"Where did this bring me?"
Kael lay on a floor of blinding, pure white. He felt weightless, yet grounded—intact in a way that felt impossible after a lifetime of breathing Night City's toxic smog.
"Get up. Why are you still idling?"
The voice came from directly above. Kael looked up and saw a hand extended toward him. He reached out, and the moment their skin touched, his mind ignited.
Memories—vast, visceral, and alien—exploded behind his eyes like a digital supernova. He didn't recoil. Instead, he absorbed the data as if it were a missing firmware update. It didn't feel like learning; it felt like remembering.
"Now you get the picture, right?"
Kael stood up and faced the man who had pulled him up. The stranger was wearing a weathered Pilot helmet from the Frontier. Kael knew him instantly. This was himself—a version of Kael who had lived, bled, and fought in another reality.
"I knew it," Kael muttered, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Someone this handsome had to be the protagonist. My 'Cheat' just had a long loading screen."
"Could you put some clothes on first?" Titan-Kael asked, his voice filtered through his helmet's comms. "We're all the same person, sure, but I really don't need to see a naked guy in the middle of a sanctuary."
"Right. My bad." Kael focused, and his standard street-tech attire materialized over his body. In this White Space, thought dictated reality.
There was a third Kael present. This one didn't wear a helmet or chrome. He looked slightly older, his frame broader and packed with dense, athletic muscle. He was a Ghoul Investigator-in-training, though he hadn't yet graduated into the grim reality of the CCG. He looked like an apex predator in a tailored suit—fair-skinned, sharp-eyed, and radiating a calm, clinical lethality.
"Wait," Cyber-Kael said, looking at the Pilot. "Where's Cooper? If you're in the Titanfall universe, you should be with BT-7274."
"What if I am the Cooper of my world?" Titan-Kael crossed his arms, his posture radiating the "Calculating Survivor" energy they all shared.
"Then the Militia is screwed," Ghoul-Kael remarked, leaning against nothingness. "Pack it up, boys. The IMC wins."
"Don't speak such blunt truths," Cyber-Kael chuckled. "We're all on the same side here. Give the man some face."
Titan-Kael snorted. "Laugh all you want. I thought the same thing at first. But now that we've linked? The legend of the Pilot starts with me."
The thunderous roar of a heavy lift rocket woke Kael from his slumber. Orange-yellow flames painted the sky through his window—another shipment of corporate cargo heading for the Moon.
Kael sat up and walked to the mirror. He looked the same, but he felt different. Every fiber of his being felt meticulously sculpted, his muscles possessing a new, terrifying density.
By merging with his other selves, Kael now possessed the Power of Three. Even though he was the "weakest" physically, the combined martial instincts of a Frontier Pilot and an elite Ghoul Investigator had transformed him.
He threw a series of jabs at the air. Whap-whap-whap. The air cracked under the pressure.
"This... this is unbelievable."
His raw strength now rivaled an Edgerunner equipped with high-grade Gorilla Arms, but without the loss of humanity or the risk of cyberpsychosis. He had the instincts of a man who had survived atmospheric drops and the cold-weapon proficiency of a monster hunter.
He looked at Lucy's Omaha pistol on the workbench. He picked it up, and the weight felt perfect. He could see the neon signs a hundred meters away and knew, with absolute certainty, he could put a round through the center of any letter he chose.
"Militech Omaha series. Crudely modified," he whispered. Information flooded his brain—not just memory, but an intuitive understanding of the electromagnetic rail system inside the gun.
Before, his intelligence hadn't been enough to grasp high-level Netrunning or advanced weapon engineering. Now? His brain felt like a supercomputer.
His fingers moved like a blur, disassembling the Omaha in seconds. He cleaned the carbon scoring, polished the rail guides, and tuned the magnetic accelerators. When he snapped it back together, the slide moved with a buttery smoothness that Militech's factory line couldn't dream of.
"Three hundred Eddies? Lucy, you got the deal of the century."
Holding the gun, a surge of confidence—dangerous and intoxicating—overtook him. "I don't think I've ever been out after dark. Let's see what this city is really made of."
Night City was a fever dream of light pollution and decay.
Japantown at night was a chaotic mess of neon, heavy bass, and the smell of cheap synth-booz. It was a tourist trap by day, but by night, the Tyger Claws and the Scavengers owned the shadows.
Kael moved through the crowd with the clinical efficiency of an Investigator. He wasn't looking for trouble, but he was tracking the flow of the street.
That's when he saw her.
Lucy was staggering out of an alley, clutching her abdomen. Blood—crimson and real—leaked through her fingers. She had clearly injected a MaxDoc, but the wound was deep.
She tried to reach the NCART station, but a group of shadows cut her off.
"I almost let you slip away, Lucy," a man sneered. He was a former partner, his face twisted in a betrayal that stung more than the bullet. "We were a team. I only wanted to strip your chrome and sell it... nothing personal."
"Go to hell," Lucy spat. She lashed out with her Monowire, the glowing cord cutting a lethal arc through the air. The man jumped back, barely avoiding decapitation.
"Enough talk!" a massive Scavenger barked. He was shirtless, wearing a blood-stained apron and sporting mismatched, oversized cyber-arms. "She's hot, she's high-tier chrome. I want her intact for a few hours before we harvest."
The Scavengers closed in like hyenas. Lucy reached for her holster, her heart sinking as she realized it was empty. She had left her gun with the "harmless" techie across the hall.
"Lucy, don't struggle. It only makes it—"
Pop. Pop. Pop.
The man's head snapped back as three electromagnetic slugs turned his skull into a red mist.
The Scavengers froze. Before they could even process the sound, Kael stepped from the shadows. He moved with the terrifying grace of a Pilot, the Omaha barking in a rhythmic, lethal cadence.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
Each shot was a masterpiece of precision. In Night City, pistols were designed with massive stopping power to compensate for cybernetic armor. In Kael's hands, the Omaha was a scalpel.
One Scavenger—the one in the apron—took a round to the forehead, but the slug sparked off a hidden titanium cranial plate.
"Think a pop-gun can zero me? I'm full chrome, you—"
Kael didn't wait for him to finish. He fired again, the projectile tearing through the Scavenger's throat. The giant didn't die; he gurgled, blood spraying from his ruined jaw as he charged with a rusted saw blade.
"Tough skin," Kael noted. He was out of ammo.
"Watch out!" Lucy screamed, her Monowire lagging behind the brute's momentum.
Kael didn't flinch. As the saw blade descended, he sidestepped with a speed that defied human biology. He snatched a discarded steel pipe from the trash, and with the redirected strength of three worlds, he drove it straight through the Scavenger's cybernetic eye socket.
The pipe shrieked as it pierced the metal skull. The Scavenger collapsed, dead before he hit the pavement.
"Filthy," Kael muttered, shaking the gore from his hand.
Lucy stood frozen a few feet away. She looked at Kael—the man she had bullied and teased—and felt a cold shiver of unfamiliarity. This wasn't the "good boy" from the apartment. This was a predator.
"Where did your common sense go, Lucy?" Kael asked, breaking the tension. "If I hadn't decided to take a walk, the next time I saw you would have been on an XBD."
The familiar snark snapped Lucy back to reality. "If I had my gun, I would've zeroed these rats ten minutes ago."
"Heh. Sure you would."
"What's that 'heh' supposed to mean?! You don't believe me?" Lucy marched up to him, her face flushed with a mix of anger and adrenaline. She went to grab his collar, to stand on her tiptoes and intimidate him like she always did.
But this time, a warm, heavy hand landed on top of her head, holding her in place.
"At this point," Kael said, leaning down until their eyes were level, "the correct response is 'thank you'."
The power dynamic had shifted. Lucy's face turned a deep shade of crimson, and her breath hitched. She bit her lip, looking anywhere but at his eyes, before whispering, "...Thank you."
"What was that? Couldn't hear you over the music. Did you leave your vocal cords at the apartment too?" Kael cupped his ear mockingly.
"I SAID THANK YOU!"
Lucy grabbed his earlobe and screamed into it, nearly bursting his eardrum.