Cyberpunk 2077: V

Chapter 33: First Step

Till the end, V said. Till the end.

Jackie told V that they needed to delta back to Misty's ASAP and throw a little party to celebrate the "big day." V wasn't sure how thrilled Vik or Misty would be about celebrating their gig... From what she surmised, they were about as excited about it as V was. But Jackie was on a roll, and V had said she would give this a chance...

Till the end.

Even if V said that, she still felt something cold and raw in her stomach. There was something off about this gig—though Dex had made it seem like Evelyn Parker was the source of the strange smell. She reeked of something weird, all right, but she wasn't as bad as Dex himself. V didn't like it. She didn't like that all history of the man had ended suddenly two years ago. She didn't like that when she asked about that time, either no one knew or wouldn't tell.

As it was, V told Jackie to head on without her, and that she'd meet him at the Esoterica. When asked, Jackie said that they wouldn't tell Misty and Vik all the specifics—they were at least agreed on that. The fewer people who knew about a gig as crazy as this, the better, especially for their own protection after the fact, when Arasaka would be sniffing around. They agreed on the level of detail, Jackie gave V another pat on the back, and he strutted out into the Afterlife proper.

V made a show of hanging back to make sure the Flathead was "good to go." Instead, she waited until she was sure Jackie had pranced his way out of the place, grabbed the bot, and started doing some reconnaissance.

Nobody was in the back hallways and storerooms of the Afterlife, which V thought was odd. It was a poor security choice too. From what she could see and scan, there weren't even any cameras or sensors back there. Perhaps Rogue, the owner, was so confident in the sanctity of the place she didn't feel the need to put any up. Perhaps it would have been hard to do because it was an ex-morgue. Who knew? But V was glad for it, in a way. Gave her a chance to snoop around without having to sneak. 

She found storerooms filled with barrels of beer, liquor, and junk food; found a netrunning chamber with a locked door that had some tip-top preem gear in it; and, most interestingly, what looked like a back office in a corner of one of the storerooms.

This little spot intrigued her. There were a few computers and monitors set up with some sort of data mining operation running. The data streams were moving too fast for her to pick up on what it was doing exactly, and she wasn't about to jack into something and maybe pop an alarm, so she looked around a little more. What really caught her eye was a full 3D blueprint scan of, of all things, the freaking Crystal Palace on one of the monitors. She wondered if there was a gang of mercs in the Afterlife planning a space heist. They were hyper-rare and rarely ended well, but if someone pulled off something like that, the merc world would forget about Jackie and V's escapade pretty quick.

After looking around for about fifteen minutes, she couldn't find anything useful. Certainly nothing about Dex, at least. So she made her way out into the noisy, neon-green Afterlife, walking back up to the bartender who stood tinkering with something under the bar. Jackie seemed to think they'd be spending a lot of time there, so V wanted to do her usual thing—talk to the bartender, be nice to them, ask some questions... you never knew when a little connection like that would help you out in the future.

"Hey, sorry real quick, got a couple of questions for ya if that's okay," V asked as she approached.

The bartender looked up and cocked an eyebrow, setting down whatever she was fiddling with to set her hands on the bar.

"Sure, everyone's got their drinks and doing their little planning pow-wows so I'm free. What's up?"

V shifted the bot case in her hand and asked, "Just curious... how do you like working at the Afterlife?"