"ZZZ…"
Early in the morning, Roqi was still out cold when the phone started buzzing like hell.
After any night of shootouts and chaos, his sleep hit different—deep and heavy.
So even with the sun blazing through the window, trying to cook his ass, waking up was not part of the plan.
Around six or seven, he half-sleepwalked to the bathroom for a leak, then dove back into bed to hug his blanket—pure happiness.
Until Jackie ruined it.
"Hey, Lucky! Up and at 'em! V's heading to the ripperdoc."
On-screen, Jackie saw Roqi blindly grab the call, still eyes shut, mumbling like a zombie.
"Shit… knew it… fuck, I'm tired…" Roqi groaned, locked in mortal combat with his warm, fluffy blanket. "It's probably a neural virus—Vik'll handle it."
"How the hell do you know that?" Jackie asked, stunned.
"Uh…"
Roqi instantly snapped awake.
But Jackie, no matter how creative he got, would never guess that Roqi already knew part of what was coming.
"You think Scavs jammed Sandra's signal just with a chip? Nah, frying her neural firewall was the real trick," Roqi bluffed.
"Where are you guys… ugh, my brain's mush…"
"V didn't ping you? I'm downstairs. Get your ass moving, choom," Jackie said, slurping noodles mid-sentence.
"Lemme splash some water on my face, at least. Be right there."
Roqi stuffed the phone in his pocket, shuffled barefoot to the sink, slapped on some face wash, gave it a lazy rub, rinsed, gargled, spat. Then, still dripping, he threw on socks and shoes.
He stepped outside and knocked on V's door.
No answer. Already gone.
Sure, V probably didn't want him to worry. But what—he says "stay home" and Roqi just rolls over like a good boy?
Yeah, no.
He rode the elevator down, ads blasting on the walls—Biotechnica, TECHTRONIKA, and a flashy WNS report hyping Arasaka's big event—the "Arasoul Festival," with a cameo from none other than Hanako Arasaka, daughter of Emperor Saburo Arasaka himself.
"Welcome to Channel 54 News. Here's your local update."
"Violent crime continues across the Badlands. Shootouts on Highways 1, 166, and 101. Witnesses say it's internal gang beef. No spike in civilian attacks. Still, NCPD's bumped the threat level to Tier 2. Travelers advised to avoid side roads."
"Stay tuned for more coverage."
That one hit close—literally. It was right around where he and V used to live.
Even before the Bakkers joined Snake Nation—back when they bailed—gang wars like this showed up all the time on the news. But not like this. Not this loud. Not this long.
Roqi didn't have warm fuzzies for the family anymore, not after the amnesia. But V did. So for his sake, Roqi silently hoped the Bakkers made it through.
"Now for international news."
"The 'Moon Valley' uranium mine collapse near Novosibirsk, South Siberia, has been resolved."
"35 miners trapped underground after a quake. But thanks to Mole-Rat II hibernation implants, they survived two weeks without food or clean water. After a quick checkup, they returned to work."
Roqi: …
Capitalism, baby.
"Back to the surface—Militech announces a new colony on Crimson Star. The base will include industrial, science, and residential zones. Ten housing modules now available. Starting price: 100 million euros. Expensive? Sure. But your safety… is priceless."
Roqi: …
Capitalists: "It's only 100 million. Your safety's priceless."
Spending blood money never looked so easy.
"NCPD warns citizens: stay safe when using data terminals. Recent scans found widespread malware corruption. In extreme cases, these viruses may even prove fatal."
"In response to rising gang violence, the mayor has declared Red Alert. Residents in Watson and Arroyo advised to stay indoors after dark and keep a weapon close. Schools and hospitals are closed until further notice."
"What's next for Pacifica? Once a luxury paradise, now a lawless wasteland of gangs and junkies. Kang Tao's expressed interest in buying property to build a mega-server hub and logistics center. The city says if they show they're serious about cleanup, land might be sold for a symbolic €1."
"And finally—"
The anchor, sporting hair that screamed "attention-seeker," kept babbling. But Roqi had already tuned out.
So Arroyo's locked down too?
He pulled out a PDA—rare in a city where everyone was chipped—and opened up the Night City map.
Night City stretched along the coast, split into six districts, each with their own subzones.
His and V's apartment was in southern Watson, Little China. Looking due south, you could see the tallest tower in the city:
Arasaka Tower.
Jackie usually stayed in a garage behind the Wild Wolf Bar his mom ran. Cozy little setup. That was down in Haywood, past the City Center, in the Glen. Far but not impossible—couple kilometers by car or rail.
Roqi would rather walk than take public transit that smelled like a rotting corpse inside a microwave.
As for Arroyo? That was even further southeast, in Santo Domingo. All factories and fumes. Roqi knew jack about it.
The official excuse for the lockdowns? "Gang activity."
But MaxTac was literally out here turning gangers into paste on the street. Roqi wasn't buying it. Not when mainstream media fed you twelve lies for every ten words. As Marx put it: financial elites control society through government ties, media, culture, education, and foreign policy.
Militech and the U.S. government. Arasaka and Japan.
In Night City—a place that would give Karl Marx a second heart attack—nothing was too fucked to be true.
"Peace, prosperity, and unity"? What a fucking fairytale.
Even someone politically clueless like Roqi could see it. NCPD was straight-up hunting gangs like it was open season. The same psychos who used to rule the streets were now cowering underground like rats. Scapegoats, nothing more.
The final news segment was about a proposed 10,000-euro dog tax. Insane on paper, but let's be real—if you could afford a dog, you weren't sweating it. If you couldn't, it didn't matter anyway.
Feeling the vibes were way off, Roqi finally stepped out of the elevator. Any longer and someone might've called the psych ward.
The lobby was packed with food stalls held together by duct tape and dreams. In a megabuilding slum, that was normal. Actual restaurants were luxury.
Two NCPD officers stood by a cart, arguing about MaxTac.
With Watson locked down, the cops were everywhere. The air was thick with tension.
Roqi's instincts kicked in.
Not because of the old saying: "If you see cops first thing in the morning, your day's fucked."
But because if off-duty cops were eating lunch right outside your front door, things weren't just tense—
They were seriously fucked.
"One juice, please," Roqi said, transferring a few eddies to the vendor for a bottle of sugary neon-colored nonsense.
He drank half, left the bottle on the table, and casually walked off.
He didn't catch anything useful. The male cop was scolding the female one for putting herself in harm's way to protect a civilian and drawing a cyberpsycho's attention. In his view, regular cops were in no shape to deal with that kind of heat.
At least the story had a happy ending—she didn't end up dead. Sitting there with a sandwich was already a miracle.
"Mm…" Roqi sighed.
Even after half a year, he still hadn't gotten used to the filth and chaos that defined Night City.
A place so stunningly gorgeous—and so horrifyingly rotten.
A brutal kind of beauty.
In the hallway, cops were taking statements. Across the street, cruisers had roped off another crime scene.
It wasn't that crime had spiked with all the cops around.
It's just that now, with boots on the ground, people were finally noticing what had been there all along.
.
.
.
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