Su Xiao followed Jack's gaze and looked over.
He saw a girl in a blue vest and trousers, with a stunning figure and beautiful features, leap ahead of them and slip into a futuristic, extremely expensive supercar.
Su Xiao had a good memory.
Although he had only seen it once, he clearly remembered that the target the fixer wanted them to steal from the rich man was the very car the girl had entered.
Two fixers had actually set their sights on the same supercar.
And they had happened to run into each other?
"Su, let's go. We absolutely can't let that woman get there first."
Jack called out and charged forward.
Su Xiao had been about to follow, but a sense of danger suddenly rose in his heart.
"Jack, come back! Jack!"
Jack wasn't about to listen.
Wakako's payment was substantial. How could he stand by and watch the duck he had already caught fly away?
After the girl climbed into the car, she didn't use a key. She might have used some kind of Decrypter, but she actually managed to crack the supercar's security system.
The headlights came on, clearly indicating that the car had been started.
And right then, Jack arrived.
Since the security system had already been cracked by the girl, Jack could open the door from outside as well.
He hadn't expected someone else to cut in.
The girl's delicate face immediately filled with shock and fury.
Jack didn't bother being polite.
Leaning against the car door, he pointed his pistol at her head.
"Get out."
Get down to some actual business, Jack
Drive away? Or talk trash?
The girl struggled for a second before giving up on driving away.
With a gun pointed at her head, she didn't think she could outrun a bullet.
Perhaps someone could withstand a barrage from a twenty-millimeter autocannon with their muscles while in a state of extreme rage.
But people's constitutions couldn't be generalized.
When she became extremely angry, she could only remain extremely angry.
The girl obediently raised her hands.
She was afraid that too much movement would provoke Jack.
"Okay, take it easy."
Seeing that the girl was willing to cooperate instead of trying to step on the accelerator and throw him off, Jack's expression softened considerably.
But the muzzle never left the girl's head.
"I've got nothing against you, friend. It's just business. The Rayfield is mine."
The girl was shocked and furious. "What? Come on, don't you know the rules? First come, first served. I got here first."
Jack knew that what he had done violated the rules and that he had no case.
So he had no intention of arguing with the girl.
"Listen, I'm giving you two choices—settle this peacefully or settle it violently."
"Either way, there's only one outcome—I'm driving this car away."
Jack quickly glanced back.
He saw that Su Xiao hadn't followed.
His heart sank.
But now he had already mounted the tiger and couldn't get off.
There was nothing he could do but bite the bullet and continue.
Jack wanted to pull the girl out.
But at that moment, sirens suddenly blared.
Two police cars roared into the parking lot and drifted to a halt in front of them.
They formed a partial encirclement.
"¡Qué chingados...?!"
Jack was stunned.
Why was the NCPD here?
And how had they arrived so quickly?
Then he suddenly remembered that Su Xiao had also said earlier that he had a bad feeling.
He hadn't expected it to come true.
"NCPD! Drop your weapon!"
"Don't move!"
"You're both under arrest!"
"Stay where you are!"
The officers got out of the cars and aimed their guns.
Jack hurriedly raised his hands. Then he slowly bent his knees, placed his gun on the ground, and pushed it across the pavement.
With his skin color, he was likely to receive a complimentary NCPD magazine-dumping service just by walking down the street, even if he did nothing.
And he actually had a gun in his hand.
Only after Jack voluntarily disarmed himself did two of the bolder officers approach.
They pinned Jack and the girl to the ground.
A man slowly emerged from the headlights, where the light revealed the Tyndall effect amid the swirling dust in the air.
Looking at the two people being held down on their knees, he spoke leisurely and mockingly.
"Jack Wells, an old friend of the station. After all these years, how come you still haven't learned your lesson?"
Jack raised his head. "Hey, isn't this Detective Stints? Long time no see."
"It's Inspector Stints," the man corrected him.
Jack curled his lip disdainfully.
"Same damn thing."
Stints didn't take Jack's words to heart.
Instead, he turned to the girl.
"Come to think of it... your partner looks pretty familiar too."
When the girl said nothing, Stints continued, "Come on, say something. I'm waiting."
"You know me, but I don't recognize you."
Seeing that she didn't know him, Stints couldn't be bothered to introduce himself. Instead, he listed some details about her recent life. "You ran off to Atlanta in search of a happy life. Looks like you didn't find it."
Stints deliberately walked slowly over to the girl and crouched down in front of her.
The badge pinned to his chest shone brightly under the lights behind him.
The ID hanging around his neck swung back and forth with his movements.
"I told you long ago that you Heywood maggots were all the same."
"Born here, making your way here, and dying here. Looks like I was right."
The girl was thoroughly displeased. "Are you done? What do you want?"
Stints sneered.
"When you're out there making a living, you admit your mistakes when you're wrong and stand straight when you're beaten. Don't you understand that?"
"If you hadn't been caught, you could've driven that supercar all over the city. But since you've been caught, you're obviously going to suffer a little."
The Female Cop beside him reminded him in a low voice, "Inspector, if the chief hears you say that, he'll accuse you of being politically incorrect again."
The muscles on Stints's face twitched.
Jack said from beside him, "Hey, give us a break. You said you've arrested us, but other than jerking off until our trial, what else can we do?"
"At worst, we'll spend a few months inside. Let me tell you, these days the only place with room is the lockup, so there's a good chance we'll get released early."
Over the past fifty years, drastic changes in the social structure had greatly increased the proportion of the poorest population.
Economic recession, global financial crises, and the ever-growing poverty rate had created a massive underclass and marginalized population in the cities.
In this era, the right to education was firmly controlled by corporations. Ordinary people couldn't even dream of climbing upward; simply avoiding a fall was already pretty good.
Oh, they were already at the bottom and on the fringes of society, with nowhere left to fall?
Then never mind.
The moment most people in this world came into it and saw what their parents were like, there was a two-hundred-percent chance they would end up the same way.
The moment they saw the environment they were born into, there was a thousand-percent chance it would be their own environment for the rest of their lives, and that they would never escape their poverty.
Technology was everywhere, but the highly advanced technology always cared only for the tiny minority at the top of the pyramid.
Stints himself had come from Heywood.
But he knew that someone like him was an exceptional case and couldn't be used as a reference.
Aside from him, there was also a Heywood native who played basketball and had gained the chance to change his fate.
In all of Heywood, there were only a handful of people like them.
Most other Heywood residents either joined the Valentino Gang and were eventually killed by a stray bullet on some unknown day,
or lived as unremarkable ordinary people until they were killed by a stray bullet on some unknown day.
Even if they were lucky enough to avoid every kind of accident throughout their lives, they would still be exploited until they died.
That was why Stints wouldn't say, "Get down to some actual business, Jack."
This wasn't Jack's fault.
It was the world's fault!
It was Night City's fault!
It was the corporations' fault for taking everything away from people and then making them grateful for tossing them a little scrap!
Just as Jack had said, the NCPD didn't have enough cells to hold small-time thieves like them.
Even if they really shoved them inside, they would spend no more than a few months there.
And because there weren't enough cells, they would be released early.
That was how Night City was.
There were so many criminals that the cells couldn't hold them all.
Every minute, the NCPD received dozens of emergency calls.
Fifty percent of the NCPD's manpower was assigned to North Oak and Charter Hill.
The former was the mansion district of the powerful and wealthy, while the latter was a paradise for the middle class.
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