Tap, tap-tap.
In a back alley of Watson, where acid rain poured down in sheets.
On the ground, where fumes and mud had mixed into a filthy sludge, an old couple and a child trudged forward, dragging a battered handcart behind them.
They had spent the whole day grilling and selling mystery meat skewers on the street, and the money in their hands amounted to only a few chips. Not even enough to cover a factory worker’s daily meals.
"Grandma, when is Mom coming back?"
The child asked brightly, standing in the rain without even an umbrella.
The old woman’s wrinkled hand, gripping the cart handle tightly, trembled.
Her daughter had been missing for months now. They had gone to the NCPD precinct hoping to catch even a thread, but what they got thrown in their faces wasn’t an investigation report.
Only a heavy bill, issued under the name of an "administrative processing fee for the slums." In this steel city, the disappearance of someone poor wasn’t even an incident.
"She’ll be back soon. Your mom said she’d make a lot of money and buy our little puppy some pretty clothes, remember? Let’s just wait a little longer."
With a sad smile, the old woman wrapped her arms around the child’s small shoulders and hurried on through the rain.
Soon they reached the entrance of a shabby apartment building. A rusting, crumbling mailbox hung precariously from the wall.
With half-resigned eyes, the old man opened the dented metal lid.
It was the last bit of lingering hope he still couldn’t let go of—maybe, just maybe, there would be some trace of survival left behind by his daughter.
Kreeeeek-.
The empty compartment opened with a grinding sound. Inside sat a single stiff paper envelope.
The old man’s rough hands carefully pulled out the contents.
Thud.
An anonymous credit chip with no sender. The number floating in hologram form was an absurd amount, far beyond what they could have earned selling skewers for a lifetime.
And beneath it lay two stiff paper tickets. One-way transport tickets that would let them leave this rotten city of Night City behind and head for another district.
The old couple’s wrinkled hands shook violently around the tickets.
All the emotions they had been holding back burst out at once, and the old woman collapsed onto the muddy ground, sobbing her heart out.
The old man, too, clutched his wife’s shoulder and silently let tears spill down his face.
"Grandma? Why are you crying? What is it?"
Only the child, still not understanding anything, broke into a giggle at the adults’ tears of joy.
A thin warmth, blooming like a miracle in a back alley drenched by toxic acid rain.
Across the street, on the railing of an old commercial building’s rooftop, Ji-hwan stood watching the scene quietly as the rain poured over him. A deep sigh leaked through the speaker of the crude old physical terminal in his hand.
It was Dakota, watching the same scene through a hacked surveillance camera network.
[Haa... You crazy bastard. You dumped all the eddies you risked your life to save into that? And now you’re flat broke.]
Dakota’s sharp scolding came through. Ji-hwan roughly shook the rain from his hair and twisted up the corner of his mouth.
"Still enough left to buy myself a meal."
A worthless little laugh. Through the terminal, he heard a sound of exasperated friction.
Then Dakota’s voice turned dry.
[About that identity check you asked me to look into before you came to the city. The female Maelstrom cyberpsycho you killed on the Badlands border.]
The smile vanished from Ji-hwan’s face.
He shut his mouth and listened closely to the terminal.
[Her name was Elena. An ordinary factory worker from the lower Watson slums, working night shifts to support her family. She was added to the missing persons list three months ago.]
"And the NCPD?"
[Those useless pigs? Of course they dropped it. They just sent the family a fee bill under the pretense of a search and closed the case.]
The sound of Dakota exhaling cigarette smoke irritably came through the old speaker.
[The reason she was kidnapped was her damn body type. She was born with an abnormally low rejection response to mechanical implants—an unusual constitution with high resistance to cyberpsychosis. The Maelstrom bastards saw that number and snatched her right off the street.]
Ji-hwan ground his jaw.
[They pumped drugs into her veins and jammed in every kind of illegal military chrome they could find. Pushed her past human limits until her mind shattered. They used her like a disposable one-use part, something that could die for all they cared.]
At those words, Ji-hwan’s thick fist clenched tight.
[Listen carefully, Ji-hwan. This is the reality of this damn city. If you’re weak, you get eaten and turned into parts. That good deed you just did, handing money to that old couple? In the end, it’s meaningless in this giant trash heap. All you saved was a single grain of sand.]
Dakota’s bitter warning, urging him to face reality. Ji-hwan stayed silent for a moment, taking the acid rain head-on.
"I know."
Then came the calm answer that slipped past Ji-hwan’s lips.
"Still... at the very least, I have to be able to stand by my own conscience."
A sharp light flickered in Ji-hwan’s eyes as he clenched his fist so hard his knuckles went white.
"Even if what I’m doing right now is meaningless hypocrisy in this city, I’ll carry it out on my own terms."
Another heavy sigh rolled through the comm terminal.
[Haa... Fine, whatever. Oh, right. There’s something else I need to pass on.]
With a burst of crackling noise, an encrypted data file arrived on the crude screen.
The abandoned All Foods meat processing plant in Northside, Watson. A floor plan of the place where the remaining Maelstrom bastards had holed up like rats.
"So... it’s here after all."
The very slaughterhouse where, ten years in the future, the merc V had crushed Maelstrom under blood and steel. A familiar deathtrap burned clearly in the memory of Ji-hwan, who carried the memories of 2077 in his head.
But the layout of 2068 could not be exactly the same as the one in the future.
As he zoomed in and studied the structure, Ji-hwan’s narrowed gaze locked onto one point.
Deep beneath the factory.
An encrypted blind zone, black as spilled ink, refusing to show even a single trace of light.
"What’s this blocked-off area? It doesn’t appear in the data at all."
At Ji-hwan’s question, Dakota’s voice grew heavier.
[That’s the place the Maelstrom boss, Vice, is handling personally. Security’s locked down tight.]
Her explanation continued through the dry speaker.
[Rumor in the back alleys says there’s an old main thermal gas line buried near the factory basement. It’s shut down now... but who knows what those chrome-crazy freaks did to it. If they set it off carelessly, the whole Watson district could go up.]
Ji-hwan ground his jaw, calculating the worst-case scenarios in his head.
[That’s all I can squeeze out of the network. Anything beyond that, I can’t tell you. Sorry.]
The fixer’s bitter apology. Ji-hwan looked away from the screen and lifted the corner of his mouth.
"That’s enough."
Click.
Ji-hwan cut the terminal’s power and pushed himself upright, bracing a hand on the rooftop railing.
Tap, tap, thud.
With the movement, the toxic rain pooled on his battered leather jacket spilled down to the concrete in heavy drops.
He shook his shoulders once to fling off the weight of the water, then turned his head with his mouth set hard.
As he cut through the rain, Ji-hwan thought for a moment.
The hunting ground was Maelstrom’s main den in Watson. The true nest of the remaining bastards.
If he wanted to, he could kill them all, even if it took days.
But the problem was what came after. If an entire major gang vanished, a power vacuum would inevitably open up.
Other organizations in Night City would swarm in greedily to claim the empty space, and a bloody territory war would break out. And in the middle of that full-scale war, the first to be trampled would be the powerless civilians in the back alleys.
He had no intention of watching innocent people like the old couple he had just given the credits to get swept up in gang gunfire and turned into chunks of meat.
"I’ll just take the head."
The target was only the local boss, Vice. He’d pluck that one piece of trash out like a splinter, snap his neck, and leave.
From the start, Maelstrom’s full strength couldn’t possibly be concentrated here.
Vice was only one branch leader among a swarm of chrome-mad fanatics. No matter how strong Ji-hwan was, he couldn’t erase all of Maelstrom across Night City, and even if he could, a meaningless slaughter that spilled the blood of countless innocents was not his path.
Having sorted out his thoughts, Ji-hwan ground his jaw and pushed his pace faster.
How long had passed? Through the fumes and rain, the silhouette of a massive structure came into view, neon red signs flickering grotesquely in the haze: the All Foods meat processing plant.
Ji-hwan killed his footsteps and slipped into cover behind the rain-soaked concrete outer wall.
He sharpened his senses and scanned the troop placements and security net around the factory—then, in that instant.
"...?"
Ji-hwan froze in place. A thick question mark seemed to pass between his narrowed brows.
The outer perimeter of the All Foods plant came into view. As he swept over the scene, a hollow breath slipped from between his lips.
"Well, damn..."
An absurd defense line. Every steel door leading into the first floor had been welded shut so thickly there wasn’t even a crack left, and layers upon layers of electrified barbed wire had been strung over them.
That wasn’t all.
The Maelstrom leftovers guarding the perimeter were armed at the level of a military unit preparing for war.
Brutes with medium plasma cannons slung over their shoulders, troops scanning every direction while fiddling with the charging handles of smart submachine guns. Their grotesque multi-LED lenses spat red flashes nonstop across the rainwater on the ground.
"Do I have to punch through it?"
With that thought, Ji-hwan briefly toyed with the dagger’s grip, then dismissed the idea.
If the outside was sealed up this obsessively, the inside was bound to be packed with mines and kill traps. There was no reason to jump into an obvious deathtrap.
This wasn’t just a simple defensive setup. It was the information Dakota had warned him about—the old main thermal gas line running through the factory basement.
For Maelstrom freaks who had lost their humanity to chrome, especially a boss like Vice who had been driven to the edge, it was highly likely they had wired the gas line to a detonator for a last-ditch trap.
Their security pattern was tight. They always moved in groups of three or four, rotating every ten minutes to erase any opening.
The heavy scrape of mechanical joints grinding into the dirt.
Watching their patrol routes, Ji-hwan confirmed once again that there wasn’t a single infiltration route left on the ground floor.
His gaze naturally drifted upward.
The top of the factory. A massive rooftop vent, belching out fumes.
Swoosh.
In the gap created when the ground troops’ thermal sensors turned during a shift change, Ji-hwan gripped the concrete outer wall with bare hands and climbed straight up like a spider.
He reached the rooftop and stood before the corroded giant vent.
Ji-hwan’s thick hand seized the steel grate blocking the vent with brutal force.
Grrrk—! KRAK.
With the sound of metal buckling, the thick bars were ripped away in one motion.
Ji-hwan squeezed through the open passage and slipped into the facility.
In the outer corridor of the factory, a lone Maelstrom leftover standing guard with red multi-LED lenses flashed his irritation, laced with the sound of metal.
"Fuck, we welded every entrance shut just to catch one rat...? This is getting more and more fucked up..."
As the bastard muttered to himself, letting his guard down, that was the moment.
Thud!
A thick hand shot out of the darkness, seized his throat with iron force, and hoisted his body up before slamming him into the cold steel wall.
BANG!
With the impact, the wall cracked and the man’s upper body locked up.
"Ghk...! Ngh!!"
The man thrashed, choking for breath, trying desperately to pry Ji-hwan’s forearm away. But Ji-hwan kept his mouth shut until, at last, his lips parted and a dry, emotionless voice cut into the guard’s ear.
"If you even think about calling for help."
With those words, the hand around his throat tightened with savage force.
Krrrk.
"I’ll make you beg me to kill you."
Under the pressure of that steadily closing grip, the bastard finally stopped struggling.
Unable to speak with his airway crushed, he gave the faintest possible nod, signaling agreement.
"Good."
A faint twist touched the corner of Ji-hwan’s mouth.
When he loosened his grip just a little, a ragged metallic gasp burst from between the man’s split lips.
"Cough... hack...!"
"Answer only what I ask. Where’s Vice, that piece of trash, holed up right now?"
As Ji-hwan eased the hand covering his mouth, the terrified gang member answered in a trembling whisper.
"D, deep underground...! In the main control room bunker! P-please, spare me! We only did what Vice told us to do...!"
"What’s the troop layout on the way there?"
"T-that’s not the problem! I know who you are! Please, get out of here! It’s over!"
Even with death staring him in the face, the gang member practically hissed at Ji-hwan to run. His optic lenses were shaking wildly. That bizarre reaction made Ji-hwan’s brows draw together.
"What are you talking about? Say it properly."
"V-Vice, that crazy bastard...! He planted a bomb! No, it’s worse than a bomb!"
The gang member spat out the desperate secret, flecked with saliva.
"Under this factory there’s an old main thermal gas line running through it, one those old corps dumped and left connected to the whole Watson district! Vice completely lost it and linked his heart-rate sensor to the gas line’s detonator!"
"...What?"
Ji-hwan’s eyes went cold.
"If that bastard dies of a heart attack, or if someone cuts his throat... the moment his heart stops, the detonator goes off! If the gas line triggers a chain explosion, it won’t just be this abandoned factory—the whole district will be turned to ash! Hundreds of thousands of people will vanish!"
A cyberpsycho boss pushed to the edge, threatening a self-destruct hostage massacre: if he died, he’d blow up part of the city along with innocent civilians.
Pow!
Ji-hwan knocked the man out cold with a single blow to the back of the neck. The gang member’s body slumped lifelessly, but Ji-hwan remained standing in the darkness, unable to move for a long while.
"...If I cut Vice’s throat, a tenth of the city goes up. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians die."
He had come this far because he didn’t want innocent people to spill blood, even calculating the odds of gang war to avoid it.
And yet the moment he stopped that trash boss’s heart, the hellscape he had tried to prevent would swallow Night City on a scale thousands of times worse.
But if he backed off now? Vice would use the detonator as a weapon and run even more wild, turning the district into a living hell.
Ji-hwan gripped the bloodstained dagger so hard it looked like it might break in his hand. A perfect dead end. The crushing weight of an unbreakable responsibility pressed down on his shoulders.
Leaning against the cold concrete wall, Ji-hwan let out a short breath.
His mind was a tangled mess. How was he supposed to deal with that chrome lump, Vice?
For a moment, a technique like a shock-strike flashed through his mind—driving the force of the blow through armor and destroying the target from the inside. But Ji-hwan immediately shook his head.
The last success had only happened because every coincidence lined up like a miracle. Hoping for that kind of luck again was no different from suicide.
If he tried it half-baked, it would end in complete failure.
"Should I ask Dakota for support?"
He dismissed that thought too. Dakota was probably at her limit already, barely keeping her newly stabilized territory in order and under control.
He couldn’t drag her into this headache too.
In the middle of that physical dead end and helplessness, Ji-hwan’s gaze dropped to the floor.
There lay the Maelstrom bastard he had knocked out earlier. A glint of something new flickered in Ji-hwan’s eyes.
"Hey. Wake up."
Thwack!
With a merciless kick, the leftover coughed and snapped awake.
"From now on, answer only what I ask. How does your internal power structure work right now?"
The leftover, his focus wavering, was crushed by Ji-hwan’s murderous intent and stammered out an answer.
And then names Ji-hwan hadn’t expected came spilling out. Vice might be the boss right now, but the real power beneath him was split between Royce and Brick.
The puzzle pieces clicked together quickly in Ji-hwan’s head. He let out a short laugh and grabbed the bastard by the collar.
"Listen up. Vice is going to die by my hand today, no matter what."
Ji-hwan’s voice was low and dry, but full of certainty.
"You don’t want to die with him, do you? If you want to live, go back right now and figure out a way to bring Brick to me."
The leftover’s face went pale as he trembled violently.
"H-How the hell am I supposed to pull Brick out alone? If I make the wrong excuse and Vice hears about it, he’ll grind me down to bone dust...!"
Ji-hwan slowly tightened his grip on the collar and whispered in a cold voice.
"That’s your problem. Not mine."
By the time the bastard was choking and gagging, Ji-hwan drove the point home.
"Remember this. If you don’t want to die happily with Vice and the rest of them, you’ll help me by any means necessary. If you want to live, prove your worth."
The leftover nodded frantically, tears practically flying out of his eyes.
When Ji-hwan let go, he crumpled to the floor, then staggered off into the darkness on shaking legs, using every last ounce of strength to flee.
...
How much time had passed?
Heavy footsteps, the kind made by mechanical joints locking together, began echoing through the silence of the abandoned building. Ji-hwan lowered his body and watched the source of the sound.
Thud, thud, thud.
There wasn’t just one set of footsteps. Through the thick darkness, red optics flashed grotesquely along with rough breathing.
"Fuck, I had to crawl all the way into this rotten sewer just to see some rat? Which bastard is it? Let’s start by blowing his head off!"
The first voice to burst out of the darkness was Royce’s, rough and laced with metal.
Kreeeek, bang!
Walking like a derailed train that might explode at any second, he radiated pure madness.
A huge optic covering half his face swept the area like a beast’s eyes, and his fingers twitched fiercely as if he were about to draw the heavy gun at his hip any second.
But just as Royce was about to lunge forward, a heavy steel prosthetic arm blocked his chest.
"Calm down, Royce. We can fight and kill him after we see what cards that bastard’s holding."
Stepping out to restrain Royce like an experienced rider reining in a snorting warhorse was Brick.
Despite his body being coated in heavy chrome, his stride was strangely relaxed and weighty.
An oppressive presence like an old mafia boss who knew how to read the flow of the board and weigh order over pointless slaughter pressed down on the abandoned factory.
Royce clicked his tongue in annoyance, but didn’t bother knocking Brick’s arm away.
Maintaining a razor-thin balance while keeping each other under extreme suspicion, the two incompatible forms of violence finally revealed themselves fully before Ji-hwan.
Brick spotted Ji-hwan standing in the darkness and lifted his chin with a haughty smile.
"So. You’re the gutsy bastard trying to grab Vice by the leash and shake him around?"
Grandmother and grandfather and grandson
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