You cannot start this questline before your conversation with Takemura inside Tom's Diner.
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Ghost Town
To start this questline, you will need to talk to Rogue and pay her €$15000 to enlist her services. Rogue needs 24 hours to find details on your target, so you can kill that time clearing the map of gigs and/or scanner hustles.
Rogue will call you once the time is up. Complete the conversation and head to the Afterlife to talk with her in person and receive intel on your target, Anders Hellman. He is about to be escorted out of the Night City area by Kang Tao, so you will have to act quickly. Rogue will also put you in contact with a former nomad-turned-merc named Panam Palmer. Call her and she'll agree to meet you in an abandoned railyard on the edge of the city.
Drive to the railyard to meet with her and at the entrance, on the security building, you can find the Strength tarot card. Talk to the merc, who is currently bent over, rummaging in a car. She's rather frustrated at you interrupting her, and combined with her disdain of Rogue, she isn't exactly ready to hear you out. Convince her to help you and she'll eventually agree, on the terms that you help her get her ride back.
Get in the passenger seat of her current car and she'll drive to the camp of her former clan, the Aldecaldos, to retrieve some stuff. You will meet Mitch and Scorpion at the camp, who will greet Panam like an old friend. She, however, is quite on edge, preferring not to meet with someone named Saul. Follow Panam to her tent and grab a crate out of it, before bringing it back to the car. Meanwhile, Panam has planned to meet a group of Raffen Shiv, the people who nicked her car, in Rocky Ridge, a ghost town on the eastern side of the Badlands. Travel there and you are asked to scout the area; scan the three indicated items and you'll discover that the power in the town is out.
Talk to Panam again to find out how to get the power up and running again, then connect the power again. She'll explain that she wants to use the power suddenly turning on as a method to ambush the Raffen group. Before this can happen, the town's substation needs a jumpstart from a different source and the power needs to be flipped on within the power station. The former is rather straightforward, but the latter requires either 8 Body to break through the power station's door, or for you to break the window and then hop through. Use the computer inside to turn on the substation, then head back to Panam and use a jumper cable to hook up the old car to the power line.
Panam will explain to you that she plans to ambush the Raffen while they're distracted by the power suddenly turning on, which is when you come into play. Head up to the roof of the power station and wait at the switch. The game will fastforward to nighttime when you're at the switch. Wait for Panam to give you the signal, then flip it. Use your preferred method of dealing with the Raffen before taking back the car. You're faced with another choice here; complete the deal with Rogue or help Panam get revenge on Nash, the man who sold her out. With future questlines (and a possible romance if you're playing as a V with a masculine body type), it's recommended to help Panam here.
Get in the car and she'll drive to a cave system where Nash is holed up. Kill him and his goons and return to the car. Panam will then go back to the motel with you to deliver the package she was supposed to deliver to wrap up her job. Afterwards, follow her into the motel's bar and talk with her about a variety of things. To wrap things up, head to your motel room and sleep.
Lightning Breaks
This mission follows directly after Ghost Town. You wake up with Panam being nowhere in sight; she is still close, fiddling with her car. Head to her and she'll explain the plan she has for getting to Anders Hellman. Panam aims to trigger a large-scale EMP to knock the AV he's being transported in out of the sky and will explain it to you further using a variety of tools in the garage. Get in the car when you're ready to leave.
During the ride, you can talk to Panam about a variety of things, which mainly serve to flesh out her character and have no impact on the main story. Eventually, Panam will ask you to calibrate with the turrets, which leaves V worried about her finding out that Johnny is in their head. She inevitably does, and you will have to convince her that you won't inadvertently infect the car's systems with the "virus".
Follow the instructions to calibrate the turrets before Panam drives to the power station. She will stop at a lookout point, which is a prime moment for the two of you to go over the plan one more time. After this, you have another opportunity to get to know more about Panam while waiting for the right time to strike.
When the time's there, you and Panam will head to the power station, where you will engage in combat with a set of drones. Use the turrets to deal with them, before exiting the car to overheat the turbines using three terminals in the power station. Following this, head back into Panam's car to escape.
Panam will come to a stop at a cliff overlooking the power plant. Wait for the AV to fly over, then use the detonator. It will take three attempts for the detonation to be successful, so don't be confused if nothing happens when you select the detonate option. Alternatively, if you fail to trigger the detonation, Panam will reach over and use the detonater herself. However, the explosion is not enough to knock the AV right out of the sky, so Panam takes out a rocket launcher to knock them down with more direct force.
The AV crash attracts the attention of the Aldecaldos, who are scrambling to rescue its passengers. Panam tries to stop them from doing so, but the EMP is interfering with her comms and the other nomads can't hear her. More drones will chase you as the mission ends and the next main mission, Life During Wartime, begins.
Life During Wartime
This mission kicks off immediately after completing Lightning Breaks. With drones still pursuing you, head back onto the turret to shoot them down. The turret will jam, however, and Panam will set the car on autopilot in an effort to repair the turret. She gets injured by a ricocheted bullet, but continues to repair the turret until successful, which allows you to shoot down the last of the chasing drones while Panam drives the two of you towards the crash site.
When you're overlooking the crash site, Panam will launch a surveillance drone that you connect to. Use the drone to survey the area, paying special attention to the Kang Tao operatives, the combat drones and any signs of the Aldecaldos. When you've found the AV itself and Panam's friend, Mitch, you can exit the drone and head down to the crash site while Panam covers you with Mitch's rifle.
This section can be tricky to deal with in open combat, since the Kang Tao operatives are quite strong and the AV has a mounted turret in working order. Your main objective here is to disable the turret. You cannot hack it with your cyberdeck, so you will have to get close to the AV to manually disable it. Deal with the Kang Tao forces however you want before disabling the turret and entering the AV. You will find the pilot there, holding Mitch hostage.
To get the details from Hellman's whereabouts, you will have to select "I just want Hellman" and "I'm losing my patience" as your dialogue options. This has as added benefit that you will have less enemies to fight later in the mission. If you're playing as a male V and wish to romance Panam later, also select the "I gotta get Hellman, will you help?" and "I'll help you settle the score" options.
After this conversation, get on one of the bikes and follow Kang Tao's trail to a nearby gas station, where a large group of enemies has set up camp, along with two mounted turrets. These turrets can be remotely hacked, unlike the AV turret from earlier. Mark as many enemies as you can before heading in; whether you go loud or keep it quiet depends on your playstyle. Either way, there is a weapons vendor inside who'll tell you that Kang Tao is effectively holding him hostage and that Hellman is being held in a room above the garage.
Enter the room and confront him. Johnny will also appear for a chat. Wrap that up before knocking Hellman out and calling Takemura. When you're done with the phone call, carry Hellman outside to find out that the Aldecaldos moved out in force thanks to Mitch. The Aldecaldos' leader, Saul Bright, will also make his first appearance. He's got quite a lot of built-up tension with Panam, which comes to burst in a loud argument. You have the option to support either of them, but for the sake of her questline, you must side with Panam. This will allow her personal questline to start a short while after mission completion. When you're done with Panam and Saul, take Hellman back to the motel and interrogate him.
This will go on for a while, and you're free to pick any dialogue options you want. Takemura will eventually arrive, allowing you to leave the room, finish the mission, and gain this achievement:
- The Wheel of Fortune
Interrogate Anders Hellman.
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You will suffer a harsh Relic attack upon exit, which triggers a part of Tapeworm.
Tapeworm - Hellman
You can choose to shut out Johnny entirely with omega-blockers, or listen to him rant about corporations. It's your call, and there are no important story decisions here. This part ends as soon as Johnny's finished talking or you've taken one of the blockers.
13. District: Badlands11. Act 2 Main Quests - Voodoo Boys/NetWatch
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