It had already been a month since the Animal gang had been driven out.
The basement of the old hotel on the outskirts of Pacifica was no longer a place that hurt people.
Word had spread through the whole nearby slum that anyone without money could get treated there for a handful of eddies, basically at cost.
By the entrance, a line stretched on and on with desperate poor souls suffering from chrome side effects and injuries day after day.
Inside the clinic. Boris, a massive man over six and a half feet tall, was crouched in front of an old operating table.
Between his thick, blunt fingers—hands tuned for hurting people—a pair of thin tweezers wobbled precariously.
In front of him was delicate work: reconnecting a child patient’s severed neural interface. Sweat dripped in heavy beads from Boris’s forehead.
"Done. Try moving it."
Right after the rough bandaging was finished, the child flexed his squeaking artificial arm and broke into a bright smile.
"Thank you, mister!"
The child’s parents bowed again and again in gratitude.
Boris cleared his throat awkwardly and grumbled in a rough voice.
"Yeah, yeah, just get out of here already. Next patient!"
Despite his brusque tone, Boris didn’t push away the unfamiliar warmth of his patients.
He no longer hesitated to give people rough hands instead of a gun.
As he devoted himself day and night to the patients he faced, a strange sense of responsibility had settled into his beastlike eyes, along with a deep fatigue.
But reality was cold.
"We’re running out of antibiotics and bandages."
At the report from one of his underlings, Boris violently raked a hand through his hair.
Running out of basic supplies wasn’t the only problem. Faced with critically wounded patients being hauled in covered in blood, his crude surgical skill had become a painfully obvious limit.
Watching patients die because he couldn’t handle neural reconnections or precise chrome repairs, Boris sank into a deep self-loathing.
In the end, he dragged his heavy steps toward the corner of the clinic.
On an old sofa in the dark corner, Ji-hwan sat watching everything through a red goblin hologram mask.
Even with his thin, lean frame, the cold charisma he gave off made Boris lower his posture naturally.
Unlike a month ago, when he had obeyed out of fear, Boris bowed his head heavily now with genuine respect.
"Boss. At this rate, I can’t save people anymore."
His cracked voice drifted toward the empty medicine cabinet.
"The meds and my skills, that’s as far as they go."
Ji-hwan slowly raised his upper body from where he had been silently looking down at Boris’s tired face.
With an old coat draped over him, Ji-hwan gave a calm order.
"Go finish wrapping those bandages. I’ll be back in a bit."
After leaving the basement, Ji-hwan walked the streets of Pacifica.
Passing the black, twisted silhouette of the Tree of the Lost rising between cracked concrete, Ji-hwan pushed open the door to the old bar Moth.
Creak.
Taking a seat at the bar, he watched as the bartender, Daphne, slid a glass filled with red liquid toward him.
A sweet drink. Neon Cherry. Ji-hwan bit the straw through his mask and drank in the sticky liquid.
"Looks like it’s a little quiet today, Zero."
Daphne wiped the bar counter with a towel and chatted casually.
Ji-hwan answered the meaningless small talk while keeping his gaze fixed on empty space.
Knowledge and equipment. If he wanted to fill both at once, he’d have to strip a decent ripperdoc in the center of Night City.
But to do that, he needed solid intel on their location and the security net guarding them.
Ji-hwan was rubbing his chin, deep in thought, when—
Ding.
The old bar door opened, and a familiar silhouette stepped inside.
A woman in an old coat with the collar turned up. It was Stella Ramos, the former cop who had been moving quietly while on medical leave.
Whether she had come looking for someone or just happened to stop by, her wandering gaze around the bar locked onto Ji-hwan, sitting in the corner with the red goblin mask.
Ji-hwan set down his empty glass with a sharp clack and gave her a small nod.
Stella approached carefully and stopped beside him.
While Daphne was away handling another customer, Ji-hwan asked,
"Good timing. There’s one person I’m looking for. Can you check on them for me?"
At the unexpected request, Stella stopped in her tracks and nodded.
"What information do you need?"
Ji-hwan briefly listed the target’s conditions through the goblin mask, then added,
"Count the cost as debt you owe me."
At that, a faint smile spread over Stella’s stiff mouth.
She shook her head without hesitation.
"Debt? No. I’m fine, so just keep doing what you’re doing."
After answering, Stella’s brow tightened slightly.
The target information Ji-hwan had just rattled off. The man in front of her had never met the target, and yet he described the shabby ripperdoc’s exact background and private habits in the back alleys of Night City as if he had been staring straight through him for years.
"Do you... know this person?"
At Stella’s cautious question, Ji-hwan absentmindedly traced the rim of the empty glass.
Fragments of a world he had faced through a monitor, across dozens of game restarts. A strange curve formed beneath Ji-hwan’s mask.
"He won’t know me."
The meaningful answer scattered over the stale air of the old bar.
It was silent refusal to ask any more.
Stella caught the meaning in Ji-hwan’s heavy gaze and lowered her eyes, as if lost in thought for a moment.
"My younger sister is a netrunner... I’ll contact her. If it’s her, she should be able to pull the information you want in no time."
Ji-hwan silently nodded, staring at the bar table.
The next day.
On the dusty outskirts of Pacifica, a familiar old coat entered the run-down building with the shabby neon sign that blinked "Ripperdoc Clinic."
Stella Ramos, wary of her surroundings as she descended into the basement, stopped dead in front of Ji-hwan, who was sitting on the old sofa in the corner.
"The thing you asked for..."
Stella’s hand paused as she reached into her coat to pull out a silver data shard and an earpiece.
Ji-hwan, leaning back against the sofa, was silently staring at her without answering.
When his gaze through the goblin mask met hers, Stella’s brow furrowed in confusion.
"Is something wrong?"
Even at her cautious question, Ji-hwan remained silent for a beat.
He quickly weighed his options in his head. This former cop had grown disillusioned with the corrupt police force, yet she still showed unwavering loyalty and trust toward him.
'Yeah. If it’s this woman...'
After a brief moment of thought, Ji-hwan slowly raised a hand.
Whirr.
With a faint mechanical sound, the red goblin hologram mask that had covered his face twenty-four hours a day dissolved away.
The bare face of an East Asian man with deep black hair and cool, indifferent eyes was revealed under the dim basement lights.
Stella’s eyes widened grotesquely.
She had finally faced the real face of the man who had shaken the back alleys of Night City—the monster who had hidden himself so completely—and for several seconds she stood frozen, holding her breath.
But after a short breath in, her wavering gaze settled down calmly.
With her usual composed expression, she stepped closer, took a silver data shard and a small black earpiece from her pocket, and slid them across the table.
"These are the things I promised."
At her dry tone, as if nothing had happened, Ji-hwan picked up the shard from the table and asked casually,
"You’re not surprised?"
At that question, a faint smile spread over Stella’s stiff mouth.
"I was surprised. But... that means you trust me that much, so I’m actually happy."
Stella took out a silver data shard and a small black earpiece from her pocket and slid them across the table.
"The shard has the target’s location and the basic security layout of the clinic. And if you plug in this earpiece, it’ll connect you directly to my sister. Her name is Sasha. You’ll need direct netrunner backup on-site if you want to break through the security net."
Ji-hwan silently nodded behind the red goblin hologram mask and gathered up the items.
"Thanks."
After leaving those words of gratitude, Ji-hwan gave Stella a slight bow, and she turned to head back out of the basement.
The moment her old coat disappeared completely beyond the stairs—
"Oh, boss."
Three or four hulking scavenger underlings sauntered over and peered at Ji-hwan’s worn sofa.
The same bastards who had been butchering people a month ago were now awkwardly bandaged up and reeking of disinfectant.
One of them, his face covered in scars, glanced around and slowly raised a thick, blunt pinky finger.
"Could it be? Did the boss finally get a lover..."
A burst of snickering followed.
After a month of forced reform, they’d grown somewhat used to Ji-hwan’s control, so this was their own stupid attempt at a joke.
But instead of answering, Ji-hwan projected the expression of someone who had just heard a terrible joke through his hologram mask.
The underling’s snickering gradually stiffened.
"Kheh... ahem... where was that patient..."
Startled, the idiots scratched the backs of their heads awkwardly and quickly looked away.
Watching them scatter back to their posts in a hurry, Ji-hwan let out a short, incredulous breath.
He rose from the sofa and plugged the data shard Stella had left into a terminal.
Whirr.
On the hologram screen, the target’s coordinates and security data appeared, embedded in Jigzig Street.
After silently confirming the target’s location, Ji-hwan shut off the display and draped the old coat over his shoulders.
The heavy soles of his combat boots passed Boris, who was crouched in the middle of the clinic sorting bandages.
"...I’ll be gone for a few days."
At that, Boris shot up from his seat and bowed frantically at the waist.
"Have a safe trip, boss!"
"Who said I’m your boss?"
As he spoke, the smile that had already formed on his face showed Ji-hwan’s mood, and Ji-hwan plugged a small earpiece into his ear before pushing open the basement’s iron door and stepping out.
He headed to an empty parking lot on the dusty outskirts of Pacifica. An old civilian sedan, an Archer Hella that Boris had been told to prepare in advance, was waiting beside a puddle of rainwater.
Ji-hwan opened the driver’s door and folded himself into the seat. A cheerful voice crackled out of the small earpiece in his ear.
Ssshhk.
"Ah, can you hear me? You’re the ‘Zero’ my sister mentioned, right? I’m Sasha. Thank you so much for saving her!"
An upbeat greeting that didn’t fit the heavy air of Pacifica at all filled the cold car interior.
Ji-hwan gripped the old steering wheel, started the engine, and replied calmly.
"Yeah. I heard about you from your sister."
The moment he answered, faint mechanical sounds rang out one after another over the comms, and the camera installed inside the scan vehicle began to sweep.
The curious netrunner Sasha was habitually trying to scrape Ji-hwan’s biometric data.
But.
"Huh...!"
A sharp gasp burst through the earpiece.
"W-what the hell are you, mister? The scan isn’t working...!"
Sasha’s entire monitor view was completely blocked out by a solid black [Blackout].
Ignoring Sasha’s panicked voice, Ji-hwan shifted gears and answered dryly.
"Save the small talk for later. We’re moving."
At Ji-hwan’s voice, Sasha quickly steadied her breathing and made the sound of fingers rattling across a keyboard.
"O-okay! Head to checkpoint number three on the outskirts. I’ll shut down the surveillance cameras and sensors for ten seconds, so just pass through naturally!"
Vrooom-!
As Sasha’s netrunning support tore through the firewall and blinded the checkpoint’s eyes, the sedan Ji-hwan was driving slipped into the neon glow of central Night City without leaving even a single byte of digital trace, even as it crossed Pacifica’s heavily guarded border.
In a shadowy alley near a checkpoint on the edge of the Pacifica Combat Zone.
Inside a crudely modified old vehicle, a low-level merc crew was scanning each car leaving Pacifica one by one.
The merc in the passenger seat chewed on a cheap, flavorless energy bar and complained bitterly.
"Fuck. Sitting here breathing dust and running scans all day is gonna fry my optic implants."
The grumbling bastard suddenly glanced over and asked a stupid question.
"Hey, if we’re gonna find the target’s location anyway, why don’t we just ambush him and grab him ourselves? Then instead of getting some pocket change from the corpos for info, we’d take the whole 2.5 million eddies."
At that nonsense, the merc at the wheel snorted in disbelief.
"You insane prick. Don’t you watch the footage?"
The driver turned on a hologram projector.
A fragment of a short combat BD floated in the air. In it, under the rain in Pacifica, a monster with no chrome on his body at all was butchering an entire swarm of heavily armed mercs and corporate elite strike teams by himself, ripping the vanguard apart into bloody chunks of meat in a horrific massacre.
The merc in the passenger seat stared blankly at the footage, swallowed hard, and slowly took his hand off the grip of the weapon he’d been holding.
"...Fuck it, let’s just keep scanning."
Having quickly faced reality and abandoned his stupid dream of bounty hunting, he turned back to the scanner just as a sedan broke through the rain and emerged from the Pacifica checkpoint into Night City—an old Archer Hella.
The merc’s eyes, with his optic implants running on instinct, widened grotesquely.
"Huh?"
In his field of view, the entire scanned silhouette of the person was completely blocked out in solid black [Blackout].
"What the hell is that? The scan is completely jammed?"
"What? ...Forget it, just go after it."
Beyond their flustered voices, greed darkened the mercs’ eyes, and the engine of the modified vehicle roared as they hurriedly began tailing the suspicious Archer Hella.
At that moment, Ji-hwan’s sharp senses caught something clinging to his back. He glanced into the rearview mirror and saw something behind him, and his eyes flashed as he spoke.
"We’ve got a tail."
But Sasha, who was providing backup, denied it.
"- No way! I blocked the firewall and the cameras, so not a single byte of digital trace got through... -"
Sasha didn’t get to finish.
"- Huh? -"
At that very moment, the vehicle trail of the mercs physically chasing the Archer Hella appeared late on Sasha’s monitor as red dots.
"- H-holy crap! It’s real?! No, how did you notice them before my sensor net did?! -"
Sasha cried out in shock at the miraculous sight of an analog sixth sense leaving top-tier digital hacking in the dust.
But Ji-hwan ignored the fuss and gave a dry order.
"Save the chatter for later. Mark me a blind spot nearby—some place with no CCTV and few people. We need to shake them."
With the rattling of keys, a new destination updated on the hologram navigation screen.
"- Two kilometers ahead, to the right. It’s a dark, narrow alley behind an abandoned factory!"
The moment he confirmed the blind-spot coordinates Sasha had marked, Ji-hwan’s heavy combat boots slammed the Archer Hella’s accelerator all the way down.
VROOOOM-!
The engine screamed as the old civilian sedan kicked hard off the rain-soaked asphalt.
With the sudden burst of speed from the car ahead, the modified vehicle of the low-level mercs that had been carefully tailing at a distance was instantly thrown into chaos.
"Fuck, he spotted us!"
"Hurry up and chase! Floor it, now!"
As the merc in the passenger seat shouted frantically, the one at the wheel slammed the gas pedal until it nearly broke while shifting gears.
The modified vehicle, roaring with a deafening howl, bit onto the Archer Hella’s tail and tore through the rainy road.
The screech of tires cutting through standing water and the engine’s thunder split the narrow streets of Night City in disorder.
After a hair-raising series of cornering maneuvers at an intersection, the Archer Hella’s red taillights slid into the dark, narrow back alley Sasha had marked.
Screeech-!
With a violent screech, the tailing merc vehicle blocked the alley entrance like a beast.
Clack, click-!
The men kicked open their doors, drew their weapons with tense faces, and surrounded the parked Archer Hella.
One of them cautiously approached and yanked the driver’s door open.
"......!"
The car was completely empty. An empty space with no heat signature or digital trace left behind.
"What the fuck! Where’d he go?!"
"He came into this alley just now! Search everywhere!"
The low-level mercs fell into extreme confusion, shouting in panic as they frantically spun up thermal sensors and motion detectors.
But above their heads, while they cursed and searched the empty car and the slick floor without even catching the heat of a rat, Ji-hwan’s figure in a red goblin mask slipped soundlessly across the roof of a dark abandoned building beyond their line of sight.
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