At the very moment Ji-hwan was in the underground parking garage, shamelessly dumping the wrecked motorcycle keys on Bison and vanishing like he was running for his life.
Upstairs, separated by a single wall, the air in Mammoth’s VIP office, the head administrator of the arena, hung heavy and stale.
"..."
Mammoth glared across his desk.
On the sofa opposite him sat a man in a spotless black suit that looked completely out of place in this corner of Pacifica’s fight pit.
"Our employer would like to speak with you directly."
The moment he finished speaking, the man removed the opaque special sunglasses that had been hiding half his face.
Vreeeeng- click!
At once, a fierce blue light burst from one of the man’s eyes and projected a massive hologram into the empty air above Mammoth’s battered desk.
Gathered particles of light formed the silhouette of a man standing straight in a top-of-the-line tailored suit.
But strangely enough, his face was completely swallowed by deliberate digital noise and deep shadow, making it impossible to make out a single facial feature.
Only the shifting outline beyond the darkness came through clearly in the hologram.
"A pleasure to meet you, Mammoth."
The man in the hologram moved his lips, and his voice flowed out.
"My name is Mr. Hands. A businessman who’s only recently settled in Night City."
The moment he heard that name, a thin bead of cold sweat slid down Mammoth’s broad gray forehead.
It was obvious Mammoth was seeing both the intermediary in front of him and the man in the hologram for the first time today.
But as a gang boss who controlled Pacifica’s entire web of information and rumor, that name was anything but unfamiliar to him.
"So it’s you..."
"I didn’t expect to see the ghostly fixer who keeps his face and identity hidden so thoroughly in Pacifica’s shadows."
"Well now... I didn’t expect there’d be someone who knew me."
Unbothered by Mammoth’s sharp response, Mr. Hands in the hologram let out a languid, amused laugh and waved a hand lightly.
"Heh... no need to be so wary. I’m just a fixer with no real power or influence, boss."
Hands’ smooth, polished voice wrapped itself around the stale air of the old office.
"How much do you know about that fellow called K you’ve got running in the ring right now?"
At the abrupt question, a faint twitch passed through Mammoth’s savage eyes.
"In my arena, sweat, blood, and violence are the only laws, and the only résumé that matters. I don’t give a damn whether the guy used to crawl out of a trash can or was some corpo dog."
"Indeed. A very romantic answer, worthy of the boss of the Animals."
Hands clapped leisurely through the hologram.
But soon his voice changed, turning sly and sharp as a snake as it slid into Mammoth’s ear.
"Still, haven’t you ever found it strange? A body with not a single gram of machine parts in it, not even the usual neural socket. And yet he’s been beating challengers in the ring. Where the hell did a guy like that come from, and why did he end up hiding here in Pacifica of all places?"
"..."
Along with Hands’ snake-like, chilling voice, K’s horrifying personal information appeared as text across the hologram.
"Name: Kim Ji-hwan. Charges: first-class terrorist who reduced Biotechnica’s Chimera Project research facility, a top-tier security site, to ashes and assassinated Director Lowell by driving a knife into his forehead."
Ignoring Mammoth’s shock, Hands continued speaking.
"He’s the highest-bounty fugitive who burned down a Biotechnica high-security facility and ran. You’re sitting on a fortune and a ticking time bomb at the same time."
As Hands went on, Mammoth’s face hardened.
Without ever having thought deeply about K’s identity, Mammoth’s mind was now being slowly and skillfully poisoned with doubt and unease by Hands.
"You talk too much. As long as the bastard’s under my octagon ring, he’s one of mine. I refuse your offer."
It was a refusal driven less by the corporate bounty and more by the strange bond he felt toward K, the man who made his arena shine, and by the loyalty of a gang boss.
But the mastermind behind it all, Hands, showed no sign of being rattled by Mammoth’s iron wall.
On the contrary, as if he had expected this from the start, he burst into a very pleased laugh.
"Excellent. I like that stubborn streak of yours very much."
At a slight tilt of Hands’ holographic chin, the suited intermediary who had been sitting quietly on the sofa reached into his jacket and pulled out a small, smooth communication chip, then slid it across Mammoth’s battered desk.
"What’s this?"
"A direct encrypted communication channel to me."
Hands whispered in a low, meaningful voice.
"You’ll protect him out of loyalty for now, but soon enough the corporate hounds will come sniffing around. When that day comes and you regret your decision, contact me through this channel. At the very least, I’ll take that one friend of yours with me."
Hands’ hologram slowly faded, leaving one final trap behind.
"Then... I’ll be waiting for your wise decision, Mammoth."
Vreeeeng- pop.
Once the hologram shut off completely and the intermediary quietly left the office, heavy silence settled over the room once more.
Mammoth stared down at the communication chip left alone on the desk and fell into thought.
Originally, Mammoth hadn’t really cared about K’s past.
But now that Mr. Hands had just laid it all out, K’s strange behavior up to this point was starting to make sense.
"...This is turning into a headache."
Mammoth muttered to himself, exhaling a long plume of thick cigar smoke.
The product he’d thought was nothing more than a simple money-maker was actually a corporate time bomb that could go off at any moment.
He cracked his stiff neck and got to his feet. For now, he’d take a walk through the lower level of the arena to clear his head.
Creeeak- thud.
Mammoth left the office and came down the stairs toward the first-floor entrance leading to the underground parking garage.
But something about the atmosphere near the entrance felt off.
The guard who was supposed to be standing watch, Bison, was pacing back and forth in front of the door, unable to settle down.
"Hey, Bison."
"B-boss!!"
That overreaction made Mammoth’s brow furrow.
"What’s wrong? Why are you acting like a dog that just got caught shitting itself?"
As Mammoth strode up with heavy bootsteps and pressed him, Bison’s face went pale. He trembled and swallowed hard.
"W-well... uh..."
Bison was caught in a real dilemma.
Just moments ago, K had turned Mammoth’s precious motorcycle into a heap of scrap, then shamelessly winked and fled after saying, "I’m leaving it to you." If he told the truth about that bastard’s crime, he was afraid K’s fist would come flying at him later. But if he kept quiet, it felt like the boss’s hammer-like fist would smash his skull open right here and now.
Behind Bison’s fidgeting back, through the gap in a carelessly draped tarp, a grotesquely twisted mass of metal caught Mammoth’s sharp eye.
"Hm? What’s that..."
As Mammoth’s brow tightened, Bison noticed his gaze going over his shoulder and frantically flailed both arms.
"B-boss! J-just a second! This is, uh..."
"...Move it."
Realizing that Mammoth had already seen everything behind him, Bison could only wear a miserable expression and quietly pull away the huge tarp he’d been desperately hiding, stepping aside.
Once the tarp was fully removed, the pitiful wreck beneath it was finally exposed under the cold lights of the underground garage.
"..."
In that instant, the thick cigar clenched in Mammoth’s mouth slipped free and dropped weakly to the floor.
It was Mammoth’s proud steed, the Arch Nazare, the very motorcycle Ji-hwan had borrowed only a few hours ago, saying he’d be heading to Santo Domingo.
But the metal heap in front of him was no longer a motorcycle. It was closer to scrap metal waste.
After tearing down the road at over 100 kilometers per hour, the brakes had locked up, sending it tumbling across the asphalt and smashing it into a wall. The heavy titanium armor plates were riddled with ugly, deep scratches that had torn the whole body apart, and the headlight and rearview mirror were both shattered to pieces, with loose wires dangling everywhere.
"I-I don’t know anything about it..."
Once the tarp was gone, the pitiful shape beneath it was fully revealed.
"..."
"M-my Black Demon!!"
From the mouth of the Pacifica gang boss came a desperate scream, as if he had lost the world itself.
Mammoth’s face twisted like he was about to cry on the spot as he stomped over to his ruined steed.
"W-what the hell happened to it! The armor plates are all scraped off! My, my suspension!!"
With his huge hand trembling over the torn titanium plating, Mammoth looked up, swallowing back tears of blood.
"Where did that crazy bastard go!! Tell him to get his ass back here right now!!"
Realizing that his precious motorcycle had been destroyed and the culprit had run off without a care, Mammoth’s rage erupted like a volcano.
Breathing hard, he strode forward and grabbed Bison, a two-meter giant, by the collar and yanked him up into the air.
"H-hiiik!!"
"You useless bastard! He wrecks my bike and runs, and you just stood there watching?!"
"B-boss! Please, spare me...! Aaaagh!"
In his fury, Mammoth started shaking the suspended Bison wildly from side to side. The awful nausea and crushing pressure of being jerked back and forth in the air by Mammoth’s brute strength had Bison on the verge of foaming at the mouth.
"Do you have any idea how much that thing cost... or how hard it was to get?!"
After shaking Bison for what felt like forever, Mammoth finally snorted in anger and hurled him to the floor.
Crash!
"Kuhk..."
The massive body rolled miserably across the cold concrete of the underground garage, every bone in him screaming. Bison lay sprawled out, dazed, staring blankly up at the ceiling.
"Am I really gonna die like this..."
As he trembled on the cold floor, a completely random and strangely pitiful thought drifted through Bison’s mind.
"...I suddenly really miss my dead parents."
As Mammoth stormed off with veins bulging in his neck, the people around him watched the furious boss heading to find Ji-hwan. Then, when Mammoth’s huge shadow reached the end of the corridor and stopped in front of the steel door, the savage expression that had looked ready to rip the door off like paper suddenly became calm in an instant.
Knock, knock.
Mammoth tapped on the steel door with very quiet, restrained movements.
"Hey, K. It’s me."
Surprisingly, the voice that slipped out between his lips was not one filled with rage, but an unnaturally calm, heavy tone.
In truth, while replaying his conversation with Mr. Hands, he had realized something.
The fact that Hands had personally exposed K’s true identity to him and left behind a communication chip was not just a scouting offer or a threat. It was Mr. Hands deliberately telling him that this entire area around the arena was under close surveillance by megacorps and other factions.
So Mammoth had gladly acted out his anger.
He made a scene as if he were going to fight Ji-hwan in the middle of the crowded arena, then naturally used the chaos to come down here to the underground pipe room, the digital dead zone where no wiretap signals could reach and Ji-hwan’s territory.
Meanwhile, inside the pipe room beyond the tightly shut steel door, Ji-hwan, who had been leaning against an old leather sofa and dozing lightly from exhaustion, snapped awake at the sound of knocking.
"Ah... that bastard Bison really sold me out and betrayed me, huh. Just you wait."
Ji-hwan completely erased the fact that he had been the one to shove the motorcycle keys into Bison’s arms and run off in the underground garage moments ago, and shamelessly ground his teeth while blaming Bison in his head.
"Well, whatever. I just have to insist it wasn’t my fault."
Kiiiiiik-
Ji-hwan had expected Mammoth to smash the door open and grab him by the collar, so with a slightly flustered and somewhat guilty feeling, he quietly opened the steel door.
"Uh, about the motorcycle, I didn’t do tha—"
Before Ji-hwan could even finish the shameless excuse he’d prepared, Mammoth stepped inside silently, shoved past him, and personally locked the heavy steel door with a sharp clank.
Then he cut off Ji-hwan’s explanation and spoke in an unnervingly calm voice.
"The motorcycle doesn’t matter. I came because I have something else to say to you."
"...?"
Ji-hwan’s brazen expression faltered in confusion. Mammoth was supposed to be furious over the wrecked bike, but instead of blowing up, he was acting extremely serious and careful.
"What the hell, Mammoth. You didn’t come here to yell at me?"
At Ji-hwan’s puzzled question, Mammoth removed the cigar from his mouth and whispered from the darkness in a very low, heavy metallic voice.
"Quiet... K. No, Ji-hwan."
"...!!"
The moment his real name slipped out, Ji-hwan’s eyes widened in shock.
His real name, which he had never once told anyone in this Pacifica underbelly, nor anyone in Night City. Ji-hwan was just about to gasp and ask how Mammoth knew it when—
Mammoth gave him no chance to recover and immediately dropped the bombshell.
"Right now, this entire arena building... is under someone’s surveillance."
"..."
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