The man died before Ethan could even blink.
One second, the black-coated officer was standing there like a loaded gun.
The next, two gleaming mantis blades punched out through his chest in a spray of hot blood.
And one drop landed in Ethan's eye.
For a heartbeat, the whole world turned red.
---
But that was the end.
The beginning had come earlier that morning, carried on a wind so cold it felt like it was slicing through bone.
Seabrook City didn't get snow in winter, but the air had a cruel bite to it all the same. By the time Ethan reached school, his fingers were numb inside his pockets, and every breath came out as pale mist.
At the entrance below the teaching building, he ran into Tyler.
Tyler was hunched over in the wind, clutching a paper bag full of hot dogs like they were priceless treasure, his face twisted in annoyance.
"The school leaders are insane," Tyler complained the second he saw Ethan. "What kind of brain-dead setup is this? Staggered physical exams, but everyone has to arrive by eight? We third-years don't even get checked until ten, so we're supposed to sit around in class for two hours freezing to death?"
He shoved one of the hot dogs into Ethan's hand and kept ranting.
"Tell me, Ethan. Has the administration had its brain kicked by a donkey or what?"
Ethan took the food automatically. "You're right."
But his answer was absent-minded.
Because at that exact moment, his ears caught a low conversation drifting down from an open window above.
Two teachers.
"…Did you hear? Two students from Building Two were taken away."
"Taken away? Last night?"
"Yes. Straight from their dorms. Some people from the… General Affairs Department? I've never even heard of them before."
"I heard this physical examination was arranged by them too. Not just students—all teachers have to be examined."
"That's too strange. Do you think something happened?"
The voices blurred after that.
Ethan stopped walking.
His fingers tightened around the hot dog until the paper crackled. His pupils contracted sharply, and a cold, electric warning ran down his spine.
Tyler noticed at once. "Ethan? You okay?"
Ethan forced the muscles in his face to relax. "Just a little cold. Took medicine."
Tyler reached over and slapped a hand against his forehead, checking for fever with all the natural lack of boundaries of an old friend. When he found nothing unusual, he let out a breath.
"Good. Come on, let's go in."
Ethan followed him upstairs.
Outwardly, he looked calm.
Inside, his thoughts were detonating one after another.
The General Affairs Department.
The name alone was enough to make his chest tighten.
Yesterday, he had only suspected that the school's sudden physical examination might be a search for players. At the time, he'd placed that possibility at thirty percent.
After overhearing those teachers?
It jumped to seventy.
Maybe higher.
They had already taken two students away.
Not invited. Not questioned.
Taken.
That single word carried too much weight.
He didn't know whether this General Affairs Department was hostile, cooperative, or something in between. He didn't know whether captured players were offered protection, imprisoned, dissected, or turned into tools.
And Ethan had no intention of gambling his life on the kindness of an unknown organization.
Especially not in his situation.
He was already carrying secrets that would make any official force lock onto him like a missile. If he surrendered himself, he wouldn't be treated like an ordinary student. He'd be watched, tested, restrained—maybe forever.
No.
There was no retreat anymore.
The more he thought about it, the heavier the pressure became, pressing against his lungs until even breathing felt deliberate.
And then another thought struck him.
Why were they moving this fast?
The game had only begun influencing reality recently—at least from Ethan's point of view. Yet in barely a week, an organization powerful enough to coordinate a full-school inspection had already appeared. Not only that, it had the authority to pull students from dorms in the middle of the night.
That wasn't normal bureaucracy.
That was preparation.
Which led to an even more unsettling possibility:
Had the authorities encountered Night City long before this?
Had there been earlier tests? Smaller batches? Other points of contact?
A thousand people. Ten thousand people. Secret research channels. Hidden projects.
If that was true, then the state already possessed a terrifying first-mover advantage. While ordinary players were stumbling through the dark, they might already be armed with cyberware, data, procedures, and kill teams.
The thought was suffocating.
But Ethan forced himself to calm down.
No matter how strong they were, something didn't add up. If the authorities had fully mastered Night City's systems already, why keep everything hidden until now? Why not roll out overwhelming control much earlier?
Which meant one thing.
They probably did have an advantage.
But not a complete one.
And if there were cracks in their control, then there was still room to survive.
Still room to move.
Still room to fight.
He entered the classroom with Tyler and sat down as the counselor kept order at the front. Around them, students whispered, complained, and checked their phones, the usual restless energy of a campus morning.
Tyler dropped into his chair and instantly opened a mobile game.
Ethan pulled out his own phone and pretended to scroll.
In truth, every nerve in his body remained stretched tight.
Thanks to the enhancement from the Kuei Arm 400, his hearing was now sharp enough to catch conversations from the next classroom if he wanted to. He let the background noise wash over him, filtering through it without seeming to listen.
A few scraps stood out.
One of them made his eyes narrow.
Selena Vaughn from the neighboring class had taken leave.
Ethan knew who she was.
Everyone did.
She was Seabrook University District's most famous campus beauty—graceful, wealthy, untouchable. During the Mid-Autumn Festival gala, she'd played a piano rumored to be worth more than a million dollars, the most expensive instrument in the entire city.
Ethan didn't remember the piece she'd played.
He only remembered the price.
And how irritating it had been.
Some people lived in worlds so far above others that even the distance between them felt insulting.
"Selena took leave…"
A thought surfaced immediately.
Could she be a player too?
The closed beta had one hundred thousand players worldwide. That sounded tiny against a global population of billions—but spread across enough cities, it still meant Seabrook City could easily have several hidden among its residents.
That possibility had already made Ethan suspicious of people in his own apartment building.
And Selena?
If she was a player, then unlike Ethan, she wouldn't need to claw her way upward with scraped knuckles and desperate timing.
She had money.
Real money.
Enough to buy progress without blinking.
Enough to whale through the game so hard that someone like Ethan would only be left staring.
The thought made something bitter twist inside him.
He'd finally scraped together three million dollars for recharge, and it had vanished almost instantly after only a few upgrades. Now just increasing one personal level required two million on its own.
Two million.
And that was only the beginning.
Night City wasn't just a trap.
It was a bottomless furnace built to burn money and lives together.
As he was mentally cursing the system, footsteps echoed from the hallway.
Instinctively, Ethan looked up.
A girl passed outside the classroom.
Tall. Slender. Wrapped in a soft wool sweater that made her look both elegant and distant. Her dark hair was tied back, exposing the smooth line of her pale neck. Even from behind, she carried the kind of quiet refinement that pulled attention without asking for it.
Ethan recognized her immediately.
Selena Vaughn.
For a moment, he frowned.
Hadn't she taken leave?
Why was she here?
He wasn't the only one to notice. Half the male students in the room turned to stare. Tyler, utterly shameless, whipped out his phone and started taking candid photos. The flash went off immediately, earning him a chorus of disgusted scolding from the girls nearby.
Tyler puffed out his chest like a fool. "I'm willing to fall for beauty!"
The room burst into laughter and noise until the counselor smacked the desk and restored order.
Then the grade director appeared at the door.
"Your class. Move out."
Tyler hopped up at once. "Let's go, Ethan."
They joined the stream of students heading toward the activity center on the fifth floor. As they climbed the stairs, Tyler nudged him and proudly flashed the photos on his phone.
"Pretty good shots, right?"
Ethan ignored the screen and looked ahead instead.
The neighboring class's line was visible not far in front of them.
And there she was again.
Selena.
Something in Ethan hardened.
Without changing his expression, he silently activated his ability.
"Flood."
The world lit up.
A torrent of data cascaded through his vision, turning reality into layers of glowing information. Over the past few days, Ethan had learned enough about cyberware to understand what he was looking for. Mechanical arms. Optical implants. internal weapon systems. reinforced skeletons. Artificial organs.
Cyberware chips were one thing.
Heavy body modification was another.
And unless the user possessed high-end anti-detection hardware, those changes were almost impossible to hide under Data Perspective.
His eyes swept over Selena Vaughn carefully.
Nothing.
No glowing implants hidden in her limbs. No machine structure behind flesh. No unusual data signatures other than the phone she carried.
At least on the surface, she looked entirely human.
That didn't clear her.
She could still be a player with a chip like his. Or a player who hadn't modified herself yet. Or she could be innocent.
Too many possibilities. Not enough certainty.
He withdrew his gaze.
Only to find Tyler looking at him with a sly grin.
"Bro, stop staring. Frogs like us don't get to eat swan meat."
Ethan gave him a flat look.
"I'm not interested in her."
Tyler's grin only widened, clearly not believing a word.
They reached the fifth floor and lined up outside the examination area. The atmosphere changed the moment Ethan saw the setup.
Too controlled.
Too rigid.
The line moved slowly, one student at a time. At the front stood a classroom whose windows had been completely sealed behind black curtains. Students entered through the front door. Two or three minutes later, they exited from the back.
No one was allowed to linger.
No one was allowed to enter in pairs.
Every movement was monitored.
The air felt tense enough to spark.
Ethan kept his face composed, but his heartbeat was no longer steady.
He didn't know what waited inside that room.
He didn't know what kind of scanner, examiner, or weapon the General Affairs Department had prepared.
But turning around now would be the same as writing guilty across his forehead in red ink.
He had no choice except forward.
The line crawled ahead.
Bit by bit.
Closer.
And then he noticed that Selena Vaughn from the neighboring class was next to enter.
Ethan's eyes narrowed.
If she really was a player, would they catch her?
A cold thought crossed his mind. Even if they did, maybe she'd be treated differently. Beautiful, rich, protected by the right family—people like her belonged to a different layer of society.
A layer that often bent rules instead of being broken by them.
He was still thinking that when the classroom door opened.
What emerged first was not a face, but a coat.
Black as spilled ink.
On its chest was a white double-headed eagle emblem, wings spread wide in fierce domination. Beneath it were three words:
General Affairs Department.
Then came the man wearing it.
Brown-haired. Caucasian. Somewhere in his thirties or forties. His face was hard and cold, like something carved from stone instead of flesh. There was no warmth in his eyes, no hesitation in the way he stood.
He looked like the kind of man who could receive an order, shoot someone in the head, and then eat lunch without losing his appetite.
A soldier.
A killer.
Ethan's instincts screamed at him to look deeper.
He activated Flood again.
And the man's body transformed.
Titanium alloy skull.
Combat-grade mechanical arm.
Rib plating reinforcement.
Titanium skeletal frame.
Military synaptic accelerator.
Modified humeral cannon system.
The list flashed across Ethan's vision so fast it was almost dizzying.
Four. Five. Maybe more.
All E-grade, but real.
Real steel inside real flesh.
The pressure hit Ethan like a hammer. His lungs seemed to forget how to draw breath.
This was only one field operative.
How much had the authorities already built?
Then the man slowly lifted his head.
And Ethan saw it—
A faint blue light igniting in the officer's eyes.
His stomach dropped.
Data Perspective.
The bastard had it too.
And he'd noticed the scan.
Ethan shut his own Flood down instantly, but it was too late. He was certain the man had already felt it—like being touched by another gaze in a dark room.
The black-coated officer looked up.
Cold sweat broke out across Ethan's back. He lowered his eyes just slightly, forcing himself not to move, not to react, not to stand out among the long line of students packed around him.
For one long second, the man seemed to search the crowd.
Then he frowned.
"Was that a mistake…?"
He turned slightly, as if about to step back into the classroom and report what he'd sensed.
And then—
CLANG—!
Two gleaming mantis blades burst through his chest from behind.
The sound of tearing flesh and piercing metal struck the corridor like a gunshot.
Blood exploded outward.
Students screamed.
And one red droplet flew through the air in a perfect arc—
Landing directly in Ethan's eye.
His vision went crimson.
In that blood-red world, one thought rose inside him with terrifying clarity:
His quiet campus life was over.
Not ending.
Not fading.
Over.
Gone so completely it would never return.
And standing at the edge of that collapse, Ethan understood something even more chilling—
The real game had finally begun.
--------------------------------
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