Chapter 109 – Recruiting!
Arthur parked the car outside a modest little building lit with flickering red neon: Turbo Bar.
The place wasn't glamorous—not like Afterlife, or the velvet-coated Ritz Bar where the city's elite came to trade rumors and contracts under dim lights. No, Turbo Bar was honest. Gritty. A haven for those who just wanted to drink without having to dodge a corporate assassin, or worry whether the guy on the next stool was a cyberpsycho seconds from melting down.
It was the kind of place Mann loved.
Arthur stepped out of the car, cracked his back with a loud pop, and gave a familiar nod to the bartender through the glass.
"Two dozen beers. Bring it outside."
The barkeep grunted acknowledgment and got to work.
Arthur, Jack, and V settled into a battered metal table outside, under a flickering LED sign. The sounds of Night City echoed around them—hovercars whirring overhead, distant gunfire like thunder, neon casting colors on tired concrete.
Arthur pulled a beer free from the pack, popped it, and stared out over the street. There was no Pyrrha dancing on the alley corner like before—no energy or movement at all, really.
Pyrrha had been folded into his crew recently, working off her debts. Right now, he'd sent her out past the city border to track down some highly specialized industrial-grade equipment. The kind of tools no black market in Night City would carry. You had to visit those janky "manufacturing showrooms" yourself, the kind where salespeople still handed out physical catalogs and you signed forms with actual pens.
"Arthur," V said, tilting her bottle toward him. "That spine on your back. What is it? Where the hell did you even get it?"
Arthur took a long pull from his beer before answering. "Honestly? Ripped it straight off Adam Hammer's freighter. The plug-in frame's my own design. I've been refining it for years."