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Watching Maine's crew vanish into the dust, Kael exhaled and lowered the Nekomata tech-sniper rifle. He handed the weapon to Lucy, who immediately began the meticulous process of purging grit from the internal magnetic rails. In the Badlands, a technical firearm was a fickle god; one stray grain of sand could cause a feedback loop that would turn the high-grade chrome into a very expensive club.
"Maine just pinged the coordinates," Falco called out from the driver's seat of the modified Ragnar.
"Move out, and keep it fast," Kael said, eyes narrowing at the horizon. A sickly yellow line was beginning to swallow the sky. "The sky's turning. I don't like the look of it."
"Sandstorm's coming," Falco agreed, his nomad-honed instincts already sensing the static in the air. "A big one."
"Then what are we waiting for? Let's burn rubber!" Jackie shouted, nervously checking his harness. He'd heard enough stories about storms that could strip the paint off a tank to know he didn't want to be caught in the open.
They reached Faraday's designated hand-off point ahead of the main convoy—a deep cave tucked into a jagged hillside. It was a perfect windbreak, but as they pulled in, the graffiti on the walls signaled trouble. The jagged, skeletal markings of the Night Wraiths.
"Brothers! We've got a live one!" A group of Wraiths at the cave entrance cheered, howling like starving wolves as they leveled their mismatched firearms.
Kael didn't even sigh. "Lucy, kill their grid. Falco, floor it. Jackie, hold onto your teeth."
Falco slammed the accelerator. The Ragnar roared, its reinforced prow smashing through the makeshift gate before the Wraiths could even register the "rabbit" had fangs. As they tore into the heart of the camp, Lucy's hack hit the local transformer.
Darkness slammed down like a shutter.
Then came the lightning.
CRACK-BOOM.
The electromagnetic discharge of Kael's Kenshin pistol illuminated the cave in strobe-like bursts. To master the Kenshin was to master the power of the storm.
"He's in the rafters!" "I can't see him! He's flying!"
Kael was a ghost in the dark. His Jump Kit thrusters flared, launching him across the cavern as his grappling hook snapped him toward the ceiling. He rained down death from angles the Wraiths didn't have words for. Inside the car, Falco calmly adjusted the radio to a high-tempo synth-wave track while Jackie tightened his seatbelt, watching the muzzle flashes dance across the cave walls.
"One voice in this crew, Jackie," Falco noted over the bass. "And it isn't ours."
"No argument here, hermano," Jackie muttered, impressed despite himself.
Outside, the Badlands were dying.
"Super-cell sandstorm imminent. Visibility below fifty meters. Seek immediate shelter," the emergency broadcast droned through the static.
The world had turned a bruised, swirling orange. Maine's convoy was struggling, dragging the heavy Arasaka container through the deepening drifts. Communication was dead; the storm's electromagnetic interference had severed their link to Faraday.
"Don't worry," Maine grunted, fighting the steering wheel. "I sent the coordinates to Kael. They'll be waiting."
They finally spotted the hazy mouth of the valley. Maine pushed the engine to its redline, seeking the safety of the rock walls. As they rolled into the cave, the silence was chilling.
The ground was littered with Night Wraiths.
"Bodies are still warm," Rebecca noted, hopping out of the truck to inspect a corpse with a hole between its eyes.
SNAP.
The overhead lights flickered on, humming with sudden power. Maine's crew instantly raised their weapons, scanning the shadows.
"Took you guys long enough," Kael's voice echoed from a catwalk above. He leaned over the railing, looking down at them with a tired smirk.
"You bastard! You're trying to give me a heart attack!" Rebecca shrieked, but she was already sprinting up the stairs to tackle him in a celebratory hug.
Maine laughed, holstering his gun. "I knew the kid would have the table set."
They entered the command center to find a pathetic sight: Faraday, slumped in a chair, his remaining cyber-optic flickering.
"Faraday? What happened to the big-shot Fixer?" Rebecca asked, poking him.
"He didn't have the Eddies for your final payout," Kael explained coldly. "He was planning to use his Night Wraith 'associates' to zero you and keep the cargo for himself. Lucy had to... aggressively negotiate with his brain-computer interface to get his bank codes. I'm afraid she fried his motherboard in the process."
"Looting time!" Pilar hooted, running off toward the Wraiths' tech-pile.
"What's the play, Kael?" Maine asked, sitting heavily on a crate.
"The storm is our ghost," Kael said. "We wait for the wind to die down. The sand will bury the Wraiths and every trace of our presence. By the time Militech arrives, the cargo will be in Night City, and Faraday will be the only one left to take the fall."
Kael leaned back, resting his head in Lucy's lap. "Maine, get the big guys to open that container. We're moving the 'Gorilla' prototypes into the Ragnar. Then have Pilar reinforce our sand-shields. We leave at midnight."
As the storm subsided, a Militech recovery team reached the valley.
They found a charnel house. A mountain of charred Wraith corpses, melted by burning fuel, stood as a grim monument. The Arasaka container sat in the center of the camp, its heavy doors wide open.
It was empty.
"Contact Faraday," the Militech lead commanded, his voice trembling with fury.
"Sir... his signal is dead. He's ghosted us."
The leader stared at the void where the multi-million Eurodollar prototypes should have been. "Find him. I don't care if you have to burn Night City to the ground. Find Faraday."
At that exact moment, the Ragnar was pulling into Delamain's secure headquarters. V was waiting to take custody of the braindead Faraday. Within hours, a digital trail would be manufactured: a story of a Fixer who got greedy, stole from two megacorps, and vanished into the Blackwall.
Kael looked at the glowing "Adamant" chrome in the back of his car. The board was clear. It was time to start building his own legend.
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