take my share of the eddies. Call it a veteran's gift to the rookie."
She cut the link.
UPLOAD: 80%... 85%...
The jammer died. The building woke up in a frenzy of red lights and howling sirens. The office door was kicked open by a security bot, its optics glowing a lethal crimson.
"UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL. SURRENDER OR—"
Sasha didn't let it finish. Her Mantis Blades snapped out, and she took the bot's head in a single, blurring arc. She was pinned to the desk by the data cable, her head swimming with the heat of the hack. She burned a Cyberpsychosis quickhack into the next bot, her vision blurring as the feedback scorched her brain.
UPLOAD: 95%...
A submachine gun barked. A bullet tore through her left shoulder, spinning her around. The force of the impact sent her reeling toward the floor-to-ceiling window—already spiderwebbed from the bot's stray fire.
UPLOAD SUCCESSFUL.
The cable snapped. Sasha fell backward, the glass shattering into a million diamond shards as she tumbled into the cold, midnight air of the City Center. She closed her eyes. She'd done it. She'd given her mother an answer. The fall was a small price to pay.
But the terminal velocity never came.
Instead of the cold embrace of death, she felt the jarring, solid warmth of a human body. The scent of cheap laundry detergent and old whiskey filled her lungs.
Sasha opened her eyes, dazed. She was being held against a broad chest, the wind whipping around them as they plummeted. She looked up and saw a refined, calm face—completely natural, completely human.
"You haven't told me how much money you plan to give me yet," Jax said, his voice steady even as the ground rushed up to meet them.
He looked at her with a terrifying, serious intensity. And for the first time in her life, Sasha felt like she wasn't the only ghost in the room.