PRIVATE Hell on Wheels

[Emer Tor]

Rare that the sun pierced the thick blanket of NC smog. Rarer still that it reached its warm fingers all the way down to street-level Westbrook, gilding the rubbish that coated every surface like a particularly persistent mould.

This extraordinary sunlight roused Emer early on a Friday morning, beaming right down onto her face through the narrow slit she'd left open on the window shutters. Served her right.

She washed off the dregs of sleep and settled at her kitchen counter with a cig and a shot of coffee (no whisky!). With the clear blue sky outside, it was hard to stay cranky for long – and there was always shit to do at the club, anyway.

Emer was out the door at an extraordinary 10:24, ready to seize the day.

Then she stopped. Squinted. Puffed her cheeks. Glanced at the firmament for guidance from a dead god. Sighed.

Her beautiful red Quartz sat on the pavement where she'd left it last night. Operative word being sat.

On wooden blocks.

Someone had nicked the fucking wheels.

Emer lit up again and pivoted on the spot. The security guy needed convincing to the tune of a hundred eddies and her toothiest smile, and then she was scrolling through the sensor footage.

In ten minutes she had a fuzzy cyberdeck signal. A convo with a contact and a half hour later, she had a net address. No name, no identifiers, just a string of numbers. Given the sloppy scratches on her front axle, they weren't professionals. A bunch of scrappers fallen through the cracks, more likely.

At 11:04, Emer brought out her own spoofed cyberdeck and picked the road less travelled.

> From: MHunt
> hey choom. heard u r looking 2 offload some quartz hardware. 1k €$ & i take it off ur hands 2day

She stalked back up to her apartment and parked her arse at the kitchen bar for another espresso. With whisky, this time.

 

[Catriona Devine]

"Are you fuckin' DENSE?!"

"Only as dense as you are narrow."

Another morning, another hangover, another fucking argument.

It was a bleary-eyed continuation of the night before's revelry, a celebration of a job half done, where the conversation had come up on the impossibility of modern, legitimate career choices for people like them. People like them. Like any of the four in that room could pretend to be cut from the same cloth. Ended up on the same filthy concrete floor, right enough.

A simple lament, really; Catriona had been knocked back from another menial shit-for-pay job on the basis of not having adequate proof of address. It was one thing to be rejected by such titans as dying fast food franchises and dilapidated corner stores, but getting knocked back by a filling station that got robbed every third day was a real low. That wasn't quite true; the real low was when the manager of said filling station offered her twenty eddies and an expired pizza slice for a handjob.

Got her th

inking, though.

Not about the handy-jay; she wasn't touching that gonk's low-ball offer. God, no.

"Aw man, keep it doon, quines. Ma heid's pure stottin'," whined a lump under an oil-stained beach towel masquerading as a blanket. Some were handling their hangovers better than others.

"Yeah, well, her head's not fuckin' connected with reality! Jumped-up fuckin' joytoy wannabe!" PCS responded with wildly flailing hands, directly ignoring the request to 'keep it doon' and instead getting louder and angrier (as she was wont to do). "Flatlined in a fuckin' week!"

"Escort, not joytoy," Catriona chose to correct with hands on hips, pointedly avoiding the prospect of being murdered in the pursuit of being morally correct.

In the corner of the warehouse, oblivious to the quickly spiralling argument huddled the resident tech-gremlin in an oversized hoodie, her state of being disguised by oversized sunglasses that obscured the absolute oblivion of the boost-borne come down that was tearing through her central nervous system like an insidious wasting disease. The ragged recliner that contained the woman barely flinched, but eyes beneath the shades darted frenetically, always jacked in, even if her brain had long since departed following last night's session.

>: From: Tripz
> u 4 real ledhed? 2k or nthn. wont gt btr factory spec thn this on mrkt.

Somebody had to be useful.

 

[Emer Tor]

Halfway through contemplating a destressing visit to the range, Emer's deck pinged with a response.

She furrowed her brow at the message and stubbed out her fifth cigarette. Now these punks were trying to fleece her? The fucking audacity. The entire car was barely worth 10k at this point. With how badly they must've scratched the rims in that botched wheeljob, two thousand eddies was a delusional asking price.

> From: MHunt
> 500 upfront & the rest aftr inspection

Her skullcracking days were over, but acts like hers were always just one bad week away from a flashy comeback. It wasn't her favourite potential outcome – in an ideal world, Emer showed up, haggled them down to 1k, picked up her stolen carparts, and everyone lived.

But NC wouldn't know ideal if it shot in the back of the head, so…

 

[Catriona Devine]

"Shit by any other name still stinks the same," came PCS's surprisingly bitter rebuttal as the street fighter stepped forward, jabbing a stiff gorilla finger straight into Catriona's sternum, which genuinely felt like it might have left a bruise.

"Like your breath, girl," Devine hit back with, choosing to go low instead of high in the light of being brutishly poked. However, in an act of extreme bravery, the university dropout swiftly backed away in fear of retribution (and to get away from that rancid morning hangover breath). "I don't even get your deal, hadn't chalked you up for a prude."

"I'm not a fuckin' prude! You're talking about slingin' your gash on the streets! No, worse! Fuckin' Badger's streets!"

"Christ on a bike, PC," the lump known as Sock lamented under the towel.

Tripz remained oblivious; bleary eyes focused on the prize as she considered the offer on the table. After naming the new asking price, she found that 2k eddies had been optimistic at best after giving the market price of factory Quartz rims a browse on the Net. However, this had not deterred MHunt, who the netrunner had decided was a total freaking mark. The brutality of the comedown was already ringing in her ears, vision dancing in and out of focus. What time was it? What day was it?

> From: Tripz
> deal. bt dnt wste our time. we knw wat we hve.
> Tripz has pinged you co-ordinates.

"My WHAT?!"

 

[Emer Tor]

Northside. Fucking ass.

The coords pointed to one in a mile-long stretch of dilapidated warehouses. The district had died the day the corpos had cut their losses and left the factories to rot. Its corpse somehow shambled on, animated by roaches and squatters.

And Maelstrom.

Emer tugged on her boots, steel-tipped for her pleasure. She shrugged on a shoulder harness, handgun on the left, kukri on the right. Her fingers lingered on the handle as she slid it home into its sheath, the wood stained with patina from decades of use. She exhaled the distracting thoughts of blood and blonde tresses, strapping into a slim combat vest. A loose shirt and a jacket completed the ensemble, hiding her teeth behind the flash of fashion.

Like a loser, she caught an E-train up to Eisenhower and then hopped onto the Northside loop. Emer could've taken a walk through the streets instead – but why would she? Why would anyone?

NID was a gleaming monument to corporate misery: discarded plastics, oil spills, toxic waste seeping from every-corner-cut storage facilities. The few hundred metres from the station were enough sightseeing for a year.

Hands stuffed into her pockets, unlit cigarette hanging from her lips, Emer made herself the picture of a scuffed NC resident. She rapped her knuckles on the sheet-metal door of the loading dock. Rust sloughed off like fine, misty rain.

"Hunt," she announced into the darkness beyond.

 

[Catriona Devine]

Everybody was still reeling from hearing the word gash rip out of PCS' mouth like verbal violence, well, except the street fighter herself, who didn't see the problem with such uncouth imagery on a hungover morning. No, she had a point to make.

"Point is, you're not the fuckin' Watson Whore! You're a softshit beav on a tourist visa, Cat, and if you go out there and sell your ass, you'll get fuckin' zeroed, or worse, and we'll be left cleanin' up your mess."

Shit, that actually almost hurt her feelings. There was an arrogant, decidedly middle-class part of Catriona that saw PCS as some knuckle-dragging troglodyte who traded in functioning brain cells for fists to the face to win a handful of eddies and a half-eaten Cheese HawtDawg, which is why it always felt like a sucker punch when she hit back with something cutting.

"Fuck you, Agnes," she seethed, bringing out the big guns of real names, "I'm in the same shit as you guys."

"Yea', with none of the skills."

"Got a buyer, bee-tee-dubs," Tripz finally announced, the netrunner's speaking voice almost a rarity amongst the sounds of bickering bitches and Scotch nonsense. Speaking of, Sock's head finally emerged from its towel blanket, the man's bucket hat remaining perpetually wielded to his head. He looked like shit, the hangover pulling down the flesh of his face like a booster's ballsack, he needed another lifetime of sleep, but he was desperate to A) make some eddies and B) stop the loud altercation. "Aye? Far's the meet at, like?"

"Oh, I just pinged them the deets for the warehouse," Tripz answered, nestling lazily into her oversized hoodie, now finished with her part of the job.

In unison, the three stopped and stared at the spaced-out netgoblin with pupils like 8-balls and undereye bags like corner pockets. There was a variety of emotions spread across their faces. None of them pleased to hear what she'd just said.

"You... you're nae spikkin' aboot here?"

"WHERE WE FUCKIN' LIVE?!"

"Shit."

Without missing a beat, Tripz shrugged, her eyes already closed and ready to catch a snooze, "Whatevs, it's just meatspace."

---​

Their meatspace, as it were, was really a squatter's den by any other name. It wasn't as depressing as those booster-infested junkie dens with crumbling concrete and bodies strewn across the floor in various states of decay, both living and dead. For a start, they had mattresses. Or three of them did, with their netrunner choosing that dilapidated recliner as the ideal bed. Hell, Catriona even managed to improvise a fitted sheet for hers.

They reckoned it had once been a small garage, consisting of one large open space, one half-functioning bathroom and a cramped office filled to the brim with Sock's scavenged car parts and Tripz' technoshit, which burst out into the main sprawl, just as cluttered with the shit from their lives. PCS's punching bag, impotently on the floor after being uppercut from its hook. Sock's beat-up old shitbox of a van, graffiti'd to fuck and running on bohemian dreams alone. Tripz's bathtub, currently occupied by an entire vending machine's worth of cans and bottles, empties and fulls intermingling haphazardly. Catriona felt empty by comparison; the only evidence of her existence was found in a few old art books, probably the least expected items there. Physical data. Tangible. Smelly in the glorious way that only paper could be.

In a flurry of activity, they had all prepared in their own ways. Sock had dug out his DB-4 Igla and slung it across his back as if it made his wirey bedraggled frame any more intimidating. PCS got herself psyched up, inflicting thick, rapid bass on them all before crushing a canister of AssKick like a fucking maniac. Catriona actually washed her face and made an effort not to look like yesterday's flaming, strung-out garbage (albeit in yesterday's ensemble, an homage to the beatnik. Black boots, black jeans, black sweater. Form fitting. Fucking fabulous.)

Tripz remained asleep. Inexplicably.

They were a hot fucking mess, and as knuckles rang out on iron, they all froze. Team talk time.

"Richt, quines. Ah'll dae the bletherin' and you twa jus-"

"They won't even fuckin' understand you! Leave the talk to me."

"I dinna 'hink so. You'll pure raj 'em up."

"I'll raj you in a fuckin' second!"

It was Devine's time to shine and prove she wasn't a softshit beav on a tourist visa, as she swanned up to the door (the one for humans, and not the one for vehicles) and poked her head out. Soft relief. Decidedly not Maelstrom or one of Badger's clan. Alone to boot. One person was better than a gang, although one person could feasibly still be a gang with the right chrome.

Smokin' though, but in that step on my neck, androgynous mommy way.

"Hey. The wheels, right?" Catriona's floating head inquired with a cool front only managed by those destined for corpo middle management. "Give us a sec, and we'll roll them out for you to peruse at your leisure." There was zero intention to let MHunt inside to see how they lived; it would ruin the mystique. "A beverage while you wait? NiCola? Beer?"

 

[Emer Tor]

"The wheels." Emer confirmed and slouched forward from her casual lean.

The woman looked like she'd wandered in from a different story entirely; a cross between 'Succession' and 'Desperate Housewives', maybe a touch of 'Skins' for flavour. Inflection, face, outfit: all out of place for the place. A pretty blonde thing, and Emer with a thing for pretty blondes.

What serendipity.

"You Tripz?" she sidestepped the question and an overturned bin. Her lighter hissed as she resumed leaning, this time next to the door for humans. Emer thumbed another cigarette from the pack, "Smoke?"

 

[Catriona Devine]

From behind the door, there was a lot of frenzied gesturing and animated facial expressions, with neither PCS nor Sock having been prepared for Catriona to take point on negotiations. Their surprise was a mystery; one of them had the temperament of a chromed-up chihuahua one day from cyberpsychosis, and the other spoke in a dialect so unintelligible that it may have well been a different fucking language. Why wouldn't she do the talking?

"No, Tripz is currently engaged in other matters," Devine responded with a customer service smile, said other matters being code for 'the spacehead is currently asleep'. "Just hold on a sec."

Catriona's head retreated back into the warehouse, where a fun new game of charades began.

"Can you go and grab the wheels for inspection?" She asked of them, holding up one finger to signify one person as PCS tried to punch her with her eyes. Sock mimed swinging a katana, presumably silently asking if MHunt was armed. Catriona shrugged, prompting PCS to grab the shotgun strapped to the Scottish vagrant's back by the muzzle and shake it (and him) as if to ask the question again, with emphasis. "Yeah, that's perf, thanks," she spoke with a reinforced shrug, to which PCS responded by flipping her off while gnashing synthetic teeth.

Taking advantage of the situation, Devine returned to their buyer, slipping out of the front door entirely and reassuring the role of the crew's face. She even joined in on casual leaning, having evaded wheel retrieval.

"Won't be a moment," came the update, a certain aura of smugness emanating from the blonde, who took great pleasure in giving PCS a rage-induced aneurism. "I'll take that smoke if you're still offering."

Strangely, their buyer didn't seem to have a ride. An eyebrow (not quite perfectly manicured but close enough) quirked.

"Jesus, you didn't walk here, did you?"

 

[Emer Tor]

"No problem." Emer smiled and offered the flame of her lighter. "Pleasure to meet you, then, …?"

Though her senses weren't as keen as they once were, Emer had made up the difference by becoming a people person instead. It was easy to wait, easy to make small talk, easy to keep her finger off the trigger. The split diopter trick her Kiroshis could pull had turned her stomach inside out the first time she'd used it. These days, it was a convenient way to keep an eye on two things at once.

The cigarette between full lips, its burning cherry as the blonde hollowed her cheeks – the shifting shadows inside the warehouse, coathanger figures hauling round burdens, gesturing wildly all the while.

So, three total? Maybe?

Emer put a pin in that and laughed. "What'd you think I need the wheels for?"

 

[Catriona Devine]

"Cat, and you're right, the pleasure is yours."

Apparently, there was some rite of passage that she'd missed the NCART on or a collective Night City meeting where everybody but her got bestowed their alias. Cat was uninspired, but nobody wanted to be caught dead overthinking their own nickname and was at least miles better than Sock.

The first cigarette of a hangover was always make or break; it was either going to scratch that itch or remind your guts that they hated you and there was no middle ground. The atmospheric pollution smiled down on her, and the first drag hit like heaven, a little slice of bliss caught in a single breath. She savoured the moment, tilting her head back against the warehouse with closed eyes. Fuck, it was almost enough to forget about everything.

"You know, I didn't even stop to think," Devine admitted with a slight hum of amusement, a smirk playing at the edge of her mouth, "I know a guy with a van if you need them transpor-"

"FOR FUCK'S SAKE! JUST TAKE ONE!" Came the somewhat muted roar from within the warehouse. Even from through the wall, PCS could kill a good vibe.

The door clattered open, booted by a single battered sneaker as the group's knuckles emerged, carrying a tyre on each arm through the power of gorilla arms bearing more ink than octopus hentai. PCS, in her effort to get amped up for trouble, had decidedly not freshened up for the occasion, her muscle tank top emanating an aura of dried blood and stale body odour, which Catriona imagined was what the inside of a French bodybuilder smelled like.

She shot Devine a passing death glare that said, quite clearly, 'thank you for the fuckin' help' before lumbering back inside to grab the last one.

Sock emerged next; his face crumpled into an agonised pile of beard, oil and pain as he rolled a single tyre out in her wake. The scabby shotgun was still strapped to the back of his synthetic Hawaiian shirt, which hung open to inflict his pasty, hairy chest on Northside. The man's oil clarted jeans were practically below his arse by the time he made it outside, revealing his preference for going commando and a regretful tattoo that read FLORA<3 on his fuzzy right bum cheek.

"Ah, shit." He realised too late that he was, quite literally, showing his arse and suddenly reached to pull up his jeans. This meant letting go of the tyre, which began to roll away on a slight incline. "Ah, bugger!"

What a fucking first impression.

 

[Emer Tor]

The smoke nearly fell out of her mouth as her smile cracked wider.

"You run a tight crew here, huh?" That arsecheek tattoo really was something else. And the walking anger management issue had a nose that looked even more broken than her own. Quite a feat, given her youth. "Gotta say though Tripz was way nicer over the net."

Emer ashed her cigarette and dropped down into a squat to inspect the wheels. The lugs were badly mangled and the rims gleamed with several new scratches, but they were hers alright.


"You were saying something about a van?"

 

[Catriona Devine]

If Catriona was trying to exude the aura that they were an organised collective of capable yet mysterious individuals then it was dead on the floor. The corpse was actively fucking twitching under the pale moonlight of a hairy Scottish arse. At the very least, Devine could at least attempt to pretend that she was an organised, capable, yet mysterious individual instead.

"Northside's finest," she replied as if in on the joke, although unconsciously, she'd mouthed the words 'Jesus Christ' as their buyer squatted down to inspect the goods. "Oh, that's not... that wasn't Tripz. Have you ever known a netjockey to do physical labour?"

Sock had managed to catch the runaway tyre, rolling it over to the rest of them before leaning on it with all the pain that came with being over the age of thirty in Night City without a health plan. The hangover sweats dripped from his pores, giving him the perfect cologne of cheap synthbeer and lower back pain.

"Sock here has a van."

"Fit aboot Moira?" He wheezed, out of the loop.

"Yeah. What about Moira?" PCS intruded with much more menace, having emerged with the fourth tyre and evidently none too pleased about... something. It was hard to tell, really, was she mad about the prior conversation? The current conversation? Life in general? All of the above? Must have taken all her energy not to throw a 'fuckin'' in there

"I was extending the offer of transportation to our buyer," Devine shrugged, still leaning, pretending there was a zero percent chance of an entire-ass wheel, rims and all, being yeeted at her head. "A professional courtesy."

"Fuck off, that'll cost extra. We're not a fuckin' charity."

Ah, there it was.