I got there at nine thirty. Biotechnica sits beside Arasaka like any other corp building, lean lines, glass, lights that mean money. Dark clouds press low. Rain will come. I watch the entrances from the park benches and feed my deck the side cams. There is a service mouth, an underground parking gate behind the building. I slide my passive tags into every blind spot I can reach without touching their core. Nothing loud, nothing that calls home. Passive only. I know I am new at this, but new is not an excuse enough to panic. I force myself to stay measured.
I do not stare. You never look like you are waiting for a job to go sideways. I lift my eyes when I need to and pretend to read a news feed. Misty and her terrible prediction taro cards have been in my head for a while. Lovers, the tower reversed, the hermit reversed. Lovers could mean Sasha. Lovers could mean just a person, not necessarily a love interest. Tower reversed looks like a revelation and the building just before looks like a tower. My stomach pulls. I tell myself the reading was a mistake and the anxiety hits harder for it.
I think about leaving. Going back to my hideout. Letting Sasha do the thing she knows how to do. Then the hermit reversed pops up in my head and I laugh, a short bark that sounds like panic. I say, "FUCK," loud enough that people look, then keep walking. Maybe it is self fulfilling. Maybe the cards are a mirror and I am the one leaning in. Maybe there is no magic and I am just making reasons to stay. I rub my face and try to calm the thoughts into things I can control.
I started building a wall. A data wall. Something to occupy my head. The city throws advertising fish in the sky and they arc orange to blue until the light hurts. The work steadies me. Tiny entropy patterns, a fake handshake, a callback on nonexisting functions. It is boring and that is why it works. I break it, fix it, test it, until I fall asleep.
Hours pass. I stretch, make another wall, check the feeds. My concentration frays and I patch it back together. I run through options. Call a Delamain, buy an Excelsior package and vanish for a while. I can almost afford it if I spend everything. Nobody I know would go fight a corp on a whim for me. So I sat. I watched. I keep the tags passive and the breath steady.
Midnight rolls are quiet and heavy. The last workers leave the building in a sluggish trickle, heads down, coats pulled tight. Nobody gets paid overtime here and it shows. Sasha walks up to the main entrance in that bright outfit that makes her stand out even in dim corporate light. Her bag swings at her side. She slips her personal link into the port next to the doors and they open almost instantly. Too fast. She steps inside and the doors seal behind her like she was never there. That makes me calmer, knowing that it's that easy to get in for her.
I try to reach the interior cameras but they are dead. Not disconnected. Dead. No feed. No signal. No handshake. It makes no sense how she got in that clean. The building sits dark and still, but under that stillness is a stack of passive defenses that my ping already mapped out. Turrets. Pressure plates. Scanners. Optical nets. All idle. All ready.
Minutes pass with nothing to latch onto. The street noise around me starts to drift away until it is just my heartbeat sitting in my ears. For a moment I let myself think that this might go smoothly. Then a Biotechnica AV bursts past overhead, so close I feel the displaced air slap my face. It banks toward the hidden side pad and disappears behind the structure.
The urge to run hits me hard. Instead, I sent her a message telling her to leave.
"Leave, now! I'm outside and security has flown in."
"sorry, no."
Then nothing. Signal cut. My hands grip the rail in front of me before I even notice. I force my mask on and jog to the entrance. I try to copy her method but the reader demands employee credentials that I do not have. The overclock burns in my chest before I even start it and I push it anyway. Two hundred percent. I scrape for anything that resembles an emergency unlock protocol and after a few seconds find the buried line meant for fire crew access. I shove a brute force into it.
The building tries to trace me but my walls are already up. Fourteen layers so far, including walls I made and bought. I twist the failsafe open and the doors shudder apart.
The lobby is quiet. Perfect floors. Empty reception. A single elevator humming at rest. I call it and see from ping that it sits near the top floors, around sixty. No chance I wait for that. I pull the control node open with a hack and kick the speed limiter off. Sparks start dropping down the shaft as the elevator tears downward past safe velocities.
I cast a wide ping through the building. New blips flicker to life. Humanoid frames. Fast. They take a separate elevator and are already rising. There is no time to think. I brace against the wall and ready the copperhead.
My suit traps all the heat from the overclock and sweat soaks into the inside of my vest. My breaths taste metallic and thin. My hands refuse to stay steady. The elevator halts so suddenly my knees almost buckle. Someone cut the power and seized control. Some netrunner on the corporate side saw the spike I left and grabbed the line. FUCK.
The elevator lights go out. No movement. No sound. I try to restart the node but the panel gives nothing. I climb onto the railing, push the hatch open with multiple strikes with the butt of my rifle and climb out into the shaft.
The shaft is colder than the elevator. I spot the nearest floor door and drop onto its narrow frame. My fingers dig into the seam. I rip open a side panel and jam my personal link in until the lock buckles. The doors split apart and I roll inside.
Bright cafeteria lighting hits me in the face. Long rows of tables. Glass partitions. Abandoned trays still sitting near the washer belt. I ignore all of it and scan for the stairs. They sit tucked next to the catering station. I sprint toward them, throat burning, lungs dragging air that refuses to calm me. I start climbing and run another ping.
Nothing. Absolute silence.
Every floor I pass has a camera pointed straight at the stairwell door. No feed returns to me but I can feel the pressure. My legs burn by the time I hit fifty five. A muffled blast rolls through the concrete and shakes dust out of the ceiling. Gunfire follows right after, sharp and tight. My chest tightens and I push myself faster, almost tripping on the last step as I reach the door.
I press my ear to it for half a second. More shots. Something metal scraping. I slam it open.
The corridor is wrecked. Smoke hangs low and the lights flicker in a lazy rhythm. Three green security units sprint across the far side with rifles spun up. One of them jerks its head toward me and I feel the bottom of my stomach fall. I raise the copperhead out of instinct but before it fires the bot snaps sideways and empties a burst into its own ally. Its optics flick from blue to red like someone flipped a switch.
For a second I think the system glitched. Then I see motion behind them.
Sasha slides into view with incredible speed. She pivots under a burst, sweeps one bot's legs out and drives her hand into its neck joint. Her fingers split into claw tips and sink through the casing spilling a fountain of oil. The bot's frame convulses and drops. I angle past her and fire at the one backing her, hitting arm and torso plating. It slows just enough for her to jump back and finish it with a clean thrust.
The hallway is littered with pieces of earlier units. A chunk of the doorframe is missing where something blew through it. The air tastes like hot plastic.
Sasha darts backward into an office, almost disappearing behind a row of overturned chairs. Her left arm cable stretches taut toward a computer at the back. The holographic headset on her forehead is powered down but still glowing faintly at the rims.
I take off my mask and move toward her, boots slipping on spent casings.
Metal footsteps echo behind me.
"WE NEED TO LEAVE, NOW!"
Sasha whips around and raises that neon-pink pistol. My lungs freeze. Before I can say a thing she fires past my shoulder. Rounds punch into the bots rushing in behind me and the muzzle flash paints the walls red for a heartbeat. I jerk into a sprint and she tracks around my outline, clearing lanes that I cannot see. Her irises flare between red and green as she hijacks whatever she can.
I get to the doorway and press my back to the wall while more steps close in. A few shots crack past the opening and I duck. Outside, engines thrum somewhere above the building. Another AV. Sasha shouts over the noise, voice sharp enough to cut through the ringing in my ears.
More metal feet hammer the floor. I peek long enough to see shapes moving through smoke.
Sasha yells "WHY?" her voice shakes with anger and something close to panic
I cannot think about that now. I check the elevator on the ping but it is dead. The only working lift is the one the bots came in on and that shaft probably goes straight down to the underground bay. It is the only path that is not straight suicide.
I shout "I knew she would try to die here! WE ARE LEAVING!" The words spill out louder than I expect.
Sasha glances at the screen, jaw tight, cable locked around her hand like a tourniquet.
"I cannot."
Then the whole corridor lights up with muzzle flashes. Six units rush in, firing like they want to cut the walls apart. Her ping hits my deck and sudden lines of connection open even without sight. I crank overclock again. My skull feels like a furnace but I push through and slam a short circuit into every one of them. Their servos jolt at the same moment, giving us a heartbeat window. We both lean out and shoot. Three go down from the copperhead alone as Sasha's gun did not have the firepower and her bullets bounced off like pebbles.
Heat climbs up my neck. Something punches through my boot and the warm trickle tells me what happened before I even look. A couple toes gone. Pain shoots up my leg like a live wire.
Sasha fires over me while I drag myself back behind the frame, trying not to fall forwards into certain death.
She calls out that she needs a little more time. I reload with hands that do not want to grip anything. The bots shift focus away from her and onto me. I guess I am the closest target. My vision shakes. Sasha screams at me to close my eyes. I do it instantly and bury my face in my arm. The flashbang hits the doorway with a metallic rattle followed by a scream of white noise.
I lean out and fire blind, trusting angles I barely understand. My bad foot folds and I crash sideways, shooting as I fall. The pain almost blacks me out. When the ringing fades I realize the whole hallway is quiet.
No movement. Only the sizzle of dead circuits.
I grab the wall and drag myself upright. The copperhead scrapes the tiles as I pick it back up. Sasha reaches out, grabs my collar and pulls me behind the desk. I land on something hard. Her bag. The monitor in front of her shows a progress bar creeping toward a network uplink. She yanks the cord from her arm and I ask if she is done.
I ingest a meddoc and my head clears enough to breathe.
"Just.. give me a second."
Sasha gives me a worried little smile that makes something twist in my chest. She says she does not think we are getting out. I hear the hum of the AV before the light spills in through the glass wall. The window trembles. The AV hovers right outside with more bots lined on the ramp. Two human operators raise rifles at us.
Sasha throws her visor aside and crouches next to me. Her hand digs through spare mags until she finds the square Nokota charge. She slaps the adhesive plate and throws it against the glass. The fuse light turns green. Her fingers run across the detonator coil with a calm that makes my throat tighten.
She looks at me. No words. Just a look that tells me to move.
I stand but stumble. She catches me under the arm and shoves me upright as the AV operators open fire. I throw everything I have into a wall of ICE, trying to overheat them, but their ICE is heavy and I only punch through once. Heat slams up my spine. My vision flashes white.
Sasha shouts a single sharp word. Then she hijacks one of the bots and it turns on its own squad.
She grabs my arm. We jump the desk and she slams the detonator. The ceiling caves with a roar and the force blows the window outward. Glass scatters across the office and the AV jerks off balance. I drag her clear while debris rains around us. The floor shakes under our feet.
We run.
The AV operators opened fire the moment their sensors cleared. I reacted before I even thought about it, throwing up a few short curcuits. The shooters had heavy ICE. I could only force one hack through before my overclock spiked again. Heat roared under my skin. My vision went white at the edges and the room tilted sideways. All I heard was Sasha cutting through the noise with one sharp word.
"NO!"
Then her own hacks slammed into the system. One of the bots jerked and spun, firing straight into its allies. The operators panicked and staggered back behind the viewport glass as sparks filled the air.
We got up at the same time. Vaulted over the desk. Sasha already had the charge in her hand. She pressed it to the ceiling support and set it off. The blast kicked the whole room sideways. A chunk of the ceiling collapsed and the falling rubble created a perfect barrier between us and the AV. Glass blew outward and I heard the AV engines whine as it destabilized.
I grabbed Sasha by the arm and dragged her partly out of the danger zone, taking a glancing hit to my ribs in the process. We sprinted for the exit.
"The elevator is broken. We need another way," I yelled.
The meddoc finally started taking the edge off. The pain went quiet enough for my head to clear. Sasha staggered for one second, then looked back sharply.
"Follow me!"
She ran. I went right behind her. She kicked out the cut floor plate and it tore open. Below was a maintenance level full of pipes and service rails. She jumped first. Robots flooded the office above us as the rubble settled. More units came from the corridor. Gunfire cracked and three hits slammed into my back. The vest stopped them but the shock stole my breath and made my ribs snap. I dropped into the gap and Sasha pulled me deeper inside.
The maintenance level was only half lit. Steam hissed from a cracked coolant line and the air tasted metallic. Sasha pushed forward and opened a service hatch into the vertical spine of the building. I followed her, wheezing, trying to steady the flashes in my eyes. We squeezed between cable bundles and narrow beams. Sasha kept glancing back to see if I was still walking straight.
We reached a turn in the spine and heard metallic thuds above us. The bots had tracked us. Red sensor beams flickered through the grate overhead. Sasha assessed the space in a heartbeat and dragged me toward a heavy waste disposal door. She pushed me in front of it and yanked at the release lever. It was locked by a mechanical interlock and would not move. She pulled out her personal link but I stepped past her and punched the lever with everything I had. It snapped loose. The lock disengaged.
Hot foul air washed over us. The chute sloped down like an open throat. Sasha went in first without hesitation and slid down, slowing herself with her boots. I dropped in after her as rounds struck the metal above my head.
My whole body felt heavier and my vision flashed white again. Heat crawled across my skin. I tore off my jacket and let it fall behind me. The chute was long enough that I could hear the shutters powering up. They were trying to trap us mid descent. Sasha braced her arms and boots against the walls and angled herself toward a side junction.
I copied her but my injured foot almost gave out. Pain shot up my leg and I gritted my teeth.
"We are almost there," she shouted.
The shutters slammed shut right above me. The entire chute shook. I held on by instinct alone.
We dropped into the side cavity and hit the second slide. It threw us into a massive industrial dumpster in the underground waste zone. The landing crushed the air out of me. I groaned and rolled onto my side. Sasha pushed herself up immediately and turned toward me.
"Can you move? Please?"
Alarms echoed through the concrete around us. I could hear drones and more bots closing in. I forced three deep breaths and tried to pull my vision into focus. My hands shook as I pulled out a bounce back. I downed it in one go, felt the burn hit the back of my throat, and pushed myself up with Sasha helping me to stay standing.
"Don't even ask."
We climbed out of the dumpster and hit the underground zone. Half of it was fenced off, the other half had two corridor exits. The smell of oil and damp concrete filled my nose. From the left I heard the whirr of drones closing in. Sasha's eyes flicked right. She nodded toward the corridor on our right and tapped her personal link. A door clicked open.
The underground parking bay was dim. One electric bike stood fully charged and unlocked. We sprinted toward it. I slammed the door behind us as drones opened fire, bullets pinging off the concrete around Sasha as she dashed forwards. She twisted and shouted in pain as rounds tore through her upper back.
I turned and saw her sprawled on the floor, crawling through a pool of blood. Her legs barely moved. I short-circuited the bots around her, then rushed over and hoisted her up. She shoved against me, trying to push away.
"ARE YOU FUCKING DUMB? I'M NOT GIVING UP HERE," I yelled, ignoring the heat in my chest.
Tears streaked her cheeks. "I don't understand. What did you know?"
I pressed a bounce back to her lips and then took one myself to make sure the dose was right. The stimulant hit fast. She went rigid for a second, then relaxed. I grabbed her fully and got her onto my shoulders.
"NOBODY THAT SAYS THEY WON'T DIE STAYS ALIVE FOR LONG. IT'S COMMON FUCKING SENSE," I yelled. What the fuck is wrong with her?
A small smile breaking through the pain. I tightened my grip and carried her out, leaving bloody footsteps behind.
I put her on the back seat of the bike and swung onto the front.
"Grip tight," I said.
The engine roared. The garage door opened automatically. Doors meant to block drones slid open. Bots and operatives opened fire as we launched. Sasha clutched me so hard it was hard to breathe. I checked behind us. Nobody was following directly.
I spotted a familiar car in the lot. I hacked it fast, forced the familiar fuel pump to short circuit and ignite the highly flammable CHOOH2. The vehicle erupted and flames spread. It began to cause a small chain reaction with the cars nearby.
Sasha kept her head turned around, her eyes flashed and one started shooting each other.
We shot out of the underground bay into the alley behind the Biotechnica building. The AV overhead was scanning but could not see us under the overhang. We accelerated into the nearest side street. Sirens and corporate alert tones screamed behind us but nothing tracked us directly.
I leaned forward over the handlebars, feeling the adrenaline pulse through my veins, my vision cutting out and coming back in. Sasha's head rested lightly against my back, her grip still tight. Rain began pouring.
"I let you down..."
I glanced back and saw her fully passed out, still holding onto me. Her fingers were curled on my vest. I yanked the throttle hard and the bike screamed down the street as I struggled to keep it balanced and not slide in the rain. Every nerve in me sharpened.
"Ripperdock or a clinic. Ripperdock or a clinic. Ripperdock or a clinic. BLEEDING OUT IS BULLSHIT."