Cyberpunk 2077: V

Chapter 52: Demons of War

Just as Regina's face popped up on V's screen, it started to rain. A squall—dark clouds whirled overhead, cutting off the sun in an instant. V tried not to think of it as an omen.

"V—my subscans picked up somethin'. NCPD got a call 'bout a potential cyberpsycho, actually sent a patrol this time. Been a couple of hours with no report back. Either those cops got scared and bounced or..."

Regina shook her head.

"Anyway, check it out for me? Just sent you the ping. Think this might be related to our inquiry based on the location. Much appreciated."

V watched the ping come through and routed it to her map. An overlay of the Night City streets faded into view on her HUD. It would take about 15 minutes to get there.

"Aight, on my way. Be there in 15, prob less."

Regina nodded. "Good. Be quick. If he zeroed those badges, then there's no way in HELL MaxTac is gonna bring him in alive. We're the best chance that wacko gonk has at getting out of this in one piece. The cops haven't sent any iron yet, but if we wait too long, someone might see something and call it in. So—good luck."

It took V twelve minutes to get there. She looped around back toward the industrial part of town, mercifully a good distance away from where she'd been earlier. The ping took her up the side streets where the asphalt slanted towards the sky—towards old overpasses that had been damaged and left to fall apart in chunks and pieces onto the abandoned warehouses below. V had never been over to this specific area herself, but she'd heard of it. Dismal, dark, and smelly. A place where people went to try and escape the world around them, too scared of actually leaving NC to try their hand in Dogtown or the desert.

V slowed to a crawl as she crested the on-ramp to the highest overpass, noting the old, faded white and orange concrete partitions to her right, blocking off the rest of the highway. The ping was here, at this intersection, with a choice of left or right. V pulled up a recent map of Night City and compared highways, then quickly cross-checked known homeless camps. As recent as a couple of days ago, some blog had mentioned a large encampment of people living on the old overpasses, seeming to practically dangle off the edge, waiting for their makeshift homes to crumble under their feet. Gazing off toward the right, ever so faintly through the sheets of rain, V could make out flickering red and blue lights.

Right it was.

V elected to get out of her car there, despite the rain. She needed the maneuverability and stealth to figure out what was going on. As an afterthought, she slipped her yokai mask on over her face, then got into a low crouch. She flitted between concrete partitions left in haphazard blocks around the asphalt, scanning piles of abandoned construction equipment lying around there and farther down the way—leftovers from when the city once thought about attempting to rebuild. She got about twenty feet in when the smell of blood hit her nose.

And then she saw the body.

A woman. She was splayed out like she had died mid-run, her face against the wet concrete. A giant splatter of blood shot out from under her chest, fading away in tendrils from the rain. Must have been hit by what looked like a large caliber, ran away, but bled out and died on her feet. V checked her pulse. Nothing. The body was still slightly warm, even with the cool rain.

Psycho or not, someone was out there with a gun.

Senses on high alert now, V continued down the abandoned overpass. The rain had kicked up a little, making the tall piles of boxes, partitions, and old pallets of metal rebar gleam darkly, looming through the raindrops. She slipped around concrete building blocks and some construction railing, noting that there were some abandoned portable toilets up ahead, streaming rust down their sides, showing their age. There was a long, forty-foot gap between the heaps of old equipment V was peeking over and the toilets, which were butted up against huge stacks of boxes and slabs of rebar on the far side of the overpass highway. More partitions set up what looked like a purposeful serpentine path into a patch of dark shapes, which V surmised to be the ramshackle buildings and tents of the homeless camp. The flashing lights of the badge patrol car kept shimmering through the rain.