"What a great day today! What a great day!"
Luca strutted down the sidewalk, his shiny leather shoes tapping against the concrete in rhythm with the tune he was humming. His sharp, tailored suit hugged his frame, and his slicked-back hair gleamed under the afternoon sun. To any passerby, he looked every bit the confident young professional at the peak of his life.
And truthfully, Luca had every reason to be cheerful.
At twenty-eight, he had just earned a promotion—finally achieving the position of architect after years of grueling overtime and endless revisions of blueprints. On top of that, today he was going to pick up his marriage certificate. Promotion, a steady income, and a soon-to-be wife—life couldn't look rosier.
It felt as if the stars themselves had aligned for him.
Luca paused, glanced at his reflection in a nearby glass storefront, and brushed imaginary dust off his lapel. The mirror showed a man in his prime, a man who thought he had conquered life's major milestones in one fell swoop. He grinned, satisfied.
Maybe I really am the chosen one.
But life, as the saying goes, has a cruel sense of humor. It is often in the very moment of triumph, when one is drunk on their own fortune, that fate comes barrelling in to tear it all away.
And in Luca's case, fate arrived in the form of a roaring dump truck.
The monstrous vehicle burst out from a side street with terrifying speed. The sun glinted off its metallic frame, and for a strange, brief moment, Luca's sharp eyes caught a detail that made his heart lurch—the word "Ascension" faintly etched on its license plate.
It was as though the universe itself was mocking him.
Luca froze, his mind flashing back to all those bizarre isekai stories he had read online—protagonists getting run over by random trucks only to wake up in a fantasy world full of magic and harems.
"No way… No way this is happening to me."
A cold chill ran down his spine. He had even been a moderately successful writer on Qidian, a Level 1 Great God, no less. Hadn't he given the platform years of his life, dozens of stories, hundreds of late nights?
"Hey! I've contributed to Qidian! You can't just—wait, is this Brother Eggplant's doing? Qidian, save me!" he shouted at the heavens in a mix of panic and desperation.
But the indifferent sky gave no reply.
The truck, impossibly, seemed locked onto him like a guided missile. He tried to dart left. The truck followed. He leaped right. It adjusted. His every attempt at escape was meaningless.
Bang!
The impact was deafening.
The world spun violently, his body felt weightless, and then—darkness.
---
Meanwhile, several blocks away, a different scene unfolded.
"Rebecca, check this out! How do you like my new prosthetic arm?"
Pila waved his freshly installed chrome arm with boyish excitement. He flexed his metallic fingers, the hydraulics whirring faintly. "At dinner tonight, I'll balance a tray on my knee and spin it with this bad boy. Drinks on the house!"
Rebecca, a petite woman with pink hair tied up in messy twin tails, folded her arms and scoffed. "Hmph. With the way you're grinning, I bet you'll use it for something else the second we get home. And don't even think about serving me drinks—I'll get them myself."
Pila waggled his eyebrows and made an obscene hand motion with the prosthetic. "You know me too well, Rebecca. Hahahaha!"
A vein throbbed on Rebecca's forehead. She balled her fist, ready to smack him senseless, when her sharp eyes caught something on the road ahead.
"Pila! Stop the car! There's someone in the street!"
Her voice was urgent enough to slice through Pila's laughter. His expression drained of color. He slammed the brakes with all his strength, the vehicle screeching and skidding. But momentum was merciless.
The figure in the suit—Luca—was struck head-on.
His body was flung several meters before crashing down onto the asphalt with a sickening thud.
Both Pila and Rebecca scrambled out of the car, panic plastered across their faces.
"Shit, shit, shit—we're screwed!" Pila's voice trembled as he stared at Luca's unconscious body. "That guy's dressed like a corpo. A high-ranking one too. If he dies, we're dead!"
Rebecca crouched beside Luca, her normally cocky demeanor giving way to clinical focus. "Don't just stand there! Grab the pneumatic injector from the glove box, now!"
"But… Rebecca, this isn't like you. Since when do you—"
"Shut it and move!" she barked.
Pila obeyed, fumbling into the car before returning with the device. Rebecca snatched it from his hands, jammed it against Luca's chest, and pressed the trigger.
Psssh!
Compressed medicine hissed into Luca's body. A moment later, his chest heaved, then rose and fell in a steady rhythm.
Rebecca exhaled, collapsing back onto the pavement in relief.
"He's stable… for now."
Pila wiped cold sweat from his brow, then rubbed his chin. "So what now? We can't leave him here, but if we take him with us, won't it be even more dangerous? Corps don't exactly send thank-you cards."
Rebecca shot him a look. "Leaving him here means the Scavs will strip him for parts before sunrise. That's worse. If he's alive, at least we control the situation."
Pila's lips curled into a sly grin. "You're saying… we keep him. A corpo drone like him must be loaded. If we saved his life, maybe we can squeeze a fat stack of eddies out of him. Hell, I could even upgrade this arm again!"
Rebecca rolled her eyes. "You and your implants. Think for once, Pila. He could just as easily turn around and destroy us once he recovers."
Still, after a long silence, she sighed. "Fine. We'll bring him back. Better to gamble than watch Scavs pick his bones clean."
---
Hours later, Luca stirred.
"Ugh… my head. Why does everything hurt? And why can't I see anything? Did I… did I go blind?"
Rebecca, sitting nearby, perked up at his voice. She rushed to his side.
"Don't move. You were just hit by a car."
The voice was female, sharp yet oddly reassuring. To Luca's ears, though, the words were foreign.
"English? A foreigner?" he muttered.
Rebecca frowned. "Excuse me? You're the foreigner here."
Realizing his blunder, Luca quickly apologized. "Ah—sorry, sorry. I didn't mean it like that."
Rebecca huffed but let it slide. She pulled up a chair and leaned close, studying him.
"Where are you from? Konrad?"
"Konrad?" Luca blinked. The name rang no bell. Is that some kind of company? Doesn't sound real.
"Do I look like I sell tiles?" he joked weakly.
Rebecca tilted her head in confusion. "Tiles? No. Konrad sells weapons. You seriously don't know that?"
"Weapons?" Luca's heart skipped. "Wait, shouldn't that be companies like… NORINCO?"
The unfamiliar word drew blank stares from both Rebecca and Pila, who had just walked in.
"You sure you didn't hit your head harder than we thought?" Pila smirked. "Never heard of NORINCO in my life."
Rebecca folded her arms. "Could be amnesia. It happens."
"Amnesia?" Luca tried to sit up, only for pain to shoot through his body. "No, no, my memory's fine. I remember everything. Today's date is August 21, 2023. Around 2:45 p.m.—well, probably later now."
Rebecca's eyes widened. She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Oh no. Oh no. This is bad."
"Why? What's wrong?"
Pila chuckled darkly. "Because, buddy… the date you just gave us? Adjusting for time zones, that's August 20, 11:40 p.m.—the exact moment Johnny Silverhand nuked Arasaka Tower."
Luca's blood ran cold.
Pila clapped his shoulder almost sympathetically. "Welcome to Night City, my friend. Welcome… to fifty years later."
"What the f—!"
Luca's mind shattered. Words blurred. Thoughts tangled. His ears buzzed as fragments of conversation slipped past—Johnny Silverhand, Konrad, Arasaka.
There was no denying it anymore.
He hadn't just been hit by a truck.
He had crossed into another world.
Not a world of swords and sorcery…
But into the neon-drenched, blood-soaked nightmare known as Cyberpunk's Night City.
And just as the horrifying realization settled in, a flicker of light returned to his vision.