Volume 1 – Steel Ghosts of Night City
Chapter 1: The Day the World Broke—and Refused to End
Death did not come with light.
No tunnel. No choir. No warmth. Only momentum—metal screaming against asphalt, glass shattering like ice over concrete, and a woman's voice shouting a name that always pulled him back.
"David!"
Nate knew the sound didn't belong to him.
That realization came fast, even as his body—David Martinez's—slammed sideways, seatbelt biting into ribs that were too thin, too fragile, too young.
Then the truck hit.
The world inverted.
Pain arrived late, distant, like a system notification delayed by a bad signal.
And then—nothing.
When consciousness returned, Nate expected darkness.
Instead, he found space.
Not the vacuum kind. Not stars. Something deeper—an endless expanse of layered realities folding into each other like holograms. Equations drifted with mythic sigils. A battlefield of gods and machines frozen mid-conflict. Time paused, waiting for a command.
At the center stood something.
It was not humanoid.
It was not divine in the traditional sense.
It was a Commander.
A colossal construct of impossible geometry—part war engine, part living system, part throne. Entire armadas slept within its structure. Cities folded and unfolded along its limbs. Its "eyes," if they could be called that, were singularities of perception—capable of watching a trillion fronts at once.
And yet… it regarded Nate with focus.
"Nathaniel Reyes."
The name echoed through every layer of his existence.
"Fan. Observer. Analyst. One who admired from a distance but never held power."
Nate swallowed. He felt… whole. No pain. No fear. His thoughts were clean—sharper than they'd ever been.
"Am I dead?" he asked.
"Functionally. Temporarily."
Figures.
"I didn't exactly die a hero."
"Irrelevant."
The Commander shifted, wars flickering across its surface—civilizations rising, collapsing, adapting.
"You died with regret. With rage at a system designed to grind the vulnerable into fuel. With affection for a story where a boy burned too bright because he lacked the tools to survive."
Nate's chest tightened.
"David Martinez."
"Correct."
Images surged forward—the anime, the game, the inevitability of it all. A kid who never stood a chance. A city that devoured him.
"I offer you a divergence."
The words carried weight—cosmic weight.
"You will be reborn as David Martinez. At the moment of catastrophic failure. With intervention rights."
Nate's breath hitched. "You're saying I can save his mom."
"You can rewrite causality."
Silence stretched.
"…What's the catch?"
The Commander almost seemed amused.
"You will carry my Essence."
Reality peeled back.
The Essence was not power.
It was authority.
The right to command reality through understanding.
Blueprints flooded Nate's awareness—not schematics so much as concepts. The knowledge of how matter wanted to behave, how systems could be convinced to obey. The awareness that flesh and steel were merely different expressions of machinery.
"You will possess a Command Frame."
A body. A machine. A god-engine capable of fighting wars across galaxies.
"It will be inaccessible to all but you."
Blackboxed. Absolute.
"Your will shall not fail."
Infinite resolve.
"Your mind shall not break."
Trauma repaired. Resistance hardened.
"Your memory shall be perfect."
Every moment, forever.
"Your creations shall be loyal."
No betrayal. No corruption.
"The line between man and machine will cease to exist."
Nate felt something click.
He understood his heart not as emotion, but as a pump. His neurons are not as mysterious—but as signal relays. And then—
"You will not need them."
His consciousness expanded beyond flesh.
"You may partition your mind infinitely. Accelerate thought without limit. Exist in multiple substrates simultaneously."
This was no longer a gift.
It was ascension.
"And Night City?" Nate asked quietly.
The Commander's gaze sharpened.
"That world is insignificant on my scale."
A pause.
"But it matters to you."
"Yes."
"Then command it."
Reality collapsed inward.
David Martinez came back screaming.
Not in pain—in awareness.
Time slowed to a crawl.
The car was still spinning.
Glass hung in the air like glittering stars. His mother—Gloria—was mid-turn, mouth open, eyes wide with terror.
Timestamp: 00.0003 seconds post-impact.
David's consciousness fractured—no, expanded.
One thread stabilized his body, nanomachines blooming from every cell like invisible silver pollen. Another seized control of nearby electronics. Another reached outward, mapping the city's networks, cameras, signals, traffic AIs.
Another—gentler—wrapped around Gloria.
Her injuries registered instantly. Massive internal trauma. Hemorrhaging. Neural shock.
Unacceptable.
Nanomachines flowed.
Bones reinforced. Organs rebuilt. Blood purified. Neural pathways restored better than factory default.
Her heart stuttered.
David commanded it to beat.
The car slammed into a barrier.
Momentum died.
Metal screamed—but did not crumple.
To the outside world, it looked like a miracle.
To David, it was a solved equation.
Time resumed.
"David—?" Gloria gasped.
He turned to her.
"Mom," he said softly. "You're okay."
She blinked. Coughed. Looked down at herself in disbelief.
"I-I can breathe…"
Sirens wailed in the distance.
David smiled.
Night City had just been denied a sacrifice.
The hospital declared it a statistical anomaly.
No internal bleeding. No lasting damage. Gloria Martinez walked out forty-eight hours later, shaken but alive.
David walked out changed.
He let the world see only what it needed to.
His cyberware—subtle. Perfectly integrated. Human on every scan. No visible chrome beyond what a poor kid might scrape together.
But beneath his skin?
A foundry.
A factory.
A war machine that could birth gods.
He started small.
In abandoned alleys and forgotten rooftops, David released his first constructs—animals.
Chrome-furred dogs with air-quality filters in their lungs. Cat-shaped drones that hunted vermin and gang surveillance devices alike. Winged scavengers that repaired infrastructure at night and vanished before dawn.
The city didn't notice at first.
But it felt cleaner.
Safer.
Whispers started.
You hear about the Hunter?
Chrome animals, man. Watching everything.
He took out a Maelstrom crew solo.
David didn't deny it.
Didn't confirm it either.
He hunted criminals with surgical precision. No collateral. No noise unless necessary. His robot beasts fought like coordinated squads, guided by a mind that could track a thousand variables without effort.
He took contracts—but only the ones that aligned with his internal calculus.
Main noticed.
So did Maine's crew.
The day David Martinez stepped into the Afterlife for the first time, Night City unknowingly welcomed something far worse than a legend.
It welcomed a Commander.
And this time—
The boy wouldn't burn out.