Cyberpunk Patriarch-Chapter 100 – The Legacy of Johnny Silverhand!

Arthur rolled his eyes so hard, they nearly clicked into the back of his skull.

"Not everyone is like you, Maine. Just because you're obsessed with flexing your chrome doesn't mean every prosthetic needs to come with a display setting. Look here—this square right here?" Arthur tapped a subtle chrome panel on the hip of the backup Adam Smasher prosthetic body. "Press it right, and boom. Out it comes. Clean. Efficient."

Maine stared, jaw slack, then gave a slow, admiring thumbs up. "High tech."

He kept eyeing the gleaming chassis, licking his lips like he was about to make out with it.

"Yo, so, uh... should this thing be mine now?"

Arthur gave him a side glare sharp enough to cut steel.

"Are you insane?" he snapped. "If you strapped into this thing, your organs would burst like microwaved pudding. This gear is made for a guy whose nervous system runs on reactor cores, not burger grease."

He pointed to another glass case nearby, filled with bulkier, less refined components.

"That stuff? That's yours. I'll retrofit it—get you some gorilla arms, reinforced spine, maybe even a personality implant if we're lucky."

Maine looked like he was about to protest, but the words caught in his throat.

He sighed. "So I risk my life breaking into the Smasher-mobile, and I get the leftovers?"

Arthur smirked. "You get the lab-tested, idiot-proof leftovers. You're welcome."

"But couldn't you just... buy me the arms?"

Arthur raised an eyebrow. "What kind of man buys arms when he can steal 'em from the devil's locker?"

Maine grumbled something incoherent as he began loading gear into magnetic crates.

As he reached for another chrome torso, he froze. "Uh, question. How are we getting all this out?"

Arthur blinked.

Good point.

The arsenal was packed with high-grade prosthetic modules, rare alloys, even Smasher's unused exosuits. But the gear was bulky—built like it belonged in a war museum, not a duffel bag.

Arthur scratched his head. "I should've brought a van."

"Should've?" Maine scoffed. "You were gonna carry all this by hand?!"

Arthur waved him off. "I had a plan, alright? Pretend we're Arasaka staff. Say Smasher's current gear short-circuited in a fight, and we need to bring him his spare."

Maine stared at him. "You're not good at plans."

Before Arthur could reply, a voice cut through the air like a railgun blast.

"Stop! Hands where I can see them!"

A large, stocky man stood in the doorway. He looked Asian, mid-40s, and had enough muscle to pass for a low-tier Smasher knockoff. In his hand was a Malorian Arms pistol—the kind of gun that made grown mercs flinch.

"You rats think you can just squat on Arasaka's property? This is Adam Smasher's personal freighter! You wanna end up like Johnny Silverhand?!"

Arthur squinted, eyes narrowing.

"...Gleason?"

Yep. Adam's unofficial errand boy. He wasn't technically family, but he handled Smasher's grunt work—recharging batteries, replacing lubricants, managing post-massacre cleanup. Someone had to do it. Smasher had no patience for bureaucracy.

New n𝙤vel chapters are published on novelbuddy.cσ๓.

Arthur's eyes dropped to the gun. He recognized it instantly.

That wasn't just a Malorian. That was the Malorian.

Johnny Silverhand's personal sidearm.

"Interesting," Arthur muttered.

And then everything slowed.

His synaptic accelerators kicked in, flooding his neural network. Reality crawled to a halt. Gleason's finger was still curling around the trigger when Arthur moved. One blink, and Arthur was already behind him. His twin switchblades slid out with a shk-chk, crisscrossing in a clean, surgical arc.

Shing.

Gleason's head popped off like a champagne cork, tumbling silently to the floor before his body collapsed. Arthur snatched the Malorian midair and spun it in his hand like a revolver at a Wild West show.

Time resumed.

Blood hit the ground in thick splats.

Maine winced. "You couldn't have stabbed him in the heart or something?"

Arthur shrugged. "If you wanna make sure someone's dead, you take the head. Especially in this city. I've seen people come back from worse with a cyber-lung and an ice pack."

Maine muttered, "Still, this is supposed to be a stealth op."

Arthur ignored him and examined the gun, admiration etched all over his face.

Johnny Silverhand may have been a terrorist, but he was the terrorist. A living legend. His Malorian was a unique prototype—semi-auto, smartlink compatible, and designed for chaos.

Arthur holstered it with a grin.

"You see this?" he held it up dramatically. "Custom-built. Smart ammo modes. Made for rockstars and revolutionaries. Worth ten times your entire chrome loadout."

Maine's eyes widened. "Wait, Johnny Silverhand's gun?!"

He practically lunged forward, peering at the engraved silver hand on the grip. "Holy sh*t. That's the real deal."

He reached out to touch it, and Arthur immediately tucked it away behind his coat.

"Nope."

"You can't just tease me like that!"

Arthur raised an eyebrow. "You want the matching sunglasses too?"

Maine threw his hands up. "You mercs and your nostalgia..."

Arthur turned back to Gleason's body and rifled through his pockets, pulling out a keycard and an old-school ignition fob.

"Looks like we got lucky," he grinned. "Our getaway ride's parked nearby."

Maine blinked. "You mean there's a car?"

Arthur nodded. "Well... more like a heavy transport, but yeah. We can load all this up, drive out like we belong here."

He tapped the side of the backup prosthetic. "This time, we walk away with everything. Full crate. No more hauling body parts on foot."

Maine gave him a sideways glance. "Is this... is this the second time you've stolen from Smasher?"

Arthur paused. "Technically, third. First time was just a servo motor. Second was that ocular AI system."

Maine blinked.

Arthur scratched his chin. "Okay. Maybe we do have a habit. And maybe Arasaka is gonna notice eventually. But hey, we're still alive."

"Barely."

"Details."

They stood in the center of Smasher's private vault, surrounded by enough high-grade hardware to outfit a black ops team. Blood pooled around Gleason's feet, and the air smelled of gunpowder and ozone.

Arthur took one last look at the Silverhand pistol in his grip.

"Funny thing," he murmured. "That psycho Smasher kills Johnny Silverhand, and somehow, twenty years later, I'm walking out of his armory with Johnny's gun."

He looked up at Maine and grinned. "Fate's got a sense of humor, huh?"

Maine stared at the weapon, then at the body, then back at Arthur. "Yeah... but I think karma's got a sniper rifle aimed at your back."

Arthur smirked. "Good thing

I'm faster than karma."

--------------------------------------

Visit our Patreon for more:

patreon.com/Samurai492