As a cyberpunk dystopia is wont to do, every gram of nature to be found was hidden within hyper-expensive, private parks for the uber rich. Which would lead most people to believe that entering the park would involve some advanced infiltration, but it turns out that no mega-corp worth their salt would ever spend any substantial amount on security for a site that doesn’t contain anything worth stealing.

 

In fact, for this park in particular we could all but walk in.

 

When I heard about the secret lab we’re currently targeting, the same person also told me about a crack in the walls that they used to enter in the first place. This meant that only 2 hours after we met up, our little group was standing on the shore of one of the only lakes in all of Night City, wearing full stealth gear — this time in all black — and with rebreathers in our mouths.

 

My armour had actually been fully repaired by the time Ethan’s group showed up, but we decided to wait a couple more hours for night to fall so that we’d have the cover of darkness — although mostly for the vibes — for this heist.

 

Wordlessly, John turns from his spot closest to the water and assesses our readiness, although considering we won’t have any threats to deal with until we actually get into the lab, that seemed a little preemptive.

 

Once he saw that everyone was ready for action, John simply nodded before diving headfirst into the lake.

 

Upon following him, I am immediately hit by a wave of disappointment. While I couldn’t see much in the darkness of night, the carefully manicured plants — shaped into a variety of different forms — that could be found throughout the rest of the park, had lured me into the false ideal that the lake floor would be a secret realm in its own right.

 

Instead, however, all I saw was a layer of sea-grass sprouting from between the gravel coating the ground. This did allow us to make out where the secret door is quite easily — since it wasn’t covered in gravel — but the further reinforcement of just how much the mega-corps would cut costs when possible was especially disappointing when compared to the organic beauty of Golden Gai and Lower Newbai or even the synthetic splendour of Clouds.

 

Luckily, John calling for my help managed to snap me out of my thoughts and I moved to enact my part of the plan.

 

You see — as we had expected — the method of opening the door was genuinely well obscured, and since we didn’t plan on taking the quiet approach regardless, it only made sense to break our way in.

 

For this task, I drew my sword from the sheath I had attached at my hip — causing a whirlpool to start forming as the water started flowing into the pitch black edge — and made several cuts into the door. This allowed for the water to push aside the obliterated chunks of metal; granting us access to a small airlock — or I suppose waterlock in this case.

 

Once we had all entered the waterlock, Chris removed a stainless-steel canister from a pack on his side and pressed a button on the bottom of it.

 

Immediately a blue foam was sprayed from the opposite end, and the moment it made contact with the broken doorway it stuck fast and solidified. Once the broken doorway was once again sealed, Chris turned to me and nodded. At that I cut open the door blocking our way and once again sheathed my sword.

 

The second all of the water flowed out of the waterlock Oliver commented “Goddamn that thing is cool.”

 

Turning to him I grinned. “I know right?”

 

In order to prevent us from losing focus, John clapped his hands and said “Alright people, I’m sure all of the guards have already been notified of our entry so let’s focus up. Chloe take point, Ethan guard our flank, we don’t know what it is we’re up against so keep a careful eye out.”

 

At the reminder, I draw my revolver — once again loaded with the special bullets from the caravan — and carefully inspect our surroundings. Stretching to either side of us is a long hallway, the walls and floor are made of the same dull, gray concrete and the ceiling is only differentiated by the semi-regular fluorescent lights.

 

Looking off to the right I can’t see much of note. The Hall goes on for around 50 meters and then hits a T-intersection, that said, placed into the opposite wall of the intersection is a set of stainless-steel, elevator doors.

 

In contrast, to our left the hallway opens into a vast, open space. Unfortunately, from this angle I’m unable to see exactly what an area multiple Kilometers long could possibly be used for, but considering our location I have to assume that it’s probably something like vehicle testing.

 

John — having seen the same things as me — quickly made a decision on which direction to head. “Let’s head right. We don’t have time to check out a space that big and we don’t want to get caught out in the open.”

 

So we started moving slowly towards the elevator, weapons at the ready. It was unlikely that we’d encounter anyone this soon, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

 

Luckily, however, we reached the intersection unaccosted and had plenty of time to inspect both pathways.

 

Tragically, there really wasn’t much to see.

 

Unlike the open area behind us, the only thing I could see from here were a bunch of different doors. Each one likely led to a different lab, but there was nothing to distinguish them.

 

Unlike me, however, John didn’t even hesitate as he immediately directed us to turn right while saying, “we’ll check some of the labs on this floor while searching for some stairs.”

 

When we reached the first lab, Chloe and Oliver remained at the doorway — automatic rifle and minigun, respectively, trained on the empty halls — and the rest of us entered to see what we could find.

 

Except, instead of finding ourselves inside of a pristine and sterilized laboratory filled with a variety of sci-fi devices, what we found was a messy workshop filled with a bunch of different pieces of vehicles and mechanical tools absolutely everywhere.

 

Strangest of all, however, was the fact that there were at least a dozen people still working, and none of them had noticed us.

 

Seeing this, Ethan turned to ask John a question. “Did we not set off the alarm?”

 

“I mean, you’d think cutting two doors to pieces would alert someone but this isn’t exactly a good sign for the rest of their security.”

 

“It’s definitely a good sign for us though,” Chris added.

 

“That’s for sure.”

 

“So do we just move on? Or…” I ask, uncertain.

 

At my question, John becomes uncertain and gives the room another once over. “I guess we should look around while we still can. This entire floor is probably some kind of vehicle RnD so we won’t find anything to steal here but it can’t hurt to check things out more.”

 

And so that’s what we did. While we made sure to keep our guards up, the next half hour was just us wandering from room to room checking things out, and when we had seen 6 different workshops — all pretty much the same as the first — we made our way back to the elevator.

 

“You know, this isn’t what I expected when I asked to do a heist.” I say as we wait for the elevator.

 

“Don’t jinx it. We still have a lot more secret laboratory to get through.” Ethan responds before an almost comical ding sounds out from the elevator as the doors open and we step in.

 

“Honestly I think I’d rather jinx it. This is getting super boring,” Chloe adds.

 

Oliver follows that up by looking straight up and saying, “This whole heist is going to be super easy and super boring and we won’t get into even a single gunfight.”

 

At that moment we arrive at the next floor and the elevator doors open to reveal two security guards.

 

Instantly they both reach for the guns at their sides, but Chloe is faster and before I can even tell what’s going on she raises her rifle to her shoulder and takes out both of the guards.

 

“Hell yes. Our power over fate has been demonstrated once more,” she jokes while grinning at her bloody work.

 

Immediately taking the opportunity to slow her roll, Chris adds “you know, if you wanted to see more action, you probably should have let them call in reinforcements.”

 

Chloe’s only response to that was to look at the two corpses and mutter a quick “damn it.”

 

Luckily, however, at that moment alarms start blaring from concealed speakers in the ceiling and likely throughout the rest of the lab.

 

“Hell yes!” I, Chloe, and Oliver exclaim simultaneously.

 

John just looks at us incredulously and asks, “how the hell did you idiots make me excited to hear an alarm?”

 

In response Chloe points an accusing finger at him and retorts, “it’s not our fault, blame the shitty security of this place making us super bored for the last half-hour.”

 

Unfortunately, before we could continue bantering, a large group of semi-armored guards rounded a corner and readied themselves to take us out.

 

Now, I’d like to say that the two dozen guards aiming at us while we were entirely exposed posed a serious threat to our safety. But the combined work of Chloe, Oliver, and Ethan meant that by the time I had even removed my revolver from its holster those guards had already turned into a rather gauche carpet.

 

Looking at the three murder machines incredulously, I ask “why’d you want security to show up if you weren’t even gonna give them the chance to shoot at us?”

 

“Don’t you worry, that was just the warm up. Just wait until they start breaking out the power-armour and plasma rifles. That’s when things’ll really start to get good,” a grinning Chloe responds.

 

That event, however, wasn’t going to occur anytime soon and 15 minutes later we had obliterated 3 more groups of guards — this time I actually got the chance to shoot my weapon — and finally reached the first lab of this floor.

 

When we checked what was inside, I was met with something that much more closely matched what I had imagined. Although the space was still littered with random parts and tools, the mess was mostly contained to individual workbenches and there were a variety of, seemingly, finished products.

 

Additionally, the people working here had already evacuated — seeing as we hadn’t seen them in the hallway they were likely hiding behind the steel door on the far side of the room — and the lab was entirely deserted, allowing us the opportunity to more closely inspect what was being created here.

 

As far as I could tell, this floor was home to more utility oriented items. It was hard to see exactly what these things did without actually using them, but considering the strange welding torch and parachute I found being worked on, I think it’s safe to say I’m right. Especially since Chris further confirmed my guess by listing off what a dozen of the items did.

 

This did mean that there was little reason to search the rest of this floor, but we also knew that as shoddy as the autonomous security system had been so far, it was a ridiculously stupid idea to try and use the elevator while the facility was already on high alert.

 

Which meant that it took us another 10 minutes and 2 groups of security guards — this time much smaller in size — before we found the stairs. Because apparently whoever had built this place had decided it was a good idea to put the stairwell on the complete opposite side of the facility as the elevator.

 

Luckily the next floor — let’s call it Floor -3 — went entirely differently.

 

When we exited the stairwell there was a lab directly in front of us and no guards lying in wait. Which allowed us to quickly inspect what was being researched on this floor — it was material sciences — and move on.

 

Floor -4, however, was entirely different from all those preceding it for one simple reason: it had something we actually wanted.

 

Upon entering the first lab on this floor greed immediately filled all of our eyes, because Floor -4 was researching explosives. This meant we immediately started searching for something incredible, only to run into a major problem; there wasn’t anything functional in this lab, and there likely wasn’t anything in any of the other labs either.

 

This meant we needed to find out where they were storing their finished equipment — or really anything that was ready for testing — and I had an idea of how to do exactly that.

 

Drawing my sword once more I head over to the iron door that has been present in every lab so far and quickly cut it open — pausing only briefly to consider the fact that all I’ve really done so far is open doors — before stepping inside.

 

Immediately, what I had thought to be a safe-room, revealed itself to be primarily made for storage. Shelves lined the walls and were loaded up with tons of boxes, each containing a variety of parts and materials.

 

In the middle of the room, however, were all of the researchers I had been looking for.

 

But before I could get to questioning them, John stepped into the room and placed a hand on my shoulder while clearing his throat. “Apologies everyone. We promise not to harm any of you, but we need to know where you send your prototypes for testing.”

 

Getting only silence in response he continued, “nobody? Well then, I guess we’ll have to take more drastic measures.” Seeing several people’s fearful gazes John’s smile turned devilish and he turned back to Chris — who was still in the lab — and said “could you start destroying as many projects as possible, please.”

 

Hearing that, Chris’s expression became a reflection of John’s and he moved to do what was asked of him, only to be brought up short when an older man called out “wait! I’ll tell you where the testing is done, just don’t break anything!”

 

According to the old man, the layout of each floor — aside from the first one where the entrance and vehicle testing facility were an added offshoot — was a large square ringing the central testing facility. This meant that, while the spot we needed to access was quite far from the stairs, it would be in a consistent spot on every floor.

 

That said, we actually ended up deciding not to head to the testing range on this floor after hearing something the old man had to say. “You know, you’re not gonna find anything worth stealing, over there. Each design only has one prototype and it’d be impossible to tell which would work and which wouldn’t. If you head three floors down you’ll find where the weapons are designed, I’m sure you could find something worthwhile there.”

 

While it was tempting to just head straight to Floor -7 to get some insane firepower, John vetoed that idea saying “we’ll get down there eventually, we shouldn’t skip over potentially valuable gear just because we got impatient.”

 

He was, unfortunately, proven correct when we arrived at Floor -5 to discover that it housed the development of not only cyberware but also wetware enhancements.

 

While these items were unlikely to come in handy during the heist itself, the only thing that could potentially match them in value were the weapons on Floor -7 and even those were limited by any special ammo they required, which would massively reduce their value.

 

This meant that for the first time since Floor -2 we were forced to leave the immediate proximity of the stairwell, which — predictably — led to us getting attacked by security.

 

Unlike every other time, however, the guards actually posed a serious threat — yes they were actually using plasma rifles and power-armour — and the only reason we didn’t get wiped out is because we ran into them right as both of our groups were turning a corner.

 

This meant that for the first time today I actually got to use my sword on something other than a door, and as it turns out, when your blade can cut through literally anything, it doesn’t much matter whether you know how to use a sword or not. Especially since these guards were very cautious of friendly fire, so I was able to avoid even being shot at so long as I was in the middle of the enemy squad.

 

This did have the consequence of making the remains of the confrontation a lot more gruesome — which very nearly made me barf — but the strategie’s efficacy was more than worth it.

 

After the fight, as we were making our way to the testing room, Chloe commented “That was bad ass as hell Ella. I hope there’s another one of those on the weaponry floor. I would love to run around cutting up corporate goons.”

 

Smiling at the compliment I responded, “I can lend it to you after this. I won’t be able to log in very often so it’s probably better if you have it.”

 

Ethan, however, quickly reminded me “don’t forget, we have to give all of this stuff to Rat Poison once we’re done with it.”

 

“But what about that ‘one weapon per merc’ rule you were telling me about?”

 

“Well I guess you could probably negotiate keeping just the sword.”

 

At that Chloe intervened, “woah, woah. Let’s not make any plans just yet. We still don’t know what we’re gonna get from this. Maybe they’ll have an even cooler sword and I won’t need yours.”

 

“Hmph, I doubt it. My sword is the coolest one in existence.”

 

Turning around and giving me a sly grin, Chloe was only stopped from bantering back by John saying “eyes forward, please.”

 

Luckily, we didn’t encounter any further complications in the time it took to get to the central testing room, and the process of finding the storage itself was rather simple.

 

Once we were inside, however, the process of actually selecting what to bring with us was anything but easy.

 

There was pretty much an implant for anything you could imagine down here, ranging from literal laser eyes to something that used the same void tech that was in my sword to delete shit while it’s still inside your body, we were spoiled for choice.

 

And that’s not even including the wetware. While most biological enhancements were relatively subtle, there were a select few that were not in the slightest.

 

One allowed you to camouflage like a chameleon, another turned your hair into prehensile tentacles, and one even let you read the mind of anyone within 2 meters from you. Hell this one didn’t even do anything specific, it would just make whatever fantasy abilities your avatar has work despite the restrictions Night City placed on that stuff.

 

Wait. Haven’t I heard about that before?

 

Reading back over the documents on this item’s use that were stapled to the top of its container, I tried to remember where I had heard about anything like this.

 

Immediately I recalled the time Radia had been telling me about the research documents of a secret lab she had gained access to and how one of the items she talked about did the exact same thing as this injectable.

 

So does that mean that this is the secret Virtual Labs research facility that she was talking about? I mean what are the odds that two different companies developed the exact same thing at the same time?

 

And doesn’t this mean that somewhere in this facility is a top secret piece of super-software, that even Radia couldn’t find the details on?

 

If so, I need to find it.

 

That would be the ultimate finale to my time here.