After recovering her body and burying it in the cold acid rain of the wasteland, Ji-hwan was about to leave the scrapyard when he suddenly stopped.
"Come to think of it..."
The place where she had burst out from a moment ago flashed through his mind. Ji-hwan turned back and headed deeper into the scrapyard.
Silently passing the horrific corpses strewn across the ground, the bloodstains, and the shattered scrap metal, he finally reached the spot. There, off in one corner of the yard, a huge steel container sat abandoned as if it had simply been dumped there. Painted across its surface in glaring red were hazard markings, along with Maelstrom’s grotesque skull emblem.
As Ji-hwan approached the half-open container—
"Ugh... what the hell...?"
A stench so vile it stabbed straight into his nose wafted out from inside, and Ji-hwan instinctively wrinkled his brow and pinched his nose shut.
It was a revolting mix of blood, waste, and rotting machine lubricant.
Holding his nose, Ji-hwan carefully stepped inside, and the miserable scene within came into view.
In the dark corners were the desperate traces of someone who had clearly lived here for a long time, and in the middle of the floor lay two thick iron chains, roughly severed, the kind that must have once bound her arms tightly.
The walls around them were even worse.
As if she had frantically struggled to escape, the surfaces were covered with deep scars where the blue blades of [Mantis Blades] had slashed through them mercilessly.
Ji-hwan stared quietly at the butchered walls and pieced the situation together.
She must have been locked in this dark, cramped place while cyberpsychosis slowly took hold.
Her neural pathways collapsing, despairing in unbearable pain, and finally throwing away the last scraps of reason and hope before going completely mad.
"Haa..."
A heavy sigh slipped from between Ji-hwan’s lips.
As he looked over the inside of the container with bitter eyes, a small fixture mounted high in the corner caught his attention.
"A camera...?"
It was an old surveillance camera, already smashed by someone else, its lens destroyed.
Staring at the dead device, a single hypothesis flashed through Ji-hwan’s mind like lightning.
"Damn... right. So that’s it."
He spat out the curse through clenched teeth as he grasped the full shape of this grotesque situation.
This hadn’t been some simple gang kidnapping or random act of violence.
Some organization had dumped her in this remote Badlands scrapyard on purpose, either to experiment on her or to test the modified implants in her body.
They had probably forced those heavily altered implants into her so they could eliminate any dangerous risks in the distribution process and safely observe the results from a distance through cameras.
Ji-hwan shot the shattered camera a cold, hard look.
Then, suppressing the murderous intent boiling up inside him, he stepped back out of the stench-filled container and spotted one of the three survivors lingering nearby, as if waiting for him beside a pile of scrap.
The man still seemed too frightened to approach the container where the horrific massacre had taken place, and only watched Ji-hwan warily from a distance.
"What are you going to do? The cause of all this is gone now, and Dakota’s worried about you guys."
At Ji-hwan’s words, the survivor let out a long sigh with a look of resignation that was hard to believe from someone who had been trembling in terror just moments earlier.
"Haa... what else can we do? If we want to keep making a living here, we need to clean up this mess. We can’t just leave those awful bloodstains and corpses lying around. Hell... this filthy cleanup is still our job in the end."
At the bottom of brutal Night City, even after a teammate had been torn apart by a monster, you still had to silently wipe away the blood if you didn’t want your next meal to disappear with it.
"Tell Dakota to send us some replacements as soon as she can."
After deciding to stay behind and handle the aftermath for a while, Ji-hwan gave a short nod.
"Got it. Then I’m out."
"Take care, Ji-hwan. See you around."
Leaving the survivors’ rough farewell behind, Ji-hwan used the remote signal from his old smartphone to call up his battered Thornton Colby parked atop the sand dune.
As the rough engine noise drew closer from afar, Ji-hwan found Dakota Smith’s name in his comm list and immediately placed a call.
Tatatatang-. Click.
A blue hologram projected into the air, and Dakota’s face appeared.
She took one look at Ji-hwan through the camera lens—his clothes shredded, his body smeared with blood and dust—and immediately frowned.
"You look like hell."
"It was a cyberpsycho."
"...What?"
Even the fixer who controlled the East Badlands information network couldn’t hide her shock at that report.
Ignoring her surprise, Ji-hwan got straight to the point.
"Did you have any cargo containers sent to this scrapyard?"
At his question, Dakota froze for a moment as if caught off guard, then seemed to think it over. After looking at Ji-hwan’s expression, she quickly realized what he was suspecting and let out a small sigh.
"I get what you’re saying, but even if I manage this whole East Badlands sector, I don’t personally check every single container dumped in some scrap heap corner. There was probably a guy in charge of the site named Derek... is he still alive?"
Watching her reaction, Ji-hwan sensed that Dakota really didn’t know the full truth behind this incident.
"No. They said he was the first one to lose his head."
"Hmm..."
Dakota let out a low murmur, then her eyes lit up blue as she searched through her personal data terminal. Her gaze sharpened.
"Found it. That Derek guy sent over some paperwork a little while ago saying a shipment was coming in. But the manifest only listed a cargo container full of scrap vehicles... could it be that one?"
The fact that someone had smuggled in dangerous goods with forged documents, even while deceiving the fixer herself, left her with a nagging suspicion.
Ji-hwan rubbed the cold metal of the old data shard tucked deep inside the inner pocket of his leather jacket, the corporate logo on it cleverly erased.
This wasn’t something light enough to bring up over a hologram call.
"Let’s talk in person."
Ji-hwan ended the call shortly. As the blue hologram crackled and vanished, the Thornton Colby he had summoned rolled up through the harsh sandstorm and came to a rattling stop beside him.
And then, the scene shifted to Dakota’s repair shop, inside her private room sealed behind a thick door.
Tatatatang.
As Ji-hwan’s blue hologram call cut out in midair, Dakota fell into a deep silence, arms crossed over her desk, as if lost in thought.
A mysterious shipment had been brought into her territory in the East Badlands, and it had turned out to be a cyberpsycho who went on a killing spree. The fact alone sharpened the instincts of the seasoned fixer.
"Hmm..."
Suddenly remembering something, Dakota’s fingers tapped rapidly across the invisible keyboard in the air. She accessed the old CCTV and encrypted black-box data network connected to that scrapyard.
As the noisy footage from the past rewound and played back at incredible speed, Dakota’s eyes swept over countless frames before stopping sharply at one point.
On the screen was the very image Ji-hwan had just described: a massive military steel container standing alone, the one from which that horrific cyberpsycho woman had burst out.
Frowning, Dakota linked footage from another camera angle and synchronized the data back to the day the container had first been dropped off.
"Got you."
Zooming in on the footage, she caught the blurred shapes of the people hauling the huge container through the darkness.
Dakota ran a visual enhancement program and zoomed in on their faces and clothes. Distorted facial implants, leather gear, and the eerie skull insignias carved into their equipment.
"Maelstrom..."
A chill murmur slipped through Dakota’s lips.
Her face twisted darkly as she confirmed that Maelstrom, the filthy cyberware junkies of Night City’s core, were deeply involved in this incident.
"Those bastards are dumping trash in my territory?"
Unable to hide her irritation, Dakota immediately manipulated her personal terminal and placed a holo-call through an encrypted security line to somewhere else.
Tatatatang-. Click.
When the call connected, Dakota spoke first in a tone that was less relaxed than usual, a little stiff and uncomfortable.
"Hey, it’s me. Long time no see."
"What, now you only call when it’s time for my funeral?"
A middle-aged woman’s voice, thick with cold sarcasm, drifted from the speaker.
It was a barbed joke that brought back the memory of a messy breakup from the past.
Dakota rubbed her brow and let out a small sigh. This was someone she knew, but also someone she always seemed to keep at a slight distance.
"Ha. You still remember that crap from years ago? Cut the jokes and get to the point."
Dakota briefly explained the Maelstrom movement Ji-hwan had uncovered, along with the circumstances of the container secretly dumped in the Badlands.
The woman on the other end listened quietly, and after a short silence, she finally spoke in a heavy voice.
"...We got word a while back that Maelstrom’s head got replaced. Why?"
"Think about the timing. It hasn’t even been a year since the leadership changed. That means their internal network got reorganized, and now they’re either smuggling suspicious cargo out beyond the city or taking dirty corporate contracts to clean up messes. Give me the exact routes and location data for where those bastards have been moving through this area lately."
At Dakota’s demand, the middle-aged woman on the other end gave a low snort.
"This one’s going to cost you."
There was no such thing as a free lunch in information trading between fixers. But Dakota wasn’t about to back down either, and she curled one corner of her mouth into a smirk.
"Hmph. So what are you going to make me do this time in exchange?"
"Well. I’ll send you the bill later."
With that, the holo-call ended. Dakota turned back to the monitor to track Maelstrom’s movements using the information she had just obtained.
Beep.
An alert sounded from the external CCTV camera watching the perimeter of the repair shop.
When Dakota brought up the screen, she saw Ji-hwan’s battered Thornton Colby just arriving, sliding into the shop yard through the rough acid rain and dust.
"Perfect timing."
Dakota slowly rose from her seat and walked toward the alloy door to greet the merc who had returned from the job.
And after getting out of the car, Ji-hwan silently pulled on the old leather jacket Dakota had given him over the bloodstained clothes clinging to his body.
The reactions of the people around him as he crossed the repair shop yard were very different from before.
The mechanics and guards didn’t bother giving him curious looks.
At most, a few of them were startled by the bright red blood showing through the tears in his leather jacket.
When he opened the heavy alloy door and stepped into Dakota’s private room, she was already waiting for him beyond the hologram terminal and motioned with her chin.
"You’re here. Sit on the couch over there for now."
At Dakota’s invitation, Ji-hwan leaned back on the worn leather sofa.
"What happened to the other survivors?"
"They stayed behind to clean up the mess. They told me to ask you to fill the empty spots as quickly as possible."
At the dry report, Dakota gave a small nod and rubbed her chin.
"Hmm... ah, right. There was a group of drifters who settled in this part of the Badlands not long ago. We can pull replacements from there. Anyway, that aside..."
Dakota’s sharp eyes swept over Ji-hwan’s wrecked clothes and bloodstains.
"Well... I can tell something happened just by looking at you. Hah."
She gave a light laugh, one corner of her mouth lifting with interest.
"So you ran into a cyberpsycho? What kind of bastard was it to leave you looking like this?"
Ji-hwan let out a deep sigh as if it were nothing and leaned comfortably against the couch back.
"It was running around with a [Sandevistan] and [Mantis Blades]."
"Right, a Sande... huh?"
Dakota, who had been nodding casually, suddenly widened her eyes as if they might burst.
"What?! A [Sandevistan]? How the hell did you come back alive after fighting some lunatic with a military-grade speed implant?"
At her shocked question, Ji-hwan calmly lifted his hand.
He was showing her the section of his fingers that had been sliced off clean during the fight.
"Does this look fine to you?"
"Ah... haha..."
Confronted with the brutally severed stump, Dakota let out an awkward laugh and offered him a brief word of comfort.
Even so, her gaze lingered for a split second on the tip of Ji-hwan’s severed fingers, sharp and intent.
It had clearly been a fatal wound, cut clean through bone, and yet red new flesh was already rising stubbornly over it, covering the severed edge.
Worse, a faint, strange dark-red vapor kept seeping out from the wound.
That kind of recovery speed should have been impossible for a normal body, or even for a body stuffed with expensive medical implants.
'What the hell is wrong with this guy’s body?'
A deep surge of suspicion and shock flashed through Dakota’s mind, but she kept her mouth shut.
In Night City, she knew better than to violate a fixer’s unspoken rule by prying into the secrets of a capable merc who had just risked his life to finish a job.
Even with Dakota’s awkward laugh and comfort, Ji-hwan only let out a short breath.
Then he reached into the inner pocket of his old leather jacket, pulled out a cold metal fragment, and set it down on her desk with a soft clink.
It was the old data shard he had ripped from deep inside the neural socket of the Maelstrom cyberpsycho woman he had killed at the previous scrapyard.
"Can you decrypt this?"
Dakota studied the shard lying on the table, then narrowed her brow and picked it up.
"What is this?"
"Something I took from that cyberpsycho."
At that, Dakota’s eyes turned sharp. She let out a low "Hmm..." and examined the insignia that had been cleverly scratched away from the shard’s surface, then plugged it into her personal terminal slot and tapped away to check the data.
But after a few attempts, Dakota let out a deep sigh as if she had a headache and tore her eyes away from the monitor.
"Not right now."
"Why not?"
At Ji-hwan’s dry question, Dakota leaned back in her chair and answered.
"I don’t know exactly what’s inside, but it’s got some nasty ICE on it. The thing itself definitely came from a corpo, but some gang bastard got their hands on it and layered on extra security. Breaking through the firewall itself won’t be that hard, but... it’ll take a bit of time."
She kept the shard connected through her terminal and motioned to Ji-hwan.
"You’ve had a rough day, so go get some rest. Like last time, my guy outside will settle the payment for the job."
Just as Ji-hwan gave a short nod and stood up to head for the heavy alloy door—
"Ji-hwan."
Dakota’s voice from behind him had lost all its usual ease. It was now serious, heavy, and impossible to ignore.
Ji-hwan stopped and turned his head. Dakota stood with her arms crossed, staring at him with cold eyes.
"Let me give you some advice. A group that uses military-grade chips like this as a base and runs biological experiments... that’s not some small-time gang selling drugs in an alley or a half-baked merc crew. At minimum, it’s a major gang that controls an entire district of Night City, or a corpo, or a megacorp... something at least on that level."
Dakota’s warning was clear.
It was the kind of tragic end that happened all the time in the underbelly of Night City: someone crushed by the brutal experiments of a hidden power. She was telling him to stop digging into the shadow behind it right now.
"So don’t go poking around like an idiot."
Even with her blunt warning and genuine concern, Ji-hwan gave no answer, only met her with a cold, steady gaze.
At his silence, Dakota let out a small sigh and continued.
"You did take down that cyberpsycho covered in military chrome. You’re doing great, and you’ve got real talent. But you’re still just one person. If you ram headfirst into that massive wall alone, the only thing waiting for you at the end is a miserable death. So... just... pretend you never saw it."
It was the bitter warning of a fixer who had survived this city: one person couldn’t change the world. But even in the face of that warning, Ji-hwan didn’t waver.
Instead, a faint, almost pitiful smile spread across his blood-crusted lips.
Ji-hwan adjusted the collar of his old leather jacket with a rough hand, taking Dakota’s sincere advice to heart while still answering in a low voice full of stubbornness.
"Thank you, Dakota. For worrying about me so sincerely."
At Ji-hwan’s rough but heartfelt thanks, Dakota’s eyes trembled ever so slightly.
But then Ji-hwan met her gaze squarely with firm eyes and continued.
"Still... I’m going to try as far as I can."
Staring quietly into Ji-hwan’s unyielding eyes, Dakota finally let out a deep, heavy sigh as if she couldn’t believe him.
"Haa... stubborn idiot. This is why I shouldn’t stick my nose in other people’s business."
She leaned back against the chair with resignation and waved a hand.
"Do whatever you want. If you’re determined to shorten your own lifespan, what am I supposed to do about it? I’ll contact you once the decryption’s done, so until then don’t go getting yourself killed somewhere trying to act tough."
"Then let me know when the decryption’s finished."
Ji-hwan gave a light nod and a heavy bow of farewell before turning around and pulling open the massive alloy door.
Clank.
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