"So it’s 2067..."
Faced with the shocking truth that everything he knew about the future had been reduced to scraps of toilet paper, Ji-hwan collapsed inward and muttered to himself, staring into space while Rachel looked on in confusion beside him.
"Did I really get dragged into this insane game? Or is this just one fucked-up hell?"
A laugh, half-mad and hollow, slipped out between his bloodied lips.
In the middle of this awful camp in the Badlands, he had no choice but to admit that his pathetic little hope had been trampled flat.
"Yeah. I’m fucked. Shit... I’m really fucked."
Ji-hwan buried his face in his knees and sat there, blank and broken, for a long while.
The brutal reality of being dragged off tomorrow and dismembered alive by the Raffen Shiv, then sold off as an organ pack or spare body parts, weighed heavily on his reason.
"Mister... are you okay?"
Then a cautious, childish voice brushed his ear.
He slowly lifted his head and saw little Amy staring at him from the darkness, her big eyes full of worry.
In this stinking camp filled with despair and fear, a frail little kid who had barely started to understand the world was comforting a grown man. At that absurd irony, Ji-hwan could only let out a small snort of laughter.
The sight of human beings trying to share whatever warmth they could, even in this hellish lawless zone, made his once-frozen heart start beating again.
Ji-hwan wiped the bitterness off his face as best he could, then smiled gently and gave Amy’s tousled blond hair a rough pat.
Then his expression changed in an instant.
He burned his own will back into those dull eyes and stared at the cold steel wall lit by the flickering glow of the old hanging bulb overhead.
Yeah. Who gives a shit whether it’s 2067 or 2077.
Ji-hwan ground his teeth like an animal.
I’m not just going to sit here and let those cannibal bastards strip me for parts.
"Fine... let’s do it. We’re doing this."
Ji-hwan muttered grimly, forcing strength back into his legs and hauling himself upright once more.
Then he moved toward the locked steel door and the wall beside it, gripping an old tool screwdriver in one hand and using his bare fist to feel along the surface, tapping and probing every inch as he fought to find even the tiniest crack that might let him escape this cage.
Clang, clang-! Tap tap!
As the sounds of Ji-hwan hammering and prying at the wall rang out unnaturally loud in the dark, the other survivors huddled in the corners of the camp turned their eyes toward him all at once.
They had already lost all hope of living, their eyes dead and empty, and now they watched Ji-hwan’s stubborn struggle with pale lips moving in whispers.
"Look at that crazy bastard... thrashing around like that just to save himself."
"Tch. Waste of time. You think that door’s going to open with bare hands? If he keeps making trouble and pisses off the Raffen guys, we’re all done for."
"It’s all pointless anyway... we’re just going to be sold off for parts."
They openly mocked his actions as useless and foolish, or looked at him with disgust as if he were a lunatic denying reality.
It was the kind of hopeless cynicism you saw all the time at the bottom of Night City.
But Ji-hwan didn’t care in the slightest about the whispers and sneers spilling from behind him.
He kept his senses narrowed to the tips of his fingers and the vibrations in the wall, silently continuing the one thing he could do: searching, prying, tearing.
And Rachel, Amy’s mother, who had been watching everything in silence, now had a strange light in her eyes.
She found herself studying this unfamiliar man named Kim Ji-hwan.
The man who had been covered in blood, cursing like a madman in despair, had gotten back up after a child’s words of comfort and was now clawing at the wall.
Even while the people around him pointed at him and called him crazy, showering him with ridicule, he never once looked back or wavered, digging toward an escape with animal-like persistence.
He wasn’t crouching there like the rest of them, beaten down by the terror of reality like pigs in a slaughterhouse. He was fighting back, trying to bite through the wall and survive. Rachel quietly stared at Ji-hwan’s broad, wounded back, nursing a tiny, faint hope that his unbroken resolve might somehow work a miracle.
Clang, clang-!
The screwdriver tip, which had seemed meaningless in the dark, suddenly scraped against the wall and gave off a strange cracking sound.
Not the dull ring of steel, but a heavy resonance, as if there were empty space beyond it.
He sucked in a breath, shoved the pointed tip of the tool screwdriver into the tiny seam where concrete and steel met, and started gouging at it like a madman.
His fingernails broke and blood seeped from his fingertips, but he didn’t care.
Gggrrk-!
At last, part of the corroded outer panel tore away, and a small hidden space opened its mouth in the pitch-black darkness.
"F-found it!"
Joy burst from between Ji-hwan’s bloodied lips.
But what appeared inside the torn-open wall was an old steel door that must once have served as a vent or maintenance passage, its edges sealed shut with thick industrial welds and red rust crusted over the seams like scars.
"..."
An awful wall of despair smeared with heavy slag. A few prisoners watching in silence saw the welded seal and immediately shook their heads, letting out resigned sighs.
There really was no hole to escape through in this camp.
But Ji-hwan said nothing. He turned around, crawled across the pitch-black floor, and started rummaging through the darkness again like a madman.
Clunk, ching-!
His hand found a heavy piece of metal while digging through the scrap heap.
It was a rusted rebar rod, roughly cut to the thickness of a grown man’s forearm.
Ji-hwan grabbed it and moved back to the steel door.
Then he jammed the end of the rebar into the welded seam he had pried open with the screwdriver.
"Uuuaaagh-!!"
Ji-hwan bulged the veins in his neck and threw all his weight into the rebar, using it as a lever to force the door down.
But the heavily welded steel door didn’t budge an inch before that pathetic human strength, as if mocking him.
"Help me...!!"
Ji-hwan cried out desperately, turning back with bloodshot eyes.
"Don’t just stand there watching, come help me! You want to die like dogs in here?!"
At that desperate shout, a few gaunt men huddled in the corner exchanged uneasy looks.
After a moment, about three of them staggered over and put their hands on the rebar with him.
"One, two, three!"
At Ji-hwan’s count, the four men threw their weight against the bar at once.
Gggrrrrrk-!!
Very slowly, with an awful grinding shriek, the tightly welded metal began to bend and open a hairline gap, as if hope itself were finally appearing.
"Just a little more... just a little more...!"
But the ones who had stepped up to help Ji-hwan were little more than skeleton-thin livestock, starved for so long after being captured by the Raffen Shiv that they could barely eat properly.
"Huff... huff... I can’t... anymore..."
"My arm feels like it’s going to snap... no, this is too much..."
"S-sorry... I can’t do it..."
At last, reaching their limit, their hands slipped off the rebar one by one and they sank to the floor, panting hard as they gave up.
But Ji-hwan, in the space they had abandoned, was still clinging to the rebar alone, fighting with every vein in his body ready to burst as he held the door from closing again.
"Grrr... fuck...!!"
His whole body shook like a trembling leaf, and even as the skin on his palms was peeled away and crushed against the metal, he still hadn’t considered giving up when a tiny, warm touch settled over the back of his battered hand.
"...Amy?"
Ji-hwan turned his bloodshot eyes to the side, and there was little Amy, who had been hiding in Rachel’s arms, stepping forward and pressing her tiny hands against the rebar with him.
Of course, physically it added not even a single gram of force. It was the meaningless strength of a feather-light child. But to Ji-hwan, that small, pure touch was bigger than any cyberware output.
He forced a ridiculous grin through his split lips and, feeding on that innocent warmth like fuel, began pouring all his strength into the steel bar, igniting a mad fire in his beast’s heart.
"Aaaaaaagh-!!!"
An hour. Then two. Ji-hwan’s hands were already mangled, and his teeth were clenched so hard that blood ran from his gums.
But he never let go for even one second, doing everything he could to force the door open.
The people in the camp, who had been watching in silence, were the same ones who had mocked him earlier for thrashing around just to save his own life.
And yet, the will that kept trying to break through the wall even as his hands were being torn apart spread to them like an infection, drawing them back to Ji-hwan’s side.
Swish.
The man who had given up and sat down just moments ago staggered back to his feet and stood beside Ji-hwan, and then an old woman came up next to him as well.
Rachel, Amy’s mother, grabbed the end of the rebar, and soon all the prisoners who had been crouched in the corners like the dead silently came forward and began wrenching at the gap between the bar and the door.
"Pull!!"
Cracka-cracka-crack-!!
At last, just as the welded seam seemed ready to scream and tear free, a small sound reached them.
BOOOOM-!!!!!
An explosion rang out outside the wall, and the entire camp building began shaking violently as if an earthquake had struck.
"Eek!!"
"W-what’s happening?!"
Dust fell from the ceiling, the lights overhead flickered, and with the vibration and explosions shaking everything, the people screamed in terror and dropped flat to the floor, covering their heads.
But Ji-hwan, too, was on the floor, glaring up at the trembling ceiling.
Someone... is attacking this entire Raffen Shiv base from the outside and tearing it apart.
Ben, the field boss of the Raffen Shiv and a man with a rough mohawk and a dust mask, was in a good mood for once.
He had recently gathered a lot of useful "goods"—people—from the barren wastes and filled the camp’s warehouse nicely.
On top of that, this time he had even managed to stop Buck, that hotheaded bastard, from damaging the merchandise when he flew off the handle, which meant he could hand the goods over to the boss cleanly and pocket a nice cut without any punishment or reprimand.
"Looks like this job’s going through without a hitch."
Ben hummed with a dull, satisfied note behind his dust mask, just as—
Whoosh-!!
"...Huh?"
Before Ben could even lift his head, a grenade round came flying in and slammed mercilessly into the side of a nearby merc who had been lounging against an old sofa.
Then it reacted with the industrial oil drums stacked beside him and flashed with blinding light.
KWA-BOOOOM-!!!
"W-what the hell!!"
A deafening blast and a fierce wave of heat swallowed the Raffen Shiv warehouse camp.
The body of the merc hit by the grenade was torn to pieces without even keeping a human shape, scattering meat across the ground, and Ben was swept up in the shockwave of the massive explosion, rolling across the dirt as he tried to figure out what was going on.
"We’re under attack!!"
Ben shouted at the top of his lungs, covered in dust.
The other Raffen members who had been killing time in the camp’s corners also panicked and grabbed their guns at once, throwing themselves behind collapsed concrete rubble and wrecked vehicles for cover.
Ratatatatat-!! Kwang-!
Under the merciless hail of fire pouring in from every direction, Ben held his breath and peered urgently over his cover at the situation outside.
And soon, deep despair and fear settled over his eyes above the dust mask.
"Shit..."
A massive force was charging through the sandstorm and completely surrounding the Raffen camp. Ben was stunned when he saw the crude markings on their armored vehicles and the fierce momentum of the rough nomad-modified rigs built for Badlands warfare.
"Fuck!! It’s the Aldecaldos!!"
The Aldecaldo family, the rough and powerful heavyweights of the Badlands, had come roaring in on their engines to raid the Raffen Shiv’s temporary camp.
Realizing that the Raffen Shiv’s flimsy defenses and manpower could never withstand the Aldecaldos’ full-frontal firepower, Ben quickly turned to find the massive man taking cover beside him.
"Buck!!"
Buck, a hulking brute with a crude chrome prosthetic arm after having once mutilated merchandise and been punished by having his arm cut off, looked ready to charge straight at the Aldecaldos. Ben shouted at him in a near-spit of blood.
"Buck!! Don’t engage those bastards! We need to grab the goods in the warehouse and get the hell out of here now!!"
If they weren’t careful, the valuable bio-parts for the boss—the prisoners—would be caught in the Aldecaldos’ crossfire and explosions and reduced to ash. The only choice was to grab the merchandise and slip out through a hidden escape route.
"Got it!! Hold on!!"
Buck snarled, gripping a heavy Overture pistol.
Then he rose up through the rain of bullets and, with thudding footsteps, started running like a madman toward the warehouse where Ji-hwan and the survivors were desperately preparing to escape.
When Buck reached the warehouse, he was already breathing hard and had only one thing on his mind: open the heavy steel door, grab the valuable goods inside, and run. But—
"What... what the hell?! Why won’t it open!! Damn it, not now!"
Buck shook the steel door violently and kicked at it, but it stayed firmly shut and didn’t budge at all.
Before long, he realized the rats trapped inside had locked the door from within.
"You fucking bastards!!"
Amid the rain of gunfire and explosions, Buck roared in a voice twisted with rage.
"Open it now?! If you open it right now, I won’t hurt anyone! So come out nice and quiet!"
He had to keep the goods intact no matter what, so Buck forced down his anger and tried a clumsy bit of persuasion.
But only silence came from behind the sealed steel door, and that silence shattered the thin patience of the hotheaded Buck.
"You little shits!! You really want to push this to the end, huh!!"
Unable to contain his rage, Buck raised the crude, hideous chrome prosthetic that had replaced the arm cut off as punishment and swung it high into the air.
Bang-! KWAANG-!!
"Open it!! Open the damn door right now, you rats!!"
The heavy chrome arm battered the steel door without mercy, but the door built to keep them locked inside wasn’t going to open that easily.
Then, growing frantic, Buck glared with bloodshot eyes and barked at one of his subordinates taking cover behind a wrecked vehicle nearby.
"You! Go get the laser cutter now!"
"N-now?! The Aldecaldos are out there...!"
When the subordinate protested over the thunderous blasts shaking everything around them, a terrifying killing intent flashed across Buck’s ugly face.
"You want to die by my hand right now, shithead? Hurry up and get it!!"
"Y-yes, sir!!"
The terrified subordinate ran off in a panic toward the workshop, where gunfire was still ripping through the air.
With him gone, Buck pressed himself against the steel door and listened to the explosions and gunfire outside with a low, venomous growl, then gave the people on the other side a horrible warning.
"You think this’ll save you? The moment that door opens, some of you are going to die by my hand for real."
Buck had once been punished by the boss for damaging merchandise, but somewhere along the way he had forgotten even that and was now soaked in murderous intent.
Before long, the subordinate came running back, panting and carrying a heavy industrial laser cutter.
"Hurry up!! Tear it open now!"
At Buck’s bark, the subordinate hurriedly powered up the cutter, and with a sizzling hiss, red-hot sparks licked the steel door and began melting through the gaps in the locking mechanism.
Meanwhile, the people inside the camp were being driven into a state of total panic by Buck’s murderous threats outside and the horrible sound of the steel door glowing red and melting away.
"W-what do we do... he’s really going to kill us all..."
"We should’ve opened it when he told us to earlier...!"
A few gaunt survivors sat down in the dirt, clutching their heads and spilling out regret in despair.
In truth, when the massive explosion went off from the Aldecaldos’ attack outside and Buck first shouted for the door to be opened, some of the terrified people had been ready to throw the bar aside and surrender.
But the one who stopped them was Ji-hwan. He had noticed that if things got worse outside, they would try to drag them out, and he had blocked the people trying to open the door with his own body, firmly talking them down.
"If we open that door and go out now, we’ll either be riddled with bullets from outside or killed by that bastard!"
Ji-hwan had led the frightened people and pointed toward the section he had been prying open earlier, shouting with certainty.
"As long as that door hasn’t been breached, we can still open this gap! Trust me!"
Back in the present, the laser cutter behind him was boring through the main steel door and spraying red sparks everywhere, but Ji-hwan didn’t turn around once.
Chiiiiii-!
The main door behind him was glowing red and melting under the industrial laser cutter Buck had brought, throwing off merciless sparks.
There was no time left. Ji-hwan had already jammed the rusted rebar he’d used to pry open the auxiliary door into the main door’s lock, buying Buck even one extra minute. That was the only use he’d gotten out of it.
So the only weapon left to Ji-hwan was his own body. He shoved his bare hands into the hairline gap in the auxiliary door and clung to the wall like a beast, yanking at the door with all his might.
"Gghh...!!"
But a pure human body with no chrome, no cyberware, had its limits.
Even as his skin tore and his nails peeled back, the heavy slab of metal refused to give him any more space.
Faced with that hopeless weight of steel, the eyes of the prisoners who had been helping Ji-hwan only moments ago began filling with fear and resignation once more.
"No... it’s over. We can’t do it!"
"He’s going to tear us apart for not opening the door earlier!!"
"This is your fault! If you hadn’t stopped us from opening it before...!"
Crushed by the fear rushing toward them, the people finally began hurling blame and curses at Ji-hwan.
But even with those arrows of resentment raining down on his back, Ji-hwan didn’t waver even a little.
Extreme tension and exhaustion had already left him badly dehydrated and dizzy, but he never let go of the metal in his hands and screamed as if his throat would split.
"Aaaagh-!!"
Chiiiiik-
Between Ji-hwan’s torn skin and muscle, a faint, eerie red vapor began to rise.
It wasn’t ordinary sweat or heat. It was his body answering his will.
The adults trembling in fear didn’t notice the tiny change.
But little Amy, who had been holding her breath right beside him, opened her eyes wide.
"Huh...?"
The moment Amy tilted her head and pointed a tiny finger at the red vapor rising from Ji-hwan’s body—
"Aaaaaaaghhhhh!!!"
A roar burst from Ji-hwan’s throat, no longer fully human.
Rrriip-! KRAK!
In Ji-hwan’s ears, the horrible sound of the muscle fibers in both his arms swelling all at once and tearing apart alive rang out with sickening clarity.
His brain had forcibly released the limiter and pushed his body’s output beyond its limit.
CRACKA-CRAAANG-!!!
Under that overwhelming strength, the stubborn auxiliary steel door finally bent backward like paper with a grotesque metallic scream, and a space just big enough for one adult to squeeze through miraculously opened into the dark pipe passage beyond.
"Haa... haa... I did it... I got through!"
Ji-hwan tried to smile, panting hard with relief and joy.
Just as he was about to lift the hand holding the door so he could hurry the others inside—
"...Huh?"
A bewildered breath slipped through Ji-hwan’s stiff lips. From his shoulder all the way to his fingertips, his brain’s command to move his arm wasn’t working at all.
As he slowly looked down at the strange sensation of total numbness, he finally saw the horrifying state of both his arms. The skin had been shredded to pieces, and the price of drawing out power beyond the limit was that the flesh had been torn open, the burst blood vessels and ripped muscle fibers laid bare as dark red blood poured out.
And as the adrenaline slowly faded, a searing pain like bone and flesh being ripped apart struck Ji-hwan’s brain like lightning.
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