2076.
Night City.
City Center, Arasaka Tower.
Twenty-seventh floor, R&D division.
“Rook, wake up.”
Knock, knock, knock.
A man in a white lab coat rapped his knuckles against the desk, and the sound dragged him awake.
He opened his eyes slowly.
The office around him was unfamiliar, all polished surfaces and corporate sterility, and so was the man standing over his desk.
Directly ahead stretched a massive panoramic glass wall, sleek enough to look less like architecture than a corporate vision of the future.
Countless virtual screens floated across it, but the brightest text sat dead center.
Welcome to Arasaka.
“Rook.
Stop zoning out.
Shift’s over.” The man frowned, clapped a hand on his shoulder, shrugged out of his lab coat, and headed out.
He stayed frozen for all of two seconds before he stood and followed.
His brain had gone completely offline, so he trailed after the man through the hallway, into the elevator, and all the way down to the front entrance on pure instinct.
Then he stepped outside.
Flying cars cut across the sky.
Red and blue holographic koi drifted over the street.
Layers of 3D advertisements rippled through the air, luxury megatowers speared up through the haze, and the whole city screamed chrome, neon, money, and violence all at once.
Only then did his mind finally catch up.
‘Holy shit.
I just walked out of Arasaka Tower.’
‘Cyberpunk.
Night City.’
The two names slammed into his skull with terrifying clarity.
In the next instant, memories that did not belong to him came flooding in.
Rook Mercer.
Twenty-two years old.
Full-time R&D employee.
Human, with a standard cervical neural interface installed at the back of his neck.
He owned a fifty-square-meter apartment in The Glen, Heywood.
Before he could fully process any of it, mechanical prompts chimed inside his head.
[System Notification]
Host identity confirmed.
Black Tech System initializing…
Activation complete.
Starter Pack issued.
“Wait.
You little bastard, explain what the hell is going on.” He snapped the words out loud, then forced himself to breathe.
“Fine.
I get that I got dropped into another world.
What I want to know is what you do.”
The impossible had already happened.
He was here.
There was no point wasting time screaming at reality.
Not in a city full of cyberpsychos on the edge of collapse, edgerunners who killed for rent money, gangs that treated murder like a pastime, and corpos who crushed the poor so completely they barely had time to realize they were dying.
If the thing inside his skull could not help him survive here, then he was already dead.
[System Notification]
Black Tech System online.
Function: Advanced technology development support.
The reply came back with unnerving efficiency.
Before he could ask another question, a status panel opened in his mind.
[Status]
Host: Rook Mercer
Age: 22
Height: 1.85 m
Identity: Arasaka R&D Employee
Attributes
Body: 4 (average adult: 5)
Intelligence: 5 (average adult: 5)
Cool: 4 (average adult: 5)
Reflexes: 4 (average adult: 5)
Technical Ability: 5 (average adult: 5)
Skills
Driving: Advanced
Assets
Funds: 52,076 eurodollars
Inventory: Starter Pack
He stared at the numbers for a moment.
The stats were nothing special, but the inventory line changed everything.
He focused on it immediately.
‘Open it.’
[Starter Pack]
Rewards
– Military-grade enhancement serum x1
– Modified Model 85 nanite exo-armor
– Source Protocol armor schematics
‘Holy shit.’
For a second, the noise of the station seemed to fall away.
Then the opportunity hit him.
If he could get out from under the corporation, manufacture his own armor tech, and build on these designs, then Night City did not have to remain a playground owned by Arasaka and Militech.
He could build a tech company of his own, maybe even one strong enough to stand against them.
The thought lasted exactly long enough for the next problem to crush it.
‘Money.’
In Night City, building a tech company without corporate backing was close to impossible.
Without capital, nothing moved.
The fifty-two thousand eddies sitting in his account sounded like a fortune to a normal person, but here it barely covered a decent weapon and enough breathing room to get killed somewhere more expensive.
He needed money.
‘Fast money.’
He looked out over the glittering skyline and thought of all the rot buried under the chrome and neon.
Then he started walking toward the NCART platform that would take him back to Heywood, turning possibilities over in his head with every step.
He never noticed the woman watching him from across the station.
No.
More precisely, she was watching the Arasaka-issued chip seated in the first slot at the back of his neck.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter.