"Did I hear that right?"
"Did that choom just say go frontal?"
Jackie Welles's voice roared through the comms, drowned halfway by the rat-tat-tat of automatic fire echoing from his end.
Inside another sector of the Scav base, Maine's team froze mid-sneak.
Pilar blinked, dumbfounded. "Boss, tell me I'm hearing wrong—Jackie just said they're doing a head-on assault?"
Dorio groaned. "Pilar, we're all on the same damn channel. No need for commentary, genius."
Maine clenched his teeth hard enough to make the cyberplates in his jaw creak. He'd always been the hot-headed one, but this time—this time he was the calm one.
Sandra Dorsett wasn't just another gig. She was a Trauma Team platinum-tier client—corpos would ransom a city block for. And the only reason she was still alive after being taken by Scavs was because she was valuable enough for them to keep breathing.
You don't screw around with a job like that.
And then—within ten damn minutes—Jackie Welles and his crew had turned it into a warzone.
Maine's temple twitched. "Unbelievable…"
"Actually," Kiwi's calm, silvery voice interrupted from her netrunning rig, "Jackie's chaos has drawn most of the Scavs to the north side. Their sentries are thinning out over here. It's… a very good opportunity."
Maine took a deep breath. "…Then we take it. Everyone move. Let Welles handle the fireworks—we'll finish this clean."
…
Frontline: Fifteenth Floor.
Thanks to Rebecca's "door-opening" method, subtlety had officially died a fiery death. The moment her Ironheart shotgun blew apart the encrypted metal door, the entire nest of Scavs woke up screaming.
The sound of boots, metal clanks, and the roar of machine guns filled the corridor like a storm of hellfire.
And the Scavs—they were no random punks. They were Night City's monsters in human skin.
Organ harvesters. Torturers. Human traffickers. If you got caught by them and only lost a kidney, you'd thank every saint in the system. Most people didn't even get their bodies back.
And yet, the Scavs thrived—because Night City needed its monsters. Corpo politics. NCPD bribes. Bureaucratic handoffs between divisions. Everyone pretended to hate them, but no one really wanted them gone.
They were the city's dirty secret—and its backbone.
…
Gunfire tore through the hallway. The Scavs laid down a relentless suppression barrage, every inch of wall and floor shredded by bullets.
"David! Don't just rush in!" Jackie barked, yanking the kid back behind cover just as a burst of rounds tore through where David had been standing.
When the gunfire paused for half a heartbeat, Jackie slapped him on the shoulder. "Combat's got rhythm, hermano. We hit first, but if we don't wipe 'em all in that first wave, they'll come back angrier and twice as fast."
He peeked from cover, scanning the angles. "You dodge the storm, then you strike while they reload. That's rhythm. That's survival."
David nodded fast, trying to absorb every word. "Y-yeah, got it!"
"Good. Now once this next—"
Jackie didn't finish. Because that's when Neo moved.
The Scavs' next volley came fast, bullets screaming through the air—
And Neo stepped forward into it.
"Time's running out," he said. "If we stay here, the client's dead."
"Rebecca, the door."
"On it!"
She didn't even hesitate. She trusted him too much to ask questions.
The Ironheart roared again—BOOM!
The steel door exploded into shards.
The Scavs on the other side froze mid-motion, brains struggling to process what just happened.
They'd been pouring lead into that hallway for minutes—and now the prey was opening doors?
Then the firestorm began anew.
RAT-TAT-TAT! RAT-TAT-TAT!
An entire crossfire grid locked onto the breach, bullets screaming toward Neo like a wall of death.
And he… smiled.
His right fist clenched. The air around him twisted.
"—No-Sword Style: Grand Tornado."
He punched forward.
The blow never touched metal. It didn't need to. The sheer pressure from his strike howled through the air, forming a cyclone of cutting wind that shredded every incoming bullet mid-flight.
Gunfire dissolved into sparks.
Before anyone could blink, twin flashes of steel sang in his hands—
Shing! Shing!
The twin blades hissed from their sheaths, catching the light of muzzle flashes like lightning caught between storms.
"Two-Sword Style," he whispered. "Basic—Pierce and Slash."
Then he vanished.
The world blurred.
Neo moved faster than the Scavs could react—faster than their optics could track. A ghost slipping through smoke. A wind carving through flesh.
A dozen Scavs froze where they stood, eyes wide, still trying to understand the strange gust that brushed past them.
And then—
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Heads began to fall.
One by one.
Blood spattered against flickering neon, painting the cracked walls of that nightmare building in violent crimson.
Rebecca's grin widened as she leaned against the doorframe, shotgun smoking. "...Holy shit."
Jackie just blinked. "Remind me never to piss this guy off."
David could only stare.
In Night City, cyberware was supposed to make you superhuman. But Neowas proving something else.