Arthur had just endured the worst three days of his life.
No TV, no computer, no phone—nothing but the confinement of a hospital bed. Time stretched endlessly, each second dragging like a chain tied around his neck.
Dr. Oda only visited once a day. She would run through her examinations with clinical precision before leaving in a rush, warning him not to move around freely.
The official review he had been expecting never came. The silence was worse than any punishment. It was like a sword hovering over his head—waiting, never falling.
Arthur regretted everything. He regretted making the choice, regretted transmigrating into this world. Sometimes he even wished he had chosen the first option and become a wandering nomad instead.
But those feelings didn't last long.
Not because Arthur was particularly open-minded, but because his emotions themselves felt dulled, like someone had turned down the volume on his inner voice.
His brain seemed sharper by the day, processing information at lightning speed. But in exchange, his emotional responses were fading. The contrast terrified him. If he lost his ability to feel and was left with only logic and cold analysis—what difference would there be between him and an AI?
Fortunately, when he cautiously brought it up with Dr. Oda, her response gave him some relief.
His damaged nerves, she explained, had interfered with emotional perception. Rather than a curse, this might actually be a protective mechanism of the brain. With time, as his nerves healed, his emotions might return. Probably.
And even if they didn't recover, she insisted, it wasn't necessarily bad. In a world like this, being able to remain calm and rational at all times was a rare gift.
Arthur couldn't tell whether that was supposed to be comforting or ominous.
For now, all he could do was set aside his unease and turn that detached, clear thinking toward one thing: survival.
On the fourth day, Dr. Oda finally brought him a piece of good news.
"Your Net access port has been reinstalled," she told him. "For the next few days, you'll be able to access the Net freely. If the monitoring data matches expectations, you'll be reassigned to resume hacking operations. I don't know anything else."
Arthur quickly stopped her before she could leave.
"Dr. Oda, about the accident…"
Her gaze sharpened slightly, though her voice remained calm.
"As far as I know, after Director Aoki submitted his report, headquarters didn't suspend the project. Instead, they arranged a new experimental project. As for the accident's consequences… well, it wasn't the first time someone has died. Still, the server requires repair, the firewall has to be reset, Net IPs must be transferred. For now, excavation has been delayed a few days, but operations will resume soon."
Her tone turned more serious.
"You're lucky. The neural damage you suffered was severe, but not fatal. Very few people ever recover once their brain nerves are damaged. That ability of yours alone suggests your hacking potential may be far greater than we first assessed. Of course," she added, her eyes narrowing slightly, "greater potential is not always a good thing."
Arthur noted that while Oda's voice was cold and professional, a trace of humanity still lingered in her words. She wasn't the typical corporate predator willing to step over corpses without a second thought.
Not completely, anyway.
"Are you saying the new project might involve me?" Arthur pressed.
The question caught her off guard. She shot him a quick glance, lips parting as if to reply—then closed her mouth, turned on her heel, and left in silence.
Arthur frowned. A new project… Could it really be tied to him? He pondered for a while, then sighed and gave up chasing the thought. He had other priorities.
With deliberate care, he activated the newly-installed Net access port.
The Net access port was the crown jewel of cybernetic implants for a hacker. It allowed a Netrunner to influence the physical world directly through the Net—unlocking doors, hijacking cameras, even seizing control of network-linked weapons. It also enabled direct wireless connections to nearby systems.
Different corporations manufactured different models, each with their own quirks.
Netwatch's ports came with a diffusion module that made quickhacks spread virally from one device to another.
Arasaka's designs, in contrast, prioritized stealth, sabotage, and surgical precision against single targets.
For Arthur, none of that mattered right now. What he needed most was simple: a stable Net connection.
Life had been unbearably dull without it.
[Arasaka Mk3 Net access port activating…]
[Biometric verification passed.]
[Permission audit… Audit passed.]
[Arthur Han—usage permissions authenticated.]
[Current neural latency: 2.7 ms.]
[Bandwidth test result: 780 GB/s.]
[Exclusive ICE: Obsidian V.2 successfully launched.]
[Coprocessor: "Hannya" Quickhack module operating normally. No Quickhack programs currently loaded. Please comply with Arasaka employee protocols.]
A long cascade of data scrolled across his vision, then vanished with a thought.
Arthur shifted on his side, grabbed the Arasaka-issued tablet that Oda had left on his bedside, and set it on his lap. Extending a sleek data cable from his wrist, he jacked into the tablet's port.
With a Net access port, he could connect wirelessly, browse, stream, or hack directly with his mind. But in Cyberpunk 2071, even street kids knew better than to jack their brains straight into the Net.
Direct connections meant viruses and Net attacks would strike his brain itself. If his ICE failed, it wouldn't be just a fried hard drive—it would be fried gray matter.
Arthur checked the date.
October 12, 2071.
Noted.
He didn't waste time with distractions. He knew privacy here was a myth—every word, every click, could be scrutinized by someone.
His first step was to confirm his location. That was easy enough.
He was on the outskirts of Vancouver, Canada.
But Canada in this world wasn't a sovereign nation anymore. It was a corporate resource colony carved up by the megacorps.
Militech controlled Alberta, turning it into a synthetic oil hub.
Netwatch ruled Quebec, a sprawling "data farm."
Vancouver, meanwhile, had become a fortress city under Arasaka's absolute control. Since 2045, the corporation had annexed the entire region, even converting Parliament into a research facility. It was Arasaka's western stronghold—a gatekeeper for Asian trade flowing into North America.
Arthur studied the map carefully, considering escape routes.
The most direct path south would take him to Emerald City—Old Seattle—then down to Portland, through Oregon, and finally to Night City. Roughly two thousand kilometers in total.
But there was a problem.
Seattle was a radioactive wasteland.
Back in 2045, Militech had launched "Operation Emerald Bird" to deny Arasaka control of the city. They'd detonated three Cobalt-60 dirty bombs in northern Seattle, creating an exclusion zone that would remain lethal for thirty years. Even now, the city was still contested, Militech out in the open, Arasaka lurking in the shadows.
Charging straight through that battlefield was suicide.
He'd need another way.
Two options emerged.
Option one: by sea. If he could secure passage on a ship from Vancouver's port, he might bypass Seattle entirely. With luck, he could even reach Night City directly. But this plan demanded speed. If Arasaka discovered his disappearance before he boarded, their grip on Vancouver made capture almost certain. Careful timing, disguises, and preparation were essential.
Option two: by land. If he slipped through the border checkpoints, he could race through the Badlands. That route had its own dangers—Wraiths, raiders, mercenaries—but at least those were risks he could anticipate.
Arthur shut down the Net connection. No need to linger. He'd seen what he needed.
Now, it was time to test something else.
Though his memories told him he possessed hacking skills, he wasn't satisfied with theory. He needed proof.
And nothing proved a hacker's worth better than practice.
His target: the hospital's surveillance system.
He would write a stealth daemon, compress it into a Quickhack, embed it into the Netrunner operating system, then use it to seize control of the ward's cameras.
Basic stuff for a real Netrunner.
Arthur's fingers never touched the tablet. The data cable transmitted directly from his mind. His thoughts became code. At wired speeds—near-instantaneous—the screen filled with cascading programming windows.
His vision shifted. A faint golden glow flickered in his eyes. The world seemed to unravel into streams of data, numbers flowing through every object.
It was effortless. He didn't think in terms of syntax or structure. Lines of code simply formed themselves, slotting into place like instincts.
Fifteen seconds. That's all it took to complete a working Quickhack takeover program. One more second, and it was embedded into the operating system.
But just as he prepared to test it, a red alert flared across his vision.
Unauthorized quickhack detected.
Action violates company employee law and Mk.3 Netrunner OS permissions.
Cease activity immediately.
Arthur clicked his tongue.
Instead of backing off, his golden-lit eyes sharpened. He kept pushing.
The tablet's casing grew hot. Code poured across the screen in a frenzy.
Suddenly, the display went black.
[Arasaka Mk.3 OS restarting…]
[Action log missing. Do you wish to restore and report?]
"Cancel."
[Warning: corrupted log. Running self-diagnostics…]
[Restarting…]
Ten long minutes passed.
Finally, Arthur unplugged the cable, clutching his head in pain. "Ow, ow, ow… damn it." He cursed, massaging the burning interface behind his ear.
Then he grinned.
It worked.
He had written, compiled, and deployed a stealth daemon. He had bypassed Arasaka's protocols, optimized their bloated OS, and hidden every trace of his intrusion.
Employee monitoring systems—gone.
Automatic logs—gone.
Corporate backdoors—gone.
ICE parasites—deleted.
All in thirty minutes.
If the old Arthur had tried this, he would have failed before even breaching the ICE. But now, it felt almost natural. As if extinguishing alarms and rewriting corporate software was no harder than flicking away cigarette ash.
He even repackaged the exploit into a new program:
Freedom Killer v0.1.
Its sole purpose: to erase surveillance backdoors and corporate kill-switches on cyberware. It would destroy the original code, then disguise itself as a functional replacement. Primitive now, yes—but scalable. With time, it could become a universal countermeasure against corporate control.
Arasaka had always retained the ultimate leash: the ability to lock down employee cyberware instantly. They even armed their agents with "killer hacks" designed to shut down their own people if necessary.
But with Freedom Killer, Arthur could sever that leash forever.
He lay back, clutching his aching head, but smiling wider than ever.
"Being a hacker… really is pretty easy."
The tablet cooled on the desk, faintly scarred from the stress test. Arthur closed his eyes, letting exhaustion drag him down.
He didn't rest long.
The door clicked open.
A man in a sharp suit entered, his expression colder than steel. A woman followed, equally grim.
"Arthur Han," the man said flatly.
Arthur's eyes snapped open.
"Company audit."