Legal Problems Requires Illegal Solutions (2)

During the day, the Afterlife bar stayed closed to the public except during certain dates, and today wasn't an exception. Despite most of her income comes from being a fixer and acting as a middleman for the better gigs in Night City, the Afterlife bar was Rogue's baby, and she took loving care of the place.

Right now, the Queen was looking over her financial reports, a bottle of vodka right next to her. "Still nervous?"

"Squama." Rogue acknowledges her Bodyguard's presence while reaching for her glass of alcohol.

"I think that's enough," the burly man takes the drink out of the older woman's reach, "It's not even eleven in the morning, Rogue, you had enough already. There's no cyber liver that can keep up with that."

She glares at her bodyguard, who answers by tilting his head towards the three empty bottles of vodka on the table, with a fourth already midway there. Rogue takes a deep breath, before relenting. A thoughtful waitress brings some water and other refreshments to her employer.

"Stop treating me like an invalid, I'm fine."

"No, you're not fine. You're scared as shit." Squama counters his charge and friend, "especially after that night. Can't blame you, nobody could believe what they saw, regardless of the rumors."

Once the rumors of the Maelstrom demise came to her ears, it was a trivial matter to check up on the rumors. At first, Rogue was skeptical of the rumors, believing them to be exaggerations from scared Animals. If the Jackals gang were dumb enough to charge at a killing field, they deserved what they got.

Then more data returned to her, as one of her Netrunners hacked the closest security camera pointed at the All Foods Plant and recovered the footage, meanwhile, she ordered another of her runners to dig for information on the Engineer.

In Rogue's opinion, it was disturbingly easy yet hard to find information about the man. Mark Henderson, recently arrived in Night City, sold unregistered firearms to a shop near the Night City Landfill, rented an apartment on Megabuilding 04, and established himself as The Engineer in Pacifica. Afterward, the information becomes more unreliable, as there aren't enough security cameras in the area where the Engineer set up shop, and anything related to Mark before he arrived at Night City was completely unavailable, not even the NCPD customs department had information on his arrival. In her eyes, Mark either hacked the NCPD database and erased the traces of his arrival, or the madman walked to Night City.

Rogue isn't certain which option is more terrifying after meeting the man.

The Queen's first impression of the Engineer was that of a naïve, sheltered young man in over his head, wielding more power than he could handle. He made some wild claims about the Maelstrom incident, accepted her one-sided deals, then went to Maine to talk and ordered dinner.

One of the small headaches Rogue is dealing with right now is deciding if it's worth the hassle to stock different items on the menu, then perhaps she should add a few different seats for that kind of service, among other considerations. When she realized it, she once more reached for her drink, being disappointed it was only water.

When Faraday arrived and walked straight to Maine's table, she sent a message to her security in case there was an altercation, but other than kicking Faraday in the Ego the exchange ended up peacefully. Rogue thought that was the last excitement of the day coming from the Engineer, but she was mistaken.

Mark was good on his promise and gave her all the shards in his possession while keeping the eddies for himself. The sheer amount of information contained in those shards is a treasure trove, and that's only counting the personal shards of each gonk. There were also locations of weapon stashes, drug stashes, blackmail material of all sorts of corpos through the city, secrets the Netwatch would be interested in and would pay handsomely for it, and a couple of BD and XBD chips.

Or more accurately, XBD chips recording the last moment of several Maelstrom gonks as the Engineer went through them.

"I'm going to be sick," Rogue mutters under her breath, washing the risen bile in her mouth with another cup of water.

Rogue lived through the worst of Night City history when the Arasaka Executioner was a new nightmare in the city, the Corporate Wars, the Time of Red, and more recently the NUSA unification wars. However, when she saw the devastation from the eyes of the Maelstrom gonks, she almost sympathized with them, almost.

Then came the Blue Cloud. She saw flesh melting, bones cracking, and blood boiling, with the only mercy being how quickly the substance worked. Rogue was the first, and one of the few people, who knows the source of the biological slurry found at the old factory. 

'The madman had the audacity of having dinner afterward.' Thought Rogue with a shiver, 'twice, if Miguel's testimony was accurate.'

Rogue decided she was right to initially compare Night City's boogie man with the Engineer. 'It's been a while, but I guess I should take up praying again,' Rogue fingers trail a Buddhist rosary inside her pocket, finally starting to calm down, 'and pray that Adam Smasher and Mark never meet each other.'

She regains her composure after a few minutes of meditation and brings up the report on the loot that Mark wants fencing that he recovered during his assault: cyberware, weapons, ammunition, miscellaneous equipment, and even jewelry that was taken from past victims. 'There's being a klepto, there's being a loot goblin, and then there's the Engineer,' Rogue thought with irritation at the reminder of the paperwork she will need to do to properly deal with that inventory since she can't delegate everything to her subordinates.

The Queen of Afterlife sighs, "Things were much simpler when my only worries were shooting at people and being shot back at."

In the end Rogue realized too late that Mark wasn't simply being easily reeled in by her, charmed by the reputation of Queen of the Afterlife and giving in to her demands without putting a token effort into negotiation. The truth was the opposite, as Rogue mentally summarizes the headache she volunteered for, 'the Engineer drops on my lap all the complicated and boring issues while he goes out and plays with his toys.'

A message reaches her Agent making the corner of her lips tug upwards into a smile. "Well, at least I won't be the only one dealing with headaches."

…

Faraday, in his view, was a man destined for success. Raising in the cutthroat corporate environment of Militech, he believes he's on the road to success. Faraday will not accept failure, nor he will allow any kind of disrespect to go unpunished. He quickly contacted some of his personnel to gather intelligence on the Engineer.

Supposedly, such a dangerous man lives in a dilapidated apartment on Megabuilding 04. "A clear ploy," Faraday confidently assumes, keeping the address in mind to potentially ambush the Engineer if he ever tries to lay low, but otherwise dismisses the place as a secondary concern. When Faraday realized that the main area of operations for the Engineer was the district of Pacifica, Faraday became livid.

"I am the one who's going to conquer that place and rebuild it in my image, not some violent thug with aspirations of grandeur!" Mark would laugh at the irony of the statement.

Despite the well-earned in Faraday's opinion, arrogance of the man, the fixer knows that invading the Engineer fortress would be stupidity. That's why he will take a more subtle approach.

"I can't rely on Maine's crew for this," Faraday mutters under his breath, irritated that he can't make use of an asset he took care to cultivate, "but it will be a good lesson for them to realize who is the real power behind their actions, once I deal with the Engineer."

Looking over his list of contacts, he calls a particular Netrunner who should have the necessary experience.

"Kiwi? Are you interested in a well-paying job?"

…

Somewhere hidden in the Night City, a pair of Scavs finish their latest assignment.

"Are we sure we should be doing this?" One of the Scavengers asks his partner. "It feels like we're going too far."

The other gangster slowly turns to his partner. "What the hell choom, you do remember what we do for a living, right?"

"I mean, yeah," the first Scav admits, "I know what we do is evil, but this?" He waves around his hand to illustrate the point, "It just feels wrong, choom. It makes me feel dirty, like we're dealing with forces we're not meant to mess with."

The other Scav thinks about it, before reluctantly nodding. "Yeah, I get it. Unfortunately, it's the higher-ups' orders, so it's out of our hands now."

…

Mark stops after scouting the Bad Lands, marking a few areas for future expansion and development, but those are concerns for the future. He finally managed to find an area with oil reserves. Looking at the map, it's in a disputed area between the NUSA and the various independent states that were born in the wake of various disasters of the current universe.

Considering himself fortunate, he places a few oil extractors, hooks them up with solar energy, and then decides on what to do with the oil. He needs water for the chemical plants to work with his current module settings, but there are no sources of water nearby. He could bring a train line from this outpost to an area closer to the ocean and Night City, but he's not certain people won't try to interfere in his business.

Thankfully, he managed to take a special building from the Krastorio module and adapt it to his needs: the small camera-like radar that is the precursor to the radar. It has a modest range of visibility, but it doesn't interfere with the aviation industry.

For now, Mark will barrel the oil and drive it back to Night City, thankful that he kept most of his items in a chest back at the Starter Base.

Happy with his success, Mark drives back to Night City and plans which research option he should prioritize now. When he comes close enough to Night City, his Agent signals an incoming call.

"Hey, Miguel, how are you doing? Any problems back at the base?"

Mark decided to hire his new friend, Miguel, both to help the man and to have a pair of experienced eyes and ears on Night City. Miguel can also help him stay informed on the Edgerunning scene so that Mark can anticipate certain tragedies.

"A few people answered your recruitment ad, you just need to interview them."

"Great!"

"Also," Miguel hesitates, not sure how to break the news, "you got a Cease-and-Desist letter."

Mark's mind stops, as he looks at the message written on his Agent.

"I got a WHAT!"