His relationship with video games dated back to childhood. After school, he would rush to internet cafés with a handful of coins. Over time, it stopped being an occasional pastime and became a constant routine. As an adult, he still played, though without the competitive obsession he had in his teenage years.
Multiplayer games and pay-to-win systems never interested him much. He preferred complete experiences. Self-contained stories, defined worlds, and clear rules. Games that could be explored in depth until every system and possibility was fully understood.
And he mastered this one.
He explored every district of Night City. Tested every viable build combination, experimented with implants, weapons, and combat styles until he understood how the game's systems truly worked. Every skill tree was pushed to its limit, every mechanic exploited until he found what worked best.
He also completed all the major story variations. Every relevant ending. Every possible narrative path.
Always searching for a different answer.
Until he reached the last one.
There were no more expansions announced. No new updates on the horizon. The game's lifecycle was officially over.
The final confirmation appeared on the screen.
He had completed everything.
Normally, he would have closed the game without a second thought. But this time, he let the credits roll. It was the definitive ending. After nearly a decade since its release, the developers had announced they would stop producing content and move on to a second installment, abandoning V's story entirely.
For years, he had kept playing with a persistent hope: to find a way to change the tragic ending of the story.
But he never managed to do it.
No matter what choices he made, there was always a sense of incompleteness. As if every path inevitably led to the same destination.
The hope that some DLC might alter that outcome vanished when they announced the project's closure.
That was when a screen appeared that he had never seen before.
—Do you want to change V's story?
He stared at the message for several seconds.
It didn't make sense. No new content had been announced, and nothing like this had been mentioned in forums or communities.
He thought it might be a bug. Or a corrupted file left behind by some mod he had installed months ago. Some hidden remnant the game had failed to remove.
Still, he moved the cursor to "YES."
He clicked.
And the moment he pressed the button—
The screen went black.
He opened his eyes.
He was no longer in front of his monitor.
He was in a damp, poorly lit underground space. The place was built from bare concrete, with rusted pipes running along the walls and hundreds of exposed cables crossing the ceiling in every direction.
The air was heavy, thick with dust and moisture.
It took him a few seconds to stand.
He scanned the environment carefully. Everything suggested he was in some kind of abandoned metro station. The space was wide but neglected, as if no one had been there for years.
But the strangest part wasn't the place.
It was his body. It felt completely different from his weak, anemic one.
He looked down. The clothes he was wearing weren't his. His own wardrobe had always been full of loose clothes and medical gowns.
The realization pushed him toward a few broken shards of glass on the ground. He crouched and used one as an improvised mirror.
The reflection confirmed what he already suspected.
He was looking at V's face.
He had created many versions of V over the years, but this one in particular had taken him entire days in the character editor. He hadn't wanted just an attractive avatar; he wanted an exact representation of how he imagined the protagonist.
That was the face he remembered.
The outfit matched as well. A neo-military style body armor with an integrated folding helmet, designed for a Corpo background. He had always believed the character's origin should be reflected not only in narrative choices, but also in appearance and equipment.
Everything was exactly as he had configured it.
A sword rested at his hip, and a single pistol sat in his shoulder holster.
For a few seconds, he remained silent, trying to process the situation. It was absurd from any logical standpoint, but arguing with reality wouldn't change anything.
—For now… let's move forward.
Even he was surprised by how calm he sounded. But his mind had processed the situation at high speed, leaving no time to fully register his own decisions.
It wasn't just his body that felt different. His thoughts were clearer, more structured, as if his mind had adopted the same analytical coldness he had always imagined for this character.
He needed to find a way out.
It didn't take long to find an elevator platform in a side tunnel. It was an industrial slab embedded in the ground, covered in a thin layer of dust and accumulated grime. At first glance, it looked abandoned, but the structure remained intact.
He stepped onto it cautiously.
For a second, nothing happened.
Then the ground beneath his boots began to vibrate, and the platform started to move. A deep hum ran through the mechanism as the slab slowly rose through the vertical shaft.
He exhaled in relief.
If the elevator didn't work, exploring kilometers of abandoned tunnels wasn't a particularly appealing alternative.
He remained steady as it ascended. The space was narrow, and the friction of the mechanism against the walls produced a metallic echo that resonated through the shaft. Small particles of dust fell from above each time the system vibrated.
The elevator continued rising for nearly half a minute.
The hum of the motor became more irregular as it climbed. The mechanism seemed old, but surprisingly resilient. Finally, the platform stopped with a sharp jolt.
A metal panel in front of him slid open with a rusted screech.
A gust of colder air rushed into the shaft, contaminated air flooding his lungs.
He stepped forward and exited the elevator.
The place he arrived at was another metro station, but far larger than the lower level. Several broken advertisement screens hung from the walls. Some still flickered with distorted images.
He immediately recognized the style.
Advertisements for cybernetic implants. Weapon promotions. Corporate credits.
It was the kind of omnipresent propaganda found in Cyberpunk 2077.
He walked a few steps along the platform.
The ceiling lights were off, but some emergency lights were still working. The place was covered in trash, graffiti, and abandoned machinery.
It looked like a forgotten sector of the metro network.
He stopped when something caught his attention. A small interface panel embedded in the wall.
Instinctively, he raised his hand.
The gesture came out automatically, as if his body remembered how to do it.
The moment his fingers touched the panel, a blue screen appeared in his field of vision.
Not on the wall.
Directly on his retina.
A HUD.
He stood still for a few seconds. He had seen that interface thousands of times in the game. But seeing it projected inside his own vision was something entirely different.
System active.
Neural link initialized.
Implant scan:
— Kiroshi Optics: operational
— Personal data link: active
— Biometric system: stable
He blinked slowly.
He wasn't just in the character's body.
He had all the implants too.
The first gunshot echoed through the tunnel, followed almost immediately by a short burst of automatic fire. The sound bounced off the concrete walls of the abandoned station, amplified by the empty space until it became a constant echo of detonations. It wasn't a stray shot or an accident.
It was an active firefight.
He approached the edge of the platform cautiously. As he moved, the folding helmet of his armor deployed automatically around his head with a soft mechanical sound.
The visor came online instantly.
The world changed.
Darkness was no longer an obstacle. Thermal signatures appeared highlighted in the multi-spectrum visor—human bodies turned into luminous silhouettes moving between pillars and the remains of abandoned train cars.
Eight heat sources, clearly defined. Possibly a ninth further back, partially obscured by rusted metal.
The trajectory prediction system began drawing subtle lines, anticipating each combatant's movements based on their direction and weapon positioning.
The information floated across his vision as if it had always been there.
Two groups.
One was taking cover behind the platform pillars.
The other was advancing from the tunnel, using the train car as cover while firing intermittent bursts.
Gangs.
The kind of chaotic confrontation that happened daily in Night City.
He observed for several seconds without intervening. The armor maintained filtered, clean air inside the helmet while dust and smoke particles drifted through the station.
For a moment, he simply watched—stunned—seeing real violence unfold for the first time.
Then one of the men in the tunnel stopped.
The thermal silhouette shifted slightly.
A flash.
The bullet struck the metal of the elevator behind him with a violent impact that echoed through the station.
—THERE! ON THE PLATFORM!
Three weapons turned toward him almost at the same time.
The first bullets tore through the air in his direction.
The visor reacted before he did, briefly outlining the predicted trajectories of the incoming projectiles.
He shifted half a step to the side.
One bullet passed exactly where his head had been.
The others struck his torso with dull, heavy impacts that shook his body, but the armor absorbed most of the force. Layers of dense polymers and ceramics dispersed the energy before it reached him.
The other group had noticed him too.
Now both sides were shooting at him.
For a moment, he wondered why they had stopped fighting each other to focus on him—but his accelerated thought process quickly provided the answer.
He was an unknown factor.
In the middle of a supposedly abandoned tunnel.
At the exact moment two gangs were fighting.
—...I don't think I can talk my way out of this.
He stood still for a second, analyzing the situation.
Eight enemies.
Two automatic rifles.
One shotgun.
Several pistols.
Irregular cover across the station.
If he tried to retreat, he would have to cross both lines of fire.
Even if his character could theoretically endure it, the idea of actually getting hurt was another matter.
In the game, you just healed instantly with an injector.
Now it was real.
And his equipment was minimal. No stimulants. No backup.
He had already tried to access an inventory or status screen. Aside from the HUD—something everyone in this world seemed to have—there was nothing.
So he chose the simplest solution.
Eliminate the problem.
He activated the Dynalar Sandevistan.
The change was immediate—and deeply unnatural.
It wasn't that the world stopped.
It was that everything else became incredibly slow.
Gunfire bursts turned into individual projectiles he could follow with his eyes as they moved through the air. Ejected casings spun slowly before falling to the ground.
The sound of combat stretched into a low, elongated echo.
His own body, however, moved at normal speed.
He jumped.
The reinforced tendons in his legs released absurd power, launching him upward effortlessly.
The first jump carried him to the side of the abandoned train car.
The second propelled him directly on top of it.
From that elevated position, he had a full view of the fight.
Eight enemies.
Now seven.
One of the men was raising his rifle toward him—but the motion was painfully slow.
The katana left its sheath with a clean metallic sound.
He dropped into the group.
The first strike was fast and precise, cutting through the man's chest before his weapon finished rising.
The second attacker had barely begun to turn when the blade traced a short arc that opened his throat.
The helmet's movement prediction system was already projecting the next likely trajectory of the closest enemy.
His body simply followed that line, as if executing a movement he already knew by memory.
When time returned to normal speed, two bodies were already collapsing to the ground.
The remaining combatants were only just beginning to understand that the stranger on the platform was no longer there.
Now he was in the middle of them.