Chapter 26 - Chapter Twenty Six

The first whispers started as blurry photos on the Net, a skyline where there shouldn't be one, gleaming towers half-shrouded in morning fog with trees in the foreground and grass too green to be faked, and the comments ran from "Corpo arcology?" to "Nomad mirage" to "CGI scam," but the pictures didn't stop coming and soon testimonies trickled in too, wanderers swearing they'd seen streets with working lights, glass towers, parks filled with animals, and a strange number of people who spoke like nomads but lived like city folk, and though details were scarce the story itself was enough, a new city had appeared in California, and once that idea caught fire it spread faster than anything else, feeding on curiosity, envy, and the hunger for something better than Night City's choking towers. Corpos caught wind immediately, not through official reports but the same way everyone else did, a flood of chatter on forums, filtered pictures, shaky drone footage from the Badlands, and while the street-level talk was awe and hope, the boardrooms buzzed with suspicion, execs asking each other the same question, "When was there a city there, and who's behind it?" because nothing in their world happened without money and power fueling it, and yet here was a functioning settlement no Corpo claimed, operating outside their control, which made it either a threat or a prize, and both demanded investigation. On the ground the changes were even more obvious: the homeless of Night City no longer huddled on cracked pavement or under broken neon signs waiting to die, instead they packed what little they had and became wanderers, moving into the green around the city, learning to forage, to hunt, to build simple shelters, traveling in loose bands from stream to stream like old tribes reborn, and though they were still poor and vulnerable, they were no longer doomed the way they had been in the desert, because food and water were there for the taking. The Aldecaldos noticed too, their nomad convoys that had once scraped by on fuel, smuggling, and trade now finding their routes easier, safer, the endless fear of starvation and dehydration easing with every mile, and their camps became steadier, more secure, not just temporary pit stops but semi-permanent outposts with real supplies, smoke from cooking fires rising steady instead of thin, a sign they had enough to eat, and the relief showed in their laughter and the way their children played in the grass instead of clinging to their parents. Travelers moving between California's cities realized the danger of crossing the wastes was shrinking, because instead of scorched desert where you armed yourself to the teeth, drove with one eye on the horizon and one hand on a trigger, and slept with a gun in your hand, now you could pass between forested stretches, streams, and small groups of other wanderers, and though the world was still violent and gangs still prowled, the terror of the desert itself had been removed, replaced by a living landscape that offered food, water, and cover at nearly every stop, which meant trade could flow, refugees could move, and entire new patterns of life could grow. Back in Night City people debated in alleys, bars, and feeds whether this new city was real or just Corpo theater, but more and more were packing their things and heading toward the horizon to see for themselves, saying they'd rather risk a lie than keep living in a truth that ground them down day after day, and though most had no idea what they'd find, the very fact that hope existed was enough to push them forward. Meanwhile the corpos were watching every new report with sharper eyes, digging through satellite archives, cross-referencing resource movements, trying to find any trace of who had built this place, because if they weren't behind it then they needed to know who was, and their paranoia grew with every unanswered question, because a city springing up outside their control wasn't just a curiosity, it was a direct challenge to the grip they had on California, and no Corpo could allow that to go unanswered for long.