BOOM! A violent explosion rocked the entire abandoned hospital, startling everyone inside. "What the hell was that?!" Several black braindan
BOOM!
A violent explosion rocked the entire abandoned hospital, startling everyone inside.
"What the hell was that?!"
Several black braindance directors, deep in the middle of editing illegal BDs, twitched violently—nearly suffering neural damage. When your nervous system is tightly synced to a BD for immersive editing, any sudden real-world noise can be absolutely jarring.
"No idea. Sounds like it came from the west basement, where those Scavs have been hanging out."
"What the hell are those Scavs doing now? I already told them—after editing, bring the captives over for filming. Don't tell me they triggered their own mines or something?"
"No clue. I'm checking the cameras. Some audio just came through… Looks like the Scavs are still operational—equipment that wasn't blown up is still transmitting."
The black BD directors muttered among themselves, and then one hit play on the garbled audio feed.
A screeching, chaotic mess of screams burst from the speakers.
"Help—HELP! There's a monster! It's too fast—it's burning—HELP ME!!"
"IT'S KK! KK WITH SIX ARMS! FLAMES! HE'S ON FIRE! IT'S KK!!"
Hearing the screams, the previously annoyed BD directors looked at each other in confusion.
What the hell?
"KK? Have those Scavs fried their brains from too much synth?"
One director shook his head. "No way KK's here. He doesn't even know we exist. And we've never crossed him... But I gotta admit, those Scavs have taste. Six-armed KK? That was MY BD edit. They've got good taste watching my stuff."
"Bullshit! Did you hear them say 'fire'? That was MY work! I made the flaming KK by molding rubber over an actor's body and dousing him with gasoline. That scream, that visceral agony—that was my masterpiece. Yours was just flesh limbs sewn together, wobbly as hell. Don't compare it to mine!"
"Pfft, please. Both of you are hacks. Real art is in the blood and meat. My gore series is on a whole other level. Stripping flesh from bone—that's true expression."
"Oh, shut up, freak. You're just the most desperate to buy bodies from the Scavs. And your sales still don't match ours."
While the directors in the east wing squabbled over BD aesthetics, the door suddenly burst open.
A panting man stumbled into the blood-soaked filming studio.
"RUN—RUN, IT'S KK! It's REALLY KK! I saw him on the cams—he looked straight at me! HE SMILED AT ME! THAT WAS REAL—IT WAS HIM!"
The BD directors froze and turned toward the breathless man—it was their security cam operator.
His words killed the room's buzz in an instant.
One second passed. Two.
The gore-obsessed director from earlier gulped hard, his Adam's apple bobbing, and muttered as if clinging to denial:
"Are you sure he smiled at you?"
"Yes! He smiled!" the operator nearly broke down. "He looked right at the camera. Like he knew I was watching. That smile—that smile!"
"KK's smile."
Every BD director dreamed of replicating it. They'd tried endless times—brainwashing actors, re-sculpting faces—but something was always missing. It lacked something real.
That smile couldn't be manufactured. So instead, every BD starring KK had been filmed from a third-person perspective. No one had ever successfully produced a POV KK braindance—they couldn't grasp what was in his mind.
In their underground circles, this smile had its own name: KK's Smile.
A smile so unique that any industry pro could instantly tell apart real from fake. It was a smile none of them could understand—let alone recreate.
And now this operator, a clear industry insider, was claiming he saw the smile with his own eyes...
"Shit. It's really KK. He's here. RUN. RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!"
The once-composed black BD directors instantly panicked.
They trampled each other trying to reach the exit first, pushing and shoving in a desperate attempt to flee.
Just moments ago, they'd been smug and confident, thinking the Scavs had hallucinated KK. But now that they knew the real KK had shown up, they wanted nothing more than to sprout extra legs and get the hell out.
They knew too much about KK. Probably more than even the mercs at Afterlife. They made illegal BDs starring him—even if indirectly—and if KK found out...
They didn't want to end up like the NPCs in their own snuff films. In those edits, peeling skin and slicing nerves were the tame parts.
As chaos erupted, countless people were trampled to death just trying to escape. But the moment they saw the west wing of the hospital begin to collapse, and their getaway vehicles roared to life, a faint sense of relief returned.
KK hadn't come for them. Not yet. If they scattered fast enough, there was no way even he could catch them all.
The hospital was right on the border of the Badlands. If they could just flee into the open desert, the odds of getting away were decent.
At worst, maybe just one unlucky bastard would get chopped down.
So they floored it, gunning their vehicles and speeding toward the Badlands.
By the time they were nearly a hundred meters from the hospital, confident in their escape, Karl lay calmly atop the roof, behind the railing—watching.
He blinked slowly.
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM—
A string of explosions lit up the area, each vehicle engulfed in fireballs.
"Not bad, huh?"
On the rooftop, V grinned and bragged to a stunned Panam beside him.
"Karl's hacking skills... pretty badass, right?"
"I told you," Karl said, standing up straight as the flames reflected in his eyes.
"Not a single one of them… is getting away."
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🔥 Cyberpunk: The Relentless
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