Chapter 18

Leo followed Jackie's line of sight and looked over.

He saw a girl in a blue tank top and pants, her figure curvy and her face strikingly pretty, diving headfirst into a sleek, futuristic-looking supercar. Leo recognized it immediately—it was the same car their fixer had asked them to snatch.

It looked like two different fixers had targeted the same luxury ride, and they had both shown up at once.

"Leo, let's move!" Jackie called out. "No way we're letting her take off with it."

Jackie bolted forward. Leo had planned on following but felt a sudden flare of caution.

"Jackie, come back! Jackie!"

Jackie refused to listen. Wakako's reward was too big to pass up. He couldn't just watch the prize slip through his fingers.

After the girl crawled into the car, she must have used some kind of bypass tool because, without a key, she still managed to unlock the car's security system. The headlights came on—she had started the engine.

That was when Jackie reached her. Since she had already disabled the security, Jackie managed to pull open the door from the outside.

The girl's delicate face showed shock and anger at being intercepted.

Jackie wasn't polite about it; he leaned on the doorframe and aimed his pistol right at her head.

"Out you go."

Would she try to gun the engine and escape, or attempt to talk her way out? The girl hesitated for a split second, then gave up on driving off. A gun pointed at her forehead wasn't something she could outrun. She wasn't the sort of person who could summon superhuman feats in a rage; furious or not, she knew she was no match for a bullet.

She raised both hands, careful not to move too suddenly. "Okay, easy now."

Seeing that she was cooperating instead of stamping the gas, Jackie relaxed a little. He kept the gun trained on her, though.

"I got nothing against you personally, chica, but business is business, and this Rayfield is mine."

She bristled. "What? You don't know the rules on the street? First come, first served—I was here first."

Jackie knew he was breaking an unwritten rule, so he didn't bother arguing.

"Listen, you've got two choices—peaceful or violent. Either way, it ends with me driving this car."

He threw a quick glance behind him, suddenly realizing Leo wasn't there. Unease gnawed at him, but he had already gone too far to back down.

Jackie reached in to pull the girl out, but sirens exploded through the garage.

Two police cruisers screeched into the lot, drifting to a halt in front of them in a half-circle.

"¡Qué chingados…?" Jackie muttered, stunned.

How had NCPD shown up so fast? He recalled how Leo had warned him about a bad feeling. Turned out that feeling was spot-on.

"NCPD! Drop your weapon!"

"Don't move!"

"You're under arrest!"

"Stay right where you are!"

Officers hopped out of the cars, weapons aimed. Jackie hurried to lift his hands. Slowly, he bent at the knees, placed his pistol on the ground, and slid it away.

He knew full well that someone who looked like him could get shot without doing anything at all—much less being caught with a gun.

Only after he disarmed himself did two of the braver officers step in, forcing both Jackie and the girl down on their stomachs.

A man emerged from the cloud of dust and the glare of headlights, strolling toward them with deliberate slowness. In a mocking tone, he said, "Jackie Welles. The station's old friend. All these years, and you still haven't learned."

Jackie peered up. "Hey, if it isn't Detective Stints. Long time, no see."

"It's Sergeant Stints," the man corrected.

Jackie curled his lip. "Same difference."

Stints ignored the jab and turned to the girl. "Now you…I've seen you somewhere before, too."

She stayed silent.

"Well, say something," Stints goaded. "I'm all ears."

"You know me, but I've got no clue who you are."

Since she didn't recognize him, Stints didn't bother introducing himself. Instead, he listed off what he knew about her. "Went off to Atlanta, looking to build a new life. Seems you didn't find it."

He drew closer, crouching next to her. The badge on his chest gleamed under the lights, and the ID hanging around his neck swung with his movement.

"I've always said folks from Heywood are all cut from the same cloth," he went on. "Born here, scrape by here, die here. Looks like I nailed it."

She glowered. "Had enough talk? What now?"

Stints sneered. "You commit a crime, you deal with it. You get caught, you face the heat. If you'd gotten away, you could've cruised around town in that supercar. But since you're caught…"

A female cop nearby lowered her voice. "Sergeant, if the chief hears you talking like that, you'll get a lecture about political correctness again."

A muscle twitched in Stints's jaw. Jackie spoke up. "Hey, cut us some slack, huh? Suppose you bring us in—what then? We'll just wait for a court date. Worst-case scenario, we do a few months. Hell, these days there's not even space in lockup, so we'll probably get kicked loose early."

In the past fifty years, the social structure had shifted dramatically, leading to a huge spike in the number of people living in poverty. Economic depressions, global financial crises, and soaring poverty rates had swelled the ranks of the lower and fringe classes.

By 2077, corporations controlled education. Ordinary people were lucky if their station in life merely stayed the same, without sinking further. As for those who were already in the slums—well, there was nowhere further down to go, so that was that.

Most folks in this world were born into circumstances they had zero chance of changing. The tech revolution had only widened the gap, blessing the elite on top while leaving everyone else further behind.

Stints himself had grown up in Heywood, but he was an outlier. There was also that one basketball star from the same area who'd changed his fate. Other than these few success stories, the rest of Heywood's people either joined the Valentinos and eventually died from a random bullet, or they trudged on as nobodies…only to be taken out by a stray shot someday.

Even if, by some miracle, they avoided every risk of random violence, their entire lives would be spent being exploited until death.

So Stints never said, "Do some honest work, Jackie." It wasn't Jackie's fault. It was the world's fault—Night City's fault. It was the corporations' fault, taking everything from people and tossing them scraps to keep them eternally grateful.

…

And as Jackie had predicted, the NCPD didn't have enough cells to lock up petty thieves. Even if they did get tossed into jail, they'd be out in a few months anyway because of overcrowding.

 Night City was just like that—crammed with criminals and nowhere to put them. The police answered dozens of calls a minute, half their force assigned to North Oak and Charter Hill. The first was where the big shots lived, the second was a haven for the middle class.