Morning in Night City.
The sun rises over the skyline, light spilling between chrome towers and scattering the smog.
Where sunlight falls, shadows retreat—but the high-rises just cast new ones.
Half of the Qianchi Corp plaza glows in gold, the other half sinks in steel-gray shade.
Pedestrians swarm the ring-shaped skywalk; above them, aircars weave through the megablock canyons like silver serpents.
One of those cars—a dull, silver-gray AV-type hovercar—slides out from Qianchi's mid-level hangar.
The automated gate opens, and the craft drifts out on schedule, its grav-engines humming softly.
By flight plan, it should've been heading toward North Oak.
But once it cleared the corporate airspace, the car abruptly yawed off course, drifting toward an unregistered vector—like someone had hijacked the nav-AI mid-route.
Inside Qianchi headquarters, in a signal-monitoring data suite, a tech analyst jolted upright as red warning icons filled his display.
"President Xu—just as you predicted. The vehicle's deviated from its assigned route. It's moving toward an unknown sector."
Xu Wanxue inclined her head slightly, eyes locked on the red blip pulsing on the holo-map.
That was her AV—now flagged as compromised.
"The chip that seized the flight control core—the one carrying the black ICE payload. Have you finished analyzing it?"
Her tone was calm, but her gaze swept the room like a razor.
The data room buzzed with quiet urgency.
A long holo-table ran down the center; analysts and netrunners worked at their stations, running traces, decrypting telemetry, compiling reports for Xu's command feed.
On the wall, a giant AR display streamed layers of system data, flight vectors, and security overlays.
Among the staff, one figure stood out—a woman with wine-red hair, leaning back in her chair with a smirk, far too relaxed for a crisis meeting.
A netrunner at the far end spoke up:
"Our intel team's traced the code structure. That chip was almost certainly built in-house. The daemon routines are pro-grade—someone with corp-level training. No street hacker could write something that clean."
Xu gave a curt nod, eyes never leaving the feed.
The red-haired woman leaned in, speaking low with a grin:
"So, Vice Prez, what kind of op are we running here—good enough to drag me in personally?"
Xu shot her a side-glance—cold and unimpressed.
Her friend's grin only widened.
That woman was Liu Ruoying, a top-tier cyberware engineer from Kang Tao—and one of the few people Xu actually trusted.
Xu sighed quietly.
"You'll see soon enough. But listen—if you don't wanna flatline your reputation in front of everyone here, keep your persona in check. Don't make me regret bringing you."
Ruoying blinked, curiosity burning brighter, but seeing Xu's eyes fixed back on the holo-display, she stayed silent.
Moments later, as if expecting detection, the hijacked AV slowed.
On the holo-map, its vector flattened—it was landing.
"How's the drone feed?" Xu asked. "I want a live visual."
"Linking now."
With a few gestures, the big screen flickered to life, showing an aerial drone view in razor-sharp clarity.
The AV was descending onto the rooftop of a rundown high-rise.
Pipes, coils, and water tanks cluttered the surface—no proper landing zone.
Still, the hovercar's autopilot aligned perfectly, lowering onto a reinforced tank.
Even the old AV-4s could balance six tons of steel on a car roof; this new corporate model handled it effortlessly.
The data room went silent as everyone watched.
Then, without warning—
Flashes bloomed.
A cluster of fireballs erupted across the rooftop like daylight ghosts—white-hot plasma bursts tearing through the haze.
Before anyone could react, multiple explosions ripped through the AV.
The screen filled with fire.
For a long moment, no one breathed.
Then Xu shot to her feet, staring at the inferno. Her jaw tightened, teeth pressing against her lower lip. Her body trembled—not from fear, but fury.
The side display confirmed: vehicle destroyed.
"It's optical-camouflage skin!" one weapons analyst yelled. "The attackers are running stealth skin grafts—cloaked. And they've got heavy ordnance!"
"Armor-piercing shells," another muttered. "Given the AV's defense grid... yeah, it's toast."
He realized he'd stated the obvious—the feed showed nothing but wreckage and fire.
Heat signatures flashed across the map—six hostiles, perfectly spaced, each covering a kill angle.
No matter where the AV landed, it would've been a kill box.
"They're running signal jammers too. Without the drone's encrypted uplink, we'd have no trace at all," another operator said grimly.
Xu's team fell silent.
A textbook black-ops hit.
From hijack to detonation—barely three minutes.
Even if someone inside had survived, they'd be trapped—no exits on that rooftop.
Many glanced toward Xu Wanxue.
She stood rigid, cold-eyed.
If she hadn't known about this hit in advance, the footage would be tonight's breaking feed on NCN NewsNet.
Fortunately, the AV had been empty.
Now all that was left was to let Qianchi Security move in, surround the building, and wipe the squad.
Then—
"Wait! Zoom in—rooftop access hatch! Someone's there!" a tech shouted.
The view magnified.
A figure stood by the stairwell door—a young man in a yellow jacket, casually wiping a katana with a handkerchief.
His eyes, cold as chrome, scanned the rooftop.
His lips moved.
No comms, no mic—just talking to the air.
Everyone watching knew—he was addressing the cloaked operatives.
The drone's directional mic picked up his voice, and the words echoed through the control room:
"Now… it's time to switch sides."
The rooftop—a perfect trap.
No way down for the prey.
No way out for the hunters.
A fair game. A flawless reversal.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🧠 MY CYBERPUNK 2077 SIMULATOR
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🧠 WHAT IF YOU COULD SIMULATE THE FUTURE BEFORE LIVING IT?
One choice.
One simulation.
One completely different path through Night City.
My Cyberpunk 2077 Simulator has 100+ chapters ahead available now.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
⚡ CALCULATE. ADAPT. SURVIVE.
🧠 Simulation
🤖 Cyberware development
⏱️ Sandevistan technology
🏢 Corporate intrigue
🔫 Combat & assassinations
🌃 Night City
♟️ Planning several moves ahead
Knowledge is power.
Preparation is survival.
And in Night City...
Knowing what comes next can make you terrifying.
🔥 300+ CHAPTERS AHEAD.
👉 See how far the simulation goes.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🌐 SrMagnusCorp: https://srmagnuscorp.com/
🔥 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/MrMagnus
🐦 X / Twitter: https://x.com/SrMagnuscorp
⚠️ More Power Stones = greater release priority.
🧠 The next simulation has already begun.