Gearbound: Cyberpunk 2077

2-in-1-chapter

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"Machine guns, cease fire. Use flashbangs."

The two heavy machine guns laying down suppressive fire nearby fell silent at once. Three of the Aldecaldos with Leo pulled out flashbang grenades and tossed them into the hotel lobby.

A few seconds later, a blinding white flash filled the pitch-black interior, turning it into a blank sheet of light.

"Open fire."

Leo swung his arm in a sharp command. The Aldecaldos stepped out from behind the exterior wall and poured bullets into the lobby like water from a ruptured pipe.

The dozen or so Voodoo Boys inside went down like wheat under the scythe. Even those behind cover were shredded as charged tech weapons punched straight through their barricades.

"Move."

Once Leo confirmed there were no more living Voodoo Boys in the lobby, he led the way inside.

Before coming here, everyone had memorized the floor plan of the Batty Hotel in detail, each of them also keeping a copy stored in their own systems. Now, they overlaid the map in the corner of their retinal displays, comparing it against the scene in front of them to keep precise track of their positions.

Crossing the lobby—which the Haitian immigrants had been using as a marketplace—they reached the stairway to the upper floors. Through his tactical goggles, Leo spotted several Haitian Voodoo Boys rushing down the stairs with weapons ready.

He instantly shared the feed with the others.

So when the Haitians came into view, they also saw the dark mouths of waiting gun barrels.

The moment they stepped into range, they were cut down. The few who survived ducked back up the stairs.

Leo tossed a stun grenade upward.

The instant it detonated, before Leo could even give the order, the Aldecaldos surged up the stairs in a rush. A fresh wave of automatic fire left no survivors.

"Keep going. Up we move."

From the stairs to the second floor, they met no further resistance. But the tactical goggles showed the enemy hadn't been wiped out—they had holed up inside the conference room, preparing to make a stand in the defensible space.

The Voodoo Boys inside had already turned tables and chairs into makeshift barricades. Charging directly through the conference room door would be suicide.

Leo quickly worked out a solution.

He took two people with him and moved around to the side of the conference room. The rest waited on either side of the main entrance.

Leo planted a breaching charge against the side wall.

When it blew, it opened a jagged hole in the wall.

The sudden explosion caught the Voodoo Boys off guard—they hadn't expected an attack from the flank.

Leo hurled several laser-cutter grenades into the breach. The weapons searing beams sliced through barricades as if they were paper.

At the same time, those at the main entrance took advantage of the distraction and lobbed in fragmentation grenades.

The overlapping blasts disoriented the Haitians so badly they couldn't mount any kind of coordinated defense, and Leo's team swept in to kill them one by one.

Modern firepower showed its full terror here. By the time they had emptied their magazines, the conference room was nothing but carnage.

The Aldecaldos stepped among the wreckage, checking the corpses one by one.

That was when a massive figure suddenly burst from beneath a pile of bodies—Placide, the Voodoo Boys second-in-command.

The Aldecaldo he lunged for reacted on instinct, drawing and firing, but Placide's hand snapped forward, a blur of motion. A throwing knife pinned the man's gun hand through the palm.

Placide closed in, seizing the wounded Aldecaldo and using him as a human shield.

"Nobody move!" he barked.

The other Aldecaldos all raised their weapons, but none dared to fire for fear of hitting their comrade.

"Stay back, or I'll kill him!" Placide snarled.

He looked at them—uniform black tactical gear, no unit insignia. Corporate? No… none of the standard security outfits matched.

That thought had barely formed when—bang.

Placide's head burst like a melon.

Leo lowered his Tsunami Defense Systems kinetic sniper rifle and moved forward to check the wounded Aldecaldo. Seeing he was fine, Leo searched through the heap of corpses until he found the body of Brigitte, the Voodoo Boys leader. Only then did he open comms to the other two teams also assaulting the Batty Hotel.

"V, Lucy, what's your status?"

"Fight's over," V replied. "We're heading for the second floor."

"The second floor is clear." Leo scanned the hotel with his tactical goggles—no more Voodoo Boys alive anywhere inside. "No point staying. We pull out."

They left the conference room and regrouped with V and Lucy outside the Batty Hotel. A headcount showed no casualties, thanks to the custom ballistic combat suits everyone wore.

Without lingering, they climbed back into their vehicles. Leo called Mitch.

"Mitch, how's it looking on your end?"

"All done, Leo."

Mitch sent over a feed—the street outside the Chapel was littered with bodies. The ground was littered with the marks left by the fighting, and even the vehicle carrying the hacking equipment was riddled with bullet holes.

Mitch pointed to the array of hacking gear mounted on the vehicle. "What about this stuff? Should we take it? I had a look—plenty of it would be useful to us."

"Destroy it all. Leave nothing."

The Voodoo Boys hacking gear was, of course, top grade, but it could not be taken. No one knew how many viruses might be embedded inside those systems, and Leo would never risk directly connecting them to his company's subnet.

More than that, the reason the Voodoo Boys had brought disaster upon themselves in the first place was because they had captured a rogue AI. That AI was still inside their digital systems. Taking the hardware would be no different from painting a target on his back for NetWatch.

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Inside Grand Imperial Mall, the hour was late, yet Mosley could not sleep.

There was no way he could.

On a large scale, tonight's operation had been for the sake of all humankind. If the Voodoo Boys were not completely wiped out, if even one of them slipped away, humanity would eventually face a catastrophe.

On a smaller scale, it was tied directly to his own career.

After raising the mission budget to thirty million eurodollars, his superior's superior back in the London headquarters had personally promised him that if he completed the task flawlessly, he would replace his current superior.

That promise had quietly changed Mosley's original plan to leave the company. Having already lost both love and family, he had no intention of also losing a career that had finally shown signs of revival.

So when the distant gunfire began, Mosley silently prayed for Leo.

He didn't know how long he had waited when the voice of an Animals gang lookout came through his comm implant: "Boss, they're back."

Mosley's mood lifted instantly. "Bring them up—no, I'll go down to meet them myself."

He hurried from his office, and a few minutes later, in the first-floor lobby of Grand Imperial Mall, he saw Leo's group returning.

Every one of them bore signs of battle, yet just as when they had departed, not a single member was missing.

The joy Mosley had felt was tempered by surprise.

He had known that if Leo dared to promise to handle the Voodoo Boys, his Aurora Private Military Company had to be capable. He also knew the Voodoo Boys were a netrunning gang whose combat ability was below even that of the Animals.

But still—

Even if the Voodoo Boys were weak, they were armed. Modern warfare was not like the age of cold steel, when a fully armored knight on horseback could chase down and butcher over tens of unarmed peasants. That advantage had not just been superior equipment, but lifelong martial training—the calluses on a knight's hands were not from holding a pitchfork.

In modern warfare, the gap between elite and ordinary was narrowed by the gun.

Even the laughable "faith shooting" of some African militias could, by chance, hit a target, and the Voodoo Boys were without a doubt more dangerous and trained than that.

For Leo's team to annihilate them without taking a single loss—the status of Aurora PMC in Mosley's eyes rose sharply.

He even had a faint premonition: though Aurora PMC was now an unassuming, low-profile outfit, in the future it might grow into a colossus rivaling Kang Tao, Arasaka, or Militech.

Mosley composed himself and gave what he thought was his most dignified smile. "You did it."

"No, we did it." Leo smiled and shook his head. "The Voodoo Boys are history. You won't have to worry about them again."

"You must be tired. Go get some rest—I'll transfer the payment to you shortly."

Leo knew Mosley would need to send the Animals to verify the results first, and he understood. No one would hand over thirty million without confirmation.

He told the others to break for the night—those who were hungry could get something from the restaurant, those who weren't should take a shower and get some sleep. He himself stayed; there were things he wanted to say to Mosley.

"So, your company—are they satisfied with how this mission went?"

Mosley didn't hide it. "I haven't reported back yet, but they've already promised me—if this job is completed to the letter, I'll take my boss's position."

"That's good. Congratulations."

In a megacorporation, climbing the ladder was hard. The bigger the company, the more people there were to compete against. Sometimes even standing on the shoulders of countless others wouldn't be enough to reach the top—that was the tragedy.

For Mosley, this was the chance of a lifetime.

Opportunities like this came once, if ever.

Like in a single-player game—you couldn't progress the later main quests without finishing the earlier ones. If you took the chance when it came, you could climb higher, maybe even keep rising. If you missed it, that was the end of it.

Mosley said with genuine sincerity, "No, I should be thanking you. Without you, I wouldn't be here. Let's not lose contact, alright? If there's a chance, we should work together again."

"In fact, we just might have that chance."

Although Leo's Aurora PMC already had a website and its own ICE, it still needed the protection of NetWatch. And Mosley could be the person who lets them get a foot in the door.

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