2077
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2077
CHAPTER
NINE – The Fall of Night City
Outskirts of Night City
The sky bled poison.
Clouds of acid rain drifted over the steel horizon, each droplet hissing where
it landed — melting rusted rooftops, eating through chrome, blistering skin.
The air smelled of ozone and rot. Somewhere far beyond the smog, lightning
rippled like a serpent’s tongue, carving silver scars across the heavens.
Night City was silent.
The kind of silence that comes before a scream.
Families hid in the ruins of
apartment blocks, gathered around barrel fires that spat blue flames. The power
grid was dead. Shadows ruled the streets. The neon signs that once throbbed
with life now hung dim and broken — faint ghosts of a city that had forgotten
the meaning of daylight.
Looters prowled the boulevards in
plastic raincoats, their reflections dancing across puddles of acid. Metal
clanged, glass shattered, and human screams melted into the rainfall. Hospitals
overflowed with the half-dead — flesh sloughed from their bones, their eyes
milky with despair.
This was Night City’s new dawn.
A dawn of corrosion and ruin.
Inside a rust-bitten hangar on the
city’s edge, Jay stood before his squad. The air inside smelled of oil
and old sweat. The hum of distant thunder echoed through the walls like a dying
heart.
His team — Ghost, Cynch,
Braxton, and Harley — listened in silence. Faces lit by the flicker
of red emergency lamps. Armor gleamed wet under the rain that leaked through
cracks in the ceiling.
Jay’s voice was calm, but every word
carried the weight of war.
“We strike fast. We strike clean.
Gangus dies tonight.”
No one spoke, but they all nodded.
Cynch and Braxton moved to the
armory. The sound of weapons locking and sliding echoed like metal prayer. EMP
grenades, plasma rifles, silenced 9mms — death, neatly packed and labeled.
Harley primed the helicopter engines; the rotors cut the night air with a
rising metallic howl.
Jay looked up at the rain before
climbing aboard.
For a moment, he thought it looked beautiful — in a terrible kind of way.
The city unfolded beneath them, a
labyrinth of fire and fog.
Skyscrapers pierced the clouds, their shattered windows glinting faintly under
the storm’s pulse. Each flash of lightning revealed something dying — a burning
car, a collapsing bridge, a child’s doll floating in an acid puddle.
Intel marked their target: an
abandoned warehouse in the city’s dead zone — Gangus’s new throne.
“Cynch, Braxton — lace the perimeter
with explosives,” Jay said, voice steady through the comms.
“Ghost, you’re with me. Harley, hold at the extraction point.”
He and Ghost activated their stealth
suits. In an instant, they shimmered, then vanished into the rain.
The warehouse rose from the earth
like a metal carcass.
Rain hissed off its roof; the guards outside huddled beneath broken awnings,
weapons slung lazily.
Jay and Ghost moved through the
dark, silent as breath. The air vents were slick with grease and dust — the
sound of their crawling drowned by the storm’s growl.
They dropped into the heart of the
compound. The smell hit first — gasoline, sweat, and blood. Ghost’s visor
flared to life, painting the world in shades of heat. Targets glowed red
through the haze.
Suppressors whispered.
Bodies fell.
Each shot a punctuation mark in the silence of death.
“Three down,” Ghost murmured.
He unsheathed his katana. The blade
hummed faintly, reflecting the red light of the alarms. He moved like liquid
shadow — no hesitation, no noise, only motion and end.
Jay searched the corpses, his
fingers slick with blood and rainwater. A keycard — metal, worn, stamped with
Syndicate code.
“Got the access. Control room’s this
way.”
Inside, the monitors flickered. A
man screamed behind the glass.
Gangus towered over him — a monster of steel and flesh, his arms plated with
chrome, his spine wired into an exosuit that pulsed with red energy. The young
soldier in his grasp wore special forces insignia — another ghost of a dying
world.
Jay felt something twist inside his
chest.
“We’ve got visual,” he whispered.
“The toxin bomb’s nearby. Cynch, Braxton — light it up. Give them hell.”
Outside, Cynch aimed his flare gun
skyward. The red light split the rain — and a heartbeat later, the ground
erupted. Mines tore through Syndicate trucks. Flames licked the air, painting
the rain in streaks of fire. Screams echoed.
Braxton shouted something over the
comms — laughter maybe — before gunfire drowned it out.
Inside, chaos bloomed.
Guards sprinted toward the outer perimeter, leaving only Gangus and a handful
behind.
Jay and Ghost moved in. But before
they could fire, the warlord turned. His visor flickered, scanning the shadows.
“I can smell your fear,” he growled.
The EMP blast came like thunder.
Their suits died instantly — the shimmer of invisibility burned away.
“He can see us! Flank him!” Jay
roared.
Ghost leapt forward, sliding beneath
gunfire. Sparks lit the room as bullets struck steel. Jay fired from cover, glass
raining down from shattered monitors. The air tasted of iron and ozone.
Gangus advanced, each step shaking
the floor. His voice broke through the chaos — half man, half machine.
“You’re too late. The city’s already
dead.”
Ghost lunged — his katana slicing
through the storm of bullets. He struck deep. Sparks flew. The blade pierced
metal and flesh. Gangus staggered, fell to his knees, and collapsed with a
hollow clang.
Silence.
Only the rain and the hum of broken machinery.
Cynch’s voice crackled over the
comms, strained and broken.
“Braxton’s down… we’re pulling out.”
Jay looked at Ghost — both drenched
in rain and blood. No words. Only nods.
They moved fast, gathering the
hostages and disabling the toxin core. Outside, Harley’s chopper waited, blades
chopping through the storm. Cynch stumbled aboard, one arm slick with blood.
As they lifted off, Jay looked down
at the burning warehouse — the flames reflecting in his visor like dying stars.
Night City burned beneath them.
A graveyard of steel, smog, and memory.
But for now — just for a moment —
the CyberSquad had won.
The tyrant was dead. The night had
been reclaimed.
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