Evening. Lizzie's basent.
Vito used to feel sothing like regret that most BDs weren't watchable.
He didn't have that regret anymore. Just a revulsion that started sowhere deep and didn't stop.
The contents of the BDs don't bear describing in detail. But Vito could feel every gram of the despair without any reduction.
Judy was an expert. She gave him a mont to acclimate, then opened edit mode, letting him search through the BD for anything worth tracking.
"It might get a little disorienting. Stay with it, Vito."
Vito held the nausea down.
"Alright, Judy. Start."
The headset ca on. White light across his vision.
The scene: inside a building. Through the gap at the window fra, neon signs visible outside.
"Vito. Run a scan. Find anything in the room that could give us a trace."
Judy's voice in his ear.
Vito scanned everything in the room carefully. He found one thing worth noting.
A takeout box from a noodle cart.
"This place is probably near Little China."
"How do you figure that?"
"I know that box. It's from a cart with genuinely terrible noodles. Nobody hauls that particular noodle out to sowhere far away. Unless they have a very specific condition."
"Reserving judgnt. Night City does have quite a few of those."
He kept scanning. Found so wiring tapped directly into the wall.
"This is a private power tap. The draw is significant — probably running high-power servers. That kind of brazen tap is gang territory."
"Noted. Keep going."
Vito advanced the BD at one-tenth speed and watched the people in the fra. Their faces had been processed out. But in the pool of blood on the floor, in the angle of the light, he caught one fra with part of a face reflected back.
Bald. Many unusual cyberware modifications across the face.
"Got sothing. Judy, zoom in on this fra and pull the face from the blood reflection."
Judy extracted the image. Vito pulled out of the BD. He had her run it against the Night City resident database. Four minutes. Thirty-seven results.
Remove the dead. Remove anyone without a criminal record.
Three remaining.
"This one. Koizumi Kenji. Tyger Claws mber. Suspected kidnapping, extortion, murder, trafficking."
Judy pointed at one profile. The resemblance to the blurred face was there. And this Koizumi Kenji had several unusual facial modifications and heavy tattoo work across his body.
"Good. Let's run the second BD. See if they used the sa location."
Vito took a slow breath and put the headset back on.
"You don't need a break?"
Judy knew how bad he was feeling.
"No ti. If we find their location fast enough, we might still get to soone."
Judy didn't argue. She started unpacking the second BD.
White light again.
The sa room. This ti, three people in the fra, each holding a custom knife.
Vito worked through the BD in edit mode, looking for anything he could use.
"Wait, Judy. I'm picking up background noise."
Judy opened audio editing. Under the screaming, Vito caught a fragnt of sothing else in the background.
"Not enough goods... ...zumi... this Mo... ...most, Wo..."
"Judy. Can you clean that up?"
"No. There's too much interference."
Nothing to be done. Vito kept going.
After more ti at slow speed, a blade in the fra caught the light at the right angle. One clear fra reflected most of a face.
"Judy. Pull this fra. Run the comparison."
"On it."
While Judy ran the comparison, Vito kept watching.
He didn't let his focus slip. He couldn't miss anything.
Near the end of the BD, the last clue appeared.
Soone kicked a noodle box aside in the corner. The kick exposed the tap point for the private wiring. A panel cover nearby, left open, had a two-digit prefix that confird: Kabuki district.
"There it is, Judy. Look at the panel cover in my scan."
"Kabuki district. Near a noodle cart. Long private tap. And the face ca back. Kawaguchi Aldo. Tyger Claws mber. Suspected assault on public officers, murder, fraud."
Vito pulled the headset off. His first ti unpacking a black BD had him close to being sick.
Jackie ca up from the bar and put sothing down on the table to help.
"Jackie. We split up. You go pick up that BD seller. I'll have Stints track Koizumi Kenji and Kawaguchi Aldo." Vito's voice had gone flat. "I'm going to pull those two apart."
Jackie put everything he'd brought on the table, checked his weapons, and walked out of the basent.
Vito picked up a bottle of lemon water and drank it down.
"How much did Susanna pay you for this job?"
Judy reached toward his back, thought better of it, and withdrew her hand.
"This isn't about money. Lately I just can't stand looking at what the Tyger Claws do."
Vito caught his breath. The room was settling.
"I thought you rcs only cared about money."
"You know what matters most for a rc?"
"Reputation?"
"Choice."
He stood up, transferred the agreed amount to Judy, and walked out of the basent.
"Choice?"
Judy repeated the word.
"Maybe choice really does matter. Not just for rcs."
Then she thought back to the two black BDs she'd just unpacked. And she thought about Clouds. About what happened to the dolls there.
She made a call.
"Hello? I quit. Starting tomorrow, I'm not going back to Clouds. A reason? My reason is that I don't want to anymore."
Call ended.
Judy found Susanna Quinn.
"Susanna. I want to work at Lizzie's. I want to help the girls."
Susanna had no hesitation about welcoming soone with Judy's skills. Her BD work had a reputation.
Outside Lizzie's, Vito called Stints.
"You had looking for Jotaro Shoji this morning and now you want to find so Koizumi and so Kawaguchi? Who do you think I am, the NCPD chief?"
"Ten thousand per person. Stints. Extra work deserves extra pay."
Stints laughed.
"Ten thousand each? Vito, can this commission even cover that? Or have you got so much money you've run out of ways to spend it?"
Vito didn't engage with the laughter. His voice ca out cold.
"So people forgot what protect and serve ant. I have to pick those words up out of the screaming and the blood. Even if only this once."
Stints stopped laughing.
30 advance chapters at patreon/Eatinpieces
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