The exit of the underground tunnel on the outskirts of Pacifica had completely collapsed under a surge of filthy floodwater.
Before the dust had even settled over the ruins, a group of mysterious figures in sharp suits, rifles in hand, arrived without a sound.
They were the dedicated escort team Mr. Hands had sent to invite Ji-hwan to the meeting.
Under the glare of their harsh searchlights, they quickly swept over the broken rubble and the mud-choked ground.
But at the final escape coordinates marked on the map data, there was no sign of the target.
The lead agent pressed his lips into a firm line and activated the holo-call network.
"Reporting in. The entrance is completely blocked, and the person you mentioned is not visible at this time."
And beyond the screen.
Deep in the sofa of a dark suite, Mr. Hands had been waiting for the report in relaxed silence when his silhouette twitched.
Startled, he pulled his upper body forward and planted both hands heavily on the glass table in front of him.
[You can’t see the man? Then why is the entrance blocked?]
At Hands’ low, cold question, another agent beside the one on comms crouched down and began scanning the wet dirt on the floor.
"It looks like there was major flooding inside. The pressure burst and debris caused the tunnel entrance itself to collapse entirely."
The agent pointed to a deep groove carved through the mud and added, "We found traces that the target escaped through here. There are marks showing someone roughly dragged an unconscious target away, but we can’t tell where they went after that."
After hearing the report, Mr. Hands leaned back against the sofa and let out a short breath of relief.
If someone had dragged Ji-hwan away, then at the very least it meant he had survived the collapsing toxic water and made it out alive.
That deal with that man isn’t over yet.
The top-secret information about the Unification War that K was holding. Only by receiving that data intact could Hands make the numbers work for hiding a first-rate fugitive from Night City’s entire surveillance net.
Even Hands hadn’t expected the final entrance to this old ant nest, once a sealed-off zone from the old days, to collapse as an unforeseen variable.
And now, instead of that blocked entrance, they would have to punch open a new route of approach.
[Since it’s likely someone took him, search the area thoroughly and follow the trail.]
With that order, the blue light on the screen crackled and the connection cut out.
The agents who had received the command immediately spread out and began searching the dark alleys around the collapsed entrance.
Tap, tap.
Their eyes, silently following the dragged trail, suddenly stopped in a corner of one alley.
A single deep tire mark was clearly left in the mud. It was the trace of whoever had loaded the target into a vehicle and fled.
The agents immediately tightened their grip on their rifles and began tracking the tire marks at a brisk pace.
But their pursuit did not last long.
The moment they left the alley and entered Pacifica’s old, tangled main road.
The clear tire tracks were messily overlapped by countless others left by gangs and drifters, then quickly lost their shape and broke off completely on the asphalt.
"Damn it."
Staring at the main road where the trail had gone cold, the lead agent clicked his tongue.
Then he pulled a compact comm unit identical to the one Ji-hwan had carried from his waist and hurriedly began scanning frequencies.
Inside the target’s pocket was an encrypted communication chip Mr. Hands had personally handed over.
At the fixer’s secret instruction, a tiny tracking circuit had been embedded inside the chip, so if they could catch the signal, they should be able to find him wherever he had been dragged off to in Night City.
Tatatatang!
But all that appeared on the device screen was a mess of sparks and gray noise.
"I can’t get a signal at all. It’s not offline... the transmitter itself has been completely destroyed."
Confusion crept into the agent’s voice as he tapped the unit.
The reason was the flooded zone beneath Pacifica the target had passed through.
Acidic water mixed with chemical waste and toxic runoff illegally dumped by Night City’s corporations.
While Ji-hwan had dived through that rotten poison water with his bare body and escaped, the communication chip in his pocket had been exposed to the acidic flood and corroded from the inside out, its microscopic circuitry dissolved away without a trace.
"...We lost him completely. Pull out."
The agents shut off the device with a hollow stare at the rain-slick asphalt.
***
The stench of blood and the acrid bite of disinfectant stabbed at the nose.
In what was now simply called the Pacifica Combat Zone, or the Pacifica sealed-off district, and would later be known as Dogtown in the 2070s, there was an illegal slaughterhouse run by scavengers in the basement of an abandoned hotel on the outskirts.
And beneath flickering red neon lights, mutilated corpses lay scattered over filthy tubs packed with ice.
At the center of that scavenger den, on a rusted steel operating table, Ji-hwan’s heavy eyelids slowly lifted. As his blurred vision returned, he recalled the time he had once woken in Biotechnica’s cold morgue.
Having come to, Ji-hwan raised his right arm, which had been burned away in the toxic runoff and freshly restored by super regeneration, and tried to scratch his head.
Clack.
With a dull metallic sound, his arm stopped dead in midair. Something heavy was pressing hard against his wrists and ankles. Looking down, he saw thick leather belts and rusted chains binding his limbs tightly to the operating table.
"Huh...?"
A disbelieving laugh slipped out of Ji-hwan’s mouth at the absurd situation.
Creeeak.
Then the basement’s tightly shut iron door opened, and someone walked in.
A crude hologram mask covered the face. It was the first time since arriving in Night City that Ji-hwan had seen such a disgusting scavenger getup.
As soon as Ji-hwan saw him, he muttered carelessly, "Ah, a scavenger."
The moment those words rang out, the scavenger approaching him jolted hard.
"Blat?!"
Seeing an Asian man he had assumed was a corpse open his eyes and speak so calmly, the scavenger recoiled in shock, spitting out a Russian curse.
He staggered back and shouted for his companions through the open door.
With a clatter of heavy footsteps, several more scavengers wearing hologram masks rushed into the operating room.
They hesitated when they saw Ji-hwan blinking alive on the table, but once they confirmed his limbs were locked in restraints and he couldn’t move, they started grinning and snickering.
"What, you called us in here for this?"
"Heh. How the hell do you not have a single piece of chrome on your body?"
The scavengers gathered around the table began leering down at Ji-hwan, who was bound hand and foot.
"That means there’s no scrap metal to strip off, but those organs of yours will work just fine."
Even with that vicious threat to cut him open alive, Ji-hwan showed no fear. Instead, he asked in a lazy voice, as if this had nothing to do with him, "Then who exactly are my organs going to?"
At his relaxed attitude, the scavengers laughed in disbelief.
He was just meat tied down and about to be gutted, so they didn’t even bother hiding it.
"Finding a clean adult human with no modifications like you is like finding a needle in the sky. Some big shot on the black market’s coming to buy you for a very high price."
Hearing that, Ji-hwan gave a small smile and nodded.
"That’s a charming story. Shame the person it’s happening to is me."
"That mouth of yours is done running now. Let’s finish this."
The scavenger at the front picked up a blood-caked scalpel and a power saw.
"Sorry, but we need to take the organs out while you’re still alive if we want them to last."
"If you stay still, it’ll be over... so don’t struggle, all right?"
Wheeeeng!
The saw blade spun with a harsh mechanical whine as the scavengers stepped in close to the operating table, pressing the cold steel forward to slice Ji-hwan open alive.
Ji-hwan stared quietly at the blade coming right up to his face, then let out a short sigh, as if he had nothing left to say to those trash heaps.
Hoo—.
The moment he exhaled, Ji-hwan tensed his entire body against the restraints.
Crack—! Szzzzzt!
With a brutal jerk of both arms, the thick leather belts and rusted chains burst apart as easily as thin sheets of paper.
The sound of torn metal clattering to the floor made the scavengers, who had been advancing with scalpel and saw in hand, freeze in place.
Those restraints were sturdy enough that you’d need at least Gorilla Arms to break them free.
Yet the sheer force of a bare body with no chrome, tearing steel apart like paper with nothing but grip strength, made the scavengers’ eyes widen in shock.
Ignoring their stares, Ji-hwan stood up from the table and rolled his arms around, checking whether the bones that had been broken were set properly.
The bones and muscles that had melted in the toxic water moved smoothly again without a hint of creaking, and he could feel the wounds sealing much faster than before.
As his ability grew stronger every time he crossed the line between life and death, Ji-hwan quietly muttered, feeling his body drift further and further beyond the human realm.
"Almost fully recovered."
Then Ji-hwan’s cold gaze snapped toward the scavengers, who were staring at him in dumbfounded silence.
"What are you waiting for? You gonna all die like this?"
Only then did the stunned men flinch and reach for the guns at their waists.
But before their fingers could even touch the triggers, Ji-hwan kicked off the operating table and shot into their blind spot like lightning.
Thud!
Grabbing the head of the scavenger at the front with brutal force, Ji-hwan used the full momentum of his charge to lift the man clean off the ground and hurl him hard into the companion beside him.
Kwaang! Crack!
The dull impact of two bodies colliding in midair.
The one who took the hit bent in half at the waist, while the one thrown into him became a meat cushion and smashed together with him through the basement wall.
In the instant where cement dust billowed and screams crossed paths, another wave of frantic footsteps thundered up the stairs from the lower floor of the building, startled by the massive crash of the wall breaking.
"Fuck! Shoot him! Shoot!!"
The moment the panicked scavengers screamed and aimed dozens of gun barrels at him.
Ji-hwan, red haze pouring through the gaps in his torn skin, passed sentence on them.
"Die."
The instant the verdict fell, Ji-hwan’s form, scattering red smoke, tore through the crossfire of the hunting dogs and drove in viciously.
"Aaaagh!"
"Shoot! Kill that bastard!"
Shrieking screams and deafening gunfire filled the slaughterhouse.
In the thick stench of gunpowder smoke, Ji-hwan’s figure advanced while shedding a deep red haze, like a starving predator trampling through a flock of sheep.
Every time Ji-hwan’s hands and feet moved, dull impacts rang out, and the scavengers’ bodies folded like paper and rolled across the floor.
Thud! Bang!
It was power that should have been impossible without a body covered head to toe in high-end chrome.
Against that overwhelming violence, enough to punch through thick concrete walls and tear apart human bones and artificial joints with sheer grip strength, the scavenger who had first tried to slice open Ji-hwan’s stomach let out a breathless cry of despair.
"No way...! How can a guy like that not have a single piece of chrome on him!!"
His eyes were bleached white with terror.
Looking down at him as he sat collapsed on the floor, Ji-hwan said in a dry voice, "I don’t care what you trash do in this dump."
Ji-hwan continued, flicking away the blood droplets splashed onto the back of his hand.
"You just shouldn’t have been in my sight."
Wheeeeng!
From a blind spot behind Ji-hwan, a sharp motor scream ripped through the room as he spoke.
Taking advantage of the chaos, one scavenger had slipped in behind him and raised a blue-white sawblade sword high, charging like a bolt of lightning for Ji-hwan’s neck. But Ji-hwan simply stepped half a pace to the side and let it pass with ease.
Swoosh.
The sawblade sword sliced through empty air where Ji-hwan had been, missing his cheek by a hair’s breadth.
Twisting his torso to let the razor edge slide past, Ji-hwan used the full force of that momentum and drove his right fist into the empty-faced scavenger’s head.
[Instant Strike].
Puuunch!
The horrifying sound of a skull being crushed.
The scavenger, taking the condensed energy of the strike head-on, had his head burst like a watermelon, spraying red fragments in every direction.
Only the sound of the headless corpse collapsing to the floor, still clutching the sawblade sword, settled heavily over the slaughterhouse.
The remaining scavengers, who had witnessed their companion’s head explode right in front of them, buckled at the knees.
Everyone’s hands on their guns shook uncontrollably, and they no longer even had the courage to resist. They were ready to give up completely.
But then—
Boom.
The tightly shut iron door deeper inside the basement was violently thrown open, and a heavy set of footsteps that shook the floor pressed down on the bloody slaughterhouse air.
"Which bastard tore up my workshop?!"
The tightly shut iron door deeper inside the basement was violently thrown open, and with the footsteps that shook the floor came a rough curse that weighed heavily over the slaughterhouse air.
"Boss! Boris!"
The remaining scavengers, trembling on the floor, cried out his name desperately as if clinging to a rotten rope lowered from hell.
The man who appeared was nothing like the crude, scrawny build of a typical scavenger. He was well over six feet tall, with a body so massive his muscles looked ready to burst through his skin. He gave off the same oppressive feeling as an Animal gang member forced into scavenger rags.
The scavenger leader who ruled this building on the outskirts of Dogtown was Boris, wearing thick ballistic under-armor beneath his skin and holding a rough Nokota D5 Copperhead assault rifle in his hands.
But despite the fierce killing intent he radiated on the outside, Boris’s insides were churning like he’d been shoved to the edge of a cliff.
Fuck, where the hell did a monster like that come from?
Ji-hwan stood in the middle of his subordinates’ mangled corpses.
The instant Boris saw the deep red haze pouring from the other man’s entire body and those lazy eyes staring back at him through the blood, the instincts that had kept him alive through every hell Night City could throw at him started screaming warnings like mad.
Cold sweat slid down his spine.
And facing Ji-hwan’s dark stare, Boris forced out a cough and lowered his voice.
"Ahem... looks like my men have already taken quite a beating. We’ve suffered enough on our side, so let’s end this here."
Boris tried to sound relaxed as he angled the muzzle of his assault rifle toward the floor and went on, "I don’t know how impressive you are, but if this spills any further, every scavenger in Dogtown will be after you. No need to drag in the rest of the city and make this more of a headache, right?"
But instead of answering that attempt at persuasion, Ji-hwan clenched his right fist, blood dripping from it, and slowly took one step forward.
Tap.
That single footstep made Boris’s facial muscles lock up.
"H-hey! Didn’t you hear me?! If you come any closer...!"
Boris bared his teeth and jerked the Nokota assault rifle up.
As Boris moved to pull the trigger, Ji-hwan didn’t close the distance. Instead, he planted his feet firmly in place and threw his right fist into empty air.
Thoom!
A heavy burst of compressed air cracked through the room. Before the echo had even faded, an invisible blow slammed clean into Boris’s torso from more than ten meters away.
"...?!"
Hit by a mysterious, crushing force, Boris’s massive body snapped backward and rolled across the floor.
"W-what... what the hell?"
Rolling through the mud, he looked up in confusion.
At the end of his line of sight stood an Asian man, drawing back his fist again. The skin over the knuckles had split slightly, beading with blood.
Then Ji-hwan’s fist cut through the air once more.
Puuunch!
"Ghk!"
Another invisible shockwave slammed into Boris’s torso. It wasn’t strong enough to break bones on the spot, but Boris clearly understood that this unknown force was coming from the man far away from him.
Pale with fear, Boris desperately tried to aim another gun.
But Ji-hwan gave him no opening, hurling his fists in alternation and unleashing a mad barrage into the air.
Bang! Pow! Crash!
"Kgh! Aagh!"
The waves of air flying at him sent Boris’s huge body skidding and rolling helplessly across the floor.
Ji-hwan had no intention of killing the enemy in front of him all at once.
The unfinished technique he had once forced out while fighting the fake reaper in Havana—an externalized burst of force, a fist wind.
The biggest flaw in that technique was the severe backlash, tearing skin and muscle fibers apart on impact.
But right in front of him was a very tough, very durable living punching bag wearing thick ballistic under-armor and even a pain editor.
Pshk.
The first time he cut through the air, the skin over Ji-hwan’s knuckles split slightly and blood sprayed out.
But as he kept striking and his muscles repaired their own distortions in real time, Ji-hwan began to slowly internalize how to gather the dispersing force and drive power through it.
Puuunch!!
"Khh, h-hurk...!"
As the blows that had only been pushing him back grew heavier and heavier, Boris’s face drained of color.
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