Cyberpunk Patriarch-Chapter 102 – This Is a Gift from Heavy Hammer!

Red.

Old model.

No alarms had triggered. That meant only one thing—someone had hacked his surveillance grid. And only a few people in Night City were insane enough to pull off both a stealth break-in and a breach of Arasaka protocols.

Arthur.

Smasher kicked open the door.

There, slumped on the floor, was Gleason—his personal errand boy. Still "intact," though something was clearly wrong. A red stain of saliva trailed from the corner of his mouth, and his lifeless eyes stared upward in silent horror.

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Then, Smasher turned and saw the true insult.

The glass casing where he kept his backup prosthetic frame? Empty.

Gone.

But in its place, taped inside the compartment, was a note.

Smasher stalked forward, punching straight through the alarmed glass and tearing the note free. Sirens wailed around him as he read:

> "My dearest Mr. Battlefield Blender,

In celebration of my triumphant return from hell, I gratefully accept your heartfelt gift.

Stay metal,

—Arthur"

Smasher's fingers crumpled the note into a tight ball, hydraulics whirring as his grip crushed it into paste.

His optic sensors zoomed in on Gleason's remains. Red-eye wide, lips parted. He looked... surprised. Possibly at his own beheading.

"Useless."

Smasher kicked the head across the floor, where it struck the wall with a wet thwack, leaving a smear of brains on the metal panel.

Then, with zero ceremony, he grabbed Gleason's headless body by the ankle, dragged it to the edge of the ship, and chucked it into the sea without a second glance.

He activated his comm line.

"Get me the full dossier on Arthur Martinez. Now."

The voice on the other end hesitated.

"Yes, sir... Arthur Martinez... last known record is over a decade ago. Suspected cyberpsychosis, presumed dead..."

"He's not dead," Smasher growled. "He's worse. He's back."

He paused, mechanical jaw tightening.

"And I'm going to turn him into scrap."

Far below, in the dark waters of Night City's harbor, Gleason's body sank beneath the waves—just one more corpse in a sea already saturated with ghosts.

---

By the time Arthur got back to the Umbrella Company's makeshift lab, dusk had draped itself across the skyline. The orange glow of the city shimmered through the dirty windows like an illusion of peace.

Inside, the workers had clocked out. Only Maine and a few others remained, watching over the place like dutiful chrome shepherds.

Some Rangers were also present—Saul's crew had agreed to provide low-cost security in exchange for food and beds. Arthur didn't even mind. It was practically free labor.

As long as they didn't break anything, they could stay.

Arthur entered the lab and set to work immediately.

Inside, the lab looked like a chaotic fusion between a black market clinic and a back-alley chop shop. Tools were everywhere. Schematics, blueprints, and open panels littered the benches. Half of it was tech scavenged from Arasaka. The other half? Straight off Smasher's freighter.

Arthur sat down at the main bench and began disassembling the backup prosthetic he'd stolen. This wasn't just a suit of armor—it was a puzzle box designed for a body that no longer resembled a man.

Unlike most mercs, who kept some organic structure, Smasher was all machine. His frame was customized for a meatless core.

Which meant Arthur had to reverse-engineer it—strip the interface layers and reinstall compatibility converters. If he wanted to use it—or give parts to others—he had to make it human-ready again.

Each joint, servo, and connection had to be rebuilt from the ground up.

Maine sat nearby, cigarette dangling from his lip, watching Arthur's hands work like they had minds of their own. He watched as Arthur transformed monstrous killing tools into refined, usable prosthetics.

Within an hour, two polished, gorilla-sized arms sat on the table—brutal, powerful, and glistening with potential.

"Since when did you get this good?" Maine asked.

Arthur, without pausing, carefully inserted a chip into the arm socket and twisted a screw into place.

"You know how things are outside Night City. No decent ripperdocs, no safety nets. If something breaks, you fix it. You don't wait. You learn."

He gave a sidelong glance at Maine.

"I told you to read more books."

Maine rolled his eyes. "Great. So going full chrome maniac turns you into a damn engineer now?"

Arthur grinned. "Worked for me."

Maine looked at the arms again. Polished carbon-alloy. Internal stabilizers. Modular mount points. High-tier craftsmanship. This wasn't scavenger junk—it was closer to something from Militech's black labs.

"I gotta admit," he said, "if we had this level of skill a year ago, we wouldn't have needed to steal anything."

Arthur paused, then looked up.

"Steal? Nah. That was a gift from Heavy Hammer."

Maine laughed. "If he heard you say that, he'd gift you a missile to the face."

Arthur stood, casually tossing the finished arms into Maine's lap. "Take those to Victor. He'll handle the install. Might need Lucy to flash a proper gorilla arm driver too."

Maine stared at the arms. "Wait, these are just hardware?"

Arthur nodded. "Yeah. Software's separate. Just don't plug them in raw unless you want to lose bowel control."

Then he added, almost as an afterthought: "Tell Vic to tweak the drive ratios. These aren't corpo-standard calibrations. If you don't re-balance the load, it'll feel like you're getting arrested mid-climax in Twisted Street."

Maine shuddered. "Jesus."

Arthur grinned. "Welcome to my world."

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