"Welco back to Truth Sleuth, where today we’ll be talking about the bloody movent that occurred in Watson North District."
"A gunfest that lasted a solid five days, which ended in a way you’d never imagine."
"The heroes of Night City—the ’Terrorist Mobile Team’—launched at the last mont, and the result was that all five Floating Cars were shot down—
Yes, you heard right, those exaggerated armored Floating Cars! If one of them had your house in its sights, your place would be rubble in two minutes!"
[Sound of sharp intake of breath]
"Of course, it wasn’t all Terrorist Mobile Team’s fault—nor was it NCPD corruption, but hey, I’m just saying, maybe it was, you know?"
"Our ’thugs’ seem to possess so company’s... I didn’t say Military Technology International Armant, I’m talking about so company, thugs got their hands on so company’s advanced weaponry, no wonder the Terrorist Mobile Team couldn’t hold up."
"However, the magic of it is that when every Scorpion-tailed Lion turned into flying coffins, the riot cald down!"
"At the scene, only the perpetrators’ lower halves were found—yeah, just the lower halves. [Picture][Mosaic]"
[Sound of disgust]
"NCPD says they’ll soon be able to figure out the whole story from these lower halves, which really elevates the phrase ’keep it in your pants’—
After all, we all know the forr NCPD Deputy Chief couldn’t keep it in his pants."
"But then again, why does NCPD always end up associated with ’lower halves’? If they’re spending our taxes on their lower halves, we might as well use it on our own lower halves."
"At least that way, we’d get to have so fun out of it."
[Laughter]
"That’s Today’s Truth Sleuth for you, folks. Rember, the truth is way more complex than what you see on the surface. See you next ti."
The deal wasn’t closed yet.
In the storage room, Brick and his brothers were all strung up on the wall.
Having no feeling in your body can drive you insane and uncomfortable, but it didn’t seem to affect him much. His only request was to get a hit of Black Lace for a bit of bliss.
Royce, on the other hand, was tied to a pillar in front of him, his head connected to an abundance of cables.
A bit weird, but considering this was Vortex Gang territory, not too outlandish.
In another room, Lille packed away his neural connection.
[Lille: Done, he’s all yours now.]
"Ptooey."
Brick spat a mouthful of machine oil onto Royce’s face.
"Ugh... fuck..." Royce woke up groggy, pain flooding every nerve.
"Didn’t expect this, did you, you little bastard?" Brick chuckled maliciously, "We et again."
"Brick? Fuck your mother, I knew..."
"You knew shit."
Brick couldn’t move, but mounted on the wall he was hung on was a pistol.
Without any further ado, he blew Royce’s head clean off.
Blood splattered, and in the dim warehouse, Brick ended the life of this traitor—
The civil war within Vortex Gang was officially over.
But... how many of Vortex Gang were left, exactly?
Another head on the wall, Carter, now sowhat sobered up from the stimulation of Black Lace, asked, "Done?"
"Finished," Brick repeated Carter’s question, "Dammit... but what the hell was all this fighting for..."
"Bullshit, of course it’s about getting so respect! Only idiots would be minions to that old pervert Royce!
We’ll start over, no big deal, rember how Vortex Gang expanded from ten mbers to thousands? It’s no problem for us two brothers...
No, three brothers to go from three to three thousand!"
The third brother, Jostar, still hadn’t regained the ability to think straight—
But then, joining Vortex Gang, his ability to think straight had pretty much already left him.
Brick sighed, "You’re a freaking genius—hey, Jostar, right? What do you wanna do once we’re out of here?"
Jostar’s expression was sowhat blank; his young brain and nerves weren’t that resilient yet.
Instinctively, he responded, "I don’t know, find a girl to ss around with?"
"Still hung up on that, huh?" Brick pursed his lips and tossed the inhaler over.
Jostar instinctively caught the contraption.
"Stick with , badass prosthetics changed out every day. You’ll forget all about won, only pussies play with won!
Real n play with prosthetics!"
...
In another room, V, having heard this, looked thoughtfully at Lille.
Lille was fiddling with a Linear Fra.
[Pan’an: NCPD’s bringing people over.]
Lille put away his tools and swept the parts on the desk to one side.
A few minutes later, Jefferson walked in, his expression not exactly pleasant, more like complex.
The monitors showed that outside this shabby apartnt building, NCPD vehicles were packed tight.
Reaver and his partner were up front. Lille could see him winking at the caras non-stop, signaling Lille to look towards the back of the convoy—
At the very end of the convoy sat a very composed middle-aged man wearing glasses, exuding a different vibe from the other officers:
Extraordinarily calm, but you could tell from his eyes and slight facial expressions that he was always on alert and thinking.
He seed like a big shot.
Back to the negotiation.
Lille extended his hand slightly, palm up: "Please, have a seat. The eting place I’ve chosen may not be very refined."
"That... is not important."
Not very refined?!
Jefferson looked around the room. The walls were adorned with black market prosthetics, various structural pieces, conduction devices, motors...
Finished homade limbs were mounted on the ceiling, like a Slaughterhouse...
Jefferson had only seen traditional slaughterhouses in pictures, but that did not prevent him from feeling uncomfortable at the sight of human prosthetics hanging from the ceiling.
Adding to the unease were the multicolored unknown liquids on the walls and the graffiti covered by those liquids—
This place used to be the Vortex Gang’s turf.
He looked past Lille, through the one-way glass, and saw skulls hanging on the walls inside, one of which was blown apart and hung on a pillar with the steaming brain matter still oozing out!
It was like so sort of heretical ritual!
Not very refined... you sure are modest, Jefferson thought.
"I really appreciate your contribution to quelling the riots. I didn’t expect that just after commissioning you to handle the Vortex Gang, such chaos would break out here."
"No need to thank ."
Lille, without blushing or skipping a beat, gestured for V and Jack, who were almost rolling their eyes, to go play elsewhere.
Jefferson continued, "I didn’t expect the Terrorist Mobile Team to suffer such heavy losses. Everyone is paying close attention to this incident, but fortunately, it was brought under control in the end.
I guess those inside are from the Vortex Gang?"
"Don’t rush." Lille opened two cans of Dumb Monkey, took out a Separation Chip and showed it briefly to Jefferson before placing it on top of the can.
The chanical arm pushed the can forward.
"Let’s settle the previous commission. This is the kill record for this ti, all of them had criminal records and were wanted gang mbers..."
Hm?
Jefferson raised his eyebrows upon hearing this, feeling that sothing was off.
The can scraped across the table with a clanking sound, slowly arriving in front of Jefferson.
"In total, 1073 people, with a total bounty amounting to 536,651 Euros. According to our contract, that would be 2,683,255 Euros. Given the large sum, let’s round it down and make it an even 2,683,000 Euros."
Hm?
Hm?
Hm?
Question marks appeared above Jefferson’s head as his brain seed to stop functioning.
"This... isn’t right, is it?"
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