Cyberpunk: I'm Not Cheating Chapter 28: This Is The New Shit

The night in North Oak sat over the city like a grease-soaked rag pressed against its face. Industrial district edge. Abandoned freight warehouses bunched together in the dark.

"Target confird. Target went in with three officers. Tyger Claws inside to receive them. Surveillance shows seventeen people total. Apart from Dutt's group, the rest are all Tyger Claws hardcore."

Kiwi's voice on the shared channel.

"Seventeen?" Jackie was adjusting his face-spoofing equipnt. "What do these Japantown lunatics have in this place that's worth posting this many people over?"

Vito sent Stints a ssage. Moving in five minutes.

"Ready, mano?"

"Move."

Two shadows crept to the freight entrance on the warehouse's side wall like they weren't there at all. Vito raised his hand and touched his face-spoofing equipnt. The plain bioplastic restructured in an instant. A pale, twisted, blood-tear-streaked crying mask erged from the dark.

Jackie's disguise activated in sync. The sa crying face, lit from below by a bare industrial strip, looked considerably worse than it did in daylight. The two of them looked like a pair of cyberpsychos who'd had a very specific kind of night.

"Three. Two. One. Open."

Vito's boot took the iron door off the old lock. The tal shriek reached the inside instantly.

"Who's there!"

The Tyger Claws sentry had been leaning against the wall with a cigarette. The crash launched him off it. His hand went to his hip by reflex — a modified monomolecular katana hanging there.

Too slow.

The Shigure opened up. The suppressor kept it quiet. Not silent — sothing between a whisper and a cough, repeated three tis, in a tight cluster, through the sentry's throat and carotid artery. He went down clutching his neck with his eyes wide and the blade still in the sheath.

"Breach! We've got rats!"

A roar from sowhere in the back of the warehouse. Then a sound that ran up the spine — a dozen blades clearing their sheaths at the sa ti.

"For the Claws!"

"Kill them!"

A wall of bodies in bulletproof trenchcoats surged out of the cargo container shadows. Tendon reinforcent on every one of them. Tyger Claws true believers with a fondness for the old ways — thermal long blades, power warhamrs, a spinning chainsword on the one coming in hardest on the left. Not a firearm between them.

"Old school." Jackie let out a short laugh. Reason fired. The crying mask looked twice as wrong in the muzzle flash.

"Alternate cover when you reload. Don't let them close."

Vito's voice was running through the modulator on the disguise equipnt. It ca out like a broken speaker that had been recording a nightmare.

"Caras taken over. Marking weaknesses. Watch out — the one with the chainsword on the left has a Sandevistan!"

Kiwi's voice was fast and level.

"Sandevistan, Sandeviwhatsit, I don't care what it's called tonight." Jackie burst from behind cover. "Eat this."

Reason fired.

The boom ca back off every wall in the warehouse at once. Ceiling dust cascaded down in sheets.

The two leftmost Tyger Claws mbers went airborne, weapons with them. The large-caliber tungsten rounds converted their chests into sothing that was no longer recognizable as chests. What was left of them painted the cargo container behind them in a pattern that would have ant sothing to a very specific kind of art critic.

Jackie kept moving. No pause, no setup. Both Hellcats ca out mid-stride and started talking. His shooting was loose and exact at the sa ti — every round found an eye socket or a kneecap on whoever was trying to co around the sides.

"My leg!"

"Use guns! Don't blade-fight these people!"

The Tyger Claws squad had not anticipated this kind of sustained pressure. The bushido conviction looked fragile when the shooting didn't stop long enough to let them close distance.

Vito was running cold. Kiwi's real-ti cara feed turned his field of vision into a targeting system — red outlines on every weak point, every incoming angle called out half a second before it arrived.

Bang bang bang bang.

The Shigure's extended magazine ant he never had to think about conservation. He didn't need to aim with precision. He needed to point the barrel at where the red markers said to point it, and the result took care of itself.

One Tyger Claws mber hit the Sandevistan and ca in fast. Kiwi was already inside the cyberware before he arrived. His movent stuttered, slowed, and Vito moved sideways off a sweeping thermal blade and pressed the Shigure's barrel up under the man's chin.

"Good night."

Bang.

The result resembled a waterlon.

"Second-floor platform. Shooter. They're on you."

Vito didn't look up. Eddie ca up at the hip. Two shots, no sight picture, into the shadows above.

A muffled sound. The ambush shooter caught his chest with both hands and ca off the platform. The concrete floor caught him without any concern for his condition.

"Nice work, mano!" Jackie was reloading and laughing. The excitent in his voice had been climbing since the door went down. "This is basically a shooting range!"

It had stopped being a fight.

The warehouse had gunfire, screaming, and sounds that belong in neither category. The Tyger Claws warriors were not short on nerve. It made no difference. Under continuous fire from two people with modified hardware and real-ti cyberware intrusion support, the blades never touched anyone's coat. One by one, they beca part of the floor.

Five minutes.

The warehouse was quiet.

Bodies. Gunsmoke. Blood so thick in the air it had a taste. Seventeen Tyger Claws mbers and three corrupt NCPD officers. None of them still in the ga.

Sergeant Dutt was wedged behind a cargo container in the far corner of the warehouse, shaking so hard he could hear himself, pants soaked through. His three officers were dead. He'd been in the back when it started, and Vito and Jackie had made sure nothing aid his way. Dutt had not been hit.

Heavy footsteps.

Each one landed sowhere in the center of his chest.

Dutt looked up.

Two things wearing crying masks and drenched in other people's blood were walking toward him. The guns they were holding still had smoke coming out of the barrels.

"Don't. Don't kill . I'm NCPD. I'm a cop." Dutt was crying. Hands up. Face running. "I have money. I can pay you. Whatever you want."

Vito stopped in front of him. The gun barrel touched the center of his forehead. Dutt could sll the gunpowder on it.

"A cop." The voice modulator turned Vito's words into sothing that sounded like fingernails on glass. "Protect and serve. Who exactly is that supposed to be for?"