Kwaang!
With a harsh splash of noise, the thick glass door to Trauma Team International headquarters' field operations control room slid open.
Victor Vektor, a wreck in a suit, limped in with blood dripping from him, and the blood-soaked tactical helmet and ID badge in his hand were slapped roughly onto the desk.
Meanwhile, Barnes, the head of the field operations room, twisted his face into a nasty scowl.
"Victor! Have you lost your damn mind? You crawl in here half-dead and hand in your resignation?"
Even as Barnes shouted, Victor's bloodstained hand clawed at the neural socket at the back of his neck.
Click.
With a mechanical snap, the Trauma Team communication and tracking chip was yanked free and tossed onto the desk.
"The gun at my back during that op wasn't from the Maelstrom gang."
At that, Barnes's pupils shook like an earthquake had hit them.
But then he slammed the desk and roared.
"You ungrateful bastard! The company made you into Night City's best ripperdoc and a hero!"
"If you want to build that kind of hero title over my corpse, be my guest. I have no reason to stay in this rotten place any longer."
Victor turned without hesitation and even removed the high-end medical cyberware arm and external parts the company had issued him, along with the specialized diagnostic scanner, and handed them over.
Clatter.
Leaving the heavy metallic sound behind, Victor kept limping away, and Barnes, who had rushed down in a fury, shouted after him with veins bulging in his neck.
"Victor!!! Get back here right now!"
But Barnes's voice was no longer audible through the gap as the door slammed shut.
**
Top-floor data analysis room at Trauma Team International headquarters.
In front of a massive hologram monitor, upper management executives and data analysts had gathered, and unlike Barnes's earlier tantrum, they had approved Victor's resignation in a single stroke.
"Victor Vektor's resignation has been processed immediately. If we just keep him quiet, the company actually gets to quietly sweep away a troublesome problem."
After hearing that, the executive nodded and gestured with his chin.
On the screen, external camera footage from an armed AV-4 helicopter returning from Maelstrom territory was playing.
In the video, a man wearing a crude scavenger mask was calmly handling the gang members.
"More importantly, his identity."
At the executive's brief question, the analyst swallowed hard while typing on the keyboard.
"We can't."
"What?"
"This isn't just a matter of hiding his face with a mask. Identity verification itself is impossible."
The analyst's fingers trembled.
"There isn't even the most basic identification chip that even the poorest people in Night City carry for payments or ID checks. This is... it's as if he fell out of the sky."
"That's impossible..."
"My God... there are still people like that?"
"So he's not just some scavenger?"
As the surrounding analysts whispered in shock, the executive's brow furrowed.
An unknown entity with no data trail at all. The executive stared hard at the man's movement trajectory on the hologram screen.
He moved in a way that was anything but ordinary, tearing through the path of bullets and ripping steel apart with his bare hands.
The executive's eyes wavered as he took in that overwhelming force, something only possible with multiple implants.
'Those ridiculous movements... no... don't tell me?'
A vicious rumor that had recently shaken the corporations flashed through his mind.
He had seen it too.
A blood-soaked combat BD of a top-tier corporate strike team being slaughtered single-handedly in the Pacifica Combat Zone by a first-class wanted criminal. The man's unusual hand-to-hand combat style on the screen overlapped faintly with the traces left by that wanted criminal in the BD.
But the man on the screen was wearing the ragged, cheap junk of some common scavenger.
The executive let out a short breath and shook his head.
"No. That can't be it."
Having shaken off the thought, the executive issued an order.
"Leave the retired Victor Vektor alone. And then..."
The executive's sharp gaze fixed on the scavenger mask on the monitor.
"As for that unidentified scavenger, deploy every available information network and begin an investigation on him immediately."
Once again, the megacorp's gaze was turning toward him.
Staying too long in Night City's core, where corporate hounds could come crashing in at any time, was suicide, so after leaving Watson, Ji-hwan headed straight for the Pacifica Combat Zone.
Near the makeshift clinic he had returned to after several days, the familiar silence was gone. Instead, a shriek of gunfire and the roar of automatic rifles greeted him.
Kwaang! Tatatatang!
Low-level gangs trying to seize control of the area around the clinic and the remaining scavengers were tangled together in a vicious firefight.
The stench of gunpowder and blood clung thickly over the mud.
Crack.
Ji-hwan rolled his neck and wrists, loosening joints that had gone stiff.
He leaped from the building into the middle of the firefight zone where blood-red flames seemed to dance.
Thud-
At that attention-grabbing sight, the fierce gun battle stopped for a moment. The gang members fighting from behind cover all turned their heads toward the uninvited guest.
The bottom-feeding trash they hated most, a scavenger in a worn coat who ripped implants off corpses or kidnapped people to do filthy work, had crawled into the middle of the battlefield without a shred of fear.
"What the hell is that crazy scavenger bastard doing!"
"Fuck it, just kill him too!"
"Die!!"
Enraged, they all swung their guns toward Ji-hwan and pulled the triggers. But even then, Ji-hwan only let out a laugh.
"Ha. What a mess."
At the same time, leaving afterimages behind him, bullets chewed into the spot where he had been, and Ji-hwan's body kicked off the ground and shot between them.
Pow-!Crunch!
Then the gang member at the front was sent flying like a cannonball.
Blood sprayed through the air. The curses the men had been hurling at Ji-hwan a moment ago quickly turned into screams and death cries.
From that day on, a bizarre and brutal routine repeated itself around Ji-hwan's temporary base.
As poor residents came flocking in after hearing rumors of the cheap clinic, gangs trying to rob the place swarmed around it like hyenas every day.
Already, this was a lawless zone abandoned by the government.
And inside the clinic behind the thin iron door, Boris, a 190-centimeter brute, stitched up patients' torn flesh and saved lives.
But his medicine was still far too lacking compared to an established ripperdoc, so many were still beyond saving, and many more couldn't even be touched. Meanwhile, in the alley outside the iron door, Ji-hwan went out alone every night to tear apart the bones and flesh of the trash and clean house.
The small fry gang members who came after hearing the rumors were invariably knocked out or left with broken bones, groaning in the streets or alleyways in mountain-like piles. And with the slaughter repeating endlessly, fear finally began to spread among the gangs sealed off in Pacifica.
"Fuck, don't go anywhere near that clinic! There's some crazy scavenger ghost haunting the place!"
"They say some red goblin, some analog monster that scanners can't even read, patrols the streets every night!"
"That ghost bastard!!"
The vicious mask that butchered gang members every day around the area. They called him the Red Goblin or the Scavenger Ghost, and trembled at the name.
And in a room lit dimly by pink neon, netrunner Sasha Yakovleva watched the flow of data on a hologram monitor.
Sasha's gaze was fixed on the supply routes around the scavenger slaughterhouse Ji-hwan had taken over, and on Boris's account records.
For several days, a massive amount of eddies had been poured into medical supplies like antibiotics, bandages, and surgical tools as if money were water.
But Boris's useful little slush fund was emptied in an instant, the balance dropping to zero.
Tilting her head, Sasha connected an encrypted holo-call to her sister, Stella.
"Sis. What the hell is that monster of a man doing to throw money around like it's trash? Boris's account is already empty."
Across the network, Stella, who was on sick leave and resting, let a bitter but warm smile spread across her lips.
"He's forcing the scavengers to reform, and using them to run the clinic for the poor people of Pacifica who don't have any money... he's pouring his whole fortune into it."
At the truth Stella revealed, Sasha's eyes widened.
"Wow... there are still people like that in this crazy city? Doesn't he die tomorrow?"
Morality so alien to a world obsessed with eddies and power. A puff of air slipped between Sasha's lips.
Deeper than curiosity, a strong interest settled into her eyes.
Soon, the corners of Sasha's mouth curled up mischievously as she stared at Stella through the monitor.
"So, sis. Do you like that guy?"
The question came in hot and direct. Stella, the former cop who always kept her composure, flushed bright red in an instant.
"W-What?! What the hell are you talking about all of a sudden? I-it's just a deal to become an informant!"
At Stella's flustered, stumbling reaction, Sasha burst out laughing.
After lightening the mood, the playfulness left Sasha's eyes, and she placed both hands on the keyboard.
"Okay, okay. I'm kidding. But those files you stole from the precinct, right? The corrupt officers' patrol exclusion zones and the areas suspected of bribe collection. Send those to me now."
"Huh? Why??"
"Just hurry up!!"
As soon as Stella, forcing down her embarrassment, sent the data and it appeared on the screen, Sasha's fingers slid lightly over the keyboard.
Not long after, the exact GPS coordinates of the "Pacifica outskirts gang alliance armory and stash" where they were taking bribes and looking the other way were downloaded onto a silver data shard.
"There, done. I'll send it to your side."
Sasha stretched lightly and passed the shard data to Stella.
Receiving the data across the network, Stella's eyes widened in surprise.
"Already? It hasn't even been ten minutes."
"Eh, I just poked around a few back doors and they opened on their own."
At Sasha's innocent answer, Stella let out a short breath.
It was an ironclad encrypted security network installed with huge sums of money by senior police officials.
An impregnable fortress that should never have been breached "easily." Stella stared blankly at the coordinates floating in the air, once again shocked by her little sister's genius netrunning skills.
Taking the shard, Sasha winked at Stella across the connection.
"If I just hand this over out of nowhere, the old man might nag that you dug around behind his back. Pretend you're making your first deal as an internal police informant and deliver it naturally."
"...Got it. I'm on my way."
The call ended. Stella rubbed her still-red cheeks, threw on an old coat, shoved the shard into her pocket, and headed for Pacifica.
"Tch."
Checking the empty credit terminal, Ji-hwan clicked his tongue.
Thanks to the blood-soaked cleanup that had gone on every night, the area within several hundred meters of the clinic had returned to peace.
But the side effects were severe.
As the low-level gangs who had been coming by every day to hand over guns and gear suddenly stopped showing up, the supply of bandages, antibiotics, and, most importantly, eddies, had completely dried up.
Unable to take it anymore, Ji-hwan had started actively hunting on the dark streets a few days ago.
He didn't bother killing them outright.
Instead, after lightly breaking the joints of any gang member who stood out, he stripped them of everything from the weapons in their hands to the underwear on their bodies.
Then he gathered up their belongings to the last scrap, cashed them in with a fence, and barely kept the clinic supplied.
But even that profitable collection had come to an end once the small fry vanished completely.
"Haa. What should I do?"
'...Looks like they won't come anywhere near here for a while.'
Ji-hwan thought with a deep sigh.
The clinic still needed supplies nonstop.
There was a limit to scraping together pocket change by circling the area and robbing little gang hideouts. Now it was time for him to move personally and strip their main bases clean.
'Should I stop by that bar I used to go to and pry some information out of them?'
The silhouette of Daphne, the bartender at the bar who served him cheap liquor, flashed through Ji-hwan's mind.
She understood the back-alley ecology of this district, so he had a feeling she'd know a lot about the gangs' hideouts.
Just as Ji-hwan had made up his mind and was about to grab his old coat and hurry outside...
Thud, step.
"Boss."
From behind him came heavy footsteps and Boris's voice calling to him.
An unexpected call right when he was about to head out. Ji-hwan turned around in confusion.
"Someone's here to see you."
"Who is it?"
Thud, step.
Heavy footsteps approached from behind. It was Boris, the scavenger leader who had once ruled this area and was now his most loyal subordinate.
At Ji-hwan's short question, Boris twisted his face and grumbled roughly.
"It's that cop from before... damn unlucky, crawling all the way out here and causing trouble..."
Boris jerked his chin irritably toward the stairs. A woman in an old coat was coming down the worn basement steps with her collar raised.
It was Stella Ramos, the former police officer who had quietly started moving while on sick leave.
Stella walked up to Ji-hwan and slid a silver data shard across the table.
"These are the coordinates for the key armory and stash points of the gangs around Pacifica. It's where the corrupt police brass are taking bribes and deliberately looking the other way."
An NCPD officer who had once been sold off to a scavenger slaughterhouse after falling into a trap set by a corrupt superior.
Ji-hwan remembered her promise to become his internal informant by stealing high-level intel from inside the NCPD in exchange for the safety of her one and only younger sister, Sasha.
Ji-hwan's gaze locked onto the old data shard on the table.
A den of criminals even the NCPD had given up on. To Ji-hwan, it was nothing less than a treasure vault that could fill the empty clinic with supplies.
Click.
Ji-hwan smiled and plugged the silver data shard Stella had left into the terminal.
A red dot blinked on the hologram screen as the target coordinates appeared, and Ji-hwan's dark eyes narrowed slightly as he confirmed the location.
The gang armory indicated by the coordinates wasn't inside the Pacifica Combat Zone barrier. It was on the outskirts of Pacifica, near the edge of Night City, where the corporate security net still reached.
'Of all places, outside the barrier... and in Pacifica, too...'
For a split second, doubt flashed through his mind, but Ji-hwan quickly shook it off.
Stella's wet eyes, the eyes of someone who had risked everything to protect her family. Ji-hwan turned off the screen and put his old coat back on.
When he opened the basement door and stepped out, Boris, who had been sorting bandages in the treatment room corner, hurriedly bowed at the waist. Ji-hwan gave a short order.
"Pick a few usable guys and have a truck standing by."
"Huh? Why do we need a truck all of a sudden...?"
"Because we've got cargo to move. I'll go first and clear the place out, so you leave ten minutes later and load up the goods."
Without waiting for Boris's bewildered answer, Ji-hwan's body, masked as the Red Goblin, shot outside.
**
At the same time. A luxury safehouse in the center of Santo Domingo.
Backed by the glittering neon spilling through the floor-to-ceiling windows, Faraday's three red cybernetic eyes flashed coldly.
Inside the room surrounded by thick bulletproof glass and tight security, he had seen the blood-soaked combat BD of [K], the one who had slaughtered an elite corporate strike team. After confirming the vengeful beast's eyes, blazing as if they would tear through the screen, Faraday had no idea Ji-hwan's power would be that extreme, so he had been crouching deep inside the penthouse, preserving his own skin for a while.
As a fixer, he wouldn't lose his livelihood for a while...
"How humiliating..."
Grit
He could only swallow his rage alone.
Ding-
Then an encrypted holo-call rang through the personal link implanted in Faraday's ear.
When he accepted the call, the hologram of Kiwi, a netrunner with the lower half of her face covered by a red cyber mask, appeared in the air.
[I hear the big-shot fixer in Santo Domingo has been holed up in his safehouse like a mouse for days. ]
As soon as the connection opened, the woman's usual cynical mockery spilled out.
[Did you see some scary beast outside, or did you get so scared you went senile? Just checking in. ]
At the mockery that hit exactly where it hurt, Faraday's face twisted unpleasantly.
But he forced down the irritation and set down the wineglass he was holding.
"Enough nonsense. You contacted me at the right time, Kiwi. I happen to have a job to pass on."
[Oh? A job? From a fixer hiding in a safehouse. How much? ]
"If it's successful, the payout will be high. And the job is... dig up every scrap of information and trace you can find on the first-class wanted man known as [K], and report it to me first."
At the strange condition that came out of Faraday's mouth, Kiwi folded her arms on the other side of the hologram.
[K? Oh, you mean that guy from the combat BD wandering the back alleys? I saw that BD too. Didn't look fake or edited to me. ]
Faraday's mouth shut tight.
The overwhelming physical violence and the murderous intent of that man flashed through his mind. Breaking the silence, Faraday answered in a dry voice.
"That BD is real. By the way, is that BD still circulating in the market?"
[That BD's insanely popular these days. Supposedly everyone loves that beast-like way he keeps fighting even while bleeding all over the place? ]
Kiwi in the hologram shook her head as if she couldn't believe it.
[I really don't get men's tastes. ]
Cutting off her light grumbling, Faraday added an instruction.
"If you find anything, report to me immediately. You're a very valuable informant to me. We're partners, aren't we, Kiwi?"
Faraday's thin, hypocritically polished reminder. Hiding her distrust behind the cyber mask, Kiwi asked a short question.
[Fine. So where was the last place you saw him? ]
"Pacifica."
At the place name that spilled from Faraday's mouth, Kiwi's eyes cooled.
[Pacifica, huh... That's Tyger Claws territory. A perfect place to get your neural net stripped bare. ]
Letting out a short sigh, Kiwi voiced her sharp complaint through the holo-call.
[And how am I supposed to find some nameless ghost in that giant cesspool with no clues? No matter how good I am as a netrunner, the fixer should at least give me some kind of lead. ]
At Kiwi's grumbling, Faraday did not show annoyance. Instead, he snapped his fingers with a snake-like, oily smile.
"That's why I'm giving you clues. Remember when I recently ordered you to look into the movements of the scavenger nest in sealed-off Pacifica?"
[That rumor? What does that have to do with that man? ]
"Take another good look at the man's face in the BD footage. What he had pulled over his head was a crude mask that could be found rolling around Pacifica's back alleys. Quite an interesting coincidence, wouldn't you say?"
As Faraday manipulated the hologram panel in the air, two encrypted files were sent to Kiwi's view.
"The clues I squeezed out of my informants are twofold. First, a rumor has recently been spreading among the gangs in Pacifica's back alleys that a scavenger ghost called the Goblin or the Ghost is roaming around."
Faraday's red cybernetic eyes flashed coldly.
"Second, that man doesn't even have Night City's basic identification chip. Use your specialty and track down someone the scanners can't read."
After checking the transmitted data, Kiwi's eyes lit with interest.
[Goblin, ghost... and can't be scanned, huh. That's definitely a lot more interesting than ordinary data. ]
Kiwi gave a small laugh behind her cyber mask.
[Fine. I'll dig around the scavenger nest and see what I can find. But I'm charging double for the info. ]
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