Cyberpunk 2077: V

Chapter 71: Long Live The King

A hum of power rippled softly through the floor as the lights in the penthouse flicked on. A split second later the elevator doors slid open, and in strode Yorinobu Arasaka. Directly behind him was a dark, ugly black shadow, and even through the muffled glass of the TV pillar V could hear the stamping steps of none other than—

"Is tha - is that Adam Smasher?!" Jackie whispered with disbelief and horror.

"Yorinobu's bodyguard," V murmured, memory of Evelyn's dive flickering across her mind's eye. She remembered her fear.

"He's a Night City legend, V. Bleak motherfuckin' one too. Remember what he did to the Martinez gang?" Jackie swallowed and looked at V. "What's the play?"

By this point, Yorinobu Arasaka had stepped down into the living room conversation pit, while Smasher slowly tramped up to pause by the room control screen in the wall. V shuddered, the sight of him making her skin crawl. He was all... wrong. Malice radiated from the black metal and pallid synthskin stretched over his skull, not even a shred of humanity left in the glowing red eyeplate. He looked like a walking nightmare. A devil.

"We wait..." V swallowed.

"Are they here yet?" Yorinobu suddenly called out as he paced back and forth across the dark red floor.

V was unprepared for the sudden flush of recognition at hearing Yorinobu's voice. Her stupid crystal-clear memories of the braindance she'd watched a few days ago flickered across her mind's eyes, causing her to grit her teeth. There was a reason she avoided braindances, beyond her own personal beliefs. With a memory like V's, watching things like that, with all the sensory data and stuff? Didn't make a braindance feel like a show... it made it feel like an actual memory, made the feelings that the recorder felt, feel like her own.

A female voice answered Yorinobu, which V guessed was the hotel's AI, a common feature in all the high end corpo plazas. 

"They approach from the landing pad."

V froze when a bell note of cold rang through her body. It hurt.

"Fuck are they talkin' about?!" Jackie hissed.

"Bug?" V whispered as quietly as she could. "Who we got incoming? Can you see?"

Yorinobu wiped a hand over his hair, let out a long sigh, then suddenly straightened. He slowly moved to sit down on the white cushions just in front of the coffee table, facing the stairs. He casually leaned forward to swipe mindlessly at the datapad imbedded into the table's surface.

V didn't like the silence.

"Bug?"

"Nu-uh," Bug whispered quietly. Her tone chilled V, and she and Jackie gave each other nervous glances. "No fucking way... This isn't happening right now!"

There was movement on the stairs. A man dressed in an all-black luxury Japanese business suit slunk down the stairs with a strange militaristic feline grace, chin held high. Then another figure appeared on the stairs behind him, following with slower, more methodical movements, his hand clasped behind his back.

V's throat closed up. Jackie let out a sharp gasp.

"Saburo Arasaka?!" T-Bug finally managed to say, voice reverent and fearful.

"The emperor..." Jackie murmured. His eyes were huge, staring at the men descending into the penthouse. "Yet another asslickin' legend..."

Saburo Arasaka reached the bottom of the stairs. As if on cue, the man in the suit bowed slightly and turned to the hotel room, his eyes glowing red. V felt anxiety kick into high gear as she realized he was scanning the place.