"Good morning, Night City—"
The familiar voice of anchor Stanley rang out precisely at 7:50 a.m., and Karl sat up in bed.
Today, he had woken up a little earlier than usual, but judging by the agreed meeting time, he was already running late.
Rubbing his eyes, Karl quickly washed up, then picked up his phone to check for messages. Sure enough, one had already come through.
"Awake yet, Karl? Want us to come pick you up?"
It was a message from Andy, captain of the NCPD Special Operations Unit.
Since Mr. Johnson took over as commissioner, the entire NCPD had undergone massive reform. Many corrupt cops and their affiliated gangs, unable to adapt to the new order, had been causing trouble all over the city.
After retaking control of the Pacifica Free State and forging a cooperative agreement with the Aldecaldo family from the Badlands, the city's NCPD had been short on manpower until Commissioner Johnson could bring in new recruits. With so many headaches to manage, Johnson had extended an invitation to Karl and his crew, officially hiring them as NCPD auxiliary personnel.
Out of mutual respect and friendship, Karl and the others agreed in name, and today was the day Karl and Andy had arranged for him to observe how the Special Operations Unit operated.
Assigning mercs of Karl's caliber to NCPD work—especially alongside the elite Special Operations Unit—was overkill.
Still, jobs had been sparse lately, and since their new recruit Johnny Silverhand needed experience, Karl had arranged this day with Andy. They would head out together. Judging by the time… well, they were cutting it close. But if they rushed, they could still make it.
V, Jackie, and Oliver had already headed off to the Badlands, Heywood, and Santo Domingo respectively, while Johnny and Karl hadn't yet moved. Fortunately, they were scheduled to patrol downtown and Watson today, so the timing was still manageable.
"We're on our way, be there soon."
Using the classic "on our way but haven't even left yet" response, Karl glanced around the room in search of Johnny Silverhand. He finally spotted him sprawled out, limbs splayed, snoring on the downstairs couch. Empty liquor bottles lay scattered all around him.
Karl's eyelid twitched at the sight.
Never mind how painfully unsightly Johnny's "dead dog" sleeping pose was—just look at all that booze…
What exactly had V and T-Bug done when modifying him? Karl didn't know much about the process, but judging by Johnny's size, those bottles of alcohol should've filled his entire body. Unless V had installed a high-proof ethanol reactor in him?
Given that methanol-based fuel is made from gene-modified wheat and can double as extremely lethal liquor, maybe they really had done that…
Regardless, this was a mess.
Karl used to think Johnny's mechanical, ball-like body looked kind of cool. The transformations were a bit creepy, sure, but overall it was still neat. But now, seeing him drunkenly slumped over in that form, Karl couldn't help but hallucinate—a wasted, greasy rockstar flopped on the couch, reeking of booze and burnout.
At least Johnny had absorbed all the liquor without spilling a drop. That spared Karl the pain of cleaning up a sticky floor. Only the bottles were messily scattered, and Johnny was casually slumped on the couch. Maybe that was still tolerable?
Karl was starting to suspect that Johnny's antics were gradually wearing down his personal boundaries. Maybe that's how Johnny got away with so much back in the day—just slow attrition.
But Karl wasn't about to let that happen.
He walked over to the couch, where Johnny lay "resting" as he called it, even though he didn't need sleep and was supposedly in "system adjustment mode."
He gave him a nudge.
No reaction.
Then a kick.
"Squawk!"
With a weird noise, Johnny's system was forcibly booted. His eyes flickered to life just in time to realize he was airborne—then thud, he slammed face-first into the carpet beside the couch.
"Morning, Johnny."
Hearing Karl's greeting, Johnny reflexively muttered, "Morning, Karl..."
Then he suddenly came to his senses.
"Wait—did you just kick me?!"
"Nonsense. I booted you."
Karl looked at Johnny as he sat up, dazed. He had calibrated his kick perfectly: enough to wake him up, but not enough to damage his systems.
"Come on. It's time for another day of work to pay off your debt. I'll be watching, so no slacking today."
"Work to pay off debt? Oh, right—you guys mentioned we're helping out the NCPD today, right? What a joke. I used to have cops banging on my door warning me not to incite fans. And now I'm working with them?"
Johnny got up, checking the time. "Wait, what time is it? What time were we supposed to meet again?"
"Seven fifty-seven. You can read the time yourself. We're supposed to be there by 8:10. We've got thirteen minutes."
"Thirteen minutes?! That's all?!"
"Yep."
Karl said it so matter-of-factly that Johnny was stunned.
Thirteen minutes? They still had to get downstairs and drive over. Was that even possible?
Johnny was used to showing up late to dates, but for merc work? Punctuality was a must. Yet Karl looked totally confident.
"You ready?"
"Of course. I already checked—Jackie and the others drove their own rides. Hera's parked downstairs."
"Oh, we've got a car..."
Johnny's thoughts trailed off quickly.
"A car?" he repeated.
He stared blankly at Karl sitting casually in the passenger seat, clearly expecting him to drive. Johnny looked down at his short limbs, which couldn't even reach the pedals. He could barely see over the dashboard.
"Wait... I'm driving?"
"Who else?"
With the same nonchalance, Karl reached over and buckled Johnny's seatbelt. "Go get 'em, Bruce—er, Johnny. I believe in you."
"You're insane, you know that?"
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🔥 CYBERPUNK: THE RELENTLESS
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🔥 THE STORY DOESN'T STOP HERE. NEITHER DOES HE.
Night City breaks people every day.
Some crawl away.
Some disappear.
And some simply refuse to stop.
Cyberpunk: The Relentless has 500+ chapters ahead available for readers who want to keep going.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
⚡ NO BRAKES. NO MERCY. NO TURNING BACK.
🔫 High-intensity combat
🌃 Night City
🤖 Cyberware & chrome
💀 Deadly enemies
🏢 Corporate warfare
🔥 Escalating conflicts
⚔️ One relentless road forward
Every victory creates another enemy.
Every enemy leads to something bigger.
And Night City always wants another body.
🔥 500+ CHAPTERS AHEAD.
👉 Why stop now?
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🌐 SrMagnusCorp: https://srmagnuscorp.com/
🔥 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/MrMagnus
🐦 X / Twitter: https://x.com/SrMagnuscorp
⚠️ Drop your Power Stones if you want even more Cyberpunk releases!
🔥 Keep moving. Night City doesn't wait.