- 11 years before canon –
The exo-suit worked.
Not perfectly. The frame still hissed when I crouched too quickly, and sitting felt like being pressed between iron jaws. But the servos held. The limbs responded.
The weight was distributed, mostly.
It wouldn't win any Nobel design awards, but it was mine.
I flexed the actuators as I moved across the rooftop's edge, watching the skyline twitch and shimmer with holo-ads and light pollution.
My coat caught the breeze, silver flare-trims catching stray glints of neon. The suit sat under it like a shadow behind skin—visible only in outline, felt only when it whined too loud or pulled against my back like a steel spine.
The suit allowed me to apply a safe amount of force, elevating my threat and capabilities by a tier.
While armed forces might pose a threat, a scavenger—unless within a squadron or more—posed no such thing.
Physical force and agility were enhanced, with the suit assisting in sprinting and manoeuvring.
Enough to crack ribs. Not enough to break a powered door or hold up under sustained fire.
But it was progress.
Progress that needed to be tested—utilized in the forge of fire, where iron sharpened iron.
A tool was only as good as its utility; that much was certain.
Yet, I couldn't simply outsource such a suit—nor did I wish to sell it off so quickly.
I needed information.
I needed to talk to the old man once more.
He was a source of wisdom that needed melding, and while hunger gnawed at me like a beast with no teeth,
work needed to be done.
"Learning never exhausts the mind." – Leonardo da Vinci
"Knowledge is power." – Francis Bacon
These two quotes highlighted what needed to be done to thrive. Without knowledge, you were nothing. Night City was a place filled with implicit knowledge and hidden attributes; its trove of lore needed to be expanded for my plans to come to fruition.
For my return, connections needed to be made, and towers needed to be toppled.
Lesser men strived for lesser ideals, and Victor Von Doom was no such victim.
I made my way back to the underpass.
He was there, as expected, slouched beneath that same cracked support pillar, a halo of fusion-battery glow bleeding across his weathered face.
Eyes half-glazed, hands steady as he rolled a cigarette like it was a ritual passed down in his unit.
"Back again, fresh meat," he grunted, not looking up. "You stalking me or just like the smell of engine grease and old socks?"
"I need clarity," I replied. "And perhaps… a perspective you seem to possess."
He chuckled and patted the crate beside him. "Well, perspective's free. Ass pain from this crate? That's extra."
I sat. The frame tightened across my lower back with a quiet hiss. I winced inwardly.
He noticed. "Still working on that thing?"
"It functions."
"Sure, if by 'function' you mean 'walks like a tank with arthritis.'"
I said nothing.
He lit the cigarette with a spark from a broken ignition coil. Took a slow drag.
His mind seemed to wander, his eyes darting to the sky tower before slowly returning to my level.
"You ever hear why they call me Bubbles?"
I turned to look at him.
"Jacuzzi. Arasaka wetboy. Slipped into our barracks back when we still had a functioning chain of command. Caught him mid-dive in the pool, held his head under till the jets stopped bubbling. Cleanest kill I ever had. Next day? 'Bubbles.' Been stuck with it ever since."
I nodded. "I've heard worse aliases."
"So whats yours?"
"None, I go by Victor."
"Yeah?" He looked me over. "You don't strike me as a Victor. Too stiff. Surely, you got a codename? Or do they just call you Tight-Arse?"
"Victor will suffice."
He leaned back, the column behind him creaking. "You've got that look again. I saw the same one when you first came by. Planning something stupid, aren't you?"
"Planning something necessary." I answered.
"You still unchipped?" He quiped sharply.
I didn't respond.
He snorted. "Thought so. You know that makes you a walking fossil around here, right? I've seen cavemen with better optics than you…"
"I don't need a neural link to function."
"No, but you need one to exist. Around here, it's your passport, your wallet, your phone, your social ID. You're basically a ghost right now. Sometimes keeping your head down means it's rolling."
"A ghost is harder to track."
"And easier to shoot when a door doesn't open and someone's pulling a trigger behind it. Means making you disappear is just as easy. I get it—you're 'pure.' One of those… Flesh loyalists. Used to be a few back in the day. Most of them are dead."
"I don't reject enhancement out of fear," I said. "Where I come from, power didn't come from cables or firmware. I shaped my body through will. Through knowledge. I wielded power men here only dream of."
He glanced at me, dry amusement in his eyes. "You done?"
I met his gaze.
"Good," he said, "because none of that matters here. This city doesn't care if you're Jesus, Doomslayer, or a floating brain in a jar. If you can't ping, scan, or pay, you don't exist. You're scenery."
"And yet," I said, "here I sit."
"You're lucky I like quiet company." He took another drag. "But this can't last. No fixer will touch you without a neural signature. No payment system will recognize you. Hell, you can't even take a city bus without the system flagging you as 'non-compliant.' That's corp-speak for 'Shoot on sight.'"
"I need information," I said. "On the city's hierarchy. I want to know who controls what."
The veteran exhaled smoke slowly. "Now that's a rookie question. Most people don't even know what they don't know. You, though—you ask like someone who expects an answer."
"I do."
"Alright." He shifted on his crate-seat, joints cracking. "You got fixers. Gigs. Street cred. Everyone needs to eat, and fixers hand out the silverware. There's Wakako, Padre, Dakota—top shelf names. But they don't mess with nobodies."
He glanced over at me.
"You're nobody."
"Temporarily."
I scoffed at his rambilings.
Me? A nobody?
Doctor Doom was already somebody—the world merely failed to kneel.
Ignorance is what set the Homo Sapians from the Hominoidea.
The vet chuckled. "Well ain't that something. Alright, doc. You wanna get noticed? First, you gotta get feared. Brains don't do that. Guns do. Style does. Word of mouth."
"I have brains and weapons."
"You got an exo-frame with stress fractures," the vet countered. "I know a bruiser when I see one, and you—no offense—you still walk like a chess player who found a weight bench."
"I can kill," I said plainly.
"Sure you can. And I can sing soprano if someone twists me hard enough."
A beat.
I blinked. "…Was that a joke?"
"Yeah. Y'know, humor? We used to use it in the old world. Right around the time phones still had buttons."
The silence that followed was awkward.
The veteran sighed. "Man, you are all edge and no chill."
We sat in silence for a few minutes, listening to the city mutter around us—buzzing neon, distant engines, someone shouting about rent from two blocks away.
"You're not stupid," I finally said. "You're not weak. So why stay here?"
The veteran took another drag, slower this time.
"You ever have a crew?"
"No."
"Well, I did. Militech black ops, edge work, wet contracts. We were sharp. Tight. Then one day the politics changed, and suddenly we were the evidence. Purged."
I said nothing.
"Only one of us made it out clean. Guy named Reece. Fastest one among us. Smart enough to run before the job ended. Never held it against him. He survived."
"You did too."
"Yeah, but I stopped living a while back. Reece? He's still out there, still working. Probably upgraded half his skeleton by now. Me? I got a warm fusion battery and a folding chair with lumbar murder."
Another pause.
"You know what I've learned?" the veteran said. "Brains don't win here. Money helps, but it only takes you halfway. Muscle makes noise, but eventually someone bigger shows up."
I nodded. "So what does win?"
"Perception with a mix of cool. Walk like a killer, talk like a legend, dress like chrome death—and the city opens up. I've seen dumb kids talk their way into empires and smart men get ventilated in back alleys 'cause they blinked too long."
"That's a universal law," I said. "Power begins in the eye. Not the mind."
Atleast for most.
The vet gave a low chuckle. "I like that."
"You understand it."
"Yeah," he said quietly. "But you? You still think it's a strategy. You're not scared of this place yet. That'll change."
Fear?
I fear no man, much less a city.
Reed would most likely stumble here, holding too close to his ideals before being ransacked and stripped for his mind.
Magic, Engineering, Science.
Tony Stark would not match me.
The Sorcerers could not stop me.
Reed… Would never equal Doom.
It was here that we differentiated.
Reed would never adapt; he'd be abused and manipulated like a fool. A man trapped in his own mind. He lacked ambition, the cunningness and most certainly the hunger that I possessed.
Richards never knew a bad day… until he met Doctor Doom….
Although such doctrines are meaningless now. My return shall be grand, both worlds will acknowledge the greatness that is embedded within me. One way or another, they will kneel to Doom.
"Tell me, who leads Night City? I wish to understand its' workings." I asked, the pause between us dragging longer then expected.
"You still want to know who pulls the strings?" Bubbles asked, flicking his cigarette with a practiced motion.
"I do."
He squinted up at the sky, chewing on the filter like it held more answers than tobacco. "It's funny. People think corpos run the city—and they do, sure, on paper. But the real movement? It happens in the shadows. Between the cracks. The real artery of this city is in it's underbelly…"
He tapped ash to the concrete.
"Right now, you've got a few names starting to mean something—Wakako Okada's one. Old as the city itself. Still got family back then. Grandkids, even. Soft spot, or so they say. But I've seen her make harder calls than some generals."
He glanced at me.
"She still tolerates Arasaka, which says something about the world she used to believe in. Word is, she lost someone. Someone close. It hasn't curdled into hate yet, but give it time."
I made a mental note. She would be useful—until she wasn't.
"And there's Padre," he continued, "out in Heywood. Not a name that carries much weight—yet. Used to preach, they say. Real sermons. But he's starting to dip his toes into the fixer pool. Quiet-like. Has a rep for looking out for the community, but I've seen that look before. That kind of faith always breaks eventually. Real menace though, ex-enforcer for the Valentino's."
He blew smoke to the side. "He's got something to prove. Or something to bury."
I didn't interrupt. He was building a map for me, and I listened carefully.
"Dakota Smith—she's different. Out in the Badlands. Still mostly a node for nomads right now. Traders, smugglers, loose tech moving across the desert. She's not pulling strings in the city just yet, but she's got something the others don't."
"What?"
"Patience," he said. "She doesn't move till the wind favours her. But when she does? Whole highways change course."
The names filtered through my mind—not as celebrities, but as puzzle pieces. Pieces that hadn't yet settled into place, but were already in motion.
Okada. Padre. Dakota.
They weren't legends yet. But legends don't start that way.
Bubbles shifted on his crate, his knee cracking from old injuries.
"You want someone local, though. Someone not too picky. There's a guy—goes by Kian, sometimes just 'K.' Not flashy. Not on the grid. Fixes problems for people who can't afford clean reputations."
"Affiliated?"
"Independent. Used to be Militech logistics back in the day, I think. Got burned, dropped off the radar. Now he trades favours for silence. Leans tech. Likes clients who think on their feet. I hear his name from time to time. Doesn't like rookies. But I think he'd like you."
"Where do I find him?"
Bubbles chuckled.
"You don't. You let him find you. But," he added, reaching into his coat again, "you run this shard—Container Alley job—clean and cold? Word travels."
He handed me the cracked shard again, like it was more than silicon. A challenge. A key.
"Gina J's the gate. But Kian's the test."
I took the shard and slid it into my pad. Static danced across the screen, then settled into place. Coordinates. Mission brief. Minimal payout, high risk. The kind of gig meant to weed out the reckless from the useful.
Bubbles leaned back, squinting.
"You get through this, and people will start watching. Not trusting—just watching. That's how it starts."
"That's all I need."
He nodded, slow and solemn.
"You know," he said, "a few more weeks with that chip on your shoulder, and people might actually start calling you something."
"I already have a name," I said.
He grinned, cigarette burning low. "Yeah. But this city doesn't care what you had. Only what you earn."
My stomach growled.
It wasn't a protest—it was a threat. Something primal, low and guttural, like a feral animal reminding me I wasn't above the needs of flesh.
The old man raised an eyebrow. He didn't smile, not exactly—but there was something close in the corner of his mouth.
"Ah," he said, voice rough as static. "That sound… been a while. Brought back a few memories I didn't ask for."
He fished around inside his coat, shifting wires and broken coilbits, then pulled out a folded note—creased, soft from years in the lining.
"Here," he said, holding it out. "Go grab something before you start seeing stars."
I stared at it. The paper looked out of place in his hand—fragile in fingers that had crushed throats and loaded rifles.
"I don't take handouts."
"It ain't charity. Consider it a down payment."
"For what?"
"For you not dying like an idiot." He offered it again. "Go on. Feed the brain you're so proud of."
My hand hovered.
He added, "Besides, you think I want the guilt of watching your shiny skeleton drop from hunger on my watch? Not how I plan to spend my twilight years."
I took it. Reluctantly. The weight of it felt heavier than it should've—like the air had thickened around the exchange.
"Smart choice," he said. "Keep making those."
Behind him, a flier detached from the half-collapsed pillar—fluttering once, twice, then spiraling onto the broken pavement. An old campaign ad. Outdated.
Its colors bleached by sun, slashed by graffiti and gun smoke.
A skull sticker was peeling off a traffic pole across the alley. Someone had scrawled beneath it in red pen: YOU WON'T EVEN SEE IT COMING.
I looked away.
"I'll pay it back," I said.
"Don't," he muttered. "That's not how Night City works. You'll see."
I didn't want to eat.
Even with the cred in my pocket, even standing in front of a food cart spitting steam into the air like a dying engine, I hesitated.
But need outweighed disgust.
The synth-chow they served me came with a crooked smile and a slosh of something that tried to be sauce. I sat on a crate nearby, away from the neon. Bit into it.
It was sponge.
Wet sponge, with the taste of spoiled soy and salt-coded memories. It had the texture of defeat.
"You look disappointed," the vendor said, squinting at me from behind heat-smeared goggles.
"This isn't meat."
He laughed, loud and ugly. "Buddy, you'd have better luck finding a unicorn in Pacifica. Meat stopped being real back when Arasaka still had PR firms. This stuff?" He tapped the tray with pride. "Patent-grown. Lab-layered. Forty percent filler, sixty percent deniability."
"Why did they stop?"
He shrugged. "Too much upkeep. Water, land, time. Cheaper to forget the taste than pay to keep it. Most folks haven't even seen a cow outside a screen. Chickens? Dinosaurs. What you're eating is now "meat" kids these days don't know how good it was back then…"
The man behind me laughed at that. Or maybe at something else. Hard to tell.
I forced another bite. My jaw ached. My mouth rebelled.
Food was no longer culture—it was compliance. Just another processed function in a city that no longer remembered flavour, only price tags and shelf lives.
But I would remember.
One day, I'd find the strands again. Rebuild the original code. Poultry. Cattle. Real food. Real texture. Noodles, that weren't just synthetic slosh and code but something authentic.
And when that day came, they'd remember what it was I who allowed true flavour.
Food would not be disrespected.
Doom would not either.