His name was Joseph Cooper.
He had grown up in Alberta, Canada not long after the rise of its oil industry, when tensions were high, and Canada seemed perpetually on the brink of civil war. Provincial rivalries were at an all-time high, to the point where drunken brawls at bars and sporting events rarely ended without at least one casualty. He had participated in his fair share of these fights, and had killed his first man at fifteen by smashing his head into the metal railing at a stadium during a riot back in 'fifty-three. It was one of his most cherished memories—the blood running down his hands, the swelling bruises on his face, his heart pounding in his chest. All his life, nothing had gotten his adrenaline pumping like that first fight to the death.
His mother had not been pleased with him.
As time went on, the possibility of war seemed more and more inevitable, and the city began to recruit young men and boys into a new local militia in the hope of defending against a potential attack by one of the other cities, led by some old veterans from the Fourth War. Joseph was one of the first to enlist, both out of pride in his city and the desire to feel that rush of adrenaline in his blood again.
He trained harder and longer than any of the other recruits, learning the ins and outs of his weapons, studying their manual of arms, training and sparring in unarmed combat, knowing that he'd be putting himself into incredibly dangerous situations in the future, and that if he wanted to survive, he'd need to be the best. Anything less would get him killed.
Despite all his training, though, civil war never actually broke out, and Joseph was relegated to guard duty along with the rest of his militiamen—nothing more than armed security posted needlessly around the city perimeter, freezing their asses off in the snow day after day for no reason. Tensions cooled, but relationships remained strained, and so no province was willing to disband their militias. And thus, they all sat in stalemate year after year. The only thing that changed was that trade between provinces had improved.
Joseph was sick of it.
Three years of guard duty, while a steady paycheck, was not at all what he'd signed up for, and he wanted out. What was all of his training even for? He'd never once actually been in a real gunfight. They had shot a couple of trespassers at the oil refineries, but that had been the most exciting the gig had ever been. There was no sense of danger, no challenge, no life-on-the-line, split-second kill-or-be-killed moment. He did the same worthless job, day in and day out. Something had to change.
And then the Children of Wrath rolled into town.
The Children were an up-and-coming mercenary group that had heard about the situation in Canada and decided to do a little recruitment drive to fill out their ranks after a few rough battles out in the Balkans. Led by a grizzled, disgraced NUSA veteran, they were an experienced coalition that ran high-risk operations in active combat zones, doing the dirty work that the corpos couldn't (or wouldn't) handle themselves.
Needless to say, Joseph was the first to sign on.
Joseph thrived as a mercenary. Despite outfitting himself with relatively minimal cyberware, he took to the battlefield like a shark to water. He was a crack shot with a rifle, quick on his feet and just as deadly in close quarters, and it didn't take long before he was promoted. As he continued to prove himself, he eventually became a squad captain, and did more than his part to help boost the company's reputation, securing them bigger jobs and even bigger paychecks. Even as cyberware became more and more common amongst his allies and enemies, Joseph still refused to augment himself further than what he believed necessary, viewing it as a personal challenge to fight against the most 'borged-out soldiers the corporations could manufacture and still come out on top.
And he did. Job after job, battlefield after battlefield, he and his team survived due to their superior planning and cohesion. They worked together, targeted weaknesses and moved as one, becoming one of the most terrifying assault squads on the planet, hired to wage war all across the world. They weren't quite famous, but over the years, everyone in the business came to know of them.
So, it wasn't a huge surprise when one of the megacorps came knocking.
Officially, they'd received an anonymous offer, but with the number of eddies listed, everyone knew it was one of the megacorporations. Some of their crew even started making bets on which one. The offer was incredibly vague, stating only that the operations would be top-secret, long-term, and they would have to be willing to sign an insanely strict NDA to take the job. Their commander had planned to turn it down—said it sounded too suspicious to be worth it—but a good chunk of the company wanted in, enticed by either the mystery or the money. So, Joseph conducted a meeting behind his CO's back, asked who would be willing to join him on this job, and sent a message back to the original sender, stating that about a third of the Children were willing to sign the contract. In no time, they received confirmation and a scheduled flight from the nearest airport.
Joseph hadn't known what to expect. If he had, he might not have taken that contract.
His entire team had been blindfolded and taken to a secondary location before being rigorously interviewed in isolation by a proctor that sat behind a two-way mirror, after which, those who had passed were given uniforms and told their mission. Whatever corporation had hired them—they still refused to identify themselves—that they were to be part of an elite off-the-books paramilitary corps primarily tasked to be the guards and wardens of the corporation's black sites, and all that was contained there, including the scientists themselves. The contents of the experiments that were conducted on said sites were apparently both valuable and dangerous enough that the facility was to be secured twenty-four/seven, and anyone found trying to enter or exit the facilities without proper authorization was to be neutralized on sight, no questions asked.
The name of this regiment was, fittingly, Blackwatch.
Despite having his squad absorbed into a larger force, Joseph was still often placed with his own former squad mates for a good chunk of their offsite missions (often either assisting in guarding or destroying offsite experiments, or destroying other black site labs and stealing their notes and projects), since they already worked well together. According to one of his COs, the whole corps worked that way now. He explained to Joseph that Blackwatch was once a single, cohesive unit, but they had lost a majority of their forces due to a major containment breach in Idaho a couple years back, and needed to recoup their forces by enlisting mercenaries, so the squads were split up by mercenary group, and would likely continue to be for the foreseeable future, but they would all learn to fight alongside each other in time, and become a single cohesive unit once again.
He was right. In the eight years Joseph served under Blackwatch, he had seen it transform from a loose group of arrogant-but-skilled mercenaries into a well-oiled machine that made no mistakes and took no prisoners. They followed orders to the letter, trained together, and became quite possibly the most terrifying fighting force that Joseph had ever seen, even with their limited cyberware, which was strictly regulated to prevent any cyberpsychosis episodes. In turn, they were given exclusive genetic treatments to stall their aging process and keep them all in peak physical condition for far longer than humanly possible—treatments normally only available to the very richest of the rich. With such dedicated soldiers and such wealthy backers, it was no surprise to Joseph that Blackwatch quickly became one of the greatest fighting forces in the world. Even against superhuman cyborgs and chimeric abominations, they had handled everything thrown at them with aplomb. For eight years, they'd had a perfect track record. No mistakes, no slip-ups, nothing.
Until about two weeks ago.
Somehow, one of their scientists managed to slip out from under their noses with the latest and greatest experimental bioweapon that the corporation had been working on. The company flew into a panic trying to track him down, immediately deploying multiple squadrons to find him and recover the stolen sample. They branched out all over California looking for leads, and eventually found him to be in Night City, but by the time they had, he had already been murdered, and the sample was missing.
Blackwatch had their best netrunners scour the intranet, cracking private encryptions and scanning through gigabytes of clandestine conversations, looking for any hints or allusions to unknown chemical substances, strange liquid samples, dead scientists, or anything of the sort that had transpired after the death of their rogue scientist. A few pings came back, and while many were false alarms, they eventually found their primary suspect: EMT Gloria Martinez, who had supposedly pilfered the sample off of the man's corpse and was now hunting for a buyer.
Three fireteams were ordered to locate and neutralize the target, and retrieve the sample intact.
The next day, one fireteam was dead, and no bodies were found at the scene.
Control had no theories beyond wild speculation, but they believed that if the sample happened to get loose, then the only way they wouldn't have already known would be if the evidence was being actively hidden, so all Night City-based fireteams were assigned to comb the city for any places such evidence might be hidden, from disguised corporate facilities to popular homeless campgrounds to the labyrinthian sewer system spanning the city.
Joseph wasn't sure what control expected them to find in the sewers, but orders were orders.
They hadn't found anything beyond a few long-since-decayed corpses, but as they began to survey a sewer entrance in Westbrook, one of his teammates noticed that they were being watched from the rooftops. They weren't sure who it was, but it was safe to assume the spy wasn't friendly, because as soon as he realized he had been made, he pulled back out of their line of sight.
Joseph started barking orders to his fireteam: the suspect was to be found and apprehended if possible, and neutralized otherwise. But before they could comply, the spy threw himself over the edge, holding a massive steel panel in one hand and using a monowire in the other to control his fall.
Joseph engaged the spy, firing his rifle in quick bursts as his fireteam did the same, but the panel the target had grabbed did its job, and the spy managed to make it to the ground without any substantial injuries. He looked surprisingly young, with minimal cyberware and wearing an oversized EMT jacket.
The kid tore through one of Joseph's agents without hesitation, and he nearly managed to take out a second, but he got careless and exposed enough of his side for said squadmate to spray him with automatic fire before the boy's monowire decapitated him. The boy collapsed, hunched over like a wounded animal, but Joseph and his last agent were still cautious. The fact that he was alive after multiple rifle rounds to the torso was already suspicious, and Joseph didn't want to take any chances, not knowing the boy's capabilities.
His squadmate did, though. The soldier glanced away for only a moment, silently checking with him for orders, and as soon as Joseph took one hand off of his rifle to reach for his tranquilizers, rifle still aimed at the boy, he struck, killing the soldier with his makeshift shield before either of them could react, and then lunging at Joseph.
Joseph let loose a desperate, uncontrolled spray of bullets as the boy closed in. Some found their mark, but they didn't seem to even slow the boy down. Instead, he lunged for Joseph's neck and transformed into a monster.
Four large appendages ripped out of the boy's back and lunged at him faster than he could ever hope to react, skewering him in four different places, before he was forcibly dragged towards the boy. The appendages pulled him into the boy's chest, which split and segmented open like hellish jaws, and began to tear him apart bit by bit, like he was being melted in acid and eaten by thousands of rats all at once. His skin was shredded and dissolved in a second, and the rest of his flesh met the same fate soon after.
He died screaming in agony.
David stared down at his body, where his flesh had just split open at the seams and consumed a man whole.
His hands were shaking. He pressed them against his torso, still unsure if it had actually happened.
Nothing.
There was no evidence that anything strange had taken place. His skin was perfectly smooth. No scars, no seams, no pain. Even his bullet wounds had disappeared entirely, as if they were never there.
But there was no denying reality.
Three corpses were strewn across the alleyway. The broken fragments of spent rounds littered the ground at his feet; rounds that had torn through his body only seconds ago. The fourth corpse—Joseph Cooper—was missing from the scene. And David now knew his entire life, from birth to death.
Death by consumption.
He felt…he didn't know what he felt. Sick? Disgusted?
No. He wished he did, though. Maybe he felt sick at the fact that he didn't feel sick at all. He had seen plenty of gore XBDs over the years, and he'd even killed people before, and while neither of those had made him feel sick, they could be chalked up to human nature and self-defense. No one could fault him for either.
Eating someone alive was a different story.
And the worst part about it wasn't that he didn't feel sick. The worst part was that he felt satisfied. The hunger that had persisted the past few days had finally dissipated, replaced instead by the contended fullness felt after finishing a hearty meal.
There was no denying it anymore. He was a fucking monster.
Reflect later. We have bigger problems right now.
David examined the men he'd killed. All three were decked out in by far the most expensive military gear he'd ever seen: armor, rigs and all. And he knew they were some of the finest ever made, because he knew the brands and manufacturers of every piece via Joseph's memories. Their rifles were all modified Tsunami Kyubis—a gun he'd never even heard of before a few minutes ago. All of them had been installed with auto sears, recoil-mitigating counterweights, smart tracking, and likely actual tracking chips as well, so anyone that took them could be hunted down and killed for daring to try and take them.
Joseph's captain had confided that little theory to him back when Blackwatch had only recently been reformed.
David glanced back down at the corpses he'd made, briefly wondering if he would also gain their memories if he consumed them—and the tendrils immediately emerged from his back again, ready to feed.
He startled for a second, then forcibly calmed himself down, trying to will them to go away.
They smoothly retreated back inside him and disappeared, as if they were never there.
Fuck, that's terrifying.
As much as he wanted to further inspect the corpses—Roberts, Mendez and Gallagher, if Cooper's memory served—he probably didn't have much time until backup arrived. Cooper was fairly sure that each of them had been implanted with trackers when they'd been given their medical exam upon joining Blackwatch, and killing off an entire squad within a minute had to have alerted whoever their handlers were by now. At most, he had a few minutes to gather information, and then he needed to get the hell out of there before he attracted any more unwanted attention.
I can experiment later. Priority one is more information on Blackwatch.
Luckily for him, the APC's doors were still wide open.
David hopped into the vehicle, careful not to touch anything, and took a look at the computers. Multiple screens and control systems lit up the inside of the vehicle as he stepped inside, displaying complex city routes, obtuse radar systems and other obscure shit that he couldn't even begin to decipher. The system reminded David of an aircraft cockpit more than any ground vehicle he'd ever seen, and Joseph didn't know how any of it worked, either. He had preferred to sit back and let Gallagher tell him what all the technical readings meant.
He did his best to try and study the patrol map displayed on the left-most screen, given it was the only information he could actually understand. At the moment, there were seven separate vehicles deployed throughout Night City, not including the one he was standing in. Each of them were in a different sector, likely performing a thorough sweep of the city, if their driving history was any indication. He began to try and memorize each vehicle's patrol routes, but he was suddenly interrupted by a crackling speaker coming to life somewhere inside the vehicle.
"Attention all Night City Blackwatch teams: Patrol Team A-05 has gone dark in Westbrook. All Units converge immediately," a severe woman's voice echoed through the cabin. Then the APC's doors all automatically shut and locked themselves, leaving David trapped inside.
Fuck!
He'd wasted too much time. Now Blackwatch was coming for him, and he was trapped with no idea how to unlock the doors. If he didn't figure out a way out fast enough, he'd have seven squads on top of him, and even with his new freaky monster powers, David doubted he could survive seven squads at once. He'd only survived the first one because his new powers had saved him.
Think, did Joseph know of any manual override for the locks in—wait.
In the back of his mind, David had been slowly building a working theory. Beyond the new monstrous abilities he'd recently developed, he'd also dreamt of snippets of other people's lives, all loose and disconnected, without any greater context. But each of them had coincided with a different cyberware-like ability he'd developed. Now, after consuming Cooper, David could remember the man's entire life as if it were his own.
So, if the other visions are also memories, and I can somehow replicate their cyberware from just seeing them….
Cooper didn't have much cyberware, but he did have a high-quality pair of gorilla arms.
It wasn't exactly a solid theory, but it was all he had.
David focused, trying to remember the feeling of the magnetic charge in Cooper's forearms as he smashed his fist into a tree trunk, cratering a large section of it and causing the top half to break off and fall over. The heat, the power, the electricity, the kinetic energy; David sifted through and recontextualized every detail as he clenched his fists, trying to replicate the results with his new body, just as it had with all his other cyberware—for lack of a better term.
He looked down at his arms and grinned.
Fuckin' nova.
Barbed black-and-red tendrils had emerged from under his skin and coiled themselves around his arms from shoulders to fingertips, all thrumming with power. Their hardness fluctuated fluidly as he flexed his fingers, becoming pliant and flexible one moment and diamond-hard the next.
And he could feel the energy coursing up and down his arms, just waiting to be unleashed.
Well, here goes nothin'.
David raised his fists and lifted his heels off the floor, imitating a classic boxing stance. Pulling his shoulder back, he rotated his front foot inward, twisted his torso and threw the meanest punch he could muster, packing as much centrifugal force behind it as possible, and activated the stored energy with his arms. The black veins pulsed with vermillion power, sending static throughout his arm, multiplying the force of his punch a hundredfold as his fist flew forward and hit the door.
The door didn't stand a chance.
The entire side of the APC exploded outward, sending large chunks of shrapnel everywhere. Jagged pieces of tempered steel embedded themselves deep into the reinforced concrete wall on the other side of the alley and carved massive trenches through the asphalt as they skittered off into the distance. The force of the impact combined with the high-pitched squeal of metal caving in and violently shearing apart produced a deafening ring loud enough to set off the alarms of multiple cars parked in the street outside the alleyway.
David stared down at his arms in disbelief.
Holy shit.
Unfortunately, he didn't have time to revel in his newfound power. If Blackwatch didn't know where he was before, they certainly did now. He had maybe ten minutes before half the squads in the city converged on him, if not more.
But if I leave now, I'll leave behind way too much evidence.
Unfortunately, he'd be leaving too much evidence behind, regardless. There was no way he'd be able to clean up the entire mess he'd made before Blackwatch arrived. Lesson learned, he supposed. He'd have to be more careful next time.
For now, the bodies were his top priority. Left in the state they were in, Blackwatch would be able to deduce a lot of what he was capable of without too much effort, and the less they knew, the better.
David grimaced, mulling over his options. He knew that the most obvious solution would be to consume them, but at the same time, he was still a bit freaked out about the whole eating people thing, and really didn't want to have to repeat that experience at the moment.
There's gotta be another way.
He glanced over to the open sewer entrance sitting innocuously in the middle of the alleyway.
Well. That's an idea.
Summoning his tendrils once more, he quickly grabbed the scattered bodies by the various hooks and loops on their gear and dragged them to the sewer entrance before dropping them carelessly into the sewage, weapons and all. Whatever tracking chips had been implanted into them were undoubtedly both waterproof and corrosion-proof, but even with mission control guiding them, it'd still take a while for the ground teams to recover the bodies, and by then, any detailed evidence of what he'd done to them would be eroded away.
As he turned around, planning to flee the scene and make his way home, another realization hit him.
Wait. I ate Cooper. Is his tracking chip still active?
David swallowed nervously. If Joseph's chip was still intact, then he was truly fucked. There'd be no escape for him. Blackwatch would hunt him to the ends of the earth, and wouldn't stop until he was dead or back in their lab.
He brought his rising panic to heel.
Relax. If I can eat a man whole, I can destroy a tracking chip. Just need to figure out how.
He tried to focus his attention inward, calling forth all potential electronic hardware in his body, focusing on the memories of the chips being surgically implanted into Cooper, just as his cyberware was installed: the burning nerves as muscle was fused with circuit, the cold metal touching skin, the involuntary tensing and twitching of his body while the implants were still fresh and raw.
A few moments later, David felt an intense heat slowly building in his core, like a forge had been ignited inside him. He latched onto the feeling like a lifeline, unsure what would happen, but somehow certain that it was responding to his intent. And if he could replicate cyberware without knowing how his body worked, then he should be able to do something as simple as destroy a tracking chip consciously.
David focused on trying to crank up the heat, imagining that he was turning the gas valve in a CHOOH2 forge. The fire inside him burned hotter and hotter, rising to meet his intent, and he could feel the foreign matter inside his body slowly meld together and begin to lose its shape, and eventually melted down completely, like caramel candy in a hot pan.
Well, if that didn't destroy it, I don't know what would.
His primary concern taken care of; David glanced over at the wrecked APC. Given the damage he had already done, he thought about trying to wreck the engine as well, just to deny Blackwatch the resources, but he was still on a time limit, and wrecking a vehicle wouldn't exactly be quick or quiet. As of now, the sooner he got out of Japantown, the better.
That thought in mind, he activated his optical camo and fled the scene.
He made it back to the megabuilding without incident.
After sliding into his apartment through the air vent and feeling his feet hit the cheaply carpeted floor, David finally allowed himself to relax. His shoulders sagged as he shambled over to the couch and threw himself bonelessly onto the cushions, tossing and turning until he found a comfortable enough position to settle down into. The molten mass inside of him was still distinctly noticeable, and was beginning to wear on him, like an itch that wouldn't go away, no matter how hard he scratched.
It was also a burning reminder that he was no longer human.
David still had no clue how he felt about that.
Was he still even David Martinez? Was this his original body, or was it an entirely new one? What would his crew think if they learned that he ate people?
What would his mom think?
He pressed his face into the cushion, trying to avoid thinking about her reaction.
Eventually, David forced himself to sit up, stop wallowing and think rationally. Since he had no clue what he actually was or how he had changed, he had to assume that he was stuck like this for the foreseeable future, if not forever. It was out of his control, and there was nothing he could do about it, so his best plan of action was to learn everything he could and figure out a game plan before his ignorance got him killed.
Probably easier said than done, but he didn't have much of a choice.
First of all, he couldn't tell anyone about his new…condition, not even his crew. The more people knew about him, the more people could leak his secrets, inadvertently or intentionally—not to mention the fact that corporations had netrunners that could literally hack people's brains and scour their memories to find him. Even if his crew did somehow accept that their new teammate was a man-eating monster, they would still be in far more danger than if they were kept in the dark about it.
He doubted he could hide it forever, but the longer he did, the safer they all were.
More than anything, he needed information. Information on what he was, what he could and couldn't do, who his enemies were, and how to find them. From what he'd gathered from Cooper's memories, Blackwatch was tight enough on security that their operatives didn't know the names of anyone above them in the chain of command. Commanding officers were addressed only by rank and designation number, and each squad member only regularly met with the officers in direct command of them, who in turn received orders from someone directly up the chain from them. The soldiers only received orders directly from the higher-ups if they believed it truly necessary.
Cooper's knowledge of Blackwatch was shockingly limited, for someone who worked for them for eight years. He didn't even know where they were stationed: the APCs they drove had a remote takeover system that were controlled by their communications agents whenever they left or were returned to any of the Blackwatch facilities, and their windows were automatically blacked out, so they didn't know even where the hell they were stationed, let alone how to get there. Whoever ran Blackwatch took security incredibly seriously.
From what Cooper had overheard, though, David couldn't say it wasn't unjustified.
The scientists working at Blackwatch's research facilities never talked to their security team, but they weren't always the quietest when on the clock. According to Cooper's memories, they had apparently been researching applications of various complex biological experiments, up to and including designer bioweapons. The details were lost on Cooper, as he couldn't understand what the scientists were talking about half the time, but he had managed to pick up on the gist of a few of their projects.
Nothing they had spoken of sounded anything like what David was capable of.
He felt like he was going in circles. Every new thing he learned just led him to another dead end. All he had found out was that the people hunting him were called Blackwatch, they took their security very seriously, he was a man-eating monster that could survive bullets and could transform and alter his body to use weird approximations of cyberware, and he could gain the memories of the people he ate.He
Not hard to understand why they want me flatlined. I wouldn't want something like me roaming the streets, either.
Still, it was frustrating. Unless Blackwatch either sent someone with high enough clearance to know about their labs, or he managed to happen upon one of their scientists by sheer luck (which he had all but written off as an impossibility), then even if he killed every Blackwatch soldier in the city, he'd be no closer to finding out the truth than when he started.
No closer to who was ultimately responsible for his mother's death.
David forced himself off the couch, trying to jog his brain. He had an end goal, but he was still missing a starting point. He couldn't just run around flying blind, hoping he'd stumble into what he was looking for. At best, he'd just manage to avoid Blackwatch's gaze until they eventually came up with a surefire way to track him down and neutralize him, and at worst, they would swarm the city with Blackwatch agents (and potentially worse) until he was found and killed—likely with a lot of collateral damage accompanying.
He thought for a moment that they might just decide to nuke the city, but he was pretty sure Arasaka would take a serious issue with that. After Silverhand, another nuke in their city was the last thing they wanted.
Alright, let's take it from the top. My goal here is to kill whoever's running Blackwatch. To do that, I need to know who's running Blackwatch. So, how do I find out who's running Blackwatch if I can't find out by eating their soldiers?
His previous answers were still a possibility, but they relied on him learning the identity of one of their higher-ups, and he couldn't bank on that happening. He needed a more proactive solution. A way to sniff out a lead; something to point him in the right direction. Something that wouldn't reveal more about him to Blackwatch than Blackwatch to him: low-risk, low-reward. Some kind of proxy, maybe.
David's eyes lit up.
Right! A fixer!
There were enough people in Night City that made a living off of knowing things they shouldn't that he could hire. If he kept making money like he made tonight, he could probably hire three or four of them and have them each do their own separate investigations to give him a better chance at unmasking whoever was behind Blackwatch.
The only issue was that Blackwatch had far more resources than any information broker would. Which meant if he was going to use a broker, he needed the best of the best. Which would be incredibly fucking expensive.
It also meant that he would probably only be able to afford one.
He pulled the bag of cash out of his jacket pocket, which had managed to survive his encounter with the squadron by some miracle. Dumping it out, he approximated it to be around thirty thousand—a lot of money by his standards, but probably chump change to the better brokers in the city. He'd need to put in a lot of work if he wanted to hire the best.
I can do that. Just gotta make sure Blackwatch doesn't find me first.
With his mind made up, David began scouring the intranet forums. A few names popped up repeatedly, such as Wakako, which he assumed were some of the more entrenched fixers in the business—ones that wouldn't work with a newbie like him. He needed someone newer, someone less established.
After scrolling through the forums for a bit, he finally found what he was looking for: a few posts about a fixer on the up-and-up that was hiring solos for some recon and klep gigs out of a bar near Megabuilding H3. No name or other identifying info was listed, but he was apparently there most evenings, and no one on the forum mentioned anything about the guy trying to screw them over, so David assumed he was probably safe to work with. There were no guarantees, unfortunately, since he wasn't one of the more well-known names in the industry, but it was a risk he'd have to take if he wanted to make any eddies.
Should probably ask Maine to make sure it's nova first.
He doubted that Maine would have any gigs lined up for the next few days, so it was probably fine, but he figured it was probably better to ask, anyway.
After taking a bit longer than strictly necessary to send Maine a message, David finally closed out all the tabs he'd sifted through. He'd avoided it for as long as he could, but he couldn't put it off forever, so with a great sigh, he forced himself to stand and face the issue looming over his head like a guillotine: what exactly he'd become.
Let's just get this over with.
David stepped into the bathroom, quickly stripping down naked. Staring his reflection down in the mirror, he began to inspect himself for any wounds or scars, running his hand down where he'd been shot to see if there was any uneven or raw skin, but he couldn't feel anything unusual. His skin was completely smooth and flawless. There was no evidence that he'd been shot at all, let alone two hours ago.
That's…useful.
Terrifying, but useful.
Alright. Now for the other thing.
Taking a deep breath, he turned around and stared over his shoulder, adjusting his posture to see as much of his back possible, then concentrated on the memory of his tendrils emerging from his back.
Almost instantly, black lines began to surface and spread across his back, just under his skin, like venom crawling through his bloodstream. They spread evenly at first, but began to concentrate at four distinct points. He could feel the pressure build as they converged, altering skin and muscle alike, before they coalesced into four great black tendrils that scythed out of his back like giant talons. David watched as they slowly swayed back and forth through the air menacingly, like sharks in the water, methodically seeking out their next victim.
…Hooooly shit.
He was not ready for this.
Fuckin' relax, Martinez. You've got this. They aren't gonna kill you. Just think of them like they're extra arms or something.
Forcing down his rising unease, he hesitantly began to try and manipulate each tentacle individually, stretching and coiling them one by one. They responded eagerly and instantly, moving according to his every whim with shocking familiarity, almost as if he'd been using them all his life. Even moving all of them at once proved to be easy enough, though having them all perform different actions at once required a little more forethought, akin to trying to pat his head and rub his stomach at the same time.
Alright, easy enough.
He brought one up to his face, examining the tendril's tip. Despite lacking any distinct edge, it still seemed pretty sharp. Tapping his finger to it revealed it to be fairly mutable, though, the needle-point end retracting in on itself as he poked it. David let it return to its original shape before poking it again, but this time forcing it to keep its shape.
As expected, he pricked his finger.
Huh. Should have expected that.
Its sharpness would do him no good if it didn't have any strength to back it up, though.
Might as well test that, too.
Reaching out with a tendril, David pulled his mom's old towel off the bar it was hanging on before hooking a tendril around each corner and twisting it like he was trying to wring it dry. Once it had been twisted it from end to end, he wrapped all four of his tentacles around it and began to pull.
Within a couple seconds, he could hear the telltale sound of fabric tearing, thread by thread, before the towel exploded in his grip, sending strands of polymer fiber everywhere as it was ripped apart by the sheer tensile force of his tendrils.
Wow, that was quick.
He bent down to take a look at the torn pieces, assessing the damage. The towel had been shorn unevenly, both halves heavily frayed and bunched up where entire threads had been pulled straight out of the weave, which were now scattered around his feet.
David picked up one of the stray threads, rolling it back and forth between his fingertips until it came undone, splitting into tiny fibers that scattered into the air alongside the dust and other carcinogens floating around the apartment. He watched them float away, absently coiling one of his tendrils around his wrist until it left his line of sight. Sighing, he stared down forlornly at the tendril.
Guess that settles it. I'm definitely not human anymore.
Disappointment and frustration entwined themselves and settled in the pit of his stomach. He'd been trying to deny it, doing his best to ignore all the obvious signs that something was wrong and pretend he was still just a normal kid—one that had gotten some funky cyberware or weird modifications, albeit—but he couldn't run from the truth anymore.
David was a monster. A scientific abomination that could shrug off bullets and devour men whole.
He could rifle through his victims' memories like a freshly-printed braindance, imitate their cyberware, and use it to devour their friends in turn, likely healing from whatever injuries he'd sustained by eating them—memories including themselves being eaten alive.
The worst part was that he didn't even feel sick. He wished he did, just to absolve himself of some of the guilt he felt. Sure, they were his enemies, and the organization that killed his mother, whom he had sworn revenge on, but it was one thing to kill someone, and entirely another to eat them alive. David honestly couldn't think of a worse way to go.
His crew could never find out. They could probably handle the weird cyberware, and maybe the regeneration, but if they knew he ate people, they'd never be able to look at him the same way ever again. And he wouldn't blame them if they did. How else were they supposed to react if they found out that they could theoretically be devoured by one of their own at any point? Even if he never acted on it, and even if they didn't just outright boot him from the gang, they'd still always fear him, always watching their backs just in case he got hungry enough that his control started to slip.
Even mom wouldn't recognize me like this.
He looked back in the mirror, staring at the black veins and looming tendrils curled around him.
I certainly don't.
Unable to look at himself any longer, David reached back and hooked his fingers around the edge of the mirror before ripping it off the wall, pulling out bits of plaster along with it. He took a step back, swung his arm around and hurled the mirror forcefully back at the wall—
And just as he did, that burning discomfort that had been sitting inside his chest suddenly forced its way down his arm and out through his hand.
The mirror shattered into a thousand pieces against the wall with a deafening crash, many of its shards embedding themselves deep in the plaster, and alongside it, red-hot molten metal lanced out of his fingertips and splattered all over his bathroom walls, almost immediately melting right through them and exposing the shoddily fabricated metal piping behind them. David flinched, shocked, glancing back and forth between his fingers and the molten slag burning holes in the walls.
What the fuck?!
He knew the uncomfortable sensation in his chest had probably been indigestible cyberware, but he never thought his body would melt it down.
David pressed a hand to his chest, then his stomach, trying to determine if there was still any foreign substances still inside him. After about a minute of thoroughly examining himself, pressing down on his skin in various spots to see if there was still any lingering discomfort, he hadn't found anything, so he had to assume that he'd gotten all out of his system.
He was dragged out of his musings by the scent of smoke emanating from the walls. The molten metal was burning through the insulation, now, and flame-retardant or not, his bathroom walls probably weren't designed to stand up to such high temperatures, and neither were the wires and pipes behind it.
Better take care of that.
David bounded over to the kitchen, dug a saucepan out of the cupboards and quickly ran back to the bathroom, dropping it in the sink and cranking the faucet all the way to the right, letting it fill to about three-quarters full before pouring it all over the solidifying metal. The hot steel hissed loudly and created copious amounts of steam as the water hit it, fogging up the entire bathroom. David squinted through the scalding steam and fanned his hand vigorously in front of his face in an attempt to dissipate the scorching vapor, continuing to refill the saucepan and dump cold water onto the metal.
It took a few refills, but he eventually managed to get the metal to a safe enough temperature that he could leave it alone without it continuing to burn a hole in his wall. Unfortunately, he had also managed to flood his bathroom floor in the process. A thin layer of water covered the floor, and the steam was still thick enough to slightly obscure his vision. Droplets of water clung to the walls and ceiling, and the sink and faucet had fogged over entirely. He was fairly confident that even if he laid down every towel he had, it wouldn't be enough to soak up all the excess.
Fuck it. Whatever.
He could mop it up later. The bathroom floor was waterproof, anyways.
David meandered over to the window, propping his forearms on the sill and staring out at the city. So much had already changed since his mom had been killed, and he felt like he had barely scratched the surface of the city's true nature. He'd believed Night City to be a place where massive corporations stamped down on innocent, starving people for the sake of profit, but already, he'd seen that the people being trampled on weren't entirely as innocent as he'd have liked to believe. This past week had shed light on the true nature of this city: street rats outfitted themselves with chrome to kill each other in pits while others bet on them, gangs roamed the streets, killing and kidnapping and all manner of crimes for their own various reasons, mercenaries stole and slaughtered for a paycheck, and even civilians dipped their toes into criminal activity to improve their livelihood the slightest amount, unknowing and uncaring of who they might inadvertently harm.
Every man, woman and child were all desperately clawing at each other to carve out their little slice of home. Night City had operated in such a manner for far longer than he'd been alive, and it would probably live on unchanged until it eventually collapsed under the weight of its sins unless something incredibly drastic happened to it.
Which brought him to the new variable in the city: Blackwatch. If anyone were to cause something drastic in Night City, it would most likely be them. They weren't native to Night City, weren't intimidated by any of its powers, and weren't concerned about the damage they would cause to either the city and its people or the existing balance of power in the city. They were undoubtedly aligned with a megacorporation, but even they didn't know which one, and they probably wouldn't be given any instruction to avoid causing damage to any particular one for fear of being found out, so Blackwatch would begin to tear the city apart at its if they deemed it necessary. And considering that David was still on the loose, they probably would.
David supposed he himself was the other new variable in the city.
He glanced down at his arms, shifting back and forth between his monowire mutation and his gorilla arms. Whatever monstrosity Blackwatch's science division was attempting to create would have been undoubtedly terrifying. Something as versatile and powerful as he was—perhaps more—under the thumb of a megacorporation with nigh-infinite resources would have reshaped the world over; especially if it could be replicated. An army of man-eating abominations would probably end up causing the end of the world, especially if they were created with the usual recklessness and lack of oversight that the corporations typically employed.
Which meant that whoever was running this little science project was his true target.
Blackwatch would also need to go, too, but they were ultimately just enforcers—the long arm of an unseen figure. They didn't even know who they were working for, only that they were paid to follow orders, be efficient and not ask questions. Killing them would deplete their resources, but Blackwatch had already been rebuilt once. It could be rebuilt again. It wouldn't cut out the source of the problem: the scientists in that lab.
He'd seen glimpses of their experiments through Cooper's memories: airborne bioweapons transported under lock and key, horrifying attempts at splicing human and animal DNA kept in cages, unrecognizable corpses and other failed test subjects loaded into trucks and taken to taken far away to some private disposing grounds—and those were just the failures. The whole lab was completely unethical, willfully creating more death and destruction with every new project. Monsters making monsters.
His mother was just the latest in a long line of casualties.
They clearly knew they'd be targets, and they had enough resources at their disposal that even the best edgerunners would have serious trouble finding them, let alone returning alive. If David was honest with himself, he doubted even the best fixer in the city could get him the lab's location.
Unfortunately, he didn't have many options. The only way he could find out that lab's location would either be if he earned enough eddies and hired a fixer that was able to find it, or he managed to draw out and consume one of Blackwatch's top brass.
Either way, he'd be leaving a lot of bodies in his wake.
He picked up his mother's urn, closing his eyes and pressing his forehead lightly against the cold, lifeless metal. A desperate prayer passed his lips.
"Forgive me, Mom," he whispered. "I'll be killing a lot of people soon."
