The House of the Reaper has opened its arms to welcome:
Novices Nameless742, Gabriel Ross, and NerdNErd Nerd.
Operative Leonardo Henrique and Logan Greaves.
Their contributions and dedication to our cause will be honored through the Net and through the Stars.
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Santi was elbow-deep in the compound-boosted V8 that sat on the assembly bench under the overhead lights, more of its freshly printed internal components laid out in labeled trays around its perimeter. With the crankshaft seated and the main caps torqued, he was now working on the connecting rods.
Before installing them, Santi checked each one of them over one last time to ensure they were within the design spec he had created. Once each wrist pin was oiled and aligned, they were pressed into position.
The projector was running something on the north wall while the speakers were connected to the radio, tuned to 89.7 Growl FM. The bass vibrated through the concrete floor, and Santi could feel it in the soles of his feet. Sasha was lying on the couch with her back on the cushions and her feet up in the air, her legs resting on the backrest.
"So let me get this straight," Sasha said, tablet balanced on her stomach while she scrolled through something with one hand. "You walked into a NetWatch facility, stole a classified weapons program, fought a Voodoo Boy, won, almost died, got carried out by your crew, woke up in a ripperdoc clinic in Wellsprings, drove to the Afterlife, renegotiated your pay from eight hundred K to eight and a half million, and then went to see Vik at four in the morning."
"That about sums it up," Santi said, not looking up from the connecting rod he was installing.
"Then you rested for a day and now you're just building an engine like nothing happened," Sasha said.
"Something happened. I'm choosing to deal with it by building an engine."
Sasha flipped around on the couch, going from inverted to sitting upright in a single fluid motion, and crossed her legs beneath her. She set the tablet aside and looked at him.
"That's wild though," Sasha said. "You've shot into the big leagues, Santi. You're running gigs for Dino Dinovic. You're allowed into the Afterlife. You've got solos and infiltration specialists on your crew. Not even a year ago, you had found what I swore was the motherlode and got this place. Then you were doing solo runs for Regina and a couple other fixers, and now you're stealing classified shit from NetWatch listening stations and coming home with millions."
"I know, right? It's preem," Santi said, reaching for the torque wrench. "But the only real difference I can spot is the paydays are bigger and I have to work with a crew instead of running solo."
"Yeeeaaaaah," Sasha said, dragging the word out in a way that allowed her to acknowledge something while simultaneously preparing to pivot the conversation in a different direction. "So what are you going to do with all those eddies?"
Santi paused with the torque wrench in his hand. He had seated the connecting rod cap, but had not yet tightened it. He thought about it for a minute. The question should have been easy. Most people who came into sudden money had a list of shit they wanted to get. A car. An apartment. Chrome. Clothes. Guns... lots of guns. A way out of whatever corner of Night City they were currently surviving in and into whatever slightly less terrible corner they had been dreaming about.
"To be honest with you," he started. "I don't really know."
Sasha unfolded her legs and leaned forward on the couch, her elbows on her knees, her chin on her fists.
"How can you not know?" she asked. "You have millions of eddies, Santi. Millions. Most people in Night City would kill for a fraction of that. Like, hell, we've both actually killed for wayyyyyy less. And you're just going to shrug?"
"Yeeeep. I'm shrugging," Santi nodded, and then shrugged.
"That's insane," Sasha said.
"Yes? No? Maybe," Santi said.
"It definitely is," Sasha stated. "You have more eddies than most fixers make in a year, and you're standing in a warehouse in your bare feet building a car engine like a guy who makes twelve eddies an hour at a ramen stand. You don't even own a car you can drive right now. You take cabs everywhere."
"Cabs are very convenient," Santi countered. "Plus, the Widowmaker is going to be a car I can drive."
Now it was Sasha's turn to counter Santi.
"The thing is going to be a weapon of mass destruction shaped like a car," she said. "It's like a Hellhound, but a car. Like a nomad's ride. And it'll take you months to finish it. What are you going to do in the meantime? Keep taking cabs?"
"Like I said, cabs are very convenient," Santi deadpanned.
"Yeah, no shit," Sasha sighed. "But cabs are for people who don't have four million eddies just chilling in their account."
Santi set the torque wrench down and looked at Sasha, who held his gaze with unflinching directness.
"Okay, so if you don't know," she said, sitting up straighter and crossing her legs beneath her, "then here's what I think you should do. Buy a place to live."
Santi rolled his eyes and pointed his index finger up while rotating his wrist. "I already have a place to live."
"This is a warehouse, Santi," Sasha said. "You live in a warehouse. Your room is quite litterally above a workshop and under a highway overpass. There is a server room and a fabrication line and a car lift and enough raw materials to build a tank lying around, which, newsflash, you're kinda doing just that. This is a base of operations, a place you use to work. What you need now is a place where you can go home to. A real place. Like an apartment or a house. A place you can go back to, kick back, and just exist without worrying about whether the next gig is going to blow the building up."
Santi set the torque wrench down and turned the rest of his body to face her.
"You can keep this place as your base," Sasha continued. "Keep it as your workshop and server room, but have somewhere else, somewhere that's just yours... Somewhere you and your mom can actually relax in."
The mention of his mother shifted something in Santi's expression. It was minuscule, but Sasha caught it.
"That's a smart idea," Santi said after a moment. "I'll be on the lookout for something. More for Ma than me, honestly. She's been through enough. And although I did pour almost a million eddies into this place, getting a place that doesn't vibrate every time a truck goes over the Ringroad doesn't sound too bad. Mom deserves better."
"She does," Sasha agreed.
They were still in the middle of the conversation when the grey-side entrance burst open, and Judy came flying through it like she had been physically launched from a vehicle that had not fully stopped.
"SANTI!" Judy yelled.
Santi set the torque wrench he had just picked up back on the bench, turned, and had approximately half a second to register Judy crossing the ground floor at a dead sprint before she barreled into him with a hug that nearly knocked him off the stool he was sitting on.
"Thank you thank you thank you thank you," Judy said into his chest, which was about as far as she reached, even while he was sitting on a stool.
"Hey, no problem," Santi said, steadying himself with one hand on the bench. "Wasn't much."
"Bullshit it wasn't much," Judy said, pulling back and looking up at him. "Your lawyer got me three hundred thousand eddies."
"The fuck?" Santi blinked. "How?"
"Okay, so after he got me out of the station, right, with all charges dropped and everything, we went to the NCFD station on Fifth because that's where they had the firetruck." Judy talked fast, her hands moving animatedly as she retold the story. "And the NCFD didn't want to give it back. They said they'd found some of my modifications and they wanted to keep the truck for evaluation, which is corpo speak for 'we're keeping your shit and there's nothing you can do about it.'"
"And?" Sasha asked from the couch, now sitting fully upright with her legs back to being crossed and her tablet forgotten beside her.
"And Murdock just looked at the NCFD captain, smiled, and said that if the truck wasn't returned to his client within twenty-four hours, he would be filing a civil suit against the city of Night City for unlawful seizure of private property," Judy said. "And since the NCPD had already dropped all charges and acknowledged the vehicle was legally acquired, would be a very easy case to win and a very embarrassing one for the city to lose."
"And let me guess, they caved," Santi said.
"They caved so fucking fast I got whiplash," Judy said. "But they still didn't want to give me the truck. So they offered me a settlement of three hundred thousand eddies in exchange for allowing them to keep the truck and retain the rights to evaluate my modifications for potential integration into their fleet. Apparently that Murdock dude was some bad mumbo jumbo for them, so he negotiated for about five minutes and got them up from one-fifty to three hundred, and I signed the deal on his datapad in the NCFD captain's office while the captain looked like he was going to cry."
"That's nova," Santi said.
"That is extremely nova," Sasha agreed.
"I know!" Judy said, her hands thrown wide. "Three hundred K! For a firetruck I got for free in a scrapyard because I was bored! And the NCFD is going to use my junction box design! The one I made on your CNC! They're going to put my work in actual working fire trucks, Santi! I think I'm going to have a techie aneurysm or something!"
Judy was grinning from ear to ear.
But before anyone could say anything else, the music that had been playing on the speakers shifted, and the song "Going To Heaven" started playing.
"I hope there's an increase in morbidity," the singer's voice poured through the speakers, reaching the halfway point of the song. "Await the final part of the trilogy. I hope there's an increase in morbidity. Hopefully, drastically, blessed be thy inequity-"
The song was cut halfway through as the frequency was seized by an emergency broadcast ringing. Santi's hands stopped what they were doing, recognizing the emergency broadcast ringing as the same one he had heard a few weeks ago when Body Heat had cut to a field correspondent in Sacramento who had died on the air.
"This is Growl FM breaking into our regular programming with a priority alert. We have confirmed reports from multiple sources that an NUSA Army division has been spotted approaching Night City's outskirts from the northeast corridor. I'll say it again. A confirmed NUSA military formation is advancing toward Night City. We are awaiting further details and will continue to broadcast updates as they become available. Chooms, stay safe out there."
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This is the end, rack your stones and donate them. To you they have value, so then... give them to ya boy, oh yeh...
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