Chapter 18 — A Change of Mind
The night still tasted of burnt rubber and ozone when Maine unclipped his jacket and let the red glare of tail-lights paint the side of his face. The cannons on his arms sighed metal as he flexed the mechanisms, a dry, dangerous sound—like a beast awakening. He stood with one foot up on the bumper, surveying the slope below where the Sixth Street garage crouched like an iron barn of trouble.
His crew clustered around him, a ragged constellation of experience and edges. Dorio checked a strap on her pack, Pilar adjusted a toothpick in his jaw, Rebecca hummed and toyed with the Shingen like a child with a noisy toy, Kiwi leaned back in shadow and exhaled a neat ring of smoke, Sasha's laptop hummed in her lap like a spider waiting for prey, and Adrian—quiet, focused—kept his fingers loose on the pistol at his hip.
"Y'know what?" Maine said, letting the cigarette embers gutter. "You guys not going to tell Kiwi about the pay she gets for scrolling her thumbs?" He tossed the question like a coin, grin broad enough to split the night.
"What?" Kiwi's voice was flat, bored. She flicked ash, the motion controlled, precise. The glow of her mask's HUD reflected on the lines of her face. "I don't need to be told if I'm getting paid. I need to know if I'm getting liability."
Maine snorted and rolled the cigarette between two chrome fingers. The prosthetic hand at his forearm unfolded and clicked with practiced ease—petal-like plates sliding, revealing pitch-black tubing and a compact barrel that he liked to call "the cannon." He wiped a smear of oil across the casing and let the warmth settle in his palms.
"Don't worry, chica. This job won't have surprises." His tone carried the half-truth mercenaries used like armor. "As for the part about you getting paid for doing nothing—welcome to the team. You'll get used to it."
Kiwi's lip curled. She hated this tone. She liked precision. She liked records. She liked algorithms more than men who hummed bravado like a prayer. "Getting used to it," she said slowly, letting the words hang, "is a bad philosophy."
Rebecca snorted, the sound like a broken toy. "Ooh, philosophical Kiwi. You gonna yoghurt us with your existential crisis or shoot something?"
"Shut it, Becca." Dorio's hand landed on the butt of her pistol like a metronome. She looked tired and ready all at once—someone who could turn a fight into a short story in blood. "We don't have time for personalities. Maine, how's the plan?"
Maine clicked his jaw. "Sasha jams cams. Adrian gets in through the side. I and Dorio hit the front to make noise. Pilar, you take the van and get ready to pull the pickup route. Rebecca, backup. Kiwi, if Sasha can't handle the net—she calls you. We get the target out. Hand him to the runner in Heywood, call the number. Cash-out."
Kiwi's eyes narrowed, a light catching like a razor on glass. "Hell of a handoff. Heywood? That's not subtle."
Maine shrugged. "Cash is cash. The middleman covers fallouts. That's how the line reads."
Dorio clicked a tongue. "Middlemen are fragile things. Their word's thinner than credit slips. We do the work, we plan for the worst."
Pilar barked a laugh that turned into a cough. He was a man who wore his cynicism like armor, but even his posture betrayed the adrenaline that hummed in the group.
"Alright," Adrian murmured. He didn't sound like the man who'd climbed down a slope silent as a shadow a night ago; he sounded older—sharper. "Show me the route."
Sasha slid her laptop closer so Adrian could see. Her fingers flew—short bursts of code that hooked into the city's lower-tier feeds. "There is a primary camera on the signpost," she narrated. "Secondary cams overlook the back alley. They rotate on intervals. I can blackout the primary two for four minutes, not five. There's a maintenance blind spot in the roof vent above the men's restroom—ad joins there. But I just scraped the net of activity. There's more than normal tonight."
Maine's lips tightened. "How much more?"
"Twenty-one IDs pinging in the node," Sasha replied, voice steady. "Four of them are pros—maskware, custom implants, hardened rigs. They're expecting something. This is not a casual chop-shop crew. Someone's holding a package."
There was a quiet like the moment before a storm. Even Rebecca quieted, the bubble-gum popped and fell back into her mouth so hard it stung.
"Four hackers?" Kiwi's cigarette arced out of her fingers and hit the pavement, sparking. "In a garage?"
Sasha didn't blink. "Yes. Four. That's why I said I'd need backup sooner than later."
Maine's face moved from grin to concern in the space between a breath. "You sure you can handle moving through four pros if they hardjack the net?"
Sasha's mouth quirked. "I can burn two of them. Beyond that—my rigs overheat without an external cooler. I run on my rig and what I've got bolted to my skull. If I go three-deep on a quick-hack and keep the firewall on, I melt. That's bad for me, worse for you."
Kiwi's jaw flexed. She'd come here thinking she was joining a rag-tag crew that could be monetized and spun. She thought of efficiency: nodes, latency, bandwidth, firewalls. She had scanned Adrian earlier and seen "near-baseline" readings with anomalous performance spikes. He was fast. He was strong. He was… an anomaly. It should have been an easy calculation. Yet now—four hackers? Equipment heavy? That changed variables.
She straightened. "If Sasha needs my golem, fine. But I don't like being an afterthought."
Maine slapped his own thigh. "You're not an afterthought. You're a reserve asset. If Sasha can handle it—great. If not, you window into their net and we pull out before anything cooks." He looked at Adri an and offered the grin again, but it didn't reach his eyes. "You sure you're good for this?"
Adrian's stare was steady. "I'm ready."
They moved into position like a practiced wound. Adrian slipped into the pre-marked shadows, breathing slow. Sasha's fingers danced faster now; the laptop screen was a constellation of green and white. She opened port after port, sending scrambled packets and fake logs to the city's camera management nodes. She wove a soft blackout like smoke, then she spun it tighter, a temporary noose.
"You have ninety seconds of cam blackout," she whispered into the comm. "Make it count."
Adrian dropped and moved like a thought. He was a blur, arms tucked in, feet whispering on gravel. The world winnowed down—one breath, one step, one heartbeat. The ventilation duct was a spider web of rust; he lifted his pistol and pried open a rusted grate as easily as peeling a bandage. Hot air hummed from inside the garage—engine heat and men warmed by fluorescent lights.
He slipped through the vent and slithered along the duct overhead. Below him, the garage was a hive of bodies: men in patched Sixth Street jackets, armor plates threaded with tattoos, heads bent over devices, laughter that sounded like gravel. A central bay had been converted into a command room with a bank of screens and a table of hardware. Four workstations were occupied; four faces frowned in the glow—hackers working in concert, fast as predators.
Adrian eased his elbow onto the ventilation seam and listened. He could hear the rhythm of voices, the metallic clank of tools. He could map the room without looking.
Then Sasha's voice came in his ear like a cool blade. "Adrian—twenty meters. I see their node. There's a hard LA node on the east table. Don't trigger it. I'm trying to mirror their auth handshake."
Adrian obeyed like muscle memory. "Copy."
Back at the cars, Kiwi cursed under her breath. She had her rig out now—a slab of custom hardware strapped to her lap. Her fingers slid into a glove interface and her neural HUD painted the net into minutes. She launched a quiet golem—an automated harvester—then watched as it tried to slip into the garage's mesh.
The first probe failed. A walled security hash blocked it like an old woman's stubbornness. The second probe tagged a counter-hash. Kiwi frowned; whoever they were, they weren't amateurs. They'd set real security, not the lazy firewall variants you saw in knock-shop crews or weekend coders.
"Four pro-runners inside," she murmured. "This is a legit squad. Someone's paying top creds."
Sasha's voice tightened. "They just dropped a beacon. Node handshake is tightening. The blackout is slipping—fifteen seconds."
Adrian pictured the men below: hungry, entitled, dangerous. He pictured Maine and Dorio waiting with engines idling, ready to crash in with the fury of two hundred pounds of chrome and conviction. If Sasha failed, the team would erupt like a fuse.
Kiwi threw another micro-probe into the node—a brittle, winged thing meant to distract the defenders long enough for Sasha to rip a gap. It bit. A defender—an automated sentinel with a name stamped in code—latched onto the probe and tore it apart. Kiwi swallowed a curse and deployed a second golem, then a third. The defenders were skilled and patient. They knew how to wait and strike.
Sasha's breath came in the headset. "Adrian. Now. Slither the main beam. Don't touch anything but the target. I'll try to mirror their logs so it looks like a regular Friday night."
Adrian found a seam in the roofing where the vent met a service hatch. He let himself down into a crawlspace, then slid into the men's restroom like a whisper. The tile under his feet was dusty, soap-streaked, and warm. He checked his line of sight: a maintenance ladder near the stalls, a ceiling vent with grille slotted open—his escape route. The target—if Sasha's map was right—was being held in the back bay, wrapped in a tarp, breathing shallow.
He moved.
Down in the yard, things shifted. A sixth sense hummed—someone had noticed the blackout flicker, an uneasy glance up from a man adjusting a welder. Laughter stopped. Men looked at the sky and at their comms. One of them punched something and the screens hopped with a status update.
Sasha hissed a breath into Adrian's ear. "They're on a delayed sweep. Hold for three counts. Kiwi, mark telemetry—if the defender pings, we pull. Do not engage their network. You will burn them back to the stone ages."
Kiwi's voice came, thin and focused. "Telemetry flagged. I have a soft mirror on the south router. If they push, I'll ghost their feed. But if they go full counter—everyone falls back."
Maine's voice crackled through the squad channel. "On my mark, we hit the gate. Adrian, you move the mark."
Adrian's hand closed around metal under the tarp. The man under it slept like a sleeper cell—tight muscles, a scar at the jaw. A thick collar circled his neck, a chunk of corporate tracer hardware burned into the flesh; whatever he carried mattered enough to strap to his spine.
He tugged the tarp and the man stirred, grunting. For a moment, the world balanced on a pinhead: the man's sleepy scowl, Sasha's crackle of code in his ear, the distant echo of engines.
And then something went wrong.
The maintenance door slammed open with more force than it should have. A shadow moved in the doorway—two shadows. A chorus of boots on the gravel. A woman's voice that was not part of the usual Sixth Street gravel—clean, engaged. One of the hack crews had a net-caster up on a shelf, and its green eye flared like an alarm. Someone had thrown out a net—an active sweep that dissolved the blackout and rerouted cams to a manual control.
Sasha's voice dropped into iron. "Counter-scan. They've got someone in there jacked to the local mesh. They activated a sweep."
Kiwi cussed and flung a hardened probe into the node. "They've got at least one host with hardware-level authorization. It's not a tool from the street. This is corporate-hardened."
Maine's comm barked immediately. "Pull the trigger! Move!"
Dorio slammed her palm into the starter and the engines coughed like hungry beasts. Pillar's van revved. Rebecca slammed a fist on the hood and abandoned subtlety entirely. The plan unraveled like thread as men who owned speed and regret barreled toward the garage in a controlled frenzy.
Adrian's heart matched the rhythm of boots below. He could run out of the vent and be caught in the open. He could hold the man and try to move. He could risk everything for the data strapped to the man's spine.
He did what he'd always done—he moved for the smallest opening available.
He yanked the man upright just as a headlight washed in through the vents and a voice snarled, "Who's up there?!" The man's eyes flared awake like coals. He lunged, but Adrian had the weight and angle to pin him. He slapped a cloth over the man's mouth and forced him into a limp hold, one arm around his chest like a vice.
Below, the world exploded.
Maine and Dorio crashed through the front gates in a two-car roar that shook rust off eaves. They were a hurricane of chrome and intent, aiming to draw all eyes. Pillar's van screeched a last-second peel and stalled like a wounded animal—an intentional drama act in their plan for exfil.
Kiwi's voice was the single thread holding the net together. "They're deploying countermeasures. I'm temporarily mirroring their mesh—hold fast while I reroute telemetry to false positives. Sasha, push now—go deep."
Sasha's fingers moved like rain. She hit the node with a hail of packets that glittered and shimmered. Her little laptop took on the taste of danger and spat it back in defiance. Codes shifted, validators looped in endless hallways, and for a heartbeat—they owned the net again.
"Now," she breathed.
Adrian shouldered the man and burst into the open like a ghost thrown into sunlight. He barreled past the central table—men lunged for guns, but Dorio detonated a flash-bang that turned flashes into screams. Maine's cannons leaned into the air and spat lead that painted night with brief, bright flowers of violence. Rebecca danced between explosions with her SMG singing.
Adrian ran.
Two steps into the bay, a man with a hardened jaw stepped from behind a cluster of crates, and his eyes stuck on Adrian for a moment like magnets. He was the leader—broad, scarred, arms thick as tree trunks. His rig was a hybrid; not purely a gang tool. He had a corporate-grade ocular HUD that blinked with blue cold light when he recognized Adrian's face.
"You!" the leader barked. The world narrowed; the old score of street fights, of stolen glances, of debts unpaid collapsed into that single syllable. He pulled a sidearm and shot.
Adrian felt the bullet nick his shoulder, heat and sting. He ducked, shoulder burning. The leader's hand found flesh armor, and his pistol barked again. Round after round lit the air like bad fireworks. Adrian's breath shook. The man he'd been dragging shook like an animal; the collar on his neck flashed red—an anti-tamper protocol that could fry neural tissue if tripped.
Sasha's voice turned into a razor. "Adrian—drop the collar. I can ghost the signal, but you have to sever mechanical lock. There's a seam. Two quick snaps."
Adrian planted his feet, fingers finding the seam the way Sasha described. He gritted his teeth and tore the collar open with bare hands. Sparks licked the man's throat, a smell like melting plastic and burnt flex circuits. For a breathless heartbeat it seemed the collar would scream and roast them both. Then the light went out.
Kiwi had matched the move. She ghosted telemetry and fed the operator manufactured noise: false positives and jamming bursts that made the garage look like an equipment failure zone.
The leader swore and pivoted on his heel. "Kill them all!" he screamed, but the decisive advantage—the net—had been wrested the other way. Men looked at one another like sailors whose compass had been yanked. The momentum slid.
Adrian heaved the man, dragged him through the tear in the shop doors just as Dorio cleared a path with a blast that knocked a heavy jack into a pile of tires. They staggered into the alley, breath sharp, heart drumming in the throat. Pillar's van had the ramp down and the runner waiting with a dull-faced efficiency they'd learn from watching the city survive.
"Get in!" Pilar bellowed.
Maine's cannons barked a last salvo and laid down cover fire that made the alley taste of burnt metal. Rebecca covered the rear with manic glee, while Kiwi's voice in Adrian's ear ran diagnostics and whispered escape vectors.
Adrian shoved the man in, slammed the runner's door, and let Pilar floor the gas. The van lurched and made its way through blaring horns, a living thing with teeth. They slid under a low bridge and the world folded into motion: tires burning, metal screaming, the city swallowing their heat like a living thing.
In the rear, the man the team had pulled began to twitch, the data shard embedded at his spine now pulsing like a stolen heart. Adrian watched him with a new kind of interest—this was more than a job. This was a fulcrum. Whoever had paid to bury that data had paid for silence by blood.
Kiwi's voice, finally, held something like a smile. "He's on the run-list. We'll hash him, scrub the tags. But we will pay for this." Her cigarette smoke curled into the van's breath, and for once her words weren't cold. They were calculating. Stern. Real.
Maine's laughter boomed: the kind that echoed off alley walls and demanded fate notice them. "That's how it's done. Clean, fast, nothing to it." He slapped Adrian's shoulder so hard the child felt it to his bones.
Adrian looked out the small rear window as they peeled around a corner and into Heywood—into the teeth of a gang that didn't forgive but hadn't expected them to get this far. Neon washed over the van in stripes: pinks, blues, the color of a city that never slept and never forgave.
In the cool of the van's muffled cabin, with the man strapped in and the data flickering against the skin, Adrian allowed himself one thought that surprised him with its warmth: tonight had been a change of mind for everyone. For Maine, who'd wanted big creds and a bigger grin. For Kiwi, who'd tested the crew and accepted something unquantifiable. For Sasha, who'd burned code like it was prayer. For Dorio and Pillar and Rebecca who'd each brought their weights. Even for the man strapped and silent in the back.
Adrian's system pinged a new notification—quiet, low-priority—but heavy in meaning:
> [Mission Complete: Unexpected Events Managed.]
[Rewards: +0.1 Physical; +0.1 Reflex.]
[New status: Heat increased. Recommend cooldown.]
He smiled once, a quick, tiny thing. Heat would matter—heat always mattered in Night City. They would be hunted now. They would sleep with one eye open. The van smelled like burnt circuits and wild possibility.
Kiwi exhaled through her nose. "Next time," she said to no one in particular, "tell me when we're walking into a stack of talent. I like to be ready."
Maine shrugged, satisfied and sulky in equal measure. "Next time, we bring more beer."
Dorio cracked a grin that showed teeth, and Rebecca whooped like an idiot.
Adrian looked at Sasha, who sat with a deadpan face and hands trembling just enough for him to see the strain. Her laptop had gone warm. Her fingers left smudges of code in the air they would both remember. She had danced the net like a blade and walked through fire.
"Thanks," he said quietly into the noise.
Sasha shrugged, then tapped the screen. "Don't die next time. It screws up my data streams."
They all laughed, but the laughter had an edge. Out on the street, Night City hummed, full of men who would chase them for debts and secrets. And somewhere, in deep offices and dim rooms, someone with a clean suit and a corporation's patience would open the clean folder where a missing data shard had just been removed and read the new lines.
Maine cracked his knuckles. "We did a good job," he said.
Kiwi gave him a look that might have been approval if it hadn't been so cold. "We survived. That's all I keep score of."
The van pulled up to a neutral bar in Heywood, lights flickering like a bad dream. A runner stepped out as if yawned awake for duty, accepted the handoff, and vanished into the night with the man and the data. Phones exchanged numbers, deals were murmured into sleeves.
When the van finally rolled back toward Santo Domingo, the crew rode in silence but not in peace. Each one nursed a private thought. They'd won the moment—but they'd stirred the pot.
On the HUDs and the nets, a new wave unfurled: alerts, queries, probes from sensors that hadn't slept. The city's web pulsed with interest. In the distance, two sirens howled like dogs that had finally smelled the scent of the hunt.
Adrian laced his fingers together and stared at the cracked window where rain had begun to fall in thin threads. Above, the sky glowed a perpetual bruise of neon and drone-lights. He felt the small warm weight of the lucky-cat key in his pocket—Sasha's bike key—and for a second the world felt like a hinge: one motion could open a door to something else.
He breathed and realized the change wasn't only in the crew. It was in him. He'd thought the city was simply to be endured—that it was a practice in survival. But tonight, nursing a man whose collar he'd ripped apart with his bare hands, watching friends risk system and skin for one another—he had a slender, dangerous hope.
That hope was more volatile than any cannon.
And Night City, as always, promised to test whether it would burn or forge them.