Bear is dead?
That kind of military-grade commando body?
Maelstrom got him?
What kind of joke was that? Those lunatics who cut out their own organs and build their own prosthetics—able to take on a corporation?
And what the hell was going on with HQ? Not a peep from CSI security outside?
Dead or not…
These maniacs had hacked his head and deleted his contacts?
Li Pan was speechless.
"Hey, who are you trying to fool? You think I'm stupid? Wiped everyone? What about you? And who the hell are you anyway—a corp hacker? Sysadmin? Security Bureau? And quit talking in my damn voice, will you?"
The phone said:
"I am…the desk phone.
The desk phone must remain in the office area.
Dialing an extension can call employees.
When an employee is unable to respond, the desk phone will record a message to retrieve the employee's daily report.
Recommendation: the General Manager should dial an extension to retrieve the General Manager's daily report."
"Desk phone, my… You're out of your mind…"
Then he understood.
"Oh, hell no—you're a cyberpsycho, aren't you?"
These days, Night City's cyberpsycho problem was serious.
Some blamed 7-day, 12-hour workweeks. Some blamed viral braindances, drug overdoses, and rampant illegal prosthetic use. Others pointed to an unresolved toxic nerve gas leak that destroyed Neo-Tokyo. Some blamed failing wastewater treatment plants and advised drinking canned soda. Others just said it was poverty.
Bottom line—it wasn't an insult. Most people weren't all there.
The phone kept talking:
"Pick up the nameplate and—"
"Enough! I'm outta here!"
Angry and suddenly worried about "catching" something, Li Pan slammed the receiver down, ignored the phone's repeated ringing, and stepped out.
He froze.
Outside wasn't the corridor he'd come from. It was a massive office floor.
And it looked nothing like a real corporate workspace—no virtual interface pods, no hacker cooldown tanks, no racks of servers or swarms of security drones.
Just rows of desks with ancient desktop computers. Décor so retro it looked like a 21st-century trading company. Not something you saw in the cyberpunk future of Earth 0791.
And at the far end, something was standing in front of the coffee machine.
"Something" was the only word for it.
From a distance, vaguely human. Up close—not so much. Imagine a person stretched like clay to three meters tall and two meters wide, head shoved down into its neck until the scalp touched the ceiling, skin painted corpse-gray, all wrapped in a sharp business suit.
A better suit than the one Li Pan had rented.
He thought he heard his own voice, murmuring.
Monster.
And the thing heard it too—turned its head toward the General Manager's door.
No eyes, no nose—just a sharklike mouth opening from the neck into a crescent grin, bloodied, with scraps of business suit between its teeth.
Li Pan met that grin and emptied his magazine. Aimed at the head, but the rounds pinged off its suit and scattered across the floor without leaving a wrinkle.
Military-grade armor built in.
No thinking—just reflex. Years of street fights had him dropping into a low roll, tumbling back into the GM's office. A rush of air scraped his scalp as something slammed past, blowing out the wall and the window in an explosion like a rocket hit.
Riiing.
Li Pan scrambled to the desk, grabbed the phone, and roared:
"What kind of moron keeps a bioweapon in the office?!"
The phone roared back:
"Pick up the nameplate!"
"Damn it—!!"
He snatched the nameplate, phone in hand, and leapt sideways.
Boom! The thing launched like a gray bat, smashing through the GM's wall and windows, vaulting dozens of meters to slam into Tower B's wall, fingers gouging grooves in the alloy.
CSI patrol drones—armed with linked swarm munitions and Thor rotary cannons—drifted lazily past as if they were clouds.
"Fire, you useless tin cans! What kind of 'safety insurance' is this—premium expired?!"
Li Pan pinned the nameplate to his cheap suit.
The phone voice rattled off at speed:
"The General Manager may access all rooms/barriers.
The General Manager may use file cabinets/saves.
The General Manager may use fax machines/dimensional links.
The General Manager may use the desk phone/psychic echo.
The General Manager may order custom suits/guardians.
The General Manager may turn off the lights/space jump into corridors/rifts—"
"What's with the bonus clauses?!"
The thing vaulted again, slamming into Tower A, claws scrabbling upward.
Li Pan screamed, "What do I do?!"
"Turn off the lights!"
Claws punched through the window, carving five deep scars in the alloy wall.
Li Pan didn't dare look—he lunged for the switch.
Darkness fell.
For a moment he thought he was dead—then his eyes adjusted. He was back in the void corridor.
What the hell…
"The General Manager should dial the GM extension to retrieve the daily report/psychic echo."
"Damn it, you scared me!"
His heart pounded. What was that thing? A corporate bioweapon? Cyborg soldier? Synth-beast? And wasn't it also wearing a suit and nameplate?
"That's one of your employees?! I'm not gonna turn into that, am I?!"
"The General Manager should dial the GM extension to retrieve the daily report/psychic echo."
"Just tell me straight, damn it!"
Silence.
"Ugh! Fine!"
He spotted a door far down the void corridor—the way back to the lobby. Hugging the phone, he ran, redialing 0791001.
Riiing.
His own voice came fast on the line:
"My name is Li Pan. Today I joined TheM Company as a trainee and found the company under unknown attack. All staff deleted. I am now acting General Manager—"
"Skip to the point! How do I get out?!"
"Through the corridor/rift I can leave, but the file cabinet/save is out of control. Employees cannot be restored. The shredder/existence deletion is malfunctioning, preventing deletion, causing employees to become monsters/data corrupted. I must go to HR to restart the shredder/existence deletion and manually delete all staff files—"
"No way! Not my problem!"
Li Pan burst out of the door.
Daylight. He was back at the office lobby. The monster was still in the GM's office.
He bolted for the exit—thud!—slammed into a sealed door.
"The company is locked until the monster/data corruption is deleted. I must manually delete all staff files—"
"Why didn't you say so earlier?! Where's HR?!"
Boom! The monster was in the lobby—no, leaping—no, flying—damn, that was far.
"Next to the break room by the entrance."
Li Pan sprinted.
The monster pounced.
The phone beeped.
"If I cannot delete the monster/data corruption, it will bite through my waist, tear me in half, rip off my head with the spine attached, chew—"
"Spare me the details!"
"Haaah—!"
Too late.
The stench of blood rolled over him, warm, wet air curling around his scalp. Cold, invisible hands gripped his gut, then his heart, then squeezed up, forcing the air from his lungs and the light from his eyes.
He'd felt this once before—when the junkyard took his hand.
Fear.
Riiing.
The phone rang.
Haaah—
Blood-scented wind.
Invisible hands crushing his lungs.
Blue, blue, blue, blue—red, red red red!
"Ahhh—!"
He screamed—louder than he'd ever heard himself. Right hand clutching the desk phone, he hung up with his left, drew his gun, and pointed at the coffee machine.
Pain hit.
His left arm was gone—metal prosthetic torn away in one bite, oil, blood, and drugs spraying red, white, and yellow.
But he was alive.
Somehow, the thing cared more about the coffee machine—and bit his arm instead.
He dove into HR, head slamming the door open, rolling up with a lump already swelling.
File cabinets/soul seals lay on their sides, résumés scattered across the floor—hundreds of them, with photos, names, histories, a life on each page.
Beside them, a jammed shredder—last stack too thick to pass.
Hell, he hadn't seen paper this stubborn in ages.
"Haaah—!"
"Damn—!"
Flesh tore from his back—but the thing couldn't enter HR. Its arm caught fire before it could pull him out, burning to ash at the threshold.
Coughing blood, lungs feeling ripped open, Li Pan crawled to the shredder, yanked out the jammed documents, emptied the bin, and powered it back on.
The monster clawed from the doorway, each limb igniting and burning away. Gray ash piled at the door.
Finally, with a last scream, the remaining body vanished in the shredder's grinding, the suit and blank nameplate dropping into the ash.
Gasping, bleeding, he gathered the remaining résumés and fed them into the shredder, then collapsed.
The phone kept ringing.
Bleeding, he sighed, picked up.
The echo said:
"Print your résumé, fax it to HQ, then place it in the file cabinet."
He looked at the cabinet's instructions:
File Cabinet / Save
After completing onboarding, an employee's first save is created.
In cases of critical injury or near death, the employee may use the file cabinet to load, resetting their state.
Number of loads available depends on performance reviews.
If a save is damaged, the employee file must be manually deleted.
"Sigh…"
He stared at the black ash, remembering the thing at the coffee machine. A strange sadness welled up.
That last file—he'd shredded it. What about the ones before it? Who had deleted the rest? And how thick had that final stack been to jam the shredder?
But it was gone.
Damn it… I don't want to die like that. I really don't…
But… I don't want to die at all.
He hung up, silently stood, set the cabinet upright, printed his résumé from the HR terminal, signed it, faxed it to HQ, then found an empty folder, labeled it 0791001, and placed his bloodstained résumé inside.
The ringing stopped.
In the sudden silence, he looked down at his hands.
Both hands.
His left was back—real, not prosthetic. His back was healed. If not for the blood and ash on the floor, he'd think it was a dream.
A reset.
The fax machine whirred—three sheets came out.
A contract—Public Safety System-certified, Logistics Department trainee, 2,500 a month, with insurance and overtime, three-year trial.
An HQ appointment—temporary worker Li Pan, acting GM of TheM Company, Earth 0791 branch. Signatures, seals.
A memo—
Time: XX:XX:XX
Location: TheM Company, Earth 0791 HQ
Employee: 00791001
Target: Monster/Data Corruption
Evaluation: Deletion successful
Reward: One Silver Key
He put the papers in his thin folder, behind the bloodied résumé.
His pocket grew heavy. A cold, silver key—intricately carved with vine motifs, a multifaceted black crystal set in its bow.
He examined it, found no clue, pocketed it.
Standing amid the wreckage, he wanted to run—ride the subway home, jack into a braindance, forget everything.
But he only thought about it.
Still had a loan to pay.
He brewed a coffee in the break room, sat, and picked up the phone.
"Tell me. What is a monster?"
.
.
.
⚠️ 30 CHAPTERS AHEAD — I'm Not a Cyberpsycho ⚠️
The system says: Kill.Mercs obey. Corporates obey. Monsters obey.One man didn't.
🧠💀 "I'm not a cyberpsycho. I just think... differently."
💥 High-voltage cyberpunk. Urban warfare. AI paranoia.Read 30 chapters ahead, only on Patreon.
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