Gazing at the neon-drenched cage of Night City, Lucy began to speak.
loomed in her memories, towering structures of steel and glass that felt as if they were designed to crush the spirit of anyone who looked at them.
As a child, Lucy had been part of a secret Arasaka program in a foreign branch. She was one of thirteen children selected for their high aptitude for netrunning, raised and modified from a young age to become the elite tools of the world's most powerful corporation.
The panels showed child Lucy standing among her peers, her gaze already hard and defiant.
Arasaka had fed them dreams of glory, promising them that they would one day become the ultimate netrunners, serving the interests of the most powerful entity on Earth.
For that hollow dream, Lucy and her companions endured years of grueling training and experimental modification.
But when the training was over, they weren't given prestigious jobs in the city. Instead, they were taken into deep underground facilities and forced to perform "Deep Dives."
Their target was the Old Net.
"They sent us into the graveyard," Lucy said softly.
"The Old Net?" David whispered. "The one that crashed half a century ago?"
"Exactly," Lucy replied. "Everything that was destroyed when the legendary Netrunner, the founder of the Daemons, triggered the collapse: Rache Bartmoss."
"The most wanted man in history... the guy who crashed 78% of the global network," David said, a look of awe in his eyes.
figure out of legend, the "Zen Master" or "Pioneer" of the Cyberpunk world.
Because Bartmoss had shattered the global net, the internet had fragmented into isolated regional pockets. The Old Net became a "Null Zone," a digital wilderness filled with lethal malware and aggressive rogue AIs.
Hackers could explore it, but they risked having their brains fried by predatory software the moment they tried to retrieve any data.
However, where there is danger, there is also profit.
The Old Net contained the lost records of nations, the research of destroyed labs, and the secrets of a fallen age. Arasaka wanted those treasures, and they used children as disposable probes to find them.
The result was predictable. Lucy watched her friends die one by one, lost in the digital static or erased by rogue programs.
To the executives, the children were consumables, "human fuel" for their search.
"Those bastards!"
Hiroki slammed his fist against his desk. "Corporates really are the worst! This world is a nightmare!"
The horror of the Cyberpunk world wasn't that it was magical or fantastical; it was that it felt uncomfortably possible. It was a world that felt as if it were just a few decades of bad decisions away from becoming reality.
Lucy and her surviving companions realized that the corporation's "promises" were nothing more than lies. They decided to fight back.
Using the knowledge Arasaka had given them, they staged a bloody escape, killing their handlers and fleeing into the streets. They ran through the darkness, being hunted like animals.
In the end, only Lucy made it out. She drifted from city to city, eventually finding a home in the shadows of Night City.
As Lucy finished her story, Hiroki felt a deep sense of pity for her. He hoped that now that she'd found David, she would finally find the happiness she deserved.
But then... the knife twisted.
As David spoke to Lucy, his left hand began to tremble. A violent, uncontrollable twitch that he tried to hide by grabbing it with his right.
"Your hand..."
Lucy noticed immediately.
"It's nothing," David said, trying to force a casual tone. "It'll pass in a minute."
The readers felt a cold dread settle in their stomachs.
'David... no way. Not him too.'
"You haven't changed at all," Lucy said, her voice thick with worry. "You're still living for someone else's dream."
The memory of Maine flashed across the panels, showing the man who had worked himself to death for his crew.
Lucy leaned into him, her hand covering his trembling chrome. "I used to be afraid for myself. But now... I'm only afraid that one day... you'll..."
David pulled her into an embrace, trying to reassure her.
But at that moment, a static surge flickered through Lucy's cyber-eye.
The scene shifted abruptly to a digital interface. A voice was speaking to an unseen executive.
"Yes... I've managed to recover most of the logs. However, one specific file regarding a test subject has been severely corrupted."
"It looks like a deliberate erasure. The ICE was scrubbed meticulously. Whoever did this wasn't an amateur."
"I don't believe Tanaka deleted it himself. It was likely destroyed during the abduction..."
"Yes... I'll continue the reconstruction and create a backup..."
The screen showed a scrawny hacker finishing the call. But as he turned back to his work, he was suddenly ambushed.
This man was clearly a professional, a high-level netrunner. But he didn't even have time to react before his system was paralyzed by a massive breach.
And stepping out of the shadows was... Lucy.
Her eyes were glowing a cold, predatory red. She looked down at the paralyzed hacker with the detached cruelty of a ghost.
A "witch" of the Net.
[To be continued...]
[Translated and Rewritten by Shika_Kagura]
Bonus chapter
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