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"My neighbor?" Jax stared at Maine, his heart skipping a beat. "Wait, Maine, are you talking about Gloria Martinez?"
"Yes. Didn't expect that, did you?" Maine nodded, a look of grim amusement on his face.
Maine had been just as shocked when he first pieced it together. He'd been a regular on a specific encrypted deep-net forum for years, buying and selling high-grade chrome. In that digital underworld, Gloria was a ghost—a legend known only by her efficiency. She used automated street-kiosks for dead drops; you sent the eddies to a shadowed account, and she sent a GPS coordinate and a one-time passcode. No face-to-face, no questions.
The forum dwellers had spun wild theories: she was an Arasaka defector, a Militech smuggler, or a high-ranking NCPD mole. Nobody—literally nobody—would have guessed she was a tired woman in a yellow jumpsuit, scrubbing blood off hospital floors.
"That woman is selling military-grade chrome? How?" Jackie asked, disbelief coloring his voice. "She looks... well, she looks like my mom. Just an ordinary lady trying to get by."
Dorio rolled her eyes at Jackie's innocence. "Jackie, honey, your mom owns a bar in the heart of Heywood. In this city, you don't 'own' a bar without being harder than the concrete it's built on. 'Ordinary' is a mask people wear so they don't get stepped on."
Viktor, who had been listening while analyzing the material stress points for Jax's new blade, leaned in. He wasn't much for gossip, but the logistics of Gloria's life were a medical and social anomaly.
"Ordinary?" Maine chuckled, his voice dripping with street-worn cynicism. "How can an ordinary woman cross class boundaries in Night City? Do you know what the tuition is for Arasaka Academy? A cleaner's salary wouldn't cover the coffee pods in the faculty lounge."
"You think David got in on 'talent'?" Maine continued. "Talent is a pile of stinking dog shit in the face of class. There are thousands of 'geniuses' rotting in the slums of Santo Domingo. To get a seat in that Academy, you need more than brains. You need eddies. Deep, dirty eddies."
Jax felt a chill. He remembered the anime now—the subtle hints of Gloria's side-hustle. She was a scavenger of a different sort, harvesting high-end tech from the "donors" who ended up on her cold hospital tables. That's where the Sandevistan had come from—a dead cyberpsycho soldier whose gear was too valuable to let go to waste.
"Can we move our Nightwalker haul through her?" Kiwi asked, her mind already calculating the commission.
"I think so," Maine said. "If we use her established 'ghost' identity, we bypass the Fixer's 20% cut and avoid the trail leading back to us. In Night City, black-on-black crime is more regular than a heartbeat. If you meet a stranger in an alley to sell a gun, you're usually just paying them to kill you. But Gloria? She has a reputation to protect."
But as the crew plotted their next move, Jax stood up so abruptly his chair screeched against the concrete floor.
The realization hit him like a physical blow. This morning, David had mentioned the software. Sasha had warned him about Arasaka's firewalls. The timeline wasn't just moving—it was accelerating. In the original story, the failure of that pirated software was the catalyst. It led to the school's retaliation, the car accident, and Gloria's death.
If it was 2076... if this was the day...
"Jax? What's the matter?" Maine asked, his hand drifting toward his holster at Jax's sudden intensity.
Jax didn't answer. His internal HUD flickered as a call bypassed his "Do Not Disturb" settings.
[CALLER: DAVID MARTINEZ]
Jax swiped to accept the call. The audio was a chaotic mess of sirens, screaming servos, and David's panicked, sobbing breath.
"Jax... Mr. Jax... I messed up. The software—it fried the whole classroom's neural links. The principal... my mom... she's coming to pick me up, but the Academy security is holding us... they're talking about 'damages' in the millions..."
Jax's eyes went cold. "David, where are you exactly?"
"We're leaving the campus gates now... Mom is driving me home, but she's crying... she says we're ruined..."
Jax heard a faint, high-pitched whistle over the comms—the sound of an accelerating vehicle. Then, the unmistakable roar of an engine that didn't belong to a civilian car.
"David! Tell your mom to get off the main highway! Now!" Jax roared.
But it was too late. Through the speaker, Jax heard the screech of tires, the crunch of reinforced steel, and a deafening explosion. Then, silence.
Jax looked at the crew, his face a mask of predatory focus. "The Academy job just went sideways. Maine, get the car. We're heading to the city-center highway. Now!"
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