"Ding-dong. Train arriving. Next stop..."
Kai noticed the open train doors, then looked back at the silver-haired girl in front of him.
There was a trace of humiliation and anger in her cold gaze.
If he chose to keep holding her, there was no doubt he would end up surrounded by transit security, while also drawing the hostility of the Arasaka employees nearby.
The seconds kept slipping away.
The silver-haired girl clenched both fists tightly but said nothing.
Clearly, even if she got caught, she had no intention of begging him.
In the end, just before the train doors closed, Kai pulled her by the wrist and shoved her out through the open door in one smooth motion.
The girl stumbled outside, then immediately turned back in shock to stare at Kai inside the carriage.
He had actually let her go?
As she looked at him in disbelief, the train doors slowly closed.
Two transit security officers rushed toward the doorway, trying to get out before it sealed, but they were already too late.
They were trapped inside the car.
The silver-haired girl rubbed her sore wrist and saw that Kai was now surrounded by several security officers, who seemed to be questioning him.
But before she could watch any longer, the train had already started moving again, accelerating toward the next stop.
The wind stirred her silver hair.
She lifted her hand and looked at the faint finger marks around her wrist, as if lost in thought.
Then she opened her palm.
A black storage chip still rested there.
She froze for a moment, then slowly closed her fingers around it again and looked up toward the direction the train had gone, letting out a self-mocking little laugh.
Inside the carriage, Kai was already boxed in by transit security, with several suited passengers crowding nearby.
He knew that even though he was dressed like any other corporate employee, there was no visible Arasaka insignia on him.
He did not like displaying his Arasaka identity everywhere, in fact he hated it.
That was why he had refused Jenkins's offer of the AV too.
If he did not still need the corp for certain things, he would have stopped playing corpo rat a long time ago.
Since Kai had never undergone any cyberware implantation, and because of his youthful face, it was easy for people to mistake him for some junior employee from a smaller company, the kind of office grunt who worked endless overtime while desperately trying to climb upward.
Compared to the relatively calm transit security officers, the suited passengers who had lost chips were far more agitated and immediately started shouting at Kai.
"He's definitely involved! He let that girl go. They must be working together. Arrest him and question him right now!"
"Exactly! Our chips were all stolen just now. That thief had to be the one who took them. This can't just be dropped!"
"Right! Grab him! If you have to, send him to NCPD and make him explain exactly what his relationship is with that thief!"
The suited passengers grew more and more emotional, the Arasaka insignia on their badges making their corporate standing obvious.
People in Night City might sneer at corpo rats, but when it came to status and actual power, corpos absolutely had the advantage.
And Arasaka corpos even more so.
Kai thought to himself that he had only been away for a short while, and it seemed plenty of people in Arasaka had already forgotten the reputation he used to carry.
Ever since joining Counterintel, he had handled multiple internal leak cases, and more than a few Arasaka employees had been sent straight to hell because of him.
In theory, Kai had the authority to suspect and investigate any Arasaka employee he wanted.
That was the terrifying part of the power in his hands.
Especially after becoming Deputy Director of Counterintel, most people in the company greeted him with a smile.
Whether that smile was fake or hiding a knife behind it, at least nobody dared offend him openly.
Making corpo rats fear him was the best image he could possibly have.
And now these idiots had apparently forgotten the pain.
That meant they needed a reminder.
Seeing Kai alone in the carriage, the transit security supervisor stepped forward and asked in routine fashion,
"Please present your ID."
Because Kai had no implanted cyberware, his information could not simply be scanned directly.
And as Deputy Director of Counterintel, his personal information was tightly classified.
Without the proper level of access or the right tools, getting it was not easy.
Kai glanced at the aggressive suited passengers behind the security officers and said flatly,
"According to Article 132 of the Night City Resident Code, personal identity information may not be checked at random without legitimate cause or clear evidence. Electronic scanning and intrusive acquisition of personal data constitutes illegal invasion of privacy."
"I'm sure transit security personnel know that, right?"
The supervisor was clearly caught off guard.
His cyberoptic pulled up the relevant statute immediately, and it turned out Kai was absolutely right.
In Night City, everyone trampled legal codes into the mud and treated street rules as the real law of life.
But those written statutes still had their uses on the surface.
Maybe they meant nothing in a back-alley brawl.
Here, though, they worked perfectly.
The supervisor tried to find a way around it.
"Sir, we don't mean anything improper."
"That female passenger was under suspicion of theft, and when we were moving to question her, you let her go."
"We now need you to explain that action. If you refuse to cooperate with our law enforcement duties, we will be forced to verify your identity by compulsory means."
"I hope you understand."
One of the suited passengers jumped in immediately.
"Why waste so much time talking? Just arrest him and question him later. He's definitely involved!"
Kai put his portable comm unit back on, then looked past the transit security officers at the Arasaka employee who had just spoken.
"Daut. Arasaka G2 standard employee. Special Ops division. Joined Arasaka three months ago and only recently passed probation."
Then Kai turned to another suited passenger.
"Leon. Arasaka G3 standard employee. Crisis Management division. Employed by Arasaka for one year and four months..."
The faces of the suited men froze as Kai casually reeled off their names one by one.
Their employment records were the kind of information only an internal employee or a hacker with a serious breach could get.
But their cyberware monitoring systems showed no signs of intrusion at all.
That meant only one thing.
The man in front of them was Arasaka.
And not low-ranking either.
Not only were the corporate employees stunned into silence, even the transit security officers looked lost.
Clearly, this young man was not nearly as simple as he had first appeared.
Daut, the lead passenger, suddenly felt his legs trembling.
All the aggression from before had vanished.
He could only ask in a shaky voice,
"Y-you... are you from HR?"
Even now, Daut still could not accept the idea that Kai might actually outrank him.
The man looked younger than he was.
At most, he should have been another recent hire.
So Daut clung to the thought that maybe he was from HR, because that would at least explain why he knew some employee details.
It was the only way he could keep comforting himself.
Kai transmitted his ID wirelessly through the comm unit over his left eye, sending it to both the transit security officers and the handful of Arasaka employees.
In an instant, Daut and the others went pale.
Yellow rings of code glowed in their pupils as their cyberoptics processed the information.
They stood there rooted to the spot, completely stunned.
Their minds were in chaos, and even their tongues began to trip over themselves.
"D-Deputy Director of Counterintel?!"
(End of Chapter)
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