"Breathe in—cough, cough, cough!"
Standing by the border checkpoint of Night City, Arthur took a deep breath of the "fresh" air and almost gagged on the chemical-laced stench.
"This is it... This is the real taste of Night City!" he muttered, half in admiration, half in disgust.
As a traveler who had inherited the memories of his body's previous owner, Arthur remembered that the air quality had been just as bad a decade ago. Some things, it seemed, never changed. Over time, Night City had only gotten louder, dirtier, and meaner.
The towering garbage mountain off in the distance, glowing ominously under the dying sunset, was still there too. A man-made Everest built from generations of consumerism, neglect, and corporate apathy. Fixing it would've been simple—at least technologically. But the corpos at the top? They didn't care. With high-grade cybernetic lungs and smell filters, the stench was just another distant problem for the "lower classes" to deal with.
And the poor? Well, they could always take out another crushing loan to get a better nose.
Business was business in Night City.
Arthur shook his head and pulled a worn ID document from his jacket, tossing it casually into the checkpoint booth's window. The border officer inside barely glanced at it before stamping it and flinging it back through the slot like a piece of trash.
"Welcome back to Night City, Mr. Arthur!" the officer droned mechanically, eyes already shifting to the next poor soul in line.
Arthur stuffed the document into his pocket and snorted, "Right. Welcome back to my kennel, like a stray mutt who couldn't survive outside."
Hearing that, the bored officer's eyes lit up a little. He leaned forward and pitched his voice low.
"In that case, maybe you'd like to visit the Crystal Palace? Heaven on earth, choomba. I can sell you a discount ticket right now."
Arthur's lip curled in disgust.
This was what he hated most about Night City: the endless advertisements, the never-ending grift. Here, even the border patrol hustled side gigs.
"Next thing you know, they'll print ads on the damn toilet paper," Arthur muttered, grabbing his small duffel bag from the ground and walking away without another word.
He had already arranged a pickup through Delamain. Sure enough, as he reached the roadside, a sleek black cab with the familiar Delamain logo was waiting for him.
Arthur slid into the back seat, tossing his bag beside him. As soon as he plugged his personal link into the system, the vehicle purred to life.
"Welcome back to Night City, Mr. Arthur," came Delamain's cultured, artificial voice. "It's been... quite some time."
"Yeah, yeah," Arthur said, leaning back. "Haven't seen you, the world's most polite junkyard robot, in a while. What's the big news lately? Anyone climbed the Arasaka Tower to fistfight Adam Smasher yet?"
Delamain paused, as if genuinely considering it.
"Night City remains... Night City. No major disturbances. However, the latest headlines feature a cyberpsycho incident in Memorial Park. Several MaxTac operatives were terminated during the conflict. The black market is already flooded with braindance recordings and theories about the event."
Arthur narrowed his eyes thoughtfully.
It sounded familiar—almost too familiar. But then again, in Night City, cyberpsychos were as common as vending machine muggings. You slapped enough chrome onto a man, and eventually, something snapped.
"Probably just another failed experiment from a corp's back-alley R&D," Arthur muttered. "You'd think they'd learn after the hundredth massacre."
Delamain, being Delamain, offered no comment.
The cab smoothly merged into traffic, heading toward Santo Domingo—Arthur's old stomping grounds. Out the window, the decaying sprawl of the city stretched out in all directions, a chaotic collage of neon, grime, and concrete ruins.
Arthur touched the metal of his own cybernetic arm absentmindedly. This body—originally belonging to some poor Night City netrunner—had been heavily modified. So much so that the previous owner eventually developed full-blown cyberpsychosis and fled the city, desperate for a cure that didn't exist.
In the end, the old owner had died alone in a dingy motel room, drowned in cheap liquor and despair.
And Arthur had woken up in his place.
Thanks to whatever anomaly had dragged his soul into this world, Arthur's mind had remained clear. No cyberpsychosis. No madness whispering in the back of his skull.
Instead, he had gained something else.
A system.
A sign-in cheat, to be exact.
The rules were simple: check in at certain locations around Night City, and the system would reward him. Weapons. Skills. Cyberware. Money. Anything was possible.
But there was a catch.
The system only worked in Night City.
Arthur smiled wryly. Fate, it seemed, had a twisted sense of humor.
The cab pulled up in front of a towering, decaying super-skyscraper bathed in the bloody glow of the setting sun. Arthur grabbed his duffel and stepped out, staring up at the monolithic structure.
For a moment, a strange sense of déjà vu washed over him.
He shook it off. Of course this place looked familiar. He used to live here—before the original Arthur had fled.
The cab door slammed shut, and Delamain's voice chirped one final time.
"The fare has been deducted from your account. Thank you for choosing Delamain. Choose Delamain—leave your worries behind."
With a growl from its electric engine, the cab sped off, disappearing into the river of traffic.
Arthur glanced at the lower corner of his retina. His balance had dropped. Great.
He shook his head, adjusted his bag over his shoulder, and walked into the building.
Inside, the elevator groaned under years of neglect as it rattled its way up toward Arthur's old floor. Advertisements flickered on the cracked screen above the buttons—escort services, prosthetic upgrades, dubious pharmaceutical offers—all painted in gaudy neon.
He reached his door... and stopped.
A bright red eviction notice was plastered over it.
"Tenant delinquent on rent. Three days to vacate or legal repossession will occur."
Arthur sighed.
"Welcome home, huh?"