Rain began to fall outside. Luo Qi sat on the sofa, the room steeped in the deep, lacquered stillness of carved rails and jade halls, while beyond the windows wind and rain rang against the world, as if all the hills and all the earth had become this very day.
Rain falls on the poor, and it falls on the rich. It falls on the righteous, and it falls on the wicked. Rain itself is not unfair. It only falls upon a world that has never known justice.
"Wait—what's that!?"
Luo Qi suddenly sprang up from the sofa.
Several oddly shaped aircraft were drawing closer, circling in the sky.
"No, no, no, impossible." He panicked, rushing to the floor-to-ceiling glass and slamming into it with a smack, not even feeling the pain.
"What is that? Arasaka aircraft?" Jackie's eyes widened in alarm as he stared outside.
"They're Zetatech Octant drones, with Arasaka markings on them!" V recognized them immediately. "Trauma Team and MaxTac use aircraft from the same manufacturer."
"T-This is just a routine inspection, right? Does Arasaka always patrol like this?" Jackie tried desperately not to think of the obvious answer.
"Someone important is coming. Very important." Luo Qi slammed a fist against the glass.
"The staff side's in chaos—over two hundred people running around, rushing everywhere," T-Bug said as she watched the surveillance feeds.
The progress bar on the Relic safe was only halfway done, crawling upward at a miserable pace.
"T-Bug, hurry it up!" Jackie urged. "This feels bad. Who the hell's coming? Don't tell me it really is Saburo Arasaka."
"It is," Luo Qi said coldly.
"Seriously!?" Both V and Jackie looked up at him in shock.
But Luo Qi said nothing more. He simply pulled out his phone and made a call.
"It's Lucky. Be ready."
The call ended as abruptly as it had begun.
"So this… this is the pomp of an emperor," Luo Qi said, and suddenly he smiled. In the red glow of the safe's indicator lights, the smile looked almost frightening.
Six Arasaka Octants hovered on guard outside the tower, a far more intimidating sight than anything in his memories.
"Done!" T-Bug shouted at last, finally able to breathe.
"Hell yes." V pulled back his cable and watched the safe lid slide open, revealing the glowing white storage case containing the Relic.
"Give it to me. I'll carry it." Jackie scooped up the case without hesitation, cradling it as if he were holding the whole world in his arms.
"Is the Relic intact?" T-Bug asked immediately.
"Biochip integrity—one hundred percent." Jackie read the display on the case. "Looks fine."
"Good. Then let's move," V said crisply, a little excitement creeping into his voice.
But Luo Qi's vision had gone hazy.
This was it. This damned checkpoint.
A scene he had known a thousand times over. Yet all the carved splendor around him did nothing to warm the freezing chill inside his chest.
There was no Yorinobu Arasaka barging in halfway through with his bodyguard Adam Smasher, forcing V and Jackie to scramble for cover.
No Saburo Arasaka pacing gravely down the stairs with Takemura Goro at his side.
But the Arasaka Octants outside had completely destroyed Luo Qi's plan to slip out through the glass back exit.
"That's right! There's still the front door!"
Though only the soft patter of wind and rain should have filled the air, Luo Qi instead heard distorted bass, violent rhythms, wild strings, and a war drum heartbeat pounding in his skull.
"No good! The elevator's going down!" T-Bug cried. "I'm trying to lock it—shit! Too late! Find somewhere to hide, now!"
The elevator had already descended to the twentieth floor.
Luo Qi could not see who was inside, but it had to be Yorinobu Arasaka.
"Are you kidding me!?" V snapped. "Where the fuck are we supposed to hide!?"
Under pressure, every last one of them started to lose their cool.
"T-Bug, open the rooftop access door with the backdoor program, then bring the Flathead back up. We don't need surveillance on those slow-brained Arasaka idiots anymore." Luo Qi pressed a hand to his temple, forcing himself to calm down. "V! Jackie! Move, now! Follow me! No hesitation!"
"…O-Okay! Got it!" T-Bug sounded just as rattled.
The three of them bolted up the stairs. The glass door clicked and swung open cleanly.
The roar of torrential rain hit them at once, along with the icy wind and sheets of water.
"Shit, that's high." V clenched his jaw as he looked at the transparent glass walkway beneath their feet.
"Keep low. Move fast. Don't let them spot you."
Luo Qi glanced at the aircraft constantly circling the tower and urged them on.
He poked half his head out from the top of the stairwell and checked the landing pad.
"Perfect! No one's there!"
His spirits lifted in an instant.
Saburo Arasaka had not landed on the rooftop yet. Neither of the huge bodyguards who looked like sumo wrestlers were there either.
"Quick, over here!"
Luo Qi grabbed V and Jackie and hurried them toward the opposite corner of the roof. Besides the landing pad, the rooftop was crowded with antennas and signal towers mounted atop utility rooms, all enclosed behind a four-meter-high iron fence.
"Lie flat. Don't make a sound."
At the edge of the wall was a narrow recessed ledge, maybe sixty or seventy centimeters wide. Luo Qi dropped flat into it and motioned for the other two to do the same.
Jackie hesitated, then carefully set down the Relic case and flattened himself out the way Luo Qi had. V did the same at once.
All three of them, dressed in black suits, lay there in a line like salted fish, hidden in a corner no one would ever think to check.
Rainwater soaked through every inch of them.
The thunderous hum of massive engines drew nearer, blasting the landing pad with roaring turbulence.
"¡Estoy congelada! I'm freezing my ass off!" Jackie muttered through chattering teeth.
"Shh. Quiet…" Luo Qi tapped the sole of Jackie's shoe.
A blinding searchlight swept over the rooftop as one Arasaka Octant drifted past the side of the tower, lowering altitude before continuing its patrol.
Then, from the landing pad, the engine noise gradually softened. With a hiss, a pneumatic door opened.
"Who is that?" V whispered over the comm channel.
"How the hell should I know? Hhh—" Jackie shivered so hard his whole body shook.
"It's Saburo Arasaka…" T-Bug said, her voice full of disbelief.
"T-Bug, pull out of Konpeki Plaza's subnet right now. They're going to crank up network lockdown any second," Luo Qi warned. "Did the Flathead make it back?"
"Okay, I'm pulling out now."
T-Bug had no desire to take unnecessary risks either.
"The Flathead's at the power shaft… okay, it's back up now."
"Tell me what the rooftop looks like."
The Flathead's microcontroller was still slotted into V's interface. T-Bug linked him into its visual feed.
"Bit dizzy, hang on…" V lay there in the water, accidentally swallowing some and turning his head to spit. "Two huge bodyguards. Don't see anyone else."
"Good. Let me see." Luo Qi rose slightly from the water and cautiously scanned their surroundings. "Those big metal flies have all dropped lower. For the moment, the area's clear."
Then he opened the large case behind him and pulled out a suppressor, screwing it onto the Kongou pistol—Yorinobu Arasaka's personal custom model—at his waist.
"I take one, you two take one. Just drop them. I'll finish the job," Luo Qi gestured, speaking with both hands and voice.
"Got it."
"What are you three doing?" T-Bug asked, her voice jumping.
But none of them answered.
They were already moving.
At the faint sound of footsteps behind them, the two bodyguards, who had been muttering to each other in low voices, turned in confusion.
Pop.
A soft muzzle flash flared and vanished into the rain. One bodyguard took a bullet straight through the eye and dropped instantly.
Maybe his skull was titanium alloy, but his eyeball sure wasn't.
V and Jackie tackled the other guard together, but his monstrous strength nearly threw both of them off. Luo Qi came in with a flying kick that crushed the man's groin, then calmly fired three shots into his crotch.
He had no choice. With V and Jackie pinning the man's head, aiming there risked hitting them instead.
The gigantic body slumped down, the guard's eyes bulging round as duck eggs.
"Easy work. Told you so, brothers," Jackie said, still finding time to brag. "Now what?"
"We take this thing out for a spin!" V's eyes lit up as he looked at Saburo Arasaka's aircraft.
"No. Absolutely not." Luo Qi cut him off at once. "Six Arasaka Octants, plus a whole bunch more that haven't launched yet. This isn't Macross. I'm not getting shot out of the sky."
"Then what do we do?" V asked.
"V, plug the Flathead into it. T-Bug, help hack the AV," Luo Qi said, pressing at his Bluetooth earpiece.
"What are you planning?" T-Bug asked.
Watching the Flathead slither skillfully under V's control into the craft's control panel, Luo Qi grinned.
"I'm letting you remote-control the most expensive drone in Night City."
"Holy shit, how is your brain built like this?" Jackie stared at him. "That thing—what do you call it? Lure the tiger away from the mountain?"
"This is what you call tactics, amigo."
Luo Qi smiled and repeated the exact same line he had once used back in the Scav den.
At that exact moment, a shrill alarm erupted throughout the entirety of Konpeki Plaza.
"We regret to inform you that Konpeki Plaza has entered full-building red alert. Please remain in your rooms and comply with all instructions given by hotel personnel."
"Holy shit! What happened?" Jackie was stunned.
"I don't know. The building network is totally sealed now, I can't get in." T-Bug's voice sharpened. "Something happened to Yorinobu Arasaka and Saburo Arasaka! There are no cameras inside the suite!"
"We don't need cameras," Luo Qi said. "Saburo Arasaka was killed by his son."
"What? That's impossible!" V said in shock.
"There's nothing impossible about it. Fate can be changed, but the things you don't change will still keep moving along their original tracks." Luo Qi sighed. "Yorinobu and Saburo have been building toward this for a long time. Without outside interference, it was always going to reach this point sooner or later."
Inside the suite, Saburo Arasaka's aged body now lay collapsed before the television wall.
A crack marred the glass, smeared with blood.
"¡Mama mía!" Jackie yelped. At the sight of Saburo's corpse, his eyebrows nearly took flight. "What do we do now?"
He stood there helplessly clutching the Relic case.
Everything that had happened today at Konpeki Plaza was more overwhelming than the whole of his first thirty years of life put together.
The emperor of Arasaka was dead.
"We go outside," Luo Qi said, racing downstairs.
"But there are aircraft everywhere out there!" T-Bug protested.
Luo Qi burst through the glass door and ran to the corner, where a narrow ledge ran along the outer edge of the tower.
"You two first. See that ladder ahead? Climb down there."
He pointed toward the yellow maintenance ladder glowing under a red light at the far end.
"I'll cover the rear. Move!"
V nodded hard, his eyes fierce.
"You can do this, Jackie. Just don't look down." Jackie swallowed hard and muttered encouragement to himself—then accidentally glanced below and nearly had a heart attack. "Fuck, that's high."
The two of them edged forward inch by inch, the ledge beneath their feet narrowing from about an arm's width to barely the width of a palm.
One wrong move and they would be shattered on the pavement below.
Then, just then, an armored AV rose into the air and swept around from the far side of the tower.
"Shit! Trauma Team?"
"If they're here for Saburo, they're a little fucking late!" V shouted bitterly.
"Please don't see us, please don't see us…" Jackie muttered.
Maybe his prayer worked. The Trauma Team craft merely climbed, swept past, and vanished.
But the next thing that appeared was far worse.
Wrapped in cold black armor, a combat flyer approached with a shrieking engine, belching a corpse-blue flame like something crawled out of the grave.
It stopped directly in front of V and Jackie.
An Arasaka Octant.
They had been spotted.
"Hijo de puta! Oh fuck me!" Jackie nearly went into cardiac arrest on the spot.
"安全上の脅威が疑われる. Suspected security threat detected."
The Octant spread its crablike side-wings, humming like some monstrous armored beetle.
Everything seemed like it had been set in stone from the beginning.
Even arriving earlier had changed nothing.
This was fate's choice.
The wind swept on. The rain lashed on.
Luo Qi dropped to one knee. Rainwater streaked sideways across his face. His eyes twisted with something close to madness.
"Fate?"
"Fate?"
"FATE?!"
The anti-air launcher on his shoulder jolted violently, vomiting a thick cloud of white smoke that vanished into the rain.
The missile twisted free of the tube and, almost instantly, punched straight through the Octant's side armor.
"襲撃された! We are under attack!"
In a storm of sparks, the Octant lost balance and plunged downward, wobbling and smoking like a drunk who had lost all control.
Red warning lights flashed across its frame.
"It's still not dead!?"
Luo Qi leapt to his feet, rammed the last missile into the launcher, and kicked the heavy iron case off the tower's three-hundred-meter height.
"TO HELL WITH YOUR FUCKING FATE!"
From over a hundred meters away, the missile smashed head-on into the craft's nose. In the next instant, the armored drone the size of a truck exploded from the inside into a huge fireball, massive chunks of flaming wreckage tumbling down like meteors.
Gunfire thundered from secondary detonations as fragments, engulfed in flame, tore straight through the upper atrium of Konpeki Plaza.
"Ha! Hahahahaha! Vete a la mierda! Eat shit!"
Jackie had just about died of shock—and then, with the situation flipping in an instant, burst out laughing in sheer exhilaration.
"Hurry! There's another one!" V shouted. Judging the distance, he threw himself forward and caught the ladder. "Throw me the case!"
As another Arasaka Octant came into view, curving around the tower to pounce, Jackie edged forward two more steps and hurled the case.
"Move! I'm jumping!"
Hearing him, V dropped lower down the ladder. Jackie gave a loud grunt and launched himself across.
"Jesus fuck—pull me up, pull me up!"
He missed with one foot and ended up hanging off the outside circular rail of the ladder shaft.
"Give me your hand." V lunged, grabbed him, and hauled him into the ladder well just before the Octant arrived. Both of them flattened themselves inside.
The nose cannon roared to life, spraying heavy-caliber rounds that shredded the surrounding glass barriers into sparks and ruin as if they were made of paper.
But the two targets had already disappeared.
Only one figure remained, standing at the edge with no time left to escape.
Luo Qi: Fuck!
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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