In Watson, in a narrow, dark back alley of Kabuki Market.
Ji-hwan’s steps came to a stop in front of an old iron door.
In his memory, this was the hideout of Viktor Vektor, the best ripperdoc in Night City in 2077.
Kreeeek-.
The rusty iron door opened with a harsh scrape. Ji-hwan stepped into the darkness, expecting the familiar sensations that should have been there: the sharp sting of alcohol disinfectant in his nose, the noise of an analog boxing match playing on an old CRT TV. But the moment he entered, his vision went cold.
There was nothing there.
An empty basement with no medical chair, no surgical tools. Only damp mold, a layer of pale dust, and discarded scrap metal littering the floor.
Staring into the empty space, Ji-hwan finally understood.
He was in Night City in 2068. He had never considered that Viktor might not be here yet.
[Mister. Who exactly are you looking for in there?]
Through the earpiece in his ear, Sasha’s voice came through with the sound of her chewing snacks.
Ji-hwan leaned against the old wall and spoke.
"Viktor Vektor... as far as I know, he’s a ripperdoc...."
[Viktor Vektor? You mean that Trauma Team Viktor Vektor?]
Ji-hwan scratched his chin at that.
"Then find out where he is right now. At least track his route."
At his request, the harsh clatter of typing rang out through the earpiece.
[Not easy. The firewalls layered over the main server at headquarters are all Black ICE. If I try to shove through head-on, my brain’ll get burned to charcoal.... It’ll take me a bit to route around it.]
"Nothing ever comes easy."
With a short sigh, Ji-hwan left the empty basement.
He sat down on an old bench along the smog-gray streets of Kabuki.
The sight of Night City, where filthy mud and flashy neon signs were disgustingly tangled together. For all the ten-year gap, the essence of this city hadn’t changed at all.
Whiiiiing-!
[The main server’s a bust, but I managed to grab one of the outbound armed AV-4 dispatch channels. I’ll sit on the encrypted frequency and filter the radio logs until Viktor Vektor’s name gets called.]
Encrypted radio noise poured nonstop into Ji-hwan’s ear through the earpiece.
Sasha kept tracking them through their frequency, and Ji-hwan listened while leaning back on the bench.
And after several hours had passed.
[Huh? Mister. A dispatch order just went out for Viktor’s team. But this is weird....]
There was no trace of her usual playfulness in Sasha’s voice.
"What is it?"
[The operation zone is... right in the middle of Maelstrom territory. No support can reach them, and the gang’s firepower is going crazy. A normal Trauma Team would void the contract and run immediately, but the higher-ups are forcing them in. They’re even trying to cut the comms on purpose.]
The typing stopped, and the netrunner delivered her cold conclusion.
[This isn’t a rescue... I don’t know why, but it looks like they’re trying to kill the man named Viktor.]
Ji-hwan’s dark eyes narrowed sharply.
"Put the location in my sight right now."
[Mister, have you lost your mind?! It’s a trap. There’s no need to get mixed up in this crazy stunt. If you need a ripperdoc, let’s just hire someone else!]
Sensing the danger, Sasha shouted in rational protest.
But Ji-hwan, rising from the bench and straightening the collar of his worn coat, drew a hard line.
"It has to be him. Just send me the location."
[Ugh, seriously! You’re impossible!!]
A grumble thick with frustration. A moment later, the coordinates of the combat zone on the outskirts of Night City were stamped clearly in front of Ji-hwan as a red dot.
The instant the coordinates were fixed in place, Ji-hwan moved.
At the same time, high above the outskirts of Night City.
Inside the Trauma Team AV-4 helicopter descending with blaring sirens.
The squad waiting for deployment all wore tactical helmets and kept their mouths tightly shut.
Amid the roar of the engines, Viktor Vektor, an elite operative now called a living legend, steadied his breathing inside his helmet.
The corporate ecosystem where human life was weighed strictly in eddies. This bullshit was the last time.
Once this mission was over, he would hand in his resignation immediately. With that resolve, Viktor tightened his grip on the tactical rifle.
Then he noticed a few teammates seated beside him subtly nodding their heads, exchanging covert signals on the frequency.
But there was no noise at all inside his helmet’s internal comms.
A strange sense of unease brushed past him, but Viktor dismissed it as ordinary pre-mission tension and let it go.
The cold truth he didn’t know was waiting outside the helicopter, in a comfortable safe zone.
The Trauma Team headquarters control room.
Administrative staff were watching Viktor seated inside the AV-4 through a giant monitor.
One employee pointed at the screen and snickered.
"He got lucky and became a legend, but today he’s got the worst luck imaginable. I almost feel bad thinking about how he’s going to die on this mission."
At the light mockery, an executive standing nearby gave a cold order.
"If he dies, one of Night City’s living legends becomes a ‘true legend’ who died heroically saving a client. Use that as the face of the memorial ad campaign and get it ready immediately to boost our megacorp’s stock."
A subordinate receiving the order asked cautiously,
"Then what about Viktor’s body?"
"The body? Leave it. It’s gang territory anyway. Someone will clean it up."
The executive looked at the living, breathing Viktor on the screen like he was already a dead slab of meat and answered indifferently.
Back again, the AV-4 descending into the jaws of death.
TatatatangKwaang!
Unaware of the death sentence handed down from headquarters, Viktor’s helicopter dropped straight into the middle of Maelstrom territory, the target zone.
The moment the helicopter door opened, the team leader’s sharp operational transmission stabbed into Viktor’s helmet mic.
"Everyone, drop! Break through to the VIP signal coordinates!"
Tatatatang!
"Right flank clear! Move in!"
The instant the squad and Viktor deployed to the ground with those orders, Maelstrom gang members with red optical eyes flashing in the darkness burst out like beasts.
"You corporate rat bastards! We’re gonna grind you all into paste, motherfuckers!"
The rough profanity of men drunk on drugs and slaughter washed over the battlefield along with gunfire.
Violent tearing sounds and blood-red flames ripped through the air. Under the barrage of anti-air fire, Viktor and the Trauma Team squad’s tactical rifles spat fire.
Thud!Crunch!
The head of a Maelstrom ganger charging at the front with an assault rifle exploded like a watermelon.
In the instant brains and blood sprayed through the air, the chest of the man rushing in beside him was also pierced by a high-caliber armor-piercing round, tearing his upper body apart in a grotesque mess.
In the middle of a hellscape where blood and flesh rained down, Viktor and the squad fought their way deeper into the ruined building to find the V.I.P. client.
Finally, in front of the old iron door at the deepest point where the rescue signal had been traced.
Bang!
The lead squad member kicked the door in and entered, sweeping tactical lights across the dark room.
But there was no bleeding client. Not even a rat.
An empty sealed room. An underground space completely cut off from the outside. Confirming that the client wasn’t there, Viktor instantly sensed that something was going terribly wrong.
"Something’s off..."
The moment he began to speak in caution, a teammate standing behind him pulled the trigger without the slightest hesitation, aiming for Viktor’s heart.
Bang!
Thud!
The thick bullet he failed to dodge brutally punched through his thigh, ripping flesh apart.
"Ghk...!"
Viktor’s knee buckled as a groan of pain escaped him.
As he collapsed to the floor, bleeding out, the helmeted teammates all aimed their cold gun barrels at him at once.
"Why are you doing this... If the higher-ups find out about this, do you think they’ll let you off?"
At his blood-boiling warning, one of the teammates let out a sour laugh.
"The corporation? This is happening because the higher-ups ordered it directly."
With a slight tilt of his gun barrel, the bastard revealed the horrible truth.
"Don’t take it so hard. It’s all about eddies in the end. From the people above, your stupid title as a ‘living legend’ is way more marketable when you’re packaged as a hero who died gloriously on the battlefield than when you’re alive and breathing."
At that, Viktor’s eyes trembled.
"No way..."
Another teammate standing beside him sneered and added,
"Besides, your ridiculous fame and that whole high-and-mighty act have always been pretty disgusting...."
"Enough chatter. Let’s finish this and get back."
Then the teammate beside him cut in coldly, flipping off the tactical rifle’s safety and about to pull the trigger. But Viktor, still sitting there bleeding, lunged forward at the same time. Even with the pain of his torn thigh exploding through him, he threw his hand up and slapped the gun barrel hard off the bullet’s path.
Bang!
Thud!
As the muzzle sliced through empty air, the fist from his modified Gorilla Arms smashed the helmeted face of the teammate who had been about to fire, shattering it completely.
With one teammate dead, the remaining two men panicked and stumbled backward, shouting desperately into the darkness outside the sealed room.
"Fuck, Maelstrom! I know you bastards are waiting outside! Get your asses in here and help kill this motherfucker right now!"
At the frantic call, Maelstrom gang members with grotesque metallic voices and flashing red optical eyes came laughing out of the darkness.
But their blue gun barrels were not aimed at Viktor. They were aimed at the Trauma Team teammates screaming for help.
"!!!!...W-what are you doing!!! That’s not what we agreed on!"
One of the Maelstrom executives stepped forward toward the screaming Trauma Team member and snorted.
With red optical eyes gleaming, he opened his mouth with a nasty grin.
"A deal? Sure, it was a pretty sweet deal. But after doing the math, swallowing your shiny armed AV helicopter whole was a hell of a lot more profitable than the pocket change those corporate rats were offering us."
He yanked the charging handle roughly and added without mercy, as if it were obvious.
"In this line of work, the ones who get played are the idiots. So the deal’s off."
Tatatatang!
A merciless hail of bullets tore through the silence of the sealed room.
Blood-red flames burst from the gun barrels of the surrounding Maelstrom members. Caught in the middle of that crossfire, the two traitorous teammates were reduced to meat in an instant without even managing a scream.
Staring blankly at the lumps of meat sprawled across the floor, Viktor’s face went cold.
Because he had forced himself to use his lower body to kill one teammate just moments ago, the thigh wound he had first been shot through had ripped open completely, filling the floor with blood.
With the feeling gone from his leg and his mobility driven to the absolute bottom, dozens of gang barrels were now aimed at him all at once. The red-eyed lunatics who had shredded the traitors were closing in, snickering.
"Damn it..."
In the narrow basement corridor.
Leaving the carnage in the sealed room behind, Viktor sprinted with gunfire pouring into his back.
Maelstrom was determined to erase the only witness and claim the AV helicopter for themselves. Every time he hurled himself deeper into the ruined building while cutting through the storm of bullets, fresh bloody wounds piled up across his body.
The thigh wound that had been pierced at the start tore open completely, spilling blood in a rush. As Viktor’s leg buckled and he lost his balance, he rolled across the floor.
In that opening, a few Maelstrom small fry who didn’t know him rushed in with weapons raised, thinking he was easy prey.
But the modified Gorilla Arms implanted in Viktor’s forearms moved.
Thud!Crunch!
Viktor’s trained strikes crushed their chests and skulls in an instant.
Witnessing the sight of the small fry coughing up blood and collapsing, the Maelstrom executives cackled nastily.
"As expected of Viktor Vektor."
They didn’t rush.
Like hunters stalking a bleeding beast, they slowly tightened the net while laying down merciless suppressive fire.
At the dead end deepest inside the ruined building.
With nowhere left to run, bullets rained over Viktor’s entire body.
Tatatatang!
His helmet was hit again and again by incoming rounds, and the visor shattered mercilessly.
With the suffocating blur and the broken mechanical noise, Viktor ripped off his helmet. At the same time, blood from his torn forehead streamed down and covered one eye, painting his vision red.
His head, torso, and thigh all wrecked. Viktor’s strength left his legs and he sank down.
The Maelstrom pack, red optical eyes flashing, all aimed their guns at him and completed the encirclement.
"Keep pushing!!"
At the executive’s shout, they moved to close in.
But then.
Kwaang!
A massive roar shook the entire ruined building.
Suddenly, right behind Viktor, a thick cement wall was blown clean apart as if a giant tank had slammed into it.
Concrete fragments exploded outward and slammed into the Maelstrom bastards at the front.
"Aghhh!"
"Wh... what!! Is this!!!"
Along with the screams and curses of the men knocked down by the debris, even Viktor, who had already prepared himself for death, froze. A strange, suffocating silence fell over the whole space.
And then, through the thick cloud of cement dust billowing up in the air.
Someone pushed through the wreckage and spoke.
"Cough, cough."
The figure brushed the dust away with one hand and emerged from the darkness.
A man wrapped head to toe in an old black coat, wearing a horrifying scavenger mask with a red goblin face over his own. Ji-hwan.
Ji-hwan brushed the dust from his coat hem and turned his gaze.
In front of him were dozens of Maelstrom gang members frozen in place, red optical eyes flashing, and far off to the side, Viktor in a miserable state, bleeding from his head, body, and thigh and sitting on the floor in the worst possible crisis.
Taking in the situation, Ji-hwan scratched his chin indifferently.
Through the earpiece at his ear, a lazy, dry voice came through.
"Oh. There you are."
At the same time, in the hideout on the outskirts of Pacifica.
Sasha, sharing Ji-hwan’s vision and watching the hellish scene unfold beyond the monitor, slapped her own forehead with a loud smack at Ji-hwan’s absurdly casual line after smashing through the wall like a tank.
[...Mister. Seriously, I can’t even. Do you have any idea what the mood is like over there right now?]
Sasha’s exasperated complaint rang in his ear, but Ji-hwan ignored it and slowly walked toward the Maelstrom crowd in front of him.
In the thick cloud of cement dust. The sight of the one who had walked out of it sent Maelstrom into a moment of deep confusion.
Because the monster that had burst through a thick concrete wall like a tank was just a low-level scavenger in a shabby coat wearing a crude mask.
Then the Maelstrom executive, who had been grinning at the thought of swallowing the AV helicopter whole, stepped forward with a fierce growl.
"What the hell are a scavenger scumbag like you doing here?"
Even with his mechanical eye glowing red in threat, Ji-hwan casually brushed the dust off his shoulder and answered without even looking at him.
"Oh, just passing through."
The executive, enraged by the absurd bullshit, considered drawing his gun.
...What kind of chrome would you need to punch through a wall like that?
As far as he knew, to produce that kind of explosive force on demand, even the top brass of a gang would need insane high-end military chrome plastered all over their body.
After deciding that the shabby scavenger in front of him might be a monster beyond common sense, the executive instead jerked his chin toward Viktor, who was sitting at Ji-hwan’s feet and bleeding out.
"That bleeding bastard there is our target, so hand him over quietly and get lost."
At the threat, Ji-hwan slowly turned his head.
He looked down at Viktor, who was a wreck and still wary of him, then tossed out the words as if translating what the gang executive had just said.
"Well... that’s what he says."
At the sight of Ji-hwan suddenly appearing through the wall and spouting nonsense, Viktor’s bloodshot eyes wavered.
Was he here to help? Or was he just a cyberpsycho?
Even with confusion and blood pouring from his thigh, he never let his guard down.
And burning with the will to survive no matter what, he stared Ji-hwan down to the very end.
Even at the edge of death, he refused to break. The moment Ji-hwan faced him, a pleased laugh slipped out from behind the red goblin mask.
Heh.
Then Ji-hwan, without even turning his back on the Maelstrom bastards aiming guns at him, politely greeted Viktor, who was still watching him warily.
"I came to help."
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