Chapter 9 — Sasha Yakovleva
For a second Sasha's world collapsed into a soft, slow slide—noise muted, colors smeared, and the elevator of panic dropped. Then she felt the clamp of arms, solid and warm and shockingly human. The Afterlife's memory—the clinical cold of the Biotech lab, the hiss of the ripper, the taste of blood—faded into the taut focus of the moment: someone was holding her.
Adrian. Solid, smelling of rain and ozone and something like cigarettes and laundry. He had the kind of grip that meant he'd planned the arc of the fall, and then planned how to survive it. The city rattled and screamed below them. Sasha's first clear thought was stupid and small: she could feel the thud of his heartbeat through the jacket.
Then the HUD pinged in his peripheral vision like a vindictive game reminder.
> [Mission Update]
[Primary Objective: Modified — Rescue Sasha Yakovleva]
[Do you accept the mission?]
[Accept / Reject]
Adrian didn't hesitate.
> [Accepted Mission — Rescue]
Danger Level: Medium
Mission: Extract Sasha Yakovleva from Biotech custody; alter status to living.
Mission Reward: Random Attribute +0.10, unlock one random skill.
He felt the panel blink, then fold away like an obedient shadow. Later there would be time to check rewards. Right now there was wind and weight and the staccato rattle of security bots closing in.
"Hold on tight," Adrian said, voice tight with something that wasn't bravado. "If you fall, you're dead."
Sasha's laugh came out like a broken bell. "Optimistic, aren't we?"
He slung her over his shoulder with an efficiency that surprised even him. One hand steadied her waist, the other snapped Lizzie, the Lizzie's-model pistol, from its holster. He'd practiced that movement for nights when he'd thought it would only be a flex. Tonight it had teeth.
Security bots opened fire. The ceiling exploded into a fan of sparks and concrete dust. Adrian tracked the trajectories with a predator's calm he hadn't known he had, muscles translating the math of angles into motion. He launched himself away from the doorway in a single bounded arc—four meters, maybe more—throwing his form like a rock through the smoke.
He rolled, planted, and let Lizzie sing. The shotgun burst in close-range mode chewed through metal and circuitry where two security bots had dared to stand. Oil and wiring sprayed the corridor like dark fireworks, then flame licked the air where they collapsed. The staccato pop of failing servos filled the concrete room.
"Bomb?" Adrian heard Sasha's voice, wild and thin.
She was right. She'd pulled a last-resort on the way in—an incendiary time charge tucked into her bag to guarantee the data wouldn't be kidnapped by the corp again if they couldn't run. The idea had been salvage over exposure—beautiful symmetry. Now it meant one more countdown.
"You planted a bomb?" he barked.
"Not mine—our exit plan," she coughed. "Don't go near the door. It's going to blow."
Adrian's head dialed through distance and time. Fourteenth floor—high enough to break both of them if they jumped and landed wrong. Suicide would be a fast, messy way out. He glanced at the shrapnel-strewn window, then at the open shaft of night beyond.
"We jump," Sasha said before he could decide. There was the same cold logic that had made her a brilliant netrunner: pick the pain you control, not the pain fate throws. "Better to fall than get turned into confetti."
"Jump from the fourteenth with me?" Adrian said, incredulous. "You know how many tiles that is?"
"Better than being fried." She hissed a breath of humor into fear. "You came up with this exercise; you can get us down the same way you got us up."
He snapped a grin he didn't feel. "Climbing up and falling down are not the same thing."
She shoved him toward the window with a laugh that dissolved into a grimace of pain. "Then don't analyze. Jump."
Adrian didn't ask a second time. He sprinted to the shattered glass, hooked a shoulder under Sasha's legs, and dove.
The city cried out beneath them, neon streaking into impossible lines. For a heartbeat they fell as if the world had gone horizontal, and the air rushed so loud Sasha heard Adrian's laugh and panic at the same time. Her body weight swung like a pendulum, momentum threatening to tear them apart, but Adrian's arm locked like iron around her waist. He adjusted mid-fall — a move of impossible physics, or just luck and reflex — and aimed for the lower roofline he'd spotted. They crashed into the seventh-floor loading bay; concrete screamed and then held.
Adrian's palms burned from the impact. He rolled, brought his legs under him, and thrust a dagger into the nearest wall to anchor them. The blade found purchase in hollow cinderblock with a shuddering scream. It was an ugly, loud solution. He hoped his improvisation beat the alarms and the thin shriek of corporate radars.
"Maine!" he snapped into the comm. "If you and Pilar don't hit the west gate in thirty seconds, Sasha and I are done. Hover extraction—now!"
Static, then Maine's laugh—half admiration, half terror. "You madman. Fourteenth floor—what the hell?" The old merc's voice came through ragged, then turned sharp. "We're on it. Driver! Pilar, move!"
Maine's disbelief ricocheted across the channel like a question: Who does this? Adrian didn't have time to answer it. He had to keep Sasha from bleeding out and keep their exit alive.
Sasha tasted of iron and heat. The vents at her temples leaked steam, the white puffs now smeared with blood. She looked up at him, eyes unfocused, and for a flicker—maybe a second—Adrian thought of innocence, of the girl behind the gamer alias, fingers bright and flying over a deck as if conjuring miracles. She'd cornered the corp's guilt and made it scream into public light.
"Can you walk?" he asked.
"Bullet's through the shoulder. Not pretty. But yeah. Move," she said.
He hauled them to their feet and sprinted toward the west gate where the bridge arched into the night. Above, a pattern of black dots—security drones and bots—poked like a constellation. The Terrorist Squad was famed for its hovercraft drops, and the biocorp had its private response units. If they reached the bridge, they'd be under Maine's lines of fire; if they didn't, they'd be running as the city's silence closed in.
Maine's wheels glazed the horizon: the modified car screeched to a stop like a beast with brakes. Doors whipped open and the crew spilled out in practiced chaos—Dorio a coiled breaker of will, Pilar checking the jammer, Rebecca a loud red hurricane ready to bite anything that moved. Adrian leaned Sasha into the back seat as Maine whistled hoarsely.
"You absolute lunatic," Maine breathed, eyes bright under the street light. "You jump from fourteen and still grin. Who raised you?"
"Bad decisions and worse coffee," Adrian panted, chest pounding.
Pilar slammed the gas and the car tore forward, tires throwing water into neon arcs. Pyrrha (corrected: Pilar; sorry for the confusion earlier—he's the tech backbone) hammered the comm as they pushed for extraction. The air smelled of burnt rubber and adrenaline.
In the back, Sasha clutched the wound, white smoke still whispering from the port vents on her cheeks. Blood soaked into her shirt, and the pink helmet lay dented beside her. She glanced up at Adrian, eyes suddenly fierce.
"You didn't have to—" she started.
He shrugged, careless. "You'd have thrown the place to the wind if I left you. Figured I'd save my cut by saving you."
She gave him a look like she was both offended and indebted. "You already owe me. Later we'll talk about payment. For now, keep breathing."
Maine barked orders into the radio as they wove through Little Chinatown. "Dorio, keep our six. Rebecca, make noise on the east side. Pilar, keep that jammer singing. We buy time, we move."
Rebecca whooped, leaning out the window with a grin sharp enough to cut. "Oh, we're loud all right."
Adrian's system stuttered in the corner of his vision, another line appearing with the smug certainty the HUD had when you did someone a favor for the universe's scoreboard.
> [Quest Complete: Rescue Sasha Yakovleva]
Rewards: +0.10 Reflexes; +0.05 Composure; Hidden: Bond increased with Sasha.
Consequences: Corporate alert level — HIGH. Traces initiated.
He swallowed that last line and let it sit like lead. He'd rewritten a strand of fate tonight. That made him either hopeful or a mark. Night City didn't care which.
At Lizzie's, the lights were low and familiar, a refuge stitched of warm clutter and fluorescent beer. Susan's eyes were already sharp as razors when they pulled in. She didn't shout; she didn't need to. The Mox had a smell that meant home and trouble both. Korna, Rita, and Judy clustered by the back, faces lined by worry and pride. The room inhaled when Sasha was carried in—part sympathy, part the purest, loudest gossip adrenaline.
"Korna," Adrian said, voice raw. "Get someone on her shoulder wound. We need clean, now. Pilar—steris, stat."
And Korna moved like practiced glue, hands sure and gentle, patching, applying a field bandage. Susan hovered, the pistol she'd loaned him resting in its familiar place. For once, her interrogation grin didn't come; she looked at Sasha like a woman measuring a fragile thing she could not fix with orders.
Sasha lay on the cot, breathing shallow, but alive. She caught Adrian's eye and mouthed, "Thanks." Her voice was a gravelly thread when she managed to speak later. "You're an idiot."
"You say that like it's a diagnosis," Adrian answered, and for a moment the bar laughed—the fragile, loud sound of a family who'd survived another night.
Maine sat back with a drink, looking like he'd consumed a small star. "You okay?" he asked Adrian finally.
Adrian shrugged off the adrenaline tremors. "I'm tired. The system gave me reflexes." He smirked.
Maine's face softened. "You saved a ghost tonight. That means something. It also means Biotech will have teeth in the morning."
Korna's fingers found his hand for a beat. "You took a risk. We'll cover it, but you remember—family eats each other last."
The system's afterglow flashed one more thing—an optional objective complete: Sasha alive. Adrian stared at it, at the number and the hidden bond tag. Something heavier than XP settled across his chest: responsibility.
Outside, somewhere far above and crisp with corporate muscle, a new line of code began to run—traces across firewalls, a slow, cold search for the leak's origin. Night City had noticed. The trackers would curve in like sharks on scent.
Inside Lizzie's, laughter resumed, ragged and defiant. Sasha murmured, half to the room and half to the ceiling, "If I die, I die with a leak." Her voice was a flint. No one believed death now. Not after what they'd just pulled.
Adrian sat back, letting his hands tremble free. He'd changed a story tonight. He'd changed a life. He'd also made enemies he hadn't met yet.
The city would answer them soon. For now, there was a bandage, a warm drink, and the sound of his friends' voices pulling him back from the brink. He let himself be pulled.
---
System Log — Mission Stat Snapshot
Mission: Rescue Sasha Yakovleva — Completed (Altered Canon)
Rewards: Reflexes +0.10; Composure +0.05; Hidden: Bond (Sasha) +1
Status: Corporate interest level — HIGH. Biotech trace initiated.
Notes: Adrian's actions increased team cohesion. Immediate risk of reprisal from Biotech & contractors.