Strong Enough 3.1

Refugee 3.1

“Becca! Time to delta!”

Scarlet slides around the corner, placing the barrel of her gun against of a gangoon creeping up on her friend. One round sends his headless corpse tumbling forward. Time to retreat.

Becca grins over her shoulder. “Find your little lamb?”

“She’s not my anything,” Scarlet snaps. Becca has the most pieces of her relationship with Emma, and won’t keep her electric-alice blue mouth shut about it. “And we need to get out of here.”

“Suit yourself, choom.” Becca tosses a grenade back down the hall. “That’ll buy us some time!”

The two dart back towards the ripper’s chop shop, which is not where Scar thought she’d end up when she agreed to save Emma’s life. The gig seemed so much easier before Sasha pinned Emma’s location deep behind the lines of a gang war, and they had to rip their way through the most borged-out gang in Night City to get there. Scar’s lost track of how many Strommers she’s zeroed out. There’s no time to even check their faces against her mother’s killers. She can’t even spare the space to think about it.

They catch Dorio at the stairwell. She has Emma cradled in one arm, tucked in with the girl’s remaining leg hanging down to Dorio’s hip. Emma stares at Scarlet, green eyes wide. Scar ignores her.

Dorio has an autopistol trained on the stairs. Over the echoing booms of gunshots, Scarlet can hear curses and taunts rattling up towards the four of them, daring the women to come out.

“They’ve got us jammed up,” Dorio says.

Becca huffs. “Liked it better when they were stupid.”

Sasha pings the group. “You have to get down to sub-2.”

“Sub-2?” Becca asks.

“There’s an attached Marina, that’s your exit.”

Dorio fires twice at a flash of red through the gaps in the stair. “How many ‘nades you got left?”

Becca pats her bulky jacket. “Enough to soften up some chooms here, or a real big finale on the way out!”

Dorio grins. “Remind me to whoop your ass for storing spare grenades in Maine’s car.”

“You becha.” Becca pulls out two explosives. “We blasting our way out?”

“Save them.” Scarlet reloads her revolver. “I’ll clear our way down.”

“Wait—” Emma reaches towards her. Scar blurs into null-time before they touch.

The stairwell is filled with bullets. She pushes the Sandevistan hard, fire flowing down her back. The wall of lead slows to a crawl that she can slip through, bleeding afterimages in her wake. Three Strommers on the first landing; she skates past, revolver raised.

Scar squeezes the trigger. In this, the space between moments, she can see the moment the electric ignition mechanism kicks the bullet. A flare of sparks spurts out the gap behind the chamber, plasma licking along metal. By inches, she feels the recoil push back into her palm.

The bullet escapes the barrel in a slow, furling tongue of flame. It creeps across the inches to its target. So fast is she, Scar doesn’t even see the cylinder start to turn. Instead, she takes a step to the side, lines up with the second ganger.

Time crashes back into them.

Bang.

Click, goes the cylinder.

She pulls the trigger twice more, and three bodies hit the concrete.

A spray of bullets tears up the concrete, but Scarlet is already behind the shooter. Two more shots, time slows. She fires her last bullet at a man mid-duck before reloading. She’s running out of rounds, but even here, she doesn’t have the time to worry about that.

Scarlet plucks a thrown grenade out of the air and hurls it down their escape corridor. She comes to a stop at the bottom of the stairwell, gun raised.

Time explodes back around her in a swirl of light and heat. She puts one more bullet into a twitching ganger to make sure.

“Let’s move!” she shouts.

“Fucking metal!” Becca slides down the rails with Dorio sprinting after.

Emma watches silently, eyes wide open. Scarlet hates that she still notices. She calls Sasha. “What’s our route?”

“Plotting you now!” Taylor’s nEYEads flash, and a glowing line lights up along the floor. “I’m still pinging contacts up ahead, but nowhere near as many as the party you left behind. So I’d—”

Sasha’s voice cuts out suddenly.

Scar’s head snaps up. “Sasha?”

Dorio swears. “Runner finally showed up.” She lifts her gun, squeezing off two short bursts at the still working cameras. “We still have our path?”

Scarlet nods, the map is still there. “What about Sash?”

“Trust her to take care of herself. None of us are specced for netfights.” She nudges Scarlet with her wrist. “Call out cameras.”

Scarlet jerks, before nodding. If another runner did show up, they’ll be able to throw out quickhacks through the cameras. Better deny that resource to both sides.

And trust Sasha to win the fight in the net.

Scarlet flashes forward, ignoring the pressure slowly building behind her eyes. The brutal piece of metal burns warm in her back, as if spurring her forward. It doesn’t matter either way; she doesn’t have time to stop.

They clear the halls in flashes of blood and smoke, kicked in doors and shrapnel spinning past her eyes in the grey-gold of slowed time.

Scarlet runs out of bullets and takes up a discarded rifle, one she doesn’t recognize. It packs less punch than her revolver, more time per target.

She dumps the mag into a snarling Strommer’s face and snatches his gun from limp fingers.

Becca and Scar take point, Dorio bringing up the rear, protecting Emma.

An explosion goes off behind them. “Pick up the pace, Scar!”

Scarlet is going as fast as she can. Scarlet is going so fast that the limiting factor is the time it takes her guns to fire. She has to drop back into the slow, screaming morass of the real world for the slide to kick back, for the gun to cycle, for the bullets to find their targets.

Sasha stays radio silent, but the lights flicker sometimes, surges of power running through the facility. Scar doesn’t know if she’s still fighting or if they’ve just knocked out too many walls. There’s no time.

Then they break through into the marina.

Panting, almost out of bullets, they stagger through the metal doors to an enclosed dock. Waves lap against rough concrete piers. Becca kicks a groaning strummer in the head hard enough to send him into the water, where his chrome drags him down to the depths.

“Fuck.” Dorio says.

The marina is empty except for a single jet ski. The metal gate is closed.

“Load her up.” Scar turns back to the door, clutching tight her borrowed gun. “I’ll find another way out.”

“I’m not fitting on that,” Dorio says.

“Find a way! I—” Scar catches a glimpse of motion out of the corner of her eye. The Sandevistan stings when she activates it this time, the heat prickling inside her neck. She flashes down the hall, finishing off the two Strommers after them.

“We’re out of time!” She shouts. Rumbles echo from the twisted corridors they’d just cleared through. More explosions, or something else, she doesn’t know.

Dorio swears again. “Becca, grenades. Get the VIP on the damn ski.”

Scar catches a glimpse of Becca’s face before the woman firms up. She takes Emma with a grunt.

Dorio takes the grenades.

Scarlet jogs back to the marina. “We can all get out through, we—”

“We’re getting out.” Dorio opens the bag, fishing out a handful of grenades. “Help me blow the gate.”

“How? These aren’t rated for demolitions.”

Another boom, closer.

Dorio points upward. “Take out the chains.”

Scarlet takes two grenades and rushes over towards the grate. At the top, she sees the winch mechanism a quick jump and she plants a live explosive at each of the two winches. She falls back into the shallow water as they both go off. A muffled boom shakes the water, the grate groans, crashing into the water.

Taylor pulls herself, sputtering, steaming, out back onto the pier as the gate sags. The rails on the side keep it from falling.

“Ready to go when you are!” Becca shouts.

Dorio is over by the gate as well now, bag of grenades slung over her shoulder. She wraps both hands around the steel guide rails, plants her feet, and heaves.

With a roar, she tears the rail out from the wall, sending the gate listing, collapsing. For a moment, it looks like the gate will hold, then the far side pulls free and crashes into the water.

“Get going, Becs,” Dorio says.

Becca pauses, hands on the throttle. “You guys?”

Emma finally succeeds in catching Taylor’s eyes from across the room. She reaches, expression begging. The mottled bruises across her face and limbs make it so she can barely move, but Taylor knows what she’s asking.

Don’t leave me.

Another boom shakes the walls. Scarlet whips around, moment broken, but the door to the Marina remains empty.

“We blasted our way in.” Dorio rolls her shoulders. “Scar and I can blast our way out again.”

Scar blows out a breath. They don’t have any other choices though, not like Dorio can swim for it. “Yeah,” she says. “Let’s do it.”

“F-f-forgetting about me?” Sasha asks.

“Sasha!”

“H-hey.”

Scarlet winces. The runner’s voice is rough, even over digital. “You okay?”

“Got fried a bit.” She gives a laugh, breaking out into coughing. “But I got the bitch in the end. I sh-should be able to guide you out.”

Taylor looks at Dorio and nods.

“Becca!” Dorio turns. “Get going. Once you clear the jamming radius, Trauma Team will pick you up.”

“Got it boss!” Becca salutes.

Dorio turns back to Scarlet, “As for us—”

The wall explodes inward.

Scarlet surges away from the flying concrete. The pressure behind her eyes sharpens into a lance of agony so quickly that she stumbles back into normal time.

It wouldn’t have mattered.

She pulls the trigger, firing half blind. The bullets plink off of steel plates welded to industrial equipment. A giant wrecking ball of a hand whistles overhead.

Scar pushes the Sandevistan just enough to throw herself backwards.

Her eyes widen as she slips through the air, like a fly sinking in amber. Power loading arms, demo equipment, all bolted to a frothing, seething madman.

Not my daughter—

The color of real time slips back over the world just in time for her to it the water, just in time for the wreckingball to hit the concrete. Scarlet goes under with a hiss of steam and a shower of shattered stone. She sinks, the world closing over her.

Taylor breaks the surface with a raw scream, “No!”

Her feet scrabble at the slick bottom, as she tries to raise the gun. She pulls the trigger, only for the junked together electronics to spark, useless.

Instead, she is fourteen again, watching helplessly as the borg sweeps up Dorio in a three clawed hand. The woman struggles, useless.

“No!” Taylor screams again.

Dorio looks over her shoulder. Their eyes meet. Get gone, she mouths.

Taylor shakes her head.

Something like a laugh, but crushed by an industrial pressed is forced out of Dorio’s lips. The borg isn’t even trying to kill her, just watching, head twitching, as it slowly ratchets up the pressure. Dorio’s hands slip into her bag, and come out with a fist full of pins.

Run, she says.

Becca grabs two fistfuls of Taylor’s dead mother’s coat, and pulls her over the pommel of the jet ski. Emma is screaming.

The jet ski lurches forward, the grenades go off.

They tear out into exit channel just slow enough for Taylor to watch as the monster from her past reels through another wall. The whole building comes down around them, concrete and steel beams slamming into the water.

Taylor finds Emma’s fingers blind, squeezing hard. She squeezes back. It’s not enough, but it’s better than dying alone.

Then the jet ski shoots out of the tunnel and into rough chop of the sea. Becca swears and curses as she wrestles with the it. The engine whines, sputters, and then finally settles into gear. Taylor’s head hands down, dripping water into the sea. Sasha says something in her ears, but she cannot find the strength to reply.

Becca takes them to shore. Somehow, Taylor manages to find her feet long enough to pull a shivering Emma off the jet ski. Hands her off to Trauma Team when they get there far later than they should. Somehow Taylor pings Alan, who pays her without questioning, so full of thank yous that she wants to rip mouth out.

What good is that money now?

Taylor sits there, on the edge of the ocean, surf crashing into the sea wall. Behind her, sirens blare. Just like the year her life fell apart.