Watson, Little China.
After dinner with Gloria at Embers, Kai returned directly to his upscale apartment.
Even though Gloria had repeatedly asked him to come back to her place for a while, he took one look at the still-dejected David beside her and declined.
Gloria had agreed to work with him and become his fixer, but she still needed one real baptism by fire, one job strong enough to announce her proper debut to Night City. He was still considering how to arrange that.
Kai had thought about stepping in directly and solving David's problem at the academy, but that would definitely attract certain people's attention inside Arasaka, and it would only make David's situation at school worse.
In Kai's view, even if Gloria was short on money, borrowing enough to pay Arasaka Academy's compensation fee would still have been better. That way, David could at least keep that fragile teenage pride of his intact. As for David's feud with Katsuo, children's problems were best handled by children themselves.
Once Kai got home, the smart home assistant had already started working.
He smoothed out the suit jacket Gloria had given him and placed it carefully in the wardrobe, then took his sleepwear and headed into the bathroom.
The shower came down in a hot rush, soaking him from head to toe as steam rolled thickly through the room.
Five minutes later, feeling fresh and clean, Kai walked into the living room in his sleepwear and heard the smart assistant announce that he had a work message.
He picked up the portable comm unit from the table and put it over his left eye.
It was from Carter Smith.
The result of his decrypted trade intel.
"The trade location is the abandoned steel factory in Watson's old industrial district. Trade time is 9:30 p.m."
Kai did not care whether the information Carter had sent was true or false. He replied immediately.
"Tomorrow, I'll take you to report directly to Mr. Jenkins. This is your result. It should be acknowledged by your superior."
Carter, who had just been preparing to leave work, saw the message from Kai and felt immense relief.
He congratulated himself on the choice he had made earlier. In his eyes, what Kai called taking him to Jenkins to report the results was really just a way to dodge responsibility. If he had reported the time too late and something went wrong, then all of it would have been pinned on him.
"I knew you'd pull something like this. When it's time to claim credit, there's no sign of me. But when there's risk, it all gets dumped on my head. Too bad this trap was dug specifically for you."
He had already arranged things with the Special Ops contact.
If they could not seize the Maelstrom deal within half an hour, then Counterintel would move in.
Given the strength of Special Ops field agents, five minutes would be enough to crush that disorganized pack of edgerunners. If necessary, they could simply offer a higher price and buy the thing outright.
Carter replied:
"Understood. Thank you, Director."
Kai did not even wait to see the reply.
He had already taken off the comm unit and instructed the assistant to blacklist Carter Smith completely.
"Jumping into Susan's fire pit twice in a row. That's some real hard-headed commitment."
From the start, Kai had never cared what kind of intel Carter fed him. The real lead in this whole performance was never going to be him.
It was Militech.
What Kai needed now was to remove himself cleanly from the center of the matter.
As for whether he could get the runtime data Tanaka wanted from the implant, he did not care in the slightest. The one who would get chewed out in the upper-level meeting if things went wrong was not him.
And besides, by now he already had more than enough confidence in the outcome.
Kai watched the news on the television and thought to himself that even if he was not the main actor in this play, a major director still deserved a good seat to enjoy the show.
"Time to call Jackie."
"And I definitely can't forget Night City's own walking judge of the dead."
"V."
V was the nickname Kai used for the girl.
Back then, she had made a bit of a fuss over it, but in the end she had reluctantly accepted it and only allowed him to call her that.
But when Kai thought carefully through the details of their past interactions, he suddenly realized that V might not have returned to Night City yet at this point.
She had grown up in Heywood, and every inch of her carried pure street flavor. She loved dressing in bizarre combinations that looked like some strange fusion of punk and old-school chaos.
Her face was so striking it bordered on absurd, yet she still liked styling herself like some walking omen of death.
Even ghosts would probably hesitate before talking to her.
And she spoke with a thick Heywood mouth on her too.
A year earlier, V had left Night City and gone all the way to Atlanta. Nobody knew what she was doing there.
Maybe looking for family.
Maybe collecting a debt.
Kai had the smart home assistant place a call directly to Jackie.
The line connected quickly.
Jackie's broad, familiar smile appeared in the TV projection, and Kai could not help feeling that seeing a friend again really was one of the best feelings in the world.
"Hey, brother, what took you so long to call? You finally decide you're in for a drink at Lizzie's?"
Kai said, "It really has been a long time. I remember last time I kept calling and you never picked up. I left you plenty of messages too."
Jackie replied, "Brother, I have no idea what you mean about missing your calls. But no matter what, I'm sorry now."
Kai said, "No need for apologies. I've run into a little trouble lately. Let's put together a job and give that Arasaka bitch a proper beating."
Jackie lit up instantly.
"What kind of miracle made the wires in your head finally connect right? Arasaka's a straight-up snake pit. If you've got trouble, coming to me is always the right call. People from Heywood don't fear corp dogs. Ah, wait, that wasn't supposed to include you."
Kai said, "I told you about this before. Somebody inside Arasaka wants me dead. But not only am I not dying, I'm going to ram it right back down that bitch's throat."
Jackie grinned.
"Then we absolutely have to give that bitch a surprise. What time, what place? I'll start lining up people and hardware right away."
Kai said, "Let's meet early tomorrow. We'll go over the job and location face to face. And I need you to help me look for someone, see if she's back."
"Who?"
"Her name's V. A full-on street girl. You might not remember her, but she used to stop by your mother's bar all the time to drink and pick up work."
Jackie said, "There's someone from El Coyote Cojo worth remembering and I don't know her?"
Kai said, "Think about it. In the last ten days, how many of them did you actually spend at your own bar? You should make more time to see your mother."
Jackie laughed.
"Brother, you've definitely changed. You'd get along great with my mom now. You both love lecturing me. Fine, leave V to me. And I'm definitely not hanging up on you just to get out of this, but Misty is waiting to give me some mysterious spiritual guidance."
Kai sighed.
"If you can't find V, then let's meet early tomorrow at Viktor's. I'll bring a case of beer and stop in to see him too."
Jackie answered, "No problem."
Only then did the two of them end the call.
Seeing Jackie again brought a flood of old memories crashing back.
At the Afterlife, they had once raised their glasses high.
"To Night City!"
"To the Afterlife!"
"To Jackie!"
"To Kai!"
Then inside a Delamain, he had been blindsided.
"Goodbye, brother..."
Jackie, who had wanted so badly to become a Night City legend, had died right in front of him.
That memory would stay with Kai forever.
Sometimes it felt like he had once lived his life being pushed forward by some unseen hand.
Was it Saburo, obsessed with digital immortality?
Was it the AI gods watching from beyond the Blackwall?
Was it Blue Eyes and his hidden conspiracy?
Or was it simply that damned fate?
Once, Kai had believed that leaving this city might have been the best possible choice.
But he could not let go of the people in this city.
The friends.
The memories.
The stories.
And the knot in his heart that still had not come undone.
Kai let out a long breath and decided he needed to go for a run and burn the weight out of his chest.
He changed into a clean set of exercise clothes, put on his running headphones, and opened the door.
With one foot already out over the threshold, he suddenly felt like he had forgotten something.
So he turned back, returned to the apartment, grabbed one last item, and headed out again.
Only after patting the gun in his hand did he finally feel at ease enough to leave.
(End of Chapter)
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