Carl didn't die.
Not for lack of trying. Two grenades, cooked and primed, had exploded almost point-blank. The blast was savage, enough to rip through composite armor, crack concrete, and vaporize anything human caught in its radius.
But Carl had gambled on physics.
The dual grenades had landed right in the ACPA's chest cavity—lashed in place with monowire, nestled between hydraulic joints and control cables. When they went off, the worst of the pressure washed over the mech's torso, not outward. Carl had fallen flat to the ground beforehand, shielded by the same heavy steel arms and that ludicrously overbuilt rotary cannon.
The cannon's thick, wide barrel had taken most of the brunt. Lucky him.
Still, "lucky" was relative. Carl lay on his back in the middle of the ruined lobby, limbs aching like split tendon, the left side of his torso numb and wet. Something warm trickled past his eyebrow. A curtain of ash drifted down from the torn ceiling like grey snow.
"Goddamn," he hissed. "This better not count as overtime."
His ears rang. His vision pulsed. He tried to move and pain lanced through every joint like barbed wire. He tasted blood. Not from his mouth—his nose, maybe. Or lungs. Didn't matter.
One of his arms didn't respond. The other ended somewhere short of a hand.
"Shit."
He sucked in a breath, sharp and ragged, then pushed himself upright with what was left of his elbow. It took everything he had just to sit up. His jacket was shredded, flapping loose in strips. His pants were scorched. But he was alive.
Barely.
"Three minutes left..." he muttered, glancing at the ceiling and the pale daylight bleeding through cracks in the structure. "Gotta get Hanako to the tower. Sure. No problem."
That's when he heard it.
Rubble shifted.
Metal ground against concrete.
He turned his head—slowly, because fast movement hurt—and watched a scorched, mangled arm punch through a pile of debris. Fingers flexed, twitching. Then came the cockpit—its armor peeled back like the skin of a fruit. Inside, the ACPA pilot, or what was left of him, clawed his way out like a corpse refusing burial.
Half his face was gone, jawbone exposed and teeth glinting like ivory tombstones. And yet, impossibly, he smiled.
"You just couldn't stay dead," Carl muttered. He reached for his hip—then remembered he had no hands left. "Right. Forgot. That's on me."
The ACPA pilot, bathed in sparks and trailing hydraulic fluid like blood, dragged himself free of the wreckage. His armor was ruined. His gait was lopsided. But he still moved with purpose. Each footfall left a crater in the floor.
"You look like shit," Carl said, smirking through the pain. "Wanna call it a draw?"
The pilot didn't answer. He just kept walking.
"You don't get it," the man rasped, voice ragged from smoke and fury. "I'm the one who won."
Carl tried to scoot backward, but his legs barely responded. Too much damage. He glanced down at himself—blood-soaked, missing fingers, half-burned. He couldn't run. He couldn't fight. All he had was a smile and a few bitter lines left in him.
"Congrats," he said. "Hope the prize was worth it."
The ACPA lifted one oversized fist. One strike, and Carl's torso would be pulp.
And then time shifted.
It didn't stop—but it bent. Warped.
Carl's vision stuttered, colors blurring at the edges. Something entered the room at a speed he couldn't fully register. A blur of motion and noise and power. Air pressure dropped like someone had opened a vacuum seal. The lights flickered.
And then came the sound—less a noise, more a rupture.
A crunch so deep it skipped straight past hearing and vibrated through Carl's chest.
The ACPA froze mid-swing.
Carl blinked.
Standing behind the mech was something worse.
A hulking shape, wrapped in matte-black armor, broad as a truck and twice as mean. The figure had one hand around the ACPA pilot's exposed throat. Fingers locked like a hydraulic vise. The pilot's eyes widened—then his neck gave way with a sickening wrench.
Blood geysered skyward, painting Carl in red. The pilot's body dropped like wet concrete.
The killer—no, the executioner—stood tall and still, watching Carl with glowing red optics.
Adam Smasher.
The Reaper of Night City. Arasaka's black-handed ghost. The cyborg they sent when they wanted the job over and no witnesses breathing.
Carl couldn't move. His brain couldn't decide whether to cry, scream, or laugh.
The figure stepped forward, slow and deliberate. Metal heels scraped the concrete, leaving sparks.
Then it spoke.
"Kid," came the voice, filtered through layers of modulation and bass-heavy distortion, "your job? I'm taking over."
Carl stared.
He knew that voice. Everyone did.
Even in the merc circles that avoided corpo gigs, you didn't not know Adam Smasher. You didn't say his name like a person—you whispered it like a warning.
"Guess… that's my cue," Carl mumbled.
He smiled once, a crooked, cracked-lipped thing, then passed out.
Just before the dark took him, he had one last thought.
So this is what it feels like… to be saved by a legend.