In Pacifica, known to be Voodoo Boyz territory, an apartment building shined from a light shining in a single window. The room smelled like burnt circuits and bad decisions. The soft neon of the monitors pulsed against the dark, their glow washing over a cluttered landscape of empty cans, tangled wires, and half-finished hardware projects.
A woman sitting in her cracked leather chair stretched, one bare leg hooked over the armrest, toes tapping absently against the rusted metal frame.
Her pink and purple curls sat in two defiant puffs, frizz escaping like static electricity. The back of her cropped shirt read "404: NOT FOUND", and it suited her.
The screens cast a neon glow across the walls—endless lines of code, flickering data streams, a frozen frame of grainy warehouse footage. The massacre.
A single figure in the video, blurred by static. Tall. Broad. Chrome glinting under warehouse lights.
The shooter.
She leaned forward, fingers tapping against the cracked shell of her cyberdeck. "Mwen pa jwenn ou. Yet."
Her voice was lazy, her Creole melting into English without thought.
Still no ID. No facial match. No corp tags. Nothing. Whoever this was, Arasaka had buried them deep.
She rewound.
Gunfire. Screaming. Bodies hitting the ground.
Rewind.
The shooter moves—fast. Calculated. Not some gonk losing it on a power trip. This was controlled.
She let out a long breath through her nose, clicking her tongue.
"Who di bloodclaat is you?"
Somewhere to her left, the ancient vending machine she used as a makeshift server hub let out a groaning beep, blinking a red warning light. She ignored it. If the machine caught fire, that was a problem for later.
The newsfeed looped quietly on a side monitor. Her gaze flicked over. A woman named Ruki Fujioka. Apparently a victim. Corporate backdrop, that fake-ass PR posture and a facial expression like cheap plastic.
"I was taken against my will. Arasaka rescued me. They saved me."
The woman in the chair smirked, lazy and unimpressed. "Ouu, gyal, yuh lie bad."
That was a corp-controlled statement if she ever heard one. And she'd heard plenty. She should've let this go. Should've let Night City move on to its next tragedy.
Instead, she sighed.
"C'mon, Fab. You got this."
She reached for the cable on her deck and plugged in.
As she leaned back into her chair—headset glowing, the real world faded. At first there was only darkness, then a rush of data—tunneling her forward like a tube.
Fab landed in the void, and the void was alive.
A sunken metropolis stretched before her, an endless sprawl of data skyscrapers rising from an ocean of blackened code. The golden pulse of Arasaka's security flowed through the streets, rivers of encrypted information, patrolled by shimmering constructs moving like mechanical sharks.
And floating beside her, shifting between smooth curves and jagged spikes—Cipher. It pulsed once, a quick sequence of chirps and clicks.
"Relax, ti cheri. If dem catch me, dem have to catch me first."
Cipher pulsed again—faster, disapproving.
Fab snorted. "Yuh don't rate me? I vex now."
The AI let out a low-frequency whine, vibrating in warning. She ignored it and ghosted forward.
Fab moved like a shadow, slipping past firewalls, dodging snaking ICE tendrils, her hands dancing over command lines. She was good at this. Too good.
But then—Cipher froze. She felt it before she saw it. The AI hovered mid-air, pulsing erratically. Its usual soft blue had shifted—yellow. Orange. Red.
"Wha? What yuh see?"
Cipher let out a sharp, glitched screech. Fab winced. Cipher never screamed. She followed its gaze. A single file, floating in the black void of cyberspace. No title. No corporate markers. Just a name.
Smasher.
Cipher's red pulses quickened.
Fab frowned. "Why you spooked? File just sittin' there."
Cipher let out a distorted hum, glitching hard.
"A'ight. Momma just peekin'—mi promise."
She reached out. And opened the file.
The moment the file decrypted, everything shifted. The city distorted. Buildings twisted into jagged, glitched structures, their golden surfaces darkening like rotting metal.
And then—it moved.
Something inside the file was alive.
Fab stilled herself. It was watching her. Not physically. Not directly. But she felt it.
A slow, creeping shadow unfurled in the void, shifting like black smoke trapped in shattered glass.
Cipher twitched violently, shifting into an erratic, jagged form. Fab tilted her head.
"Dat you, big man?"
The presence shifted. Then, in an instant—it lunged.
Fab quickly dodge it, but the presence twisted unpredictably. A white shimmering pathway appeared beneath her feat. Cipher was making her a way to escape. She saw the corruption whirl once more and bolted.
She sprinted through the shifting pathways, vaulting over bridges of distorted code, dodging mutated ICE defenses that warped into grotesque, shifting figures.
Cipher pulsed erratically beside her, flickering, glitching.
"Mi nah dead tonight, mi nah dead tonight—"
The presence was faster.
It caught her.
A cold, impossible force wrapped around her digital form, suffocating, crushing—then.
Cipher threw itself in front of her.
The AI slammed into the darkness, its form breaking apart upon contact. For the first time, Fab heard it scream.
A horrific, distorted burst of noise that made her stomach drop.
The corruption sank into it.
Cipher glowed violently, flickering erratically, pulsing red-red-red—and for a brief second, Fab saw something worse than the black smoke.
A face.
Half metal, half decayed flesh.
A twisted, monstrous imitation of what was once human, grinning through the static.
Then it spoke.
"Gotcha."
The voice sounded demonic yet digital. Amused. The chuckle after sent chills down her spine. Every nerve in her body felt chilled to the root. That's when Fab ripped herself out of the Net.
Back in reality, she jerked upright, gasping. Her hands shook, but not from fear. No. It was Cipher. She turned to her screen.
Cipher's code was flickering, distorting. Still there. Still alive. But something was eating at it. Fab wiped a hand down her face.
"Okay. Okay. Dat… was new."
Cipher pulsed weakly. But then—it flickered. Not red. Not blue. Something darker. For a brief moment, Fab saw it glitch—a single flash of a corrupted tag, buried deep in Cipher's code.
[THREAT CLASS: A]
Fab stared. Cipher had never had a classification before. Had never been marked as anything. Her stomach curled.
Arasaka knew. Cipher wasn't just corrupted. They'd been tagged. She had tripped a wire. And now—she was being hunted.
Fab sat back, exhaling slow.
"Mi hear you, Cipher. We need help."
She had always been a fan of Grave Signal. Tried to keep tabs on the band members, especially after the shooting. All are on record as dead, except one. The lead singer. She pulled up a file. A face appeared on the screen.
K.
Fab exhaled.
"Betta hope dis one ain't a eediat."
And she started typing.
Meanwhile, a meeting was taking place on Jig Jig street. A woman sat in her red leather chair, between to large body guards.
K stood bare-chested under the scanner's glow, arms folded, expression unreadable as Charlene Fox analyzed his cyberware. A fixer's eye was as sharp as any Corpo's—but colder, smarter.
Charlene wasn't like the others.
She'd crawled her way up from Jig-Jig Street, turned a joytoy's trade into something far more lucrative. Where others aged out or got taken out, she did something different—she listened. And when she listened long enough, she realized she knew more about who really ran Night City than the men paying her to keep their secrets.
Now? She owned Jig-Jig Street and half the Tyger Claws with it.
And K?
K was standing in front of her, getting judged like a piece of chrome at a chop shop.
Charlene leaned back in her chair, studying the holographic projection of his cyberware diagnostics. A slow, unimpressed smirk crept across her lips.
"I like you, kid." She tapped the scanner's interface, flicking through the details. "You remind me of a merc I used to see back in my joytoy days."
Her gaze flicked to his face, teasing. "Had the same stupid, serious look too."
K ignored the jab, exhaling sharply through his nose.
"So I'll be honest with you. No bullshit…" Charlene clicked her tongue and shook her head. "It's not enough."
K frowned. "Excuse me?"
Charlene rotated the screen to show him the scan results.
"Your implants. It's all garbage."
K's jaw tightened. His fists curled slightly. "Well, I didn't exactly get to pick. Needed 'em to save my life."
Charlene nodded. "That makes sense… but it still isn't enough for a job like this. I'm surprised you survived this long with tech like that."
"Fuck lady," K muttered, shifting his weight. "I thought I was here for a job, not a chrome convention."
Charlene laughed, a throaty, knowing sound, eyes flashing like she was looking at something entertaining.
"And you are. But first things first—you'll need a few upgrades. I'm not in the business of sending mercs to their deaths—especially the fun ones."
A card slid across the metal table, gold-lined, pristine, impeccably Corpo but not Arasaka.
"Personal friend of mine. The only ripper I trust. Say my name when you get there—he'll know what to do."
K picked up the card, glancing over the minimalist details. One name. One location.
"Just like that, huh? And what if I already got a guy?"
Charlene chuckled, her gaze sharp and amused. "Trust me on this one… mine is bigger."
K caught the meaning, exhaled, and said nothing.
Charlene grinned, devilish. "Good. Now run along. When you return, we shall work."
K grabbed his jacket, still feeling the weight of the decision. More chrome. More upgrades.
Every step closer to being better also brought him one step closer to being something else. Still, he needed it. Maybe even wanted it.
Mantis blades? Yeah. He thought about them sometimes. Never seriously though. He did however have to give this some serious thinking over.
Kay was stepping toward his car, tossing his keys in his palm when his phone buzzed. Unknown number.
He frowned, staring at it for a second. Another fixer? Another job?
He answered. "Speak to me."
A voice—smooth, playful, feminine—came through the line.
"Big bad K, starboy of Grace Signal. Mi feel honored."
K's steps halted.
The tone in her voice, the way she spoke his name like she already knew him—it made his stomach twist in a way he didn't like.
"Who the hell is this?"
"A fan," the voice teased. "And, lemme tell you, boy—you got some real interesting admirers."
Kay's jaw tightened.
"What do you want?"
"I got intel on the warehouse shootin'. The one left your people full of holes."
His grip on the keys stilled. For a moment, he forgot to breathe. The massacre. He hadn't gone back to that day in a long time. Hadn't let himself. And now, here was someone claiming to know why it happened.
"Wha? Cat got yuh tongue?"
Kay clenched his jaw, staring at the pavement. Could be a trap. Could be Arasaka setting him up. Could be the thing that killed them all wasn't finished yet.
"Could be a setup," he muttered. "Arasaka knows I'm still alive?"
Silence stretched. Kay could almost hear her thinking. Then—she sent a location ping.
"Meet me. Find out."
The call cut out. Kay exhaled hard, pressing his lips into a thin line. A message pinged through. A time. A place. Kay sat in his car, staring at the notification glowing on his screen. His gut screamed at him. He ran his thumb along his bottom lip, then reached for his lighter. The cigarette shook slightly between his fingers. This was it.
He lit the cig, dragged deep, and let the burn hit his lungs.
What if this was it? What if this was what he'd been waiting for?
What if the truth wasn't something he could survive?
Kay took one last drag, then flicked the cigarette out the window. He gripped the wheel.
And he pulled off.