Pacifica Combat Zone. On the outskirts of the Pacifica Combat Zone, in what would be called Dogtown in the 2070s, stood an abandoned old hotel. The scavengers’ slaughterhouse, renovated in the basement, should have been a place overflowing with noise and stench.
Normally, the screams of the forcibly dragged-in victims and the grinding rasp of rusted electric saw blades shaving bone should have been hammering against the walls.
The scavengers in their cheap hologram masks would be ripping chrome off bloody corpses, spitting out filthy jokes while downing cheap synthetic alcohol, CHOOH2, like it was just another day.
But today, the slaughterhouse air was dead still.
The saws had stopped spinning, and the scavengers pacing around the blood-caked operating tables could barely breathe.
All of their attention kept flicking nervously toward the iron door at the back of the basement, the one that was shut tight.
Beyond that door was the private room used by their leader, Boris. It was a space so orderly it felt alien compared to the disgusting, blood-red operating room outside.
Polished surgical tools were lined up with precise care, and the floor was spotless, without a single bloodstain.
For a man with such a savage build, the room made it obvious at a glance that Boris was the type to be neat to the point of being fussy.
And in the center of that tidy room, a man in a shabby, grimy scavenger outfit sat slouched in a chair.
He wore the same rags as the rest of them, but once he removed the hologram mask, the face underneath belonged to Ji-hwan, an East Asian man with black hair and sharp eyes.
At Ji-hwan’s feet, on the clean tiled floor, knelt Boris, the scavenger boss who had been shaking down the outskirts of the Pacifica Combat Zone.
A hulking body over six feet tall. His face, wrapped in thick subdermal armor, was grotesquely swollen with dark bruises and torn cuts.
It was the result of being hammered over and over by the blunt impacts Ji-hwan had unleashed from thin air just moments ago, then rolling through the mud after being smashed by those invisible shockwaves.
"..."
Boris panted raggedly, unable to sit still.
Every time his thick thighs trembled where he knelt, the floorboards gave a faint creak.
Ji-hwan casually brushed the dried blood off his own right fist, then looked down at Boris.
"How do you usually make eddies?"
At the sudden question, Boris glanced around and mumbled, "W-we mostly pick up scrap or usable military gear from the outskirts and sell it. If we’re lucky, we’ll strip smuggled goods off the Badlands crews."
After hearing that answer, Ji-hwan fell silent and thought for a moment.
For now, he had to keep his head down no matter what.
He had traded Mr. Hands the classified details of the Unification War in exchange for an escape route, but if he got any deeper into that fixer’s business here, there was no telling how the future would twist itself out of shape.
I can’t get tangled up with that guy any more.
After a short internal debate, Ji-hwan decided to keep his distance from Mr. Hands and disappear for a while.
He reached into his coat and pulled out a black, round object.
It was the item Mr. Hands had given him earlier.
It had already been corroded beyond use while crossing the flooded sections under Pacifica, its internal circuits ruined, but he couldn’t leave even the slightest chance of being tracked.
Krrk-!
With the sickening grind of metal being crushed, the sturdy communications chip was pulverized in an instant and crumbled through Ji-hwan’s fingers.
At the sound, Boris flinched hard.
Thinking he was about to be beaten again like before, he hunched his swollen neck down in terror.
Ji-hwan brushed the metal dust off his hand and asked the frightened man, "What’s your name?"
"B-Boris."
"Boris."
"From today on, this place is mine."
It was a one-sided declaration that he was taking over the gang’s base wholesale. Boris opened his mouth at once, ready to snap back in anger.
"What the hell do you mean by—"
Crack-.
Boris never got to finish.
Ji-hwan clenched the bloodied right fist that had just crushed his men and let his knuckles pop with a cold, threatening sound.
At that warning, Boris’s grotesquely swollen face stiffened.
He reflexively shrank his shoulders and hurriedly swallowed his protest.
"D-do whatever you want!"
As Ji-hwan slowly stepped closer until he was right in front of Boris’s face on the floor, his shadow and killing intent swallowed the man whole.
"Don’t get it twisted. I don’t need your life to take this place."
Under that killing intent, Boris felt a chill of fear freeze a corner of his chest, cold sweat pouring down like rain.
"Gulp."
He swallowed hard and kept his head bowed, forehead nearly touching the tile floor.
Then, just like that, the heavy pressure crushing the room scattered away like an outgoing tide.
"Hoo...!"
Only then did Boris finally let out the breath he’d been holding and cautiously lift his head. Ji-hwan was already sitting with his legs crossed on the old chair in front of him, looking down at him.
"Smuggling and scrap dealing, huh. Fine, whatever."
The dry voice continued.
"But there’s something you didn’t bother to tell me just now. The part where you kidnap regular civilians and do whatever you want with them."
When the man’s grotesquely swollen lips trembled and he couldn’t even manage an excuse, Ji-hwan made the decision for him.
"I don’t care if you trash each other over weapon smuggling or whatever. But if I hear even once more that you’ve kidnapped or killed innocent civilians..."
Ji-hwan slowly stood and tossed the words at Boris like they were nothing.
"...I’ll rip your arms and legs off while you’re still alive."
Boris, still sprawled on the floor, nodded frantically.
Seeing that, Ji-hwan turned and started toward the door, and Boris cautiously asked, "W-where are you going...?"
"I’m going to look around nearby for a bit."
Ji-hwan yanked the door open with rough force and issued an order.
"While I’m gone, clean up the ones lying around outside. And keep your mouths shut."
Stepping out into the blood-soaked slaughterhouse corridor, Ji-hwan pulled out the crude hologram mask he’d taken from one of the downed scavengers and put it on.
Vrrr-.
With a mechanical hum, a different set of features was overlaid across Ji-hwan’s real face, and wearing someone else’s face, he opened the slaughterhouse door and walked outside.
Once he stepped out, the scene of the abandoned district, far removed from the neon glow of central Night City, weighed heavily over his vision.
Massive steel skeletons of skyscrapers that had once been started with megacorp investment and then abandoned mid-construction rose up like bare bones. Between those rusted frames, old containers and shacks hung precariously, forming a giant slum.
Ji-hwan started walking the streets without a destination.
Everywhere in the mud-caked roads, the bottom-rung lives of the residents lay exposed in plain sight.
People wearing filthy plastic sheets to block the heavy acid rain while stripping insulation off scavenged wiring. Homeless drifters sitting out on the street with unfocused eyes, their minds wrecked by the side effects of cheap illegal cyberware. And rough voices haggling over eddies while laying broken military armor plates and smuggled magazines out on the ground were all tangled together in a chaotic mess.
As he walked past that desolate landscape, Ji-hwan’s steps came to a stop in the middle of a cracked asphalt plaza.
Where his gaze landed, a huge dead tree stood grotesquely jutting up through the broken concrete, black and withered, with not a single leaf left on it.
Around the base of that lifeless tree was a pile of empty shell casings and rusted dog tags someone had left there.
Ji-hwan quietly stared at the barren branches, then turned his eyes to an old man crouched beside it, tending to a broken gun barrel.
"What is this tree?"
At the dry question, the old man lifted his cloudy eyes and glanced at Ji-hwan’s crude hologram mask.
"The Tree of the Lost."
The old man answered in a gravelly voice, calm and matter-of-fact.
"It’s sort of a symbol for this combat zone. A place to honor the ones cast out by the outside world who washed up on this rotten land, and the ones who quietly died here."
Listening to the answer, Ji-hwan silently looked up at the spindly dead branches.
Then, beside the tree’s dark shadow, several men and women in mercenary gear with rifles slung over their shoulders brushed past him.
Ji-hwan’s gaze naturally followed their path, and he saw them open a heavy door and disappear into an old building with light spilling out from inside.
It was a bar, with a soft neon sign shaped like a butterfly hanging above it, and for a lawless zone it looked surprisingly quiet.
Ji-hwan briefly turned his head and took in the old man’s weathered back, still crouched by the Tree of the Lost as if remembering something.
Then, without hesitation, he turned away and pushed open the heavy door to the bar, whose sign blinked [Moth].
Creeeak-.
The moment the door opened and the rain was cut off, cold stares from inside the bar all snapped toward Ji-hwan at once.
The mercenaries and gang members drinking at the tables frowned in annoyance.
One of them even dropped a hand under the table to touch the grip of his weapon, making his hostility plain.
At that wariness, Ji-hwan swallowed a short sigh.
Ah, crap.
He’d forgotten he was wearing the crude hologram mask of a scavenger, the kind of trash this district treated like the lowest filth around.
For a moment he stood by the door, wondering if he should take the mask off, then let out a short, annoyed breath and kept walking.
Ignoring the sharp stares and open suspicion around him, he pulled out a vacant chair at the bar and sat down without a word.
Before long, a white woman who looked like the owner of the place came over to him.
She gave a tiny pause at Ji-hwan’s strange build under the scavenger mask, but then, as if it meant nothing, slid a glass of ice water in front of him.
"New face. First time here?"
At Daphne’s easy, friendly question, Ji-hwan kept the mask on and took a sip through the straw in the glass, dryly wetting his throat.
"Thanks. Yeah, it’s my first time here."
Ji-hwan set the glass down with a soft clack and added lazily, "...I’m not looking to cause trouble."
At that indifferent answer, Daphne let out a small laugh.
For a scavenger, he was far too calm and polite. She set down the glass she’d been wiping and gave a light nod.
"Looks that way. So, what’ll you have?"
At the question, Ji-hwan glanced down at the empty bar top.
"No menu?"
At that dead-serious question, Daphne burst out laughing.
"Ahaha! Take a look around. Do you see anything that fancy in this place?"
At her response, which treated his serious question like a joke, Ji-hwan let out a small sigh inwardly.
I wasn’t joking...
Ji-hwan muttered under his breath and scratched his chin.
Then he gave his order in a calm voice from behind the mask.
"Then could you make it a little sweet? I’m not much of a fan of alcohol’s bitterness."
Daphne arched a brow, interested.
"You’re an interesting one. Hold on."
She turned and took a silver shaker filled with ice from behind the bar.
She poured in a base of clear vodka without hesitation, then mixed in fluorescent red synthetic cherry syrup and a generous amount of sweet liqueur.
Shhhk-shhhk-.
With Daphne’s flashy wrist flicks, the crisp scrape of ice and liquid cutting against each other split the bar’s heavy air.
After a quick mix, a sticky liquid of deep red and amber was poured into a small glass.
Swoosh-.
Daphne slid the ice-filled glass over to Ji-hwan and added with a sly grin, "It’s a flavor a lot of women like."
"Thanks."
Ji-hwan smiled lightly and took the glass.
Without removing the crude scavenger mask, he bit down on the thin straw in the glass and sucked the red liquid down in one go.
The moment it slid down his throat.
"Mm?"
The harsh alcohol hit his stomach like a hammer, burning so hard it almost stole his breath.
But then a rich, sweet fruit aroma gently covered it over.
An unexpectedly excellent mix. Ji-hwan’s eyes lifted in satisfaction as he set the glass down with a soft clack.
"Oh, that’s good. What is this?"
Daphne draped the towel she’d been using to wipe the bar over her shoulder and answered with a faint laugh in her voice.
"Neon Cherry."
Ji-hwan memorized the unfamiliar name and gave a small nod.
"I’ll remember it."
He sipped the red liquid lazily through the straw behind the mask and scanned the bar interior.
Daphne, wiping the counter, looked at Ji-hwan in his fearsome scavenger mask calmly sipping sweet liquor and let out a quiet snort to herself.
In her eyes, he was just some big, slightly dim scavenger who’d gotten lucky surviving this lawless zone.
Daphne quickly lost interest and naturally turned her attention to the other customers.
After a little time passed, the cold wariness from the mercenaries and armed gang members who had stared at Ji-hwan when he first walked in had loosened up as well.
Deciding there was no need to keep paying attention to a harmless scavenger sitting quietly in the corner and drinking sweet booze, they turned back to their tables and resumed their own chatter.
Through the buzz of alcohol-soaked noise, fragments of information about Pacifica and beyond the wall filtered into Ji-hwan’s sharp hearing.
"Hey, you hear the rumor going around outside? Word is the whole back alley side of Night City beyond the wall got completely flipped upside down."
It was the voice of armed mercs seated at the table to his left.
"Biotechnica jacked the bounty up five times in one shot. Two and a half million eddies. The target was called ‘K,’ right?"
"What kind of insane bastard gets a bounty that high?"
"They say he killed a corporate exec in Pacifica and went on a rampage on top of that... Right now, corpo strike teams and every famous hound around are all burning their eyes out trying to find the guy."
They were talking about the astronomical bounty on his own head. The people outside might be chasing him like mad, but with no digital trace tied to the Net, he was nothing more than an untrackable ghost in Night City right now.
Then, from the corner table behind Ji-hwan, the voices of armed gang members clashing beer mugs roughly together hit his ears.
"Damn, aren’t the turf wars on the outskirts getting worse and worse? Those Pacifica leftovers and Animals are going completely feral."
"Do they really need to stomp through the tent slums of the outer district just to claim territory? They’ve crossed the line and then some."
"I heard they even wiped out a bunch of scavenger lackeys picking through scrap outside the district yesterday, just to make an example. Bastards really are animals with no blood or tears."
Listening silently to their conversation, Ji-hwan got a rough picture of the situation on Pacifica’s outskirts.
Ji-hwan gave a tiny snort through the straw and drained the remaining red liquid from the glass.
As he stood and the chair scraped back, Daphne, who had been wiping the bar, looked up.
She lightly asked the broad back of Ji-hwan as he headed for the exit, "By the way, what’s your name?"
At that question, Ji-hwan’s steps paused for the briefest moment.
A calm voice slipped out from behind the mask.
"Call me Zero."
"Zero?"
Daphne let out a snort of laughter.
"Isn’t that a little too lazy?"
Ji-hwan shrugged with his hand on the doorknob.
"A secret’s better when there are more of them, right? What about you?"
"Daphne."
"Right, Daphne. Thanks for the drink."
Ji-hwan gave a light nod, and Daphne answered with an easy smile of her own.
Creak, jingle-.
With the sound of the rusted door closing, Ji-hwan left the bar.
He sat sideways on the railing of the old building to keep out of the pouring acid rain and silently took in the bleak scenery of the Pacifica Combat Zone, where mud and neon signs were tangled together in chaos.
After letting out a short breath, he turned his steps back toward the scavenger hideout.
Tap, tap-.
The moment Ji-hwan opened the old iron door leading down to the basement and stepped inside, the air in the dark slaughterhouse was crushingly different from when he had left it after laying down the rules.
Dozens of armed scavengers had formed a semicircle facing the entrance, all of them staring straight at Ji-hwan.
At the center of that naked killing intent stood Boris, his face grotesquely swollen.
Old habits die hard. The man who had once bowed to overwhelming force had used Ji-hwan’s absence to gather every scavenger he could find nearby, set a trap, and prepare to take Ji-hwan’s life.
"You piece of shit, you finally back?"
Boris sneered, his bruised face twisting into a filthy grin.
Ji-hwan stood with his back to the shut iron door and swept his narrowed eyes across the gun barrels filling his field of view.
But he simply walked toward them at an easy pace, like he was taking a stroll through a quiet park.
At that relaxed attitude, the scavenger lieutenant standing beside Boris frowned and sneered, "He looks pretty ordinary. You dragged all of us here because some punk like that beat you?"
At his partner’s jab, Boris’s forehead veins bulged as he shouted, "Don’t look down on him, you moron! That bastard smashed through a wall barehanded and played with all our guys like they were toys!"
Then Boris yanked back the charging handle of his assault rifle and roared, "Kill him!!"
Clack, click-!
Tsssshh-.
At the same time, from inside Ji-hwan’s worn scavenger coat as he walked forward at a leisurely pace, a suppressed red aura began to boil up.
Though it did not leak outside the clothes, a faint red haze carrying fierce heat began to seep out through the gaps at Ji-hwan’s shirt sleeves and the back of his neck, pressing heavily against the basement air.
Ji-hwan, his eyes flashing with the ferocity of a predator facing prey, declared in a low voice, "Not beaten enough yet."
The instant the verdict fell, Ji-hwan’s body, wrapped in that red haze, surged forward through the hounds’ crossfire with savage speed.
After that, screams rang long and loud through the deep darkness of the Pacifica Combat Zone, pouring out from one scavenger and the dozens of scavengers surrounding him.
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