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Valerie brought Judy and Evelyn to Viktor's clinic without further incident. Apparently, the Voodoo Boys hadn't expected their remote execution of a "mere doll" to fail and hadn't prepared an offline contingencies team.
Kael was already waiting.
"Put her here," Viktor directed, immediately initiating the scrub. "Cyberware overheating caused by Synapse Burnout. You cooled her down just in time. Any later and her neural bridge would have been molten slag."
Viktor methodically purged the residual Voodoo Boy viruses. The damage, however, was severe. Evelyn's high-end, specialized "pleasure" cyberware—the tools of her trade—were completely fried. To save her life, Viktor had to strip the scrapped chrome, essentially resetting Evelyn to baseline. She had lost her livelihood, but she had kept her mind.
"She's stable," Viktor said, rubbing his eyes with bone-deep exhaustion. "But her psyche took a hit. She'll be seeing ghosts for a while."
After thanking the doctor and seeing him off to bed, the room fell quiet, save for the hum of the medical monitors.
Kael looked at the sleeping Evelyn, then shifted his gaze to Judy. "Your ex-girlfriend has a talent for finding the most lethal friction in Night City. What do you know?"
Judy wasn't stupid. She knew Kael had been shadowing them for a reason. "The Voodoo Boys hired her to record a Braindance in Yorinobu Arasaka's penthouse. She decided to cut them out and sell the intel to Netwatch instead. It went sideways."
Kael nodded. For Judy, the reality was sinking in: Evelyn had provoked the butchers of Pacifica. The Voodoo Boys didn't just forget a slight; they projected their influence through every subnet in the city. No gang—not even the Moxes—would protect a "doll" who had painted a target on her back by messing with those lunatics.
"Want me to save her life?" Kael asked, reading the desperation in Judy's eyes.
"Can you?"
"On what grounds? I've already repaid my favors," Kael countered.
Judy panicked. She didn't have the eddies to move Kael, and she didn't believe in the "girls helping girls" myth of Night City. Finally, she looked him in the eye and grabbed his collar, her voice trembling with reckless resolve.
"I'm a top-tier Braindance editor. I know hardware, software, and data-mining better than anyone in the Moxes. Protect Evelyn, and I'm yours. My skills, my loyalty... you can do whatever you want with me!"
Kael paused. Delve could technically outperform Judy, but having a human specialist with "street-intuition" wasn't without value. Plus, Judy's genuine loyalty to Evelyn was a rare commodity in this city.
"Whatever I want?"
"Whatever you want!!" Judy affirmed fiercely.
Evelyn slowly stirred. "Water..."
After a few gulps, her vision focused on Kael. "You?!" she gasped, her breathing hitching. She instinctively thought Arasaka had caught her—a fate far worse than the Voodoo Boys.
"Relax, Evelyn. Arasaka doesn't know about your little heist yet," Kael comforted her. "People call me BT. For Judy's sake, I'll handle the Voodoo Boys, but you owe me that Braindance recording."
Evelyn gave a bitter smile. She was lying on a stranger's operating table with fried chrome; she had zero leverage. "The video is in my head. Let Judy pull it. Wipe my signature from the metadata."
Judy extracted the data and handed the chip to Kael. He didn't view it; the raw 'exercise' between Evelyn and Yorinobu was something he'd rather let Pilar appreciate later.
"Valerie, take them to the Water Plant," Kael ordered. "We need someone for external PR. Evelyn's 'expensive' look is perfect for corporate networking."
"I'm going with her," Judy added, still not fully trusting the legend. Kael waved them off.
Now Kael had the data, but he needed to handle the extraction. Yorinobu Arasaka was practically leaving the door unlocked, but stealing the Relic would draw heat from Militech, Netwatch, and Saburo himself.
Kael needed a fall guy.
He turned his thoughts to the All Foods factory. Royce had recently usurped power from Brick, turning the Maelstrom hideout into a den of cyber-psychotic aggression. Royce had kept the "Flathead" drone that Dexter DeShawn had paid for, but Dexter was now broke and his "rookies" were dead.
Royce was frantic. He had stolen corporate hardware from Militech and now had no buyer to take the heat off him. He was the perfect, unstable element for Kael to exploit.
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