Cyberpunk: Starting in 2071

Chapter 1 Flame
Han Yu never expected that after completing Cyberpunk 2077 once again, a game Easter egg he had never heard of or seen before would pop up on the screen in front of him.

When he controlled V to breach Arasaka's hidden underground Kokkoro server once again, he blasted Adam's hammer corpse to pieces with a shotgun.

Then, as the King of the City looked down upon the Night City from the hovercar, a line of text suddenly popped up on the screen.

Are you satisfied with the ending of this story, and with everything that happened in this cyber world?

[1—I'm quite satisfied. After all, regrets are an integral part of life.]

[2—I'm not satisfied. If everything is a predetermined tragedy, why did I even begin this journey?]

satisfaction?

Jack's dual pistols are moldy in the storage room of his gaming room; the remains of David, Rebecca, and others in the cemetery are reduced to a single, cold line of text; the protagonist, V, still only has a few months left to live.
How could anyone be satisfied?

Because of these grievances, Han Yu pressed the second option without hesitation.

"But it seems like no one has triggered this Easter egg before? I'll reload the save file and try again later, record it, and post it online to see what happens."

Han Yu sat up and stared at the screen with great interest at the sudden dialog box that appeared on the screen.

So, would you be willing to try again, to make amends, and see if you can truly save a city? Or perhaps, to burn everything to ashes? Even if this time, you might be the one burning yourself?
Please think carefully and give your answer. Once you make a choice, you cannot go back!
Players, please make your choice.

[1—Forget it, V is V, and I am me. No matter how strong I am in the game, it's all fake.]

【2—From this moment on, ignite this little flame within me!】

Need I say more? Dude, I'll definitely pick the second one!
After Han Yu made her choice without hesitation, she suddenly realized that something seemed a little off.

This option seems a bit different from the type of options you usually encounter in games.

The mysterious dialogue box in the game is not being spoken to by the character he controls, V, but rather seems to be communicating with a player outside the game screen.

but
Isn't that more interesting?
Han Yu excitedly took a sip of iced cola and couldn't wait to read the following text.

So, please choose your starting point. Out of kindness, I've provided a similar option for you.

[Option 1 - The wanderer of the Barker family, a foolish hacker who stands on the edge of the black wall out of curiosity.]

When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

Option 2 - A hacker from the Arasaka Corporation's hacker training institute is ordered to dig out old network data from the black wall due to work requirements.

Foolish gravediggers.

Option 3 - A street kid from the Voodoo Gang, along with his friends, lies deep within the cyber world, ignorantly calling upon demons.

A pathetic nobody.

After just one quick glance, Han Yu had a lot of thoughts.

First of all, the three options presented in the game are related to hackers, or rather, cyberspace, black walls, and AI.

"Could it be that the one I'm talking to is an active AI?"

Han Yu offered a relatively reasonable conjecture, since according to the game's setting, the player's own setting is very likely to be a wandering AI, while the protagonist V is just a tool controlled by the player.

As for choosing an identity, Han Yu believes it is not a difficult decision.

First, the third street kid from the Voodoo Gang can be ruled out – when he plays the game, the most annoying character is the Scavenger, followed by the Voodoo Gang.

The Cleaners are a group of organ traffickers who live on the streets and make a living by digging up corpses and even kidnapping and killing people to steal their prosthetic bodies for sale.

The Voodoo Gang, on the other hand, is a group of traitors with an extremely strong sense of racial consciousness.

The Voodoo Gang is a criminal organization primarily composed of Haitians, a nomadic ethnic group. They mainly operate in the online world and possess powerful hacking skills and their own large-scale server, 'Poseidon'.

They are not only extremely xenophobic, but also capitulationists. In the cyber world where humans and roving AI are irreconcilable enemies, their ultimate goal is to break through the 'black wall,' which is the firewall that prevents AI from invading the real world.

They hope to use this to unleash AI, let AI take over the world, and then become its lackeys, the number one lackeys in the new AI-dominated world.

Chun Chun is no longer human.

Option 2, Arakawa's background, looks somewhat familiar.

In the cyberpunk anime "Fringewalker," the female protagonist Lucy escaped from there. It's called a hacker training center, but it's actually a humanoid mining card concentration camp.

Arasaka collects children with hacking talent and throws them into cyberspace day and night to dig up data from the old web era.

To be honest, Han Yu found this start quite interesting.

As for option one...

The Barker family is actually the family that the protagonist V is in when he chooses to start as a wanderer. V ran away from this family and wandered all the way to Night City.

Judging from the background, there aren't any major plot holes, and she might even get involved with the protagonist, V.
Wait a minute, this chat box didn't specify what year (2000-2000) it was supposed to send me.

"Don't send me to the future and have me fight the Fifth Corporate War, okay?"

However, before Han Yu could make a choice, the options on the screen suddenly began to flash. Before Han Yu could react, option one, representing Barker's background, appeared.
It simply vanished!
Han Yu dared not wait any longer and immediately chose option two—he would rather go to Arasaka as a mining card operator than have a disgusting Voodoo gang background.

Han Yu muttered to herself as she pressed option two, feeling both apprehensive and excited as she waited.

The computer screen in front of him suddenly switched to the main menu when the game started after he made his choice, and then the screen began to flicker.

At first, the flickering looked like 'brain overclocking' was enabled in a game, with only the edges flashing red and blue. But soon, the entire screen image collapsed into a mosaic.

As the black and red light flashed continuously, Han Yu felt a sudden darkness before his eyes. The next moment, his hearing, sight, and touch all disappeared, leaving only a deathly silence.

In the hazy light, a line of text could be vaguely seen flashing by.

[Intrusion in progress] [Intrusion complete.]

The moment the words in front of him disappeared, Han Yu suddenly opened his eyes.

No, it's not just Han Yu.

A jumble of memories of a boy named Mercer flashed before his eyes, and as a sharp pain surged through his mind, he instinctively reached behind his ear.

But even such a simple action became incredibly difficult at this moment, as if the whole body was being torn apart and steamed!
"Fuck me!"

With a trembling, almost instinctive curse escaping her lips, Han Yu's trembling hand finally grasped a data cable behind her ear, and then she yanked it out.

The next moment, a series of noisy noises filled the air. The room lights flickered a few times and then went out. The computer screen that was lit up and the server that was placed not far away exploded with a bang, emitting puffs of pungent black smoke and sparks.

In the darkness, only a few LED lights flashed red, and Han Yu, in a panic, rolled over and fell off the hacker chair.

"Cough! Cough cough! Holy crap!"

He struggled to lie on the ground, trying to prop himself up on his arms, but all he heard was a piercing warning.

"Beep! Beep! Alert! Alert! Unknown data surge detected! Server overload!"

"This has been identified as a mobile AI attack. Protection mode has been activated!"

Suddenly, a glaring red light illuminated the room. Han Yu turned her head around blankly and saw only a row of hacker chairs surrounded by huge data cables.

At that moment, on those hacker chairs, seven children who looked to be only between twelve and sixteen years old were removing the hacking devices they were wearing on their heads.

Besides him, right next to him, on the hacker chair, lay another boy with black smoke rising from his head, blood gushing from his nose, mouth, and even ears. He was already dead on the hacker chair.

Welcome to the world of cyberpunk, my friend.

A male voice, devoid of any intonation and sounding like a synthesized machine, suddenly rang in my ears.

What kind of noise is this?!
The voice that suddenly rang in his mind made him feel a chill run down his spine.

Han Yu was still a little dazed, but at that moment, the group of children around him who had removed their hacking tools all turned to look at him.

What's wrong with Mercer?

"Hey, are you okay?"

"Holy crap, the server is smoking!"

"Tony? Tony!"

Tony is dead.

[System restart complete.]

Biomonitoring is now back online.

[The Arasaka Mk.3 neural access chamber has been reconnected.]

[The Arasaka Type 3 RAM upgrade has been reloaded.]

[Arasaka.]

Han Yu, or rather Mo Se, felt a sharp pain in his head, as if someone was drilling into his brain with an electric drill—this feeling was extremely disgusting and made it almost impossible for him to think normally.

The noise around him made Mercer subconsciously turn his head to look, where a girl with pigtails was staring at him with red eyes.

Just as the girl with pigtails hesitated to speak, another fair hand, out of sight, grabbed his wrist, trying to help him up.

"Hey Mercer, are you alright?"

Mercer turned his head and saw a beautiful girl with short rainbow hair looking at him with a worried expression.

Why does he look so familiar?
Ah!
Lucy!

Mercer's eyes widened slightly as he immediately recognized the girl in front of him—her beautiful face and signature rainbow-colored short hair were exactly like Lucy, the female protagonist from the anime "The Edgewalker"!

"Lucy!? I'm... fine."

After replying almost instinctively, Mercer suddenly felt a wave of dizziness and nausea, causing him to fall to the ground again. This time, he completely lost consciousness.

He vaguely heard a few cold, inhuman words.

[Operation FF:06:B5 has been successful.]

Can it really change all of this?

I'm not sure.

But this is already the best option.

Let's load the program then.

【clear. 】

[Initiate the operation.]

Operation codename: Ragnark.

Let's start this little flame now, my friend.

The sounds around me gradually faded away, leaving only a pitch-black, deathly silence.

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(End of this chapter)