Downstairs, at the Asian food stall hung with red lanterns bearing the words Dark Night Street, two figures had clearly been waiting for quite a while.
"Lucky! You took way too long!"
Jackie slapped his thigh and shouted.
V, meanwhile, was sitting in his chair with a faint smile, not the least bit annoyed.
"You want something to eat?"
"Ah, sorry. I got distracted watching the news. V, you okay? What feels off?" Luo Qi sat down, then turned to the stall owner. "Soup dumplings and sushi. To go."
"It's nothing major. Probably got hit with a little poison," V said, waving it off.
"Come on, get in the car and we'll talk there." Jackie grabbed Luo Qi—who had just taken his breakfast(?)—and dragged him toward the car he had just gotten fixed up for V. "Me? I landed us a big job."
Sitting in the driver's seat, V was the more cautious one.
"Jackie, we haven't even met him yet. Don't go running your mouth."
"Heh heh." Jackie scratched his head sheepishly. "Dexter DeShawn. The most badass fixer in all of Night City. Not saying Padre or Wakako aren't good, but this guy? He's top-tier."
"And he only just came back after spending two years out on the road," V added, clearly wary of this fixer who had appeared out of nowhere.
Compared to Jackie, who could be a little too carefree, V always liked to ask Luo Qi for his take—because Luo Qi tended to be even more cautious than he was.
"T-Bug made the introduction, but I still think something's off," V said. "You know how fixers are. They go around scooping up clients, then hire the cheapest idiots they can find to do the work, and if those idiots die, their bodies end up in a landfill."
"You're getting nervous, V." Jackie, on the other hand, didn't seem bothered. "We've made a bit of a name for ourselves by now. Somebody reaching out isn't that weird."
"No, Jackie. This time you're wrong. Very wrong."
The moment he heard that name, Luo Qi immediately pictured a massive Black man well over three hundred pounds, dripping in gold, dressed in the loudest, tackiest, flashiest 2077 rich-thug fashion Night City could offer.
And then came the echo of alarms blaring through the entirety of Arasaka Tower.
Suddenly, something clicked in his mind.
"The Watson lockdown…" Luo Qi's eyes sharpened. "It's not because of gang activity."
"You… what are you talking about, Lucky?"
Jackie had no idea why the conversation had suddenly swerved toward the lockdown.
"Relic… no. It's nothing." Luo Qi shook his head. Right now, it was still only a guess. Saying anything more wouldn't help.
Then he patted V on the shoulder.
"V, remember what I'm about to say. When you go meet that dead-fat bastard later, believe nothing he says beyond the hard facts that actually happen."
"Why?" Even V looked puzzled this time. "You know him that well?"
A fixer who had vanished for two years to hide from trouble was definitely suspicious, so V instinctively trusted his best friend's warning.
When it came to judging a situation, Luo Qi had a sharper instinct than either V or Jackie.
"No, I don't know him that well…" Luo Qi gripped the food bag in his hand, though he still hadn't taken a bite. "But I do know that no matter how powerful a fixer is, he's still just a fox. Only the corporations—those who hold national power and the arteries of the economy in their hands—are the hunters carrying the guns."
He looked at V, then at Jackie, who still didn't understand, and for a moment his gaze lost focus.
In his ears rang Johnny Silverhand's final swan song. In his mind rose the image of a ruined body becoming living fire. On this land, in this country, no matter how history turned, the last victor was always capital.
Brutal beyond words.
Like a silent black comedy.
"Hey, hey, Lucky, you okay?" Jackie was alarmed by how suddenly bleak Luo Qi had become and waved a hand frantically in front of his face.
"It's pronounced Luck-y, not whatever the hell you keep saying. Come on, repeat after me: L-U-C-K-Y."
Luo Qi rolled his eyes and mercilessly roasted Jackie's Spanish-accented pronunciation.
The car rolled to the intersection of Bradbury and Bran. In the street-side display windows, sensuous men and women were dancing around poles.
Luo Qi had no interest in any of it. Especially not after spotting a few scantily clad men—he nearly chucked the soup dumplings he'd only just started eating.
"Once Vik gets your circuits sorted out, come find us. Then we'll go see what kind of job Dexter's got for us."
Jackie stepped into Misty's shop, leaned on the counter, and immediately started joking around with her—the "bonding time" he'd been looking forward to the whole way here.
The shop itself was dim and fragrant with incense, packed with all kinds of statues. The candles gave everything a mystical atmosphere. Porcelain, bells, censers—basically a world tour of spiritual aesthetics all crammed into one place.
With her fluffy tousled hair, off-shoulder blue sleeve top, and fishnet stockings, Misty was the owner of the place, and also Jackie's "almost-girlfriend."
Who could say anymore? By now Jackie and Misty were so familiar with each other they could hardly be closer. Their relationship was incredibly close, and yet every time they talked, they still treated each other with that odd, polite tenderness. Before long they were both laughing. Misty's laugh was like silver bells. Jackie's laugh was like a barbell.
Old Vik—Viktor's ripperdoc clinic—was tucked right behind Misty's shop. Outside it looked like some shabby hole in the wall; inside it felt like the secret underground lab of an evil genius.
Back when they had first arrived in Night City, V had brought Luo Qi here to get his head checked. Viktor had simply handed him a bottle of painkillers and sent him home.
At first, Luo Qi had been baffled.
But when Viktor told him it was only a mild concussion, that it would clear up in a few days—two weeks at most—and reality proved him right, Luo Qi had to admit Viktor's calm confidence was the real deal.
After all, if you went to a hospital instead, the bill alone might kill you on the spot.
"They are lizard men from Alpha Centauri!"
Outside, the self-proclaimed prophet Gary—the cyber-madman—had once again begun loudly preaching his nonsense to the world.
Since he was a cyberpsycho with absolutely no combat ability and shouted like this every single day, he had basically become one of Bradbury Street's signature attractions. People came just to take photos. The people responsible for keeping order on the street let him be. Nobody was going to pick a fight with foot traffic—and by extension, money.
But Luo Qi knew that this bespectacled man, whose real name was Gerard Winkler, actually knew things—about the AI beyond the Blackwall, about Maelstrom, and about Arasaka. It was just that, for him, all of it had been too much to bear. Or maybe his cheap implants had malfunctioned. Either way, the result was the same:
Now he stood here raving at passersby.
But right now, the priority was not the cyber-network world looming over the setting, threatening the whole globe.
It was V and Jackie.
When all Luo Qi had in his hands were a keyboard and mouse, all he could do was sit behind the screen with a smile that barely hid the for fuck's sake inside it.
But now he existed in this world for real.
He sat at a street-side food stall, ordered fried rice and steak, while nearby several NCPD officers were reconstructing the scene for victims of a cyberpsycho attack, and farther off, an NCPD netrunner was investigating on the street.
He breathed in the mingled odors in the air.
A narrow shaft of sunlight slipped down between the skyscrapers and fell across Luo Qi's slightly upturned face.
Sunlight belonged to those respectable people who lived high enough to touch the clouds.
Ordinary people like him, V, and Jackie only got the mud.
And when they died, they'd probably die in the mud too—
rotting in some roadside trash heap.
He bit his lip lightly, then let go.
Luo Qi missed home.
That home he could never return to.
That home so distant it did not even exist in this world.
From the moment he arrived here, he had never once stopped longing for it.
But now—
now he had a new family.
V.
And Jackie.
Sometimes Luo Qi had to admit that Jackie, despite looking like a straightforward lovable idiot, was actually far more sensitive and perceptive than people gave him credit for. Sometimes the things he said cut deeper and clearer than anyone else's.
In this frozen city, there really was a place that felt like home, a place where everybody was brothers and sisters.
That home was small.
Only three people.
But it held a warmth strong enough to carry them through winter.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 172)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 116)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter105)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter100)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter69)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter119)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 70
From Junkman to Wasteland 60
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 40
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 66
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 50
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 52
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 55
The Way the Umamusume Look at 42
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 40
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 36
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 30
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 26
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 26
My patreon : patreon.com/queen_sin