Chương 86: Dino's Gig: Project Chimera I

"We are born of the blood, made men by the blood, undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open." - Master Willem (Bloodborne) POV: Santiago "Santi" Reyes I was currently in a cab on my way to the afterlife, and was going over what Dino could possibly have for me when I remembered the earlier events of the morning. It was like nine-something when I left my place and had called a cab over.

While I was waiting for the cab, I glanced over to where Judy always kept the decommissioned NCFD firetruck and noticed the spot was empty.

My first instinct had been to think of the worst that could have possibly happened, and that was her getting killed. However, I quickly pushed that out of my mind since that gonk that hosted the body lotto, Stan the Man, would've been itching to do a special announcement this morning about a chick getting killed while riding in an NCFD firetruck. So I shifted my thoughts into something more reasonable.

Judy had spent the better part of a year rebuilding a fire truck and had finally gotten to drive it on a day when the entire city's law enforcement apparatus was distracted by war crimes. And knowing Judy, the idea that she simply kept driving until the fuel ran out was most likely what had happened. Once the cab dropped me off, I made my way into the Afterlife and quickly realized that the Afterlife in the morning was a completely different building than it was at night.

The main floor was mostly empty, except for the two booths that were occupied and a man asleep at the bar with his forehead on the countertop and a half-finished drink beside him. The screens above the bar were running N54 on mute, which was off to suck big daddy NUSA off by trying to downplay what actually happened in Sacramento through eight words: "Unification War: Insurgents in Sacramento have been Defeated." I didn't clock it on my way in, but there wasn't really a bouncer on shift either.

I looked back and saw a guy, almost half-asleep, sitting just before the entry, using his Nue and his hand as a pillow. The gonk didn't even try to see if I belonged in here. I walked towards Dino, who was in the corner booth with his denim vest on and his boots up on the seat. He had an almost empty bottle in front of him this early in the morning, and I got the sense that it was most likely his daily routine.

"Ghost," he said.

"You look well rested... Not a fan of that shit."

"Clearly," I said.

"You look like you haven't slept at all."

"Haven't gotten the chance to do so," Dino said.

"Been on call since three in the morning with four different clients who all suddenly discovered they have urgent business in Night City now that Sacramento's a parking lot. And sit the fuck down already, looking up at you is making my neck hurt and my head spin." I obeyed and slipped into the booth.

"Here's the gist of it," Dino said.

"Client wants a data cache. Data cache is encrypted and volatile. They know approximately where it is, what it relates to, and they're willing to pay good eddies for it. But, knowing where something is and getting your hands on it ain't really the same thing, now is it?"

"Any idea on what it's related to?" I asked with genuine curiosity.

"A Militech project called Chimera," Dino said as he scratched the side of his head.

"Never heard anything about it," I said after I had attempted to jog my memory on whether there was information about this project or not in the data I had copied during the last gig.

"No shit," Dino said as he took a drink and set the bottle down.

"The Chimera is a Militech black-budget program that has not produced a single leak. Which is astonishing, because from what we know of Militech, they leak like a colander at the best of times, and something being this clean for this long is itself a signal."

"How clean are we talking?" I asked.

"Clean enough that I've been trying to run down what a Chimera actually is, and everything I've turned up is second-hand rumor about the program's existence, none of it about the program's content. What I do know for certain is that it's being developed under the direct supervision of Militech's armored division chief engineer, a man named Filippo Andrews. Design work started in 2065 under the classification of an urban combat platform, which could mean anything from a personnel carrier to a tactical AI.

But whatever it is, Militech considered it important enough to run the entire program off the books, off any network, and out of every regulatory framework."

"So if I took a shot in the dark, I'd guess that the client wants the specs," I inferred.

"The client wants everything on the project," Dino said with an eyeroll and an expansion of his arms.

"I'm talking blueprints, manufacturing specifications, component sourcing, test data, doctrinal notes- did I mention blueprints already?" I nodded, so he continued speaking.

"They want every file available. If it's in the cache and it's Chimera-adjacent, they want it." You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"Okay..." I said slowly.

"And this cache is where?"

"Pacifica," he said before taking a quick pull from the bottle.

"In the subterranean levels of the development zone. Deep below the flood line, in a section that never got finished." He reached into the inside pocket of his vest and produced a data shard, and set it on the table between us.

"Client provided a briefing package," he explained.

"Everything they know about the target, the location, and the operational parameters. It's not a lot, but it's what they have. Take a look for yourself." I picked up the shard and inserted it into the port at the base of my skull, and the contents unfolded across my overlay. The first section was the target profile. The Militech Chimera program.

Everything the client had managed to compile from years of corporate espionage, source recruitment, and passive signals intelligence amounted to a document that was long on inference and short on confirmation. The Chimera was, according to the compiled intel, an armored platform intended for urban combat operations that had legs, plural, though the exact number was disputed across the different source reports.

It was designed to withstand engagement from contemporary anti-armor weapons, which meant its armor package was significantly heavier than that of any current Militech platform in service. It carried a mixed weapons loadout that the client's sources could not fully confirm, and its command architecture employed a dedicated cyberdefense suite. The intel report noted that approximately thirteen units had been produced, though the number was flagged as low confidence.

The program was believed to be in the transition phase between prototype production and full manufacturing tooling, which meant this specific moment, before the mass-production run committed Militech's supply chain, was the window during which a Chimera package would be worth the maximum amount to the buyers. After the mass-production run, the specs would naturally leak as component vendors, assembly-line workers, and shipping manifests began distributing information.

Before the mass-production run, all program information was concentrated in a small number of highly secure locations. The cache was housed in an off-the-books observation post on Sub level four of a never-opened retail development, in a server room whose existence did not appear on any official Pacifica infrastructure map.

The briefing included a floor plan reconstructed from thermal imaging of the site, which meant the client had someone good enough to bounce a thermal signal through six levels of concrete and get a usable image back, and some really deep pockets. The observation post was presumed inactive, and their recommendation was a light infiltration team, since it should just be a simple in-and-out gig. The third section had timing and contact protocols for post-extraction delivery.

The final page contained a note in a slightly different tone from the rest of the document, the specific tightening of voice that indicated a personal message rather than a briefing insert.

"Time is of the essence. The Sacramento situation has accelerated the market clock. If the package is not in our hands within seventy-two hours, our position weakens materially. Please execute at earliest opportunity. All questions to the fixer. No direct contact." I unplugged the shard and handed it back across the table.

"Client's probably a NUSA task force," I said. Contrary to my expectations, Dino did not react to my inference.

"Or somebody one degree removed from a NUSA task force," I continued.

"Looking at the document structure, sourcing language, and operational sign-off tone, whoever wrote that has staff training, which most likely means NUSA, Militech, or Arasaka. Sure, I can maybe say Kang Tao, but they don't deal in what they asked us to get, so the next guess would be Militech, but they're the target, so not them either. Next would be Arasaka, and with their support for the free states, they're a maybe, but the most likely suspect would be an entity within the NUSA...

Someone who wants to steal information to something they'll eventually have..." Dino picked up the bottle and looked at it, noticing that it was empty. So he set it back down.

"Listen, kid," Dino began.

"You're smart, maybe too smart for your own good. You are not being paid to draw those inferences."

"I was making those inferences for you," I tried to argue my case. He looked at me for a moment, and I noticed the corner of his mouth twitch as he leaned over.

"I appreciate the concern," he said in a low voice.

"But I'll pretend I didn't hear it. Client's identity is not my problem. Client's motivation is not my problem either. But the client is paying, and paying well, and paying quickly due to the shitshow up in Sacramento. What matters to me and you is that the site is exactly what the briefing says it is. Not whatever fucking ideas you're getting. This is the downside of working with young people.

It's good that you bring me more than I asked, but you have to learn to monitor what comes out of your fucking mouth and learn when to shut the fuck up."

"I understand," I muttered, feeling like a scolded child, which, technically, I was.

"Good. Memorize that shit, 'cause it can very well get you flatlined in this line of work," he said.

"Now, there is a bit more I want to add myself. The briefing understates the digital side of things. Client's netrunner consultants classified the Chimera's own cyberdefense as significantly above current-generation baseline, meaning that if Militech built the platform's ICE at that level, they built its documentation vault at the same level or higher. My read is that the architecture is going to be a fortress, and my read on my read is that we should assume worse and be pleasantly surprised."

"Understood," I nodded.

"There's a second problem," he said, leaning back.

"Sacramento spooked the money, and right now every corp with an investment position in Pacifica started pulling assets the second word began to spread yesterday. They're recalling whatever personnel were still maintaining a presence down there."

"That was fast," I said.

"That's Night City, kid. You'll understand when your balls drop," Dino said as he put his hands behind his head.

"Money doesn't have loyalty, choom. The corpos pulling out created a vacuum, and the vacuum filled in under twenty-four hours. Ever since the Pacifica project was put on pause, there have been new crews, scavs, and other opportunistic bastards that moved in to claim a new home. So when you go down there tonight, you're walking into an empty basement full of people who have been setting up and may be clashing with those who arrived yesterday.

There's no word on established territory, just that they're all competing for the same scrap. You up for it?" I thought about it for a few seconds before asking, "What's the payout?"

"That's a fair question," Dino grinned.

"I'd have been disappointed if you didn't ask."

"So?" I asked.

"Base pay is eight hundred thousand," Dino said.

"Split three ways between you, Moth, and Torque. That's two hundred and sixty-six thousand and change for each of you. For a single night's work." My heart skipped a beat at the number, but I wasn't surprised, especially since I had made two hundred grand with Dino in the last gig we pulled.

"Any space for bonuses?" I asked. Dino shrugged.

"Depends entirely on what you bring back." I nodded at his answer.

"So, when do we leave?"