"This is Lucky."
Roqi was sitting on a street bench with Mower in Japantown, enjoying the seaside view of Night City when a call came through.
"Lucky, about Evelyn—I think there's something you need to know."
It was V. His voice was heavy with exhaustion.
He must not have slept well last night, still tied up at Judy's dealing with Evelyn. Whatever the case, he didn't sound great.
"Of course."
Roqi put the call on speaker so Mower could hear too.
"Evelyn didn't tell us the whole truth."
V didn't sound angry, but the fatigue woven into every word was unmistakable.
"Turns out she might be connected to the Voodoo Boys. I saw their symbol."
The Voodoo Boys?
Roqi glanced at Mower, who also looked surprised. Her brows lifted slightly.
"You mean that weird gang? The hacker cult freaks?" he asked, taken aback. "What the hell would they want with the relic?"
Roqi had assumed only a megacorp rival would be desperate for relic tech. He never imagined a gang—especially one shrouded in mystery like the Voodoo Boys—would be behind it all.
"I found a clue in Evelyn's braindance. It points to a small chapel somewhere in Pacifica. Judy said their netrunners are incredibly skilled—I couldn't even get a look at the woman's face."
V let out a tired sigh, his throat dry.
"They're after the relic because of what's inside—Johnny Silverhand's engram. They want to find Alt."
"Alt? Who's that?"
Roqi's mind immediately filled with a jumble of Ultraman-like figures.
[Fuck…]
Unexpectedly, Johnny cut in, his voice tight.
[Johnny? You know her?—This Alt?]
Even in a single word, Roqi could sense a shift in Johnny's mood.
[How the fuck would I know?!] Johnny snapped, clearly agitated. [I've been dead for fifty goddamn years—I know as much as you do.]
[Then why are you freaking out?]
Roqi didn't get it, but he could tell Johnny was holding something back.
[Goddammit…]
It was the first time Roqi had seen Johnny so worked up.
The usual carefree punk was gone—this was a storm of bottled-up rage.
[Alt Cunningham. She was a genius netrunner.]
Johnny's voice cracked between frustration and bitterness.
[Your girlfriend?]
Roqi caught a flicker in Johnny's tone. It wasn't just casual.
Alt clearly meant something more.
[She's alive… she's still alive…]
Johnny muttered to himself like a caged animal, slamming against the dark walls of cyberspace.
Knowing Johnny Silverhand—whose DNA spelled womanizer—Roqi would've believed him if he said he'd slept with an entire battalion. But this Alt? This was different.
[It's been half a century. Whatever happened back then, if someone wants to use you to find her now… her situation must be worse than death.]
Roqi's reminder seemed to hit like a jolt of static.
[You're right… you're fucking right.]
Johnny gritted his teeth, practically growling.
If he had a body, he would've punched himself.
[I don't know what she's been through, but getting angry won't help now.]
After a moment of silence, Roqi gently coaxed him back down.
[That logic… dammit. I hear it. Just… fuck.] Johnny choked the rest of his cursing back. [This whole cursed situation... it's a long story.]
And so it was that over the next few minutes, Roqi got the whole tale—after mentally editing out Johnny's endless stream of profanity.
In 2020, Arasaka had kidnapped Alt Cunningham, Johnny's lover and a legendary netrunner, during what should've been a simple walk through the city.
They wanted her to design a program—Soulkiller.
A terrifying piece of code capable of copying a person's consciousness and uploading it to a server, killing the host in the process.
Johnny planned a rescue: he gathered a strike team, reunited Samurai for one last free concert—right across from Arasaka Tower.
With the help of a fan-crazed crowd, they broke in.
But they were too late—Alt's body was gone.
Her mind, however, lived on—trapped in Arasaka's mainframe by her own creation. Arasaka couldn't control her, and she couldn't escape.
Johnny didn't listen to her plea to stay away.
Instead, he returned… with a nuclear bomb, codenamed Samurai Two.
In 2023, Arasaka Tower went up in smoke.
After that, Alt vanished—fleeing beyond the Blackwall, into the net's ruined, AI-infested Old Web.
And that's where she remained.
The Old Web had been destroyed by the viruses of the legendary netrunner Rache Bartmoss, who—upon death—unleashed self-replicating AI into cyberspace. They corrupted everything: systems, data, even human minds.
Eventually, the damage was so catastrophic that NetWatch erected the Blackwall, a digital barrier designed to hold the chaos at bay.
It became the border between the known net and a realm of rogue AI and corrupted data.
A digital wasteland.
Before Bartmoss, the net was free and limitless.
After him, it was a fortress city—isolated behind a wall, with demons prowling the ruins outside.
And now… a gang of fringe netrunners wants to send Johnny Silverhand back across the Blackwall to find Alt.
[A hacker gang, trying to track down an engram that's been lost beyond the Blackwall for half a century…] Roqi rubbed his temples. [It's not like they're doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.]
[How the fuck should I know?!] Johnny exploded. [All I know is, we find these Voodoo fuckers and shove a gun so far up their asses they start confessing bedtime stories.]
[Do you understand our situation?]
Roqi groaned at the man who always made everything about himself.
[What situation?]
Johnny calmed just enough to listen.
There was silence on the line. Roqi, Mower, Johnny, and V all sat with their own thoughts.
Only the soft sound of breathing proved anyone was still there.
[We stole the relic from Konpeki Plaza.] Roqi's voice dropped, somber. [Do you have any idea how much that thing's worth? Even sold as scrap, it could fetch over a hundred million eurodollars.]
[We're not heroic samurai walking the path of righteousness. We're mercs—half a month behind on rent.]
He leaned back. The cold wall seeped into his shirt, sobering him a little.
[In this city, if I study hard, earn my degree, claw my way up the ladder, you know what I get? I become a fucking corpo dog. Just another cog, stripping people of their flesh and dignity in the name of quarterly profits.]
[But that's not an option…]
[We came into this world with nothing. But I'll be damned if they take our dignity too.]
.
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🤖 My Girlfriend's a Cyberpsycho—Who Knew?
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