Dakota didn't waste time putting me to work.
"Maelstrom," she had said, sliding a heavily encrypted data shard across her desk. "A gang of chrome-junkies obsessed with cybernetic perfection. They hit an Aldecaldo supply run three days ago and dragged the cargo back to a chop shop in Watson. I want the cargo back."
Getting to Watson meant crossing into Night City proper.
I would have loved to make the drive on my custom hoverbike. The problem was, it was currently a heap of very expensive, heavily modified parts sitting on a workbench in my new rented Santo Domingo garage. I didn't have the glimmer or the transmat schematics for a real Sparrow, so I'd cannibalized the frame of a wrecked Yaiba Kusanagi and blown half our startup capital on three stolen Militech heavy-lift repulsor thrusters. It was going to be a masterpiece. Eventually.
Right now, however, it was just a massive hole in my wallet, which meant I was stuck driving the beat-up Thorton Colby Dakota had lent me. It handled like a brick and smelled faintly of wet dog.
I rolled up to the massive, militarized toll gates of the Southern California border checkpoint. Floodlights cut through the smog, illuminating the heavy concrete barriers and automated Militech turrets tracking every movement.
A border guard in heavy tactical armor stepped out of a reinforced booth, raising a hand to stop the Colby.
"ID and cargo manifest," the guard boredly demanded, tapping a heavy scanner against the driver's side window. "And jack into the port for a biometric scan."
I rolled down the window and looked at the personal link cable dangling from his terminal. I didn't have a neural port. I didn't have a SIN. I didn't even technically exist in this universe.
"I don't have a port," I replied smoothly, my vocal synthesizer steady over the sputtering idle of the car's engine.
The guard frowned, his hand instinctively dropping to the heavy pistol on his thigh. "No port? What are you, some kind of bio-monk? Step out of the vehicle. Hands on the hood."
I sighed internally, calculating the quickest way to disarm him without causing an international incident. But before the guard could unholster his weapon, the scanner in his hand let out a loud, cheerful BEEP. The red light on his terminal flashed a brilliant, authorized green.
The guard blinked, looking down at his screen. His frown deepened into utter confusion. "Uh... my apologies, Mr. Blackwood. Corporate diplomatic immunity? I... didn't realize Arasaka Counter-Intel was running deep-cover ops in a Colby."
Mr. Blackwood? I kept my faceplate entirely neutral. "Just doing my job, officer. Keep this off the official logs."
"Y-yes, sir. Of course, sir. Opening the gate."
The heavy barricades slid apart, and the automated turrets powered down. I put the brick in drive and smoothly rolled into Night City limits.
As soon as we were out of earshot, I let out a low whistle. Echo, what did you just do?
"I forged a high-level corporate identity, backdated it a decade, implanted it into the Night City central registry, wiped the local camera feeds of your face, and bypassed his scanner's ICE to feed him a false positive," my Ghost replied smoothly. "It took me zero point four seconds. The architecture here is so primitive it's almost cute. It's like watching a Vex Goblin try to do long division."
Remind me to never make you angry, I thought, genuinely surprised at how insanely effective he was against Cyberpunk tech. In our universe, he was a flashlight and a door-opener. Here, he was a god-tier Netrunner.
We hit the open highway leading into the Watson district, the neon glow of the city swallowing us whole. The Colby rattled violently as I pushed it past eighty miles an hour.
Echo, I called out internally, watching the towering megabuildings loom closer. If you can hack a militarized checkpoint in less than a second, why the hell are we doing street-level muscle work? Why aren't we doing mercenary work as a Netrunner? You could sit in my garage and rob half the corps in this city blind without us ever firing a shot.
Silence.
Echo? Come on, buddy. You're practically a god in their Net. Why aren't we taking high-paying Netrunner gigs?
Still no answer. Just the rattle of the Thorton's suspension beneath me.
Is it because I blew half our savings on the Sparrow parts? I asked.
I waited. The silence in my head was deafening. It was the distinct, heavy silence of a Ghost who had completely muted his comms channel out of sheer, unadulterated spite.
Look, I need transportation! I argued, gripping the steering wheel tightly. Normal bikes bottom out when I sit on them. I weigh like eight hundred pounds! I need a heavy-lift hover-frame. It was a tactical investment!
Nothing.
I had survived centuries of war, the Vault of Glass, and the collapse of localized timelines, but nothing was more stubborn than a Ghost who thought you were being financially irresponsible with your loot.
"ECHO!!!" I yelled out loud, my vocal synthesizer booming in the cramped cabin of the car.
A tiny, familiar click finally registered in my audio receptors.
"Turn up ahead," Echo's voice replied dryly, completely ignoring my excuse, "and we'll be at the place."