They both possessed a Militech Sandevistan implant. In their minds, bringing Leo down was only a matter of ti.
The two operatives raised their weapons simultaneously and activated Sandevistan. In that slowed perception of ti, they each aid at Leo's legs.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Gunfire echoed—but suddenly their vision blurred. The target before them vanished in an instant, leaving only a spray of blood in midair.
They stared in shock as their hands were severed at the wrist and their lower legs sheared off at the knees. They tumbled helplessly to the ground. Then—
Ti snapped back to normal.
To any outside observer, it looked as though Leo and the two operatives simply vanished for a blink, reappearing a mont later with the operatives sprawled on the pavent, limbs severed and blood splashing across the dry ground.
Leo flicked his blade, shaking off the droplets clinging to it.
"Don't bla ," he said coolly. "Bla yourselves for being strong."
He'd spotted at a glance, up on the overpass, that both operatives were fully outfitted with combat implants. In particular, to prevent hacking, they had installed the sa Tetratronic Rippler Mk.4 system he'd once helped Lucy acquire. With a solid defense against netrunners, Leo couldn't use the sa trick he'd used on others—jamming a jamr device into the neural port at the back of the neck.
Even so, he had gone easy on them; instead of lopping off heads, he'd only removed hands and feet. Though it looked brutal, 2077 tech made reattaching limbs or installing new ones fairly straightforward, provided the patient got dical attention soon enough. So people even replaced perfectly healthy limbs with cyberlimbs for better functionality. At least these two got to keep their lives.
redith, anwhile, stood paralyzed. The cigarette she had just lit fell from her mouth, forgotten. She had seed so composed earlier, but the shock on her face now was priceless.
Before she could speak, Leo strode over and struck her with a vicious backhand across the cheek. As a corporate exec, redith had never once been slapped by soone from the street. She glared furiously.
"You—!"
"Don't get the wrong idea," Leo said with a casual smile, ignoring her anger. "I'm not your enemy. That slap was payback for what you just tried."
He had co with full intent to negotiate in good faith, but redith had tried to trick and ambush him. It wouldn't have sat right to let that slide.
She clutched her stinging cheek, glaring at Leo, then turned away. Walking to her armored SUV, she retrieved two MaxDoc Mk.3 injectors from its dkit. They were the high-end variety—nothing like common off-the-shelf junk.
She planned to administer them to her fallen operatives, who lay groaning on the ground. Just then, a violent noise erupted from the SUV's trunk.
"What's that sound?"
Alard, Leo instinctively reached for his sword. redith's earlier display flashed through her mind, and for a mont, she worried he might cut her down. But Leo held off, watching her closely.
She forced herself to appear calm. "It's the mole I caught. What, do you know them? Want to show you?"
Leo wasn't about to trust her at her word, but his tactical goggles confird there was indeed a forr Militech mid-level staffer bound hand and foot in the SUV's trunk. She wasn't lying or playing another trick this ti.
"Don't know him, and I'm not interested."
Satisfied Leo wasn't about to cut her down, redith let out a quiet breath. She hurried to her operative's side, injected each of them with MaxDoc Mk.3, and roughly bandaged their wounds to stop the bleeding. These were her most reliable subordinates; no ti for haughty corporate posturing now.
Once finished, she looked back at Leo. "So, can we talk now?"
"How do you want to play it?" Her face darkened. Being a Militech executive, yet so easily strong-ard by a rc, felt humiliating. Leo spread his hands.
"It's not about what I want. I said on the phone we could help each other. Your convoy got hit. You lost everything. You have no clue who did it. If you don't recover that shipnt, you're screwed, and Militech won't hesitate to toss you aside."
Leo had never worked for a gacorp, but spending half a year in Night City let him see how they operated. Whether low-level wage-slaves or mid-tier suits, employees were ultimately just tools—once their value was tapped out, they got thrown away like trash, no matter any past service or loyalty. Nobody pitied them.
redith's face turned pale. She'd hoped her lofty title might help her pressure Leo. But his blunt assessnt of her situation left her no room to posture.
"All right, we're in the sa sinking boat. Satisfied? Now, what do you actually know?"
"I know your shipnt was jacked by a local gang, thanks to a mole on the inside. I can't tell you exactly who, but I do know the gang."
redith frowned. She wanted to trust him, but how did he know which gang was responsible when she didn't?
"Is your intel reliable?"
"Absolutely."
"Fine, I'll bite." Her captive, the alleged mole, still swore he was innocent. If she kept waiting on him to crack, she'd go down with him. Might as well gamble on this rc's info.
She'd considered having her own netrunner hack the suspect's neuralware, but for reasons unknown, the man had a kill-switch installed. If they tried to break in, it would fry his entire neural system. Her only option had been conventional interrogation, and that was getting her nowhere.
"What do you want out of this?" she asked. Cooperation ca down to mutual benefit, and she needed to know Leo's angle.
"One of the convoy's items was a drone called 'Flathead.' I need it."
A drone, redith thought. She recalled sothing on the manifest, a prototype unit lacking real combat capability—an auxiliary model.
"What do you plan to do with that?"
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