Thup, thud-thud.
The only sound breaking the heavy silence of the second-floor operating room was the patter of blood droplets falling from the ceiling to the floor.
Everywhere was a nightmare. The corpses of scavengers with blown-open heads or torn-off limbs lay scattered like chunks of meat.
Standing in the middle of that sea of blood, Ji-hwan stared blankly down at his own hands, stained red with someone else’s blood.
A few minutes ago, an afterimage had flashed across his retinas.
A young scavenger throwing away his weapon and running. When the crude mask came off, the face beneath it was just the face of an ordinary person, the kind you could see in Night City’s back alleys every day—twisted by sheer terror.
Without a shred of hesitation, Ji-hwan walked up to that weak back as it slipped on the blood and flailed for its life, then stomped down and crushed the skull.
It was slaughter so natural it was almost like breathing.
"What the hell am I, if I can kill people this casually? How am I any different from those trash?"
As the self-mocking question circled through his head, disgust rose from deep inside Ji-hwan’s chest.
No matter how much of human garbage they were, he found himself horrifyingly repulsed by how numb he had become to butchering living people.
"Hah, hah..."
A rough, suppressed breath burst from Ji-hwan’s mouth.
Even though his body had no implants, the extreme mental strain of watching himself become a killing machine pressed down on his reason like the first signs of cyberpsychosis.
Staggering, Ji-hwan braced one hand hard against the blood-caked edge of the operating table and forced his collapsing upper body upright.
His vision swam with dizziness, and he shut his eyes tight.
"It’s not like I came all this way, and survived this long, because I was trying to be a good person."
A selfish rationalization.
Ji-hwan bit down hard, swallowing the metallic taste of blood, and forced himself to gather the frayed threads of his reason before slowly opening his tired eyes again.
The first thing that came into his murky vision was not the living remnants he still had to finish off, but the cold operating tables the scavengers had used.
On them lay the disgusting traces of what those bastards had done to innocent civilians—kidnapping them, cutting them open alive, and harvesting their organs.
The cruel setting he had only ever seen behind a game monitor.
Now it had become vivid reality, with screams and stench vibrating through the room and carving themselves into Ji-hwan’s brain.
The moment he faced the rotten essence of Night City with his own eyes.
Above the revulsion that he was no different from them, there was only the reality that he had to live in this world from now on.
"Well, whatever... Even if it’s hypocrisy..."
By the time that thought surfaced, there was no more wavering in Ji-hwan’s dark eyes.
He pulled on one of the crude hologram masks lying on the floor and roughly threw an old coat over his shoulders.
Outside, in the muddy streets of the Pacifica Combat Zone under a pounding acid rain, every gang member and drifter under ragged tarps and makeshift shelters turned to stare as Ji-hwan walked by.
A miserable figure, coated head to toe in other people’s blood and mashed flesh. Through the mask, Ji-hwan’s eyes showed through for a moment, empty as a bottomless abyss with not a trace of emotion left in them.
At that inhuman, eerie sight, the crowd lining the street recoiled and backed away in a panic.
"What the hell is that...?"
"Did he just come back from grinding up a person or something?"
"Look at his eyes. Make way—he might be some crazy cyberpsycho."
Fear-soaked murmurs drifted in from all sides, carried on the rain.
But Ji-hwan paid no mind to any of it, strolling calmly through the crowd as it split apart like the parting of the Red Sea.
Before long, he reached the entrance to the scavenger den he had made his base.
Kreeeak—.
As the heavy iron door opened with a grating screech and a massive silhouette dripping blood stepped inside, Boris, who had been waiting outside with his breath held, hurried forward to greet him.
"Y-you’re back..."
Boris froze in place before he could finish the greeting.
The stench of blood hit him hard. The boss who had gone out looking perfectly fine had returned drenched in red, and Boris asked in a worried voice, "B-boss! What the hell happened to you? Did you get seriously hurt?"
At Boris’s stammered question, Ji-hwan’s empty gaze settled on him.
"It’s not my blood."
At that instant, a cold shiver ran down Boris’s spine.
"If all that blood is someone else’s..."
Before Boris, now silenced by instinctive fear, could say another word, Ji-hwan spoke.
"The situation at the place you mentioned is over."
"Huh...? Th-then the guys inside..."
"Go clean up the bodies. That’s what you usually do, right?"
Before Boris could even ask in surprise, Ji-hwan cut him off coldly.
"There should be civilian survivors. Treat their injuries properly so they don’t get infected, and report back to me."
For a killer scavenger to order them to personally treat and care for the victims they had kidnapped, Boris stood there dumbly, still trying to process it, while Ji-hwan shot him a look full of deep contempt for a man who had also made a living kidnapping people.
Then, blinking with exhaustion, Ji-hwan turned and walked indifferently toward his room in the corner of the rain-soaked hideout.
Once Ji-hwan disappeared completely from sight, Boris, who had been holding his breath, kicked at the slumped-down underlings, forcing the ones groaning with broken bones and bruises back to their feet before jerking his chin irritably.
"Grab your tools. We’re going to clean up."
A subordinate with half his face caved in swallowed the pain and asked, "Wh-where are we going?"
"That abandoned building three blocks over. The one he mentioned earlier."
At that answer, the underlings’ eyes wavered uneasily.
"T-that’s Ivan’s turf, isn’t it? They’ve been looking for a chance to settle scores with us. If we go there looking like this, we’ll get turned into Swiss cheese right away..."
Before the subordinate could finish, Boris grabbed him by the collar.
"You’ll know when we get there. Shut up and follow me."
Boris forced the underlings to move and led them through Pacifica’s mud under the pounding acid rain.
When they finally reached the entrance to the abandoned building, the first thing they saw was the blood-smeared iron door.
The moment they stepped inside, a suppressed gasp burst from their throats.
Everywhere was a slaughterhouse.
The rival scavengers they had been fighting over territory with lay strewn in blood, their limbs ripped off or their skulls caved in like chunks of meat.
After looking directly at that crimson hellscape, the word "betrayal" vanished cleanly from the underlings’ minds.
"Clean up the bodies, and take any weapons that still look usable."
Boris gave the order in a trembling voice and started moving with heavy steps, searching the corners of the building.
Unlike the blood-soaked outer area, when he kicked open the door to an old room that had been firmly shut, a group huddled in the darkness flinched and lowered their heads from the light.
They were the civilian survivors, kidnapped by scavengers and waiting for the day their organs would be cut out.
Because they had been locked in a narrow, soundproof room, they had no idea what massacre had just taken place outside and were only trembling in terror.
Boris paused without taking off his crude hologram mask.
He couldn’t let ordinary people see the horrors of this filthy operating room where lowlife scavengers had been chopping up human beings.
Boris gestured to the underlings behind him to block the survivors’ view, then forcibly kicked open the intact back door of the building.
"Damn it... do I really have to do this kind of shit at my age?"
As he roughly cut away the restraints, Boris muttered under his breath.
He felt ashamed at the absurd situation of having to rescue people when he had spent his life kidnapping and dissecting them.
But that frustration didn’t last long.
"If the new boss says jump, you jump."
With his face hidden, Boris awkwardly herded the survivors outside and silently pushed them forward so they wouldn’t look back at the blood-soaked horror inside.
Blindfolded with rough strips of cloth in the darkness, the survivors walked across the slick floor with their hands on one another’s shoulders.
These were people who had been tied to operating tables, waiting for the day their organs would be ripped out.
With no idea what was happening outside, the sudden blindfolds and forced movement felt no different from a march toward death.
"Honey... please, our kids..."
"Where are you taking us? You’re not going to kill us like this, are you...?"
Cries and family names trembled up from all around.
The scavenger underlings at their sides barked at them to be quiet, but since no one bothered explaining why their eyes had been covered, the survivors’ fear only grew worse.
As Boris led that chaos out of the building, the muscles in his face twisted ugly.
If this had been his usual self, he would have put a round through the heads of these noisy meat sacks on the spot.
He was irritated at having to escort people alive, but when the cold gaze of that East Asian boss flashed through his mind, Boris swallowed his harsh words and let out a long, heavy sigh instead.
"Haa..."
Then, from the middle of the anxious crowd, a calm female voice rang out.
"Everyone, calm down. If they meant to kill us, they would have shot us in that room already."
It was Stella Ramos, a female cop with a silver badge pinned over her torn body armor.
Her eyes were also covered by a blindfold, but she kept her reason and soothed the others.
"We can’t fight back anyway. There’s no reason for them to go to this much trouble, even covering our eyes. Just keep walking and follow the person in front of you."
Stella’s logical assessment noticeably quieted the crying survivors.
Boris, watching that scene, opened his mouth for a moment.
He almost blurted out a "thanks" for calming the cargo that had been impossible to control.
"Tha..."
But a scavenger who had spent his whole life slicing people apart and tearing them open had no place for a word like that.
His tongue stiffened around a kindness he had never spoken before, and Boris cleared his throat awkwardly before roughly shoving the survivors onward.
"Ahem! Damn, you people sure talk a lot! Shut it and keep moving!"
Before long, the damp acid rain came pouring down over the survivors’ heads.
After confirming they had fully exited the abandoned building, Boris nodded to his underlings, and the restraints and blindfolds binding the survivors were all removed at once.
Under the gray Pacifica sky, the trembling survivors touched their own bodies in disbelief. Then one of them burst into tears and bowed deeply toward Boris.
"Th-thank you... Thank you so much. Who are you people..."
At that expression of gratitude, Boris’s swollen face flushed red.
"Don’t thank me, thank the..."
He almost said the identity of the real savior out loud, then froze.
Come to think of it, he hadn’t even asked the name of that East Asian monster who had crushed them by force.
Boris scratched the back of his head and looked away.
"Whatever. Thank our boss."
There was still one more horrifying order left from that boss.
"A-and also. If any of your injuries start acting up or you need treatment..."
A good deed he had never once done in his life. The words scraped out of Boris’s throat like they were caught on thorns.
"Come to the basement of the old hotel at the end of those three blocks. It’s our base... we’ll fix you up."
The sight of a scavenger who kidnapped people now promising wound care and advertising a back-alley clinic was bizarre beyond belief. Stella Ramos, listening to that clumsy, contradictory speech, narrowed her eyes sharply.
The scavengers were notorious for cruelty, and now they were suddenly letting civilians go and even offering a treatment center? There was no way this had happened of their own free will.
"Our boss? What kind of bastard is behind this, to turn these crazy dogs into leashed mutts overnight?"
Stella stared hard at Boris’s face with suspicious eyes.
Some huge, alien force was clearly shaking the back alleys of Pacifica.
But she couldn’t uncover the truth right now with no weapon in her hands.
Stella firmly carved that deep suspicion into one corner of her heart, then led the still-trembling survivors away toward the rain-filled street.
On the gray night streets of Night City under a brutal acid rain, the heel of Stella’s shoe came to a stop in front of the main entrance to NCPD Precinct 6.
At the end of her soaked vision, she caught sight of the traitorous superior just as he was stepping out the front door.
The familiar face that had made her a nuisance for digging into her husband Bill’s death, then sent her into the scavengers’ slaughterhouse under a fake investigation order.
"You son of a bitch!"
With a furious shout, Stella lunged like an animal.
Before the superior could even turn in surprise, Stella’s hand seized him by the collar and jammed the cold muzzle of her service pistol straight into the center of his forehead.
"Hah...!"
A gasp burst from the superior’s lips as he turned white, as if he had seen a ghost.
Sudden threat of killing a fellow officer. The other cops loitering around the front entrance panicked and all at once drew their pistols on Stella.
"Stella?! You’re alive?!"
"Put the gun down now! Calm down, Stella!"
Her colleagues’ voices poured in from every direction. The superior, his jaw trembling under Stella’s muzzle, frantically reached out, terrified she might expose the truth.
"S-Stella?! How are you even alive... wait, just listen to me first!"
Stella brutally smashed the back of his hand with the pistol grip as he struggled to shove the gun away, then tossed a data shard into the air from her other hand.
Whirr—.
Blue holographic light sliced through the rain. There, the evidence was laid bare: the "communication interference log" showing how the superior had deliberately redirected the search net to the Badlands when Stella went missing, and the "encrypted text messages" proving he had taken eddies.
"This bastard sold me out to the scavengers!"
Every colleague pointing a gun at Stella immediately turned their eyes to the floating holographic record.
Unlike Stella’s expectation that they would naturally slap cuffs on the superior, the colleagues’ gun barrels slowly lowered.
They only exchanged furtive glances with one another, then, as if by prior arrangement, quietly backed away and averted their eyes from Stella.
"...You bastards."
Stella’s voice trembled in tiny fragments.
From the executives to the lowest ranks of this precinct, they had already been bought by corpos and gangs alike and were all in the same boat.
Seeing that her colleagues would not arrest her and were instead silently going along with it, the superior’s face finally got some color back, and a disgusting smile spread across it.
He gently pushed away the pistol still pressed to his forehead and spoke with shameless ease.
"Oh, Stella. After being kidnapped by a gang and put through hell, it looks like you’ve developed severe PTSD. Fake data like that? You should be seeing a psychiatrist first."
Stella’s blood ran cold at that absurd gaslighting. The superior stepped closer, tapping her wet shoulder and whispering coldly into her ear.
"Keep your mouth shut and take sick leave. Otherwise, your dead husband... or your little sister left all alone... might have a very unfortunate ‘accident.’"
At the veiled threat against her sister Sasha, Stella’s fist, veins bulging as she gripped the pistol so hard it seemed ready to break, trembled violently.
But Stella suppressed the rage threatening to explode out of her and slowly lowered the gun from his forehead.
"...Understood."
A short answer squeezed out between her bitten lips. Stella lowered her head as if avoiding his eyes, turned on heavy feet, and trudged back to her desk in the corner of the precinct.
Watching that helpless back, the traitorous superior and the others let out relieved sighs and greasy smirks.
They had completely mistaken her for someone who would tuck her tail and stay quiet from now on.
But beyond the dark partition, the eyes revealed through Stella’s wet bangs as she sank into her chair were shining with a very different light.
It was not resignation, but resolve.
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