January 30th, 2069 | 20:25
Watson – Megabuilding H-10 (Atrium)
Richard Wagner (Zorge)
Richard let out a satisfied exhale as he finally reached his hidden apartment. Wasting no time, he pulled up his backup email – the inbox already bloated with a pile of new messages.
Scrolling through the chaos, the fixer grimaced, already picturing the mountain of tangled problems he'd have to sort out after the recent shitshow.
Flagging the most critical contacts, the blonde's eyes skimmed over subject lines until one in particular snagged his attention – a message from Rogue.
Opening it, Wagner's brows arched slightly at the attached file. He didn't open it right away. Old habits die hard. Running it through his security sweeps first, he waited for the programs to confirm it was clean before finally cracking it open.
"I'll keep this short and sweet – something here might be useful to you. A couple of hours ago, some sketchy types dropped by Afterlife, bristling with combat implants like fragging Christmas trees. Naturally, I told them to shove it, but let's say they were... persuasive. I let them talk. Turns out, they're sniffing around for info on you and anyone tied to your ops. Didn't get much, thankfully – just addresses for a few of your safehouses and a couple of names of your close associates. I'm attaching visuals of the bastards and everything else I could dig up. Call it my little 'thank you' for that so-called 'friendly' favor you did for me back in the day."
"She's in rare form, as usual," Richard muttered with a dry chuckle.
Without hesitation, he opened the data packet and leaned in, analyzing every detail.
Four people. Two men, two women. All using callsigns when they talked to each other…
Time slipped past unnoticed as he pored over the file. Half an hour gone in a blink. What he saw left him with more questions than answers.
The leader of this crew was none other than Dan Fei – the same merc who'd tried and failed to take Wagner out once before. After that botched hit, Fei had vanished for a long stretch. One of Richard's bodyguards had worked him over pretty good back then. Now it seemed Fei was back and, judging by the intel, better prepared.
Running through possible counterplays in his head, Zorge found himself recalling a recent conversation with a certain morally ambiguous bastard. Replaying their exchange, he shook his head with a wry smirk.
"Alex's plan might actually not be half-bad," he admitted under his breath.
Cracking his neck, Richard began consolidating all available intel and, without wasting a second, forwarded it to three trusted associates. If they wanted to set the bait and reel these assholes in, they needed to know exactly what their prey looked like.
Meanwhile, Richard planned to tap into some old connections – the kind that could make tracking a lot easier. If the city's surveillance network was still accessible through the right backdoor, it'd save them a world of hurt.
That was assuming, of course, the guy with access was still breathing. In Night City, betting on someone's continued existence was always a gamble.
"Guess I owe Rogue a proper thank you… and maybe a favor for one more little thing."
***
January 30th, 2069
Japantown
Yun Yun Xiao
"What did you find out, Yun?"
The white-haired man's eyes swept over his battered subordinate, surprise flickering in his expression as he took in her condition.
"First of all… they're fast. Unbelievably fast." Yun's voice was steady, but there was a taut edge beneath it. "The dark-skinned one was casually gunning down my cyber-pets like it was a game. And the other – the one who came to back him up – he outpaced me. Outpowered me too."
"You're saying they outclassed you?" Fei raised an eyebrow, his voice sharp with disbelief.
"Correct." She hesitated, fingers brushing the stump where her right arm used to be. "My arm… it was severed by a vibroblade. I had to sacrifice it to stay alive."
"You're a specially-trained killer," Fei said coldly, his words cutting deeper than any blade. "How the hell did a pair of gutter rats – with shiny toys, granted – manage to take you down?"
"There's something… off about his implants." Yun's expression hardened, sapphire hair falling over her bruised face as she met his gaze. "My scanners didn't detect any factory markings. Custom augmentations, most likely. Black-market craftsmanship or something way above board. Either way, it's not standard."
"Even with custom gear, it shouldn't have been enough," Fei said, his voice like ice. "Think about who you are, what you went through to earn your strength. The corporation turned your body into a masterpiece. Some street-level merc isn't supposed to be your equal."
"Our fight lasted only a few dozen seconds, but…" Yun's lips pressed into a thin line. "I'll say it straight – I can't take them on. Not alone."
"You'll be better next time." Fei's tone was final. "Go to Li. Get that arm replaced."
"What about you?" she asked quietly, lingering in the room's threshold.
"I have people to visit. Questions to ask." Fei turned his back on her, his voice low but laced with warning. "Go. Patch yourself up. We'll discuss your… slip-up after the mission. Until then, don't fail me again."
"Yes, sir." Yun bowed curtly and left, the door sliding shut behind her, leaving Dan Fei alone in the dim room.
"Remember," he murmured after her retreating steps, "your life belongs to the Guild. You don't get to let it down."
The moment Yun's boots stopped in front of the ripperdoc's door, her whole body tensed. Memories clawed their way up from the depths – painful, unwelcome reminders of everything she'd endured to get here.
Being an elite assassin paid well. But the price of becoming one? It never stopped collecting.
The Guild didn't recruit. It harvested.
Orphans and street kids plucked from alleys, taken in young, and turned into raw material for their sadistic experiments.
The process started with comprehensive "preparation" of the body for future modifications. Most didn't make it past that stage – unable to survive the brutal changes forced on their small frames. Those who did were shuffled into the next phase: "training."
That word was a cruel joke. Training meant daily torture, which the overseers euphemistically called "tempering." Their goal was simple: break the body, then rebuild it stronger. Future killers had to learn to endure any agony, to make pain their servant instead of their master.
For an assassin, pain wasn't an obstacle. It was just another variable to control.
Once the children stopped reacting to pain, their bodies were subjected to yet another round of modifications. A specialized mutagen was introduced into their systems, designed to push the human body to its absolute limits in record time. If the mutagen was successfully integrated, the teenagers were then carefully prepared for the roles they'd been engineered to fill.
Unnecessary parts of their bodies were replaced with combat-ready augmentations. Even their internal organs weren't spared – ripped out and swapped for enhanced bio-cybernetic equivalents built for endurance and efficiency.
By the age of sixteen, after surviving all the initial stages, the trainees were finally taught the craft itself. By then, any trace of their former lives had been burned out of them. Memories erased. Identities hollowed. All that remained was a perfectly loyal weapon, honed and calibrated to serve the Guild without question.
A year of advanced training followed – bleeding-edge tech blended with brutal field drills – until the newly minted killer was sent on their first mission under the watchful eye of a senior operative. For the next two years, these seniors would shape their protégés, guiding them until they either survived long enough to rise to senior status themselves, or – if they were lucky – became apprentices.
At that stage, an apprentice was considered conditionally independent, able to take on contracts within a tightly controlled range of assignments.
After years of conditioning, betrayal wasn't even a concept that could form in an adept's mind. Pain no longer registered as something negative; past injuries stirred nostalgia rather than fear. By then, the assassin's psyche had been so thoroughly warped that almost nothing remained of the person they once were.
This approach kept the Guild's secrets locked down tight. As the years passed, the process only grew more sophisticated. Now, every operative who survived the early phases received a special chip – implanted deep in the back of their cerebral cortex.
If a killer stepped out of line – even slightly, in the eyes of their masters – the chip would fry their brain in an instant. It didn't happen often, but it had happened. Some people with iron willpower managed to cling to fragments of themselves despite the daily breaking.
Yun Yun was one of those rare cases.
But even among outliers, she was… exceptional. Her abilities eclipsed those of most of her peers, and it was thanks to them she reached her current rank faster than anyone else.
She understood early on that she wasn't like the others. And with every passing day, that realization dug deeper into her mind.
Yun couldn't say she liked her life… but neither could she say she hated it. The truth was simpler: she barely remembered a time outside her cage-without-walls. Faint echoes of a past life sometimes flickered in her mind, but they were quickly smothered under the weight of the doctrines burned into her subconscious – the Guild's commandments demanding blind obedience.
Maybe if she'd held onto even a sliver of light from those early years, she would've tried to change her fate. But now? All she could do was drift with the current.
And that current had carried her here, to this moment, to the hollow ache that lingered after her meeting with her master.
The words of her instructors still echoed in her mind – that her body was a work of art, a masterpiece sculpted by science and suffering. A part of her, shamefully, felt pride at the thought. After all… everyone wants to believe they're special. And Yun was no exception.
Dan Fei had always been rough with his subordinates – so much so that more than a few of them had fantasized about sinking a blade into his throat for the things he said.
The man was a firm believer in the so-called cult of winners, and if something didn't go the way he thought it should, he made damn sure to voice it in the bluntest, most abrasive way possible. It was precisely that trait that made Yun Yun want him gone.
The only thing keeping her from acting on that desire was the Guild's ironclad conditioning. It was the leash that kept her thoughts in check.
But deep down, she knew: if the day ever came when Fei crossed a line – really crossed it – she wouldn't hesitate to put her plan into action.
Fei was walking a razor's edge. One wrong move, one step too far, and his head would roll. And when that moment came, not even the kill-switch chip embedded in her cortex would save him.
Yun had long since figured out her body's unique configuration. If it came down to it, she could take him out before the chip even had time to spark and fry her brain like an overcooked circuit board.
"It's you, Yun. Dan Fei told me about your little… problem." The ripperdoc's voice was smooth, professional. He gestured toward the worktable, where several cybernetic arms lay waiting like snakes coiled for the strike. "Any preferences for your replacements?"
"Fit me with the ones that have monowire filaments."
"You want both arms swapped or just the damaged one?"
"Both." Yun nodded firmly.
Just give me a reason, she thought. That's all I need.