The flickering light above buzzed and died, leaving the station in half-shadow. Only the pale glow from Max's cybernetic eye cut through the dark.
Kade shifted, unsettled. "You talk like you've seen it firsthand."
Max didn't look up. "Seen it?" He gave a low, humorless laugh. "Kid, I'm not part of that program."
The words dropped between them — plain, cold.
Kade's breath caught. "Wait, you're saying—"
"Ghostlink prototype unit seventeen," Max said, but his voice held no ownership. "They called it 'Horizon.' It was an experiment blending organic thought and synthetic logic. Terrible idea. Terrible people." He flexed his metal fingers slowly, servos purring. "The aim was soldiers who could think faster than machines and never hesitate. Not my aim. Not mine."
Kade's face went pale. "Everyone said the project was wiped. That it failed."
"It 'failed' in public," Max said quietly, staring out at the rain leaking through the cracked tram window. "They scrubbed the records, burned the labs, buried the evidence. But the tech — and the profit motive behind it — never went away."
Mary's voice came over the comm, edged and factual. "Correction: ninety-one percent of Ghostlink test units terminated post-failure. The remaining nine percent are unaccounted for."
Kade swallowed. "Unaccounted for…? So there could be others?"
Max shrugged once. "Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, it's not me. I didn't build it, I didn't run it. I only know what it does to people — and what it makes companies willing to do when money's on the table."
His jaw tightened. "They think they can do it better this time. Cleaner. Smarter. A version that won't remember the blood on its hands."
Silence stretched. Above them, the city hummed and breathed.
Mary's tone shifted, colder. "Max, the uplink data — it's not only blueprints. There's a test schedule embedded. Human integration trial: forty-eight hours from now. Site: Arcology Nine."
Kade's eyes widened. "That's here. That's in this city."
"Of course it is," Max said. "They always test where they can deny it later."
"Max," Mary warned, "if you interfere, Militech will mark you active. You'll lose safe nodes, contacts—"
Max shrugged the warning off like rain. "I'm not the one who started this. But I won't watch them run it again." His voice was level, flat. "We told people. We exposed what we could. That matters. People hear. People get angry."
He met Kade's stare. "This isn't my war, kid. But it doesn't have to be only mine. If enough folks know the truth — workers, ex-techs, the families of those who were used — they'll push back. They'll make Militech accountable. Ghostlink is illegal, immoral, and it shouldn't exist. If enough people stand up, they can stop it."
Kade felt something show in his chest that might have been hope. "You really think people will do that?"
Max's mouth twitched once, not quite a smile. "I think people will do what they have to when it's their lives on the line. I think they'll rally. That's what you want to be part of, right? Not another gig — something that actually matters."
Mary's voice softened, almost quiet. "The data's been copied to multiple dead-drops and distributed. Word's already spreading through nets no corpo can fully scrub."
Max nodded. "Good. Let them hear it. Let them organize. Militech bought power by hiding what it used. When the hiding stops, so does the power."
He turned toward the stairwell, coat whispering on metal. "I'll do what I can to fracture their systems. You and your crew — if you want in, learn fast, move clean, and keep your head down when it counts."
Kade squared his shoulders, pistol heavy in his grip. "I'll do it."
Word spread faster than any courier. The dead-drops Mary seeded lit up the black channels and bled into public forums within minutes — raw footage, archived logs, personnel rosters, voice prints and field telemetry that tied Ghostlink research to named contractors and board members. The files didn't just allege anything anymore; they showed faces, dates, vessels of payment. They showed names on payrolls. They showed human bodies in labs.
"Holy—" Kade whispered, watching the first public relay of a lab video loop on his wrist. A scientist strapped to a table, a console reading 'Horizon Test: Phase IV' in the corner. The clip cut to a boardroom transcript where a Militech exec casually argued the financial upside of a living weapon. No spin could gloss that.
Mary surged through the comms, her voice tight. "Drop uptake is massive. Half the city's net nodes are pinning the files. Corporate PR teams are scrambling. There are already local labor feeds calling for a hit on Militech sites. This is—this is getting noisy."
The noise became a soundscape of outrage. Workers' unions and ex-employee channels lit up with messages — "We knew," "Our kids were used," "Where were you when they buried my brother?" Small groups organized and converged at known Militech contractors. Protest feeds went live. A handful of dockworkers walked off in solidarity and started peeling the Militech decals off a supply carrier. A night-bus of ex-techs pulled up outside a subcontractor's office and started pasting the leaked manifest across the locked doors.
Kade grinned, equal parts proud and terrified. "We did that."
Max's face didn't move, but his eyes — the cybernetic eye catching the flicker of a thousand live feeds — reflected the unfolding chaos. "We made a dent," he said. "Not enough to stop them, but enough to force them to show their hand."
Show their hand they did. Within the hour Militech issued a terse corporate statement calling the uploads "malicious fabrications" and announced "targeted security operations to safeguard critical infrastructure." It wasn't an apology. It was a threat. Convoys that had been idling on the edge of town powered up; armored vans peeled away from corporate compounds; private security signatures flared on Mary's net overlays. The company picked up its toys and moved them closer to home.
"Militech mobilizing," Mary reported. "Four heavy convoys inbound, northern approach. Two tactical teams vectoring toward Night City personnel hubs. They just blacklisted several independent broadcasters."
Kade's smile faltered. "So we pissed the wrong giant."
Max nodded. "We pissed a giant that makes soldiers for itself. They'll be careful, but they'll also be ruthless."
***
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It's 22 chaps ahead