Chapter 111

"David, we need to meet."

That's how my next conversation with Bestia began.

In fact, in the past month since I had met Geralt and sent him to the witches' fortress, I had already fulfilled orders for both her and Regina a couple of times. And let with the same intensity as before I no longer worked ...

But I suddenly realized that the tasks that I had previously considered overly complicated and risky were no longer so. My team has reached a whole new level. All-round development and training has done its job and now... now we can really be called a Major League team, not because of the experimental Sandy at the expense of which I performed even very difficult and risky missions, but because of our skills, experience and technical equipment.

Magic, which began to teach us also did its job, well, at least those signs of witches, which I was taught and which I still perform extremely slowly, have already begun to play a role in the fulfillment of missions. The same Axius I began to use on every mission, simply because sometimes it is more convenient to use it, especially since the cameras do not record its use, and make the enemy move away in a blind spot, than to activate sandi and at speed knock him out relying on the fact that the girls qualitatively wipe the traces.

No, I have no complaints about the girls' work, but it's better to do everything well, giving the girls a chance to go through the pockets of our opponents without distracting them from helping me. However, last time it was not possible to do this ... The order was related to the corporation and I, despite my reluctance to get involved with the corporations took it, just to carefully test the skills of my team.

"Bestia, is this an emergency?"

"Yeah, uh. today. Postmortem. come back in an hour."

I frowned.

I didn't like the way she talked to me, she never did that. I mean, there was a moment when we met, but after that. somehow we got back to normal conversation pretty quickly and then this...

"I can't do it in an hour."

I shook my head.

"Give me the address, I'll get an avi from Delamain. It's urgent and you need to be here..."

Inhale... exhale.

"Okay, I'll be there in an hour."

"What's the address?"

"I'll call Delamayne myself."

"But..."

I dropped the call and stood up from the table and quickly made my way to the girls.

"Girls, hack into Postmortem now."

"А?"

"Bestia called, but the way she communicated, it was like she wanted to turn me against her, but she couldn't do it directly. So she spoke dryly, matter-of-factly, as she has to speak to a not-so-smart and important solo. And we have a good relationship with her...

"Okay, let's see..."

"Somehow..."

I looked at the girls doubtfully.

"Have you forgotten that we've worked on some parts of the Postmortem defense in the past? More precisely on the cabins cut off from the outside world, but we also touched on the protection of the Postmortem itself, and having worked with it from the inside..."

Lucy shrugged.

"Right, let's hurry up, we've got an hour to scout and get to Postmortem."

"Even if it's a trap?"

"Especially if there's a trap..."

"Is there something we don't know?"

Triss intervenes in the conversation, as she grows tighter and tighter in our company, but Ian is probably with the man she likes, who, unexpectedly for me and for Ciri, is Scorpius.

"It's easier to work when you know about the trap..."

I shrugged.

"...We know the afterlife, and if we know about the trap, we can act well and correctly. But if we miss this opportunity, we can get into some bad situation when we are not ready for it at all."

"Hmmm... that's a reasonable enough point of view."

Triss nodded thoughtfully.

"Okay, very good, they haven't updated the security system, so in about ten minutes we'll be online."

I nodded my head and immediately dialed Saul.

"Yeah, is it something urgent?"

"Code Yellow."

Saul's image frowned.

"Are you sure about this?"

"No, that's why it's yellow, but literally in a dozen minutes the code can change."

"Roger that, entering code yellow..."

And as soon as we broke the connection, and about a minute had passed since the moment of the conversation, there was a very lively commotion in the street. Everyone started getting ready, checking their weapons, and generally being a little more tense than usual.

The ten minutes flew by in suspense...

During this time, I managed to call Delamain, dressed in an armored suit, in addition to which was now a small "hump", which hid a folding helmet.

"Okay, we're hooked up..."

Lucy's voice was slightly strained and as I approached her I realized why, exactly across from Bestia sat the Borg...

Large, clearly armored, with no obviously noticeable weaknesses, and this Borg was also quite famous... In certain circles. In fact, he was one of Knight City's legends. Or more accurately, a bogeyman legend.

"Adam Smasher ..."

"A celebrity?"

Triss looked at me with interest.

"The Eridanus of our world..."

"А?"

"A mercenary, very old, very experienced, very strong. About fifty years ago there were rumors that he had died, but ... then he reappeared and his previously ordinary, meaty body became this."

"Hmm... I take it that's the problem?"

I sighed.

"I don't know..."

"How's that?"

"Well, his mere presence near Bestia suggests that we have not scoured our entire history in vain, leaving only some digital footprint, enough to exist but not enough to learn about our past and our weaknesses. Here, however, is the reason for its presence..."

I shook my head.

"Ciri?"

"Who knows? We can't rule out that your Eridanus was smarter than we'd like and still managed to negotiate with the corporations... or in our case, Arasaka, we can't. But I don't think that's very likely."

"It is..."

"А?"

While you were wondering, I did a little digging into the security system and pulled the security tapes. Long story short.

*** Some time ago. Postmortem. An outsider's perspective. ***

"Out of the way..."

"Smasher, you're not welcome here."

A loud gunshot interrupted the immortal guard of Postmortem, and he grabbed his stomach and fell to the floor, then collapsed on his side, frantically trying to clutch the wound on his stomach.

A couple of blows and the door to the Afterlife flew inside the club, and many weapons were immediately aimed at the entrance. They didn't carry heavy weapons, but there were more than enough light weapons for the club's visitors. But many of them, seeing who decided to visit the club, quickly changed their minds and put away their weapons, and as soon as Smasher entered the club, they hurried to leave the place.

"I see everyone's happy to see me, huh?"

Abruptly pulling a large revolver from its fastening on his hip, the Smasher fired several what might have seemed haphazard shots, but...

Three shots and three people would fall to the floor of the club with their heads bashed in. But no one fired back, even those who hadn't put their weapons away before only took a couple of steps away from their previous position.

"I won't say it twice... everyone out. everyone but Bestia."

Literally ten seconds and the solos began to remove themselves from the club, and five minutes later there was almost no one left inside.

"Freeze..."

The last girl to come out, who had been standing behind the bar before, froze in place.

"...go back behind the bar."

The girl didn't dare to somehow contradict what Adam Smasher was saying and so she returned to the bar quite quickly.

"You know, after I became like this. I don't need food or water, but the flavors of alcohol."

Smasher shook his head.

"...It's the few things that make my life richer and more alive, as strange as that sounds. So make me a couple cocktails of your choice."

The girl nodded her head and immediately began mixing cocktails, while Smasher walked toward the booth where Bestia was sitting with feigned calmness.

"Bestia... what a meeting."

There was a sneer in Smasher's voice.

"Tell me what you want and get out of my club."

"You know... you don't know how to pick your friends..."

Smasher pretended not to even notice her words and slowly sat down on the couch, which had sagged very badly under his weight.

"...used to be Silverhand... now it's Quiet."

Smasher shook his head.

"So you're here about Tihonja?"

A grin appeared on Bestia's lips.

"I want to disappoint you, I don't know where he is, I can only tell you his real name, but it won't help you, and neither will the one detail I know from his past."

"If you mean that his name is David and that he studied at Arasaka Academy, then my employer knows that very well. He's smart and clever, and he cleaned up his data, but Arasaka keeps data on all the interesting people on several servers... and the director of the academy thought he was promising, so we still have his data..."

"But they're useless..."

"Yes. Useless. However, in order to make his meeting with us possible, we have you..."

"And why should I..."

"Yes, because you want to live, you want your common-law husband and son to live... And compared to that, the life and health of this Tikhoni will be much less important to you.

"What do you want?"

"It's simple, my dear, now you call him, but my roner will connect to you and make sure you don't say anything, and you call him here. And he should be here within the hour. If he doesn't, I'll cripple you first, and then I'll go after the people you care about."

"Okay..."

A couple of minutes later, a man enters the club and walks up to Bestia and connects to her private port, and after a nod from Smasher, Bestia closes her eyes and I realize this is the moment she called me, and soon she opens her eyes.

"Everyone..."

"Great. wench, where's my drink?!"

The girl brought him a couple of glasses with drinks, the first of which he drank almost in a gulp.

"Uh... that went well... what kind of cocktail?"

"Johnny Silverhand."

"Ha... ironic..."

Smasher looked at the girl and grinned.

"...and what's your name?"

"Claire."

"Claire, huh? I'll keep that in mind. It's rare that I get such an unusual cocktail named after some terrorist loser..."

Bestia's teeth gritted.

"Oh, oh, oh. did I hurt your dead friend?"

But Bestia did not respond to this provocation, and after another five minutes the club was flooded with people in black suits, after which a rather famous Japanese man at the moment walked inside.

"I think Tihonja will be here within the hour..."

"That's good..."

The Japanese man nodded his head and sat down on the couch.

"...then we wait..."

*** End. ***

"Yeah... this Yerinobu guy is involved too."

I shook my head.

"Okay, Becca, it's time for you to show me what the girls have taught you about magic. I remember I gave you the task of learning the invisibility spell..."

"I did..."

The girl tossed her head proudly.

"That's fine, you'll have my back while the rest of us stay here and work through the secure direct connection..."