Judy and Sylvia were taken to a medical room for treatment. Meanwhile, the two people Regina had sent—intended to help Anna—ended up in body bags. Anna had killed them.
Susie slipped away to a separate room and called Regina. Nobody knew what they discussed. When she finally came out, looking visibly drained, she invited Leo into her office. The moment they sat down, Susie straightforwardly agreed to the terms Leo had named before.
"I've seen what you can do. Your crew will each get fifty thousand eurodollars, and the Mox will back you up whenever you need us. Also… thank you for saving Judy and Sylvia."
She slammed her fist on the desk, teeth clenched. "They're good girls. They didn't deserve to die here."
Through the office window, Leo could see Mox girls cleaning bloodstains off the factory floor. "I'm sorry about Anna…"
Susie shook her head. "When we found her alive, I should've been more vigilant. She'd been missing longer than Dorothy, but she had fewer signs of abuse. I should've known what Jotaro Shobo did to her."
She met Leo's gaze, eyes full of determination. "Please, do whatever it takes. Jotaro Shobo needs to pay for what he's done."
"Hmm, Count on it."
With the deal settled, Leo saw no reason to stay. He stood to leave. When he reached the door, Susie suddenly asked, "What's your plan?"
Hand on the door, Leo turned back to Susie. "Don't worry about that, Ms. Susie. When we need the Mox's help, we won't hesitate to call."
Even though the Mox had hired him to take out Jotaro Shobo, there was no guarantee the Mox didn't have a Tiger Claws mole. After all, not even megacorps could clean out all their traitors—what chance did a gang have?
…
Leaving the factory, Leo rode Fenrir from the Northern Industrial District all the way to Little China, where the crowds bustled. The stoplight changed to red, and vehicles halted while pedestrians crossed the street. At a corner café, a group of shady types whispered among themselves. Overhead, an AV carrying some rich suit and a Trauma Team flyer zipped past.
Leo pulled out his phone and called, "Jackie, you up? I've got a job—big money on the table."
…
A few hours later, Leo—now in casual streetwear—appeared in Japantown's lively night market. Spotting a group of Tiger Claws in biker jackets, neon tattoos glowing on their skin, sitting in a small eatery called "Midnight Diner," he walked in and ordered a plate of sliced sausage and a tamagoyaki. He downed them in a few bites.
When paying, Leo made a point of unzipping his bag just enough for the Tiger Claws to glimpse all those pretty eurodollar bills inside.
They looked at each other, silently confirming one another's thoughts. As soon as Leo left, they settled their own tab and followed him.
Outside, they spotted him right away. Leo pretended to notice them trailing him, acting flustered. In a fake panic, he darted into a narrow alley like a trapped rat. The Tiger Claws were thrilled—roughing him up on a crowded street would have been messy, but now he was conveniently taking them somewhere quiet.
They rushed in after him, only to see the "helpless little rabbit" transform, the corners of his mouth curling into a predator's grin. In less than ten seconds, Leo had snapped each Tiger Claw's arms and legs, slapping duct tape over their mouths so they couldn't scream. Lucy stepped out from deeper in the alley, her personal interface cable already sliding from her wrist and into the neural socket at the back of one man's neck.
"How long?" Leo asked.
He hadn't gone through all that trouble—buying a flashy outfit, carrying a bag of cash—just to kill a few Tiger Claws. He wanted intel on their hideouts. No need for torture; in 2077, hacking someone's neural port was faster and more effective.
Of course, high-ranking corpo agents and security forces often had failsafes built into their cyberbrains—ICE, daemons, even self-destruct protocols. But these low-level gangsters had nothing advanced. Lucy, not even looking up, replied, "Not long."
A moment later, Lucy withdrew her cable. "Got it. They have a base at a mechanic's shop in the southern part of Japantown." She glanced at the immobilized men. "What about these guys?"
Leo rested a hand on Muramasa's hilt. In a few flashes of steel, the Tiger Claws stopped moving, blood pooling beneath them.
…
Armed with that intel, Leo and his three partners headed to the mechanic's shop, a Tiger Claws outpost with no outsiders on-site.
Perfect.
Once Lucy hacked the cameras to loop old footage, the group stormed in. Anyone who moved got a bullet. In under three minutes, the place was cleared out. They took the shop's computer systems and valuables, then rigged it with grenades and left it in ruins—making it look like just another gang scuffle.
In Night City, large-scale gang wars had mostly died down, but stuff like this still happened all the time.
…
They jumped into a Delamain cab and hurried away, heading for the Afterlife. There, they rented a small netrunning suite. The plan was to crack the computers they'd seized and sift for valuable intel.
Strictly speaking, Lucy alone could handle that job. So Jackie and V posted up at the Afterlife bar, chatting and sipping drinks. That left just Leo and Lucy in the rented workspace. Lucy had changed into a light-white netrunner's cooling suit, her expression complicated as she eyed the netrunning chair. She felt an instinctive revulsion, remembering how she'd once been forced into deep net dives at an Arasaka lab.
Last time, in the Eden gang's hideout, it was life or death—she hadn't had time to think about her fears. Now…
Suddenly, she felt Leo's hand over her own. She turned and saw him standing there.
"Don't worry," he said gently. "I'll stay with you. I'm not leaving."
Lucy bit her lip. Resolve flickered in her gem-like eyes. She mustered her courage, peeled away the disguised port for deep dives, and lay back on the netrunning chair. Leo personally plugged the cable into the back of her neck, then stayed by her side, fingers interlaced with hers.
The Tiger Claw's computer was connected to their subnet, though only at the lowest clearance. But Lucy was a skilled netrunner with a fourth-gen "Tetratronic Ripple 4" hacking implant. Bypassing the gang's ICE was just a matter of time.
Three hours later, Lucy opened her eyes.
"You got it?" Leo asked.
She nodded. He carefully unplugged the cable from her deep-dive port. Lucy tried to get up, but rummaging through the Tiger Claw's subnet had consumed so much of her energy that her limbs felt drained. She swayed, and Leo immediately reached out to steady her.