Lucy and Rebecca both reached for the passenger handle. They were close, but neither let go.
Lucy said quietly, "I always sit here."
"Huh? Before? Before, I sat behind L and hugged him. Want to talk about 'before'?" Rebecca tilted her chin.
From the driver's seat, Rocky watched their back-and-forth, sweat prickling. Speaking now meant trouble.
A cough saved him.
"Ladies, I actually think I could sit here," Jackie said from behind them.
Both women turned and stared at him until he flinched. Then, at last, they let go together and moved to the back seat.
With everyone aboard, Rocky exhaled, started the Deluxo, and drove. He dropped Jackie in Heywood, then chose to take Lucy home first; Rebecca and he both lived in Watson, which was closer.
They rolled again into the concrete lot in front of the clinic. Rocky parked. Lucy reached for the door.
A data stream brushed Rocky's system like a stray wire snapping hot.
"Lucy, wait."
She paused. An AV's buzz bled through the cloud cover. Armored trucks slid from side streets and boxed the Deluxo in. Doors slammed. Well-equipped troops spilled out, rifles up, a ring tightening.
The logo on the vehicles needed no translation.
Militech.
In the hovering AV, a Militech netrunner launched a live intrusion at their primary target: Rocky: military-grade deck, airborne uplink, top-spec bandwidth. Against cyberpunks or even cyberpsychos, that kit usually walked in.
Not this time. Her interface slammed a wall of ICE and skated. "Damn it, I can't break his ICE," she snapped.
The operations commander beside her stared. Their strike package had bounced.
"Then hack the other targets," he said immediately.
She nodded, pivoted to breach Lucy and Rebecca, and froze at a noise like torn air.
A vertical seam opened ahead of them. A figure stepped through. Before the netrunner could register shape or distance, a right hand closed on her throat and lifted.
"Is the hacker game fun, bug?" Rocky asked, calm.
His hand tightened. Bone crunched like wire-cutters through soft metal. The head came off clean. Blood sprayed the AV's interior.
The commander recovered and opened fire on the sudden intruder.
Rocky moved as the first rounds left the barrel. Tyrant's output hit maximum. The world slowed to a crawl.
He slipped the gun line and appeared behind the commander.
Several crisp sounds followed. The commander's hands left his arms and thumped to the deck. Without a Pain Editor, the man's scream ripped the cabin.
Rocky plugged it with a fragmentation grenade and turned his attention down to the cordon on the street.
Militech's ground squad tightened toward the Deluxo. A few operators below had already noticed the AV's mess and were sighting on Rocky.
He smiled. "The big one is coming."
He kicked off the AV and dropped fast toward a rifleman.
The shooter reacted and fired. Rounds grazed Rocky and threw up shallow blood sprays, but could not slow the fall.
BOOM.
Gunfire choked off. Dust rolled, then thinned to reveal Rocky standing and the soldier under him reduced to paste.
"Adam Smasher style entrance. I like it," Rocky said, laughing.
Behind him, the grenade in the AV went off. A brief rain of red drifted down like a curtain call.
"Militech, huh. Then let me test the new Chrome."
He activated the Tyrant's trump card.
{ Tyrant OS — Ultimate Domination: Active }
{ Boosts doubled }
{ Regeneration online }
{ Linked cyberware in overdrive }
The white exospine along his back flushed bright red. The world slowed again. Power surged like a floodgate opening. The grazing wounds closed in seconds.
He flashed to the nearest operator, palmed the man's head, and spiked it into asphalt.
A red flower bloomed on the ground.
Two more fell before the cordon reacted. Then the squad fired as one. Several operators kicked their Sandevistans online and lunged.
Even sped up, they were still too slow against a Tyrant state.
Rebecca saw every muzzle swing off the Deluxo and onto Rocky. She kicked the door open, hefted the heavy machine gun Rocky had tossed her before he tore the phase rift back at the AV, and went loud.
"Ha ha ha!"
Recoil slammed her shoulders and felt perfect. It was her first time running this kind of gun, her first taste of a proper fire hose.
She had always carried twin pistols and played small. Tonight, she found the shape of her happiness.
"Heavy firepower is the romance of cyberpunk," she crowed, and kept pouring rounds into the ring of Militech troopers.
Across the lot, Rocky moved like a shadow, harvesting lives one clean cut at a time.