"Emily?!"
Ethan's eyes widened in shock as the armored knight standing before him slowly removed the helmet.
For one frozen second, his heart stopped.
He had never expected to see his younger sister's face in a place like this.
After almost a year apart, after months of carrying worry, guilt, and exhaustion inside his chest, the sight of that familiar face hit him so hard that he almost forgot where he was.
But the feeling lasted only a moment.
Ethan quickly noticed what was wrong.
The face was Emily's, yes. The soft features, the youthful beauty, the delicate shape of her eyes and lips—they were all there, recreated with unsettling accuracy. At first glance, it looked as if heaven itself had shaped her out of light and memory. But the longer he stared, the colder he felt.
This was not his sister.
The eyes were empty.
The expression was lifeless.
There was none of Emily's warmth, none of her stubborn little smiles, none of that teasing spark she always carried even when she was sick or tired. What stood before him was only a shell. A perfect shell, perhaps, but still a shell.
It was a projection. A hollow image made from data.
Not Emily.
Not really.
"You want to build an AI based on Emily?"
Ethan turned sharply toward the old cyber monk, and the meaning of everything he had heard finally came together.
To fight Johnny Silverhand, Nine Lotus Temple planned to use its most advanced method. Not guns. Not blades. Not ordinary code.
They wanted to create a new cyber intelligence from Ethan's own memories, a temporary awakened AI capable of entering the digital battlefield and erasing Johnny Silverhand's presence from within him.
Only something powerful enough in the cyber realm could stand against another digital ghost.
And in Ethan's mind, no image was stronger than Emily.
"It is not something I can do for you," the old monk said calmly. "You must do it yourself."
His seven cybernetic eyes glowed faintly in the half-light of the hall.
"Among all the people in your memories, she is the one who carries the deepest emotional weight. Because of that, only she can serve as the most stable core model for your mind."
He spoke without force, almost gently.
"This is the method with the highest chance of success. Through this, we can remove Johnny Silverhand from you."
Ethan frowned and stared at the projection again.
He hated how close it felt.
And he hated even more how wrong it felt.
A storm of emotions rose inside him at once.
Part of him wanted to step forward.
Another part wanted to smash the projection to pieces.
He could not accept it.
That isn't my sister, he thought.
He had never once imagined replacing Emily with some artificial copy. Never. Not even in his darkest moments.
If he agreed to this, what would it mean?
Would building a false Emily out of his memories be a betrayal? Would it stain everything his real sister meant to him? Or were these monks simply using his grief, dressing up a dangerous plan in spiritual language so he would obey?
Suspicion crept through him.
Doubt followed.
Then fear.
For a moment, Ethan wanted to turn around, leave the hall, and walk straight out of the temple without looking back.
But reality was cruel.
By now, he understood what Johnny Silverhand truly was.
This was not some strange hallucination he could ignore. This was not stress, not exhaustion, not ordinary madness. Johnny was real in the worst possible way—a digital invader buried inside his life, his body, and his mind.
If Ethan refused help and tried to face it alone, he would die.
Not maybe.
Not someday.
Soon.
There was no road left behind him.
Only forward.
As if sensing the war taking place in Ethan's heart, the old monk continued in a steady voice.
"You do not need to fear this."
"An AI is still only an AI. It is a tool created for a purpose."
He looked at the false Emily without sentiment.
"It will exist only for the task ahead. Once its purpose is complete, it will self-destruct."
His tone remained calm.
"It will not replace your sister. It will not alter your love for her. It will not take anything from the real Emily."
Those words did not fully ease Ethan's discomfort, but they gave his thoughts something solid to hold on to.
A temporary weapon.
Nothing more.
He slowly forced himself to breathe.
Right now, Johnny Silverhand was the true danger. Everything else could be questioned later. Everything else could wait.
"When do we start?" Ethan finally asked.
A faint smile touched the old monk's face.
"This is not a small matter," he said. "The temple must prepare properly. A full Pudu rite will be held for you."
He gestured toward the quiet hall around them.
"Stay here for three days. Clear your thoughts. Read the sutras. Do not enter the Night City game during this time."
Then his expression became solemn.
"This concerns not only your life, but the fate of many others. You must treat it seriously."
Ethan gave a slow nod.
"Understood. Thank you, monk."
At that moment, there was a soft knock at the door. The younger monk who had guided him earlier stepped inside, bowed respectfully, and said he would lead Ethan to his room.
Ethan followed him out, but before leaving, he glanced back one last time.
The old monk had already turned toward the great Buddha again, lowering his head in silent prayer as if the conversation had never happened.
---
The room prepared for Ethan was deeper inside the temple grounds, beyond a long corridor that opened into a quiet inner courtyard.
The view surprised him.
From the outside, Nine Lotus Temple had seemed ancient and severe, but the inner grounds were wide and peaceful, almost like a hidden world separated from everything outside. A neat row of small houses stood beneath dark trees, their roofs catching faint moonlight. The air carried the smell of incense, old wood, and cold mountain wind.
His room was simple, but clean and comfortable.
His bedding had been arranged carefully. His travel bag had been placed in the corner. On the wooden table sat several sutras, including the Lotus Sutra and the Shurangama Sutra, waiting for him as if the monks had already decided exactly how his next three days would unfold.
Under normal circumstances, Ethan would never have imagined himself spending days in a temple reading Buddhist scripture.
He had never disliked Buddhism, but neither had he felt any deep connection to it.
Still, he had made an agreement.
And right now, he needed these people.
So he stayed.
For the next three days, Ethan lived quietly inside Nine Lotus Temple.
He did not log into the game.
He did not touch the world of Night City.
Instead, he read.
Morning after morning, he sat with the sutras and let line after line pass through his mind. At first it felt awkward, even pointless, but over time something changed. His thoughts became less noisy. The tension in his body eased. The constant pressure in the back of his skull weakened just enough for him to notice it.
And, to his surprise, he slept better than he had in months.
That alone felt like a miracle.
He ate with the monks, three meals a day, all vegetarian. Wild greens, mushrooms, rice, tofu, soup—plain food, but nourishing. The meals were quiet. Nobody spoke much. Chopsticks moved. Bowls emptied. The monks lowered their eyes and carried themselves with disciplined calm.
But Ethan did not relax.
Not really.
Even while pretending to adapt to temple life, he kept watching.
He studied the monks' routines, their expressions, their habits. He observed how they moved, who reported to whom, which halls were locked, which were active late at night, and which pathways people used when they thought no one was paying attention.
And what he found only deepened his unease.
The monks were not as detached from technology as outsiders might imagine.
If anything, they were more connected to it than ordinary people.
Again and again, Ethan caught them staring down at their devices, fingers moving across screens with quiet focus. They might chant sutras in the halls and burn incense before ancient statues, but they were still checking messages, data streams, and system prompts like everyone else in this new age. They were just more disciplined about it.
It reminded him of the people in Moss Village.
Controlled. Directed. Dependent.
As if some invisible intelligence hovered over their lives, guiding every motion.
There was more.
The temple's cyber side revealed itself most clearly through its logistics.
Drones came and went almost constantly. Some arrived carrying sealed metal containers. Others left loaded with crates. Ethan watched from a distance as shipment after shipment moved through the inner courtyard under the cover of routine discipline.
And then he saw what was inside.
Weapons.
Not a handful.
Not a secret stash for emergencies.
Crates and crates of Night City firearms.
Ethan stood in silence as monks in plain robes moved them with practiced efficiency. Most were low-tier by Night City standards—street-level weapons, the kind punks and hustlers would carry in back alleys and gang blocks. But that did not matter.
On Earth, even so-called low-grade Night City weapons were terrifying.
The tech gap was too large.
A flood of these weapons into the world would shatter the balance of power everywhere.
What he was looking at was not temple security. It was an armory.
And if Nine Lotus Temple had this much stock, then other groups probably did too.
Governments.
Corporations.
Private militias.
Cults.
Criminal networks.
Everyone was probably building up in the shadows.
The thought made Ethan's stomach turn.
The world had not collapsed yet, but the cracks were already there. All it would take was one spark.
Chaos was coming.
That realization hardened his resolve.
He needed to solve Johnny Silverhand's problem fast.
Then he needed to get Emily somewhere safe.
No matter what happened after that, he could not leave her exposed.
During those same three days, Ethan also tried sending messages to Rebecca.
There was no reply.
Not one.
Every unanswered message made his thoughts darker.
What was happening in District 21? What mission had pulled Rebecca into silence? Was she hurt? Hiding? Dead?
He had no answers.
So he forced himself to wait.
---
On the night of the third day, there was a knock at his door.
Ethan looked up from the table.
The monk standing outside was one he recognized immediately—a senior cyber monk, lower in rank than the old abbot but clearly above the others. Five mechanical eyes were built into his face, and in the dim light they gave him a cold, unsettling appearance.
"Peace be with you," the monk said, bowing lightly.
"Ethan. The Pudu rite is ready. The abbot has sent me to bring you."
Ethan stood slowly.
"I'm ready."
The monk led him through the corridor, across the quiet yard, and toward the deepest section of the temple—an area Ethan had never entered before.
Even before they arrived, he could smell the heavy incense in the night air.
And then the chanting reached him.
Layer after layer of voices rose in the darkness, solemn and deep, echoing like waves inside stone walls.
When Ethan stepped into the hall, he saw rows of cyber monks seated in a broad semicircle. Their robes were still. Their mechanical eyes glimmered faintly. At the center of the hall sat a single meditation cushion.
Behind it stood the old abbot, his expression compassionate and unreadable.
He said nothing.
He did not need to.
Ethan understood.
That cushion was for him.
"How does this start?" Ethan asked as he approached.
The monks around them continued chanting as if he were already part of the ritual.
The abbot lifted a device from beside him.
It looked like a pair of glasses at first glance, but it was closer to a neural headband—metallic, elegant, with dual projection ports at the front. Faint light flickered inside it.
"You will sit," the old monk said, "and wear this. It is a braindance simulation device."
Ethan's eyes narrowed.
He remembered the stories he had heard earlier. The warnings. The burned-out brain of a monk who had once attempted true cyber wandering. The death of the guide who had led him.
This kind of technology was dangerous even when used correctly.
And now these monks wanted to put it on his head.
His guard rose instantly.
His hacker chip was only E-rank. If they tampered with the device, he might not even notice until it was too late. If he truly lost control inside a simulation, he would be helpless.
A target.
A body on the altar.
The abbot seemed to read the suspicion in his face.
"You are not entering true cyber wandering," he said. "This only simulates the state. It will not place that kind of burden on your brain."
Then, after a brief pause, he added, "If you are still uneasy, I can grant you full access control."
That made Ethan still.
The old monk's cybernetic eyes flashed red for a moment as he interfaced with the device. The headband gave a soft hum, and then he handed it over.
Ethan took it carefully.
Inside his mind, he silently activated his data vision.
At once, the entire hall exploded into layers of brightness and encoded structure. The monks around him blazed like sealed systems hidden under clean outer shells. He could sense the strength of the encryption and the depth of the tech surrounding him.
And the result did not comfort him.
If these people chose to move against him, many of their systems were clearly beyond his present level.
Still, when he checked the device itself, he found that the permissions really had been opened.
That mattered.
It meant he would not be completely blind. If something went wrong, he could cut the simulation, snap back into his own body, trigger the Sandevistan, and fight.
That fallback was enough.
For now.
Ethan exhaled slowly, placed the braindance headband on his head, and sat cross-legged on the cushion.
Light surged into his vision.
The hall vanished.
The chanting vanished.
The monks vanished.
In the space of a single breath, the world around him changed.
And when the glare faded, Ethan's body went rigid.
He knew this place.
He knew it too well.
It was a living room.
Warm. Quiet. Familiar in a way that hurt.
The furniture was modest, but every detail felt alive with memory. The arrangement of the chairs. The old table. The bowl of fruit. The family photos on the wall. The soft lighting. Even the feeling of space in the room struck something deep inside him.
His eyes lifted toward one of the photographs.
A young couple stood smiling, holding a little boy and a little girl between them.
His mother.
His father.
Himself.
Emily.
For a moment, Ethan could only stare.
"Mom… Dad… Emily…"
His voice came out as a whisper.
Then he turned toward the window.
Beyond the glass lay a bright, peaceful city resting under the shelter of distant mountains.
District 17.
His hometown.
And this house—
This had been home.
This was where he and Emily had spent their childhood. This was the place filled with ordinary days, easy laughter, and simple love before tragedy tore everything apart. Before the hospital bills. Before the desperate struggle to save his sister. Before his parents died and the future became a long tunnel lined with debt, fear, and grief.
He had sold everything once.
Even this house.
Later, when he had money again, he tried to buy it back.
But that had never really been the point.
A house could be bought.
A family could not.
No amount of money could rebuild what had been lost.
Standing now inside this perfect reconstruction, Ethan felt the ache of that truth more deeply than ever. The room glowed with warmth, but the warmth was cruel because it belonged to the past.
This was memory.
Nothing more.
Still, it was beautiful enough to make him want to stay.
He clenched his hands.
"So this is my memory…"
"Yes," said a voice beside him.
Ethan turned.
The old abbot stood there now as well, dressed in his brown robes, calm and steady as if he had always belonged inside this remembered home.
"These are the memories inside your mind," he said. "And from them, you must create the AI that will face Johnny Silverhand."
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