Chapter 6 — Afterlife
The car rolled through Watson's tangled arteries until the skyline broke into Little Chinatown. Neon kanji buzzed above noodle stands and pawn shops, casting garish light on cracked concrete and flickering holo-ads. Adrian leaned back in the seat, hood low over his face, listening to Rebecca hum along to some bass-heavy track blasting from the cracked speakers.
They weren't heading for food. They were heading for a legend.
The Afterlife.
In Night City, saying the name was like invoking a prayer and a curse all at once. To gangsters, mercs, fixers, and anyone who made their eddies by the barrel of a gun, walking through those doors meant one thing: you'd arrived. The Afterlife wasn't just a club. It was the beating, neon-lit heart of the mercenary underworld. Deals were born here, legends were buried here, and every chrome-slick operator worth a damn passed through eventually.
When the car finally pulled to the curb, Maine stepped out first, sunglasses in place despite the daylight. His bulk alone drew stares; people knew who he was becoming. Dorio followed close behind, arms crossed, scanning the crowd with the instinct of someone who expected trouble.
Rebecca stretched, bounced out of the backseat, and grinned at Adrian. "C'mon, rookie. Today you get to see the real stage."
Adrian adjusted his hat lower. It was instinct—years of walking Watson's streets had made him cautious.
Maine laughed when he noticed. "Relax, kid. Tiger Claws wouldn't dare start shit here. This is neutral ground."
"I'm not worried about them," Adrian said. His voice came quiet, steady. "I'm just used to wearing a hat."
It was true. Back when Korna first sent him on errands, he'd taken the habit. A brim was good cover, made you blend in, made you invisible in a city that ate the careless alive. Over time, it had become second nature.
They approached the stairs leading down into the club. A mountain of a man guarded the steel door. Adrian froze for half a heartbeat—he knew this guy. The game had burned his image into memory. Emeric. Always standing sentinel at the Afterlife's gates.
Emeric's eyes narrowed. "Who's the new kid?"
"He's with me," Maine said without hesitation. His voice rumbled with authority. "That a problem?"
Emeric studied Adrian for a moment, then shrugged. "Just watch yourself, Maine. You've only just started making waves."
"I know the rules," Maine said with a chuckle. "Wouldn't disrespect the house."
The steel door swung open with a groan, and Maine clapped a heavy hand on Adrian's shoulder. "C'mon, choom. Time to see where legends are written."
---
The Afterlife hit Adrian like a memory rewritten in flesh.
In the game, it had been pixels and voice lines. In reality, it was a cathedral of chrome and ghosts. The club had been a morgue once, and it still smelled faintly of antiseptic, cold and sharp in the throat. The ceilings arched high, steel beams crossing like ribs. Dim neon strips painted the walls in green and violet, and every corner whispered of deals that had changed the city.
The place was half-empty—daylight hours belonged to corps and civilians. Night belonged to mercs. But even in this lull, the atmosphere pressed heavy, like walking into history itself.
Behind the bar, a man was stacking bottles, wiping counters in preparation for the flood to come. Adrian remembered the game's Craig, but here was someone else entirely—flesh, not code. It hit him again: this wasn't a simulation. This was Night City.
"Private rooms are off-limits," Maine explained, waving to a set of doors cloaked in shadows. "That's where the big deals happen. Fixers, corpos, people with pull. For now, we stick to the floor."
Adrian only half-heard him. His eyes scanned the architecture, the chill crawling down his arms. The Afterlife wasn't a bar. It was a throne room, and every merc in the city bowed to it eventually.
---
"Over here!"
The voice cracked like a duck's quack, sharp and high-pitched. Sasha waved from a sofa in the corner, her face lit by the pale glow of a laptop. Next to her lounged a skinny man with oversized gorilla arms—chrome pillars clamped onto a frame too small to carry them. He looked like a caricature, all wires and attitude.
"Pyrrha!" Rebecca shrieked, then launched herself forward like a missile.
"It's Pilar!" Adrian's mind corrected, but the thought was drowned by the chaos unfolding.
Rebecca landed square on her brother, biting his head while pounding his chest with both fists. "You asshole! We agreed to go in together, and you ditched me!"
Pilar yelped, his chrome arms instinctively shielding him as he staggered under her assault. "What the hell, Becca?! I was five minutes early, that's all! Emeric just opened the damn door!"
"Liar! You left me behind!" she screamed, fists raining down.
Dorio groaned. "Not again…"
Maine smirked behind his shades and shook his head, guiding Adrian toward the table. Beneath the amusement, Adrian caught something else in Maine's expression—a pride in his crew's chaos, like this was just how family worked here.
Sasha glanced up from her laptop, cat-like smile tugging her lips. She extended a hand toward Adrian. "You must be the bodyguard. Glad to finally meet you."
Her grip was small, but the confidence in her gaze spoke volumes. Adrian nodded once. He'd been hired to protect her; she already understood that.
---
"Alright," Maine said once everyone had crowded around. His voice cut clean through Rebecca's ranting and Pilar's protests. "Team's all here. Let's do this proper.
Name's Maine. Captain. Combat lead."
He gestured to the woman beside him. "This here is Dorio, my partner. Vice-captain. She'll break you in half if you cross her."
Dorio gave Adrian a curt nod, her eyes steady and cool.
Maine waved at the hacker. "That's Sasha. Don't let the cute look fool you—she's sharper than any blade in this city. Our jobs live and die by her code."
Sasha smirked, clearly used to the introduction.
"Pilar—tech backbone. Guns, chrome, gadgets, signal jammers. Half the work we pull comes through his contacts."
Pilar puffed his chest, still nursing the bite mark Rebecca had left on his scalp.
"And finally—Rebecca. You've met her. Loud as hell, violent as hell, but she's family. Think of her as… support fire."
Rebecca flipped Adrian off, then grinned wide.
Adrian said nothing, just nodded. He wasn't ready to call them "we," not yet.
---
Maine lit a cigar, smoke curling around his shades. "No more delays. Today we make our mark."
Rebecca cocked an eyebrow. "So we drinking till dawn again, or actually doing something?"
Maine exhaled a slow cloud. "This job can't wait. We're hitting Biotech today. Sasha and Adrian go inside. I'll run pickup. Pilar, you jam their signal. Dorio and Rebecca, you'll hold at Afterlife. We need minimal noise inside."
Rebecca slammed her glass on the table. "What?! You're benching me?"
"Not benching," Maine said firmly. "Minimizing risk. This is data theft, not a firefight. Smaller the team, better the odds. Sasha needs a guard, not a distraction."
Rebecca's jaw clenched, but Dorio's hand on her shoulder stilled her.
"Fine," she muttered. "But if he screws this up, I'm cutting his balls off."
Adrian raised an eyebrow, unfazed. "Noted."
Sasha smirked again, amusement flashing across her face. "Don't worry. He'll keep up."
---
As the crew continued hashing details—routes, signals, fallback points—Adrian leaned back in his chair. The room hummed with smoke, neon, and the weight of ambition.
In the corner of his vision, the system flickered.
[New Quest: Data Heist — Biotech]
Objective: Infiltrate Biotech with Sasha.
Conditions: Protect the netrunner. Retrieve the data. Escape alive.
Reward: Random Attribute +0.10, Bonus Eddies.
Danger Level: High.
The notification pulsed once, then sank back into the dark edges of his vision.
Adrian breathed out slow. He'd stepped through the doors of the Afterlife—and there was no walking back.