"You thought you could botch a job like this and still walk away in one piece?!"
In the VIP penthouse office, lit by a glittering chandelier, a Biotechnica director was shouting himself hoarse, veins bulging in his neck.
"Half the facility is wrecked, and my top-tier security force got shredded to pieces!!"
Crash-!!
Unable to contain his rage, the director hurled the thick crystal whiskey glass in his hand at Alpha’s head.
The heavy tumbler slammed straight into Alpha’s forehead and shattered with a sharp crack.
Blood seeped through the torn skin and ran down in red streaks, staining Alpha’s blood-red eye lenses and silver chrome jaw.
But Alpha didn’t even blink.
He didn’t try to dodge. He just stood there, silent and motionless, like a statue.
Staring down at Alpha as he stood there like a sculpture without even bothering to wipe away the blood, the director’s shoulders heaved with pent-up fury as he kept huffing and puffing.
"Haa, haa... The only reason you’re still standing here is because you at least brought the bastard’s corpse back intact. If there’d been so much as a scratch on that body, I would’ve ripped your spinal cord out on the spot!"
The director finally caught his breath, then jerked around irritably and stared out through the penthouse’s massive glass wall.
From behind, his silhouette was arrogance made flesh as he looked down at the dark Badlands and the faint glow of Night City’s skyline far away. The director’s reflected eyes in the window turned ice-cold.
"The massive damage caused by this operation... you’ll take full responsibility for it. Remember that."
"...Understood. My apologies."
Alpha, the Manticore Squad leader who had silently endured the abuse and violence, bowed deeply and left the office with heavy steps.
Outside the door, his squad members were waiting with grim expressions. Alpha gave them a short gesture and led them to the security force’s rest and standby room on the first floor.
As soon as they entered the room, the team’s female netrunner ripped off her suffocating full-dive helmet and let out a snort of laughter. As she shook sweat-soaked hair out of her face, her gaze landed on the blood dripping from Alpha’s forehead.
"Looks like you got chewed out pretty good up there, boss."
"...Haa."
Alpha sank heavily into a reinforced plastic chair that looked like it might crack under his weight, let out a deep sigh, and roughly wiped the blood from his forehead with the back of his hand. Then he growled low in his throat.
"At least we brought the bastard’s corpse back intact. For now, that’s all this is."
When he finished speaking, Alpha pressed down on his throbbing artificial temple and fell into thought for a moment.
Then a heavy afterthought left his mouth.
"...But things are going to get rough from here. For a while, we’re going to be stuck cleaning up this mess like it’s our tail to drag around."
At that gloomy declaration, the big squad member polishing his weapon snorted and tossed out a joke.
"Man, boss, that’s a terrible outlook. At this rate, shouldn’t we just finish this Biotechnica contract right here, pay the penalty, and run?"
At that, the female netrunner, fiddling with her helmet, flicked her fingers and popped up an imaginary hologram pad as she chimed in.
"Exactly. What the hell were they even doing in some backwater basement to make a monster like that show up? Might as well check the numbers while we’re at it. If I just slip around the local net and open up a little data..."
"Stop."
Alpha cut her off with a hard growl.
"Don’t go poking into useless crap. There are truckloads of mercs in Night City who dug their noses into a megacorp’s filthy secrets and didn’t live long enough to regret it. We just need to protect the director and this facility according to contract. Dig any deeper, and nothing good comes of it."
"Tch, you’re no fun. Fine."
The netrunner pouted and shut off the pad she’d floated in the air without a shred of regret.
"I wasn’t planning to dig that deep anyway. Once this job’s wrapped up clean, I’m holing up in a luxury resort hotel in Night City and spending a month in full-dive VR. I’m going to rest hard."
"Hey, you planning to have all the fun by yourself? I already promised my daughter I’d use this fat bonus to get her the latest chrome. I’m done rotting in this dusty Badlands backwater. I’m going home and opening a little pub."
"Oh? Then I’ll retire and come by your pub every day just to drink you dry."
As the subordinates traded flashy jokes back and forth, Alpha’s rigid mechanical jaw slowly curved into something like a smile, and he let out a short laugh.
"You crazy bastards. Your mouths are the only thing still alive on you."
Feeling some of the fatigue lift, Alpha clicked his tongue.
"Fine. Once we finish cleaning up this pile of shit perfectly, I’ll cover the rest of the contract penalties out of my own pocket if I have to. Then we’ll all go on vacation."
For once, the standby room filled with the bright, boisterous laughter of mercs, and warm banter drifted through the air. Then one of the members checking the comms approached cautiously and reported to Alpha.
"Boss. About the civilians the bastard smuggled out through the tunnel during his rampage... We sent a tracking team, but they’ve gone missing."
"...What?"
Alpha’s mechanical eyes flashed ominously.
"You lost those civilian bastards? Are you out of your mind!"
Alpha slammed his hand down on the table in irritation. At that moment, the female netrunner fiddling with her helmet frowned and added,
"And to make things worse, we also failed to track the netrunner who seems to have been his outside accomplice. Right before the bastard was captured, he smashed every communication device he had on him to pieces. That wiped out every clue we could’ve used to trace him back."
"..."
"And that netrunner is seriously good. He cut his trail so cleanly that all the traces left in the system are dead ends. We’ve barely confirmed that a netrunner even existed. At this point, figuring out who they are later is going to be almost impossible."
"What a bastard. So he wasn’t just smashing equipment out of defiance. He calculated all of that in advance."
At Ji-hwan’s vicious thoroughness, Alpha ground his teeth.
"Don’t expect much from the netrunner side. Just poke at it for form’s sake. What’s urgent now are the civilian test subjects who ran off into the Badlands."
"Understood."
"We need to cut this off before it gets any bigger. Spin up every tracking net we can use right now and find those bastards as fast as possible. The moment we catch them, silence them. Kill them cleanly. All of them."
Alpha barely held back his boiling anger and jerked his chin at the squad.
"Sort through the confirmed intel and get the next operation briefing ready. We’ll catch our breath for a minute, then head out after them."
He leaned back against the chair, letting the coolant circulate through his exhausted artificial spine, and closed his eyes.
The monster was lying dead in the cold morgue, and once they dealt with the fleeing civilian remnants, this miserable mission would finally be over.
The standby room fell into heavy silence, along with a brief, sweet moment of rest.
At the same time, in the penthouse office after Alpha had left and the heavy armored door had shut.
"A bunch of stupid metal cans."
The director muttered as he irritably brushed at the bloodstained hem of his shirt reflected in the window, but soon an uncontrollable grin of greed and delight spread across his face.
This miserable outpost in the Badlands, reeking of filth, sand, and blood. The hellish time he’d spent rotting here was finally over.
Night City glowed in the distance with multicolored neon signs cutting through the dark. Soon he would return to that dazzling city, to the deepest and most secret seat of Biotechnica’s power.
Humming to himself, the director walked over to his massive oak desk and brought up a hologram console.
Ding-.
Floating in the air were Ji-hwan’s body data, scanned by the medical staff before he was taken down to the morgue, along with the core backup data for the [chimera project].
They hadn’t dissected his brain and spinal cord yet, but even this scan data was more than enough to prove the potential hidden in his cells.
"Right. I should send this little sample data to the main server at headquarters first."
The director’s fingers tapped briskly across the keyboard. The data transfer protocol began running. But the sly, greedy man had no intention of handing over this precious data to headquarters in one clean piece.
Whirr—clank.
The director scanned his own retina and fingerprints, then layered the data with top-level multi-encryption that could only be unlocked with his own unique authority.
"This secret is mine and mine alone to control. Without me, even those old raccoon bastards at headquarters won’t be able to open this precious data."
If he suffered some unexpected accident or headquarters tried to throw him away after using him, the key to cracking this encryption would still require him to be alive.
It was a lifeline and a selfish lock, built entirely to secure his own safety and power.
[Data transfer and encryption complete.]
When the system voice sounded, the director was drunk on the feeling of total victory and reached for a fresh whiskey glass.
He poured in the most expensive liquor, brought it to his lips, and was just about to savor the sweet taste of power.
That was when it happened.
Aaaaaaeeeng-!! Aaaaaaeeeng-!!
The fire alarm and emergency siren began screaming like they were tearing the entire building apart.
"A major fire has broken out in the underground lab and morgue!"
On the first-floor standby room, Alpha’s eye lenses flashed irritably as he tried to rest.
Of all places, the area where the corpse and blood samples were stored. A bad feeling crawled up Alpha’s artificial spine.
"The corpse? Check the morgue CCTV right now!"
"Th-that’s... because of the fire security protocol, the network on basement level two has been temporarily cut off. If we force our way in now, it’ll trigger an alarm in the main system and headquarters’ inspection division will find out..."
"I’ll take responsibility! Hack it open now!"
At Alpha’s bark, the female netrunner on the team hurriedly entered code and attempted a forced hack.
Soon, with a crackling burst of noise, the morgue’s interior feed appeared as a hologram. Then the netrunner who checked the screen let out a stunned gasp.\
"B-boss... the corpse is gone. Someone must have broken in and stolen it!"
"Stolen? Or maybe..."
Alpha’s mechanical jaw ground with a grotesque metallic sound.
"Was that bastard just pretending to be dead?"
"The researchers were drawing blood and running tests, and he was in a perfect state of cardiac arrest the whole time. And the vital monitor definitely showed...!"
As he listened to the netrunner’s explanation, Alpha’s brain circuitry went cold. A corpse with no heartbeat. And now it was gone.
A moment later, Alpha opened his mouth in a heavy voice laced with metal.
"If that bastard is alive and moving, then he already burned his data and samples. In that case, who’s his target?"
At Alpha’s chilling question, the fire team member beside him, who had been silently checking the heavy weapons, answered in a deliberately stiff voice.
"...The facility’s top authority. The one who led this experiment and tried to put him on the dissection table. The director."
"All units, listen up!"
Alpha roared like thunder into the comms network.
"Move into the second-floor penthouse right now and evacuate the director first! The rest of you seal off every emergency exit and route he could use to escape! Move!"
At the same time, amid the blaring sirens, the director frowned and connected to the internal comms network, only for a panicked subordinate’s voice to burst out.
[D-director! We’ve got a major problem! There’s been a fire in the basement level one storage room and the morgue! The researchers have all been killed, and even that bastard’s corpse...!]
"W-what did you say?!"
The director’s drunken haze vanished in an instant. He flew into a rage and slammed his fist into the heavy oak desk. The communication cut off one-sidedly.
"You useless bastards...!"
Just as the director was boiling over with anger and pouring whiskey into his glass again, ready to bring it to his mouth, there was a knock at the massive penthouse armored door.
Tap, tap.
It was Alpha and his squad.
"They’re faster than I expected."
Ji-hwan clicked his tongue as he sprinted like a ghost down the second-floor corridor.
From below, the sound of elevators moving and military boots pounding the floor was already shaking the building. The bastards had noticed the fire and moved to lock things down immediately.
"If I get surrounded like before, I’m done for."
If he still had his usual brute strength and iron body, he could’ve smashed his way out. But in his weakened state, he wouldn’t last long under concentrated fire.
There was only one option left: cut the throat of the guy who looked important here and get out immediately.
"Seriously, why do all the big shots always love the top floor so much?"
Even while complaining, Ji-hwan moved quickly. Soon, at the end of the corridor, he spotted the door to a massive VIP room decorated with ornate gold trim.
He reached for the handle and was just about to grab it when...
"Shit!"
Ji-hwan cursed inwardly and instinctively ducked, flattening himself against the floor.
Kwaang-!!
The huge armored door split apart with a scream.
From inside, Alpha fired the modified projectile-launching arm cannon mounted on his arm at point-blank range and blew the door away.
Instead of flying off completely, the massive door was torn in half, the upper section shredded horribly while the lower half hung precariously from the frame.
"...Ahem."
As the acrid smoke cleared, the situation inside the office came into view beyond the grotesquely torn half-door.
Alpha and the Manticore Squad members were just about to turn toward the private elevator leading to the escape AV, escorting a deathly pale director.
Through the blasted opening, Alpha frowned and spoke.
"...So it really was you."
Alpha growled lowly, his voice grinding like metal.
The suspicion he’d had ever since hearing that the corpse had vanished from the morgue. The fact that the monster whose heart had stopped had somehow come back to life was now reality, staring back at him through Ji-hwan’s vicious eyes in the torn doorway.
But Ji-hwan didn’t answer Alpha’s provocation with a single word.
Still flattened behind the broken lower half of the door, he kept himself hidden and fixed his gaze only on the director, who was staring at him in terror from behind Alpha’s back.
"..."
A bloodthirsty, feral smile slowly crept across Ji-hwan’s lips.
"You were so desperate to crack open my skull yourself, weren’t you? So I came all the way up here on foot. Happy now?"
Alpha was growling and overheating the cylinders of his Sandevistan, but Ji-hwan treated him like he was invisible.
He drove his merciless gaze only into the director’s trembling eyes, which were shaking like leaves in the wind.
Meeting that horrifying stare head-on, the director stumbled backward and screamed.
"Y-you insane monster...! What are you waiting for, get that thing off me!! Alpha!!"
Alpha’s artificial jaw emitted a bizarre metallic grind that sounded ready to snap. Ji-hwan, mocking that chain of command, pointed the tip of his knife at the director and taunted him lightly.
"Boss! Let me rip that bastard apart with my own hands! I won’t get pushed back this time...!"
"Shut up, butcher!! The number one priority is protecting the director! Get him out of here now!!"
At Alpha’s razor-edged shout, the butcher gritted his teeth, but in the end he began backing away, escorting the director toward the private elevator connected to the rooftop AV.
As they retreated, Ji-hwan’s pitch-black eyes, crouched behind the shattered door, completely ignored Alpha’s glare and followed only the director with obsessive focus.
The moment the director met that icy stare head-on, he knew it.
"That bastard... he’s coming for my throat no matter what it takes."
It wasn’t a rational conclusion. It was the instinctive certainty of someone staring death in the face.
The absolute conviction that even if this entire building came crashing down, that monster would claw his way through the rubble just to cut him down.
"Hurry! What are you idiots doing, move already! Faster!"
Terrified, the director trembled like a leaf and screamed as he shoved the backs of the huge squad members escorting him.
Forcing his fear-heavy legs to move, he hurried toward the elevator in a desperate scramble for survival.
During that short yet endless stretch of time while the director boarded the elevator and the squad fully withdrew, Ji-hwan couldn’t take a single step forward.
"If I move too soon, I’ll get caught."
Alpha’s airtight suppression, standing guard in front of him, was restricting even the slightest movement Ji-hwan made.
He could have thrown his knife to draw attention or gone for the director’s ankle like he had in the previous fight, but Ji-hwan didn’t flick his wrist recklessly.
Against the reflexes of that insane chrome can, currently wound up to the limit with his Sandevistan, it would only end in a pointless waste.
In the end, Ji-hwan withdrew the trajectory of the knife he’d intended to bury in the director’s back.
Then he slowly turned his gaze, baring his teeth as he glared at the hunting dog standing in his way, Alpha.
"You really are one hell of a faithful hound."
Ji-hwan’s cold, mocking voice sliced through the tense air of the corridor.
"You’re going to stay here with me and die like a dog just to save that piece of trash?"
"...Shut your mouth. The one dying like a dog here today is you."
Alpha growled lowly, his grotesquely twisted mechanical jaw clicking.
Their eyes collided in midair, releasing a bizarre killing intent.
The tip of Ji-hwan’s combat knife and Alpha’s Gorilla Arms drew an invisible line through the air and locked into a taut standoff.
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