Cyberpunk: STRAY

The streets of Dogtown blurred into a neon haze as Aurore crushed the accelerator, fingers clenching the wheel so hard her knuckles went white. Rain pounded against the windshield, turning the city into a warped, flickering nightmare of neon and shadow.

Vincent sat in the passenger seat, silent, tense. He could feel the weight pressing down on him, the kind that settled in the gut like a bad meal. Aurore hadn't spoken since they peeled out of the last ambush, but the air in the car was thick—hostile, electric. He knew what was coming.

The comm line buzzed, cutting through the tension like a razor. Hansen's face flickered onto the holo-display, his expression a mask of cold fury.

"Aurore, we're waiting. What about our deal? you can't just fuck off like that.."

Her jaw tightened, eyes flicking from the road to the screen. "My brother fucking got killed. ..Hansen, consider the deal off."

Silence strikes like a hurricane..

"Say that again..." Hansen said in a low husky voice with anger behind it..

Her voice sharpened, words cutting like broken glass. "You heard me right...I'm dumping the Neural Matrix. Right now, the deal's fucking burned."

Hansen exhaled slowly, like a man holding back the urge to put a bullet through the screen. "You do realize what that means, don't you? You're not just burning a bridge—you're setting the whole damn city on fire."

Aurore's grip tightened further. "Then let it burn."

Vincent saw it then—something in her eyes, something raw. It wasn't just anger. It was grief sharpened into something lethal.

"You've made your choice," Hansen said, his voice carrying a quiet, deadly promise. "Expect repercussions."

The call cut. The car roared forward. And then, Aurore snapped.

Her hand flew off the wheel and struck Vincent across the chest, shoving him back hard against the seat with her right hand.

"This is on you."

Vincent barely had time to react before she shoved him again, harder. The car swerved, tires skidding over wet asphalt.

"You got my brother killed, you little shit. merde...."

The words hit harder than her fists could. Vincent's mouth opened, but nothing came out.

Aurore's voice trembled, raw and jagged. "If I never met you, he'd still be alive."

Vincent swallowed hard, his mind scrambling for something—anything—to say. But what was there? She was pissed. Aymeric was dead. Apparently it's because of him.

The sound of engines closing in behind them snapped Aurore back to the present. The rear view mirror lit up with flashing headlights—Hansen's goons. SUVs, armored, closing fast.

She slammed the gearshift forward. "MERDE.... Already???"

Vincent barely had time to brace before the car lurched forward, skimming past the rusted husks of old wrecks, weaving through Dogtown's labyrinthine alleys.

The Chase

Gunfire cracked through the night. A bullet punched through the rear window, spraying shattered glass. Vincent flinched as a shard sliced across his cheek.

Aurore didn't even blink. "Hold the fuck on....PUTAINNN.." she lost control of the wheel for a split second, she wasn't much of a driver anyway...

The next turn was suicide—a narrow alley barely wide enough for their car. But Aurore didn't slow down. She yanked the wheel and sent the vehicle skidding sideways, metal scraping against concrete, sparks flying.

Vincent gritted his teeth as the car shot out onto a rain-slick side street. Aurore stole a quick glance at the holo-map. "Warehouse sector. We lose them there."

The city blurred past—hollowed-out factories, rusted fire escapes, neon-drenched billboards flashing promises no one believed in. Rain hit the windshield in sheets, streaking past like ghosts in the dark.

Aurore took a hard right, cutting through an alley barely wide enough for the car. Metal screeched against metal. A bullet tore through the rear window, shattering glass, filling the air with glittering shards.

Vincent ducked, heart hammering.

Aurore didn't hesitate. Didn't panic.

"Hang on."

She jerked the wheel, fishtailing hard, dodging between abandoned construction sites and half-collapsed overpasses. Two SUVs stayed on them, relentless.

Gunfire.

A neon sign exploded in a shower of sparks as bullets raked the walls beside them.

Vincent's mind raced—Aymeric was dead. Hansen had sent mercs to play their roles. Now Arasaka and FIA were tightening the noose.

There was no turning back.

Aurore slammed the brakes, sending the car into a violent skid, then jammed the accelerator, shooting them into an old service tunnel. A rusted fire door slammed shut behind them, cutting off the chase.

Inside, the tunnel was black as the void. The only light came from the soft glow of Vincent's holo-screen and the fading red of their taillights. The SUVs were relentless, pushing hard, gaining ground. Drones whirred above, scanning, hunting.

Vincent's pulse hammered in his ears. "What if we don't lose them?"

Aurore let out a humorless laugh. "Then I kill as many as I can before they take me down."

There was no hesitation in her voice. No bluff. Vincent knew then—she wasn't just angry. She was on the edge. And if he didn't find a way to pull her back, she'd drag them both down in flames.

The warehouse district loomed ahead—dark, empty, a graveyard of steel and concrete. Aurore gunned the engine, tires screeching as she veered into a narrow service tunnel. The walls closed in, the air thick with exhaust and rust.

Then—silence.

She killed the engine, cutting the lights. Only the sound of distant sirens remained. They both get out of the car near a power plant..

Vincent exhaled shakily. "Did we—"

Aurore grabbed him by the collar, yanking him close. "YOU DON'T GET TO TALK." Her breath was ragged, her eyes burning. "JUST SHUT UP FOR FUCK SAKE.."

She shoved him back, fists trembling. "Do you even get it? Do you have any fucking clue what you cost me?" She pushed him down...

Vincent stared at her. He saw the fury, but beneath it—the grief, the loss.

Aurore turned away, fists clenched, shoulders shaking. She wiped at her face, but the rain had already washed away any tears.

Vincent got back up, he hesitated, then said, his voice slow, "I didn't want this."

Aurore let out a bitter laugh. "Ah oui, quel putain de génie....Neither did I. "

The moment stretched, brittle, ready to break. But then, a warning chime flickered on the dashboard.

INCOMING TRANSMISSION.

The holo-screen flickered on—a news bulletin, the headline flashing in bold red letters:

2 ARASAKA OPERATIVES FOUND FLATLINED IN JIG-JIG : NCPD INTENSIFY PURSUIT OF FUGITIVES .

Aurore's hands curled into fists. "It was her wasn't it?.. that merc whore... V??"

Vincent sat forward. "Yeah, I was there too, she flatlined those Saka dudes in front of me. So what do we do??"

Aurore's jaw tightened. When she spoke, her voice was steel.

"We stop running."

Vincent frowned. "What—"

She turned to him, eyes dark, unreadable. "You want to make this right? Then we take back control."

She flicked open her cyberdeck, fingers dancing over the keys. The stolen rental logs, the hijacked biometrics—the evidence was all there. A blueprint of the trap they'd been caught in.

"We find out who's pulling the strings," she said. "And then we cut them."

Vincent swallowed hard. He knew what this meant. He sure knew that Aurore wasn't much of a fighter, but she had the heart. They weren't just fighting to survive anymore. They were in this together, but Vincent felt her wanting to kill him from the bottom of her heart, blined by rage and emotions of loss.

She was already pulling up logs on her cyberdeck, skimming through secured data feeds. Her eyes narrowed.

Something was off....

She tapped a few keys, pulling up a secured rental log from earlier that night. The moment she saw it, her blood went cold.

"Vincent," she said, voice sharp, "look at this."

She flicked the data onto the cracked windshield. A timeline. A theft report.

The Quadra Sport R-7 "Charon"—a rental car she and Aymeric rented when they arrived to Night City, it had been reported stolen nearly 48 hours ago.

Aurore leaned in, brow furrowed. "That doesn't make sense. We took it hours ago... " Then she realized, they used the car to drive to the stadium, and then had someone drove the car back to the place so Aymeric at the time, meditating in his room at Eden Plaza wouldn't suspect a thing.. they were outsmarted...

Aurore's fingers moved fast, pulling up biometric records from the car's onboard systems. Her pulse pounded in her ears.

Retinal scan logged: Aurore Cassel.

Voice match confirmed: Aymeric Cassel.

Timestamp: 18:42.

Her stomach twisted.

"They hijacked it." Her voice was low, dangerous. "They stole it right after I went busy saving your ass... Used its scanners to copy our biometrics. It's all your fault Vincent.." She was on the brink on shooting Vincent in the head...

Vincent's face darkened. trying to deflect her rage away from him.. "So that's how they got in. The imposters—fake you, fake Aymeric—they had perfect data. They weren't just pretending." His voice tightened. "I'm sorry."

Aurore clenched her fists, ignored him. "They didn't just set us up. they erased us."

The realization hit like a hammer. Whoever was behind this had full access to their digital identities. To the world, the real Aurore and Aymeric had been replaced.

And Aymeric… he was already dead.

Vincent looked at her, voice raw. "Hey umm..."

Aurore's jaw locked. "Shut the fuck up will you?" Her mind burned through the possibilities. There was one way to fight back.

Find the source. Trace the hack. Burn the system that let this happen.

She reached for her cyberdeck, firing up a secured line. "I know someone. A guy in the rental corp's old tech division—ex-engineer. He owes me. If anyone can crack these logs and trace the data theft, it's him."

Vincent nodded, fists still clenched. "Where is he?"

Aurore started the engine again. The roar filled the tunnel, echoing like a war cry.

"Old industrial sector. No cameras. No tracking. We meet him tonight."

Vincent was disapproval of that, "Like the old Watson Industrial sector? like the Scav's turf? come on that's too risky, you don't know the City.."

She scoffed, "Fine..then...so the fuck you gonna do then?" Then she slammed the car into gear, peeling out of the tunnel, into the sprawling dark of Night City.

The rain had stopped by the time Vincent and Aurore slipped out of the warehouse district, but the air was still thick with tension. The city hummed around them—sirens in the distance, the occasional gunshot echoing through the night. Dogtown never slept, and neither could they.

Aurore kept her eyes on the road, jaw tight. She hadn't said a word since Vincent had laid out his plan. He sat back, running through the details in his head. He'd studied this city enough to know how it worked. People only survived in Night City by being one of three things—powerful, invisible, or useful. Right now, they weren't powerful. Staying invisible was no longer an option.

That left being useful.

"Forget your contact, I've got an idea" Vincent looked at her with a slight grin..

He pulled up his lens display, fingers moving fast over the holo-interface. His earpiece flickered online. He routed a call through a scrambled line, bouncing it off multiple servers. The voice that answered was synthetic, modulated—a fixer's standard security measure.

"Who are you going to call?" Aurore 

Vincent leaned back, keeping his voice steady. "A client. One with something valuable to trade."

A pause. Then: "Go on."

Vincent kept it short. "The damm shard.. . you got that on you right? I can get us a good BD techie."

Another pause—longer this time. Vincent could almost hear the gears turning on the other end.

"You sure about that, kid?"

"Very."

Her voice let out a low chuckle. "Ballsy move. Where's the meet?"

Vincent flicked his eyes toward Aurore. She was still gripping the wheel like she wanted to strangle it. "Kabuki, Watson."

The client answered the call. "You got the shard kid? You know no one moves heavy in Corp turf without a leash right? Fine. You've got two hours. Don't waste my fucking time."

The line went dead. Vincent exhaled and turned to Aurore. "That's our way out."

She let out a slow breath, her grip on the wheel easing—just a little. "You better be right."