Westbrook, Japantown.
In the small plaza outside the TURGO convenience store, several modified muscle cars were parked along the edges, while loud punk rock blasted nonstop through the night.
A crowd of edgerunners, many of them sporting all kinds of gleaming metal chrome, sat around three hot-food stalls in the plaza, drinking beer and chatting freely.
Pilar, the skinny bearded guy with the wiry frame, was weaving around with a tray full of beer, showing off by juggling it between customers and friends like some kind of street performer.
Dorio tossed several empty bottles at him one after another, and Pilar caught every single one with those long cybernetic arms of his.
Pilar proudly showed them off.
"My fingers are incredible! You don't think so?"
Dorio laughed helplessly.
"Now everybody knows what you get up to with those fingers at night."
Then she made a quick little motion in the air with one hand, and the whole group around them immediately burst into bad-natured laughter.
That only seemed to make Pilar prouder.
He grabbed a beer bottle, gave it a quick wipe, took a swig straight from the neck, and boasted,
"You guessed right. I could do that all day."
That set everyone off again, and the plaza erupted in laughter and applause.
The team's netrunner, Kiwi, was still wrapped in that red outfit that showed off her tall figure. A cigarette hung beneath her faceplate as she sat at the table, tapping away at a laptop.
Perched on the hood of a car, Maine watched everything in front of him, but his expression remained heavy.
Tomorrow night was the deal with Maelstrom.
He had already had Kiwi deliberately leak word of the transaction onto the black-market net.
And Kiwi had successfully intercepted Arasaka intrusion records, confirming that someone on Arasaka's side now knew about it.
As for how Arasaka would act, that depended on Kai's arrangement.
Still, Maine was waiting for someone else.
Someone important.
Whether he would really get to install the military-grade Sandevistan in the end depended entirely on how deeply Arasaka and Militech got pulled into the game.
Just as Maine was thinking that over, his attention was caught by a wine-red luxury sedan rolling slowly into the plaza.
The car door opened.
A white-haired man in a dark red suit stepped out with an arrogant expression. The right side of his face was fitted with a special composite triple cyberoptic. His gaze swept coldly over the entire plaza before finally settling on Maine, seated on the hood.
Maine looked back at him.
This was the man he had been waiting for.
A fixer with Militech at his back.
Faraday.
Even after working with him many times, Maine had never trusted him for a second.
There was only one reason he ever dealt with Faraday.
The money.
In Night City, finding a fixer who both paid well and kept his word was hard. Fixers came in all kinds, some skilled, some sloppy, some reliable, some rotten, and in the end the easiest standard to measure them by was still the payout.
Faraday was one of the strong ones.
Well-connected, high-paying, and backed by Militech, which meant he never had to fear other fixers competing with him.
Maine hopped down from the hood and walked over to him on his own initiative.
This meeting had been his request, so he spoke first.
"I've got an important piece of intel to discuss with you."
Faraday kept one hand in his pocket and looked displeased.
In Night City, it was usually the fixer who handed out work to edgerunners. Put another way, the fixer was the one paying, and that gave him a natural edge.
"You'd better hope it really is important."
He looked down at Maine with the usual lack of respect he reserved for hired muscle. If Maine had not been someone he worked with regularly, Faraday would never have bothered making the trip. The only reason he had come was because Maine had said the intel was closely tied to Militech.
"Get in."
Faraday brought Maine back into the car with him, planning to complete the information exchange there.
The sedan started moving again after they got inside.
Faraday was already suspicious.
He had dealt with Militech enough to know exactly how arrogant those corp dogs were. An edgerunner like Maine would never have had any direct contact with them.
The only real possibility was that Maine had gotten the information from somewhere else.
He broke the silence first.
"Go on, then. Let's hear how much your information is really worth."
Maine knew Faraday was vicious and underhanded, but one thing that had never been questionable was the payout.
So he got straight to it.
"James the cyberpsycho's military-grade Sandevistan is in my hands."
At that, the expressionless look on Faraday's face shifted into a frown.
He had already known the implant had gone missing. He just had not expected it to end up with Maine.
Thinking it through, though, it was not difficult to guess how it had happened.
Some edgerunner, hungry to get stronger, had stolen the implant off James's corpse and found a way to move it. Militech, meanwhile, had shown no intention of retrieving it, so Faraday himself had stopped paying attention to the matter.
Faraday said, "You clearly haven't installed it yet. And if you're planning to sell it back to Militech through me, don't bother."
Maine shook his head.
"I'm not trying to sell you the implant. I'm trying to sell you a piece of intel. About a deal."
Faraday sounded dismissive.
"Then I'll give you a piece of intel for free. That implant's still in human testing. Installing it isn't going to do you any favors."
Maine replied, "And that's exactly why Arasaka wants it. Or more precisely, wants the human test data from it."
Faraday immediately grasped the center of the matter.
Militech might not be planning to recover the implant right now, but that did not mean Arasaka would feel the same.
He sat up straighter, the three lenses in his right eye turning as he stared at Maine.
"So you're saying Arasaka wants that implant. In that case, why don't you just sell it to them?"
Maine let out a grim little laugh.
"Make a deal with Arasaka without a fixer in the middle? I'd like to live a few more years, thanks."
"You've got Militech backing you. You should know exactly how important this is."
"Tomorrow night, nine o'clock. I'll be trading with Maelstrom at the abandoned steel factory in Watson's old industrial district."
"When that happens, Arasaka special ops will definitely come for the implant."
"I want you to persuade Militech to make a move too."
Faraday stared coldly at him, trying to judge how much truth was in the story.
After a long pause, he said,
"So that's what this is. You're trying to use the situation to wash the implant clean, so you don't end up like James and get hounded by the corps until you snap into cyberpsychosis."
"Maine, I know you. You don't have the brains to set up a play like this on your own."
"Which means you've either found yourself a new fixer... or someone new backing you."
Maine looked at the certainty on Faraday's face and almost laughed.
Even if someone beat him to death, Faraday still would not guess that the person Maine was working with was an Arasaka executive.
Working with Arasaka to set up Arasaka.
That would be one hell of a show.
Maine neither denied it nor admitted it.
After all, what he had with Kai was a one-time arrangement, not a new fixer relationship and not some stable pipeline.
"This is the intel I came to sell."
"Whether you choose to work the ambush against Arasaka, or let them take the implant in the end, that's up to you."
"I need this setup to wash the chrome clean."
"And you need this setup to prove your value to Militech."
Faraday considered it.
Yes, there were suspicious points in the story, but the overall risk still sat within acceptable limits.
And more importantly, Maine was right.
Faraday needed a way to prove his worth to Militech.
And nothing proved your usefulness faster than delivering a blow to Arasaka.
Finally, he said,
"I think your intel is worth something."
Then he transferred ten thousand eddies directly into Maine's account.
"That's the deposit. If the plan works, you'll get the rest later."
Faraday regained that lofty air of his and had the sedan brought back to the plaza so Maine could get out.
Once alone again, he picked up a glass of red wine from the car's built-in cabinet, swirled it once, and placed a call to his Militech contact.
(End of Chapter)
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