"Done for? What do you mean, done for?" Jackie asked blankly.
"I hurried and hurried, pushed and pushed, and still couldn't make it in time. Fuck!"
Luo Qi sat down hard, seething. V disconnected from the controls and looked over with Jackie, both of them full of questions.
"What the hell is going on, mano? Tell us already—you're gonna kill me with suspense," Jackie said, pacing in agitation.
"…"
Luo Qi raised a hand, took two deep breaths, waved it vaguely in the air, then slowly lowered it again.
"Arasaka… Arasaka… No. I can't lose it now."
After muttering to himself, he got to his feet and strode quickly over to the window, pacing back and forth.
"Lucky, trust us. What did you find?" V asked.
He came up behind Luo Qi, gripped his shoulder, and looked him straight in the eyes.
Jackie came over too, frowning, worry written all over his face.
"Watson was locked down because of Arasaka." Luo Qi's throat felt terribly tight; he forced the trembling in his voice down. "Because Saburo Arasaka is coming. They have to guarantee his safety."
Watson, in the north of Night City, was divided into four districts:
Little China, where V and Luo Qi lived; Kabuki, where T-Bug had given V the quickhack chip; Northside, packed with factories and industrial facilities; and the luxurious Arasaka Waterfront.
Gangs ran rampant there, but none of them dared challenge Arasaka's authority. And with Emperor Saburo Arasaka coming, the visible security posture might look calm, but beneath the surface everything had already turned razor-tight.
To get the mayor of Night City to serve his interests so obediently—that was the weight Saburo Arasaka carried.
"Saburo Arasaka? You mean that hundred-year-old monster?" Jackie's eyes nearly popped out. "You… you've gotta be kidding, hahaha…"
But Luo Qi did not laugh. He only looked at him.
"Ha… ha… ha…" Jackie's smile died on his face. "How is that even possible?"
"Yeah. The Watson lockdown might not necessarily be בגלל that," V said, though his own expression had gone stiff.
"The lockdown could've been because of riots. Or a coup. Or any number of things," Luo Qi said, pressing his fingers to his temples as he stared at the red plush rug on the floor. "But if Arasaka agents and the city's mayor were meeting in secret and reaching an agreement, could it really be something minor?"
"Shit…"
T-Bug cursed over comms. She was starting to believe him.
"So… are we still stealing that thing or not?" Jackie asked hesitantly. Now there were two roads in front of them.
One road was danger—towering, sheer-cliff danger, the kind no one should challenge.
The other was success—the kind that led straight to wealth, glory, and legend.
For a while, the four of them said nothing.
"What if it's not because of Saburo Arasaka?" Jackie still clung to a sliver of hope.
"No. On that one point, I'm sure." Luo Qi stood by the window, rigid as a statue. "This is fate."
"Then let's decide together," V said, breaking the deadlock. "I say we continue."
There was still a burning heart in his chest.
Night City might have extinguished many things—beautiful feelings, precious memories, the version of yourself you could never become again—
but V's little candle had not gone out.
"I choose to keep going too. I'm betting on this," T-Bug said, her voice turning firm. "This is our chance to finally push back against this damned city."
In Night City, you either got swallowed whole or you smashed the cage and made it to someplace higher, someplace farther away. There was no poetry and no far horizon anymore—capital had strangled all of that in the cradle. They could not just watch their last scrap of hope fall into darkness too.
"I… I…" Jackie clasped his hands together like he was praying. "We finish this one big job, and then we get out for good. That's the deal, right, Lucky…?"
He looked at Luo Qi's back and gave an awkward little grin, then glanced helplessly at V.
"Arasaka…" Luo Qi stared out for a long time before slowly turning around. "When I was young, I reached for the clouds and swore I'd be first among men."
"Who said that? Aurelius? Aristotle?" Jackie asked.
"Wu Qingdi. From a mysterious country in the East," Luo Qi said with a faint smile.
"What does it mean?"
"That's poetry," T-Bug said dryly. "And I'm curious too."
"It means: when you're young, you dream of rising above the clouds and becoming the very best." Luo Qi shook his head, smiling. "A frustrated poet wrote that when he was thirty."
As he said it, he looked at Jackie.
"Huh… that's kinda fitting," Jackie said, scratching his head. "So what happened to him in the end?"
"Nine years later he passed the imperial examination, made the honor roll, witnessed the fall of an empire, and lived into old age."
"Chingón. Hell yeah, I like that one!"
Jackie smacked his thigh and burst into a broad, open grin.
Faced with that optimism, Luo Qi couldn't help being infected by it. He closed his eyes and smiled for a moment too.
"Let's move, brothers."
The Flathead wound its way past room after room until it reached the ventilation duct and slipped into the shafts.
After navigating the maze, it infiltrated the room where the netrunner was stationed.
This wasn't some internet café desk clerk. This was Arasaka Konpeki Plaza's resident netrunner, stretched out over a data system with a throughput capacity of 1.28 quadrillion operations.
T-Bug had said it before: one good netrunner was worth a dozen mediocre ones. In cyberspace, that was absolutely true.
Unfortunately for someone inside that room, once the Flathead plugged in, an elite brain was about to cook itself into crispy rice.
The Flathead stayed behind, monitoring network traffic around the clock.
"How do you feel?" Jackie asked V after he disconnected from manual control.
"Fine. A little dizzy. Nothing else." V shook his head and lay back on the sofa.
"Crazy as Maelstrom is, this Flathead microcontroller really is amazing," Luo Qi said with genuine admiration. "No wonder people say genius and madness are only separated by a single step."
"Could just as easily be a genius who's already gone mad," V said. "Wouldn't surprise me."
"Bug, do we still have enough time?" Jackie asked.
No answer.
"Bug? You there?" V asked too, puzzled.
"Mm… yeah, I'm here." T-Bug sounded like she'd snapped back to attention after drifting off. "Listen up. The ICE is thicker than I expected. Breaking through is gonna take a few hours."
"A few hours? You can't make it faster?" Jackie's eyes went wide.
Because fooling around inside Konpeki Plaza was dangerous. Every extra minute they stayed there increased the odds of getting caught.
"You want my brain to catch fire?" T-Bug snapped at him, having no patience for amateurs. "Sit down and admire those handsome suits of yours."
"Don't panic. Hurrying only makes you lose your judgment." Luo Qi pushed Jackie down onto the sofa when he started pacing again. "T-Bug, once you punch through the ICE, set up a backdoor on the glass doors leading out of Yorinobu's suite. If something happens and alert levels jump, the netwatch dogs will lock things down several times harder. Don't risk fighting them head-on."
"Got it." T-Bug actually sounded pleased. She liked this sort of flexible, elegant contingency planning.
…
"What do you guys think? Why did he throw it all away?" Jackie asked, arms folded, looking out over the harbor at night through the window.
"Hm? Who threw what away?" V asked, half-distracted.
"Yorinobu Arasaka. Why give up all that wealth and power?" Jackie turned around, hands on hips. "Yeah, yeah, I know, old news. But I still don't get it."
"So imagine this," he went on. "You've got everything, right? Money. Education. Your old man snaps his fingers and half the planet can disappear in nuclear fire… and then you just go, 'Fuck it, whatever,' and what do you do? You go start a gang! The Steel Dragons or whatever! Cut off your family, slap on some synthskin, and go cosplay gang boss for years! What the hell for!?"
Luo Qi understood exactly why that annoyed him.
It was like some people were born standing at the finish line, while other people weren't even racers—they were born as the organizers of the entire event. And then those people suddenly decided it was "boring" and went off to "experience life as an ordinary person."
"Not knowing how lucky you are. And every family has its own hard scripture to read," Luo Qi said. "Yorinobu Arasaka wants to fight his father's Arasaka. Either he couldn't see through all of it… or he saw through it too clearly."
"Yeah. Maybe he just wanted out of the family system," V said.
"Then why come back?" Jackie still couldn't understand the crown prince of Arasaka at all.
"If the system is your family, escaping it isn't so easy," V said, thinking of his own nomad clan.
"A rotten horse is still a horse," Jackie muttered, turning back toward the window.
"You could say that."
Then he turned back again, though his thoughts were clearly still somewhere else. "Tucked his tail, came crawling home. Coward. What kind of rebellion is that supposed to be…"
After a long silence, T-Bug's voice finally returned.
"Alright, back to work. Security on the penthouse level is neutralized, and I've left a backdoor for your exit too."
"Perfecto. Our turn to step on stage." Jackie perked up at once. "Hey, Bug… uh… your channel was open the whole time just now?"
"For three and a half straight hours," T-Bug said, her voice dripping with resignation.
Now it was Jackie's turn to get awkward. "Uh… about that thing I said… the sour-face bit…"
"You mean my face?" T-Bug asked, with no mercy whatsoever.
"Uh, it just slipped out, you know what I meant…" Jackie laughed weakly.
"I do." T-Bug's mind was already back on the mission. "So now you get to make it up to me."
Walking into the elevator, Jackie's back looked stiff with tension.
With T-Bug's permissions in place, the option to go from the forty-second floor to the hundredth—Yorinobu Arasaka's Taventina suite—finally lit up.
"Hey, brother. Don't panic." Luo Qi patted his broad shoulder. That usual rock-solid body of Jackie's now felt strangely shaky. "You've got me."
Jackie forced a smile. "Uh… let me tell you guys a joke."
"Now? Seriously?" T-Bug asked.
Jackie ignored her. "Alright, listen up. Why did the rocker boy get kicked out by his girlfriend?"
He paused dramatically, then continued:
"Because he didn't perform any proper plugging in, hahahahaha—"
"You laugh like a damn barbell," Luo Qi said, slapping his own face and then cracking up anyway at the stupid dirty joke.
"Plugging in" could mean Johnny Silverhand's cult rock single.
Or it could mean a certain vigorous piston-based activity.
Of course it would be Jackie making a joke like that.
"My God…" T-Bug sighed. Even without seeing her face, it was obvious she was covered in black lines right now—and she was already dark enough.
The elevator doors slid open.
Jackie swallowed hard. V rubbed his hands together.
This was it.
Yorinobu Arasaka's suite—the exact same place V had seen in Evelyn's braindance.
Wooden floors, polished to a soft reflective glow. Wide open space. Familiar layout. Top-tier furnishings everywhere.
"Oh, nice. Great lighting," Luo Qi said, hands tucked into his waistband, strolling out like he owned the place.
"Hmph… the heir to the Arasaka empire lives pretty well…" Jackie looked around. "Sure beats the hell out of what Raúl Welles' son ever got."
"It's nighttime, what damn lighting? Stop fooling around, both of you," T-Bug snapped, tense again. "The safe! Move!"
V and Jackie hurried toward the safe's location, while Luo Qi stood in front of a huge decorative tree-root sculpture, looking around at the room from every angle.
"Well well, isn't that an iguana?" Luo Qi said with a click of admiration.
"Holy shit, another iguana," Jackie blurted.
They both remembered the shipment they'd carried when they first came to Night City.
Arasaka property.
And inside it—
an iguana.
"L-Lesser Antillean species, right?" Luo Qi asked, turning his head.
"Damn!" Jackie's eyes nearly bulged out. "N-no, not the same one. The flap under ours had more folds."
"Mmm. Clever arrangement. Green bamboo, this lighting… bamboo grove at night. It's got the mood," Luo Qi murmured, still sightseeing as he walked over to the wall-mounted touchscreen terminal, opened the messages, snapped a few photos with his PDA, then extremely naturally took Yorinobu Arasaka's handgun from beside the bed and activated the safe.
"Jesus, you know this place like it's your own house," V and Jackie said, both startled despite their nerves.
Luo Qi rolled his eyes.
That was because of you, idiot. I loaded this place ten thousand times just trying to find some way to keep you alive.
"Shit, Yorinobu's back in the building! Hurry up!" T-Bug shouted over comms. "V, jack into your personal link. I need a little time."
"Hahahaha, no rush, no rush, hahahaha…" Luo Qi laughed, beaming like an idiot.
The other three: …?
"Finally. I raced fate all the way here, and I still beat it by a step." Luo Qi uncorked a bottle and poured himself a glass. "Since ancient times, sages have known loneliness. Only the drinkers leave their names behind. Jackie—looks like your drink still won't be making it onto the Afterlife menu."
"Holy shit… what is this? It tastes awful." Luo Qi took a huge swallow and nearly spat it out. "Smells fancy enough, sure. Real high-end stuff. But what the fuck, it's so harsh—spicy and biting. Yorinobu Arasaka really does have some heavy tastes."
"You don't drink, though," Jackie said, leaning on the safe.
"I just wanted to know what kind of stuff the dog son of the dog emperor drinks," Luo Qi said, shaking his head and setting the glass down again. "Not for me."
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 175)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 119)
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?" (Chapter79)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter125)
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 73
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 55
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 66
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 64
The Way the Umamusume Look at 63
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 55
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 45
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 31
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 31
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 31
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