Night City is a place where the strange and unsettling blend into the everyday. From AI-worshipping cults bent on disrupting the city's rhythm to multi-limbed cyborgs prowling the streets, the bizarre is never far from reach. But even in a dilapidated concrete jungle like NC, few would believe you if you said you found a rogue synth waiting for you in your bedroom. They'd chalk it up to a bad trip on some tainted stims.
As I walked down the eerily quiet corridor of my hotel, the silence pressed in around me. This place, usually buzzing with life at all hours, felt deserted, as if something had drained the energy from the air. The lack of security personnel—a rare sight in a city where every corner is watched—should have been my first clue that something was wrong. Or maybe, given my circumstances, it was exactly right. My scanners, designed to pick up on even the slightest anomaly, found nothing.
Despite the silence, a sense of unease crept up my spine, making me more alert. My cybernetics responded in kind, flooding my system with a mix of adrenaline and combat enhancers. The door to my suite slid open with a soft hiss, revealing a room shrouded in darkness. As my eyes adjusted, I spotted a figure crouched in the shadows. It was impossible to miss—the metal gleam of its skull-like face, the red glow of its eyes, cutting through the gloom. My HUD confirmed what I already knew: this was no ordinary intruder.
"Are you trying to fuck with me?" I asked, my voice betraying none of the tension running through my veins.
"Not in this suit," the figure replied, its voice a harsh, mechanical rasp that sent a chill through the air.
Adam Smasher. The name alone was enough to make most people recoil, but I wasn't most people. Still, standing there, face-to-face with him, I had to fight to keep my composure. My implants worked overtime to suppress the instinctive fear his presence invoked.
He was a monstrous amalgamation of man and machine, with more metal than flesh remaining. The porcelain-white mask that covered what was left of his face was eerily smooth, contrasting sharply with the brutal reputation that preceded him. Even crouched as he was, he towered over me, his crimson eyes glowing like embers in the dark.
The state of the room only added to the sense of unease. My bed was a wreck, and the cabinets had been ransacked, the bottles of alcohol—the good stuff—emptied. I didn't bother asking why; it wasn't as if Smasher could taste anything in that suit. He'd done it because he could, a small act of defiance, or perhaps just a way to pass the time.
"You're an able guard and fighter," I began, choosing my words carefully. "The best in Arasaka by far."
The compliment barely registered with him. Indifference was his defining trait—except when it came to killing. At his full height, he was a reminder of mortality, a figure who could end a life with a casual flick of his wrist.
"But you aren't subtle, something I hope to possess for my activities," I continued, hoping to steer the conversation in a more productive direction. His response was to lean closer, his massive form casting a long shadow over me. With its unchanging expression, the porcelain mask made it impossible to read him, but his voicebox crackled to life, delivering a response that was as much a threat as a statement.
"Orders from Saburo," he said, each word grating like metal on metal. "I'll protect you against bullets; but STDs? That's on you."
I could sense the strain in his voice, not from any emotional effort but from the effort of holding back. Smasher was a blunt instrument, and here he was, forced to play a more delicate game. My neural implants struggled to read anything from his robotic voice or prosthetic face, but I didn't need them to know he was in no mood for an argument.
The stories I've heard and the BD's I've seen—all painted a picture of a man-turned-machine, a force of nature that tore through corporate guards, mercenary units, and entire gang compounds with terrifying efficiency. And that was without pushing his cybernetics to their limit. The thought of what he could do when he brought out the big guns was enough to make anyone- especially myself -reconsider even harbouring the idea of crossing him.
"It isn't my place to tell you where you can or can't go," he continued, his tone dismissive, as if my concerns were trivial. "Just know, when I bail you out, the networks will monitor it, and the Overseer will be aware of it."
Adam Smasher might not have known fear in the way a human does, but even he recognized the power that Saburo Arasaka wielded. There were limits to everyone's autonomy, and he was no exception.
"You needn't concern yourself with that," I replied, trying to maintain my composure. "Instead, focus on getting me a new bedroom and yourself different lodgings. I'm in no mood to wake up with you looming over me."
"Michiko didn't mind," he shot back, his voice laced with dark, twisted humour that only he could find crudely amusing.
I really didn't need to hear that...
Thankfully, the task of relocating myself to a neighbouring hotel room was a simple enough task, but sleep was still challenging. The cocktail of drugs I relied on to keep my mind sharp, and my body running at full tilt had left my internal clock in shambles. A good night's rest was a luxury I could rarely afford without chemical assistance.
After thirty minutes and a bedraggled hotel employee's delivery of various over-the-counter meds, I finally got what I needed. The captain of my escort detail had to be pressured to hand over the harder stuff, but eventually, I had what I needed to crash into bed. The drugs pulled me into a deep, dreamless sleep—or so I thought.
Instead, I found myself trapped in a banal dream, living the life of some pathetic loser glued to a cheap computer screen, browsing the worst content the Net had to offer. It was a reminder of how far I'd fallen, how even my dreams were becoming mundane and pointless. I needed to kick this habit before it destroyed me.
The morning light cut through the room, piercing my eyelids and dragging me back to consciousness. My body ached, torn between the desire to stay in bed and the need to get up. The air conditioning, which I'd neglected to turn off, had turned the room into a cold cell, making me even more reluctant to leave the warmth of the covers.
But I couldn't stay in bed forever. My cybernetics and augmentations, intertwined with artificial fibres and synthetic organs, purged the remnants of the toxic cocktail from my system, dragging me back to reality. I forced myself to ignore the cold, directing my body to shut out the discomfort as I stumbled, half-naked, toward the AC control panel. Halfway there, I remembered I could just shout for it to turn off.
Before I could, the door to my room slid open, and Adam Smasher ducked and twisted to fit through the frame. His towering form filled the room as his synthetic eyes locked onto me, taking in my half-naked state and the silk brocade hanging off my frame—an outfit reminiscent of something an emperor might have worn.
"She wore something exactly like that," he said, his voice scraping like rusted metal, a twisted laugh echoing in the mechanical tones.I grimaced, the disapproval clear on my face. Smasher was toying with me, and he knew exactly how to get under my skin- I really don't want to know the intimate details of my cousin's romantic life.
"Is this how you speak to your superior?" I shot back, trying to reclaim some authority in the face of his taunts.
Smasher tilted his head to the side, feigning deep thought in a display of mock contemplation. "Apologies, young master," he said, bowing his head in an almost sarcastic gesture- No, it was a sarcastic-fucking-gesture! Before straightening up to his full, imposing height.
His inhuman eyes scanned the room, finally settling on the makeshift pharmacy spread across my nightstand. A synthetic chuckle escaped his voicebox, the sound grating on my nerves. "What's the plan? More drugs? Hookers? I know some flexible ones," he said, his grinding voice a mix of crass indifference and genuine curiosity; as if he was a spectator at a zoo, observing another species- an Arasaka- that thinks itself a normal human.
Images of the destruction he'd caused in the past flashed through my mind, and I shook my head in disgust. "I've got my own plan," I muttered, more to myself than to him, though I knew he'd heard me. Adam Smasher was a constant reminder of the brutal world I lived in—a world where power was everything, and survival often meant bending the rules until they broke. As much as I loathed admitting it, having him as my shadow might just be the edge I needed in this city of predators.