“No weapons? That won’t do!
That might be your way of hunting at pigs, but we’re here to do business—not to be butchered like swine.”
Arthur’s words had barely left his mouth when the short man let out a shrill, nacing cry.
“Cut the bullshit. On our turf, you play by our rules. Hand over your guns and maybe we’ll talk. Otherwise, get the hell out.”
As he spoke, the gang pressed closer. A few even stepped right up to Jackie, hands reaching, certain they already had him cornered.
Seeing Jackie move for his gun, Arthur caught his arm and pulled him back a step.
The short man sneered, raising his voice to mock them.
“Gutless rats. Hand over the weapons now and maybe you’ll walk away alive. Go run ho to mama and cry—she might even give you a bottle.”
The Maelstrom gang roared with laughter again, but under the brim of Arthur’s hat, his eyes had turned to ice.
His right shoulder dipped slightly, his arm dropping naturally to his waist. His body went utterly still—like a cougar poised to strike.
Arthur’s hoarse voice cut through the air.
“Alright… alright…
Looks like you boys need to learn how to shut up.”
Draw. Fire!
His movent ripped through the gloom like thunder. Blood sprayed from the foreheads of six n before the gunshots even echoed in the dark.
Chaos erupted. As the few survivors scrambled for their weapons, Jackie already had both pistols drawn.
His thick arms leveled forward, both guns blazing. In seconds, the last of the lackeys were down.
Without pause, they rushed into the Ripperdoc clinic.
Inside glowed a dim, bloody red. After sprinting down a narrow corridor, they reached a modest-sized room.
The lighting here was brighter. A few masked figures in casual clothes stood around a bed, their eyes fixed nervously on the hallway.
These were the “doctors”—the scavengers feeding off Maelstrom.
Scavengers weren’t a real organization. In Night City, anyone running an illegal clinic or carving parts out of the living was called one.
Arthur wasn’t interested in conversation. He kept one alive.
“Where are the prisoners?”
He strode past the bed, grabbed a scavenger by the hair, and yanked hard.
The man pointed frantically toward a room deeper inside, his voice cracking with fear.
“There—in that room. Don’t kill .”
Butchers who could gut a man alive without flinching only rembered life’s value when their own was on the line.
Arthur fired into the man’s knees and elbows. Running low on rounds, he crushed the last joint with the butt of his revolver.
He tossed the man to the ground like garbage, ignoring the screams, and strode toward the door.
The mont it opened, a wave of stench hit him—filth and rot, piss and corpses mixed into a suffocating reek.
Inside was darkness. Only the faint spill of light from the doorway revealed human outlines.
“Jessica! Is Jessica here?
Your father sent us to bring you ho.
Jessica!”
No answer.
Arthur gritted his teeth against the choking air and forced himself inside.
A dozen people lay there, unconscious—drugged, most likely. But Jessica wasn’t among them.
Arthur turned back, dragging the crippled scavenger up by the hair again.
“Before we ca, did you deal with a girl—around nineteen?”
The man only scread.
Arthur slamd a fist into his side.
“Last chance. Talk, or I’ll put two holes in you.”
“No! No! She was healthy, no cyberware. Pri stock! They sent her to the Diman Slaughterhouse.”
Arthur’s brow furrowed.
“When?”
“About a day ago.”
According to Wakako’s intel, she’d gone missing three days earlier. These bastards were moving fast.
“Arthur—one hour from now, a slaughterhouse truck’s coming. They said it’s here to pick up a few people.”
Jackie’s voice ca from across the room.
He’d been digging through the clinic’s microterminal since they ca in, and found communication logs linking this place to the slaughterhouse.
Arthur and Jackie decided on the spot—they’d take that truck. After prying a few more details from the scavenger, they finished him.
The clinic’s underground space was actually the gabuilding’s parking garage. Across from the stairwell they’d descended was a vehicle ramp.
The slaughterhouse crew would park outside the clinic and walk in to collect their “cargo.”
With the hour they had left, Arthur and Jackie cleared the corpses outside, then returned to the clinic, watching through the door’s monitor.
Before long, a blinding white beam cut across the screen as a blue van rolled into view.
As expected, the two n inside walked in without suspicion, moving with practiced ease.
When the iron door opened, they were t with the black mouths of two guns.
No survivors. With neural links, there was no telling if they had already transmitted intel.
Better to leave no risk of a trap. That’s why every seasoned edgerunner crew kept at least one netrunner.
Two shots. Two bodies hit the floor.
Arthur and Jackie stripped them and swapped clothes. The fit was lousy, but it would do as disguise.
It didn’t need to be perfect—they just had to get past the slaughterhouse’s heavy defenses.
The van’s engine rumbled back to life, echoing through the garage. The blue van rolled out once again.
The Diman Slaughterhouse sat in a remote corner of Little China, near the edge of the Northside Industrial District.
A desolate place, practically abandoned—the grim scenery along the way confird it.
Before long, Arthur and Jackie saw the slaughterhouse wall.
Their choice had been right. Twin automated turrets flanked the main gate. Taking fire from one would rip them to pieces.
As the van rolled closer, the gates creaked open. Beyond was no yard—the factory building lood less than a hundred ters away.
No guards were in sight. Only a device on the gate projected a blue scan grid before letting them through.
The factory doors ahead slid open automatically.
And still—they hadn’t seen a single living soul.
“If security isn’t compromised, then we’ve just walked into a trap.”
Jackie’s grip tightened on the wheel, eyes locked on the wide-open gates.
“If your jinx is right, we’d better turn back now.”
Sothing was wrong. This place was running human experints—no way security should be this lax.
But the van rolled straight through the gates.
The light shifted. Their vision cleared.
A vast open space stretched out before them—four stories tall, ringed with iron stairways and catwalks leading to rooms along the walls.
At the far end lood another turret, identical to the one at the entrance, its barrel sweeping across every corner of the yard.
Dozens of cars were parked there—ordinary vehicles, no different from the van they rode in.
In the center, a long line of cars waited. Ard n checked the first in the queue.
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