Cyberpunk: Becoming a Legend from Dogtown

"Now do you get what's going on?!"Lin Yue shouted.

Maine's last nerve snapped, and he immediately realized this was a setup.

"Dorio! Maelstrom wants to take us out along with them!"

Separated by a thin wall, their voices were painfully clear in each other's ears.

Lin Yue's pistol rounds did nothing to the armored drone. He quickly retreated, lifted his sniper rifle, and fired through the barrage of bullets.

The piercing shot from his Nekomata sniper brought the drone crashing down in flames.

"Nice shot!"

Maine chuckled, praising Lin Yue for taking down the troublesome drone while frantically calling his team to retreat through the comm system.

Nice my ass! Lin Yue thought bitterly.

"Hey, Maelstrom lackey, your boss sold you out. How does that feel?"

Lin Yue pressed his lips together, not answering. His heart was pounding out of his chest.

He quickly packed up his gun and sprinted in the opposite direction without looking back.

It wasn't about sparing Maine's crew anymore—his own life was hanging by a thread.

What the hell is going on?

[Calling: Mr. Hands]

[No response]

In the dark, the red "in-call" indicator flickered in Lin Yue's eyes as he pieced everything together in his head.Hands hired a Dogtown fixer to have Lin Yue investigate. Lin Yue was tasked with stopping the cyberpunks trying to sniff around Dogtown's cargo...

Where did it all go wrong?

Wait!

That question Mr. Hands asked with a smile echoed in Lin Yue's mind like a muffled thunderclap:"Do you know her?"

Was it Sasha? Lin Yue thought he had shown no flaws, so why was Hands so sure he knew this squad?

His heart sank. While he wasn't sure why the Militech hacker took out Hamster, one thing was undeniable:

This was corporate crossfire. Lin Yue was the bait—thrown into the water for the big and small fish to fight over, tearing each other apart until even the corporation itself was dragged into the mud.

No answer from the other end of the call. Lin Yue finally understood that harsh truth:

In Night City, trust is a myth.

His arrogance, his belief that he understood Mr. Hands well, even his delusion that he was an equal "player" in this game…

Mercenaries dying at the hands of their fixers—Night City had seen it a thousand times.

That was the brutal reality.

"Fuck... played me?"

Lin Yue glanced back at the Heavy Hearts Club and the green laser beam shooting skyward. He wanted nothing more than to chuck his rifle at Hands's smug face, then unload his pistol into him.

But rationality always won in Lin Yue's mind. He gritted his teeth, clenched his fists, and kept running.

He knew that stopping meant facing the worst possible end.

From the start, he had been too focused on leveling up his abilities through the interface, forgetting that this world thrived on shadows and deceit. No power could predict the human heart.

Screw the damn rewards. Staying alive matters more than anything.

Lin Yue felt he had done more than enough for Maine's crew.

Before he realized it, several people were also sprinting in the same direction from a distance.

Lin Yue laughed bitterly. Heroic individualism might triumph in rebellion, but only with overwhelming power.

Right now, sparing them hadn't woken them up—Maelstrom's bullets had.

Idiots!

Ignoring them, Lin Yue swiftly climbed over a Dogtown building and slid down an iron scaffold.

His destination: the Voodoo Boys' hangout on Dogtown's right side, atop a hill that led to other parts of Dogtown. The gang's inevitable clash with Maelstrom there would create enough chaos for him to slip away and hide.

On the other side, Maine's crew sprinted through their retreat route, having abandoned their vehicles out of necessity—Maelstrom patrols were everywhere on the roads.

"What did Sasha say?" Dorio asked in a low voice.

Rebecca turned, shooting down a drone momentarily before continuing to run."Maine, what about the fixer?"

Maine shook his head. "No response. That kid was just Maelstrom's bullet shield. Sasha said Militech and Arasaka are at each other's throats—"

"Probably planning to wipe out our whole supply line."

"The data was fake. Arasaka's hackers are breaching the files—no one can touch it now."

Pilar shouted, "The drones are on us! Damn it, I knew I should've stayed home working on my new tech!"

"Shut up, idiot!" Rebecca cursed, firing to cover him, constantly swearing at her annoying brother.

Rebecca also noticed the young man sliding down from the unfinished building in the distance, feeling a strange mix of emotions.

That guy—Lin Yue—somehow knew her name. But this job had dragged them all into a shitstorm with Night City's corporate giants, something even Maine hadn't anticipated.

The fixer had said a client wanted to stir up trouble in Dogtown—just to piss them off—for a hefty price.Enough eddies to live off for six months. Hard to say no to that.

"Ahem... This is Colonel Kurt Hansen."

The ever-present loudspeakers in Dogtown crackled to life, Hansen's voice echoing through every corner.

"Dogtown is our home, our haven! We must arm ourselves and resist oppression!"

"But now, those corporate fucks from Militech and Arasaka want us to lay down our arms and obey them!"

"There is no compromise here…"

"Dogtown's residents, pick up your weapons and wipe out these corporate scumbags invading our paradise!"

"I, Kurt Hansen, swear to protect the rights of every Dogtown resident! Let those corporate lapdogs go straight to hell!"

"When corporations trample our rights, I'll make sure all of Night City sees their true face!"

Classic bait-and-switch.

Lin Yue immediately understood Hansen's play.

Dogtown's interests were "threatened," and Hansen was pinning the blame squarely on the corporations, letting them tear each other apart.

Before crossing over, Lin Yue had never understood why Dogtown remained untouchable in Night City.

Even the NUSA and Night City's official powers never made a move.

Logically, Militech, Arasaka, and Kang Tao—Night City's corporate titans—could have crushed Dogtown with ease.Hell, even NUSA could've teamed up with Militech to flatten this privatized city.

But it never happened. Reality was a game of high-stakes brinkmanship.

Whoever made the first move would bleed out from the knives waiting in the shadows.

A corporate war meant someone else would be waiting to exploit every crack and opportunity.

A classic "When the snipe and the clam fight, the fisherman profits" scenario. Whoever struck first would lose.

More than that, corporations wanted to stay clear of this powder keg. Hansen would love nothing more than to see them at each other's throats while he sat back and reaped the benefits.

Not to mention Hansen had backing from Cuba's "pharmaceutical" conglomerate:Every time a cigar was lit in Havana, someone in this world would lose their life.(Note: "Pharmaceutical" is an understatement. Please refrain from discussing this in the comments; it's just background lore. Keep it chill.)

Lin Yue finally understood how Hansen lived so comfortably in Night City.

Several factors combined to keep him untouchable.

Lin Yue's clearest knowledge of this world only covered the time between 2076 and 2077, along with stories of a few legends. How the world would evolve from here, or whether it would follow the path he knew, remained uncertain.

This harsh lesson from Night City shattered Lin Yue's naive confidence and woke him up for good.

...

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