Gearbound: Cyberpunk 2077-Chapter 217

Leo gave Lucy a small nod before standing up. A faint glint flashed across his tactical visor.

"Sorry. I hope this will make up for the scare you had," he said calmly.

The woman, busy straightening her disheveled clothes, shot him a cold look. "You think you can buy me off with a few lousy eddies? Let me tell you, I'm not that kind of woman!"

But the words had barely left her mouth when regret swept over her face, because only then did she notice Leo had transferred thirty thousand eurodollars, a massive sum. After all, that idiot Woodman had called her out to Clouds in the middle of the night to run around on some investigation, and in the end, only threw her five thousand as payment.

Now, just for answering a few questions, she was getting six times that amount.

And if she thought about it carefully, the reason Leo had been so forceful was only because she and her husband had misunderstood him. From the fact that he was even willing to pay, he didn't seem like a bad person. If she'd just been a little more cooperative earlier, maybe none of this would have happened...

Just then, the woman noticed Lucy hadn't followed Leo out but was still standing in front of her, one hand on her hip, towering over her.

"Is there something else? Or is there something on my face?" the woman asked, brushing her cheek nervously.

Lucy's lips curved into a cold smile. "You forget a thousand things a day—why don't you forget this one too? If you dare breathe a word about tonight, or if you run to Woodman..." Lucy suddenly leaned down, her porcelain-like finger jabbing hard at the woman's chest. "Then I'll tell your precious husband just how close you've gotten with the dolls at Clouds. You don't want him to know what his so-called goddess-like, untouchable wife has been doing there... right?"

The woman's face turned pale in an instant.

In fact, when Leo had handed over the thirty thousand, she'd already given up any foolish ideas. But Lucy's threat cemented her decision—there was no way she would ever dare sell Leo out.

"Y-yes, I understand, no need to say more—you win, I won't tell anyone, I swear, I'll take this secret to my grave."

.............

....

.

The famous Clouds club stood inside Japan Town's towering H8 megabuilding.

"Explore a hidden world of pleasure. Come to Clouds and fulfill your every desire. Don't be shy—step into Clouds. Your fantasies, brought to life one by one."

That was the club's advertisement on the "Night After Night" website.

The tagline might not sound like much, but business at Clouds was always booming. Sometimes you even needed a reservation.

Clouds was so successful not just because the dolls had good technique, but because they made you open your heart. Here, people felt like they'd found a haven for the soul.

...

"So this is Clouds?" Jackie muttered as he stepped out of the Delamain cab, staring up in disbelief at the megabuilding towering into the clouds.

"It's on the twelfth floor," Leo said, pointing upward.

They were just about to head up the stairs when voices by the building entrance caught their attention.

"S-sorry, sir. Do you have a moment?"

"Oh? What is it this time?"

"The water pipes burst in the building... those city service bastards still haven't sent anyone to fix it..."

"Watch your mouth! Do you know who you're talking to?!"

"It's fine. What do you need us to do?"

"Uh, first we need the pipes fixed, obviously... maybe some other repairs, too, there's water everywhere..."

"Alright, I'll handle it."

"Thank you!"

As they walked past the scene, Jackie gave a puzzled glance at the two shivering residents and then at the Tiger Claw members with glowing tattoos on their arms. Speaking quietly over the comms, he said, "Tiger Claws doing favors for residents? That's new." ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom

"Don't be fooled—that's their real trick," Leo murmured.

To control one of the city's busiest districts, the Tiger Claws couldn't rely on Arasaka alone. They had their own methods. Their relationship with the locals was like fish and water. Residents paid protection money, and the gang provided "protection," occasionally even helping with small troubles—not out of kindness, but to make the residents feel dependent and easier to control.

Inside the building, a dispute at one of the stalls confirmed Leo's suspicions. The stall owner, using a Tiger Claw-controlled booth, wasn't even allowed to run discounts and got a harsh warning and some jeering as punishment.

...

As Leo and the others walked into Clouds, the lobby lights cast a cold glow over the polished floor. A wall-mounted TV flickered on as they passed. On the screen, a young man stood in front of a hovering camera, speaking with exaggerated bravado.

"Call me Johnny Yang during the day. After hours, it's Boss Yang. My hands bring in money. Theirs don't.

My dad gambles. My mom's sick. My brother's in school. She just started this job and doesn't know anything yet. Her whole family leans on her. Her ex-husband's violent and gambles. Her business went under. She's in debt. She has a kid and no income.

That's why Boss Yang's here—to spend. People say the money's dirty. That's crap. I earned it. It's clean."

Footage of burning streets in Japantown flashed briefly across the screen—drones in the air, smoke on the ground—before cutting back to Boss Yang. He pointed toward the screen.

"That's where the real filth is."

The ad kept looping. Leo and the others walked past it without a glance, tuning out the noise as they made their way to the front desk.

At the terminal, a woman stood waiting. Her hair was tied in a tight bun. Her arms and shoulders glowed with detailed neon tattoos. She wore a blue dress with a fish-scale pattern that shimmered as she moved.

She greeted them with a practiced smile.

"Welcome to Clouds. Here, we understand what you really want. Please connect to the terminal."

From the detective, Leo already knew there was only one way into Clouds: connect to the terminal and pose as a client.

Glancing at the terminal on the desk, Leo asked casually, "Is this thing safe? If it's full of viruses, I don't want to be paying a ripperdoc a fortune afterward."

In Night City, you didn't connect to strange terminals lightly. You never knew if they were loaded with malware or worse. To survive comfortably in this city, you avoided unknown terminals, braindance headsets, and chips—and definitely didn't plug them into your brain without thinking.

"We need your core data to match you with the right doll," the receptionist said sweetly. "If anything goes wrong, you can file a complaint—but we've never had an incident."

Leo thought to himself, Never had an incident? More likely they just paid people off.

"Alright then."

They each handed over five hundred eddies and connected to the terminal for biometric scans.

The purpose of the scan was to let the Clouds system read their preferences and use algorithms to control the doll's behavior module, transforming it into a real-time experience.

The doll's behavior chips had memory dampers, so they would retain no memories after the session.

If that sounded too technical—well, think of it this way. Japanese adult films often had a category called "undercover investigator," and though directors loved it and audiences watched it, after a few films, the novelty wore off. Why? Because those actors weren't real investigators, and they hadn't trained or researched the part, so the performance fell flat.

But the dolls at Clouds were different. Thanks to their behavior chips, once the system scanned the client's preferences, it could control the doll's expressions and responses to perfectly mimic the desired role, delivering an astonishingly lifelike experience.