The beer in front of Ethan had gone warm.
He didn't remember ordering it.
He didn't even remember walking into the bar.
For a few long seconds, he just sat there in silence, staring at the stained tabletop while a rotten, fermented stink crawled into his nose and settled at the back of his throat. When he finally lifted his head, what he saw made his body go rigid.
The bar was packed.
Not lively packed. Not cheerful packed. It was the kind of crowd that made the air feel heavier just by existing in it. Nearly every table was crammed with three or four people, all of them wearing the same defeated look—as if life had chewed them up, spit them out, and then stomped on what was left.
Their faces were red from drink. Their eyes were dull, hostile, half-dead. Some cursed under their breath. Some complained to anyone willing to listen. Some just stared at nothing with the expression of men and women who had long since stopped expecting tomorrow to be different from today.
Ethan could tell instantly what kind of people they were.
People who had sunk.
People who once might have had chances, dreams, even futures—but now lived on cheap alcohol, bitterness, old grudges, and stories about what could have been. Some were addicts. Most were drunks. Every last one of them looked like they'd sold off their dignity piece by piece just to survive another week.
Normally, Ethan would never sit among people like this.
He didn't have that kind of time.
He had a younger sister to take care of. Bills to think about. A real life waiting outside. He had no interest in listening to drunk men burp out their regrets or watching losers gamble away the little they had left.
And yet… here he was.
Sitting quietly in a corner, alone.
Not drinking.
Not speaking.
Just existing.
Then the grief hit him again.
It came without warning, sharp and deep, like a blade sliding between his ribs.
His parents.
They were gone.
The thought surfaced so suddenly, so vividly, that Ethan's breathing almost stopped. He had already lived with that truth for two years. Two years since the accident. Two years since the people who had loved him most in the world were taken away before he could even say goodbye.
He had endured it. Buried it. Carried it.
But right now, in this filthy bar, surrounded by broken strangers, the pain came roaring back so hard it nearly crushed him.
His eyes burned, but he didn't cry.
He only sat there, motionless, chewing on the sorrow in silence.
For the first time in a long while, the miserable people around him didn't feel annoying.
They just felt… familiar.
Then the door exploded inward.
Bang!
The sound tore through the bar like a gunshot, snapping everyone's attention toward the entrance. Ethan frowned and looked up instinctively.
A man stood there in the doorway, broad-shouldered, radiating menace.
He looked to be in his thirties, maybe older. Thick hair. Beard. Dark sunglasses. A bulletproof vest. And most striking of all, a silver cybernetic arm that gleamed coldly under the dim bar lights.
The moment Ethan saw him, recognition hit like a jolt.
Johnny Silverhand.
The name appeared in his mind as naturally as breathing.
Night City's infamous rockstar. Terrorist. Revolutionary icon. Madman. The man who had declared war on Arasaka and went down in the flames of legend.
But that was impossible.
Johnny Silverhand belonged to Cyberpunk.
To a game.
To fiction.
So why was he here?
Johnny didn't even glance at Ethan. His sharp gaze swept across the room, across the drunken faces and bloodshot eyes of everyone inside. He looked at them like a man inspecting corpses.
Then he smiled.
"Well," he said, voice full of contempt, "you're all a bunch of animals."
A wave of anger moved through the room, but no one answered.
Johnny strode forward anyway.
His boots struck the floor with steady confidence. Not a trace of hesitation. Not a trace of fear. With every step, the pressure in the room changed. Ethan could feel it. The man's anger was alive—hot, volcanic, pressing down on everyone around him.
Then Johnny leaped onto the bar counter.
He stood above the crowd like a prophet about to deliver judgment.
The room fell silent.
Even Ethan, despite himself, felt his chest tighten.
Johnny lit a cigarette, the ember flaring in the darkness, then began to speak.
"You can probably tell," he said, "I'm an old soldier. Sold half my life—and an arm—before I was even twenty."
His voice was rough, but every word landed hard.
"When you go to war as a kid, you think death belongs to other people. You tell yourself you'll make it through. Then one day you get hit for real, and that fantasy dies before you do."
He took a drag, exhaled slowly.
"And then I learned the truth. The war we fought? The one we bled for? It wasn't patriotism. It wasn't justice. It was a scam. A conspiracy cooked up by capitalists and politicians. They lit the fire, and when it burned out of control, they blamed the soldiers who fought in it."
The room grew even stiller.
Johnny's expression darkened.
"We gave them blood. They gave us shame. We came home as heroes and got treated like diseased dogs."
He lowered the cigarette and stared into the crowd.
"And when I got back, I saw worse. Corporations stealing water from farmers. Land from families. Futures from entire communities. I saw cities become machines—machines powered by crushed hope, broken backs, and human misery."
His voice hardened into iron.
"They took your work. They took your dignity. They took your lives. Now they won't even let the dead rest."
A tremor ran through the bar.
Some people had already risen from their seats.
Johnny spread one hand, silver fingers glinting.
"I didn't declare war on this world because I wanted power. I did it because the system is rotten clear to the bone. This isn't a war of one man against one corporation. It's a war of people against a machine that wants to swallow all of us whole."
His words rolled through the room like thunder.
"We can't keep pretending not to hear it. We can't keep acting blind while they strip this world for parts."
He raised his voice.
"We stop them. We break them. We tear them apart. Whatever it takes. If blood is needed, I'll spill blood. If fire is needed—"
His mechanical fist clenched.
"—then I will be the one to light the match."
The bar erupted.
Not all at once. First came the sharp intake of breath. Then a low murmur. Then fists tightening, chairs scraping, bodies rising.
A scrawny old man near the front trembled as he shouted, "Will you lead us? Will you protest for us?"
Johnny's lips curled.
"Not a protest," he said. "A wildfire."
His eyes blazed.
"I promise you a wildfire that will burn across the wasteland."
Something snapped in the crowd after that.
Emotion burst free like a dam breaking. A woman started sobbing. Someone smashed a glass against the floor. Another man screamed until his voice cracked. They surged toward Johnny in a wave, arms raised, faces twisted with desperate hope.
"To unite is to never fade away!" Johnny roared.
"We shall never fade away!" the crowd answered.
"We shall never fade away!"
The chant spread instantly, louder and louder, until the whole bar shook with it.
Ethan's stomach turned.
This wasn't inspiration.
This was infection.
This wasn't rebellion.
This was fanaticism.
And suddenly, an anger he didn't understand surged up from inside him.
He stood so fast his chair nearly toppled.
"Enough!"
The word cut through the noise like a blade.
Dozens of heads turned.
Ethan pointed at Johnny atop the counter, his voice raw with fury.
"By what right do you ask them to sacrifice for you?"
The chanting faltered.
"You suffered injustice, so now you want to burn down everything that exists? What kind of logic is that? What kind of arrogance?"
Ethan stepped forward, every word coming hotter than the last.
"People like you always sound righteous at first. Tear down the system. Save the world. Free the people. But the moment someone like you gets power, you become the same kind of tyrant you claim to hate."
His eyes locked onto Johnny's hidden gaze.
"You don't want justice. You want followers. You want bodies to throw into the fire so you can play emperor over the ashes."
The room went dead quiet.
"You can't change anything."
For a brief moment, Ethan thought Johnny would laugh. Or sneer. Or explode.
Instead, Johnny only looked at him calmly.
Almost pityingly.
"V," Johnny said softly, "you don't understand yet."
Then his voice rose again.
"But one day you will."
Before Ethan could answer, Johnny jumped backward into the crowd.
Hands caught him instantly. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. The people lifted him like a messiah, shouting and crying as they carried him overhead.
Ethan's chest tightened.
Something was wrong.
Terribly wrong.
He looked down—
—and his heartbeat nearly stopped.
His left arm was silver.
His hand wasn't his.
The weight of sunglasses sat on his face.
The roar of the crowd was around him, beneath him, carrying him.
He wasn't watching Johnny Silverhand.
He was Johnny Silverhand.
No.
No, that was impossible.
Panic hit him cold and sudden. Ethan tried to move, but his body no longer listened. He tried to shout, but the voice that came out wasn't his.
"From this day forward," his mouth declared, "the wildfire will never die. It will spread across the plains."
His own body—no, Johnny's body, his body, whatever this was—reached down into the crowd.
One by one, he touched people in the chest.
A symbol appeared where his fingers passed.
A glowing V.
Ethan's scalp went numb.
Every person marked that way changed instantly. Their eyes brightened with feverish devotion, as if some invisible trigger had been pulled inside them.
Players.
They had become players.
What the hell was this?
A virus?
A ritual?
A recruitment process?
His stolen body raised one fist.
"Repeat after me."
The bar patrons obeyed immediately, expressions turning solemn.
"I, Robert Johnny Linder, solemnly swear…"
Then voices echoed all around him.
"I, Marcus Lane, solemnly swear…"
"I, Victor Halden, solemnly swear…"
"I, Jason Reed, solemnly swear…"
"I, Leon Hayes, solemnly swear…"
The sound of their oath rolled through the room like a funeral bell.
"I will remain steadfast. I will fight to the death to protect the goodness of this world. I will fight to the death against the injustice of this world."
Again.
And again.
And again.
The same vow. The same fever. The same terrifying devotion.
Ethan could do nothing but watch.
His mind raced.
Johnny Silverhand was from Night City. From fiction. From data. From the Relic.
So how was he here?
How could he be dragging real people into this madness?
How could he be reaching into Ethan's mind like this?
Then Johnny appeared in front of him.
Not in the crowd.
Not on the bar.
Right in front of him.
As if the hallucination had peeled open and let the ghost step through.
Johnny placed a hand on Ethan's shoulder.
"It's your turn," he said. "Swear."
Ethan looked around.
Every face in the room was turned toward him.
Waiting.
Smiling.
Expecting.
The pressure was suffocating.
Then something inside Ethan clicked.
The Relic Chip.
That damned thing.
This wasn't reality. Or not entirely. This was a takeover attempt. Johnny wasn't some miracle. He was a digital virus wearing the face of a dead legend, trying to hijack Ethan's consciousness from the inside out.
Understanding hit like lightning.
Ethan's fear vanished.
Rage replaced it.
"Swear?" he said.
Then he grinned viciously.
"Swear my ass."
His hand slammed down onto the glowing V mark.
A red blur flashed.
The Lexington pistol snapped into his grip as if drawn by instinct, muzzle lifting in one clean motion until it pointed straight at Johnny Silverhand's forehead.
For the first time, Johnny's expression changed.
Ethan's eyes burned.
"You computer virus. Get out of my head."
He pulled the trigger.
Bang.
The gunshot shattered the world.
The bar went black.
The crowd vanished.
The floor, the smell, the voices, Johnny—everything broke apart like film burning in a projector.
Then Ethan's consciousness dropped straight into darkness.
---
Night had completely swallowed Seabrook City.
In a narrow alley between crumbling buildings, a homeless man slept beneath old newspapers and patched sacks, curled up against the early winter cold. The wind bit hard tonight, crueler than usual, but exhaustion had dragged him under anyway.
No one came here.
No one cared.
That was why the figure who suddenly appeared beside him seemed almost unreal.
He was huge. Dark-skinned. Heavyset. Thick beard. Dreadlocks. Street leather jacket. A right hand with yellowed fingernails from years of cheap cigars.
And a gold-painted mechanical arm gleaming in the dark.
Dexter DeShawn.
Or at least, a man who looked exactly like him.
He jolted awake like a corpse being shocked back to life.
"Haaah—!"
He sucked in air violently, chest heaving, eyes bulging wide.
For several seconds, he did nothing but breathe.
Then he touched his chest.
No blood.
No wound.
No bullet hole.
"I… didn't die?"
His voice came out hoarse, disbelieving.
"That kid V shot me. That little psycho actually shot me…"
Dexter pushed himself upright, still dazed. He scanned the alley, his instincts returning fast. The sleeping homeless man registered as harmless. The environment did not.
He stepped out into the street.
And froze.
This wasn't Night City.
The streets were wrong. Too dim. Too quiet. Too clean in some places, too old in others. There were advertisements, yes, but nowhere near the endless neon overdose he was used to. The people walking under the streetlights looked even stranger.
No chrome.
No visible cyberware.
No glowing optics.
No reinforced limbs.
Dexter's brows drew together.
"What kind of backwater…"
He stopped himself, turned, and quickly grabbed the newspaper covering the homeless man. Under a flickering streetlamp, he scanned the headline.
Federal Governor Election About to Open.
His eyes narrowed. He kept reading.
The more he read, the colder his expression became.
By the time he finished, he lowered the paper slowly.
"I've… crossed over?"
It sounded insane.
But the evidence in front of him was worse.
New world. New city. No ID. No resources. No network. No fixers. No merc muscle. No Night City.
Dexter stared at the road for a long moment, then exhaled through his nose.
"Could be worse," he muttered. "Air's cleaner. Fewer corpos. And if Arasaka can't find me here, that's already a blessing."
His mind was already moving again, practical as ever.
First, survive.
Second, establish an identity.
Third, get money.
He adjusted the newspaper around his gold cyberarm to hide it, then started walking.
Half an hour later, he found himself near a university wall.
A public bulletin board stood under a streetlamp, plastered with notices, rankings, and announcements. Dexter would have walked right past it—until one title caught his eye.
Seabrook University District's Top Ten Outstanding Students.
He glanced once.
Then stopped dead.
At the top were names like Sophia Warren and Lucas Payne.
But that wasn't what froze him.
It was the tenth photo.
The face on the board.
Young.
Sharp-eyed.
Unmistakable.
Ethan.
Or rather—
"V?"
Dexter's pupils shrank.
His breathing slowed.
Then a chill crept down his spine.
"How the hell are you here too…?"
Under the dim streetlight, Dexter stared at Ethan's photo as if he were looking at a ghost.
And somewhere far away, in the darkness behind that picture, it felt as if something had already begun to stare back.
To be continued…
--------------------------------
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