“What could two six-year-old brats do?
Luckily, he had a sharp head on his shoulders and realized something was wrong early on.
We hid some cash and valuables outside the compound, giving us a little breathing room.”
“Expecting that tiny stash to keep two six-year-olds safe and sound until we grew up was pure fantasy.
Fortunately, the kid was smart.
He told me, ‘Come on, I’ve got a plan.'”
“Relying on that little bit of money, begging and hitching rides on trains along the way, we eventually made it to a Kang Tao orphanage.”
“We gave the very last of our money to a volunteer worker at the Kang Tao orphanage, and he added our names to the orphanage entry test list.”
“At Kang Tao, even an orphanage doesn’t take dead weight.
I relied on my brute strength, and he relied on his brains.
We managed to squeeze in.”
“Life in the orphanage was brutal, but thanks to that period, I realized I was a damn good fighter.
During those years, I protected him while he focused on studying.
He told me that once he got into the megacorp and reached upper management, he’d cover for me.
I believed him.”
“Back in the orphanage, he’d occasionally tell me that the world shouldn’t be like this, and people shouldn’t live like this either.
Everyone had the right to a good life, to live like a human being.”
“Who the hell could understand that kind of talk back then?
But anyway, he came up with the plans, I executed them, and every now and then we’d nick stuff from corporate turf to fence for cash.
That’s how we both managed to reach adulthood.”
“Later, through the orphanage’s placement, he got into a Kang Tao subsidiary as an R&D researcher.
I wasn’t so lucky—Kang Tao never lacked muscle.
I had no choice but to scrap on the streets and scrape by.
Luckily, whenever he could, he’d throw some work my way and lend me a hand, so I managed to keep from starving.”
“Then, after a while, he started changing.
He was always level-headed and sharp, but during that period, he grew increasingly irritable.
That was when I realized something was wrong.” Ruan Xian rattled off the long story in one breath.
Feeling a bit thirsty, he stood up and went to brew another cup of coffee.
Sandra, completely captivated by the tale, watched Ruan Xian head for the coffee maker.
“Make me one too.
But if it was just a mood shift, maybe he installed some cyberware?
Getting stressed and short-tempered from work overload is pretty normal, isn’t it?”
Ruan Xian brewed two cups of coffee, returned, and sat back down on the sofa.
“If it were anyone else, they might not have noticed.
But I knew him.
Even during our grimmest, hardest, most exhausting days, he stayed cool.
Something I didn’t know about had to have happened—something that drove him into agony and rage.”
“I messaged him, but he wouldn’t say anything.
He claimed he was fine, just tired.
But I knew everything was wrong, so I snuck into his apartment.”
Within a few short years, he made management, and the corp gave him a private apartment.
Normally, a guy like me couldn’t get near a place like that, but whatever—I wasn’t planning on using the front door anyway.”
“I’ll skip the boring details.
Bottom line, I made it into his apartment.
And the moment I stepped inside, I knew something was dead wrong.
The paintings on his wall were hideous, and scattered all over were bizarre screens displaying scrolling colors.
Looking at them for too long made my eyes blur and my brain go numb.”
“From that moment, I knew shit had hit the fan.
Luckily, I’d been honed for this since I was a kid.
If you steal from corps without learning how to dodge cameras, you’re a dead man.
So I was certain I wasn’t caught on camera coming in, and I knew for sure he’d never allow surveillance inside his own room.
I just hid in his bedroom closet and waited for him to come off his shift.”
“You know Kang Tao’s corporate culture—overtime is standard practice.
He didn’t get back until midnight.
The second he saw me, he laughed and said, ‘Fuck, you finally showed up.
Any later and you’d be collecting my corpse.'”
“That night, he babbled on and on to me till dawn.
Honestly, I didn’t understand a single word, but he kept talking anyway.
Come morning, he introduced two books to me and said that once I finished reading them, I’d understand what was truly wrong with this world.”
“Then he told me to get to the airport right away.
He said he’d follow shortly, and I needed to rendezvous with him so we could skip town together.” Ruan Xian paused here, letting the emotion build up.
“And then?
Did you two come to Night City together?” Sandra was completely absorbed, unable to resist prompting him.
“Then, that very morning, he died.
He grabbed the lead researcher of another secret project and plunged off the building to his death.
Before dying, he sent me a message saying he was about to die, but he had bought an insurance policy with me as the beneficiary.
It wasn’t much money, but the payout was fast.
He told me to buy a plane ticket immediately and leave Kang Tao’s sphere of influence—go anywhere except Night City—saying that as long as I was far enough away, I’d be safe.
He also sent me an encrypted document, telling me that no matter what, I had to survive and find someone trustworthy to decrypt it.”
“‘Sorry, brother,’ he said.
‘From here on out, you’ll have to walk the path alone.
Please remember our ideal.
If you get the chance, make it real; if you can’t, forget it.’ So, even if just for his sake, or to decrypt that document, I had to survive no matter what.
But the more I thought about it, the more pissed off I got.
I couldn’t fucking take it.
Since he mentioned Night City, something had to be wrong here.
So I came to Night City.”
“Where’s the encrypted document?
Give it to me, I’ll decrypt it for you!” Sandra sobbed, looking like a little girl whose favorite toy had just been snatched by a crow, eager to do everything in her power to help Ruan Xian. Visit novelping.com for the full chapter.
“It’s already been decrypted.
That’s Project Carpe Diem I mentioned.
I couldn’t get a real job in Night City, so when I was bored, I’d beat up a few Scavengers for extra cash.
A couple of days ago, while I was pulverizing a nest of Scavengers, Mr.
Screwllum contacted me on his own initiative and helped me decrypt the file.”
“Inside was the result of my friend’s secret investigation.
Night Corp has a special method that bypasses the underlying logic of cyberware neural interfaces to directly influence the human brain.
That way, without being detected by NetWatch, they can force someone’s behavior to conform to a code of conduct they designed, achieving total mind control.” Ruan Xian finally rounded off his fabricated story neatly.
“So…
you want me to help you expose all of this and avenge your friend?” Sandra felt like she finally understood everything.
“No.
Evidence of this caliber can’t even touch Night Corp.
Besides, my friend’s case is already closed.
I still have a couple of contacts back there, and they told me the official ruling: work-related stress combined with an overdose of stimulants led to a mental breakdown, triggering cyberpsychosis, which ended in suicide.” Ruan Xian spoke calmly, but to Sandra, he looked like a man whose soul had partially died.
“Then what do you want me to do?” Sandra was puzzled.
Mr.
Screwllum had intervened, handed her a beating, and mentioned a reward, but right now, it didn’t seem like there was much she could actually offer.
“We used to have an agreement on how we’d realize our ideal: I’d be the general, he’d be the strategist, and together we’d remake the world into what we wanted it to be.
Now, I have to shoulder our dream alone and make it happen myself.” Ruan Xian finally revealed his real motive, ready to milk the rich girl for all she was worth.
“I need to learn netrunning.
In this very stronghold of Night Corp, I’m going to teach them a lesson they’ll never forget.
Brute physical force alone won’t cut it.
Starting from Watson, I’m going to break the megacorps’ information hegemony.” Ruan Xian stated what he wanted without mincing words.
“I see.
No problem.
I’ll teach you everything I know.
But I have one more question…
is Sean Donnelly your real name?” Sandra asked.
For a netrunner, spotting the issue with the name Sean Donnelly was totally routine—one glance at the NCPD database showed red flags everywhere.
A local Night City background completely clashed with that of a Kang Tao orphanage survivor.
Asking directly was actually a good sign; keeping it bottled up would have been far worse.
“The name Sean Donnelly was something I asked Mr.
Screwllum to set up for me.
In truth, I’m an unregistered resident in Night City.
I arrived on a tourist visa and have no intention of going back.
My real name…
is Ruan Xian.” After a moment’s hesitation, he finally decided to share his real name.
Deception only ever invited deception.
When things truly settled down, he would tell Sandra the real truth: the story was fake, but the ideal was real.