"Ghhk..."
"Agh...! My, my arm...!"
In the narrow back alley near Afterlife, where flashy neon had been flickering just moments ago, the place had turned into a scene of utter ruin in only a few minutes.
Twelve Tiger Claws gang members, who had charged in with murderous intent and glowing tiger tattoos flashing under the lights, were now all sprawled in the trash and mud, not a single one left standing on two feet. Their arms and legs were broken, their katanas split in half, and their latest smart weapons lay scattered on the ground as useless lumps of scrap.
At the center of that pitiful meat pile, the only man who had walked out calmly was Ji-hwan—no, the merc named K.
K casually wiped the blood smears from the back of his hand on the sleeve of his worn jacket, then climbed onto his matte-black motorcycle parked in the dark.
He had torn through twelve armed gangsters using nothing but agility sharpened through destruction and regeneration, and raw steel-hard strength. Yet his breathing was perfectly steady, not the slightest bit ragged.
Vroooom-!!
K yanked the throttle hard, and the motorcycle shot forward, leaving a massive tire mark as it tore onto Night City’s wet roads.
After passing through Westbrook and leaving the dense forest of towers behind, he merged onto the outer roads. The stinging smell of exhaust and acid rain gave way to a dry, cold scent of sand.
The Badlands, the barren wasteland that ringed Night City.
A pitch-black desert road with not a single streetlight. Only the motorcycle’s headlamp cut through the darkness, stretching endlessly ahead.
Feeling the cold night wind of the wasteland, Ji-hwan frowned beneath his helmet.
The gig details on the data shard Rogue had handed him outside Afterlife were still swirling in his head.
"The target is a Biotechnica facility on the edge of the Badlands... and it was built just a year ago."
K’s eyes darkened slightly.
About a year ago. That timing was strangely close to the period when Ji-hwan himself had dropped into this insane cyberpunk world like he’d fallen from the sky.
According to Rogue’s intel, the facility was officially packaged as an "eco-friendly agricultural research center" meant to improve the dry Badlands soil and produce food. On paper, it was dressed up as a shining, noble place.
Its public image was practically a sanctuary for the starving people of Night City.
But the truth dug up by the fixer queen’s information network was grotesque.
Right after the facility began operating about a year ago, homeless people, drifters, and the kind of bottom-rung civilians from the city and the outskirts who could disappear overnight without anyone caring about them started vanishing one by one without a trace. And every single trail of those missing people ended near that Biotechnica research facility.
"The goal is to find out what the hell Biotechnica is doing in the area where the missing persons’ trail goes cold, and quietly obtain internal data as evidence."
"So she wants me to sneak in quietly and steal the data. Hah... fuck. So that’s why that old hag was running her mouth about getting me a netrunner."
Ji-hwan, who was muttering words he knew she’d hate, understood his own limits better than anyone.
In a straight fight, even if dozens of gangsters came at him or a machine blocked his path, he was confident he could rip them all apart with his bare hands.
But slipping past a heavily fortified facility network, infiltrating an underground data center, connecting to encrypted servers, and pulling the data out "quietly" was a very different matter for him right now.
And on top of that, he wasn’t a netrunner. He couldn’t hack at all.
"So in the end, I need a netrunner who can quietly open the door for me."
Ji-hwan knew that if he just headed straight to the job site like this, he’d end up a mute sitting duck, setting off every alarm and becoming a bullet-riddled honeycomb.
With that thought, he shifted gears and turned his motorcycle toward Dakota Smith’s hideout, his reliable backer and only source of intel.
Kkigigigik-!
In the middle of the Badlands, a scrapyard reeking of ozone, thick engine oil, and the sharp bite of solder smoke.
Under a broken Makigai MaiMai someone had apparently scavenged from somewhere, Dakota Smith was fiddling with tangled wiring. Only her lower body stuck out from beneath the car as she grunted and worked.
When she saw Ji-hwan get off the motorcycle, she asked casually, not even looking up.
"Hm? Since when do you know how to work on vehicles too?"
At the sound of his voice, Dakota slid out on a wheeled creeper and pushed her goggles up onto her forehead.
"If you’re a nomad living off Badlands dust and wind, basic maintenance skills are a passive. If your ride dies out here in the middle of nowhere and you can’t fix it yourself, you’re dog food."
She wiped the grease from her hands with a rag and gave a friendly snort.
"You’re back in a day, so I guess that shiny little Night City didn’t suit your taste after all?"
"It’s not that it didn’t suit me. There were so many flies I couldn’t even eat properly. More importantly, check this out."
Ji-hwan pulled Rogue’s data shard from his pocket and tossed it to Dakota.
"A gig Rogue from Afterlife handed me."
"What? Rogue gave you... wait, this is..."
The moment Dakota took the shard, her expression hardened.
She hadn’t even plugged it into a terminal. Just from the encrypted code etched on the surface, she seemed to recognize the job immediately.
"Hey. You knew where this gig was pointed at before you took it?"
"Yeah. A Biotechnica facility. Officially an eco-friendly agricultural research center, but behind the curtain it’s a hollow sanctuary doing filthy things to random drifters."
"You crazy bastard. If you knew, why’d you take it?"
Dakota snapped, flinging the shard to the ground in irritation.
"This was a gig that came to me first a few days ago. I ran my intel network over it and the stink coming off it was so rotten I shut it down cold. Told them I wasn’t about to get my mercs killed over this. And now that crazy bitch Rogue bypasses the fixer chain and dumps this bomb in your lap?!"
She pressed hard at her temples as if she had a headache and glared at K.
"Reject it. Right now. This is a corpo mess, and not just any corpo mess—Biotechnica, the peak of biotech, is involved. And there are rumors that Raffen Shiv raider scum have also been hired and are swarming around that facility. No matter how much of a monster you are, if you get tangled up in this too early, you’ll be ground to dust without leaving a trace, like sand in the Badlands!"
Seeing Dakota practically lose her mind, K clicked his tongue inwardly.
So Dakota was that serious about it?
Back when Ji-hwan used to play this world’s game through a monitor, he had mostly been busy trading shots with the blatantly violent corps like Arasaka and Militech. He had never really dug into Biotechnica’s deeper lore or the worldbuilding around it.
He’d only brushed it off as some stuffy company growing crops in the desert and pumping out synthetic protein. So he hadn’t fully grasped how terrifying a tripwire this gig really was.
If a veteran fixer who had seen everything was trying this hard to stop him, then this had to involve lunatics beyond imagination.
But Ji-hwan picked up the shard from the ground and looked Dakota in the eye with a slow, steady gaze.
"I’m not rejecting it."
"What? You little shit, can’t you understand a damn thing I’m saying...?"
"I understand. It’s a pain in the ass, a headache, and a drag. And thanks to you, I also know it’s dangerous. But..."
Ji-hwan tightened his grip on the shard in his hand.
"Hiding behind a nice excuse like that while dragging powerless people off to be used up for who knows what... I don’t know about anything else, but seeing that kind of garbage with my own eyes and just pretending I didn’t? That makes my stomach turn. Somebody has to do it."
Dakota stared at him in silence, speechless.
A completely unaugmented human from head to toe, yet he was pointing an almost arrogant sense of justice at one of Night City’s giant corporations.
"And if this ends up dragging corpo trouble back onto the Badlands because of me,"
Ji-hwan added with a faint smile, speaking as calmly as if it were nothing.
"then just cut me loose. Say some random outsider went off the rails on his own and cut the tail off. I’ll make sure none of it comes back on you or the other nomads."
A heavy declaration that he would shoulder every bit of responsibility himself. Dakota stared into his resolute eyes for a long moment, then finally threw both hands up and let out a deep sigh toward the sky.
"Haa... damn it. I swear, I’ve never met a guy this exhausting and nosy in my life."
She put a hand on her hip and shook her head.
"Cut you loose? Cut the tail? What kind of joke is that? What fixer just stands by and watches a guy they fed and sheltered in their territory die? Fuck it. Fine! Do whatever you want!"
In the end, Dakota surrendered completely to Ji-hwan’s stubbornness. She turned sharply toward the old trailer deeper inside the garage.
"But I’m not sending you alone. If you’re the one doing the infiltration, then bring at least one netrunner to cover your back!"
She raised a wrench and banged it against the trailer’s steel door.
"Hey, Marcus! We’re going to rip off some shitty corpo job, so pack your gear and get your ass out here now!"
Clank.
A moment later, the trailer door opened, and a man stepped out with the smell of coolant pouring after him.
He was tall and lean, a Black man whose appearance was far too out of place for an ordinary Badlands nomad covered in dust.
Between his thick dreadlocks were thin fiber-optic cables and data ports flashing with neon light, all tangled together at random, and inside the worn coat he wore, top-tier cooling systems hummed softly.
And there was that lazy, condescending look in his eyes, with just a hint of pathetic smugness. He was from the Voodoo Boys, the top netrunner crew in Night City and the ghosts of Pacifica.
He had once been a fairly hotshot talent in that terrifying crew, but after a fatal hacking screwup, he’d run to the Badlands terrified of being executed by the organization. A cowardly, meticulous, greedy hacker. That was Marcus.
"Aaaah~ Boss. I was just about to plant a backdoor in a Kang Tao ice wall~. Who’s gonna make up for my losses if you call me out like this and kill my vibe~?"
Marcus lifted his sunglasses and plugged the data shard Dakota had handed him into a neural port.
But just three seconds later, his relaxed cyber-eyes flashed blue, and then he let out a dumbfounded laugh.
"Hmmm~ Biotechnica underground data center? You’re kidding meee?"
Marcus yanked the cable out irritably and glanced at Ji-hwan leaning against the motorcycle.
"So~ this guy is my new wallet... no, my partner? Even if I got kicked out of Pacifica, you want me to ram a corporate ICE wall head-on right now? If my brain gets fried black, are you at least gonna pay for a decent funeral~?"
Ji-hwan casually revved the motorcycle engine and tilted his head.
"Get on, netrunner. I’ll handle the bastards who come at us."
That made Marcus slap a hand to his forehead and wave him off in disbelief.
"And I’m supposed to infiltrate with that brutish guy too? No thanks. I only have one life, so I’m not getting involved in a plan that isn’t thoroughly prepared."
Pointing a finger, Marcus began arguing in his usual slow, defensive tone.
"Don’t show off how dumb you are, big guy~. Even back when I was grinding under those... ahem, scary big brothers, I never worked like this~. To tear apart their system architecture, build a custom daemon, and set up a perfect backdoor for a clean exit~? That takes at least until tomorrow sunset, okay? If not, I’m out~."
A careful, cowardly excuse from a netrunner. Ji-hwan killed the motorcycle engine and asked indifferently,
"You’re picky. Then we’ll leave at sunset tomorrow."
"Huh... huh? Seriously?"
"Doesn’t matter. If it means you can definitely save me the trouble, I’ll wait that long."
There was no way they could just charge into a corpo job blind. Marcus’s obsessive need to protect his own life and safety actually made him seem more trustworthy to Ji-hwan as a partner who wouldn’t stab him in the back.
From there, Ji-hwan rode his motorcycle to the converted container lodging Dakota had given him in a corner of the scrapyard. He had spent so little time wandering the Badlands that this cramped, rough space—nothing more than a bed and an old sofa—now felt cozy and comfortable, almost like home. To shake off the fatigue from the close-quarters brawl he’d just had in the city, Ji-hwan tossed aside his worn flight jacket and lay down on the bed, sinking into a deep, peaceful sleep.
The next afternoon.
In the wide sandy clearing in front of the lodging, dull explosions kept bursting nonstop.
Kwaang!Kwaang!!
With his shirt thrown off, Ji-hwan was warming up by suspending huge chunks of scrap in the air and smashing them apart with his bare hands.
His muscles rippled like an active volcano every time he breathed, and each time he drove a fist forward, a violent shockwave shoved the surrounding sandstorm away in every direction.
He was still forging and training that beast-like body of his when...
"Hey~! We’re ready, so start packing your stuff and get your ass out here~!"
Marcus, leaning against a van in the distance, waved at Ji-hwan.
Ji-hwan took a light breath and wiped the sweat from his face.
Then he went back inside, put on his worn flight jacket, strapped a single basic analog knife to his waist, and stepped back out.
Marcus, fully geared up and ready to roll, turned toward Ji-hwan with his cyber-eyes flashing.
"Good, the daemon setup is done. Now I just need to match the route around the security net..."
He snapped his fingers.
"Open your personal frequency and neural local port so I can brief the op~. I’ve been scanning you, but I can’t get a read on your bandwidth, so how much..."
Marcus’s words cut off abruptly. The blue scan light pouring from his eyes swept over Ji-hwan’s entire body, but the data that came back was a perfect zero. No neural access port, not even a cheap communication implant. A completely blank slate.
"Wait a sec~. You... seriously don’t have a single implant?"
Marcus’s jaw dropped.
It was rare enough to see a human in Night City with no chrome, but he never would have imagined some lunatic in the merc world running around without even a comm chip.
"Holy shit... really? Fuck, then how are we supposed to communicate once I’m buried deep underground with you? Telepathy or something~?!"
For Marcus, who valued total connectivity above all else, Ji-hwan’s absurdly analog state was pure terror.
As Marcus hopped around and unloaded his complaints, Ji-hwan scratched the back of his head awkwardly.
"Uh... can’t we just turn on a phone and use speaker mode?"
"Are you fucking insane?! You want to go advertise to the corporate security network, ‘Hey, I’m infiltrating right here!’?"
In the end, Marcus slapped a hand to his forehead, veins popping, and let out a long sigh. Then he rummaged through the passenger seat of his van and pulled out something dusty, tossing it to Ji-hwan.
"Haa... what a life. Here, take this. It’s an old radio from the days when nomads still used this kind of thing, but I’ve set it up so it only connects directly and locally to my deck."
He pointed a finger and issued a greedy warning.
"This thing’s a pretty pricey antique if you sell it on the black market~. When the job’s done, you’d better return it without a single scratch, okay~? If you lose it, I’m deducting it from the fee~."
"Uh... sure."
Ji-hwan answered blankly, looking down at the crude old earpiece radio in his palm.
"Test, one two. Can you hear me~?"
"Yeah, loud and clear."
"Good. Then we’re rolling~. I’ll handle backup and hacking from the van, so you ride the bike and move only when I tell you to~."
At the time when the red sunset was sinking beyond the edge of the wasteland, Marcus climbed into his netrunning van bristling with thick antennas and started the engine, while Ji-hwan mounted his matte-black motorcycle and twisted the throttle.
Vroooom-!Kwaaang!
The two vehicles kicked up harsh sand as they left Dakota’s garage and raced into the endless darkness of the Badlands.
At the outskirts of the Badlands, in a cliffside area where dry red rocks jutted up in strange shapes.
"I’m here. I’ll move alone from this point on."
Ji-hwan hid the motorcycle in a shadowed crack in the rocks atop the cliff and whispered into the earpiece.
Hundreds of meters away at a safe distance, Marcus had parked his van behind a huge boulder and was already deep in cyberspace, his body submerged in an ice-cold tub with dozens of cables plugged into his brain.
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