Chapter 4: The Chariot
The car rumbled down the road like I was sitting on thunder.
It tore across the dystopian highway, engine growling low and violent beneath me, suspension shuddering as cracked asphalt blurred into streaks of light. Every vibration traveled straight up through the seat and into my spine.
I'd driven fast before.
This was different.
This thing didn't move so much as it charged, like the road was something it resented and planned to win against.
I loosened my grip on the wheel slightly and let my thoughts catch up.
The sensible thing—the smart thing—would be to head in the exact opposite direction of Night City.
Disappear into the Badlands. Put distance between myself and whatever insane corp games I would not doubt eventually be tangled in.
And I was doing that.
Technically.
Though not permanently, my real goal for heading out to the rocky ridge plains was Dakota Smith.
If anyone could help me untangle the mess I was in, it'd be the Nomad fixer.
My hardware and software weren't just unusual—they were completely foreign. Nothing I had matched the architecture everyone else was running.
No neural port.
No personal link.
No civic integration software.
Hell, I didn't even have a usable identity.
I could move, fight, think—but I didn't exist.
No creds account.
No traceable citizen imprint that wouldn't immediately set off alarms.
And while I didn't have a way to change my hardware yet—my body was pure Kuseno insanity—I might be able to integrate some of the software everyone else used.
An internal agent.
A compatibility layer.
Something that let me interface with the city instead of bouncing off it.
And if I was lucky…
I glanced at the dashboard, at the faded graffiti etched into the metal panels.
…I could convince Dakota to strip this car of all its Wraith iconography before someone recognized it and decided to ventilate me.
It was a lot to ask.
Especially on a first meeting.
But Bartmoss's data slate might be enough leverage to make her at least listen.
I exhaled slowly.
Okay. That was the plan.
Bargain with the da...ta....slate...
"Fuck!"
I slammed the brakes.
The car shrieked in protest as the rear fishtailed, tires screaming while I hauled the wheel hard left. The world spun—headlights carving a wild arc across the
road—before the car snapped into a brutal one-eighty and came skidding to a halt in a cloud of dust and burning rubber.
I sat there for half a second, staring straight back the way I'd come.
"…I forgot it."
The oil drum.
Outside Medeski Fuel Station.
I let my head thunk back against the seat.
"Fantastic," I muttered. "Absolutely flawless execution."
The engine idled beneath me, patient and rumbling, as if judging my life choices.
With a sigh, I threw it back into gear and floored it.
Luckily for me, the data slate was right where I'd left it.
Still sitting on the oil drum outside Medeski Fuel Station, untouched, sitting on the oildrum as if it were mocking me.
I grabbed it and, while I was there, ransacked a few more shelves for good measure. EEZYBEEF, some SCOP-based products, Koff Poppers, and something called, Cactus Water.
I half-considered leaving the unconscious Wraiths sprawled across the floor as a little surprise for the shopkeeper when he inevitably regained consciousness.
But I wasn't that much of a dick.
Instead, I dragged them outside and stuffed them into the trunks of the remaining cars. Crude, uncomfortable, but alive. Someone else could deal with them later.
With that handled, I climbed back into the Shion and rolled out.
The road eventually forked.
One path led toward Night City—neon glow smearing the horizon like a radioactive sunrise.
The other stretched out into the Badlands and beyond, empty and dark, disappearing into nothing.
I pulled over a short distance from the intersection and cut the engine.
Silence rushed in.
I sat there chewing on slightly off-tasting food, watching the city loom in the distance. Even from here I could feel it—the pull. Like gravity. Like the place itself had hands.
Like I said, the smart thing to do would be to leave.
Lie low somewhere else. Let the city eat someone who actually belonged here.
But the truth was… Night City was the only familiar thing left in a world of unknowns.
I knew its rules.
I knew how it lied.
I knew how it killed you.
Everything else was just blank space.
I barely knew the lore—anything before 2075 might as well not have happened for all the good it did me. Most of what I knew came from osmosis and late-night wiki spirals.
Which meant that, despite every scrap of common sense screaming otherwise…
I was safer heading toward the danger, or rather more informed.
I finished the last burrito.
It almost tasted good.
My HUD flickered.
[INGESTED MATERIAL CONVERTED]
[PROPULSION RESERVES: +0.30%]
[TOTAL AVAILABLE THRUST: 0.31%]
[NOTICE: SUFFICIENT FOR EMERGENCY SKIRT JUMPS ONLY]
[WARNING: USE MAY EXACERBATE EXISTING STRUCTURAL DAMAGE]
"…Great," I muttered. "You know it would be great if you tried to help me come up with solutions instead of just listing problems."
The VI continued helpfully.
[RECOMMENDATION: AVOID THRUST USE UNLESS CRITICAL]
"Yeah, yeah," I said. "I'm still pissed you let me forget the data slate."
[RESPONSE: OBJECT WAS NOT DESIGNATED AS IMPORTANT]
I stared at the windshield.
"…From now on," I said slowly, "if I'm holding something in my hands for more than a minute and walk more than three hundred meters with it, just mark it as important. Use some common sense. Context clues. You know—intelligence."
[ACKNOWLEDGED]
I tossed the wrappers out of the car window before closing it and starting the car, I took the right-hand road.
Toward Dakota Smith.
The highway was quiet at this hour. Only the occasional vehicle passed me by, headlights flashing like ghosts before vanishing into the dark.
The silence started to itch.
I flipped on the radio.
"So get awa—"
"Nope."
Click.
"When discussing ancient Babylonian demons, nothing comes to mind more frequently than the NCC!, to Night City Council the only question more important, than how much more wealth they can squeeze from the American people, is how many more children they can sacrifice to Moloch, they are so corrupt that they are worshiping an ancient Canaanite God, instead of their own demons! Wake u-!
"Jesus Christ."
Click.
The next station blasted incomprehensible techno-bebop that sounded like a washing machine having a stroke.
I stared at the dashboard for two seconds.
Then turned the radio off.
The engine hummed beneath me as Night City drew further out in the distance, lights growing dimmer against the dark.
Dakota might help, but fixers were inherently self serving creatures, as were most Night City residents, but them even more so.
She might shoot first and ask questions later.
Either way, I needed her, and in order to get her help I had to make it worth her while.
The road carried me past the Sunset Motel.
I slowed without meaning to.
The neon sign buzzed weakly in the half-light, yellow and orange bleeding into the night, paint peeling from the walls, windows glowing soft and lived-in. It looked exactly like it was supposed to.
And something twisted in my chest.
A sudden, alien surge of familiarity washed over me.
Memories of, staring at a screen, transfixed by a Native American, tomboy tsundere.
Seeing the place on a screen.
Pulling in after a job well done.
An awkward, painfully cringe attempt at flirting that at that time made me want to just reload the entire mission.
I gritted my teeth.
"Get a grip, Jesus," I muttered. "At this rate you're gonna spazz out if you actually meet her."
I rolled past without stopping.
The motel lights faded behind me.
Ahead, the land opened up—flat Badlands stretching beneath a surprisingly clear sky. And then I saw it.
A familiar communications tower rose from the dust in the distance, red warning lights blinking slow and steady.
A bit ahead of it, past some railways and on the right side, the other side of the highway was my destination
I decided to park the car by the highway, I did not want to startle them on accident.
"Alright," I murmured. "Let's try not to get shot."
Then I started walking.
The sand crunches softly under looted my boots as I make my way towards a hopefully productive meeting.
The auto repair sat alone, a squat concrete block.
A flickering sign rises above it on crooked stilts — GARAGE — the letters buzzing faintly.
To the right, the Dakota sign glows a dull blue over the building's face, half-obscured by dust and time. The paint is peeling. One of the shutters hangs crooked.
Pretty weird to have your name plastered on a glowing neon board, when your into the type of work she is in, but hey what do I know.
Wrecked cars litter the yard like corpses left where they fell — burned-out sedans, stripped frames, engines gutted and forgotten. Tyres are stacked in uneven towers, some split open, others melted into themselves.
Oil stains darken the ground beneath my feet, layered so thick they've become part of the earth.
A thin plume of smoke coils up behind the building, steady and calm.
Wind hums through the power lines overhead, rattling them just enough to sound like distant static. Somewhere, metal taps against metal, loose scrap shifting in the breeze.
Beyond it all, the desert stretches endlessly toward the mountains, pale and distant
But despite appearances, this place wasn't just a random chop shop, it was a nexus. Information and favors flowed through this yard as much as if not more than discarded cars.
Each step toward Dakota Smith's base of operations felt like I was walking toward something.
Maybe I was putting more meaning behind it than necessary, but less than a day ago none of this had been real.
The world had been pixels on a screen.
Now I was walking toward someone who, until recently, hadn't even existed to me, trying to strike a deal.
The thought made my skin crawl.
As I neared the garage, I raised my hands preemptively and kept moving at an easy pace.
A handful of people lingered around the yard despite the late hour. Some leaned against scrap piles or rusted vehicles. A few were armed, not bothering to hide it.
Strangely enough they seemed to have been expecting me, judging by the way they were grouped up together.
Maybe it was the glowing yellow eyes. Maybe they treated everyone this way. Either way, they didn't hesitate when I got within a certain distance.
Weapons came up almost in unison, barrels tracking my chest.
[SYSTEM WARNING: MULTIPLE HOSTILES DETECTED.]
[THREAT ASSESSMENT IN PROGRESS.]
[COMBAT ROUTINES STANDING BY.]
Yeah, I can see that. Thanks.
A man stepped forward from the group. He looked older than the rest, sun-weathered, his face obscured with a beard and he himself heavy set with muscle, a pair of cybernetic arms folded over a red shirt, showed why he wasn't armed.
He, it seemed, much like me preferred to handle trouble up close and personal.
"That's far enough," he shouted.
"Whatever, or whoever the fuck you are, turn around and go back the way you came."
[SCAN IN PROGRESS — ATTEMPTED BREACH DETECTED.]
What are they going to breach? We don't even run on the same tech. Calm down.
"I just want to speak with Dakota," I said calmly. "I've got a job offer for her."
"Zeke… something's wrong," one of the lackeys whispered. "I can't get a read on him."
So there's our hacker.
"She doesn't work with corpos, you rat," another one snapped. "Leave while we're still asking nicely."
That was a lie. Everyone worked with corpos, whether they admitted it or not. Dakota was far too established a fixer to have avoided corporate ties completely.
"Then it's a good thing I'm not corporate, listen I know I didn't exactly announce myself, but I promise this is worth her while." I said, hands still raised, data slate held firmly in one palm.
"Corporat—? What?" the jumpy one barked. "Man, who else fucking talks like that!"
"Benjy, calm down," the leader, Zeke, said without taking his eyes off me.
He exhaled slowly, studying me from head to toe.
"He's loud," the man continued, "but he ain't wrong. You're either a corpo or you're trouble. You're not showing up on our scans, which means you're either a Zip or packing serious ICE. And ain't no Not carrying around that much chrome."
He gestured vaguely at my arms and neck.
"Either way," he said, "you don't belong here."
"Turn around. Now."
"I'm trying to be reasonable," I replied, irritation creeping into my voice, "but I can't afford to be turned away. This data slate is an opportunity Dakota would kick herself for ignoring. And I'd rather be sent off by her than by her overzealous lackeys."
Their guns snapped higher at the shift in my tone.
They didn't like that.
Well done, you stubborn bastard. Nothing says peaceful negotiation like raising your voice at armed mercs.
[COMBAT IMMINENT.]
[THREAT VECTORS RECALCULATING.]
I tensed, already preparing to dead sprint past them and force my way inside.
Then Zeke froze.
His eyes flickered, glowing faintly orange as his focus drifted somewhere far away.
"Boss, we got this ha—" he started.
The man stiffened slightly.
"…Are you sure?" he muttered.
A beat passed.
"Yeah," he said finally. "You're the boss."
He looked back at me, irritation mixing with resignation.
"Dakota says let him in."
I couldn't help the smirk that crossed my face at the glare Benjy shot me.
"Laugh it up, pretty boy," he muttered as he brushed past. "When she tells us to flatline your gonk ass, I'm gonna ventilate you myself."
"That's enough, Benjy," Zeke snapped. "You know what Dakota says about respecting prospective clients."
Benjy scowled but backed off.
Zeke turned and motioned for me to follow, leading me through the garage entrance and into the shop.
"You can call in that ride you were trying to hide," he said casually as we passed between stacked engine blocks and stripped chassis.
"We've got cameras and sensors all around the perimeter. That little standoff earlier was just to suss you out." He said in response to my widened eyes.
He glanced sideways at me.
"Don't know why, but Dakota must think you've got something worthwhile if she's letting you meet her."
That revelation caught me off guard. Still, it made sense. In her line of work, paranoia wasn't a flaw — it was survival.
"I can't," I said after a moment. "It's not mine. That's actually another thing I'm hoping your boss can help me with."
Zeke grunted, conversation apparently over, and guided me past the main shop floor toward a door at the back.
"No funny business," he said as he opened it. "Or Benjy will be the least of your problems. I promise you that."
The door slid shut behind me with a robotic metallic thud.
"You're either desperate or cocky, coming to me the way you did," a woman's voice said. "Both are bad for business."
Dakota Smith turned from the wall of monitors lining the far end of the office
Her frame was lean and wiry, muscle carved by years in the Badlands rather than a gym. Sun-darkened skin bore old scars, the kind earned from shrapnel, crashes, and nights where luck ran thin.
Faint cybernetic seams traced her face and neck, subtle and utilitarian, more tool than augmentation.
Her black hair was shaved on one side, the rest pulled back, practical and uncompromising.
She wore layered nomad gear: a cropped armored top reinforced with exposed hardware, some sort of breathing apparatus was strapped to the harness on her chest. The tech looked custom, patched together from a dozen manufacturers, modified until it worked exactly the way she needed it to.
Nothing flashy. Nothing wasted.
Ink and scars crisscrossed her abdomen. Someone had once written ALREADY SOLD MY KIDNEY across her hip — whether as a joke or fact was hard to tell.
Around her neck hung a heavy collar threaded with metal prongs and what seemed to animal teeth, more survival rig than jewelry.
Her pants were reinforced tactical wear, strapped and buckled tight, built for long drives, firefights, and sleeping beside an engine block when the desert turned cold.
Dakota's eyes were the most dangerous thing about her.
Calculating.
The eyes of someone who didn't bluff, didn't posture, and didn't raise her voice — because when she spoke, people listened.
She wasn't a queen of Night City.
But from the way she held herself, you couldn't help but take her seriously.
She was a road-runner.
A fixer of the wastes.
A woman who kept people alive between the cities, where corps didn't care and Raffen were always lying in wait.
When she looked at me, I had the unmistakable feeling she already knew three different ways this meeting could end.
"Sit," Dakota said, jerking her chin toward the chair opposite her desk.
"Then tell me your name — and why you're walking around my turf with pre-crash tech like it's worth my time."
I took the seat.
"Pleasure to meet you, Dakota. My name is—" The words caught.
I frowned.
That was… strange.
I knew who I was supposed to be. I could feel it, like something just out of reach. But when I tried to grab the thought, it slipped through my fingers.
My name.
I couldn't remember it.
Not my last name. Not my parents'. Not the names of friends I knew I had once cared about.
Faces surfaced — laughter, arguments, late nights spent gaming and talking about nothing — but the names attached to them were gone.
Empty.
Yet I could list my favorite video game characters without hesitation. I could recall story arcs, voice lines, patch notes, release dates.
But not myself.
The silence stretched.
Dakota's brow furrowed.
"Hey," she said sharply. "You gonna answer, or are you about to zero on my floor?"
Her tone was sarcastic. Mostly.
Her hand had drifted to the pistol resting against her hip.
I blinked and looked back up at her.
"Sorry," I said. "Lost my train of thought."
"Uh-huh," she replied. "You start twitching or talking to ghosts, I'm not playing therapist. I shoot psychos."
"Fair."
I took a breath.
"My name is Genos, just Genos" I said at last.
It is as true as it will ever be.
Her eyes narrowed slightly, scanning me.
"And you want what from me, just 'Genos'?"
"I want to hire your services," I replied. "As for the slate—"
I set it carefully on her desk.
"That's my payment."
Dakota didn't touch it immediately.
She studied me instead.
Then the slate.
Then me again.
"And tell me, Genos," Dakota said, voice flat, skeptical, "why would I ever accept this as payment? It's novel, I'll give you that, but there are dozens just like it. Its monetary value doesn't even come close to my opening rates."
"It's value comes from who it belonged to," I replied. "And for all intents and purposes, Genos is my name. I'd appreciate it if you dropped the sarcasm."
She snorted.
"Alright," she said, leaning back slightly. "I'll humor you, Genos. You're telling me this thing belonged to Spider Murphy?"
"Try her boyfriend." I said.
Her expression didn't change at first.
Then her eyes flicked back to the slate.
"Her bo—"
She stopped.
Slowly, Dakota leaned forward again.
"…Rache Bartmoss?"
The office seemed to tighten around us.
Even the monitors' hum felt louder.
"Yes," I said. "That Bartmoss."
For a long moment she didn't speak.
Her fingers tapped once against the desk.
"Bartmoss died fifty years ago," she said carefully. "Fried his brain breaking the net, or uploaded his consciousness into the net if you believe the urban legends, leaving behind a fragmented world, releasing the nightmares he claimed he was protecting the world from.."
She looked back at me.
"If you're lying," she continued, "you're the dumbest gonk I've met this year."
"I get your doubts," I said evenly. "But this is legit. You're a techie — you can see the hardware specs alone don't line up with anything post-crash. I'm willing to let you examine it."
I hesitated, then added, "Assuming you can find a runner skilled enough. And I mean that. Anyone else is going to get their brain fried if they underestimate him just because he's from fifty years ago."
I waited for her to at least examine it.
But still she didn't touch it.
Instead, she still stared at me.
Her stare pinned me in place — and somehow, despite my optics being inhuman, hers were the unsettling ones.
Whatever she was searching for behind my eyes, she seemed to find.
"You're serious," she said slowly. "You actually think this belonged to him."
"I know it did," I replied. "Which makes it worth your while."
She leaned back, arms folding.
"Alright," Dakota said. "Assuming — assuming — this thing really does belong to Rache Bartmoss… what exactly do you want in exchange?"
"I don't want eddies, or rather only eddies" I said.
Dakota's brow twitched. Just once.
"That's usually where this conversation ends." she replied.
"I need a situation fixed," I continued. "I need an identity."
That got her attention.
"Explain."
"A real one," I said. "Not a burner. Not a week-long ghost. I need a SIN that survives scrutiny. Bank account. Work history. Medical registry. Tax shadow. Something that doesn't fall apart the second a corp clerk runs a deep scan."
She leaned back slightly, eyes narrowing.
"That kind of identity isn't cheap," she said.
"I know."
I took a breath I didn't need.
"I also need a ripperdoc."
Her eyebrow rose this time.
"Hardware issues?" she asked, eyes flicking briefly to the visible chrome along my arms and neck.
"No," I said. "Software."
That earned a pause.
I continued before she could interrupt.
"I'm not compatible with the tech around me. For reasons I don't want to get into, I run on fully custom hardware and software. Operating systems, programs, firmware — all of it. The stuff that gives the average person a baseline quality of life?"
I shook my head.
"I don't have any of it. I don't even have a neural port."
She stared at me.
"You're telling me you're not compatible with any of the tech everyone else is running?" she asked, intrigue bleeding into her voice. "No personal link? No chip socket?"
It was then I remembered — she was a techie. Curiosity was practically a reflex.
"I don't," I replied. "That's why I don't show up on scans. I'm completely air-gapped from everyone and everything else. I might as well be fully organic."
I shrugged slightly.
"Which has its advantages. But it's wildly inconvenient."
Silence filled the office.
Dakota's jaw tightened.
"What are you," she asked dryly, "some corp's attempt at an unhackable borg?"
She sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose.
"Don't answer that."
"I wasn't going to."
She studied my face again — longer this time.
"And you want this installed," she said slowly, "no questions asked."
"Yes. Just the software. I'll find someone else to handle the neural port later."
She exhaled through her nose.
"You know cognitive overlays aren't plug-and-play," she said. "Especially at your apparent age. Bad install and you end up drooling in a chair."
"I'll take that risk," I replied. "I'm confident in my brain's ability to adapt. And in my system's capacity to integrate the software."
I hesitated, then added, "I was designed to be modular."
Her fingers stopped drumming.
She looked at me properly then — not just at my eyes, not just at the chrome, but everything.
"You don't have a birth record," she said. "No education history. No biometrics. No State Identification Number. No childhood footage. No dead relatives I can fake."
"Correct."
"And you're carrying pre-Crash tech you claim belonged to the most notorious netrunner in history."
"Yes."
Dakota stared at me for a long moment.
"How much of you is organic?" she asked finally. "And why are you asking for software instead of just installing a neural port?"
"No questions asked," I reminded her. "That was part of the deal."
I paused.
"Though to ease your mind — I am human. Not an experimental android being piloted by a rogue AI or anything like that. I just can't afford to have some street doc cutting into machinery they don't understand."
Why the fuck did I just say that!? Why would I even put the idea in her mind!?
Her lips pressed into a thin line.
"Damn it all," she muttered at last. "You really are not making this easy for me."
She stood and crossed the room to the monitors I'd seen her working on when I first came in.
"One SIN," she said, fingers flying across the keys. "Tier-two civilian. Freelance contract specialist. Clean enough to travel. Dirty enough no one expects you to matter."
She tapped once.
"Bank account through a trusted credit relay. Minimal corpo branding. And if I find something interesting on your slate, I'll even seed it with a few eddies."
Another tap.
"And I know exactly one ripperdoc discreet enough to install cognition firmware without asking questions."
Her eyes lifted to mine.
"But if your brain melts," she added, "I'm keeping the slate."
"That's fair."
She turned fully back toward me.
"I'll put you up at the Sunset Motel while I find someone capable of handling that thing," she said. "Assuming it's legit, I'll hold up my end. Try to screw me over, though, and you'll end up vulture feed."
"You have my word," I replied. "More importantly, you have my location."
I hesitated, then added, "I'd give you the same warning, but I know how you operate. I won't insult you."
I met her gaze.
"But I'm stressing this again. Get someone skilled. Even then, make sure it isn't someone you're close to. Actually — get two."
She paused.
Then she unclipped the respirator mask resting against her collar and took a slow drag.
What is that I wonder?
[INITIATING ENVIRONMENTAL SCANS][SEARCH EYE ACTIVATED][ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION ANALYSIS RUNNING…][TRACE CHEMICALS DETECTED…][ANALYSIS COMPLETE: OXYGEN]]
What the fuck, that was rhetorical!
The system prompted again.
[RECOMMENDATION: DEEP MEDICAL SCAN]
I suppressed it instantly.
Last thing I needed was her noticing my optics flaring.
Dakota exhaled.
"Sunset Motel," she said again, "I'll have Ezekiel escort you there, though before you go, what was it you were saying about a car."