The heavy silence in Dakota's workshop was broken only by the hum of my optical sensors and the nervous, ragged breathing of the two Aldecaldo boys. The one on the right had his heavy Overture revolver aimed dead at my center mass. His hands were shaking. At this range, a high-caliber round would definitely dent my plating, maybe even rattle my internal gyros, but it wouldn't kill me. I had survived the Vault of Glass; I wasn't going to be taken out by a jumpy kid with a rusty iron.
Dakota Smith didn't raise a weapon. She just stared at me, her cybernetic eyes whirring as they tried to process the impossible machine sitting on her workbench.
"Put the irons away, boys," Dakota ordered, her voice low and even.
"Dakota, it's a rogue—"
"I said stow it," she snapped, not taking her eyes off me. "If this thing wanted us flatlined, it wouldn't be asking for a drink. Look at the size of it. It could have snapped your necks before you even cleared leather."
Reluctantly, the kid lowered the revolver, though he kept his hand hovering over the grip.
Dakota stepped closer, folding her arms over her chest. She was calculating. A good fixer always is. "You speak English. You understand context. You have a sense of humor, or at least a sense of irony. But my scanners say you're a hundred percent synthetic." She tilted her head. "So what the hell are you? An engram shoved into a drone? Some Blackwall AI playing dress-up?"
"Neither," I said, my vocal synthesizer rumbling in the cramped garage. I rolled my shoulders, feeling the familiar, simulated ache of phantom muscles. "I'm an Exo."
Dakota frowned. "Never heard of the make. Which corp?"
"None that exist here," I replied, keeping it vague. The truth of alternate universes and paracausal geometry would just sound like cyberpsychosis to her. "Think of me as the next—and final—step of a full-borg conversion."
"Bullshit," the older kid scoffed from the back. "Full-borgs need a biopod. You gotta have a brain and a brainstem somewhere in there, otherwise you're just a drone or an engram."
"Your tech relies on keeping the meat alive because you don't know how to digitize a soul without losing it," I explained, leaning forward, the metal table groaning under my dense weight. "My makers figured it out. There is no squishy brain in a jar inside my chest. My actual, human essence—my consciousness, my soul, whatever you want to call it—was completely transposed and hard-coded into this mechanical body."
Dakota's breath hitched slightly. In a world where Soulkiller just made a digital, hollow copy of a person, the idea of truly transferring a human soul into a machine was the holy grail.
"That's impossible," she whispered. "Without a biological anchor, the mind violently rejects the body. Cyberpsychosis would be instantaneous. You'd tear yourself apart."
"Which is why I'm built like this," I said, holding up my hand and flexing the thick, armored fingers. "Look at my joints. Look at my chassis. I have human-analog muscle fibers. My system simulates breathing, a heartbeat, the urge to eat, the need for sleep. It's a closed-loop system designed specifically to trick the human mind into believing it's still flesh and blood. It prevents cognitive rejection."
I paused for a second, looking down at my entirely naked, heavily scarred metallic form, and decided to lean into the absurdity of the situation.
"It's actually incredibly thorough," I deadpanned, looking back up at them. "It even includes fully functional, anatomically correct lower hardware. You know, just to keep the human brain from short-circuiting when it looks down in the shower."
The younger Aldecaldo kid choked on his own spit, erupting into a sudden coughing fit.
Dakota blinked, her cybernetic optics subconsciously tracking downward for a fraction of a second before she violently snapped her gaze back up to my faceplate.
"Wait," the older kid blurted out, staring at me with a mixture of horror and profound teenage awe. "You're saying you can... you know...?"
"It's a very robust simulation, kid," I replied, my vocal synthesizer capturing the dry humor perfectly. "Like I said: the absolute pinnacle of engineering. Now, about those pants."
Dakota let out a sudden, sharp bark of laughter, shaking her head as she rubbed her temples. To a tech-shaman of the Badlands, a perfect, psychosis-free synthetic body was a miracle. To find out its creators also gave it the equivalent of a built-in Mr. Studd implant just to keep it sane was apparently the most 'Night City' thing she had ever heard.
"An entire human essence," she murmured, a smirk finally breaking through her stoic exterior. "Trapped in a mechanical body. No ports. No ICE. Fully autonomous, and apparently fully equipped."
"Just me," I confirmed, my glowing optics dimming slightly as my battery screamed at me to enter sleep mode. "But right now, this perfect mechanical body is running on fumes. I'm battered, I'm currently stranded in a desert, and I'd really like to cover up."
I looked around the garage, taking in the dismantled cars, the weapon racks, and the rugged, survivalist nature of the Aldecaldo setup.
"I need a heavy-duty power cable to trickle-charge my core," I said, shifting into negotiation mode. "I need a pair of cargo pants, a heavy duster or jacket to cover up my plating, and a place to lay low while my internal repair systems do what they can."
Dakota's business instincts finally overrode her amusement. She crossed her arms again, a shrewd smile touching the corner of her lips. "That's a hefty shopping list for a stray piece of chrome. Nothing out in the Badlands is free, Exo. What do I get in return?"
"You get a master mechanic and a crack armorer," I replied smoothly. "Where I come from, knowing your way around an engine block and a firing mechanism isn't a hobby; it's basic survival. I had to maintain my own gear, and I took to it like a fish to water. I can strip, clean, rebuild, and modify just about anything that burns fuel or shoots bullets."
I leaned forward slightly, the metal of the table groaning again. "More than that, I'm used to working with tech that would make your corporate engineers weep. For a long time, my only hobby was dismantling and modifying highly advanced, hostile robotic frames. I actually got so good at repurposing their tech that their network had to start deleting their physical bodies from reality the second I killed them, just to stop me from building my own armory out of their corpses."
Dakota stared at me, processing the sheer casual insanity of that statement.
"And," I added, my glowing eyes locked onto hers, "if whoever caused those burn marks on your roof comes looking for me... you get a guard who doesn't miss."
Dakota weighed the risks. Having unknown, potentially apocalyptic tech in her camp was dangerous. But having a one-man army who could supposedly wrench on cars better than a nomad, upgrade their arsenal, and owed her a favor? That wasn't just an investment. That was a winning lottery ticket.
"Mitch left some of his old military surplus gear in the back," Dakota said, gesturing to the older kid who was still staring at me. "Go dig out a pair of combat pants and the heaviest jacket you can find. And for the love of God, get him some underwear. It's gonna be a tight fit."
She walked over to a heavy diagnostic terminal and pulled out a thick, industrial power cable used for charging Panzer tanks.
"You got a name, Exo?" she asked, tossing the heavy cable onto my lap.
I looked down at the thick copper connector, then up at the dusty, neon-lit horizon visible through the garage door. A new world. A new life.
"Yeah," I said, finding the emergency manual override port hidden under the plating on my forearm. "But for now, just call me Cain."