Syringe in One Hand, Gun in the Other 17

Syringe in One Hand, Gun in the Other

Chapter 17

-VB-

Alan Marris

As our network of clones expanded into multiple worlds, Arasaka quickly became a thorn in our side as they started to kill more and more of our clones.

They were lucky that Gloria agreed to leave Night City. She and David had already left, and though they didn’t know it, they had taken a ride with one of us to our Earth and not Seattle.

As for Night City and Arasaka?

Since we no longer had someone we cared about in the line of fire…

It was about time we got revenge for all of ourselves that had been killed directly or indirectly at Arasaksa’s hand (forget the fact that respawn). It was about time we put together every scrap of tech we bought, recovered, reverse-engineered, researched, and salvaged from the Tinkers across multiple worlds.

We attacked.

---

Maine

“What the fuck is that?” Maine muttered to himself while staring up at the giant portal floating in the sky.

He and his crew - Dorio, Mich, Ilyana, and himself - had come out to party to celebrate their first ever gig success. Sure, they couldn’t go to the big club like the Afterlife, but it didn’t matter where they went! They were stepping up in the world and that’s all that mattered!

They drank, hopped bars, drank some more, and they were all about to call it quits.

And that’s when the giant fuck-off portal in the sky showed up, showing a bright day on the other side of it. It cast a beam of sunlight like God’s demented window to a better world or something while Night City was showered in neon and, well, the night.

Everyone on the street had either one of two reactions. The cowards (the smart ones, Maine, thought) quickly scurried away, trying to find refuge under buildings or whatever structure that might hide them. The dumb ones were recording the giant portal and the sunny world on the other side of the

Himself included only because he couldn’t let Ilyana just stand in the street by herself. He was starting to regret making that decision now because he was looking at what looked like cannons on the other side of the portal pointing straight at Nighty City.

But as he looked closer, he realized that the cannons, which looked less like gun barrels and more like railguns, weren’t pointing at Night City in general but rather at a very specific point if the way four of those cannons seemed to be tilted inward. His Kyoshi eyes quickly tracked their trajectory (useless pieces of shit that can’t do that in real time in the middle of combat) and found his eyes tracking it to the … Arasaka Tower.

His stomach dropped as his veteran instincts told him to scram right there, right now.

He ran to Ilyana, picked her up despite her protest, and ran.

“RUN TO THE CAR!” he shouted at his crew and they ran.

The cannon began to light up from the inside and electricity arced across its frames.

Someone shot missiles at the portal and the huge ass railgun but a laser of all things shot it from the other side of the portal.

He threw Ilyana into the car, jumped into the driver’s seat, waited very briefly for the rest of his crew to get in, and just booked it the moment the fatass Mich’s fat ass touched the cushion of the passenger seat.

“What thell, Maine?!” Dorio shrieked at him indignantly but he was sweating bullets.

This was a show.

He felt it.

He saw it.

He experienced it.

Old men posture with the death of their youngsters. That’s how the Unification War was fought.

And then there was a flash of neon pink in the sky that lit up everything. Maine didn’t turn around to look but the rest of his crew certainly did even as he drove their truck out onto the main road leading out of the city.

There was a rumble.

The car skidded as he lost control but regained it moments later as he swerved the wheel perfectly to counter the car’s skidding turn.

The rumble turned into a roar.

“Holy fuck-” Mich muttered.

“DRIVE FASTER, MAINE!” Dorio shouted at him without looking at him but at what was happening behind them.

“I AM DRIVING AS FAST AS JANE WILL TAKE US, WOMAN!”

“Holy shit-” Ilyana whimpered as she crawled down and hid herself behind the passenger seat.

And then, finally, Maine couldn’t help but glance at the rearview mirror and gulped.

Because in the distance, at the center of Night City, was a pink mushroom cloud and a blurring shockwave quickly catching up to them.

He wasn’t going to make it.

He threw the car to a left turn and behind a building.

“BRACE!”

They all hunkered down just as the shockwave tore through that area. All of Jane’s windows shattered. The car shrieked as it suddenly skidded sideways. Buildings crumbled, rumbled, and cracked all around them. Roads roiled like waves and broke.

Maine gasped as he got his hands back on the wheel, bleeding from his organic ear but not his cyberware one. He looked around the car even as he pedaled it forward. They had to get out of Night City. It wasn’t safe anymore. It wasn’t where the top dogs were anymore.

It was going to become a battlefield.

He would learn later that this was but one of five attacks that destroyed five Arasaka facilities - in order of Paris European Headquarters, Nighty City, Honshu R&D Installation, Arasaka Taiwan Main Factory Hub, and finally first Arasaka Tower itself in Tokyo -  and it was heralded with a single message broadcasted to all.

“Arasaka Corporation. You hunted us down when we have done no harm to you. You ignored our attempts to communicate. You slaughtered our brothers. This is our response. Burn, you sons of bitches.”