The dark blind spot beyond the reach of the Voodoo Boys' ice-cold surveillance net, the de facto rulers of Pacifica. In a closed underground shelter where the signal network bent and warped erratically, Kiwi had quietly taken up position in a corner.
Then the netrunner Kiwi, her lower face hidden behind a red cyber mask, rubbed the back of her stiff neck and irritably shoved the keyboard aside.
"Damn Faraday."
On the monitor, only endless red-blinking error windows reading "No Data" kept flashing.
Not long ago, the tracking job for the first-class wanted criminal "K" that the fixer Faraday had tossed her.
The bastard fixer had only given her two clues.
"A scavenger wearing a strange hologram mask, nicknamed 'Ghost,' and the phenomenon where no identity comes up."
For a normal netrunner, it was common sense to hack even the target's most basic implants and scan their information.
In Night City, where millions swarmed the streets, running facial recognition scans endlessly was no different from looking for a needle in a sandpile when the guy kept his face wrapped up tight behind a crude mask.
"Should I give up?"
As she said that, Kiwi leaned back deeply in her chair.
Truth was, she had already sensed it long ago.
Faraday hadn't really expected her to find the wanted man's trail either when he handed over the job.
Fatigue rolled in from the headache and the string of dead ends. To shake off the heat that felt like it was scorching her synapses, Kiwi finally stood up.
Then, stepping outside and starting up her ride, her beloved Arch Nazare standard model, she lightly tuned the bike's output and shot off into the dust-choked night streets of Pacifica.
A little later, she arrived at a desolate vacant lot beside an abandoned building on the outskirts of Pacifica.
Beyond the concrete rubble, in the darkness, the massive silhouette of Warehouse 7, the base of the Black Tide smuggling ring's old waste logistics terminal, spread out before her.
Kiwi shut off the Arch Nazare and sat sideways, leaning against a battered railing.
She hummed a lazy tune between her lips and shoved a personal link cable into a nearby signal distribution panel.
Keeping time with the tune, Kiwi tapped at a virtual keyboard and took over the warehouse's internal surveillance camera network and security system firewall one by one.
Once she had slipped deep into the system and seized control privileges, she started pulling out the gang members' secret accounts and information.
While she was at it, a confidential file came into view concerning the large stockpile of medical supplies stored here and the people behind the scenes who had handed those goods over to the gang.
It was a corruption ledger showing that a mid-level manager at Biotechnica had deceived the company's eyes, secretly siphoned off the supplies, and pocketed kickbacks on the side.
In Night City, it was the sort of utterly ordinary, commonplace thing that happened dozens of times a day.
Kiwi didn't bother getting worked up. As always, she quietly shoved the corruption data into the download slot.
Tatatatang
Kzzzzt. One camera lens in the corner of the monitor screen started throwing off noise as the ledger was being transmitted.
Sensing something strange, Kiwi's gaze naturally snapped to that camera feed.
"Huh? What's that?!"
A muffled sound slipped from between Kiwi's lips.
The one appearing in the darkness caught by the lens was not one of the gang members guarding the warehouse.
As the man infiltrated the place, his old coat hem fluttering, a crude hologram mask with a red goblin pattern glowed over his face.
"A scavenger?"
Her brow furrowed in confusion.
She couldn't understand why a scavenger, the lowest of the low, had infiltrated this place alone.
Then Kiwi confirmed the man's slim, narrow build, and her eyes widened unnaturally.
At a glance he looked like nothing more than a skinny little punk, but the stride he planted and the shadow he cast carried an unbelievably precise center of gravity.
Kiwi immediately launched a biometric scan through her eye implants to identify the man.
Ssshhk.
The moment the scanner's reticle aligned on the man's silhouette.
His movements were on a completely different level from an ordinary person.
Weaving sharply behind obstacles and slipping into blind spots, he vanished from the camera lens without a trace before the scan could even finish.
At the same time, an unbelievable sight unfolded across the screen.
The man, melted into the shadows, was ruthlessly knocking out each gang member on patrol and cleaning out the warehouse.
There was no heavy gunfire, no noisy commotion.
Kiwi's fingers froze over the keyboard as she watched.
"...Scary..."
Just before the man disappeared from the last remaining blind spot, the distorted red goblin hologram mask filled the screen in close-up.
The moment she saw him, the vague rumors Faraday had let slip clicked together in Kiwi's mind like perfectly meshed gears.
"...Ghost."
It was unmistakably the ghost Faraday had been searching for all this time, "Ghost."
"Intruder!! Turn on the lights!!"
At last, someone in the gang must have noticed him, because a shout brutally tore through the silence inside the warehouse.
At the same time, dozens of high-intensity lights that had been off all snapped on at once, flooding the area with white glare.
With nowhere left to hide, the scavenger's rough silhouette finally appeared before the enemies' eyes, revealing himself.
Clatter, clank-!
Then enemies poured out from corridors and steel doors on all sides, yanking back the charging handles on their assault rifles and raising their muzzles in unison.
To confirm whether that monster of a man was really the first-class wanted criminal "K" with the 2.5 million eddies bounty that Faraday was desperately hunting, Kiwi cranked her eye implant performance to the max and violently gripped the scan lever.
Beep-!
Then, in one corner of the monitor, a red warning window began flashing at an alarming speed.
Someone was brutally tearing straight through the main system firewall and storming in.
Kiwi's face twisted unpleasantly.
The hacking speed was pretty damn fast. Sensing that time was running out and that the intruding netrunner's skill was anything but mediocre, Kiwi's hands slid rapidly over the system like she was playing a keyboard.
She immediately canceled the scan and backed off, cleanly erasing her digital traces scattered through the network.
Instead, she planted a backdoor code into the one surveillance camera that was showing the deepest blind spot of the system the intruding netrunner had entered.
The intruding netrunner took control of the system and cut off all communications.
And Kiwi let them believe they had the system under control while she secretly shifted the frequency through the backdoor.
Kzzzzt, crackle.
The image transmitted through the backdoor lens was horribly blurry.
Because she had cut the data transmission rate to the absolute minimum to avoid being detected, the man's blood-red combat trail was only barely visible as smeared pixels.
Unable to confirm the exact battle situation, Kiwi's fingers hesitated over the keyboard in frustration.
Then, while the intruding netrunner finished cutting off the surveillance net and let down their guard, Kiwi began very subtly increasing the backdoor's transmission strength just enough not to be noticed.
Kzzzzt, crackle.
As the transmission strength rose, the noise cleared and the blurry pixels sharpened.
Just as she was watching the screen, relieved that she had slipped in unnoticed.
The scavenger on screen, who had been clearing out the enemies in the blind spots, suddenly stopped dead in his tracks.
His head slowly tilted upward, and he stared directly at the camera lens Kiwi had secretly turned on through the backdoor.
The man had instinctively sensed that something was wrong.
But just as the man who sensed the oddity suddenly turned his body, an elite solo mercenary hidden in the ceiling blind spot where even the camera couldn't catch him sprang forward with blue Mantis Blades deployed and attacked the man's back.
Kaaang-!
After that, a furious exchange filled the narrow screen.
The moment he twisted the mercenary's trajectory and tried to land a strike, the sharp blade tip skimmed past his crude goblin mask by a hair's breadth.
Crack!.
Spraying sparks, the red hologram was shattered for an instant.
The man's rough breathing, and the dark East Asian face beneath the half-damaged mask, were captured clearly by the camera lens.
Tatak.
Not missing that tiny crack, Kiwi immediately captured the facial data and shoved it into the analysis algorithm.
Wiiing-.
A massive database spun rapidly across the monitor.
Before long, with a red warning window, the analysis result filled the screen.
[ Match rate 99%. First-class wanted criminal 'K' ]
The prey Faraday had been desperately searching for.
As if the battle were over, K left the fallen mercenary behind and turned his head again, trying to notice the camera's oddness.
Kiwi had thought there was no way he could notice her through the camera, but for some reason she couldn't shake the bad feeling, so she just cut the connection to the system entirely.
Fsssh.
She wiped the cold sweat dampening her palm on the back of her hand and let out a long, heavy sigh.
"Haa..."
"That does it for me."
The mutter echoed into the air.
All that was left now was to hand Faraday the wanted man's data and location coordinates and collect the info fee.
Just like always.
But Kiwi's finger stopped over the button for calling Faraday.
In the back of her mind, fragments of the strange rumors about K that had been drifting through the back alleys since before Faraday ever gave her the job flashed by like shards.
Testimony from poor survivors who had dramatically escaped a secret bio-research lab on the outskirts of the Badlands not long ago. They bragged that an unidentified man had thrown himself into a full-frontal battle, using his bare body to block the crossfire pouring in from a megacorp's elite strike team, all to get them out alive.
And that wasn't all. Here in Pacifica, there were even rumors tangled up like mud that he had been drinking and fighting side by side with a high-ranking member of the notoriously brutal Animals gang, covered in blood for the sake of that man's revenge and pride.
All of it was just hearsay, and everything else had been concealed, with the megacorps supposedly hiding things on purpose behind it all. And at the way he had risked his life for someone and gone straight against Night City's rules, a tiny tremor ran through a corner of Kiwi's always rational, always cold heart.
'There are still men like that left in this rotten city?'
She had no choice but to admit that she was conflicted about something, and that she was wavering as curiosity and attraction toward the unknown figure tugged at her.
Click.
After finishing her thoughts, Kiwi connected again and watched what they were doing in the warehouse.
K was once again wearing that crude scavenger mask while sorting things out. Soon after, he took control of his underlings and started loading the gang's huge stockpile of medical supplies onto old vans and trucks.
Seeing the signs that they were about to leave, she sighed again and frowned.
"Haa... fine, I'll look into it a little more..."
Even as she complained, Kiwi stood up.
When she raised the narrow warehouse shutter where she had been, her smooth, metallic-glinting Arch Nazare came into view.
Vroooom-!
The exhaust tore through Pacifica's night air, and far ahead, one block over, she could see the scavengers' old trucks and sedans loaded to the brim with cargo pulling out.
But since she had already figured out the skill of the unknown netrunner backing up K, Kiwi didn't recklessly tail them.
She lowered the bike's output and kept her distance where the other netrunner couldn't detect her, and in the dry night wind, the wheels of the Arch Nazare began to roll slowly and stealthily after Ji-hwan's trail.
On the outskirts road of Pacifica, dust blowing in dry sheets.
One gang recon team hidden under an old overpass they passed confirmed with their own eyes that the old sedan and truck had gone by, then roughly tapped the comm chip by their ear.
"Target just passed. Get ready."
At the same time, inside the driver's seat of the old sedan.
Through the noise of dry wind slapping against the open window, Sasha's urgent voice burst from the small earpiece in Ji-hwan's ear.
[ Mister, something's off... several armed vehicles are approaching you right now? ]
At Sasha's warning, Ji-hwan's dark eyes, fixed on the road ahead, narrowed sharply.
"Shit, you don't mean...?"
Ever since they had set up in the closed-off Pacifica district, memories of them raiding nearby strongholds day after day to get medicine and keep the clinic running crossed chaotically through his head.
The problem was that the prey had been all over the place.
He had stripped every gang and organization he came across of their profits, so there was no shortage of forces that had quietly built up grudges against him.
'Did I strip too much?'
In the end, it looked like the gang bastards who had been grinding their teeth at Ji-hwan had finally made a move.
Breaking the usual feud where they fought bloody every day to expand their territory, they had joined hands and were now targeting Ji-hwan instead.
But if he backed down here, Boris's truck, packed full of huge amounts of medical supplies and following right behind them, would be left completely exposed to the enemy's fire.
All around them were nothing but collapsed concrete barriers and barren open lots, so there wasn't even space to physically detour or evade.
Realizing the only way out was a straight breakthrough, Ji-hwan asked Sasha, who would be watching this situation.
"Can you drive it for a bit through hacking?"
[ Huh? Drive? If I connect to the system, I probably can, but why all of a sudden...? ]
Before Sasha could even finish answering, Ji-hwan violently reached both hands up toward the roof of the old sedan.
Crk, krrrack-!
A chilling, ear-splitting tearing sound. Under pure brute force, the car's steel roof crumpled like wet paper and was ripped off in one piece.
Dusty, acrid dirt blew in through the rough opening where the roof had been torn away.
Ji-hwan's body shot straight through that narrow gap and up onto the roof of the sedan, which was racing forward at full speed.
Thud... thump.
The fierce headwind slammed into his whole body, but Ji-hwan spread his legs wide and planted himself like a stake in the metal sheet to withstand the insane centrifugal force and load of the speeding car.
[ Ah, seriously! You crazy bastard!! What the hell are you planning to do!!!! ]
Sasha screamed in shock over the comms.
At the same time, she forcibly overrode the old sedan's steering system remotely.
The driverless vehicle carved a bizarre path down the road and kept racing furiously.
On the roof of the steel beast in full sprint, Ji-hwan stood tall facing the wind, and in his forward view, dozens of headlights flashing in the darkness ahead and the silhouettes of heavy weapons mounted on those vehicles blocked the way.
Whirr, clack-!
The hood of the lead vehicle that had been tailing Ji-hwan's old sedan snapped open. A massive member of the Animals gang, his abnormally swollen drug-muscle on full display, shoved his vicious upper body outside.
On the giant's broad shoulders rested a huge blue rocket launcher.
He raised his middle finger at Ji-hwan standing on the roof and bared a vicious grin full of killing intent.
"This is for all the times you fucked us over, you goddamn Ghost!!"
The instant the roar-like curse ended, he pulled the trigger on the rocket launcher.
Kwaang!
With a deafening roar, a smart missile spewing fierce flames shot straight toward Ji-hwan's face. Taking that hopeless flash into his eyes, a rough curse burst from Ji-hwan's mouth.
"Fuck."
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