No more air could pass through his lungs. Coagulated blood, forced back up from the organs shattered by Alpha’s attack, kept spilling out of Ji-hwan’s open mouth and soaking his chin.
Squelch.
Stepping forward through the pool of blood, Ji-hwan’s right ankle twisted at an impossible angle and dragged along the floor.
But he kept dragging that ruined leg and walking forward, seeing nothing but Alpha in front of him.
At the grotesque sight, Alpha was stunned. It was like a corpse was walking toward him. A reality-defying scene. For a man who had spent his whole life worshiping the superiority of chrome, an incomprehensible and horrific cognitive dissonance crashed through Alpha’s brain.
Swoosh.
Without realizing it, Alpha took a step back.
Then, catching himself in the shame of having retreated, he gritted his teeth, raised his cracked Gorilla Arms, and reset his stance.
He wanted nothing more than to rip out that stubborn life right then and there, to wash away this unknown terror scratching at his spine.
But Director Lowell’s order to "keep him breathing" had him by the throat.
The restriction that Ji-hwan had to be taken alive left him so frustrated he couldn’t even give the order to open fire to the men lined up behind him.
While he was trapped in confusion and humiliation, Ji-hwan kept moving, closing the line of fire one step at a time.
The energy that had filled his body was gone. Both arms and legs bent and twisted however they pleased.
The knife and grenades at his waist had been spent long ago.
He felt no strength at all anymore, no tension coiled through his body.
"So this is it."
The journey from the Badlands junkyard to this cold underground chamber flashed through his mind.
What was left? What could he do with this collapsing body? A bitter smile spread across Ji-hwan’s bloodstained mouth.
"Yeah. This is the end."
With that cold resignation, Ji-hwan quietly looked into the emptiness inside himself.
At the bottom of that abyss, where nothing remained, there was still something tiny and faint. A small pulse that looked as if it would crumble away with even one shallow breath.
Even if he died after this strike, Ji-hwan decided to stake everything on that single spark.
Squelch.
At last, Ji-hwan reached Alpha’s nose and forcibly steadied the body that was about to collapse forward.
His staggering legs planted themselves on the floor and stood straight. Then Ji-hwan’s body began to move.
That tiny pulse, drawn up from somewhere deep in his gut, rose through the muscles in his legs.
The force traveled back through his waist, climbed his spine, surged up his back, passed through his unbroken left arm, and gathered completely at the end of his fist.
A very faint but unmistakable [red smoke] shimmered like heat haze over Ji-hwan’s rough bare fist.
That fist began to cleave the air toward Alpha’s face.
A motion so slow it felt like time itself had stopped.
In that stretching moment, Ji-hwan suddenly realized why he had never been able to use this technique at will.
It wasn’t power he forced into existence.
It was a realm of mastery only reachable when all strength had been emptied away, when one had become nothing.
Ironically, only now, with his body dying, could he fully contain that wave.
His physical functions had stopped, but Ji-hwan’s fist, carrying that final realization in full, cut through the air in silence.
Faced with that slow fist, Alpha initially planned to simply take the blow on his own hardened body.
Zzzzt—!!
But then his razor-sharp instincts, the ones that had kept him alive through decades in the gutters of Night City, screamed in his skull. The survival sense that had gone dull while he lived like a corporate dog on comfortable feed suddenly howled back to life.
He couldn’t understand it with his head.
But a warning of danger slammed over his whole body.
"You little... fuck...!"
He threw dignity aside, twisted his upper body in a hurry, and rolled viciously across the floor to get out of the line of attack.
"What’s with him?"
"Boss?!"
The Manticore Squad members waiting behind him muttered in confusion.
Their leader, the man who would normally never do such a thing, was rolling on the ground just to avoid a dying man’s weak punch.
Before the men’s confusion could even fade, Ji-hwan’s empty fist, having brushed past Alpha’s shoulder, lightly touched the surface of the thick concrete pillar standing behind him.
There was no heavy boom, no violent tremor.
Only a light, empty scraping sound, like a broom sweeping across dry cement, drifted through the corridor lit by flashing red warning lights.
Alpha, who had been rolling on the floor, slowly lifted his head through the dust.
The pillar was untouched. Not a scratch on it.
He had thrown away his pride and hurled himself aside, relying on decades of survival instinct, and yet the result was pathetically small and miserable.
"Boss...? What was that?"
The squad’s confused voices. Puzzled eyes fixed on their leader, who had ended up rolling on the ground in terror over a feeble punch that had cut through the air.
The moment Alpha realized the fear he had felt was nothing but an illusion, his face flushed with disgusting shame and rage.
Crack—!
"You piece of trash, how dare you pull a stunt like that...!"
Grinding his teeth hard enough to crush bone, Alpha sprang to his feet.
He strode toward Ji-hwan, planning to half-kill him for this humiliating disgrace, and seized Ji-hwan’s collar without mercy.
"Get on the floor right now...!"
Just as Alpha was about to slam Ji-hwan down with his powerful mechanical arm, a startled sound leaked from his throat like a puff of air.
"Huh...?"
At that strange sound, the squad’s eyes all turned toward Alpha.
Ji-hwan, still gripped by the collar in Alpha’s hand, was frozen stiff in the exact same posture as when he had thrown the punch.
His skin had gone cold. His chest no longer rose or fell. His eyes had rolled back, leaving only the whites showing.
Ji-hwan had spent every last drop of life force and died standing there, fist still extended.
"What the fuck!!"
Alpha, face drained of color, shoved the collar away violently. Ji-hwan’s body collapsed weakly and rolled across the floor.
"Netrunner!! Get me the best MaxDoc now! Hurry!!"
Startled by Alpha’s shouting, the netrunner rushed out and handed over a red MaxDoc injector.
Alpha immediately drove the syringe, packed with hundreds of millions of medical nanomachines, into the area around Ji-hwan’s heart and pressed the high-pressure pump.
Thud—! Hissssss—!
Ji-hwan’s cold corpse jerked once from the recoil of the nanomachines flooding directly into his heart.
But that was all. The cutting-edge nanomachines that should have forcibly regenerated the destroyed muscles and blood vessels had gone dead the moment they entered Ji-hwan’s body.
"B-Boss! The injected nanomachines have all lost function inside his body!"
"What the hell are you talking about? That’s top-grade medical gear!"
"I-I don’t know. This is... what the hell is this...?"
At the netrunner’s horrified report, even Night City’s most advanced medical technology had run into the unknown that was Ji-hwan’s body.
"Damn it, damn it!! I was told to bring him back alive no matter what...!!"
Alpha, having lost his reason, kept jabbing in the remaining MaxDoc and pressing down on Ji-hwan’s chest.
But after hanging on for tens of minutes and trying everything to restart Ji-hwan’s heart, every attempt at CPR ended in failure.
At last, sensing that all efforts had been in vain, Alpha covered his throbbing forehead and staggered upright.
The suffocating stress. The reprimand and punishment awaiting him from Director Lowell made his expression twist grotesquely.
"Haa... Just bag the corpse and move it upstairs for now."
Alpha gave the order in exhaustion, then turned toward the elevator, already nursing a headache and about to report to Director Lowell.
Then—
Kugugugugung—!!!
From behind him came the sound of the floor caving in, and gray dust surged over them like a tidal wave.
"What the hell?!"
"B-Boss!! That pillar!!"
At the squad’s panicked cries, Alpha spun around on reflex.
The concrete pillar Ji-hwan’s weak bare fist had touched just moments ago was collapsing in pieces, as if it had hidden an invisible bomb inside, crashing down with a heavy roar.
"No way...?"
Cold sweat poured down Alpha’s spine like a waterfall.
What if he hadn’t dodged and had taken that punch lightly? The thought flashed through his mind, ominous and sharp, but he shook his head and forced it away.
"Boss... what was that just now...?"
The netrunner asked in a trembling voice, but Alpha shook his head hard.
"Must’ve been your imagination... It’s an old facility. The load just gave out and collapsed."
Anyway, the man who had done that impossible thing was already dead.
"Get back to your posts and check your gear. As for the Director... haa, I’ll report to him myself."
Alpha let out a heavy sigh, already foreseeing the miserable mess his life was about to become, and turned away roughly.
At the far end of the corridor, where the sound of his shoes was fading, Ji-hwan’s body was being coldly packed into a sealed corporate body bag by company operatives.
**
A sensation like the sea, yet warm and soft like being held in his mother’s arms.
Within that languor, Ji-hwan slowly opened his eyes.
"Where is this...?"
A pure white space. Nothing could be seen above, below, left, or right. It had no visible end, but it felt as if a thin membrane had been stretched across it, hiding whatever lay beyond.
Ji-hwan stared blankly into the void and muttered, "Ah. So I’m dead."
"Yeah. You’ll be dead soon enough."
A calm voice answered his self-talk. Turning his head, Ji-hwan saw a man with his own face quietly looking down at him.
"Second time now, isn’t it? Nice to see you."
Ji-hwan took the man’s hand and stood, then raised an eyebrow.
"Uh, but... who are you? Have we met before?"
"You’ll know someday."
The man chuckled and walked forward slowly.
Ji-hwan walked beside him and asked, "Am I dead? Is this the afterlife?"
"You’re still in a state of clinical death. You don’t know it, but you burned through even the power at your source, and your body’s functions stopped. At this rate, you’ll die."
The man’s verdict was blunt. But Ji-hwan let out a short sigh, scratched the back of his head, and answered without much concern.
"Really? That’s a shame."
"A shame?"
The man stopped and turned his head.
He seemed intrigued by Ji-hwan’s calmness in the face of death.
"Well, yeah. I still want to get stronger."
"What?"
The man’s eyes widened slightly at the completely unexpected answer.
Ji-hwan flexed his bare fist and went on calmly.
"I can’t use tricks like [Sandevistan] here, but fighting my way up with my own body, rolling around with the bastards down in this pit... it definitely makes me feel alive."
He stopped and looked at the man.
"There was something I wanted to ask. Did you do this on purpose? Making my body reject implants completely?"
At the sharp question, the man did not deny it.
"An irregular who crosses over from another dimension is bound to fall out of sync with the gears of their original world. It’s just a physical phenomenon I can’t do anything about. Well? Do you resent me?"
"......I did when I first got dropped into this cesspool. But now I’m actually grateful."
Perhaps pleased with Ji-hwan’s answer, the man who looked like him gave a light gesture, and two doors suddenly rose up in the middle of the endless white space.
The one on the right was the peaceful, comfortable front door of Ji-hwan’s original world in the 21st century. The one on the left was a heavy, cold iron door covered in red rust.
"Choose."
The man pointed at the two doors and whispered softly. Then, as if mulling over what Ji-hwan had just said, a faint smile touched his blurred lips.
"Well... after hearing your answer just now, I can already guess which one you’ll pick."
"Oh, right. But am I really dead?"
Ji-hwan asked, thinking of his ruined body.
"If I go back in now, my body’s probably completely wrecked."
At the question, the man slowly shook his head.
"Don’t worry. If you accept the condition of not returning to that original world and instead becoming fully bound to this one... your body will be restored to how it was. Though it’s not without risk..."
The man’s empty gaze turned toward the cold iron door on the left.
"You still have time. But once you go through that door, there’s no turning back. You’ll stop being just another irregular drifting through this world and become something that writes a completely new story."
"A story. And a choice..."
Ji-hwan murmured softly. He slowly stepped forward and stood before the two doors.
"Are you really going there?"
The man asked toward Ji-hwan’s back.
"This is your one and only last chance to return to the original world you came from."
The final temptation to go back to a peaceful and safe everyday life. But Ji-hwan silently stared at the right-hand front door, then let out a bitter laugh.
"I don’t know. Even if I disappeared right now, there are more people in this neighborhood who’d miss me than there are back in that other world."
The young Mia and the survivors in the underground holding facility, looking at him like he was their savior. Dakota in the Badlands.
"And besides, if I went back, I wouldn’t have any family waiting for me, and there aren’t many friends I’d miss enough to pour me a drink or two."
Ji-hwan had completely let go of his lingering attachment. His body turned toward the cold iron door. The instant he gripped the icy handle without hesitation, he looked back and asked, "But who the hell are you, really?"
"I am..."
Zzzzt—!!
The man’s lips moved, but a bizarre mechanical noise tore through the white space and forcibly drowned out his voice.
Some invisible, immense restraint was blocking him from speaking.
The man gave a light shrug, as if there was nothing he could do. His body grew even more transparent.
Ji-hwan asked no further and silently stepped into the darkness beyond the open iron door.
Bang—!
The heavily rusted iron door slammed shut, and Ji-hwan’s figure vanished completely into the dark.
The man stared quietly at the empty space where Ji-hwan had stepped and disappeared. The boundary of the endless white space where he stood began to crumble from the edges, as if burned ash were scattering away.
With eyes that reflected nothing, the man silently watched the trace of the closed iron door.
One year ago, at the moment Ji-hwan first fell through the crack in this bizarre world, he had quietly witnessed something awakening deep inside Ji-hwan’s collapsing mind as he went mad under the pressure of the world’s strangeness. Something that should never have existed in the first place. An unknown power no one else could perceive: [Possibility].
The man had only been a temporary shell, a makeshift vessel that took on Ji-hwan’s form for a brief moment, just to send that precarious irregular safely out of this world at the last second.
But Ji-hwan kicked away what he had prepared and chose reality for himself.
"Beyond a mere irregular... a distortion point in the story. And..."
Unknown words slipped from between the man’s fading lips.
"My deepest condolences."
The man finished speaking and slowly turned away with a lonely smile just as the last white membrane maintaining the space shattered. His existence, modeled after Ji-hwan’s form, quietly evaporated into the empty silence.
**
Whirrr—.
With his eyes closed, a low, steady mechanical hum was the first thing that seeped into Ji-hwan’s ears.
The cool sound of ventilation fans, and the sharp, awful smell of disinfectant stabbing at the tip of his nose.
Slowly becoming aware of the sensations around him, Ji-hwan lifted his heavy eyelids.
The first thing in view was a lighting rig made of cold stainless steel.
"...An unfamiliar ceiling."
Ji-hwan’s dry voice slipped out between his lips and echoed through the empty room.
Pushing aside the thin white vinyl sheet weighing down his body, Ji-hwan realized he was completely naked.
He slowly sat up on the cold metal bed and looked around.
Rows of cryogenic pipes venting artificial coolant. A space eerily similar to the corporate morgue he had passed through while descending through the facility underground.
Fortunately, only red emergency lights blinked lazily in the room, and there was no sign of researchers or security personnel watching over the body.
In the silence, Ji-hwan quietly checked his body.
His right arm, crushed by Alpha’s vicious shockwave, and the organs that had been torn apart were all regenerated without a single scar.
But the moment he clenched and unclenched both fists, Ji-hwan’s brow tightened slightly.
It was empty.
The fierce energy that usually boiled up from his core whenever he stood on the line of fire was gone. Not even a trace of it remained.
It was the price of burning every last bit of his life force as fuel to unleash that final strike at death’s door.
'Ah... so that’s the risk...'
Feeling the emptiness of the thing that had always supported him, he knew he could no longer rely on crude tactics like simply tanking hits with his body.
But Ji-hwan let out a long breath, then snorted.
"Well, I’ll manage somehow."
Saying that, he cracked his stiff neck left and right, then stepped down from the cold dissection table without hesitation, naked as the day he was born.
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