Santo' Workshop
patreon
It's About Saving Yourself Ch 35
🕑 Added 2025-09-28 20:06:03 +0000 UTCOoookay, this chapter was seriously easy and extremely difficult to write.
I will say, this is most likely the second to last chapter in the story. So anyone who thought Lucy getting kidnapped was kicking off the endgame? You was right!
I'll keep y'all no longer. Thanks a lot for your support, and for taking the time to read this story.
On with the show, hope you enjoy it.
=][=
“Come on! Come on! Go faster!” Rebecca urged Falco, who was driving through the Streets like a madman.
“You can literally see that I have the pedal to the metal.” Falco complained, turning savagely and nearly clipping a building’s wall.
“Can you please try not to kill us!?” Kiwi shouted from the back.
Alex’s call had made all of them scramble. The mission was simple, get into Arasaka, rescue Lucy, go to their shadowy bosses, escape.
There was more to it, but Rebecca wasn’t one to get hung up on the details.
Someone had taken Lucy, and through that, Rebecca’s nephew. Motherfuckers at Arasaka were trying to take Rebecca’s stuff.
She’d already had a dream of a tiny Alex in a tiny gasmask calling her ‘auntie ‘Becca.’ The fuckin’ Corpo would not take that from her.
They roared into corpo plaza, drove up the slick looking gray stairs, and screeched to a halt. Rebecca and Kiwi were out the back before the door finished rising.
The front was in ruins, there was an Alex’s-car-shaped hole through the wall, and the door, and the scanners, and the security checkpoint. Parked just beyond the security checkpoint and with the front crumpled and broken was Alex’s car.
Rebecca had seen the empty corpo lobby of Arasaka tower in a few Brain Dances, she’d heard some snooty asshat describe it as a brutalist edifice to the Megacorporation’s power, a statement of its reach, a cold reminder of its ability and how much power they held.
It looked a lot different covered in corpses.
The building’s intercom growled with static, before Alex’s voice came out of it. [Workers of Arasaka, some of you may know me as Redeye. Understand that I hold no personal animosity to you, but your leaders have taken something very precious to me. I am here to take it back. If you are not on the ground when I see you, if you make any sudden movements, you will not be spared. I will make no further effort to minimize casualties. You have been warned.]
After a few seconds, the message repeated.
“I’d normally wonder where he went.” Kiwi said as she trotted deeper into the building. “But it’ll be pretty simple to follow the corpses.”
“Fucker always hogging all the fun.” Rebecca said without any heat in her voice.
Not all the corpses were security guys. She’d dare to say that most of them weren’t.
Orderlies, nerds, office workers. She even saw a few that were definitely in Arasaka Academy uniforms.
Alex had not lied when he said he would not give a fuck who he killed.
They followed the corpses to a pair of huge, heavily armed robots, their frames intact, but what Rebecca assumed were important bits were sparking and on fire. They’d been destroyed guarding the elevators.
They heard a scream, followed by a gunshot, and another scream. Rebecca aimed her gun in the direction of the sound and breathed a sigh of relief when Alex walked past a corner dragging the head and torso of some corpo fuck.
His head snapped to them, and Rebecca flinched back, her hands twitching on her gun as one of those giant mechs walked out of the corner on his heels.
“Good. You’re here.” He said, dragging the armless and legless corpo by the hair. “Kiwi, take control of this thing, here are the passkeys, I need the two of you to hold this location. I’ve locked most of the elevators down and killed all the security personnel in this floor. But more will be coming.”
He tore the corpo’s helmet off and slammed him face-first against the elevators’ panel, it beeped and turned green. “I’ll be right back.” Alex said as he stepped inside and slammed the corpo against the inside of the panel, making the elevator beep and its doors closed.
“You know what I just realized?” Rebecca asked Kiwi, tapping the trigger guard of Moon Saw.
“What?” Kiwi said as the giant mech took a few awkward steps, before smoothly turning around, its guns tracking over the empty-but-for-the-corpses lobby.
“Alex is kinda scary.” Rebecca said, picking her nose with her pinky finger.
Kiwi scoffed. “You’re only realizing this now?”
“Bite me.” Rebecca said, flicking the booger on her finger off. “Never seen him just, go off like this before. Not since that time with the animals, and that didn’t hit as hard.”
“Yeah…I know what you mean.” Kiwi hummed. “Still, they’re the ones that took Luce. So fuck these guys.”
Rebecca snorted. “Now you’re talkin’!”
=][=
[—If you are not on the ground when I see you, if you make any sudden movements, you will not be spared. I will make no further effort to minimize casualties. You have been warned.] Said the ghoul on the wall screen.
Yumiko couldn’t look away from it.
‘Say nothing. Listen, with utmost care.’
Yumiko felt a shiver of fear crawl up her spine.
He was here.
She tried to contact security.
“Man, when’s the last time some cyberpunk attacked Arasaka tower?” Asked Britney.
“Eh, there was that cyberpsycho…what, three years ago? He hurt a few of the security guards.” Answered Doctor Miles as he prepared the instruments he’d need for the surgery.
“Hey,” Asked David on the table. “Should uhh, should I be awake for this?”
Doctor Miles blinked. “I mean, I’ll put you under if you like, but once I inject this you won’t feel a thing. I personally feel that seeing yourself become better is therapeutic.”
Yumiko gave up as her third call went unanswered. “Erm…I cannot raise security.”
Britney rolled her eyes. “Well of course not, they have some punk to deal with.”
“If he’s just some punk.” Yumiko said. “How has he taken over the screens?”
“So he’s got a Netrunner with him.” The Doctor scoffed as he looked at her over the rim of his prescriptionless glasses. “Miss Yumiko, this is Arasaka Tower. The singularly best defended building in the West Coast, let alone Night City. We have nothing to worry about.”
Through the glass wall, Yumiko saw the elevator open, and she caught the fleetest glimpse of a wrathful green rictus.
Her body did not wait for her mind to fold its legs and throw itself to the floor.
“My, Yumiko,” Britney said, kneeling next to her. “That looked like a nasty fall, are you o—”
There was a loud bang, it was deafening, it reverberated weirdly as if echoing in itself over and over in that singular instant, and Yumiko whimpered as she was thoroughly splattered with a warm liquid.
“Yo what the fuck!?” The child, David, said.
Yumiko turned her head very slowly and looked up.
The barrel of the pistol the monster from her nightmares wielded looked huge.
The world lurched, she felt an impact on her front that drove the air out of her lungs and her forehead bounced on something hard. She was being held face-first against the glass by a brutally painful grip on her shoulder.
Everyone on the level was dead.
Dozens of people, dead in an instant. Whatever project they had been working on, left untouched and undamaged at their terminal, though more often than not covered in blood and brain matter.
Yumiko’s eyes were drawn to Naomi, her head had been torn open form below, forming a macabre ‘Y’ shape. Strangely enough, lying close to the corpse was a mostly intact brain, and Yumiko couldn’t help but wonder if it was Naomi’s.
She felt the scalding hot metal of the gun used to murder all of her coworkers pressed into the small of her back, her clothing the only reason it didn’t sizzle her flesh.
“Smart of you to heed simple instructions. Yumiko Smith.” The monster said, his voice flat, missing something vital to make it human.
“P-P-Please,” she managed to wheeze. “Please don’t kill me.”
“Hey!” The boy, David shouted, there was a deafening ‘THOOM!’ and Yumiko could only assume he was dead.
The muzzle returned to its place in her lower back.
“Whether or not I kill you is entirely dependent on whether you can answer a simple question. Miss Smith.” The monster said, the muzzle of the gun pressing into her to the point that it became extremely painful. “Where. Is. My. Wife.”
He was married?
Someone married this monster?
She wracked her mind, trying to think of who it could be. Thankfully, her brain regurgitated a likely candidate.
“T-T-Th-The” don’t say runaway, don’t say runaway, don’t say runaway. “The girl with the rainbow hair? Pregnant?”
His grip on her shoulder tightened, she felt something snap and her eyes whited out with pain.
“Where?” The monster demanded.
“T-Two floors down!” Yumiko gasped as tears stung her eyes. “P-Private rooms! Room 1137! Chip in her neuroport keeping her quiet and unmoving! M-Minor medication to assure health of fetus!”
The grip holding her up released and she fell to her knees, her good hand cradling her left shoulder. Her left arm hanging completely limp.
She heard the monster fiddle with the table’s restraints, and turned to see that he was freeing the boy, David. He had a line of red on his cheek.
The moment the boy was free, he was tugged off the table and all but dragged to the elevators. His protests falling on deaf ears.
Yumiko watched them get into the elevator, where the monster picked up the limbless torso of the head of security, and pressed him into the elevator’s biometric scanner as if he were some kind of keycard.
Yumiko looked around at the expanding pools of blood and brain matter that used to be her coworkers.
And promptly passed out.
=][=
He knew.
That was the thought that had returned hope to Lucy.
Her Alex knew.
He was coming for her.
The warning he gave everyone in Arasaka played through the speakers again. Trapped as she was in her own body, Lucy had little else to do but listen.
Dread and hope both clashed inside her as the message repeated.
Alex was here. Everything would be okay.
But this was Arasaka, nobody could fight Arasaka and win.
To Arasaka, nukes are literally nothing more than an inconvenience.
The sudden sound of gunfire had never before made her so happy she could cry.
The gunfire ended as suddenly as it began. And an instant after that Alex was just there. Dripping in blood, with bits of bone and chrome stuck to his jacket and pants.
The squish of unmentionable organic mixture as he hugged her was the most beautiful thing she’d heard in years.
“I’ve got you.” He murmured as his hands cradled her and smeared her with blood. “I’ve got you, Lucy. We’re getting out of here.”
He found the shard keeping her trapped in her own body and removed it.
Lucy gasped, her entire body twitching as she threw her arms around him and buried her face in his neck. “Thank you, thank you thank you thank you!”
“Like hell I was going to leave you.” Alex growled, carefully removing the IV on her arms and the back of her hand, then tearing away all of the other things the nurses had stuck to her. The machine beside the bed started screeching, then died when he kicked it hard enough to shatter it against the wall. He bundled her up in his arms and lifted her from the bed as if she weighed nothing. “Come on, ‘Becca and Kiwi are holding the exfil route, Falco’s here, my mom should have met up with him by now. We’re leaving this shithole forever. Just think of the happily ever after Lucy, and we’ll be fine.”
“You say the cheesiest things.” Lucy snorted. “Is Apex…”
“She’s holding off the ‘saka Netrunners and suppressing news of what’s happened.” Alex answered as they passed by Alex’s little brother and into the sterile white hallway. Lucy was so giddy at her storybook rescue that she waved and giggled as they walked past.
“Yo Al.” David asked as he fell into step behind them.
“David. Not now. We don’t have much time to get away.” Alex said.
“But.”
“David. You found her, for that I am forever in your debt. But I’m juggling a lot of stuff right now an—”
++Where do you think you are going, young lady?++
The bubbly giddiness in Lucy’s gut vanished.
In front of the elevators stood her father’s nine-foot-tall metal frame, bristling with weapons.
“Takeshi Kushinada.” Alex said, his voice flat and cold. “I would rather not commit patricide, so I will ask this only once. Step aside.”
++I’m afraid I cannot do that.++ Her father answered, taking an aggressive step forward. ++You are holding my daughter and my legacy.++
“She may be your daughter.” Alex seethed. “But she is my woman, and she is carrying my child!”
++Ah, son-in-law, I had wondered what kind of man had won Lucyna’s heart.++ The featureless metal ‘head’ tilted slightly. ++I must admit, I am impressed. Not many would have achieved what you have accomplished. Under different circumstances, I would have enjoyed the joining of our families.++
His arms snapped open as cannons were deployed. ++In honor of what might have been, I will allow you to leave. Merely put my daughter and grandchild down.++
“David.” Alex said, setting Lucy down gently. “David!”
“Y-Yeah!?” His little brother yelped.
“Take Lucy, keep her safe.” Alex said, pushing her behind him.
“Al, no!” Lucy hissed.
Alex shook his head, not taking his eyes away from Takeshi. “Not now, Lucy. I cannot risk you getting hurt. By necessity, this is my fight.”
“W-Wait, Al!” Lucy gasped as his brother had to choose today of all days to do what Alex said and began to drag her to a nearby room. “Don’t! Al!”
She took hold of the frame of the door the little brother tried to bring her into, and refused to let go, no matter how he insisted.
++It is rare indeed, for one in your profession to conduct himself with honor.++ Takeshi said as the two of them began to circle each other. ++I can only wonder what severe Karma I am repaying, for fate itself to conspired to rob me both of my daughter, and a worthy son. I will endeavor to raise your child properly, after the tragedy I am forced to inflict upon my own kin.++
“I don’t grant second chances.” Alex said. “But for Lucy’s sake I’ll ask again. Step. Aside.”
++I cannot.++ Takeshi said, Alex blurred, and there was a thunderous boom as his ‘head’ went flying. An instant after that the nine-foot-tall metal monster became a blur.
Wherever the two blurs passed like a grey and black wind, walls gained pockmarks, furniture shattered and the corpses of Arasaka employees that covered the floor erupted.
The noise was unbelievable as the two blurs fought, the whine of bullets and flechettes constant. Not a single one of which came close to her.
Lucy grit her teeth, anger at being treated like an incubator by her own father rising up her gullet. But when she brought up her hacking interface, she couldn’t get a bead on Takeshi, so fast and erratically was he moving. And the instant she gained a bead, she found that he had set his cyber-ware to autistic mode.
Which, in hindsight, explained why Alex hadn’t hacked her father’s body into uselessness.
The fight continued for an interminable time, but as suddenly as it began. It was over.
There was a great, resounding crash, and Alex stood above the prone, nine-foot-tall metal body, holding a sparking, dripping biopod over his head like a trophy, before slamming it against the ground hard enough to dent it. With a ragged scream he punched down at it with his metal hand, cracking the outer casing and crumpling the metal, severely damaging or destroying the organs within.
He then fell to his hands and knees, coughing.
“Al!” Lucy said and barely managed to waddle her way to him.
Damn pregnancy! She was going to be very cross with Gloria for all her tall tales!
“Al!?” She gasped as she finally reached him, her dumbass output pushing himself unsteadily to his feet. “Al! Are you alright!?”
“Never better.” He gasped, took one step forward and collapsed to his knees again. “I just…I just need a second, to catch my breath.”
David had run alongside her, even though she’d barely noticed him, he helped his brother stand and walked with him to the elevators at his insistence. Lucy took a few steps but her eyes were drawn to the broken, leaking biopod.
An unwelcome mélange of feelings roiled around in her guts as she looked at what little remained of a man who had, long ago, brought her much joy, and much pain.
The worst thing was how…happy, and gentle he had sounded, spending every minute he could beside her, talking, painting a strange picture of the future, where they ‘would be a family again.’ All while she tried and failed to scream.
“Lucy.” Al said, his voice already stronger, he was standing slightly slouched in the elevator. “We need to leave.”
“R-Right.” She said, cast one final look at the leaking biopod, and couldn’t help but wonder if things could have been different.
She then turned her back on it and rushed into the elevator. Alex slammed the head of a weakly moaning, limbless security guard face-first against the panel, unlocking it and letting them ride the elevator up.
“Couldn’t you have just stolen his credentials?” Lucy asked as Alex held onto the guard.
He grunted, stabbed his finger into the guard’s neuroport for a few seconds, then tossed the guard down and stomped on his head hard enough that she heard the crunch of his reinforced skull giving away. “It honestly didn’t occur to me, I was busy.”
“Did you have to kill him?” David asked disdainfully.
“There was no longer any use in keeping him alive.” Alex refuted without taking his eyes off the elevator doors.
The mundane ‘ding!’ of the elevator was such a stark contrast to the view that greeted her when the doors opened, Kiwi, sitting prim and proper behind a pile of armored and cybered-up corpses, a pile Rebecca stood on top of as she laughed maniacally while firing.
A Militech Minotaur rattled away, the percussion of its guns vibrating the marrow in her bones.
Rebecca and the mech stopped firing, then the gun-toting-gremlin turned to look at her. “Yo Luséy! How my nephew doin’!?”
“Hey Luce.” Kiwi said in a bored tone. “You missed the party.”
Lucy’s heart felt like it might burst at any moment from the sheer happiness she felt.
“Kiwi, ‘Becca, thanks for holding the line here.” Alex said, stepping past her, the trigger finger of his metal hand tapping the trigger guard of his Burya. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Hell yeah!” Rebecca hollered. “‘Saka’s for squares anyway.”
“Since when do you say ‘squares’?” Kiwi asked, the Minotaur bringing up the rear as Alex led her to the lobby, which had been vast and intimidating on Lucy’s way in, but now looked, in a way, pitiful, with the huge hole Alex’s car had torn through it. And all the corpses, some of which being people she recognized from her time spent in the building.
“Since I thought it was funny!” Rebecca answered. “Oi! Short stuff!”
“Uhh…Me?” David asked.
“Yeah you, dummy!” Rebecca said. “Anyone ever tell ya yer cute?”
“Don’t hit on my brother in front of me, ‘Becca.” Alex said as they stepped out of the hole he made in the main gate. “I’ll get second-hand embarrassment. The second-worst kind of embarrassment.”
“Fuck you, I’ll flirt with whoever I want! It ain’t my fault your lil’ bro is adorbs!” Rebecca shouted. “He like shootin’? Hey! Short stuff! Let’s go shootin’ sometime!”
“Erm.”
Alex helped her get into the back of Falco’s car with such care that she may as well have been made of porcelain. Where Gloria began to immediately fuss over her.
“Ay Mija, look at you! Oh my God, is any of this blood yours!?” She said, wiping away at it with a moist towelette. “I told that dumb boy to be careful and what does that get me?”
“Okay everyone! Inside, inside!” Alex said, all but throwing David into the car and waving Kiwi and Rebecca on. “We’re going far away and not coming back.”
He had one foot in the car and was climbing on, when a thunderous crash sounded outside, a spiderweb of cracks forming on the bullet-resistant window right by Lucy’s head.
Lucy looked at the cloud of concrete dust, a huge shadow moving within it before another nine-foot-tall titan stepped out of it. Its head had pallid skin stretched tight across the top of it, two glowing red pinpricks shining out of its black eyes.
++PLAYTIME’S OVER, MEAT!++ Its voice a mechanical growl that boomed across the empty space between them. ++NOW IT’S YOUR TURN TO MEET THE BUTCHER!++
Adam Smasher was in Night City.
Alex was the first to recover. Lucy found his statement to be quite poignant.
“Fuck.”
Comments
PunchingTucan
Oh uh, the rocks fall everybody dies guy has come back from getting milk.
Santo
Lol! Smasher might be momentarily confused after killing David by accident! XD
bfoolforty
Just throw David at him as a distraction.
