Cyberpunk - Badland Madman [Cyberpunk 2077]

Right as he tried to rub his eyes to wipe that hovering light away, he noticed a weird augmentation in his right palm, a USB-like slot there. Dots connected in his head as he recognised it all. It'd been some time since he last saw those things, but they were hard to forget.

In the end, it was the song playing on some unknown device that painted the bigger picture.

"...Good morning, Night City, a day in the life. I was on my own, catchin' a ride…"

"What the fuck?"

He mustered enough strength to sit up, only to realise he was butt-naked and, even worse, he saw some kind of weird tech attached to his cock. It was like a belt with a big, thick tube covering his crotch. He could feel the damn thing, snug as a fist. A look to the right on the big bed, he saw the hard-to-not-recognize BD wreath, and there were also a few syringes littered around.

A further look down, and there were countless dots on his arm, clearly the spots those syringes pricked.

"...She pulls my trigger

Got me up, all right

It's a danger, pretty.

Here in Night City

Here in Night City…"

As the song continued to play, and he eyed the surroundings, fatigue started setting in. This wasn't his body; he never had tattoos of skulls and all the other random things on his legs. He was never a junkie. And for sure, he wasn't a resident of Night City.

"Don't tell me they saved me, but I'm in a coma?" He cursed and, with anger-induced strength, jumped off the bed.

He wobbled a little, threw away what was most probably a masturbation machine, and rushed out of the bedroom. He saw a red light strip above the door. To the right, he found the bathroom, somehow futuristic and normal at the same time. The mirror was missing, a newspaper was plastered in its place.

He turned again and entered what was a living room, dining room, and kitchen combined. Right there, he saw one of those projector things hanging from the ceiling that showed ads all the time. It was turned off, and he liked it that way.

I can smell it… dead air.

The house was neither rundown nor well taken care of. It was mostly empty with barely any good furniture. But that could wait. He noticed something through a window… water, a lot of it.

He rushed to the door, tapped the button on it, and watched it slide open. The first thing that hit him was even more direct sunlight, then the sensation of dead air, damp scent, and… he glanced around, a discarded couch, trash, and… a lot of water.

It seemed the house was a tiny lakehouse in the middle of nowhere. Across the lake, he could see the dam-like structure. There was really nothing around his house. And finally, he looked at the far distance. He couldn't see any structure, but he noticed very faint strips of light shooting towards the sky.

They had pictures, texts, and were clearly advertisements.

"This… is too real… And… fuck ugh!"

Thud!

He fell to his knees right there, out of his door, clutching his head with both hands. He groaned in pain for a good while and fully fell flat. He never passed out, however. Though the hovering logos and markers in his vision did scream notifications.

Not that Cypher could see them. His mind was too occupied digesting the sudden influx of so many new memories. Worse, they were barely decent. Twenty-five-year-old, member of some Nomad clan, banished because of excessive depravity towards the opposite gender.

And it was indeed depravity, the bastard banged the clan chief's daughter and wife both, knocking them up. Got found out and banished. Life was tough after that, doing odd jobs in the city to buy porn BDs and fund Glitter addiction.

Then, finally, the girlfriend broke up with him because of his weird behavior. That was the night he took a bit too much Glitter and… overdosed. On that same bed, Cypher woke up.

Cypher saw all those memories. Whoever owned this body knew how to abuse the fuck out of it. Fucking anything that moved, taking every drug known to mankind, obsessed with BD, and… the less spoken the better.

The annoying part was that the dead guy was also named Cypher, only with a different last name. And the luxurious Lakehouse? It was no investment or good luck. It was a deadly job. Survey the waters, measure the toxin levels, and you get to live there.

"This ain't a dream… No dream's this detailed." Cypher mumbled and sat up again, rubbing his head. He looked at the HUD in his vision again and clicked the mailbox.

Solicitations, all of them. Most of them were selling him crack or BDs. Others were offering him loans and whatnot. The only actual person he could see was the breakup message from the ex, saved as 'Baby♡' in the contacts. She'd found out about the past Cypher's adventures in his clan and his two kids.

"Valid." He stumbled and stood up with the help of the railing. "Why am I even here? This is all pointless. I… uh… can feel the need for that Glitter drug, this body's craving it."

Irritated, he returned inside the house, locked the door behind him, and looked for some clothes. Ignoring the scent of excessive masturbation there, he grabbed a pair of pants and a shirt. Then he searched for food, and soon found a packed burrito.

"Agk! What is this thing?!" He spat the very first bite and looked for the ingredients listed on the package. Nothing there hinted at it being a real burrito. What the hell were fungi, algae? In a burrito?

Cypher let out a tired exhale and looked at his surroundings while sitting on the dirty couch.

"Why? Why here of all fucking places? I was better off dead!"

Night City was just the more fucked up version of the world he'd come from. Hell, Cyberpunk Earth as a whole was a much, much more fucked up version of his world. A brutal dystopia built on decades of greed, where corporations rose from shady boardrooms to outright rule the planet. Where governments crumbled under corruption, the megacorps grabbed power, raised their own armies, navies, and fought wars with each other, treating the world, the people, and the damn atmosphere like disposable assets.

And Night City was the neon-lit empire built on exploitation, violence, and the wreckage of a world completely screwed over. Where chipped up gonks fistbumped each other with their throats slit, chasing the glory of naming a shitty drink after themselves in a club.

And Cypher had woken up in such a world.

Without realising, Cypher resumed eating the burrito because his body demanded it. He just stared into the distance while sitting, wondering what he was supposed to do.

The memories told him he was in the middle of 2075, so all his lore knowledge of the future was useless. The useful knowledge was the dirty secrets he knew, locations, connections, and the right people for the right jobs. Of course, they didn't even know he existed.

"Nuh-uh, this gotta go." He looked at the personal link port on his wrist. Then he felt the neural link slot and also the two shard slots on his neck. They were ticking time bombs as they ran on some corporation's software. They could hack into his head whenever they want, kill him, or do something else.

He wasn't being an alarmist after knowing the entire damn plot. Having anything other than bioware that didn't use an active connection was a no-go. At least until he had some protection, or maybe a personal ICE that he knew was unhackable?

"Fuck, fuck! Why am I even thinking about all this? I should be dead!"

Was it suicidal to want to just go into that cursed city and hope to get shot by some cyberpsycho? He really didn't want to stay at that house, or anybody's house. Going from dealing with a rabid body to a rabid world was a big jump.

But was dying here worth it? He had a reason the last time; his death was already decided. But now, he wasn't really dying, well, not far from it either, with the body being addicted to crack.

"A hundred eddies, that's it?" He stared at his bank balance in the HUD screen. "Better look around."

He finished the vile burrito and searched the house. He looked inside the bedroom first, cleaning the place at the same time. He grabbed the needles, the sheets tainted with unholy fluids. Then he looked under the bed and…

"A gun?"

It was a small handgun, not much different from the guns he remembered. The memories told him that this was called Unity, and it could shoot twelve rounds.

He pocketed the gun and continued his search, finding some ammo for the said gun soon enough. There were a few knives, then nothing for a long time. Also, there were a lot of stored porn braindances. He placed all those things aside, wanting to get rid of them.

Finally, he sorted out some clothes in the metal cupboard. He found no more firearms, sadly. There was no hidden money stash either, not even his memories hinted at that. But in doing all that, he did end up cleaning the entire house.

In the end, he returned to the living room couch and placed all the BDs, BD Wreath, small pouches of Glitter, and his gun side-by-side. Other than the gun and the BD Wreath, he wanted to sell it all.

Better take a look at the memories.

He tried to think of someone who could buy it all from him. He remembered a few faces from his Nomad clan who could, but going back to them was a great risk. Inside Night City, there were a few areas, like Jig-Jig Street, where he could sell them all personally.

"Hm? What?"

While searching through the memories, he noticed something strange. At the moment, he could feel two big packages in his head, one belonging to him and the other to the dead junkie. It was just a figure of speech, but there was a distinct difference between the two, and it ensured the memories didn't jumble together.

But now, he saw a third package. A tiny one, in fact, it only had one memory.

"Whoa!"

As soon as he tried to access it, the memory merged with his package and… he understood the contents right away.

"DL-18 blaster pistol? I don't remember it from Cybe—Fuck! I can make this?!" He jumped to his feet at the shock of how deep his understanding was with this supposed gun. He knew every part of it, every inch and every little tweaking needed.

His eyes moved to the gun resting on the table, and then his mind went back to the blaster pistol. He could already tell this blaster pistol was different, more powerful, and advanced.

How the hell did a junkie learn all this?

Bam! Bam! Bam!

Right then, loud knocks came from the front door. Cypher became alert and grabbed the pistol from the table. With hushed steps, he moved. He never had any military training in his past life; he just knew how to handle some guns. But this body clearly was used to it.

While getting closer to the door, he tried to shuffle through the memories to find out who could be knocking on the door. There was no rent due as it was work accommodation. There was nobody around the lakehouse either. Nobody should be there except for him.

Hm? Her?

It was then that a face flashed in his thoughts, and all the related memories flowed through him. He remembered that there was a supposed town submerged in that lake called Laguna Bend.

He pressed the button finally and opened the door, putting the gun away.

"Heeeey, there's my choomba."

"..."

Cypher stared at the woman; her short teal hair in a swept undercut was too recognisable for him. Her dark brown eyes were rimmed with smoky liner, lips with red lipstick. Thanks to her tank top, he could see the tattoos on her neck and sleeves. She looked pretty, no lies. He honestly couldn't stop staring at her cyberware visible on the shaved side of her head, however.

It amused him how people trusted companies with their brains.

"How long were you out there?" he asked.

"Uh-huh, saw the whole dance. You pulled a full-on gonkwalk, strutting naked, then faceplanting on the spot. C'mon, get your shit synced up before you're brain potato."

Slangs, so many slangs. Gonk, choom, and whatnot. It was Cyberpunk, alright. Cypher knew what they all meant, but using them just felt weird to him. Like he was masquerading, so he kept to his usual personality.

"Trying to, Judy. Packed up all the BDs and Glitter, can you help me sell it?" He asked, understanding through the memories about his relationship with her.

Judy was once a resident of the town submerged in that lake. She'd reached out to him eight months ago, asking to use his house for her dives down the toxic lake to see her old home.

Since she paid him a hundred eddies for each visit, he didn't mind. Over time, she ended up becoming his favorite BD dealer as she herself was a braindance editor. She really knew his choice and sorted the best BD porns for him and sent them his way.

He suspected it was just her way of getting those hundred eddies back, and the old Cypher was too dumb to realise it.

"Sure, let's talk about it later. Let me get my diving gear." Judy tapped on his chest, pushing him gently, and strode into the bathroom.

Hm, I didn't check there.

He saw Judy open the cabinet in the bathroom and take out a bag full of diving gear. She didn't even ask him to leave and just undressed, taking off her tank top and cargo pants. She stood there in just her bra and undies.

Cypher stared, frozen on the spot as she leaned down, jutting out her round hips to put on the diving suit. She wasn't that tall, well, not compared to him. She had curves but was still a pretty slender woman.

He gulped; the temptation made his mouth dry. And it seemed like she was teasing him, because he noticed the side eyes she gave him.

Too bad… She's into girls… Look at that ass—Why's that my first thought?