He had finally managed to secure a place to stay, only to have to run before his seat even warmed up.
Ruan Xian was utterly exasperated by his own luck—though, thinking about it, if he actually had good luck, would he have ended up in a shithole like Night City after leaving a comfortable, stable job back home?
While continuing to monitor the NCPD through his Data Fortress, Ruan Xian cycled through local camera feeds across the city, hoping to stumble upon a pleasant surprise.
“Mm-hmm, another nest of Scavengers.
You really can’t escape these scumbags anywhere.” Ruan Xian flipped through cameras randomly, trying common passwords like 1234, 0000, 8888, and 6666.
If a camera let him in, he would take a look.
Sure enough, he hit paydirt.
Not that it was a huge shock—what legitimate business wouldn’t change their default camera passwords?
As for people who installed a ridiculous number of cameras at home while using dead-simple PINs, could they possibly be good citizens?
“Woohoo!
Finders keepers!
This place is mine now.
Don’t like it?
Take it up with my Tamayura.” Seeing the Scavengers made Ruan Xian grin as if he had just found gold on the street.
He was just missing a neural interface, and now he got one along with a ready-made hideout.
Sweet!
“Only one guy here?
Strange.
Let me look into this.” While searching for hideouts, Ruan Xian listened to the NCPD officers shooting the breeze over their comms.
He noticed these idiots loved pulling up information on pretty girls they saw on the street, using the exact same database.
Naturally, he realized that this was the NCPD’s internal database.
Thanks to Rache Bartmoss’s catastrophic final attack, the Old Net had died on the spot.
Now everyone was essentially operating on local subnets, and by sheer coincidence, one of the servers was located right inside Watson NCPD Headquarters.
“The NCPD’s security standards are on par with Scavengers.
Eight eights?
Holy shit.” To avoid leaving personal logs, all these horny cops shared a single administrator account.
Username: 8888 Password: 88888888 Account Message (Pinned): NCPD Deputy Director of Data Management A: “Is the fucking maintenance account meant for you dumbasses to background-check chicks?!
You’re even checking fucking dudes now!
We’re hitting almost twenty thousand queries a fucking day!
If any of you bastard pieces of shit leak or sell this data, I will fucking kill you!
Everyone better fucking tone it down!
From now on, any queries over 100,000 per week will cost 1 eurodollar each!
You dumbfucks are going to pay out of your own fucking pockets!”
“Impressive, Director A—unrivaled profanity,” Ruan Xian scratched his head, thinking this deputy director was probably a total moron, which fit the standard profile for Night City management.
Then, filled with deep gratitude, he looked up the background of the solitary Scavenger guarding the hideout.
“Marcus Yasuhara.
Japanese descent.
Wow, look at this rap sheet: first-degree murder, human trafficking, illegal possession of corporate SID…
Bounty: 300 eddies.
Wait, that’s it?” The NCPD’s bounty system was accessible to practically anyone; even random street thugs could conspiratorially share details with you.
The downside was that bounties were barely worth anything—certainly not enough to warrant a gunfight.
“Doesn’t matter.
I’m not here for the bounty anyway.
The apartment is actually pretty nice—decent size, and most importantly, clean.” Ruan Xian carefully surveyed the Scavenger hideout.
Located in a dilapidated building on the northern edge of Kabuki, it had few residents, poor access, and hardly any foot traffic.
“Awesome.
I love places like this.
Here comes your new landlord!” Ruan Xian was thoroughly pleased.
The Scavenger hideout had been cleaned up nicely—bodies cleared out, almost no bloodstains.
Being in an apartment building, they were apparently a bit more mindful than Makoto Ito and those three idiots.
— Press F to skip travel time —
Ruan Xian crouched in the shadows below the Scavenger building for a moment, reviewing the footage recorded in their apartment over the last few days to confirm enemy numbers.
“Five in total, including Yasuhara.
A bruiser, a fat guy, a skinny guy, and…
wow, this guy actually looks pretty sharp.
I’ll call you Pretty Boy.” Ever since placing his totem, Ruan Xian’s Intelligence was still at 3, but possessing a Data Fortress was equivalent to having a personal supercomputer.
Retrieving information was blisteringly fast.
“This place is mine now.
Can’t make a bloody mess like last time.
I’ll slip in, take out this moron, breach his neural chip, and text the others to walk right into a trap.” Ruan Xian drafted a simple plan.
Having tested his strength, he was immensely confident.
Against trash like Scavengers, a 1v5 was practically a guaranteed victory.
And indeed it was.
Although the Scavengers’ front door was locked, the neighboring apartment was wide open and completely abandoned.
Ruan Xian slipped through the dilapidated neighbor’s flat and hopped across the balcony straight into the Scavs’ nest.
“Once I move in, I’m boarding up this balcony door.
So many security flaws,” Ruan Xian muttered, stepping inside nonchalantly under the effect of his Breath Concealment.
He complained about how terrible the Scavs were while pondering how to kill his target.
“Why bother thinking?
My 3 Intelligence tells me to rely on my 15 Body.” Giving up on complex tactics, Ruan Xian decided to go brute force.
He reached out with a large hand and grabbed Yasuhara.
“Holy shit, who are you?!” Yasuhara gasped, feeling a chill at his neck.
Lacking experience in stealth kills, Ruan Xian had inadvertently left Yasuhara a chance for last words—though those last words weren’t pleasant to hear.
He snapped the thug’s neck, refined his body in an instant, and cast him into the Spirit World, scattering his ashes into nothingness.
Let’s see what’s on your neural drive.” In front of his lotus-leaf Data Fortress, the Scavenger’s neural cyberware security was about as tough as single-ply toilet paper—punctured with a light touch.
“450 eddies…
damn, what a broke loser.
Boring chat logs, useless contacts—a total nobody.” Ruan Xian skimmed through it and confirmed he was a small fry.
Luckily, he learned that the leader of this Scavenger cell was named Merle Lee—the fat guy.
Yasuhara: Boss Merle, you guys back yet?
I’m starving to death.
Gonna grab a bite nearby on Crescent Street.
Want me to pick up something for when you get back?
Merle: Do whatever.
House is clean enough today, no worries about intruders.
We’ll be home in about twenty minutes.
Bring back two servings of synthetic beef…
make it three, plus four beers.
Get ’em from the Chinese place.
That bullshit Japanese diner gives half the portion for twice the price.
Next time I’m kidnapping that fucking store manager and stripping him for chrome.
Yasuhara: Got it.
Why only three servings though?
Merle: Slim and Bruiser just got paid and headed to Jig-Jig Street to blow off steam.
Ignore them.
Yasuhara: Alright then.
Reading this, Ruan Xian felt these Scavengers were surprisingly considerate.
Splitting four people into two groups meant he could just walk up and knock them out one punch at a time.
— Ten minutes later —
“Boss, your driving today was fucking awesome!
Twice as fast as usual, damn!” Merle, the fat leader, and Pretty Boy pulled up downstairs in a low-key older Archer model.
They stepped out of the vehicle bragging and headed toward the stairwell.
Ruan Xian gauged the timing, intending to kill them the moment they stepped into the building to minimize witnesses.
Not that being seen mattered much—in a lawless place like Night City, scanning anyone on the street with your optics usually revealed a bounty on their head.
Seizing the moment, Ruan Xian intentionally bumped into Pretty Boy just as they reached the entrance, knocking him off balance.
“Are you fucking blind, asshole?!” Pretty Boy was a Scavenger through and through; he wasn’t about to take that sitting down, immediately unleashing standard street profanity.
Merle walked two steps ahead before stopping and turning around.
“Great.
At least for these two punches, it’s a one-on-one.” Ruan Xian offered an excited grin—a look so disturbingly sinister that anyone watching it in a braindance would unload an entire magazine on him instantly.