Cutting through the fierce wind and rain, the matte-black Arch Nazare tore down the dark road at full throttle.
Through the rearview mirror, the alleyway that had just been swept by a blood-splattering firefight flashed by.
At the corner of asphalt where the acrid smell of gunpowder was being washed away, a young couple who had survived the storm of bullets were trembling in each other’s arms, clinging to each other’s warmth.
As Ji-hwan glanced casually at that tender, warm silhouette, a crooked stab of jealousy suddenly flared in his chest.
"...Damn it."
He spat out the pointless irritation boiling up inside him, then let out a hollow laugh and a very deep, heavy sigh.
"Man... Ji-hwan, you’re pathetic. Really pathetic."
Here he was, a fugitive who might die on the street tomorrow, and he was jealous of a normal couple. Even he thought it was ridiculous.
Right now, he was being hunted by megacorps with Night City’s highest bounty on his head and a three-star murder warrant to match. In the bottom-feeder ecosystem where he had to climb into the blood-soaked ring at the octagon every night just to survive, ordinary warmth was a luxury he couldn’t even afford to dream about.
Trying to soothe the ache in his gut, Ji-hwan twisted the throttle, and a faint smile spread across his lips.
With the emotion vented, his mind was already replaying the fight with the Viper Crew from moments ago at full speed.
The most encouraging thing was that even with his regeneration ability still scraping the bottom, his powers were working in real combat.
'At my current level...'
Even if he ran into monsters like Alexei from Zetatech or Alpha from Biotechnica again, the people who had once driven him to the edge of death, he was confident he could crush them head-on now.
Of course, if he thought about the legends at the top of Night City, he still had a long way to climb. But at the very least, he could protect his own life in this insane city.
But that pleasant afterglow didn’t last long. As Ji-hwan sliced through the rain, the red optics of Faraday, the fixer he had met at the Red Dirt club in Santo Domingo, flashed through his mind.
The control freak’s relentless gaze, the look of someone who treated mercs like disposable chess pieces. The back of Ji-hwan’s neck prickled with the instinct that Faraday was not the kind of man who would simply accept a refusal and walk away.
'That piece of shit didn’t put a tail on me, did he?'
Still gripping the throttle, Ji-hwan stretched his heightened senses out in every direction.
But all that met his taut nerves was empty darkness and the rough hiss of rain.
Even after confirming no one was following him, a nasty, ominous unease kept crawling up his throat like a splinter.
He had no way of knowing that the drone Faraday had been using to shadow him had already returned early, backing up the combat footage before Ji-hwan even got on the bike.
"...Probably just my imagination. I should head back and get some rest."
Shaking his head hard as if to fling off the useless thoughts, Ji-hwan roared the scarred Arch Nazare’s exhaust and accelerated toward Pacifica.
At the same time, in Santo Domingo, Faraday’s office.
The fixer sat in a flashy burgundy Neokitsch suit with dark leather gloves, in a room lit only by a blue hologram screen floating in the air.
The four artificial eyes implanted in Faraday’s face blinked red as he stared intently at the footage transmitted by the surveillance drone.
On the screen, K was venting red steam from every pore in his body during combat.
Faraday froze the video, then pulled up another confidential clip from the deepest part of his security server and projected it into the air.
It was CCTV footage from the underground Biotechnica lab he had stolen at great expense, along with the poster for a top-priority fugitive that had been blasted across the corporate network.
Faraday’s cutting-edge lenses overlaid the two figures’ skeletons and the waves of red vapor they emitted with surgical precision.
'No doubt about it. Same person.'
The breath that slipped out into the office’s silence soon exploded into uncontrollable, mad laughter.
"Keh-heh... Ahahahahaha! Kahahahahaha!!"
After laughing like a maniac for a long while, Faraday leaned back on the sofa, his red eyes gleaming.
The details of the fight didn’t matter.
The rat from Pacifica who had so arrogantly turned him down was actually the "walking money bag" carrying the highest bounty in Night City.
Faraday licked his lips greedily at the astronomical number filling the screen.
He lazily picked up his communicator and pressed the encrypted line connected to his informant inside Biotechnica.
[Faraday? Is that you? Why are you calling me now? I told you not to contact me for a while!]
The irritated underling spat venom, but Faraday only curled his lips into a snake’s smile and replied.
"I heard you’ve got your hands full because of some punk."
[...You called just to laugh at me?]
"Hardly."
Faraday tossed out the sweetest, most dangerous bait.
"I got information on him. Keep this up and I’ll have to call somewhere else."
[W-wait! What did you just say?!]
The earlier irritation vanished completely, replaced by a desperate voice clinging to him like it had been struck by lightning. Information on an executive killer was a massive score for that employee, a lifeline in an instant.
"I’ll take the lead. We’ll meet soon."
[Hey, wait a second! Faraday...!]
Click.
Faraday cut the call unilaterally and lifted his wineglass toward the wanted poster floating in the air.
"Heh... Well now. How lucky."
He tipped back the red wine in one smooth motion, then set the empty crystal glass down on the desk with a sharp clack.
He didn’t know.
He didn’t know that the Ji-hwan of the past had been a reckless thing destroying himself as he ran wild, while the Ji-hwan of now was evolving into a true powerhouse by controlling that power. To Faraday, Ji-hwan was nothing more than a lucky rookie, a single chess piece on the board.
Ji-hwan’s breathtaking growth rate was completely ignored.
Wiping the red moisture from the corner of his mouth with his leather glove, Faraday leaned forward toward the screen.
Whirr-click.
The four red irises swept over Ji-hwan’s photo with a faint mechanical sound.
"Wait for me, Ji-hwan. Soon I’ll have you licking my boots off the ground."
While the fixer’s scheme coiled in Santo Domingo, Ji-hwan raced along the empty outer road, his wounds fully regenerated, and came to a heavy stop with a grinding screech in the underground parking lot of the abandoned Pacifica mall occupied by the Animals gang.
As the rough engine noise died down, the guards at the entrance and the gang members standing watch all turned their eyes toward Ji-hwan.
"Damn, look at that bike."
"Boss’s coat’s completely trashed. Did he ram a wall out there or something?"
Ignoring the chatter spilling over him, Ji-hwan walked up to the massive guard, Bison, whose jaw had dropped open.
"By the way, where’s Mammoth?"
As Ji-hwan brushed water off the hem of his wet shirt and asked, Bison glanced around and whispered cautiously.
"Ah... you mean Boss Mammoth? He’s upstairs in the VIP office right now, having a very private meeting with someone. The mood’s pretty heavy, so you’d better not go up there unless you really have to."
"A private meeting, huh? Got it. I’ll see him later, then."
Ji-hwan nodded and turned away without hesitation, but behind him Bison stole a glance at the mangled Arch Nazare and added with a pale face, "But... Boss K. I heard it clearly. When Boss Mammoth lent you the bike, didn’t he say not to scratch it? From what I can see, this is a little more than a scratch. If he sees it like this, I don’t think you’ll get out of there in one piece..."
At the critical moment when the Viper Crew’s hacking had locked the brakes, Ji-hwan had kicked off the bike’s body hard to survive, and the abandoned motorcycle had scraped violently across the asphalt before slamming into the building’s outer wall.
The impact had gouged hideous scratches into the heavy titanium armor plating, and one headlight and the rearview mirror were both shattered and hanging loose in a pitiful state.
Facing that wrecked sight again, a cold bead of sweat Ji-hwan hadn’t even shed during the bloody fight just now rolled down his forehead.
'...I should run for a bit.'
After freezing for a moment, Ji-hwan very naturally and very quickly tossed the motorcycle key he was holding straight into Bison’s huge arms.
"Huh? Boss?"
Ji-hwan looked off into the far distance and said with the most shameless face possible, "I don’t know anything."
"What? Wait, boss! What the hell is this all of a sudden!!"
"This isn’t my responsibility."
As the flustered Bison shouted in outrage and looked ready to leap up, Ji-hwan gave him a quick wink and drove the point home with a bright smile.
"I’m leaving it to you."
With that, Ji-hwan turned around before Bison could even get a word out and disappeared at light speed, as if he were fleeing to his private piping-room lodging.
Bison’s lips trembled as he alternated between the retreating back and the broken-down ride dangling in pieces.
As he vividly imagined how Mammoth would tear him apart for this bike, the massive guard stood alone in the empty parking lot, numb with crushing betrayal and fear, and muttered in despair.
"That... son of a bitch..."
Completely ignoring the rough curses coming from behind him, Ji-hwan locked the heavy dormitory iron door and decided to enjoy the sweet rest waiting for him right now.
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