In 2077 they voted Night City the worst place to live in America. Main issues? Sky high rate of violence, and more people living below the poverty line than anywhere else. Can't deny it, it's all true - but everybody still wants to live here. This city's always got a promise for you. Might be a lie, an illusion... But it's there, just around the corner... And it keeps you going. It's a city of dreams... And I was a big dreamer.

The key word is "was". I was a fucking gonk back then. I dreamed about righting the wrongs of the world, of helping people. Then I joined the Night City Police Department and learned the hard way about what counted as right and wrong in Night City. I tried to make a change though. That all went down shits creek though when they decided to make the NCPD more profitable by replacing the chief of police with some Data Term sales rep and firing half of the department in 2076. At least I got to keep my pair of Kiroshi Optics Mk.3. I got them when I made Detective a few years back. I also kept my badge. A piece of gold and silver that didn't hold much value anymore, but was good to serve as a reminder of what I once was. Now, I drive for the Red Cab taxi service. Thirty bucks an hour and I even get to keep my tips. It's a living, I guess. Nowadays, I just wish that I still dreamed of things, man.

It's about three o'clock in the afternoon as I jacked into the terminal in my cab. I'm assigned to the Watson district for tonight. On a Friday night, that meant my shift was gonna involve a lot of shady characters and wage slaves who were just trying to find a good time after a hard day's work. That also means I'm not going to get many good tips. I hadn't had the best morning as usual and I was scheduled to work till three in the morning. Like most days, the hours were long, but you could barely tell it was daytime with the dark clouds looming over the city with thick clouds you couldn't see the tops of the many skyscrapers and hologram billboards. The world, like the people, seemed washed out and faded by the rain. A world painted with monochrome grays and the occasional streaks of neon.

A few hours later, around nine o'clock, I stopped at Tom's Diner for dinner. The one in Little China, not the one in Northside. I always liked that place. It had a classic diner style that reminded me of the diners back in Texas: checkered floors, sky-blue walls, and a counter lined with cheap food for its patrons. Interestingly enough, Little China is the only location in Night City where the owner, Tom is actually there.

I sit down and order cheap diner food and a large cup of coffee, hoping it could keep me up for the rest of the night. I look up at the TV and saw some press conference from this corpo from Arasaka with some police higher-ups. Something about that cyberpsycho that attacked Arasaka Tower a few weeks ago at the Corpo Plaza. Word is some street samurai turned cyberpycho after grafting his body to some Militech suit and some even claimed they saw the one and only Adam Smasher crash through the ring road with the giant hologram koi fishes.

Arasaka practically owns the NCPD. Anything Arasaka didn't want to be investigated was left as a "cold case". One day you'd have the suspect dead to rights, but if the Arasaka got involved, suddenly the case went cold. No leads. Nothing.

Fuck Arasaka, I think to myself.

I eat the rest of my food and took a large to-go cup for my coffee. The next few hours were pretty much the same as usual. Drunkards and people high off synth-drugs. Some of them were loud and the others were quiet. It was around two in the morning when I get a call from dispatch about a customer named Jack Rivers requesting a ride from Kabuki to an apartment complex in Little China. I pause for a second when I hear that name. It was pretty familiar like I heard on TV somewhere or something.

I stop a few blocks away from this club called Lizzie's where I see a man waiting outside. He looks mean and drunk. He's about six feet and has a beer gut, but the rest of him looks like he has some natural muscle under that stocky build. He has a bald head, an unkempt beard, bright red cheeks on pale skin, and a bulging nose that looks like it's been broken a hundred times over. His messed up face, like his name, is familiar too. On his arm is a Joytoy, a lady of the night. She has her head up high but avoids eye contact with passersby on the street. She's wearing a white mini skirt and leopard print jack. She's slender and makes a face that looks like she just wanted the night to be over. That makes two of us. Weirdly enough she seems familiar too, but this is different. Like I had come face to face with her a long time ago.

I pull up and waited for them to get in, aimlessly dissociating. I'm thinking about the time when I enlisted with Arasaka Security, which was basically just a private Corpo army. Specifically, I think about one of my last missions before getting discharged. I was in New Mexico for a covert raid on some netrunner who had been trying to hack into Arasaka using some serious ICE. Turns out recon didn't get the best intel and I ended up walking into an anti-personnel mine as I stepped through the door. It blew off my right arm, but thankfully I got a replacement. A black chrome cyber arm curtsey of the Arasaka Corporation. At first, I wasn't going to get any arm, but I ended up klepping it from a warehouse and had it attached by a ripper doc in Austin, Texas. I knew they wouldn't come for the arm. A cyber arm cost chump change to Arasaka. I realize stealing from my employers isn't considered the morally best action, but they took so much more. Yeah, the corps took care of me. Food, housing, eddies, but I certainly paid for it. I was just another cog in the machine that didn't stop trucking. I got out quickly when presented with discharge papers and I ended up landing in Night City. I was a late-twenty-something from Austin who just wanted to start fresh and do some repenting for my past transgressions. Now I drive a Red Cab.

The sound of the door slamming pulls me back to reality. The two got in and Rivers tries to get their night started. He kisses her neck and she fakes pleasure. I ignore them, but I end up thinking about where I had seen these two. I never met this guy before but I definitely knew him from TV. Maybe he was some athlete.

I look at him again through the rearview mirror, ignoring the fact that Rivers is running his hand up this woman's skirt. Rivers has this look about him, lonely and washed up. He's a celebrity for sure, but too old to be relevant. His muscular build isn't just naturally strong too. The scars on his arms suggest he has muscle implants, skeletal upgrades, and he had Gorilla Arm implants to boot. A boxer maybe? That's probably where I saw him. Some small-time boxer I saw on TV once or twice, but there's something important about him. I don't remember though. I can feel it coming to the front of his mind when Rivers catches me glancing at them in the mirror.

"The hell are you lookin' at!" He rhetorically asks. Maybe I didn't recognize him. Maybe I'm just tired. I don't look in the back seat for a while until I hear the guy mumble something in the joytoy's ear. She whispers something back and I hear a sudden and forceful smack. I look back and see her holding her reddening cheek. The guy seems angry at her and is holding her other arm with force, yanking it toward him whenever she leans away. Rivers sees me staring at him through the mirror. He said callously, "What?"

I feel my blood getting hot. I want to do something at that moment. I want to pull him out of the cab and throw him into a cell, but I can't do that anymore. I push that thought out and tell myself it wasn't my problem.

We pull up to the destination and he throws a wad of cash at me and he gets out of the cab, pulling the joytoy out of the car. She stumbles and falls to her knees. She doesn't try to get up, a small act of resistance, but he pulls her up by force. She isn't able to properly get her feet under her as they go through the door. I tell myself that it isn't my business, not my deal. I try to keep my eyes down but I look back at the apartment building. It's dilapidated and looks like it's rotting. Probably gonna get blown out or torn down within a few months. I focus on just fighting the urge to be a hero. Night City spits out heroes.

Suddenly, I get a call from the terminal. Dispatch calling for another pickup. Then that little voice in my head that everyone's got starts talking to me, my conscience. It's telling me that this wasn't why I joined the academy. This isn't how a lawman should act. I remind myself that I'm not a cop anymore, but I'm stubborn. I curse to myself and jack out of the cab's terminal.

When I step out of the cab I look around, but no one was there. It's just me. I light up a cigarette, walk to the apartment, and open the door with the busted lock. The interior looks worse than the exterior. The lobby is more like a wide hallway with a desk to the side. I walk up to the twenty-something woman manning the desk. She seems bored and in her own world. Probably didn't notice Rivers and the joytoy. She doesn't notice me until I put my badge on the desk. The lady looks at it still half-way distracted, "Can I help you, officer?"
I put the badge back in my coat pocket, "Looking for a resident. Does Jack Rivers live here?"

She looks up from her computer for the first time. She seems pretty interested at the mention of his name, "Oh yeah. That guy. You guys finally came to take him?"

"What do you mean "finally"?" I ask.

"The guy is an animal." She answers with slight disgust towards him, "He's always arguing with the other residents, and I keep getting noise complaints from the yelling."

"What are the nose complaints about?"

"Mostly the yelling and the occasional loud noises. Sometimes it's someone else yelling too."

So this isn't the first time he's done this, I think to myself. How often has he brought some sex worker to his place only to find an insecure man with a hair-trigger temper? I hear a loud crashing sound. Like something heavy just slammed through the wood. I look up to the stairs and back to the clerk, "What exactly am I walking into here?"

"He's just drunk again. Same thing every night. He's an asshole when he's sober and even more of an asshole when he's drunk." she said.

I heard another crash but paused before I went towards the stairs. I asked myself if this is what I wanted. Did I want to be a hero in a city that burns the heroes to the ground? The clerk noticed my pause, "Are you going up or what?"

I took a long drag of my cigarette and stomp it out on the floor. I walk up the stairs, and the crashing and slamming becomes louder. Just furniture, but then I hear a slap, the same kind I heard in the car. It came from the door at the end of the hall. I check myself when I got to the door. I have my cyber arm, my optics, my black ballistic weave trench coat, and Clara. She's a Malorian Arms 3516 pistol that I found in a shallow grave in Mexico. I take her out from my shoulder holster. I look at the words that have been carved into the side: "Last True Friend". True words. I named her after my mom. Like my mom, she protects me from danger, but I just hope I won't need to use her.

I knock on the door and get no response, but I can hear him yelling at her and she's yelling back, "You're drunk!"

I knock again this time slamming my fist on the door. No answer. "You're gonna remember who I fucking am!" He yells. Enough of this, I think to myself. I take my cyber arm and dig my hand between the steel door and frame and use my arms strength to pry it open. My eyes land on Rivers, the drunken giant swiping his palm against the joytoy's face. I rush him, pushing him against the rotted wood paneling of the wall. I look back at the woman who had blood dripping from her lip. I'm about to ask her what was going on when I felt a cold fist connect to my jaw. I stumbled back and spit some blood from my mouth.

He drunkenly laughs, "Didn't know Mox had pimps now."

"He isn't my pimp!" She snaps back.

He raises his hand towards her, but I was fast enough to tackle him to the ground. I was able to get him on his stomach as I pressed my knee on his chest and I use my cyber arm to hold his hands behind his back. I look back at the woman, "What the hell is going on?"

He's able to slip from my hands and plant a right cross on my temple, and I can feel the bone fracture. Stupid. I should've tied him up before asking questions. I don't know if it was him or his implants, but the motherfucker hit hard. I gain my footing and ready my fists. Rivers makes a boxing stance. It's technical and precise, keeping his arms up and close together, a proper fighting stance. His head is low with his chin tucked and his shoulders high so he could block shots easier. I recognize him now. I had seen that stance a hundred times on TV back in the day. He wasn't just a boxer, a once former heavyweight champ, but he ended up getting laid out by some younger guy in the ring. Lost his belt and faded into obscurity. A former champ and now I had to try and take him down.

I try to jab left and come in with a right hook, but Rivers catches my hand with a block and I suddenly take a shot to my stomach. It feels like a brick being launched into my abdomen and all the air in my lungs is forced out. I drop to my knees but before I can get up he grabs me by my coat and throws me across the room where I hit an old punching bag.

Fuck it, I thought. I grab a chair with my chrome arm and throw it at him. A look of surprise hits him before the chair does. He wants a fistfight and I'm not gonna give him one. I unholster my Malorian and pistol-whipped him. He stumbled back against the bed he has to the side of the room and he looks at me like a bull ready to charge. He put his hands up and tries to throw a right hook, but I duck down and slam my pistol into his left kneecap. He goes down on the busted knee and as he falls he uses the momentum to bring his fist down on my nose. I'll give him this, he knows how to take an opportunity when he sees it. I feel the bone break into pieces. Blood floods my nostrils and it runs down my face. My sight starts to blur, my brain begins going unconscious. Don't go down, I think to myself.

Rivers stood up and started limping away to the door. It was the last thing I saw before I went unconscious. It's the first time I've dreamt in a while. In my dream, I'm back in Texas, eighteen years old, and holding my dad's shotgun. He's cut in half from the buckshot. My mother was lying behind me with a blackeye and hand marks around her neck. She's crying for her son to drop the gun. I drop the gun and hold my mother till the police come. She's safe. She'll be safe from the bastard she was forced to call a husband. The police take me away and I'm suddenly asking if my mother is safe and they tell me yes. They tell me that I saved her, that I'm a good kid. I realize my purpose. To keep people safe.

I still don't remember where I recognize her.

I dream while I'm unconscious. I see a door and hear my mother's voice. She calls me. Mother, has this man killed me? Have I been righteous? Am I going to meet you in heaven? As I ask these questions to myself I suddenly hear another voice. That of my fathers. He's the one behind the door. Oh no. Mother, I'm going to Hell.