Faraday had no comeback after Maine's answer. He snorted, turned for the door, and almost left the private room before Rebecca's voice cut across the bass.
"Get out, Militech's lapdog."
She wasn't a merc who needed fixers anymore, and she wouldn't humor Faraday the way Maine had. For a long time, she'd swallowed it, a mascot in a crew where her words didn't weigh much. Now she didn't have to. Now she worked for Ascension Technology, and she said what she meant.
Faraday stopped. The three-lens stack at his right eye glittered as he stared across at her. Rebecca's temper rose to meet it.
"What are you looking at, four-eyes? Did I call it wrong?"
Even Faraday's practiced polish twitched at the corners. He held his face together and said nothing.
Information is a fixer's price of admission; Faraday had plenty. He knew Rebecca wasn't in Maine's crew anymore. If she were, he would have blown up at the first insult. Night City mercs don't talk to him like that. They flatter and hope he drops work in their laps.
Rebecca wasn't a merc. She was Ascension's and close to its leadership. Faraday had that memo. In Night City, companies are the ones who feed fixers, not the other way around. However, she'd climbed to that distance from the top, and it didn't matter. Picking a fight with her now meant picking a fight with Ascension Technology.
Ascension wasn't old, but it already had reach. Power Stimulant had gone citywide on effect alone, sped up by Arasaka and Ascension promotion. You saw it everywhere: merc bars, security outfits, corpo offices, clubs, and the alleys where the city pretended not to look. Faraday knew the deeper layer, too. Ascension's products pulled majors close, and their cooperation with Arasaka ran deep. Every merc crew he knew who took a hit-job targeting Ascension had vanished from the feed. No one came back. That was why he swallowed the insult and left in silence. The roles had flipped. Rebecca could step on his head now, and he could do nothing about it.
When Faraday was gone, Maine turned to Rebecca.
"Rebecca, come on. Why stop me from taking that commission? What's wrong with it?"
He felt the heat of her outburst in his own cheeks. He wouldn't have imagined it a year ago, let alone let it happen. He was famous now, but not a legend. Until you hit that tier, fixers and mercs keep the same gravity.
Rebecca owed him an answer. She wasn't on his crew anymore, and telling someone to pass on a job without a reason wasn't how she wanted to move.
…
Time slid back to when Maine slotted the shard Faraday tossed.
Rebecca sat off to the side, not planning to meddle. Then, as Maine scrolled the brief and weighed the pay against the risk, an overlay snapped into her vision. It mirrored the data on his shard exactly. Lissandra, of course.
In her head, Rebecca nudged the machine-queen. "Lissandra, this is rude."
She didn't want Ascension's counterintelligence hacking Maine's systems, even if he wouldn't feel the knife. Lissandra's reply came flat and ice-calm.
"For me, politeness does not apply. Only should and should not. Faraday is tightly linked to Militech as a fixer. Most of his commissions are tied to Militech. The probability of hostile action against Arasaka or Ascension Technology is high. My mission is to ensure Ascension Technology's safety. I should collect this intelligence."
Rebecca exhaled and let it stand, then read what Faraday had brought.
[ Commission Intel: Intercept an Arasaka armed convoy ]
[ Cargo: Cybertron prototype (high likelihood) ]
[ Opposing Interest: Militech ]
[ Assessor: Lissandra • Source: shard mirroring ]
While Rebecca read, Lissandra ran her own analysis across the brief and Ascension's vault.
"Arasaka convoy robbery," Lissandra said in Rebecca's ear. "By cross-reference, the payload is likely their newest prosthetic combat suit, Cybertron."
Ascension's counterintelligence sat on a mountain of data; almost all of it flowed into Lissandra's core. Cybertron's existence wasn't a rumor to her. Rocky had flagged it weeks ago and told her to watch for related moves. He also warned Cybertron that it might surface under escort. The conclusion landed clean with timing, routes, and a handful of other signals: Arasaka was probably moving Cybertron.
"What is 'Cybertron'?" Rebecca asked.
"A full-body combat prosthetic developed by Arasaka. Extremely dangerous on a battlefield."
Lissandra didn't stop there. "If the analysis holds, Arasaka's cargo is Cybertron. The route is sloppy, the escort relaxed. This suggests a trap. Militech likely knows. They are pushing Faraday to recruit mercenaries to test it."
Rebecca closed the feed and caught Maine's eye across the table. He read enough in her face to listen when she told him to walk away.