Clean Cop, Dirty City
Watson, Konpeki Hotel
[ Plaza – Perimeter, 23:41 HST | Rain: Moderate | Status: Red]
The neon skyline of Night City flickered like a dying circuit, pulsing sickly pink and cobalt in the misty rain. Konpeki Plaza stood like a chrome monolith in the center of it all—too tall, too clean, too rich to care. But tonight, it was about to bleed.
Outside the hotel's gilded front, rows of NCPD armored vans idled behind temporary barricades, their emergency strobes painting the soaked pavement in flashes of crimson and sapphire. Drone scouts hovered overhead, scanning the building's heat signatures—though static interference from Konpeki's top-tier net defenses made readings jumpy at best. No one trusted the intel.
Sergeant Vale stepped out of the command vehicle, his exo-suit groaning under the weight of layered armor and a shoulder-mounted breaching charge. He lit a synth-cig, the ember briefly casting sharp lines across his rain-slick face.
"This is a clusterfrag waiting to happen," muttered Officer Dray, adjusting her smart visor beside him. "Command says it's a weapons meet. Floor 47. That's all we've got?"
Sergeant Vale exhaled smoke and rain. "No, Dray. We've got floors of corporate muscle, gang enforcers, edgerunners, and at least one body-mod cult involved. Intel says there's a new prototype on the table. Black-market cyberware—military-grade. Could tip the scales."
A sudden flash of lightning revealed the building's glass facade. Somewhere inside, shadows moved. Laughing. Armed. Ready.
Then the radio clicked.
"Unit Bravo, this is Command. All teams in position. Green light in T-minus 60. No turning back."
Vale crushed the cig with his boot.
"Alright, kids. Time to knock on the devil's door."
Meanwhile....
[Konpeki Plaza, Floor 47 Executive Lounge | 21:47 HST | Status: Calm]
Soft jazz played through hidden speakers, as if trying to drown out the tension in the air. The executive lounge was a cathedral of luxury—mahogany-paneled walls, gold-trimmed liquor shelves, floor-to-ceiling windows giving a dizzying view of Night City's neon arteries far below. But no one was looking at the skyline.
A half-dozen high-value players lounged at the central table, surrounded by their crews. Black-market fixers, cartel tacticians, merc gang lieutenants—each one packing chrome under tailored suits, eyes flickering with embedded optics, wired to kill. And in the center: a black case, open and glowing softly. Inside lay a prototype cyberware implant—compact, polished, illegal. Military-grade. Rumor said it could bypass neural lag entirely. Ghost reflexes. Things that weren't possible yet.
Kian "Ghostjack" Reza leaned back in a leather chair, dragging on a real tobacco cigarette—one of the perks of deep black money. He flicked ash onto a gold tray without looking.
"So," he drawled, voice smooth as wet synth-leather, "who wants to make history tonight?"
Across from him, Yaro of the Dagger Serpents- an offshoot of an offshoot of a gang, cracked his neck, chrome vertebrae clicking softly. "How do we know this thing ain't tagged? Corpos don't just let toys like this walk out the lab."
Kian smiled, slow and smug. "It didn't walk. It bled its way out."
Behind them, security details paced quietly. Guns hung low under coats. No one was visibly tense—but no one was relaxed either. Deals like this never stayed clean for long. Floors and floors of men, security, armed, otherwise.
Further back, in the shadows near the bar, a silent netrunner kept fingers dancing in midair, watching for signals—corpo spies, rival gang pings, anything out of place. Cops.
She frowned.
"Static's up," she said to no one in particular. "Local feeds just started jumping. Might be the hotel's dampeners, or—"
No one heard the faint hum of a drone outside the glass.
No one noticed the slight thermal flicker above the elevator shaft.
They were too busy watching the money.
Too busy thinking they were in control.
And in just a few moments- everything was going to go to hell.