Cyberpunk: Viper

Chapter 1: Landing

Neon lights, bright colours and all that in between I guess. Night City really lives up to the hype you know. But if you were to ask me, I don't see myself living here if I'm being honest. 'City of Dreams' they call it, but honestly, after all that I've read about the legends of V, David Martinez, Andrew Weyland, Johnny Silverhand, Adam Smasher, and countless other people, all of them seem to all share the same fate: They either die, go missing, or are just simply not even in Night City anymore. Guess there's no such thing as living legends in Night City. Or anywhere now that I think about it, not even back home in Sydney. I mean, I know I'm probably one of the best mercenaries in Sydney, if not the best, but even I'm not that delusional to think that I've reached legendary status in Sydney. Probably because I spent the last two years moping around after dad's untimely death. Well, I say untimely, but I always knew the old man was on his way out. But that's a story for another time.

"Move it, choom.", followed by a bump on the shoulder brought me out of my thoughts and back to earth.

Right, back to the matter at hand, finding mom.

Finding mom...

You know, how the FUCK am I supposed to find her if she's not even gonna tell me where the fuck she is?

"Omnitech isn't what it seems, Maximus.", was the only words I have of what, I assume, left of her. Even then I can't really be 100% sure if that message was even from her in the first place.

But I guess standing here, looking up at the sky, at the front of the spaceport looking like a dumbass isn't gonna get me anywhere, so I walked to the curb, raised my hand, flagged down a cab, and headed to the only place I know that could have an answer, The Afterlife. Might as well grab a drink or two before heading to the hotel. It was only 9 PM.

As the cab passed through Downtown and parts of City Centre, I could start to really see why they called it the 'City of Dreams'. The elite here were REALLY high class, or they just knew how to dress and act like a corpo rat. I wouldn't rule out both possibilities.

Tall, urban, city-like buildings lined the street with neon screens advertising god knows what, published by god knows who, and if someone didn't grow up in a landscape like this, they'd probably find it too much to handle. Lucky for me (I guess), I grew up in the tough city of Sydney. The whole area kinda reminded me of an old city I learned about, called New York. They told us that they labelled the place as 'The City that Never Sleeps', with all the lights blaring and just in your face. I guess if you were to ask me, I'd say Night City is just a futuristic version of New York. The pictures make it seem like it. The whole city just feels like it's suffocating you and that you can't breathe. But at the same time, you can't help but feel so free to do what you want at the same time.

I took notice of the people roaming the streets of City Centre, they looked civilised enough, which felt weird, considering this was supposedly the 'Crime Capital of the NUSA'. Until 2080 rolled around, when I heard a guy called Lewis Reynolds took charge from someone and somebody made a change somewhere and blah blah blah. I wasn't really interested in all that.

What was obvious however, was that the name 'Omnitech' kept popping up on almost every second building. But for some reason I couldn't see any Arasaka logos or vehicles anywhere, and considering they're one of the world's biggest megacorps, it was weird not seeing anything, considering they were all over the place back home in Sydney. Was Omnitech some new company I've never heard of? Where'd they come from?

I also noticed that the people came in all shapes and sizes, but that was normal; some were heavily implanted with cybernetics, some were almost all organic, and some were bald. I assumed they were monks.

A common behaviour I noticed though, was that the 'Organics' gave a wide berth whenever they saw a heavily implanted choom walk approaching their way. Probably because they were scared of a cyberpsycho breaking out in front of them. I don't blame them either, cyberpsycho cases are deadly and just downright crazy. Best leave them to Maxtac.