Chapter 11: Scavenger
"I didn't expect her to be here."
Ash narrowed his eyes, surprised.
The woman before him—Evelyn Parker, the mysterious blue-haired client from the Blue Green Building incident—was now a far cry from the confident, seductive figure he remembered.
Her clothes were torn, hair disheveled, one arm broken, her face bruised and swollen. Her chest rose and fell weakly—vital signs fading fast.
"Are you going to save her?" asked Sandayu Oda, turning her head.
"We'll see if she's still useful," muttered Taki Kenomochi, indifferent. To him, Evelyn was just another doll in Night City's grim circus—a woman who reached too high and paid the price. Her supposed cunning and patience were nothing but masks for powerlessness. If she had been strong, she wouldn't have needed others to steal the Relic chip, and her life wouldn't have been ruined by it.
Ambition without power? A time bomb.
Going all-in is often painted as wisdom. But most people? Just losers who bet wrong.
"The recon's complete. Our contact's info checks out," Sandayu said, setting down the Hummingbird drone's remote and flashing a rare smile at Taki Kenomochi.
"Guess that play paid off," Taki said with quiet satisfaction. Planting an insider had just been a passing thought—but the dividends spoke for themselves.
Money really could buy miracles.
"Let's make a statement. Give our partners something to believe in." Sandayu reached into her inner pocket and drew a pistol.
An Arasaka HJKE-11 Yukimura—an auto-locking smart weapon engineered to kill with precision.
"Watch your back," Taki smiled faintly and disappeared into the shadows, not noticing the contempt flickering in Oda's eyes.
He didn't need to. In Night City, elite netrunners were irreplaceable assets—always a few notches above the rest.
And when it comes to Netrunners, one name echoes like a ghost through the ruins of the Net—Rache Bartmoss.
The lunatic legend who created Devil and Hellhound, tracking software so powerful it could hunt people in real time through the Net. A paranoid genius. During the Fourth Corporate War, a coalition of netrunners launched a desperate assault on his Data Fortress. They found him—and rained low-orbit satellite fire down to erase him.
But Bartmoss had planned for that. Upon his death, a trigger word released a Pandora's box of viruses—hellish constructs combined with rogue AIs, designed to decimate infrastructure.
Many netrunners who were deep-diving that day never woke up. Servers burned. Databases disintegrated. Government and corporate blackmail files flooded the open Net.
The solution? Physical data isolation, and a last-ditch firewall—the Blackwall.
Peaceful on one side. War-torn on the other.
The viruses became dormant without hosts, but the AIs? They evolved. Now, they clash behind the Blackwall, absorbing data, scheming to breach back into our world.
And those "tentacles" probing the digital veil? Who's to say they haven't already made it through?
Back in the real world, Sandayu Oda loaded her pistol and headed toward a scavenger hideout.
Scavengers—bottom-feeders. Organ-thieves. Butchers in the back alleys.
They prey on the desperate and the drunk. Strip advanced cyberware straight off conscious victims and leave corpses behind. Selling neuralware and fresh organs on the black market for euros.
Qian Zelong, now called Ash, once described them perfectly: "Cowards who hunt kidneys."
To ordinary people, they're just terrorists. To Ash?
A minor inconvenience.
The team stepped into the hideout. The stench of blood and rotting meat filled the air. Warm limbs, torn from bodies, were scattered on the floor.
A razor-thin thread of polyfiber flickered in Ash's hand—Drizzle, a flexible monowire hidden on his wrist. It looked like a bracelet, but cut like a scalpel.
Mocked by some as a weapon for cowards—real solos use guns, they say—but Ash didn't care. A kill is a kill.
Fast. Clean. Quiet.
Ash moved like a shadow, Drizzle flashing silver arcs through the air. Before the scavengers even realized they were under attack, he'd reached the basement.
The leader stood in disbelief. "Who the hell are you?"
Ash gave a lopsided grin. "Bad guys die because they talk too much. Didn't you know?"
Then he lunged.
The leader was heavily augmented—nearly 40% cyberware loadout, impressive even by Night City standards—but Ash dismantled him like scrap metal.
"Yui, check if there's a bounty on him," he called out.
"Nothing. Just another scumbag," Sandayu said, pulling up the bounty system.
Ash kicked the leader's severed head aside and walked toward Evelyn Parker's cell.
"You still breathing?"
Taki Kenomochi opened the rusted cell gate, nudged her shoulder.
Her only response: twitching limbs and a faint moan.
"Tch. What a hassle."
He injected a vial of emergency stim into her neck.
"Three hundred euros, wasted," Sandayu muttered, then started hacking into the dead scavenger's local account to scrape some spare change.
"It's not nothing," Ash replied, watching Evelyn regain some consciousness. "Back in the day, we scraped for every euro. You forget what it was like when we started this gig?"
Three hundred could feed someone for a month—if they were lucky and careful.
"I'll handle cleanup. Get the loot tallied. And toss our allies a bonus. Gotta keep 'em loyal—we're gonna need 'em."
"Yes~" Sandayu drawled, already moving.
Taki lifted Evelyn carefully and made for the car. The stim wouldn't keep her stable long. She needed a medtech, maybe even a ripperdoc, and a secure location.
"I hope you're worth it," Ash murmured, eyes flicking to the rearview mirror.
Northwest Night City – Arasaka Seaside Airport
A sleek Arasaka jet touched down. From it stepped Hanako Arasaka—composed, but urgent. She boarded a hovercar and sped to the sanatorium.
"How is he?" she demanded as she met her brother.
Yorinobu Arasaka's face was grim. "Father passed away an hour ago. The resuscitation failed."
Hanako's eyes flared with fury. She grabbed his collar. "What kind of rescue is that?!"
Behind them, two figures tensed.
Adam Smasher—96% borg, pure killing machine, veteran of two corpo wars, the iron fist of Arasaka security—stepped forward.
Facing him, Oda Santao—Hanako's loyal cyber-ninja and disciple of Saburo's former bodyguard Takemura—moved as well.
"Smasher."
"Oda."
They stopped mid-motion, trading cold, lethal stares.
"Take me to my father."
Hanako took a deep breath, suppressing her rage. Something didn't add up. Her father had elite guards, Takemura's protection, and Yorinobu's support—yet two low-level mercs had managed to assassinate him?
No way. Not without inside help.
But the funeral came first. Vengeance could wait.
Arasaka Sanatorium
Michiko Arasaka bowed politely as Hanako arrived.
"Aunt Hanako."
Hanako nodded with composure, despite the whirlwind of emotion inside her.
"You came late."
"Grandfather was undergoing emergency treatment. We couldn't disturb him."
Hanako glanced at Yorinobu.
Her doubts deepened.
But for now, they walked together—toward the place where the great Saburo Arasaka lay dead.