- 11 years before canon -
The air here had a weight to it—thicker than smog, more oppressive than concrete. It pressed against the skin like a phantom hand, reminding me I was in Night City, not some war-torn Balkan ruin or forgotten Latverian alley.
But the ghosts were the same.
I crouched beneath the rusted stairwell of an old control tower, long since gutted and stripped to metal ribs. From here, I had an unobstructed view of Container Alley—a dead zone nestled between two forgotten freight lines in Watson. Shipping crates sprawled across the yard like tombstones, their corporate sigils corroded into anonymity.
Neon spilled from a flickering billboard overhead, turning the puddles around me a sickly magenta. The alley's far end was framed by old automated loaders—motionless, lifeless, but casting long skeletal shadows. At a glance, it looked deserted. A deeper gaze told another tale.
From my vantage point, I counted two guards. Sloppy. One leaned against a crate, chewing something he couldn't afford—synthetic meat, most likely. The other stared blankly into a shard display, the flicker of datafeeds bouncing across his eyes.
My drone hovered three meters to the east, cloaked beneath an old patch-job of re-skinned optics and magnet-suppression nodes. Its chassis was ugly, patchwork—but functional. I had soldered it myself from Arasaka debris and Biotechnica spill-offs. It obeyed me like a trained hound, scanning infrared, heat signatures, data residue in the local grid.
I tapped into the feed. The container I sought was near the center of the alley—black, marked only by a faded red stripe. The crate wasn't locked by standard means. No keypad. No mechanical clasp. It bore a biometric scanner and internal RFID trigger, something only high-tier corpo shipments used. That alone told me everything I needed.
This was not street-level contraband. This was corporate intelligence. Sensitive. Encrypted. Worth enough to draw blood.
I muted the drone's position. Then I waited.
The wind shifted, carrying with it the stink of hot ozone and engine grease. Rain had passed earlier, leaving the dirt-slick ground spotted with stagnant puddles. I listened—servo-motors in my coat's spine adjusting to keep me still as a statue.
Then, without warning, the drone's feed jittered.
First, a flicker—unusual. Then a hard cut, and finally a reappearance... from a different angle.
Unapproved.
"Foolish," I muttered under my breath. My fingers hovered over the kill command when a voice cut through the comms, calm but amused.
"Well-built, chrome-face. Shame your locks were old code. Hope you weren't emotionally attached."
I looked up.
She was perched atop one of the nearer containers, crouched like a feral cat beside a makeshift netrunner's relay.
A tangle of neural cords ran from her wrists into a dirty black relay block at her feet. Her hair was short, jagged, and unstyled. Her jacket was stitched together with old gang tags, punked wiring, and stubborn pride. One eye glowed faintly—a scanner, judging by the blink cycle.
And she had a rifle.
Its barrel hovered inches above my head.
"I see you're the stoic type," she said, smirking. "Lame."
I didn't speak. She hadn't earned the effort.
"I can see your lips moving," she continued. "Thinking of something clever?"
She wished to banter... Wastefull.
I rose slowly. Deliberate. Measured. The exo-frame under my coat whispered faint hydraulics into the silence. I met her gaze with practiced stillness.
"Do not mistake silence for concession," I said, voice low and laced with iron. "You trespass where you should not."
She blinked—mock surprise, then laughter.
"Oh, so you talk. Nice voice, trenchcoat. Bit stiff, like someone chiseled it out of a marble bust."
She swung down from the container, landing a few paces away. Still casual. Still confident. Too confident.
"Relax, I'm not after your briefcase or whatever corpo prize they told you to fetch. I'm here for the chip. That's it."
So she knew. I regarded her, scanning for concealed weapons. No obvious implants beyond the optic. Lightweight gear. Netrunner gear.
"The processor," I said. "You can keep it."
She arched an eyebrow. "Seriously? You don't want it?"
"It is beneath me."
She laughed again—nervous this time. "Well, damn. You're either rich, crazy, or dangerous."
"I am Doom," I said, turning away.
"Wait... what kind of name is Doom?"
I didn't answer.
She stared at my face, puzzled. "No plates. No aug lines. You real? Or one of those synth-skin freaks?"
I paused. Then, coldly—
"No."
For the first time, her amusement faltered. She couldn't place me. That unnerved her.
And that, I thought, was a valuable beginning.
She dropped her stance slightly, less a threat now and more... intrigued. Her gaze lingered longer than I liked—scanning my features as if to decode a sculptor's hand, then narrowing with suspicion.
"No chrome? No glow? You're clean. Too clean." She tilted her head, optic lens whirring faintly. "Maybe you're corpo. One of the weird deep-dive projects, yeah? Lab-bred with a superiority complex."
I gave her nothing.
Her fingers toyed with the processor—ARASAKA-coded, a neural co-processor by the scan—but she handled it like junk metal. Foolish. The device was valuable to the right fixer. But it was beneath me. I had glimpsed its specs. Nothing within it would further my understanding of the real prize in this world: the architecture of domination.
"You ain't gonna make small talk, huh?" she said finally, giving a half-smile. "Fine. You do your job, I do mine. Don't get in my way."
And then—
Gunfire.
It came like a thunderclap, splitting the dead air into chaos. A shot tore through the far crate, the bullet sparking off rusted steel inches from my head. Muzzle flashes flared behind the smoke. Shadows moved—six, seven, maybe more.
Red tiger tattoos glinted in the neon haze.
"Tyger Claws," I muttered.
"No shit!" she yelped, diving behind cover as another shot tore through her jacket. A third round kissed her shoulder, sending her spinning against the container wall with a pained grunt.
Sloppy. She had exposed herself while examining the chip. She had drawn the fire meant for me.
I moved, not out of compassion, but because the alternative would have drawn attention I had no use for.
I seized her by the collar, dragging her behind the reinforced loader frame where she clutched her bleeding arm.
"You're welcome," I said curtly.
"Go to hell," she spat, biting pain between her teeth.
The first Tyger turned the corner, shouting in Japanese—
「くそったれ!」Kusottare!
「てめえをぶっ殺す!」Temee o bukkorosu!
「黙れ,雑魚!」Damare, zako!
Too loud. Too slow.
My sidearm fired once. The bullet pierced his right eye. His body crumpled without ceremony.
Two more surged from behind a shipping sled, firing. Sparks danced along the metal beside me as bullets struck. I shifted behind cover, drawing a thin, curved blade from my coat—plasma-honed, forged from collapsed reactor steel. A relic of another world.
As the next Tyger rushed, I ducked low, slid forward and slashed through the man's thigh. He stumbled—screamed—and I silenced him with a backhand stroke across his neck. The blade hissed as it cleaved meat and ceramic plating.
He staggered, hands clawing at his throat, trying to stop the hemorrhage. Futile. He dropped to his knees, his blood pooling beneath him like an offering.
Another came.
This one moved faster—too fast. His body flickered unnaturally. Time itself seemed to stutter around him.
The man zipped forward in a blur—one second ten meters away, the next almost within reach. I barely ducked beneath his strike, twisting as he passed. My blade flashed again, catching his side but not stopping him.
He wheeled around mid-run. I calculated the trajectory, flung a concussive charge behind him—timed to detonate as he hit full speed.
The blast struck him just off-axis. He reeled. Then I fired—twice to the chest. The first cracked plating, the second pierced through. He dropped, convulsing from the overload.
V groaned beside me, clutching her shoulder, blood running down her arm.
"Fuckin' hell, pretty boy… That gonk had a Sandy…"
"Sandy?" I asked, flat.
She blinked at me, confused and grimacing. "Don't tell me you're some kind of rookie. A Sandevistan, you fossil. Neural reflex booster. Time slows down, choom zips like a lightning bolt. You've really never—? What the fuck even are you?"
"I am Victor," I replied, kneeling beside the next corpse.
"Of course you are," she mumbled. "Should've known the tall, spooky ones were always nuts."
I ignored her as I pried open the man's skull jack, noting the implant node on the side of his neck.
A standard neural port, but with an aftermarket connection interface and direct-sync mod. Crude, but fascinating. I detached the optical lens with care, pocketing it before returning to the briefcase.
I didn't stop there, I simiarily pryed open the mans shirt, exposong his back and revealing the so called sandevistan. A cyberware prostheric that replaced the spinal cord... facinating.
I removed it, and while not surgically clean it found its way into my inventory one way or another. Bloodied or not
The girl she watched me, silent for once.
"What, scavving now?" she asked finally.
I didn't answer. I merely picked up the briefcase and the objects of interest.
Matte-black. Smooth. An encoded clasp and no exterior markings. I knew its value without needing to open it.
The chip she wanted? Irrelevant to me.
I tossed it toward her. She caught it, barely.
"You serious?" she asked.
"Take it. You were sloppy. Consider this your consolation."
Then I turned away. No parting words. No dramatic flare. She was not an equal.
She had survived. That was all.
I left her behind without ceremony. The girl still leaned against the container wall, cradling her shoulder, muttering curses into her palm-link. A survivor, yes. But so was a roach.
The briefcase rested firm in my grasp, its weight far greater than mere mass. There was data within. Corporate data. The kind that shaped assassinations, fueled takeovers, and rendered men disposable. But I had no interest in its contents.
I wanted leverage.
I melted into the shadows of the cargo yard. My footsteps echoed softly between containers as I made my way toward the industrial lot's perimeter—where my temp-hub was stashed behind a power junction. The city's pulse throbbed beneath the grime: hot, corrupt, alive.
Inside the shack, I laid the case on a steel slab, then turned back to the corpse I'd dragged behind me.
The man had been fast—impossibly fast. Now, he was merely a puzzle. His cybernetics still blinked with dying light, and I had no intention of letting that flicker waste.
With deft precision, I withdrew my toolkit and split the optical casing from his skull. The cyber-eye was marvelously layered, with three micro-lenses, infrared threading, and a cortical sync adapter. Designed for smartlink integration. The rest of the neural hardware… crude, but revealing.
The implant jack behind his ear pulsed with residual power. I studied the scar tissue—he hadn't healed properly. Perhaps it was rushed, installed in some basement slaughterhouse ripper-joint. Yet, it worked.
I removed the neural port carefully and slipped it into a containment tube. I needed to know how this world's interface differed from Latveria's theoretical constructs. Their cybernetics were brute force compared to mine, but their methods—mass production, adaptability—fascinated me.
There was something in their chaos. Something useful.
And now… it was time.
I activated the burner shard Bubbles had handed me days ago. It was coded to a single number—one belonging to a fixer few dared to call without invitation.
Gina J.
The line crackled. A long pause. Then a voice, sharp and dry as acid.
"This is Gina."
I allowed the moment to stretch. Let the silence bear weight.
"You do not know me."
"Clearly." Her tone tensed, sharpened. "And yet you call my number."
"I was given your contact by Bubbles. He mentioned you would come for something… lost."
There was another pause. Then the tone shifted—measured, cautious.
"You got something for me, chrome-boy?"
"I have the briefcase. Untouched. Recovered from Container Alley. Six Tyger Claws dead. I suspect you know what it contains."
"Hold up—who are you?"
I ignored the question. Names held power.
"I'm sending coordinates. A dead drop. No tails. No tech-trace. You verify the case, I get what I need."
Her voice cooled. Professional now. "Money's ready."
"I don't want money."
"…Then what?"
"A ripper-doc. One you trust. Someone off-grid with talent."
That gave her pause.
"You asking for a favor, or a deal?"
"A transaction," I said. "I give you what others bled for. You give me a name, an access line, and safe introduction. If I am satisfied, our dealings may continue."
"And if not?"
"Then I melt the drive and erase the logs. The information dies with me."
The line went dead for three seconds.
Then returned.
"Alright. Send the drop spot. I'll send someone I trust. You get your ripper. But you screw me—"
"I do not screw people," I interrupted calmly. "I destroy them."
"…Okay then, chrome-face. You got yourself a deal. Let's see if you're worth the risk."
The call ended.
Outside, Night City breathed in pulses of neon and rot. I stepped from the hideout, briefcase sealed, implant tubes secured beneath my coat. The rain had started again, misting the air in oily fragments of light.
She was still there, limping away from the alley with the processor under her arm. Her movements were erratic but defiant. She would survive. I doubted she would remember my name.
But she would remember the precision. The silence. The man who didn't bleed when bullets flew.
Good.
Let the city whisper about me. Let them wonder.
Let them think I was a scav, a techie, a ghost.
Soon… they would know.
I was Victor Von Doom.
And this world, like the last, would kneel.