Inside the train car, the moment Kai actually revealed his identity, Daut and the others went deathly pale.
How could they possibly have imagined that an M-rank Arasaka executive, the Deputy Director of Counterintel, would be riding public transit?
In their minds, corporate executives either traveled in luxury sedans or flew around in AVs.
And on top of that, he looked absurdly young.
They had never even seen him around the company before.
Did that mean he had even deeper backing?
They did not dare keep thinking about it.
At that point, all they had left inside them was shock and regret.
Arasaka's hierarchy was absolute.
Rank decided almost everything.
Daut knew that this time, the person he had offended was a Counterintel executive.
If things were ever investigated, he might simply disappear from Night City.
Arasaka was ruthless with its enemies.
It was even colder toward its own people.
Kai looked at them icily.
"Anything else you want to ask?"
The transit security supervisor immediately apologized and quickly led the other officers away from the scene.
As for Daut and the others, they had already realized how serious the situation was.
They stood there frozen, full of dread, not knowing whether they should leave or stay.
Kai had no interest in wasting energy on low-level corpo rats.
"I've remembered your information."
"I don't want to see any of you in Arasaka Tower again."
The moment he finished speaking, the station announcement reported that Santo Domingo, Arroyo station had arrived.
Kai left those words behind and stepped off the train without another glance.
Daut and the others were left slumped on the floor, completely lost.
That single sentence had practically been a death sentence.
Their only real way out now was to leave Arasaka.
Kai exited the transit station and walked through the streets of Santo Domingo.
The lively scene here was completely different from the polished order of City Center.
Along the roadside stood old power plants.
People in simple clothes drifted through the streets, some smoking, some reading newsfeeds with their heads down, some hungover and vomiting against railings. Some lay on the curb with braindance wreaths on, lost in rotten little dream worlds. If you walked a few steps farther, you could run right into a hot-tempered couple screaming at each other on the street, both of them already pulling guns.
In Arroyo, everybody lived rough.
But they also lived freely.
Kai, on the other hand, stood out completely.
His all-black retro suit was perfectly tailored, sharp and elegant, completely out of place in the chaos around him.
He even drew the attention of a few street punks.
Truthfully, Kai had not originally intended to interfere in the silver-haired edgerunner girl's business.
But the moment he actually caught her, the system had given him a prompt.
[Lucy] (Simulate? Yes/No)
That was why, after grabbing her, he started thinking seriously about who she was.
If the system gave a simulation prompt, that could only mean one thing.
Her future life was anything but ordinary.
At the very least, she would leave her own mark on Night City.
A silver-haired girl with the nerve to lift chips from Arasaka employees, a young edgerunner netrunner whose age and skill level did not match at all.
From the methods she used, it was obvious she was intimately familiar with Arasaka employee ICE, and the hacking techniques she used were Arasaka's too.
In his previous life, Kai had been one of the most dangerous netrunners still breathing in Night City.
No exaggeration.
Even though he still had not undergone any cyberware implantation in this life, his judgment and experience remained razor sharp.
Kai had initially wanted to run a life simulation on the silver-haired girl right there in the train car.
But the option had appeared gray, unavailable.
So he let her go.
His conclusion was simple.
Maybe she had not yet reached the turning point in her life that would trigger a true legendary path.
Night City was not that big.
Or maybe it was not that small.
Legends always collided with other legends sooner or later.
When he had first come to Night City, he had met Jackie, Johnny, and Viktor.
Later he ended up crossing paths with V, Rogue, and so many other legends.
As for simulating the silver-haired girl, he was in no hurry.
Following the home address from David's file, Kai went straight to the apartment.
He passed through hallways piled with black trash bags, then through dim corridors littered with drunks and homeless people, until he finally stopped in front of a yellow steel security door.
[Call Gloria]
It did not take long.
The door opened.
Standing before him was a woman with light makeup and sharp, handsome features. Her trademark red ponytail was tied behind her head, and she wore a cyberpunk-style yellow jacket.
Aside from the obvious exhaustion in her expression, it was unmistakably Gloria.
From Gloria's side, what she saw was a young man in a sharp suit.
His clean, angular features made him look less like a corporate employee and more like some young heir from a powerful family.
Unlike many other people, Gloria did not hate corpo employees.
Or rather, she did not hate Arasaka employees.
After all, her dream was for David to join Arasaka one day.
Seeing that Kai had become an Arasaka executive at such a young age seemed to make her even more certain that David's future could still amount to something.
"I didn't expect you to be this young, Mr. Kai. Sorry to make you come all the way out here. Please, come in."
As she spoke, Gloria stepped aside to let him in.
Her tone was respectful and compliant.
Part of that was because he was Arasaka management.
Part of it was because he had saved both her and David.
And maybe there was also a little shame mixed in there.
After all, she had stolen the implant.
In Night City, theft was almost too common to mention.
But facing the person who had saved her life made it much harder to ignore.
More than anything, she did not want David to find out.
In truth, Kai did not have a bad impression of the woman in front of him.
From David's file, he had already learned that Gloria was, more than anything else, a mother who had placed limitless hope in her son's future and was willing to give everything for it.
In Night City, human relationships were rarely pure anymore.
Even family ties were usually compromised in one way or another.
Very few people could give as selflessly and as far-sightedly as Gloria had.
In fact, Kai thought her approach had been the most realistic one possible.
If someone from the bottom of Night City wanted to climb into higher social circles, the corps were still the best route upward.
And not every corporation offered something like Arasaka Academy, where anyone could attend as long as they could pay.
But from what Kai knew, David had truly been the only student there from an ordinary background.
That was why he had always seemed so out of place among his classmates.
You could say that putting David through Arasaka Academy had cost Gloria almost all of her own future.
She was using her body and her time like cement and rebar, trying to lay a faster, better road for David through the mud.
Gloria took some drinks and an unopened bottle of whiskey out of the fridge and asked Kai which he wanted.
Kai walked over himself and took the unopened whiskey, glancing at the label.
A decently aged Scotch.
She had put thought into picking it.
But looking at the apartment as a whole, it was obvious Gloria was not someone who could afford to drink expensive liquor often.
Kai rarely drank.
Back then, if he did drink, it was usually only with Jackie or Viktor at Lizzie's or the Afterlife.
On his own, he kept alcohol to a minimum.
Today, though, he was in the mood.
Because he had just received a new message.
Lucy: Maine is already on his way to find Gloria. If you want the thing you're after, moving too slowly will cost you your chance.
Waiting always went better with good liquor.
(End of Chapter)
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