August 20, 2003. 22:30. Night City.
Corporations were all the same.
They sold salvation by the ounce, hooked the desperate, then drained them dry under the banner of "innovation."
Militech, Arasaka, PetroChem—didn't matter. Different logos, same rot underneath.
The moment the government loosened restrictions and threw in funding, the corporations turned on each other like rabid dogs—waging proxy wars for territory, tech, and resource control. Every headline twisted into a justification, every report polished into theatre for the masses.
This war wasn't about security. It was a feeding frenzy.
And the world watched, pretending it was progress.
But Noah knew better.
He'd seen the fallout firsthand—his UNSAF comrades left in the dust, replaced by a new breed of soldiers: shinier armour, higher pay, no soul.
Soldiers who fought for a contract instead of a cause.
He'd watched mission briefs rewritten mid-operation, pensions vanish overnight, and names of the dead buried under the label "classified."
And that wasn't even counting the Tanwir. A tragedy weaponized—used to convince the world that corporations were a necessary evil, that only they could keep society safe.
Noah didn't know what became of the survivors.
Maybe they scattered, maybe they sold out, maybe they died trying to fight back.
But he knew one thing for sure—every one of them had been a pawn in the same game.
So he made a promise—to himself, and to them. All of them.
If the system couldn't be changed, he'd tear it down.
So why would Noah—otherwise known as R-1, an ex-UNSAF—enlist in Militech to deliver the final strike against Arasaka, of all things, and at their North American headquarters no less?
What drove him to wear the armour of the very machine he despised?
To wield their guns and implants, follow their orders, fight their war?
Why stand beneath the same banner he once swore to burn?
Money, sure. Survival. Food, shelter, meds—basic things.
But that wasn't the real reason. He wanted to learn the game.
To crawl inside the monster, study its pulse, and understand every weakness in its circuitry.
Because to burn the system down, he first had to know how it breathed.
Funny thing was—the system was already doing a damn good job of killing itself.
At least for tonight. And Noah planned to capitalize on it.
To claim a prize buried deep within Arasaka's walls.
He checked his watch, the cracked glass glinting faintly under the floodlights. The operation was nearly over. And with it, this stupid corporate war.
A black hand tapped his shoulder.
Noah turned, meeting the familiar grin of Morgan—a friendship carved by years of war and camaraderie.
He wore the same Militech heavy-duty combat uniform as Noah did: composite armour plates layered over a modular exo-frame, a combat harness weighed down with ammunition, frag canisters and med-stims. The only difference—Morgan never wore a helmet.
His face was hard and lived-in, the kind that had seen a hundred firefights and never once flinched. Deep-cut features, a square jaw, and a faint lattice of old shrapnel scars ran from his cheek to his temple. A black cybernetic arm gleamed under the flickering red light, cables running its length before disappearing into the reinforced socket at his shoulder.
"Silverhand's on his way," Morgan said. "Package in tow."
Noah exhaled through his nose, unimpressed. "Verdammt. Because what every op needs is a half-coked rocker with a martyr complex and a nuclear device."
Morgan's grin widened. "Militech doesn't care who lights the fuse, as long as the bomb goes off. So, finish your part before Johnny writes another verse about it."
Noah hummed, noncommittal. "That's assuming he lives."
Morgan shrugged, gaze flicking towards the cracked marble ahead—halls lined with smoke and flashing alarms, the aftermath of a war tearing the Arasaka Tower apart from the inside.
The sound came first—a metallic roar that didn't belong in anything human. Then came the crashing thunder of heavy steps rocking the entire floor.
Radio chatter burst across their comms, voices layered with panic.
"Unit Twelve—taking heavy fire!"
"No, no, no—fall back, it's—!"
"It's Smasher! It's Adam Smasher!"
A mechanical bellow tore through the hallway like a chainsaw grating against steel.
"BLACKHAAAAAAAAND! WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?!"
Then the smoke parted—and he emerged.
Seven feet of chrome and carnage. Synthetic musculature rippled beneath layered composite plating, hydraulic servos whining with each movement. Missile pods clung to his shoulders like parasitic armour. Twin forearm-mounted cannons hissed as targeting optics spun and locked onto heat signatures. Vents along his spine glowed dull crimson, the afterburn of his inbuilt flamethrower system.
His gait was heavy but impossibly fast, assisted by a network of kinetic servos and predictive-response implants that let him track and react faster than any normal human could even blink.
Adam Smasher—Arasaka's poster boy. The killing machine that toppled battalions, sank fleets, and burned cities.
The legendary Arasaka cyborg stood in all his weaponized glory.
But Morgan's grin never faltered.
"Guess that's my cue," he said with a low chuckle.
Armed with nothing but his black cyber-arm and a Militech rifle, he chambered a fresh mag—the motion smooth and practiced. Then he glanced back at Noah.
"Go. I've got this."
Noah gave a short nod. "Don't die stupid."
"Wouldn't dream of it." Morgan winked, the gesture half-cocky, half-suicidal. "It's just not my style."
He turned towards the thunderous echo of approaching death, red emergency lights painting his face in streaks of steel and blood.
Noah didn't feel fear—he already knew how this would end.
Instead, he turned down another corridor, comms crackling to life as he radioed one particular netrunner.
"Spider Murphy, status update."
Immediately after, a woman's voice crackled through Noah's headset.
"The room's already been prepped. As long as the building stands, all external comms are dead. Reinforcement channels are fried. Security's still down. Whatever happens is your call."
Noah exhaled once. "Good. Stay on the line. Consider this your final debt repaid."
"Wouldn't have done it for anyone else," she replied.
He moved quickly after that, boots splashing through shallow puddles of coolant and blood.
Emergency lights strobed red through the haze, painting the Arasaka insignia across the walls.
Bodies lined the hall—Militech and Arasaka alike, scattered in heaps of chrome and shredded armour. The smell of burnt circuitry clung to the air. A few cybernetic limbs still twitched, powered by dying neural currents.
Militech soldiers stood by the doors and straightened as Noah approached.
"Sir!"
He returned a brief nod. "At ease."
They exchanged a glance, then pulled the heavy doors open for him. The hinges groaned, metal warped from heat and shrapnel.
Noah entered without breaking stride. The walls around him trembled from distant detonations—the muffled rhythm of another section of the building being levelled elsewhere.
On the first step inside, the stench hit him—fear, blood, and burnt chrome.
The executive operations floor looked less like a command suite and more like a crime scene repurposed for function. Reinforced panels and hardened terminals lined the walls, their surfaces scarred by breach charges and emergency rewiring.
It wasn't Arasaka's design—it was Noah's.
His men—UNSAF soldiers with nowhere left to go but the corporate frontlines—had cleared the space earlier, converting it into a forward-access node.
This was their revenge.
At the centre stood the emergency mainframe relay, half-exposed, its casing pried open to reveal a spine of glowing circuitry. Noah knew it linked directly into the building's central network—a redundant failsafe few even knew existed. Exploiting it required equal parts genius and madness.
Fortunately, he had both.
Rows of executives sat bound in reconfigured office chairs, their tailored suits soaked in sweat and blood. Chrome implants flickered weakly, power cells struggling to reroute what little charge remained.
The world's most secure corporation—reduced to trembling hostages in its own fortress.
At the centre sat Kei Arasaka, head bowed, wrists bound. His uniform—once snow-white and immaculate—was torn and drenched. Slick black hair clung to his face, and under the emergency lights, his blue cyberoptics burned faintly through exhaustion. The would-be heir to Saburo's empire looked nothing like the man who had ruled nations through stock markets and blood contracts.
Noah shut the door behind him and locked it with a slow, deliberate click. He drew his revolver; the cylinder still felt warm from earlier use. The cylinder gleamed under the low light, engraved with UNSAF serial codes long since scrubbed from the record.
The executives stirred, confusion curdling quickly into panic. One of them barked, voice shaking, "What the hell is this? We were told Militech—"
"—was professional?" Noah finished for him, checking the revolver's spin. "That depends on how you define it."
Another mouth opened and clamped shut when Noah's aim swept over the room like a threat in motion.
Kei finally looked up. His voice was dry, clipped with that old Arasaka cadence of entitlement. "This isn't how Militech operates. Who the hell are you?"
Noah's reply was low and patient. "The one asking the questions now."
He cocked the hammer with a deliberate click that echoed off the conference walls. The sound landed on the room like a verdict.
"Really funny," Kei said, trying for authority. "Tell us what Militech wants."
"We're going to play a 'game'." Noah didn't smile. "Six bullets. I ask. You answer. Correct—nobody dies. Wrong—I shoot, and we try again."
His voice was cold, clinical.
"I want direct access to your reliquary. Every file. Every archive. Full root to the mainframe. I know this building has a direct line to Japan. I want everything streamed into a secured node I can pull from. No middlemen."
A hum of disbelief rolled around the tied executives.
Someone spluttered, "You can't be serious. That's corporate seppuku—"
"Does it look like I care?" Noah cut in.
Kei's mouth curled in incredulity. "You really think we'll hand Militech the keys to Arasaka's vaults? Even if that's the demand for peace, do you understand how naïve—how insane—that sounds? The safeguards alone—"
"Wrong answer. Five shots left."
Noah didn't give them time to argue. The revolver fired once; the executive nearest him slumped forward with a wet, final sound. Blood dotted the polished floor.
The crack of the shot snapped the room into a new, sharper silence.
He spun the revolver's cylinder—slow, deliberate—each click echoing through the room.
Panic spiked. One junior suit—still bound but desperate—rolled off his chair towards the carpet's edge. "HELL NO—!"
Noah's boot came down across his shoulder; the back of the man's head hit the floor with a thud.
"Poor move."
Kei swallowed hard, but his eyes stayed sharp. "You're bluffing," he said, voice brittle with pride. "You won't kill all of us. You can't. Every person in this room is worth millions in contracts and influence." He lifted his chin slightly, his eyes burning with rage. "And I'm the CEO of Arasaka. The peace talks need me alive. If you keep shooting, you destroy your own leverage."
Noah tilted his head just slightly, the reflection of the red emergency light running along his helmet's visor.
"Das ist genau euer Denkfehler," he said softly—almost as if explaining a lesson. "When will you realize you're of no consequence?"
Kei frowned, thrown off balance.
"You're not the real CEO," Noah continued. "You're the puppet. Your father—Saburo—is the one in control. You just dance for the cameras and read the scripts he hands you. A face for the old man's empire. He will call for the peace talks—not you."
His words hit like shrapnel. Kei's composure cracked, mouth opening to retort—but nothing came out. His confidence faltered, his jaw working silently before he looked away. He hadn't expected Noah to know.
Then Spider Murphy's voice cut in.
"Feed's ready. Whenever you say go, I'll dump the stream—oh, and heads up: Militech drones report movement inbound. Looks like company's coming."
Noah gave no response. He kept the revolver steady.
Across the table, the executives exchanged terrified glances. One finally broke, voice shaking.
"This… this is Militech protocol, right? You're doing this for Militech?"
Noah let the question hang before answering.
"Partly Militech's interest. Partly mine." A pause. "Some debts you pay yourself."
He spun the cylinder lazily with his thumb. The click echoed in the dead air.
"Now. Connect me. Full access."
Kei's defiance flickered back. "You'll never extract everything without tripping a dozen silent alarms. It's impossible."
Noah's voice went soft. "You must really love gambling." He tapped the cylinder with a gloved finger.
Before anyone could breathe, the revolver cracked again.
Another executive folded in on herself, blood misting the glass table.
Screams erupted. One suit tried to scramble free, chair legs scraping across the floor, but Noah's boot pinned him back as if the movement were nothing. He raised the revolver again.
"I've shot twice now," he said, the words flat. "The more I shoot, the less likely someone will die right away." He stared at Kei. "That is, if you're willing to burn through more executives first. Perhaps a worthy sacrifice for Arasaka?"
Kei's fists clenched, trembling. "You'll never walk out of this alive," he spat.
Noah shook his head. "Wrong response." He let the silence hang, then fired again. Another executive dropped. He spun the cylinder with a slow, deliberate motion.
"Three shots fired. Three left," he announced, glancing around the room. "Would anyone like to volunteer next?"
Kei's mask of control was cracking. "You're heartless."
Noah let out a short, almost amused laugh. "Heartless?" He looked down at the bodies staining the carpet. "You people built Soulkiller. You sold lives to data banks. You erased cities and called it business." He lowered the weapon casually. "If I'm heartless, then what are you?"
He added, quieter, to himself: "Maybe I am a monster. But this world only respects monsters that play better."
Noah levelled the revolver at another executive, pressing the cold steel to the man's forehead. The man sobbed openly; his chair rattled under him. Noah's finger tightened—then his visor HUD blinked a bright red alert.
A voice in his ear, Spider Murphy's, cut in cold and urgent. "Thermal override pinging from the vents. Five signatures moving fast—seems like Rogue couldn't handle them. Nanobeacons are peeling off. Someone cloaked them, but I patched the frequencies. You'll get them on feed."
Noah's tone barely changed. "Friends," he murmured. "Fun."
The lights cut for half a second. When they came back, the shadows had shifted—five sleek silhouettes now framed the doorway and ventilation shafts. Arasaka ninjas.
All black armour and weapons drawn—one with a suppressed pistol, two with monoblades, one with a power bow, one perched with a sniper's gleam from the far vent. Their ghostsuits shimmered faintly under the emergency lights.
Though built to vanish; Spider Murphy's patch stripped them of that luxury.
Noah didn't flinch. He'd been taught to read the moves of people who never made a sound.
The first ninja fired—three suppressed shots. Noah twisted sideways, one round glancing his shoulder plate, the others punching holes through the chair behind him. The executives screamed.
He moved before the shooter could realign—speed and strength enhancement implants in full effect.
One step turned into a blur.
The revolver barked once; the first ninja's visor exploded in a mist of red.
He pulled the trigger again.Empty.
No hesitation. A half-spin, the cylinder flipped, the reload instinctive. One clean motion.
Another crack—a hole where the second ninja's throat used to be.
Immediately, Noah dragged two living executives forward, their chairs screeching across the marble.
They screamed, thrashed, but served their purpose—the Arasaka ninjas hesitated, unwilling to risk collateral damage on their own board members.
Blades carved through the smoke.
The remaining three moved in unison—perfect synchronization.
Twin arcs of silver sliced towards Noah.
He sidestepped, shoving one bound executive into the path of a monoblade.
The sword bit deep through fabric and flesh, the man's scream cutting short as the blade wedged at bone.
In the same heartbeat, Noah's reflex implant kicked in. Time tightened, and his muscles synced faster than thought.
He tore the weapon free, reversed the grip, and rammed it backward into its wielder's abdomen. Blood hissed off the heated edge, spraying across the chrome wall panels.
Another ninja came from the flank—too predictable.
Noah pivoted, driving his elbow into her faceplate with surgical force. The polymer shattered, fragments scattering like glitter across the air.
She reeled back, half-blind, just long enough for him to seize her fallen powerbow.
He slammed the weapon across her knee. What followed was a short, efficient strike that drove the monoblade's point through her throat and out the back of her neck.
Her scream died halfway out.
The last, the sniper, had taken his position in the far vent—lining up a perfect headshot.
Noah caught the faint shimmer of the optic reflection, shifted half a step, and fired.
The bullet punched clean through the scope and out the back of his skull.
Silence followed. The obscene kind.
The bodies slumped over, bleeding quietly into the carpet. Smoke curled lazily through the air.
Noah straightened, exhaled once, and reloaded his revolver. "Those earlier shots didn't count—they were self-defence. We still have three left," he muttered absently. "But just to fix the count..."
He turned back to the bound executives. The panic in the room was raw and primal now. One man tried bargaining again, voice shrill.
"WE'LL GIVE YOU MONEY—ANYTHING YOU WANT—PLEASE—"
Noah didn't respond. He raised the revolver and fired into the circle of suits. Three more bodies slumped.
The math was done; the point had been made.
An executive choked, sobbing that Noah had gone too far. He holstered the revolver with casual finality and looked to Kei—white-faced, eyes too wide.
"Now," Noah said, voice steady as any business briefing, "we were talking about access."
The remaining executives pleaded over one another; Kei snapped, shouting for silence.
Noah cut through the noise with a single gesture.
"The way to stop this," he said simply, "is to give me what I want."
Kei forced his voice steady. "No. I refuse to believe you'll kill us all. You'd lose too much. Whatever you came here for dies with us. And if anyone found out, you're just as dead."
"Reasoning that's flawed on several points." Noah stepped closer, revolver raised. "First: you assume the corporations won't replace you. Second: you also assume I don't have other, more convoluted ways to get what I want. And third: what's stopping me from saying you died in the rubble?" He pressed the barrel against another executive's temple. "So tell me—truthfully—do you really want to test me?"
The man broke instantly, voice cracking. "I'll—I'll do it. I'll give you access!"
Kei whipped towards him, furious. "You coward—what are you doing?!"
Noah ignored the outburst, speaking softly to the trembling man. "Good choice. Tell me how."
Hands still bound at the wrists, the junior executive jabbed a trembling finger towards the terminal.
"The mainframe relay node—every high-tier suite's got one. Normally it's offline—air-gapped, isolated behind ICE walls. Access needs three-factor biometrics—print, retina, and neural signature from an executive of Tier-One clearance."
Noah nodded once. "Excellent. Get started."
He cut the man loose and shoved him towards the console. The executive hesitated only a second before booting the relay from standby.
Power surged through the suite—coolant pumps whining, lights flickering crimson as the emergency relay came online. Wall-mounted scanners unfolded from recessed housings like mechanical eyes, their lenses whirring to life.
Lines of red code cascaded across the wall displays as Noah's HUD pinged a new alert.
Spider Murphy's daemon was already moving—a spectre crawling into Arasaka's fortified ICE.
Noah watched the feed with flat focus, then turned towards Kei.
"Your turn."
Kei's composure snapped. "YOU CAN'T BE SERIOUS—" His voice cracked, panic rising. "YOU CAN'T FORCE ME—"
Noah didn't answer. He moved like a machine—grabbing Kei by the collar and dragging him across the polished floor despite the man's thrashing kicks and hoarse curses. Sparks jumped from torn connectors on Kei's cybernetics as Noah slammed him against the scanner column.
Kei clawed weakly at his arm. "You will pay for—"
"I doubt it," Noah muttered.
He pried the man's eyelids open, forcing his head towards the scanner. The lens dilated with a cold mechanical whir.
First flash—red. System warning.
Second—yellow. ICE spike detected.
Third—green.
The reader locked.
"Neural sync confirmed," the console droned.
"Thank you," Noah said evenly, releasing him. Kei slumped, trembling, breath ragged through his teeth.
Then the walls came alive.
Lines of code erupted from red to white to ultraviolet as Spider Murphy's daemon sank its hooks into Arasaka's core lattice, twisting open doors that weren't meant to open.
Her voice crackled through Noah's earpiece.
"Feed's live. I've patched through. Seal it, and then burn the relay when done."
Noah keyed in the final command. The terminal roared to life.
Across the displays, Arasaka's secrets poured out—Soulkiller archives, neural-architecture schematics, classified bioware research, experimental weapon blueprints—everything, streaming into Noah's data vault.
The largest heist of the twenty-first century.
And he never blinked.
"Oh," Noah said, voice thinner than before. He levelled the revolver at Kei with a slow, surgical calm. "Mister CEO—before I forget—you're fired. For taking too long with a 'customer'."
Kei met his gaze one last time, a final act of defiance clawing its way past his fear. "You motherfucker. You think this ends with me? You'll drown in what you've stolen—"
The shot cracked; Kei folded forward with a wet, sudden sound.
Silence detonated in the room—stifled sobs, the scrape of leather against carpet, the tiny, terrified noises people make when the world rearranges itself around a new law.
Noah didn't look at the body. He let the moment stretch, letting their fear settle into the air like dust. "I have other plans for you," he said, voice flat and final, addressing the room as much as the corpse. "This isn't about punishment. It's about utility."
He tapped his comm once—a single, efficient keystroke. "Squad, mark. Move in and secure. No loose ends left to rumour."
Within minutes the room filled again — quiet boots, gloved hands, efficient ropes and cuffs. They hauled the remaining executives away.
They screamed, bargained, begged for names and promises; the answers were gestures and sealed mouths.
Noah watched them go, expression unreadable.
The fate of the executives was not his to proclaim—the truth was to be buried.