Chapter 59

Leo figured Ichijo Daisho probably belonged to Trauma Team's membership plan—either the top-tier "Platinum" or the slightly lower "Gold." Definitely not the cheapest package.

Of course, the jammer chip wasn't omnipotent. Different models offered varying levels of effectiveness, and the newest ones cost a fortune. Plus, every spear eventually meets a shield: if a victim had high-level netrunning skills and potent hacking implants, they could disable the jammer chip. Ichijo Daisho was no netrunner prodigy, though. With the chip now lodged in his neural port, he couldn't even lift a finger. He could also sense that the biochip inside his body was continually failing to send out any rescue signal.

Realizing just how dire his predicament was, Ichijo Daisho's face twisted in dread. "Wh…what do you want? Do you want money? I can pay—please."

He swallowed hard and stole a glance at Leo's impassive face. Fighting to stay calm, he pressed on, "You're a merc, right? That's all you people care about—money. How much do you want to let me walk away?"

Leo crouched down in front of Daisho and tapped his face with the sheathed blade. 

"That's the question you should be asking yourself. How much is your life worth?"

Daisho ventured a tentative figure. "T-ten thousand?"

"Then you can die right now." Leo's face darkened as he stood up, blade poised to strike.

Daisho squeezed his eyes shut in panic. "W-wait! Let's not do anything hasty! Just name your price! Whatever it is, I swear I'll pay it—no bargaining!"

Leo lowered his weapon and resheathed it. 

"I don't want any money from your bank accounts—not a single eddie. But I know scum like you always keep a stash of untraceable cash and gold bars. Tell me where they are, and I'll let you live."

The demand clearly rattled Daisho. If he surrendered all his cash and gold, he'd lose the entire fortune he'd scraped together through shady dealings at City Hall. But, after a moment of tortured indecision, survival trumped greed. He finally caved.

"I…all right, fine. B-but can you at least give me an injection first? I'm dying here…"

Without a word, Leo produced a pneumatic syringe and jammed it into Daisho's chest, pushing the plunger all the way. Almost immediately, Daisho felt relief washing over him—his bleeding slowed, and the pain dulled.

"In my bedroom, there's a suit of samurai armor. If you lightly twist the little baton on the armor's back, the whole thing moves aside—it's hiding a safe underneath," Daisho explained.

Leo took the key he'd found on Daisho and headed for the bedroom, a traditional Japanese-style room with tatami and shoji. He wasn't there to admire the decor. Approaching the armor in the corner, he twisted the baton-like piece. With a hiss of hydraulics, the armor and the piece of floor it stood on slid to the side, revealing a safe set into the floor.

Using the key, he opened it to find bundles of cash and neatly stacked gold bars. 

"This guy works for City Hall, but how'd he rake in so much money?"

He didn't realize that this stash represented nearly all of Daisho's assets. His official bank account held only a pittance—no way could a mere salary from City Hall support a lavish estate in North Oak and a private Arasaka security detail.

Leo glanced around and spotted the bed. He yanked the sheets off and used them to bundle up the contents of the safe. When he returned to Daisho, lugging the sheet-wrapped bundle over his shoulder, the man's face contorted with raw anguish. The pain of losing his hand was bad enough; now he felt like his heart was being sliced to ribbons as well.

He'd just started to feel the beneficial effects of the injection. The bleeding had stopped, but his relief vanished the moment he saw Leo coming back instead of leaving.

"Wh-what are you doing?!" Daisho spluttered, terror surging back. He tried to scramble away, but the jammer chip rendered him completely immobile. He could only watch Leo step closer, closer…

"Stay back!"

A bloodcurdling scream cut off into silence as Murasame ran straight through Daisho's head. His eyes bulged in uncomprehending horror. Leo yanked the blade free, casually flicking the blood away.

From the beginning, Leo had never intended to spare Ichijo Daisho. The man was a City Hall official—someone who already enjoyed a job better than 95% of Night City's population—yet he had brutally tortured Brice's son and turned it into a black braindance.

Corrupt and depraved, he was worse than most incompetent officials. Keeping him alive helped no one; killing him at least removed another piece of garbage from Night City.

…

They left the estate, driving out of North Oak and back to Heywood. At a garage near the El Coyote Cojo bar, Leo opened the bundle and split the cash among V, Lucy, and Jackie. The gold bars would be fenced through a network of different fixers. Leo knew better than to put all his eggs in one basket.

A few days later, he received a hefty wire transfer from the fixers—every gold bar sold for a total of seven hundred thousand eurodollars. 

He met up with the others in a private booth at the Afterlife. Leo transferred 175,000 eurodollars each to V, Lucy, and Jackie.

"We're rolling in eddies now!" Jackie crowed. He'd been living on the streets since his teens; at thirty, he was still hustling. But everything had changed once he started running gigs with Leo—job after job rolled in, and his wallet finally started filling up.

V and Lucy were both equally thrilled. Immediately after the money hit their accounts, they asked if they could start repaying the weapons loan Leo had given them. He accepted only 5,000 eurodollars from each.

Confused, the two women exchanged glances. Leo smiled.

"I never asked for interest, so there's no need to pay me back in a hurry. Hang onto it—you need it more than I do."

To him, that 100K or so was just a few day's worth of building tech weapons for Padre. But for V and Lucy, having that money on hand was life-changing. They had plenty of practical needs to spend it on.

Hearing this, both women felt a surge of warmth. 

"Leo," Jackie grinned, "where should we party tonight? Lizzies? Cloudtop? Or maybe just drink ourselves stupid right here?" He pulled down the overhead holo-menu, eager to check out the Afterlife's specials—particularly the famed drinks named after legendary mercs.

"You all go ahead," Leo said, waving them off. "I've got stuff to do, so I'll head out. Put tonight's tab on my bill—I'll let Claire know."

Leaving them to celebrate, he headed for the bar. There, he nodded in the direction of Jackie and the others' booth. "Put everything on my tab," he told Claire, transferring 10,000 eurodollars to her account.