Lizard people?!
V couldn't help blurting out, "Well, I'll be damned."
That was an urban legend from how many decades ago now? How did Garry manage to connect that with AI communications?
Garry continued unabated:
"You can recognize them at a glance by those cold blue eyes—creatures born millions of years ago beneath the thick Antarctic ice!"
"They wear human faces to hide their true forms. Two-faced serpents! Slaughterers of humanity!"
V couldn't resist snarking, "If they really had such an obvious flaw, wouldn't they just use artificial eyes? At least slap on some cosmetic lenses?"
Garry shook his head vigorously.
"It's not that simple! They're reptiles—their nervous systems are completely incompatible with human neural interfaces. Force it, and they'd end up completely paralyzed!"
"Then why not have their ripperdocs invent something that works?"
Garry pointed at V and shot back,
"Are you sure they haven't already?"
Without waiting for an answer, he went on:
"You ask me where those filthy crawlers come from?"
"Wasn't it Antarctica? You already said that."
"Exactly—Antarctica!"
Garry shouted.
"Today, they hide beneath the Antarctic ice, slowly usurping the crown bestowed upon us by the Creator!"
"Millions of years ago, they evolved from dinosaurs, striving to become Earth's first intelligent species. And who created them? The necromancers of the Alpha Centauri system!"
Right. Observing humanity, creating lizard people—those necromancers sure were busy.
But by now, V had started to catch on.
First of all, real lizard people obviously didn't exist. Whatever Garry meant by "lizard people" had to be symbolic. And since their defining trait was blue eyes, V immediately thought of Mr. Blue Eyes. Unlike normal people, whose eyes only glow blue during uploads or downloads, Mr. Blue Eyes maintained a constant blue glow due to his permanent high-speed connection to rogue AIs.
So-called "lizard people" likely referred to humans like Mr. Blue Eyes—individuals heavily controlled by AIs, who had fully defected to the AI side.
Their base being "beneath the Antarctic ice" probably meant some hidden stronghold. And "stealing the crown bestowed by the Creator" likely referred to secretly seizing control over human society.
What intrigued V most was the claim that "lizard nervous systems are incompatible with human neural gear."
Because that sounded a lot like… herself.
She couldn't use cyberware due to widespread neural atrophy. Did that make her a lizard person too? Was she also being controlled by rogue AIs?
Don't be ridiculous. If she were a lizard person, then what did Joanne Koch, who treated her, count as—a lizard ripperdoc?
V chuckled at her own thoughts and waited for Garry to continue—only to see him extending his hand for money.
"President V, you've come again. Your eyes tell me your mind is open to the truth. Would you be willing to donate a little money to help me continue my mission?"
That was it?
V transferred another 1,000 eurodollars.
"You're doing good for the people. Use it to awaken Night City."
Garry thanked her profusely.
V had now listened for four days straight and paid the "small sums." The trigger conditions were complete. The real data on the Alpha Centauri system should have surfaced automatically.
Yet when she checked the Net, everything was calm. No leaks. No revelations.
Did I mess something up?
As V puzzled over it, Garry suddenly spoke again.
"Out in the Badlands, those people ride trucks, tearing across the wasteland—but when the full moon rises, they'll remove their human masks!"
V's expression sharpened. She focused intently.
Normally, after collecting donations, Garry would pause to drink water, then resume the same old rant. But this—this was new.
Which meant the program had finally started running.
Garry, unaware that every word he spoke followed AI-designed scripts, continued to preach under the illusion of free will.
"What do you think is under the mask? Lizard people?"
V: Isn't it?
"No—it's werewolves!!!"
V: …You really do keep coming up with new material.
Garry waved his arms wildly and shouted:
"At sunset, they strip naked and dance, surrendering themselves completely to animal ecstasy!"
"Then they bare their fangs and claws and go hunting—driven mad by hunger for human flesh!"
"In the darkness they stretch for dozens of kilometers, moving at terrifying speed, like arrows loosed into the night!"
V frowned.
"Watch your wording, Garry. Nomads are rough, sure—but saying they eat people is going too far."
"Nomads do race trucks across the Badlands," Garry retorted, "but not everyone racing trucks in the Badlands is a nomad—some are werewolves!"
He asked,
"Do you know how these beasts came to be?"
"How?"
"Many years ago, a ship from the Alpha Centauri system crashed in the Badlands. It carried a substance long coveted by Arasaka's elite vampires."
"It could turn Saburo Arasaka's enemies into werewolves, bound to his command. But a fireball fell from the sky, shattering his plans with a deafening roar. From that moment, the werewolves broke free from Arasaka's control."
"The strongest among them is called the Wolf Father, king of all werewolves—so powerful that even Queen Lilith, the noblest of the necromancers, fears him!"
Hold on.
We were talking about werewolves—so why were necromancers and Arasaka vampires suddenly back in the mix? Was this the grand finale where the entire cast showed up?
And who the hell were Wolf Father and Queen Lilith? Setup for a movie adaptation? A second season?
In the past, V would've laughed it off. But now she knew Garry wasn't just spouting nonsense. He was tapped into encrypted AI channels, receiving fragments of real information—his brain simply couldn't fully decode them, so it filled in the blanks with bizarre urban legends.
Strictly speaking, everything Garry said was true—if you could identify what each abstract role represented in reality.
V started thinking.
From earlier analysis:
Necromancers = rogue AIs
Vampires = human elites
Arasaka vampires = Arasaka's faction among human elites
Alpha Centauri = cyberspace
Replace those terms, and re-examine Garry's words.
"A ship from Alpha Centauri crashed in the Badlands, carrying a substance coveted by Arasaka vampires"
= A technology emerged in cyberspace so valuable that even Arasaka desperately wanted it.
What technology?
"It could turn Saburo Arasaka's enemies into werewolves, bound to his command."
Saburo's enemies were revolutionaries—those opposed to capital and corporate colonialism. In Japan, they'd mostly been wiped out, but Night City still bred plenty.
This technology could transform Night City's revolutionaries into "werewolves." Obviously not literal werewolves, but a new lifeform—revolutionaries converted from humans into something else, stripped of free will and made to obey Arasaka.
V understood the appeal instantly. She had inherited Saburo's position herself. Even without ambitions of world domination, such a technology would make ruling Night City infinitely easier. At the very least, she could shut down the Badlands prison entirely—because even the vilest criminals would instantly reform into saints.
Clearly, Arasaka never mastered this technology. If they had, V would still be licking Michiko Arasaka's toes, not the other way around.
So why didn't they?
"Because a fireball fell from the sky and shattered his plans."
"He" meant Saburo Arasaka.
V recalled Saburo's greatest failure—aside from V storming Arasaka Tower herself. That failure was Johnny Silverhand's 2023 nuclear bombing of Arasaka Tower.
Morgan Blackhand led the frontal assault. Johnny Silverhand took a helicopter straight into the tower. One nuke later, downtown Night City—and Arasaka Tower—were vaporized.
The nuclear mushroom cloud was the "fireball from the sky."
The "deafening roar" was clearly Johnny—the loudest rockerboy in history.
So the 2023 bombing stopped Arasaka from obtaining that technology.
As Arasaka's successor, V had read all their classified archives. She knew exactly what Arasaka lost in that blast. Not Kei Arasaka. Not victory in the Fourth Corporate War.
What they truly lost was the Soulkiller program—more precisely, Soulkiller 3.0.
Everyone knew Soulkiller was written by Alt Cunningham, Johnny Silverhand's girlfriend. It could digitize anyone connected to the Net. Alt's original goal was deeper Net exploration—this was the era of the Net boom, after all. Humanity firmly believed the Net was the future. Legends like Bartmoss, Spider Murphy, and Alt Cunningham herself emerged from that era.
Alt's idea was sound. Her research direction was correct. But Soulkiller had a fatal flaw: it killed the user while creating their digital engram.
As a Net accelerator, that made it a terrible product.
As a weapon? A revolutionary one.
Imagine—click a mouse, and anyone online dies.
In 2013, Arasaka kidnapped Alt Cunningham—and stabbed Johnny with a mantis blade for good measure.
Johnny survived anyway—his name wasn't "Stronghand" for nothing. To save Alt, he waged a decade-long war of love and hate against Arasaka.
The result: Johnny became a chip, and Arasaka Tower got nuked.
To the outside world, Johnny lost. His body was buried in an oilfield swamp north of Night City. Arasaka Night City was just one branch.
But V knew the truth.
Arasaka lost.
They imprisoned Alt to finish Soulkiller 3.0—but during Johnny's assault, Alt successfully digitized herself and escaped deep into cyberspace.
Without Alt, Arasaka's scientists couldn't complete Soulkiller 3.0. They patched together Mikoshi and the Relic from her leftovers.
Why did Militech have the "Little North Star," and Biotechnica the "Spring Goddess"? All attempts to rival Soulkiller. Even that wasn't enough—Militech directly participated in the 2023 nuke, with other corporations providing support.
Why? Because they feared Arasaka might actually complete Soulkiller 3.0.
Events unfolded exactly as the megacorps hoped. Alt escaped. Soulkiller 3.0 died with her. Version 2.0 couldn't break corporate ICE. Arasaka lost its bid for global dominance.
All of that lined up with Garry's story.
But what about the Wolf Father?
From earlier reasoning, "werewolves" represented humans digitized by Soulkiller—beings stripped of free will, operating like NPCs.
Take the emergence of biological-theory AIs: Kayo Nakamura developed them together with digitized scientists stored in Mikoshi. Without V's orders, those_toggle scientists wouldn't act or think. Ask them a question, they'd answer—but nothing beyond that.
Such entities resembled primitive weak AI. Without clear instructions, they couldn't even write a 500-word essay.
So how could one of them become a Wolf Father—someone even rogue AIs feared?
V didn't know who Queen Lilith was—but she knew necromancers = rogue AIs.
A human digital engram that frightened rogue AIs… only one name came to mind.
Bartmoss.
V disliked the guy, but she had to respect his power.
Arasaka once attempted to assassinate Bartmoss, deploying hundreds of hackers. The result?
No one knew how strong Bartmoss was before.
No one knew afterward either.
Arasaka's full Net assault—prepared, trapped, terrain advantage—still couldn't probe Bartmoss's limits.
V had been shocked reading that report and complained to Sasha that no human could possibly challenge a megacorp alone. Sasha just rolled her eyes.
If anyone's digital form could terrify rogue AIs, it was Bartmoss.
Either werewolves weren't necessarily created by Soulkiller—or Bartmoss digitized himself using Soulkiller.
Either way, digitized Bartmoss becoming the Wolf Father, leader of the werewolves, made V think of CN-07—an AI evolved from a human digital engram, planted in Night City on Bartmoss's orders.
So…
CN-07 = "werewolf"?
Werewolves = AIs evolved from human digital engrams?
The outline in V's mind became clearer.
Vampires = human elites
Alpha Centauri = cyberspace
Necromancers = rogue AIs
Lizard people = humans who defected to AI
Werewolves = AIs evolved from human digital engrams
Wolf Father = Bartmoss
Queen Lilith = probably Alt Cunningham
Run it all again—it mostly fit.
What a mess. Humans, AIs, humans allied with AIs, humans turned into AIs. Each with their own goals. Sometimes aligned, sometimes opposed.
Complex enough to rival Jig-Jig Street's sex dolls—think you've got a cute girl, turns out she's packing more than you; think you've got a macho guy, pants come off and there's nothing there.
V silently thanked fate she didn't hang around Jig-Jig Street.
She hadn't forgotten why she came—to obtain the real Alpha Centauri data and report it to the ESA, purely to get back at New Africa.
No grand ideals involved. Just personal revenge.
So I've paid 4,000 eurodollars—where's my data?
As she wondered, a voice suddenly shouted behind her:
"You got a problem with nomads? Watch your mouth, or I'll bury you alive!"
V instinctively turned.
"Panam?"
The young Aldecaldos leader was just as shocked.
"President V?"
Garry shouted again,
"You can break my bones, but you can't break my pursuit of truth!"
Panam raised an eyebrow and asked V,
"A friend of yours?"
"No."
Panam cracked her knuckles.
"Good. Then step back, President V—don't want blood splashing on you."