Chapter 108 – Sell It at a Good Price!
"Blank!" Jack blurted, his voice nearly cracking as he stumbled around Arthur, staring like a cultist meeting his techno-deity.
"Old Arthur, you're insane! How the hell did you do that? Was that... was that a double stack Sandevistan?!"
He didn't wait for an answer. Jack rushed behind Arthur like a kid on synth-sugar, one hand reaching up to touch the protrusion on Arthur's spine through his black trench coat. His fingers ran over the ridged bulge under the cloth—thick, uneven, almost organic.
Jack froze.
"This thing feels like... a dorsal fin." He blinked, then muttered, "It's alive?"
Even V, who'd been through her fair share of corpo craziness, couldn't help but gape. "Wait. You're a street merc? Seriously? That move just now—what kind of merc pulls off that kind of time acceleration? That's top-tier corpo tech. I've only seen that level of nerve overclocking from Adam Smasher himself."
Arthur puffed a slow drag from his cigarette and gave the unconscious Arasaka agent on the floor a light kick. "What? The kids were just tuckered out. All they need is a nap and a popsicle."
V rolled her eyes, stepped forward, and proceeded to absolutely obliterate the agent's family tree. She landed several well-placed kicks, starting with the guy's ribs and ending with what Jack later described as a "career-ending low blow."
Arthur winced, hand reflexively covering his own lower half. "Oof. That's gonna leave a legacy."
"Remind me not to piss her off," Jack mumbled, stepping slightly farther away from V.
Wiping her hands, V looked up. "All jokes aside... What model is that Sandevistan? That's not standard Arasaka issue, and I've read most of the lab notes that make it out of R&D."