Night City.
A place where dreams came to die and where nightmares walked the streets like old friends.
"Song Zhaomei, are you really free? And me? I, V, have become nothing more than a drifting shadow in this rotten city. Damn it… I lost Johnny, I lost Panam, I lost Judy…"
The words rang in William's head, distant and hollow, like echoes from a past life. His own voice, yet not his own.
"Yes. I lost everything…"
The dull pounding in his skull grew louder.
"William! Don't fucking sleep anymore—get up and drink!"
The shout ripped him from his spiraling thoughts. His head swam. A migraine from too many sleepless nights, mixed with the sour burn of a hangover, made his stomach churn violently.
What the hell was going on with his brain?
The sour stench of cheap beer clung to his lips. He gagged, spat, and blinked until his vision cleared. The blur before him sharpened into the outline of a man—his supposed drinking buddy—sitting on an overturned paint bucket.
Fluorescent paint stained the man's military trousers. Vicious neon tattoos of snarling dogs glowed faintly across his cybernetic arms and chest. His entire body looked like it had been spray-painted by a rebellious gang of street punks.
The Hellhounds.
And right then, glowing text suddenly appeared in William's vision—like a digital HUD overlaying reality:
> [Character: Zilph Seno]
[Affiliation: Dog Town]
[Favorability: 40] (What a liar. Yesterday he said we were good buddies who even wore the same underwear.)
[Development Value: Free to exploit if you've got peculiar tastes.]
[Stage Rewards: Favorability 50 → Flesh +1, Original Sweat Military Gloves.]
William's expression stiffened. Was this some kind of messed-up parody RPG interface?
He glanced at the man again. Seno's crude cybernetics were a nightmare of welding seams and scavenged parts. His left eye was gone, replaced by a sunken prosthesis with twin red diodes glowing like dying embers. They stared at William with a predatory gleam that sent a chill up his spine.
Too real. Everything was too damn real.
The floor beneath William shifted, rocking slightly. He realized then they were inside a truck—an enclosed transport filled with crates of weaponry and high-grade equipment. Every piece bore the logo of some megacorp.
He and his so-called "buddy" were supposed to escort the shipment back to Dog Town.
William let out a shaky breath, forcing his scattered thoughts into order. His gaze dropped to his arm. Not flesh. Not skin. A gleaming cybernetic limb, seamless and perfectly articulated, ending in a steel hand.
He flexed. The mechanical fingers responded with a faint click, grip smooth and precise.
Uncanny. The prosthetic felt almost human, like it had grown from his body.
Amazing… terrifying. Could humanity really craft something this close to life?
And yet, something else demanded his attention. A new panel blinked into his artificial eye:
> [Name]: William
[Physique]: 5
[Reaction]: 3
[Technical Ability]: 1
[Intelligence]: 3
[Calmness]: 4
No legendary hero. No chosen savior. Just another street rat with slightly above-average stats.
"Did you sleep like a fool again?" Seno's gravelly voice broke in. He tilted his head back, chugging beer, foam spilling down his chin. "Another prosthetic compatibility issue?"
William wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "No. I just… can't drink anymore. I give up."
Seno laughed harshly. "Coward."
But before he could mock further, a metallic groan reverberated through the cargo box.
The hairs on William's neck stood.
"What the hell?"
Instinct seized him. Without thinking, his hand snapped to the rifle propped against the wall. The weapon felt familiar—an extension of his body. He racked the bolt. Click.
> [Arasaka Nobaki Kinetic Assault Rifle]
Reliable. Deadly.
Seno crouched low, rifle raised, creeping toward the source of the noise.
But William's gut screamed danger.
"Move!" he barked.
The words had barely left his lips when metal shrieked. A jagged tear ripped across the truck's side panel. Wind howled through the opening, carrying dust and blood-tinged heat.
The truck screeched to a stop. The sudden brake sent crates tumbling.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
The cargo smashed into them. Seno vanished beneath a mountain of boxes.
William's world lurched violently. The truck was tipping. Flipping.
Shit—!
His cybernetic arm flared with electric hums. With one desperate shove, he smashed the emergency latch at the back.
The door blew open.
And William was thrown into the blazing desert air.
BANG!
His body slammed against asphalt. Sparks flared as his prosthetic scraped the ground, the scent of burning synthetic skin filling his nose.
Alarms screamed across his vision. His prosthetic eye spat red warnings: multiple fractures, severe trauma, pain threshold exceeded.
"Damn it… I'm gonna die here."
But then—
Wake up.
A voice—or perhaps the system—flooded his body with artificial hormones. His pain editor jolted his nerves into overdrive.
No lying down. Not in this world.
Gritting his teeth, William crawled, dragging his battered body behind a jagged rock at the roadside. His chest heaved, each breath knives in his ribs.
Gunfire cracked across the desert.
Whoosh!
A bullet clipped past his scalp. His prosthetic eye calculated the trajectory instantly. He returned fire without hesitation, squeezing the trigger. His rifle spat fury.
Enemies moved in the distance, shadows against the burning sand.
"Kill them all! Don't let those bastards live!" a booming voice barked.
William peeked. A massive man with Contra-style buzzcut held a shotgun, blowing a Nether Dog soldier's skull apart. Nearby, another lunatic with bright cockscomb hair hurled grenades like party favors. Explosions rocked the desert floor.
"Bullets! All these beautiful kinetic bullets belong to me now!" the grenade-thrower roared, his prosthetic hands grotesquely oversized.
William's jaw clenched. Mann. The name stirred memories. Too familiar.
But the gunfire intensified. He couldn't dwell. He was pinned.
A sudden roar of engines cut through the chaos. A vehicle, covered in graffiti of snarling ghost dogs, skidded to William's side. A mounted machine gun on its roof spat endless streams of brass.
"Get in!"
Seno—bloodied, one arm hanging useless—kicked the door open.
William didn't hesitate. He dove inside the passenger seat. Rock music blared from the speakers. Adrenaline drowned out the pain.
Leaning half out the window, William unleashed a hail of bullets at the looters. Sparks showered off their makeshift cover, forcing them to duck.
"The cargo!" William shouted.
"Cargo? Who the hell cares?!" Seno barked, swerving hard. "You dead, no cargo matters!"
He wasn't wrong. Hansen would skin them alive for losing the truck, but survival came first.
The vehicle roared away, kicking up sand.
On the comms, Mann's guttural voice crackled. "Rebecca, I'm leaving those two idiots to you."
"Alright, alright."
A high-pitched female voice.
William's blood froze.
On a rock in the distance, a small figure rose. Twin ponytails whipped in the desert wind. Her rifle—nearly as tall as she was—gleamed under the sun. Her lips curled into disdain.
Rebecca.
William's vision flickered with data:
> [Character: Rebecca]
[Faction: Night City]
[Favorability: -10] (She wants to spit in your face right now.)
[Development Value: Potential modifiable. Future legendary figure? Get close to her if you want to survive this insane world.]
[Reward: ???]
William's hands trembled. Memories surged—images of Rebecca's fiery death beneath Arasaka Tower, crushed under rubble like a discarded doll.
Not again.
But now wasn't the time for hesitation.
He squeezed the trigger—
And agony ripped through his shoulder. His prosthetic arm convulsed. When the truck had rolled earlier, his bones had dislocated. The pain editor's suppression wore off, and now the backlash hit full force.
"Ahh—shit!"
His aim collapsed. Bullets sprayed wildly across the dunes.
"Damn it!" Seno cursed, wrestling the wheel. The car fishtailed under enemy fire. "Does that psycho girl have an RPG?!"
"I don't fucking know!" William shouted back.
Rebecca rolled through the dust, dodging their barrage. Her rifle blazed, each shot precise and deadly. One bullet pinged off the car, ricocheting into a tire.
The vehicle jolted violently.
"Ugh—fuck!" Seno cursed, slamming the pedal. Somehow, the crippled vehicle kept roaring forward, fleeing into the horizon.
William nearly lost his head to Rebecca's return fire. He spat curses, rage and panic twisting in his chest.
"Fuck you, Rebecca!"
But the truth burned deeper:
She shouldn't be alive.
Rebecca—alive? Here? Now?
Behind them, Rebecca sat amid the smoke and dust, face smudged, eyes cold. Her rifle lowered slowly.
Her lips curled into a scowl.
"…How the hell did that guy know my name?"
---
Author's Patch Notes (2025.7.9):
Adjusted William's "hesitation to fire" into physical injury factors.
Added stronger cyberpunk language patches.
Increased profanity intensity.
End of Chapter 1.