Night City's rain always carried sothing acidic in it, but tonight that was the least of it. For Vito, standing in the shadow of an abandoned factory on the edge of Watson's Industrial District, the rain was cover and nothing else.
The Cube Man mask moved through the neon with him, the miniaturized cityscape scrolling slowly across its surface.
This location was a scav hideout. In the network files Kiwi had unpacked, it was listed as a "materials processing facility."
Vito didn't rush. He moved along the base of the wall and used the Kiroshi thermal scan to read the interior. Two sentries at the entrance, easy to avoid. Further inside, past a partition of wire fencing, strong heat signatures. Multiple sources.
He found a second-floor corridor and moved along it without noise. Through a gap in the railing, he looked down.
His pupils tightened.
The floor below was not a cyberware disassembly bay. It was a filming studio lit in pink. Several scavs in protective gear were working around a large transparent container. The container held boiling acid. A living person was restrained in a chair at its center, lower half subrged.
"Expression! I want extre suffering!"
A scav in a gas mask was yelling at the caras.
"Turn the acid up. This episode's the is dissolution. The audience wants to watch him lt slowly. They want every second of it."
The victim's scream began and ended almost simultaneously. The acid reached the vocal cords before he could finish it. What ca after was a low, wet bubbling from the throat.
Vito felt the cold move up his spine and through the top of his skull. This was not fear. This was sothing older and more physical — revulsion and fury arriving together.
"These pieces of trash."
His voice was not loud.
He stepped off the second-floor railing and dropped.
"Who's up there?!"
The sentry had barely raised his weapon before the Nine Tails opened up. The kinetic rounds punched through him and continued into the wall behind him, leaving a dense line of craters. He went backward and stayed there.
Vito did not move toward cover. The mask glowed with its slow, indifferent cityscape. He walked directly into the pink studio.
"Kill him! Kill him now!"
The director scav scrambled for the shotgun propped against the equipnt table.
Vito raised the Nine Tails and pointed it at the transparent container.
"You like acid?"
He pushed the rifle to its maximum rate of fire.
The rounds punched through the bottom and sides of the container in a tight burst. The structure failed instantly. Boiling acid and broken container glass erupted outward in a wave. The director scav, hand outstretched toward the shotgun, took the full force of it.
The screaming filled the factory.
The acid moved through skin and muscle and cyberware without distinction. He rolled across the floor. When he tried to wipe his face, the fingers exposed bone.
Vito watched without expression. The mask's cityscape continued its slow rotation above the blood on the floor.
The remaining scavs had stopped moving.
He crossed the distance and swung the Nine Tails stock into the nearest one's face, then fired at contact range. The pink studio began its change to dark red. The sll in the air beca charcoal and burning chemistry.
Vito stood in the pool forming at his feet and waited for the director to stop moving.
He did.
"Now that's dissolution."
He turned and walked out. The cara was still recording. He left it running.
He did not stop there.
The anger needed sowhere to go. Night City had no shortage of available targets. Kiwi's files contained a Tyger Claws warehouse in Kabuki with a fresh shipnt of smuggled goods.
Vito put the Nine Tails away and drew the Malorian Arms Overture from his thigh holster. He'd modified it thoroughly. Combined with the new neural systems, it hit like a handheld artillery piece.
He looked at it.
"I'm going to call you Punishnt."
The Kabuki streets were moving with their usual noise. The Tyger Claws hideout inside was quiet until Vito's boot connected with the front door.
"Who the hell thinks they can just—"
The mbers in the lobby were fast. Katanas and SMGs ca up simultaneously.
Then they saw the mask. A square of glowing light in the doorway, a city miniaturized and blinking, looking at nothing and everything at once. They stopped for one second.
"New face? You want to join the Claws, you'll have to pass—"
Bang.
The Overture's report in the narrow lobby was enormous.
Vito hadn't aid for the head. He'd aid center mass. The kinetic round released everything it had on impact. The Tyger Claws boss, chest armor and all, went backward the way sothing goes backward when a vehicle hits it at speed. Chest plate and everything underneath distributed themselves across the room.
"Kill him! All of you!"
Every weapon in the room opened up. Rounds ca in from all angles.
Vito did not move.
The mask flickered red.
Most of the rounds deflected. The few that landed were stopped.
"Is that everything you've got?"
He raised the Overture and began.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Each shot took sothing permanent away from whoever it found. Three for the last swordsman: Punishnt took the arm at the wrist — katana went with it — then the knee, then the skull. Done in under four seconds.
Blood reached his coat. The mask's cityscape showed no reaction.
The remaining mbers threw down their weapons and ran.
"Think you're leaving?"
He reloaded in a single motion.
"You walked into my hunting ground. You bleed."
Six shots. Rounds angled off the walls, using the Trajectory Generator to calculate the bounces. Every fleeing target caught a round in the back.
Two minutes. No one standing.
Vito was the only thing upright in the room.
He blew the smoke off the Overture's barrel. He walked to a broken mirror near the far wall and looked at the image there: the glowing cube, blood from the collar down, the cityscape scrolling past as if nothing had happened.
He noticed sothing that he hadn't noticed before.
Every kill, watching each of them shatter in front of him — there was sothing running underneath the anger now. Sothing he didn't have a clean na for. It felt like a kind of satisfaction that had no business being there.
He filed it away.
He holstered the Overture, stepped across a body that was no longer intact, and headed for the stairs.
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