The ZetaTech executive and his secretary illustration
In the collapsed underground parking garage, pale moonlight poured through the gaping hole in the ceiling. Beneath it sat Ji-hwan, drenched in blood.
Sssshhhk-.
Faint red steam rose in wisps over his torn, ruptured flesh as his misaligned bones ground back into place. Ji-hwan swallowed his ragged breathing and focused every last bit of his attention on recovery.
After a while, once he had recovered somewhat, Ji-hwan let out a sigh and stood up.
Crack. Pop.
He checked his body, stiff from healing and exhaustion, and rubbed the blood-caked back of his neck while loosening the knots in his muscles. Then he thought deeply about the brutal fight he had just gone through with their boss, Alexei.
The bastard was clearly stronger than him.
Ji-hwan slowly replayed the final strike he had thrown just before colliding with the hulking steel frame, trying to figure out the technique he had used at the end.
It definitely hadn’t been his usual [Instant Strike].
He tried to recall that strange technique he had used purely on instinct and impulse, but his mind felt as if it were wrapped in a thick fog.
Ji-hwan closed his eyes and awkwardly lowered into a stance again.
He planted both feet on the hard concrete floor and slowly thrust a fist into the air.
He copied the movement exactly as he had done when he shattered Alexei.
"It was definitely... like this... right?"
Then Ji-hwan gathered his scattered senses and drove his momentum into a series of punches at empty air.
Whoom-! Whoosh!
But when he drew his fists back, there was no sensation left at the tips of his knuckles.
A product of countless coincidences exploding like a miracle on the threshold of death. He had forcibly dragged out an unfinished technique and paid for it with torn internal organs, but the destructive power had been real enough.
"Someday, I’ll make it fully mine..."
Muttering to himself, Ji-hwan silently clenched his empty fist and carved the fragments of that sensation deep into his memory.
"Haa..."
He exhaled and looked around.
First, the spot where Alexei had dropped to his knees. He rummaged through the concrete rubble, hoping something useful might have been left behind, but all he found on the ground were the shattered fragments of the Gorilla Arms his last strike had blown apart.
"Tch."
He clicked his tongue and looked elsewhere, but the dagger he had used throughout the fight had its blade bent so badly it looked ready to snap, and the monomolecular katana was split in half, buried in the dirt.
Then Ji-hwan spotted something in a corner of the wreckage: a dull strip of cloth covered in gritty dust.
The military optical camo cloak the Hound team’s netrunner had used to hide himself.
Ji-hwan shook the cloak out lightly and draped it over his shoulders. But unlike the way they had used it, his body didn’t turn invisible.
'How did they use this thing?'
He rubbed the black cloak between his fingers and thought about it.
In Night City, most gear linked directly to the user’s brain through a neural socket at the back of the neck.
For him, a complete organic body with nowhere to plug in a single connector, the thing was nothing but a torn rag.
'Still, if I don’t know, I should find a techie who can actually handle it.'
Ji-hwan rolled up the cloak and packed it away, then turned without hesitation.
His combat boots, caked with blood and dirt, crossed the rough sands of the Badlands as he dragged his aching body back to the driver’s seat of the old Thornton Colby parked on the edge of the clearing.
"Let’s go."
Vroooom-!
He started the engine. With a heavy rumble, the vehicle spat out acrid exhaust, left the abandoned parking lot behind, and accelerated toward Night City.
The vibrations of the off-road terrain faded, and smooth asphalt began to roll beneath the tires.
Where the darkness of the barren wasteland fell away, the immense steel forest finally revealed its full majesty before Ji-hwan’s eyes.
Vertigo-inducing skyscrapers, holographic neon signs stabbing into his vision, the trajectories of armed AVs slicing densely across the sky. The true face of this den of monsters. Blue neon flickered across the dark eyes of Ji-hwan as he gripped the wheel.
"Wow..."
He let out a breath of admiration at the sight of Night City, which he had never been able to see this close before.
"So this really is Night City..."
Then, while driving, Ji-hwan tapped the radio console. Through the crackling static, a cold voice flowed out.
Morro Rock Radio.
"This is Morro Rock Radio. Your friendly neighborhood Maximum Mike here. Don’t be fooled by the sweet lies barked out by corporate dogs. Tonight, the real truth in Night City’s back alleys..."
Maximum Mike’s signature cynical conspiracy theories drifted through the cramped cabin.
The rough rock music of the SAMURAI band mixed with the vehicle’s vibrations as Ji-hwan turned the wheel and plunged deeper into Night City.
*
A few days later.
In a dark back alley of Watson, beyond the reach of the megacorps’ shadows, strange rumors began to spread among gangs and anyone connected to the backstreets.
The rumor that Maelstrom remnants were being hunted every night.
As if to prove the rumor true, every corpse that turned up was grotesque.
Some had their upper bodies crushed and burst apart along with thick chrome plating. Others had chest cavities blown wide open as if pierced by a spear. Some were sprawled out like power had been cut to them, with their artificial nervous systems and joints neatly severed by a dagger. There were even horrific chunks of meat with mechanical limbs ripped off whole, as if seized by an iron grip. The lips of the ones who barely survived on the scene trembled with fear.
"Hey. Snap out of it. What happened?"
A back-alley informant who had been following the rumor stepped forward and grabbed the bastard’s shoulder roughly.
But the dying Maelstrom goon’s grotesque multi-lens eyes had long since lost focus. He stared in terror only into the darkness beyond, where not a single ray of light could reach.
Red fluid spilled from his mouth, wetting his lips.
His jaw trembled violently. From the broken vocalizer in his throat came a thin, winded metallic rasp.
"Red..."
The blinking eye lenses. The last memory burned into his brain. A predator’s silhouette charging through the dark, spewing scarlet haze as it rushed forward with ferocious speed.
"...ghost."
That one word.
Thud.
With a heavy scraping sound, his head dropped to the ground. The informant looking down at him went pale as ash.
From that point on, the rumor began to spread through Watson.
It also reached the ears of nearby gangs, but the local powers actually welcomed it.
The report even reached a luxury penthouse overlooking the dazzling neon signs of Kabuki.
A man in a wrinkle-free Arasaka-tailored suit in a Neo-Kitsch style. Igarashi Gendo, the boss of the Tyger Claws, exhaled a long stream of expensive cigar smoke.
As he listened to the report, Gendo tapped ash from the cigar and narrowed his brow.
"Tell everyone in Kabuki and Little China to stay away from the Maelstrom territory."
The lieutenant tilted his head in confusion.
"Boss. If the rumor’s true... shouldn’t we take over the space Maelstrom left behind?"
"What a stupid thing to say."
Gendo’s snake-like eyes flashed coldly.
"Last year, those filthy whores started a riot and formed that new gang, the Mox. Just keeping order inside Kabuki is already enough of a headache."
Having made his decision in an instant, Gendo set down his tea, now cold.
"Just watch. Quietly."
*
Tatatatang-!!
In a narrow Watson alley under acid rain, the harsh burst of a submachine gun ripped through the air.
"Come out! Come out, you motherfucker!!"
A Maelstrom gang member with grotesque multi-lens implants jammed into his face was firing wildly in every direction, panic driving his finger on the trigger.
At his feet and in every corner of the trash-strewn alley lay the mangled bodies of his comrades, necks bent at impossible angles or caved in.
Every one of them was broken so badly they would need immediate emergency care to survive, or at the very least months of bed rest.
Just as the bastard was spraying bullets at the unseen shadow,
Click, clack.
"Shit...!?"
the magazine ran dry, and the empty barrel gave off a sinister metallic whine.
At the same time, from the thick darkness behind him, a reaper’s silhouette emerged, trailing faint scarlet haze.
KRAK-!!
"Ghk...!"
A chilling rupture.
A thick bare hand shot out from behind him, crushed through his spinal armor like tofu, and drove straight into his chest.
The terrified Maelstrom lowered his trembling head and stared blankly at the blood-soaked hand that had burst clean through his ribcage.
Red fluid spilled from his mouth, wetting his lips, and he died as his artificial nervous system was cut off, without even managing a scream.
As he collapsed into the rainwater, Ji-hwan yanked his hand back out of the corpse and glanced down at the remaining survivors rolling on the ground with their mouths shut tight.
Then, without even sparing them a look, Ji-hwan’s figure vanished from the spot like a ghost.
A moment later.
The man reappeared at the mouth of another narrow alley. Red light flickered deep in his eyes as he stepped back into the darkness in search of his next prey.
*
At the same time. Watson, Northside, the abandoned All Foods meat processing plant, Maelstrom’s massive main base.
Deep inside the base, where red glitch noise and the stench of rotting protein slurry made from ground-up maggots hung heavy in the air, Maelstrom boss Vice kicked his throne in irritation.
"What did you just say...?"
The multi-LED lenses of his mechanical skull mask blinked ominously.
"The kids in Watson’s lower sectors 7 and 8... have been wiped out. Right before communications cut off... they said something attacked them..."
"You useless bastards!!"
BANG-!
Vice urgently opened an encrypted communications channel, regardless of whether his underling was watching.
He intended to call on his last lifeline, the ZetaTech executive who had been secretly backing him from behind the scenes, Carlyle.
But what came back through the speaker was only:
"This number does not exist."
Only the flat automated voice echoed on and on.
Vice’s grotesque multi-LED eye lenses trembled as he tried again and again to reconnect on different frequencies, but the result was the same.
It was only then that he realized the entire communications network had been erased. His breathing turned grotesquely ragged.
Ssshhhkk-.
As his heartbeat spiked, the hormone injector in his spine forcibly dumped sedatives into his system, but it could not suppress the rising sense of betrayal.
"You son of a bitch!!"
KRAK-! Vice smashed the communications terminal to pieces with a single punch.
His thick chrome-plated hand trembled with rage.
"So that’s how it is... You’re throwing me away?"
Grinding his jaw, Vice spat out murderous intent. Then he urgently summoned the key lieutenants waiting inside the base to the deepest chamber.
The heavy iron door opened with a scraping sound, and when the two executives who handled Maelstrom’s real fighting strength, Royce and Brick, along with several others, entered, Vice screamed at them in a voice gone mad.
"Seal every entrance inside and outside this factory right now! Lay smart mines and traps in every corridor, and activate every medium-caliber turret! Don’t let even a single ant get in!!"
The boss’s order came out in a spray of spit as he raged. But Royce and Brick only stood there with their mouths shut, staring at the tantrum.
"What are you standing there for! Move now!!"
After shouting, Vice didn’t even give his underlings time to answer. He hurriedly turned and fled toward the deepest hangar in the base.
The moment Vice’s back disappeared completely into the darkness, the gazes of Royce and Brick, left behind in the empty chamber, collided in the air.
A greasy, mocking smile spread across Royce’s face, the hothead who mainlined chrome like a drug.
Brick, too, made no effort to hide the fire of resentment in his eyes.
'Cowardly bastard.'
They didn’t say it out loud, but both executives shared the exact same rebellious thought.
Vice’s illustration
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