My name is Mia. I’m ten years old.
Just a few weeks ago, my family was loading everything we owned into an old truck and driving toward Night City.
Dad promised that once we got to the city, he’d feed us so much synthetic meat that we’d get sick of the taste of real meat. My sister and I would point at the neon lights of the glittering skyscrapers every night and dream about warm beds.
But our hopeful move was shattered by the Raffen Shiv gang that swept down on us in the barren sandstorms of the Badlands.
They trampled Dad when he resisted, shoved us into some damp warehouse like dogs or pigs, and a few days later we were packed into a cold iron container with people who looked like our family but weren’t. We were hauled off somewhere in that rattling darkness, trembling in terror for days. When the container door finally opened, the place we were thrown into was this horrifying underground detention center, reeking of blood.
It was hell.
Every night, demons in pure white protective suits opened the detention block’s iron bars and dragged people away one by one. The first to go was Dad, who had stepped in front of them to protect us.
"Dad will be right back. Hold on tight to Mom and your sister."
That was the last thing he ever said.
Three days later, they took Mom too, after she kept crying and calling for Dad.
"Our Mia, you have to listen to your sister. I love you..."
Mom never came back either.
After that, in the dark, cold cage, how many people were dragged away...? When only the two of us were left, my sister hugged my shaking body tight and whispered to me.
"It’s okay, Mia. Keep your eyes shut. This is just a really bad dream. You’ll wake up soon."
But a few days ago, those white demons grabbed my last sister by the hair too, and I clutched her hand with all my strength.
But the grip of a ten-year-old child couldn’t beat the rough hand of an adult man. My hand slipped helplessly away, and all I could do was cry miserably as I watched my sister being dragged farther and farther away.
"Mia, don’t cry! Your sister will come and get you...!"
The iron door slammed shut, and her voice was cut off.
Dad was gone. Mom was gone. My sister, who had been forced to let go of my hand, was gone too. And then, finally, it was my turn.
A blindingly white operating room. My limbs bound to thick leather straps, I stared blankly up at the dazzling surgical lamp hanging overhead.
The bulky cybernetic surgeon and the researchers leaned over me and started babbling about something.
Neocortex, chimera, evolution, dissection... the white demons’ lips moved, but I didn’t want to know anymore. I didn’t want to hear it anymore.
And my mind, already pushed past its limit, couldn’t understand a single word of those horrible things. It all just sounded like a buzzing ringing in my ears.
I looked up at them with empty eyes and just prayed and prayed that this nightmare would end soon, that I could meet Dad, Mom, and my sister again in heaven.
Then, just as the cold metal saw on the machine arm whirred closer and the icy, sharp blade was about to touch the thin skin on my forehead, I slowly closed my eyes and let my last, resigned tears roll down my cheeks.
'Mom... Dad... Sister... I’m coming too.'
That was when it happened.
Srrrk—
The operating room’s sealed automatic door quietly opened.
"Huh? Who’s there? This is a restricted area! Get out now—!"
"What... what are the guards doing!!"
Before the researcher who had turned to stop the intruder could even finish his irritated shout, the huge man who walked in from the darkness swept past them like a gust of wind.
So overwhelming was his speed and stealth that the researchers and the cybernetic surgeon didn’t even realize Ji-hwan had passed them and stepped in front of me.
"Y-you... gack?!"
The surgeon, shocked to see Ji-hwan’s back standing before the operating table, tried to speak, but what burst from his mouth was not a furious yell. It was a gush of dark red blood.
"Grrrgh...!"
"Uhkh..."
In an instant, Ji-hwan’s analog dagger had slit the surgeon’s throat, and the two researchers clutched their necks and collapsed to the floor at the same time. Blood sprayed from their deeply cut airways like fountains, staining the pure white tile red. They barely managed to crawl to Ji-hwan’s feet, gasping and pleading.
"P-please... s-save us..."
Ji-hwan, breathing hard, casually flicked the blood from his blade and looked down at them with icy indifference.
"Die in as much pain as possible. That’s the least you owe the people you’ve killed all this time, calling them test subjects."
"...!!"
Then Ji-hwan’s steel-hard fingers tore through the restraints on the operating table as easily as slicing tofu, and he lifted the frozen girl into his arms before carefully setting her down on the floor.
My empty eyes, with barely a breath of life left in them and not a shred of hope. When Ji-hwan faced that ravaged expression, his own face twisted for an instant with terrible grief and rage, but perhaps he couldn’t bear to show such a frightening look to a child, because he quickly turned away and hid it.
Instead, he wiped the blood from his hand on his clothes and gently laid it on top of the little girl’s head.
With a rough but very careful touch, he stroked my hair and offered silent comfort. Then Ji-hwan suppressed the beastlike breath boiling in his chest and tapped the old, outdated earpiece hooked over his ear.
"Hey, Marcus."
[H-hey? What’s wrong? What was that noise outside! Why aren’t you back yet, what are you doing?!]
"I don’t think... I can do this."
Ji-hwan’s voice was so calm and cold it was hard to believe he was the same man who had just cut a person’s throat a moment ago.
"If I were a merc, I’d be supposed to shut my eyes, find my own way out, and come back no matter what. But I just can’t do that."
[W-what?! Hey!! K!! What the hell are you talking about?!]
"Just go back and stay with Dakota. And... tell her I’m sorry for leaving with nothing but baggage."
[You crazy bastard!! Have you lost your mind?! Get your ass out here right now?! The guards are coming...!!]
Crack—
Before Marcus’s frantic scream could even finish, Ji-hwan tightened his fingers and crushed the communicator in his ear into powder.
It was a complete, one-sided severing, meant to make sure the netrunner maintaining the covert line wouldn’t be traced or caught in the blast radius.
At the same time, inside the van behind the cliff, Marcus, submerged in ice water, stared blankly at the suddenly dead signal.
He stared at the static-filled monitor for a long time with a stunned expression, then grabbed his head with both hands.
"That... crazy bastard!!!!"
Marcus’s voice echoed inside the cramped van, but there was no one left to answer him. By then, Ji-hwan had already walked straight into the middle of hell on his own two feet.
The moment the operating room floor turned slick with blood, the facility’s internal security system, having detected the researchers’ cardiac arrests, began to convulse like a mad thing.
Wee-oo! Wee-oo! Wee-oo!
The dazzling white lights of the underground second floor all turned into blood-red warning lamps at once, and the entire facility shook. Hundreds of corporate troops waiting on the surface and the first basement level began thundering down toward the second floor in heavy boots.
Ji-hwan went straight out of the operating room to buy time, heading for the main entrance of the second basement.
It was a massive iron gate where the main elevator from the surface and the emergency stairwell converged. Ji-hwan immediately gripped the gap in the thick steel doors with both hands and slowly twisted them into a grotesque knot, like taffy.
Kreeeeeeeeek!!
The iron door was warped beyond all hope of opening without a welder or heavy machinery. As soon as the giant barricade was finished, enough to delay the enemy’s advance for a moment, he hurled himself toward the detention block where the prisoners were being held.
In the corridor, where the blood-red warning lights were flashing like crazy, the resident security forces from the second basement had already rushed in and set up a barricade.
"Halt!! We’ll fire...!"
The guard captain shouted while raising a smart rifle, but Ji-hwan didn’t slow down. If anything, he kicked off the floor with explosive speed and charged straight into the center of their formation.
With a speed that gave them no time to pull the trigger, the head of the guard in front snapped at a grotesque angle, and his body flew up into the air.
Ji-hwan snatched a flash grenade from the waist of the airborne corpse, then rammed the metal lump, pin still in place, straight into the face shield of the guard beside him.
"Aaaagh!"
Before the scream could even end, Ji-hwan’s fist punched through body armor, shattered the man’s sternum, and sent blood spraying as broken gun parts sliced through the air.
He didn’t bother stealing their guns and firing them. As if even reloading was a waste of time, he swung his massive arms and smashed the helmets of the oncoming guards into the concrete wall.
Those who tried to resist half-heartedly were sent flying to the end of the corridor, bones breaking as if they’d been hit by a Centaur.
In just one minute, the corridor leading to the detention block was dyed a brutal red with the bodies of guards whose limbs were twisted and whose blood was pouring out.
Covered head to toe in enemy blood, Ji-hwan broke through the corridor like a merciless wrecking train without a single moment of hesitation and finally reached the detention block.
Using his heavy, iron-hard arms and legs, with blood still dripping from them, he smashed the rusted steel cages like toys and pulled the prisoners out.
"Get up. We’re getting out of here."
A tiny spark of hope, one Ji-hwan had carved open himself, began to appear in their dull, empty eyes.
As the people clung to the instinctive hope that they might still live and helped one another to their feet, Mia, who had followed Ji-hwan out of the operating room, looked up at the face of the giant man who had saved her with dazed eyes.
Ji-hwan crouched down on one knee and gently took Mia’s thin hand in his own big, rough one, wiping the blood from his clothes as best he could.
"You’re safe now."
That warm, solid touch. Mia’s blank eyes shook hard.
That rough warmth was so much like the callused hand of her father—the hand that had always held hers tight to comfort her in the truck on the way to Night City, and again on the cold floor of the detention center... the hand of a man who was no longer in this world.
"D-Dad..."
The tears she had been holding back burst out down Mia’s cheeks all at once.
The child clutched Ji-hwan’s thick fingers and began sobbing like a beast. Ji-hwan silently patted her back, then carefully entrusted Mia to the people who had just been freed from the cages.
He had just finished sorting out the situation and was thinking about how to evacuate everyone when—
Beep.
The screen of the personal device on his wrist lit up with a small alarm.
What appeared on the screen was complex 3D mapping data linking the second basement to the surface.
It was the "emergency escape route" data that Marcus, the netrunner who had said he’d run without looking back if he got traced, had risked his life to force through the firewall just before the signal cut out. On that data, a small maintenance elevator tucked against the innermost wall of the massive dome tunnel was blinking with a red dot.
For a support job from someone he’d only met yesterday, it was a life-risking favor. Ji-hwan gave a short laugh and tapped the device.
"Guess I owe you one..."
After checking the route to the tunnel, Ji-hwan turned to the group of survivors who were helping one another and trembling all over.
If he led them himself, their movement would slow down drastically, and he couldn’t block every bullet raining down on them. Someone had to draw the enemy’s attention.
Then, among the hostages in the detention block, a thin man with a limp in one leg staggered forward.
"I-I... is there anything I can do to help?"
Even as the man’s lips trembled in fear, he looked at Ji-hwan with determined eyes. Ji-hwan wordlessly placed his personal device in the man’s hand.
"I’m going to draw all their attention. The moment you see them focusing on me, don’t look back—run straight to that tunnel following the map. Can you get everyone out?"
"Y-yes...! I’ll get everyone out, no matter what."
"I’m counting on you."
[A-ack, ahem. All test subjects inside the facility, remain calm and return quietly to your detention cages. This is nothing serious, so do not resist. Any subject who resists will be executed immediately.]
Ji-hwan’s face hardened so coldly it was frightening as he decided to wipe out every last one of the bastards who had made this hell. Just as he was about to take his first step toward the blood-red corridor,
something tugged lightly at the hem of his clothes.
It was the child he had saved earlier.
When Ji-hwan paused and lowered his head, letting the killing intent fade, Mia’s tiny hands were clutching the bloodstained fabric of his pants like a lifeline.
"M-mister... don’t go... please..."
Terrified that she might lose the only person who had saved her after losing her father, mother, and sister, the child looked up at Ji-hwan with tears streaming down her face.
As Mia’s vision blurred white with tears, a big, callused, warm hand gently settled on top of her little head.
It was a gentle warmth, impossible to believe came from the same hand that had just cut a man’s throat.
"It’s okay."
Ji-hwan met the child’s tearful eyes and whispered softly, his voice kind.
"I’m going to teach those bad guys a lesson, then I’ll follow right after."
At Ji-hwan’s faint smile, Mia’s clenched hands loosened just a little, and the man waiting behind her stepped forward to carefully take her hand and lift her up.
Ji-hwan checked that they were fully behind the cargo stacks and ready to evacuate, then tightened his grip on the knife behind his back.
He had no intention of hiding anymore.
All he needed now was to draw every enemy eye onto himself.
Swish.
Ji-hwan stepped out from the deep shadow and boldly revealed himself in the middle of the corridor, where the red warning lights flashed wildly.
"Th-there he is!! An intruder!! Open fire!!"
Tatatatang-!!
The guards spotted Ji-hwan and immediately squeezed the triggers of their smart rifles like madmen.
As the chaotic trajectories of bullets poured toward his entire body, Ji-hwan didn’t dodge. Instead, he ran straight at the storm of gunfire.
Boom—!
Ji-hwan’s thigh muscles swelled like they were about to burst as he kicked off hard enough to shatter the concrete floor. With reflexes and instinct pushed to the limit of human ability, he read the paths of the incoming bullets and tore through the line of fire, slipping with eerie flexibility into the middle of the enemy formation.
While sprinting at full speed, every time Ji-hwan’s right hand cut through the air, a dagger shot from his grip.
Thud—!
"Ghk...!"
The flying dagger pierced the face shield of the guard in front and buried itself in his forehead. In that split-second opening, Ji-hwan lifted the dead guard’s body as a shield and deflected the next wave of bullets.
"You insane monster!!"
Body enhancement, monstrous visual processing, throwing skill, and control over the surrounding environment. Ji-hwan kicked a heavy industrial fire extinguisher off the floor and sent it flying into the enemy ranks, then the dagger that had left his hand slammed brutally into the airborne extinguisher.
Kwaang—!!
The extinguisher exploded, and a choking white cloud of powder completely swallowed their vision. Inside that white curtain, Ji-hwan’s merciless assault began.
Instead of pulling a trigger, he used his huge bare hands to crush the guards’ thick reinforced gloves, then snapped the neck of the guard whose hand had been broken. After that, blood and screams flew wildly through the air.
In the middle of the hellish melee, just as every gun barrel and every ounce of killing intent from the oncoming security forces was focused perfectly on Ji-hwan alone,
the man hiding in the darkness nodded with hardened resolve and began leading the trembling people silently toward the tunnel.
It was a single miracle, created by a man willing to soak himself in blood for it.
But even as he tore through the guards in front of him, Ji-hwan’s expression grew colder and colder.
For some reason, the enemy equipment kept getting heavier, and the quality of the soldiers kept rising.
'These are just regular sentries?'
The ones he had just dropped were clearly low-level resident guards inside the facility.
But their toughness and armament were far beyond what you’d see in heavily armed street gangs in the city center, and they had the eerie quality of charging even after bullets hit vital points, their nervous systems numbed so they couldn’t feel pain.
If the low-level troops were this well equipped, then the "real soldiers" waiting beyond the giant elevator door Ji-hwan had already warped would be beyond imagination.
And that ominous feeling was never wrong.
Thud... thud... thud...
At the end of the corridor, beyond the white smoke, the creepy sound of a massive machine pressing down on the ground began to approach.
Those who emerged through the smoke were on a completely different level from the guards he had just been fighting. They radiated a dense, murderous aura.
People covered head to toe in ballistic armor, with multi-combat optics glowing red in their sockets. With both arms replaced by giant plasma cannons and high-heat blades, exhaling mechanical breaths, the facility’s true elite from Biotechnica began appearing one by one out of the darkness.
"...This is going to be a pain in the ass."
The pressure of the elite unit emerging through the smoke.
Their combat power, read in detail by Ji-hwan’s beastlike senses, was on par with the "shadow unit" operatives of Zetatech who had once fought him in a bloody battle almost evenly before he entered the city days ago.
Of course, he had been the one to break those terrifying bastards, but the problem wasn’t just the elite troops lined up in front of him.
When he thought about the countless remaining corporate troops that would keep pouring in like ants from beyond the elevator door he had already crushed, the coming battle was obviously going to be a vicious, grueling war of attrition.
Desperate numerical inferiority, endless waves of corporate soldiers, and the people behind him who had to be kept alive no matter what.
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