Cyberpunk 2077: V

Chapter 58: Rot

V dropped down with a soft thump!

Pausing a moment, she quickly analyzed her surroundings. Racks upon racks of bare metal shelves, all piled high with old corpo document boxes. Leftovers from when this place was an actual warehouse and not a devil's den.

Just behind her was a security door with a metal fence from floor to ceiling. In front of her was a bare metal desk with some old food wrappers sitting on it. She decided to investigate the shelves first.

V realized that she had dropped into an old document storage room. The shelves around her were labeled with printed-out letters: A, B, C, etc. Some of the document boxes looked old, dusty, and ripped, with black and red ink and stickers showing the now-defunct company logo. Some of the boxes looked newer, though. Same red and white boxes, but these didn't have labels or logos. Looking closer, V could make out text that said, "DO NOT STORE AT EXTREME TEMPERATURES" and "SPECIAL HANDLING REQUIRED." She slipped open a particularly dusty box in the "B" section and peered inside.

Rows of old-style BD drives.

Something sick slipped into V's stomach. She quickly closed the lid, darting back. Looking at the fresh boxes, she almost imagined a dark glow surrounding them. V swallowed down the feeling and looked around again.

Some cameras— all under her control, with their looping scenes. No traps, no trips. A couple of turrets, now regressed into the ceiling with friendly green lights.

V moved on to the desk she saw before.

The desk wasn't just piled with paper wrappers; it was piled with books. Stacks of them, with some propped up along the back, leaning against the metal wall of the warehouse. She looked at the titles, and was relieved to see nothing lewd there. Just copies of The MaxTac Way, Sayonara Station, The Chronicles of Titania, and others. There wasn't a computer that she could see. After a quick look at the desk, V flitted back toward the shelves, seeing that the room continued back into darkness towards another section of the building. She wanted to check out the rest of the area first, however, so she moved back to the security door. The light was green, probably from her hacking the security system earlier. It slid open, revealing a spit of a concrete landing and a set of stairs to the right that led to a lower floor. 

The second floor, V discovered as she snuck silently down the metal steps. No one was there. Through the windows, she could see the body of one of the gangers she'd dispatched earlier. There were no cameras in this section—just filing cabinets and more shelves piled with boxes, tubs, containers, and various odds and ends. Toward the middle of the room was a large double desk covered with computers. V moved up to the multiple screens.

Sticky rotting takeout containers and knocked-over soda cans on the keyboards showed the gangers didn't care much for their equipment. The monitors flashed and stuttered with scan data—stock reports, auto-buys, waveform matching, software skims; the works. Seemed they were trying to squeeze every last eddy out of the environment around them.

The thought that it wasn't the gangers who had the skim op going, but the XBD tuners, made V's lip curl. With a savage yank, she reached out and tore the wires from the monitors and computers. There were some hisses, spits, and sparks, and then the room grew a little darker as the glow from the screens disappeared. As V moved around the desks, she saw there was a side room toward the back—server room, more than likely. No one was in there. Just some old servers with loud fans and a computer that was scanning through unsecured security cams all around NC. V pulled the plug on that one too, but left the servers. If the tuners were using them, she didn't want them to know she was there.

Didn't want her prey to know she was closing in.

The second floor cleared, V turned to climb the stairs, some dark instinct telling her that was the way to her targets. With each step, black smoke started to form at the edge of her vision. Seemed to whisper in her ears, even. It curled in sultry loops around the security door, hissing as V passed through.