Carl panted hard, breath catching as sweat and blood dripped down his face, mixing into a bitter tang on his lips. His heart thudded in his chest like a war drum, not from fear—but from the sheer disbelief that he was still alive. He hadn't taken a full hit. That monster's 20mm autocannon would've cut him in half if he had. No, what bit into him were stone shards flung loose by impact, not the shell itself.
He ripped open the collar of his undershirt beneath his bulletproof coat, just fabric and flesh and tore a long strip free. With a grunt, he wrapped it around his head, cinching it tight to staunch the bleeding. Not exactly MaxDoc precision, but it'd stop blood from blurring his vision—at least for now.
"Shit," he muttered under his breath. "This gig's really trying to punch my ticket."
He did the math, quick and grim. Eight minutes—his estimate for how long Hanako could hang on before blood loss took her. A countdown started the moment he picked her up. He had less than seven now. Seven minutes to bring down a walking tank and still get the client to safety.
Dreams are cheap in Night City. But this one felt especially absurd.
What did he have? A modded Kenshin smart pistol, a few grenades, his monowire... That was it. No backup, no heavy ordnance, no plan. Just a bleeding head, a fading timer, and a two-and-a-half-meter death machine on his ass.
Downstairs, the ACPA suit stirred. Carl could hear it through the floor—a mechanical whine, heavy servos locking back into motion. Then... silence.
Carl froze. His grip on the pistol tightened, eyes flicking around the upper level. No footsteps. No clank of armor. That thing was playing him.
And then it clicked.
"He doesn't need to come up," Carl whispered, eyes going wide.
The ACPA pilot had recalibrated. Carl had dropped himself neatly into the crosshairs, and the walking tank below had figured it out. He was about to get carved open like a package of SoCal pork noodles—mech-style.
Then it began.
A mechanical roar—louder than a streetcar wreck—erupted as the ACPA's chaingun opened fire, chewing through concrete and synthetic flooring like it was paper. Chunks of tile, metal rebar, and steel-beam fragments exploded outward as the floor under Carl's boots shuddered, then crumbled.
The last thought he had before falling: I'm lucky. Not smart, not fast—just lucky.
The floor gave way. Carl dropped like dead weight, shielded by blind chance alone. The entire segment he'd been standing on was obliterated, but the precise center of the blast pattern—the one sliver that hadn't been chewed to slag—was right where he'd been crouched.
Good news? The pilot's surgical precision missed him completely.
Bad news? The bastard had cut a perfect kill zone beneath him, and now he was right back in the ACPA's line of fire.
Across the room, the armored titan stalked forward. Carl looked up at the beast—armor thick as a tank, cannon arm raised. The gun tracked toward him like a guillotine.
"Not yet," Carl muttered.
He snapped his arm out, monowire hissing from his wrist with a flicker of energy. The ultra-thin line whipped forward, lashing around the ACPA's forearm plating and biting in just barely—maybe a centimeter deep. Two. Not nearly enough to sever. Just enough to piss it off.
Carl yanked hard. Nothing.
The machine didn't even flinch. It was like trying to drag a skyscraper with dental floss. The monowire strained, tension creaking audibly from the servo winch in his arm.
"Yeah... didn't think that'd work," he muttered through clenched teeth.
The ACPA pilot didn't break stride. The autocannon began to rise again, the same slow, deliberate motion as before—a gesture of dominance, not necessity. The pilot was savoring it.
But Carl had already moved on.
He shifted his stance and surged power into the monowire, activating the overcharge function. Electricity arced down the cable. With a burst of blinding heat, the blade's edge surged through the pilot's arm like a white-hot razor, slicing ten centimeters into the armor. Sparks flew. Metal shrieked. Beneath the armor: flesh.
The scream from inside the ACPA wasn't mechanical either. Not a full scream—more like a strangled curse through clenched teeth—but it was the first sound of pain he'd made.
Pain. For the first time since the encounter began, the pilot screamed in pain. Carl saw the twitch in the mech's shoulder, the staggered shift in posture, the hesitation in movement. The illusion cracked.
You bleed. You can be killed.
Carl didn't wait. He yanked back hard on the line. The monowire snapped taut, wrapping around both wrists of the ACPA's arms. The tension tore through his own limbs.
His hands burst free from his arms—severed clean by the wire's edge. Blood sprayed, mixing with coolant from severed cybernetics. Carl stumbled back, gritting his teeth as agony flared up his arms.
But he was grinning.
Two detached hands now dangled from his rig, the fingers clenched into death-grips. And within each clenched palm…
The pilot noticed. His HUD flared a warning.
...Twin Hand grenades.
But it was too late.
The pins were already out. The timers already ticking.
Carl fell back, blood pouring from his ruined wrists, eyes drawn to the faint shafts of daylight cutting through the ruined ceiling above. The rays painted the dust-filled air like the light of salvation. For a second, he wasn't in a crumbling corporate lobby. He was somewhere open. Somewhere free.
The ACPA pilot looked down, realization dawning too late as the metal fists exploded in tandem.
Four seconds.
That's all it took.
"Hope you liked my last handshake," he rasped.
And then the lobby lit up like a funeral pyre.