Jackie chuckled, shaking his head. "No heroics, he says. Max, hermano, you're in Night City. Heroics come free with the bloodstains."
V smirked, setting her rifle down with a click. "He's right, though. We pull clean, we live. We pull sloppy, corpos trace us back in a heartbeat. I'm not looking to wake up in a Saka interrogation room."
Max finally looked up from his HUD. His optics flickered faint blue as he studied both of them. "Then tomorrow, you follow my signals. Nothing else. If I say break, we break. If I say burn, we burn. We don't argue in the middle of the street."
Jackie lifted his hands, palms open. "Claro, claro. Jefe Max, got it." He grinned, but the edge of nerves was there. Jackie wasn't dumb—he knew how bad things could get.
V leaned back in her chair, blades twitching once from her forearms before sliding back in with a whisper. "Fine. Just don't freeze on us, Max. I've seen chooms make perfect plans and choke when chrome and bullets start flying."
Max's voice stayed flat. "I don't choke."
The silence that followed was heavy. Jackie finally broke it with a laugh. "Alright, alright. Nobody's choking. We're all gonna eat like kings after this. First gig with Padre's blessing? People'll know the names Jackie Welles, V, and…" He paused, glancing at Max. "Still never got what you want to be called, hermano. You stickin' with Max?"
Max shrugged. "Max works. The mask is enough."
Jackie grinned wider. "Mysterious. I like it. Gives people something to whisper about."
V snorted. "Or it makes them think you're a weirdo hiding under a mask. But sure. Let's roll with mysterious."
The three of them packed up, double-checking ammo counts and syncs. Outside, the Quadra sat under the buzzing streetlights, looking like a black wolf crouched on concrete.
Jackie lingered at the window, watching it. "Tomorrow's gonna be big. Could be the start of something."
Max stood, cloak shifting as he moved to the door. His optics dimmed, voice steady as ever. "It won't just be the start. It'll be the line in the sand. After tomorrow, we stop being nobodies."
V slid her rifle onto her shoulder, smirk sharp. "And start being targets."
Jackie laughed. "Targets with chrome, guns, and a badass ride. Ain't nobody stoppin' us."
The three of them stepped out, the hum of the city wrapping around them. Neon bled into shadows, the night alive with sirens, deals, and sins. Tomorrow waited on the other side of dawn—convoy steel, drone eyes, corp firepower.
They left the streetlights behind and rode toward Industrial in a low, hungry line. The Quadra slipped through alleys and service roads—Jackie's hands steady on the wheel, V crouched over the smart-AR console in the back, Max quiet up front with his HUD alive in iridescent overlays. The city thinned into wide yards of rust and concrete, towers of shipping containers and the skeletal ribs of old warehouses cutting the horizon.
Max's voice came over the silent comms, flat and precise. "Positions locked. Drones show convoy moving eastbound, two minutes out. Real rig's in position three by escort pattern. Stick to signal vectors. EMPs at ready. Jackie, you take point on the left flank. V, you're high cover on the right—no close toys until drones are down. I'll trigger the first package."
Jackie flexed his gorilla arms and grinned. "Copy that. Gonna be fun ripping doors open."
V clicked the smartlink once, eyes bright. "Drones first. Then everything else."
Max's hand rested on the console, fingers not touching—just waiting.
They reached the choke point Max had chosen: an old service overpass that narrowed to a single-lane bridge with concrete barriers and rusted railings. It funneled traffic into a slow crawl and made pursuit predictable. Perfect for forcing the convoy off rhythm.
From the ridge, the convoy came into view—six vehicles in a disciplined line, lights off, small escort drones dancing above in tight patterns. The real truck rode between two drone clusters, its armor plain but heavy. The Quadra and two chase bikes pulled up into positions Max had marked on Jackie's HUD. Heart rates rose; breaths shortened. For a moment, nothing but wind and the hum of distant engines.
Max's finger tapped twice on a pad. The first EMP went live—small, targeted, a canned scream of static launched down the escort channel. Two seconds later, a hiss hit the air as three drones blacked out and fell like dead birds, their rotors stuttering. V's smart-AR tracked and locked, and she sent a precision burst that knocked a fourth drone's sensors. The escorts split, confused.
"Now," Max said.
Jackie gunned the Quadra. The reinforced bumper hit the second vehicle at exactly the angle Max had practiced. Metal screamed. The trailer yawed, slowed, and jackknifed into the stretch of road beside the overpass, blocking half the convoy. The rest of the line ground to an immediate halt.
V dropped down through the Quadra's quick-release hatch, mantis blades already slicing a seam in the cab of the real rig. Her movements were surgical—there was no show, only efficiency. She used the AR's feed to guide her strikes around reinforced ribs and sensors. Jackie went to the next truck and with Gorilla Arms locked, tore away the rear doors like paper.
"Max—package looks sealed. One rack, heavy crates. Corpo marking—no brand I can read." Jackie barked back. "We haul it out."
Max's HUD flashed a new problem: a fast response unit five minutes out, a silver SUV already accelerating from the east. He did not flinch. Instead, his fingers danced over the Quadra's console. He synced an auxiliary EMP on a narrow band aimed at the convoy's comm mesh—enough to scramble local targeting and make their escape window wider.
"Burn route B," Max said, voice flat. "Rail spur now. Jackie, three crates — load them in the Quadra. V, secure the rest. I'll handle the escort ghosts."
They moved with trained chaos. Jackie and a hired wheelman from Rick's crew he'd convinced to help heaved crates into the trunk while V slotted in smaller packages to secure on the seats. Sparks flew; a sentinel drone tried to mount an intercept and Max hit its uplink with a hard EM disruptor. Its optics blinked and died in a slow shutter.
***
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