“You—”
Her mind went blank, her head spinning. Sasha just stared blankly at Roel, then she felt herself being forcefully picked up.
Roel listened to the system's prompt and selected confirm.
The original security mission changed to a rescue mission.
Mission changed. Do you accept the mission—Rescue Sasha Yakovleva?
Mission accepted (Rescue).
Rescue.
Danger Level: Medium
Mission: Under Biotechnica's security, rescue Sasha Yakovleva and change her destined fate...
Mission Reward: 0.1 random attribute, one random skill.
Roel didn't look closely, because now was not the time.
He looked down at the dazed little cat and said,
“Hold on tight to me. If you fall, then it’s really over.”
Roel carried Sasha on his shoulder, one hand pressed against Sasha's waist to steady her body, and the other hand held Lizzie. As the security robots looked over, Roel pushed off with his toes, and in the next instant, he shot out over four meters.
His incredible physical strength and reaction speed also allowed Roel to anticipate the security robots' attack trajectories.
One shot, two shots...
Dodging the security robots' attacks, Roel turned and fired a burst of bullets from Lizzie.
At this range, Lizzie's superb rapid-fire and shotgun modes directly incapacitated the two security robots in front of him.
Oil spewed, sparks flew, and the next moment, the two security robots suddenly caught fire in front of Roel.
“Jump out quickly, there’s a bomb!” Sasha suddenly remembered something and hurriedly warned Roel.
“What?” Roel was stunned.
“I installed a timed bomb in my bag earlier! To destroy the data here. We can’t go through the door, it’s about to explode!”
Sasha came to her senses. Only then did she realize that her hands were tightly clutching Roel's clothes, which also made her realize one thing: she wasn't as nonchalant as she thought.
Finding the truth and getting revenge on Biotechnica indeed gave Sasha the satisfaction of avenging her mother, but... she wanted to live!
“You really are—” Hearing Sasha’s words, Roel changed direction, looked at the window, and shouted,
“So now you want me to jump out of here with you? This is the fourteenth floor!”
“That’s still better than being blown to pieces! I’d rather keep my body intact!”
Sasha said quickly, then added with a hint of sarcasm, “How did you get up here before? Just go down the same way now.”
“Climbing up and jumping down, are those the same thing?”
He yelled this, but Roel listened to Sasha's words, quickly ran towards the window, and the next moment, Roel jumped out the window, holding Sasha.
Behind them were the security robots clustered together, bullets chasing Roel, while Sasha looked up, her gaze locked on the nearest security robot.
The slots on her cat face furiously vented steam, and her body became incredibly hot.
During the freefall, Sasha's body even floated on Roel's shoulder for a moment, almost being flung off by inertia.
If Roel hadn't kept one hand on Sasha's waist the entire time, then it's very likely the two would have been “going their separate ways” by now.
Falling from a great height, the strong wind blew off Roel's baseball cap, revealing his dry black hair and original face.
Inserting Lizzie into his gun holster, Roel saw a car appear on Biotechnica's West Gate bridge as he jumped out the window.
And Maine, who had just gotten out of the car, mouth agape, removing his sunglasses with one hand, staring dumbfounded and disbelievingly at the building.
Adjusting his posture in mid-air, Roel descended with Sasha. In an instant, he and Sasha plummeted from the fourteenth floor to the seventh-floor level.
And in Roel's hand, which had previously held Lizzie, a dagger had appeared at some point. Its blade was eight inches long, simple and unadorned in design, yet its surface glinted with a silver sheen.
The muscles in his upper arm swelled and bulged under his jacket, and the veins on his forearm wriggled like worms under his skin.
Roel let out a roar, gripping the dagger and forcefully plunging it downwards. The dagger pierced into the wall, sending out a large amount of sparks and concrete debris. Residue splattered on his face, an itch accompanied by a slight sting.
His black pupils turned orange-yellow. Contacting Maine, Roel quickly reported the situation.
“Something unexpected happened, Maine. If you and Pilar don’t get to the entrance for pickup within half a minute, then Sasha and I are completely screwed. The AVs will be here soon!”
“I understand. Holy shit, you really dared to do that, kid!”
Maine's voice was filled with disbelief. What a joke... That was the fourteenth floor, for crying out loud!
Jumping from the fourteenth floor with someone in his arms, how was that different from suicide? Unless he had full body cyberware. No, the only one Maine knew who could do something like that was Adam Smasher!
The fourteenth floor, man!
While not like Adam Smasher, who directly plummeted from high altitude, slamming into the ground like a meteor, Roel doing this with an almost entirely organic body had an even greater impact on Maine's senses!
Was he really organic? Or was there some new cyberware on the market that he, a fanatic, didn't know about?
But this confusion was quickly replaced by the urgency of rescuing Roel and Sasha. Maine got into the car, and Pilar was already prepared.
“Full speed, Pilar!”
“I know, goddammit!” Pilar floored the accelerator, her gaze fixed straight ahead, her gaunt face determined.
.......
“Can you still walk?”
“Yes, it’s just a bullet wound through my shoulder, it doesn’t affect anything.”
At Biotechnica's West Gate, Sasha answered Roel's question while looking up.
She saw a line of small black dots looking down from the very top, four meters up along a black crack.
Those small black dots were Biotechnica's security robots.
“It's fine, they can’t come down. These security robots are programmed stupidly, and MAX-TAC won't arrive for at least three minutes.
They always show up after everything is over, just like Trauma Team, often only arriving after the client is dead.”
Sasha mumbled, biting on tape to stop the bleeding from her shoulder.
Hearing Sasha say this, Roel relaxed considerably. Looking at Sasha's rounded shoulder, he said, “I thought you'd be leaking oil.”
With Roel's current combat power, encountering MAX-TAC would mean he'd only be able to hide, let alone escape with Sasha. That would be impossible.
Even V in the mid-game had to run away from MAX-TAC, didn't they?
Not to mention many players with poor dexterity still had to bypass them even in the late game.
In the game, the most oppressive force for players wasn't actually Adam Smasher, even though Adam Smasher was canonically stronger than MAX-TAC.
But the game's design was that MAX-TAC would get stronger as V got stronger, which is why the “Four Heavenly Kings” in the game were so terrifying.
Here, the Four Heavenly Kings, also jokingly referred to by Night City residents as the “Four Choppers,” were a squad combo that always jumped out of AVs—a hacker, a sniper, a mantis blade user, and a shotgunner.
The two climbed over the high wall of the West Gate, appearing on an empty road. After relaxing, the silence made the atmosphere a bit awkward.
And as Roel stopped, intending to turn and look at Sasha to break the silence, he had just stopped when Sasha bumped into his back.
Sasha instinctively covered her forehead, then looked up at Roel.
“Uh...” Roel instinctively reached for his head, but found nothing—his baseball cap had long since flown off, he didn't know where.
“Don’t bother, I’ll get you another one later.” Sasha watched Roel’s actions, and being smart, she immediately understood the situation.
As she spoke, she took a step back, pulling at her wound and letting out a muffled groan. On her pale face, made so by blood loss, the vents on either side were still puffing out white smoke.
“Beep!”
A horn blared, followed by the roar of an engine approaching from a distance. It interrupted what Roel was about to say. Maine's modified car skidded to a halt in front of them in the blink of an eye.
A large face peered out of the car window, “Don’t just stand there, get in!”
The rear door popped open. Roel lifted his foot, intending to quickly get in, but before he could, he heard Sasha’s voice.
“Sasha...”
“What?” Roel turned his head in surprise, looking at the little cat following behind him.
Sasha had both hands pressed to her shoulders. On her fair face, her blue-pink eyes looked seriously at Roel. At the same time, she lifted her leg and kicked Roel in the butt, sending him into the car, then she got in herself.
Stumbling into the car, Roel heard Sasha’s voice from behind him.
“I said my name is Sasha, Sasha Yakovleva.”
Roel blinked quietly. The neon signs along the highway reflected on his face and into the car.
Maine grinned, put his fingers to his mouth, and then let out a loud whistle.
This is how the story of the Big Brother and Big Sister also began. Clichéd! But effective!
“Damn it, damn it, I knew it, I knew it would turn out like this!”
In the front, Pilar banged her head on the steering wheel, inexplicably beginning to wail.
Roel: “...”