Night City's nocturnal skyline was as dazzling as ever—yet tinged with a certain loneliness.
Every towering skyscraper shimmered under massive billboards and kaleidoscopic neon lights, bathing the city in artificial sunlight.
The wealthier, more extravagant buildings were even fitted with holographic projectors—breathing vivid life into otherwise dull gray façades, offering every skyward glance a touch of surreal beauty.
But this beauty existed for one purpose: to please the elites perched at the top of the city's hierarchy.
Only they had the leisure to enjoy the gradient from darkness to light that unfolded each night.
They lived on the highest floors, gazing down at the city beneath them—both amidst and above the splendor.
Ordinary people could only observe from afar, or crane their necks upward in uncomfortable awe, yearning for a dream forever out of reach.
And yet, someone always stood in those dreams—overlooking the city from above, manipulating events from the shadows.
Just like the three men in suits atop the residential tower adjacent to Lizzie's Bar.
The trio of corporate operatives watched with icy detachment as the brute came crashing down from the sky and clashed with the Mox members—just as planned.
The sensors implanted in the brute's body transmitted all relevant data in real time: body vitals, cyberware performance, and, most crucially, feedback from the Berserk Module.
"Hero Landing mode engaged successfully. With the titanium bone reinforcement, enhanced tendons, and alloy-stabilized leg modules, the subject withstood a 15.6-meter drop. Upon impact, the pressure-diffusion system in the legs functioned correctly—the shockwave displaced air with enough force to stagger nearby adult targets..."
One of the men, fingers gliding across a mobile terminal, read the report calmly while footage of the impact played back onscreen.
Lines of performance metrics scrolled rapidly across the display. He precisely extracted every valid datapoint.
While the techie compiled stats, another man—the recorder—sighed, eyes fixed on the scene below through the window.
These days, with braindance-enabled recording implants, you could capture video from your own perspective. His cybernetic eye camera was basically a toy by comparison.
A real camera... wired straight into your brain.
"I seriously don't get what R&D's smoking. Why waste so many features adding a 'Hero Landing Mode' to the Berserk module? It's flashy but useless. Wouldn't it be better to just let the guy fire a few more rounds and take out more targets?"
The recorder muttered under his breath, his annoyance bleeding into every word.
The team leader heard him and let out a cold chuckle but didn't bother to comfort the man.
After all, wasn't he a little bitter too?
Every corp loved competition. Internal rivalries were even fiercer.
Those researchers sitting safe in the back lines, fiddling with products and enjoying their paid vacations—they had it far better than the grunts collecting real-world data in live combat zones.
"These aren't your bargain-bin MK1 or MK2 implants. When this high-end Berserk module is finalized, the first wave of buyers will be bigshots with more eddies than sense. They love this kind of theatrical flair. You know how all those edgerunners go on and on about being cool, stylish, cyber-chic?"
"Style over substance. I think they call it kitsch. And to be fair, in a city like Night City where every other building scrapes the clouds, a module that overloads your leg actuators and controls landing posture to dissipate impact... it's not as useless as you think."
The techie chuckled, still typing furiously as he offered the explanation.
"You and your fancy words again," the recorder grumbled.
"That's called 'rational analysis'. Which is why you do grunt work, and I do the thinking."
The techie smirked with disdain, hands never stopping.
The team leader finally coughed to break up the bickering before it escalated.
"We're all just wage slaves. Let's not tear each other down. Do your jobs."
The room fell briefly silent, save for the click-clack of keys and the distant pop-pop of gunfire.
Even this high up, they could still hear the firefight raging below. The sounds painted a vivid picture of urban combat in their minds.
"Knew it. Testing on small-time gangs like the Mox is ideal. Their firepower represents the global average for criminal organizations. Great real-world benchmark."
The recorder watched the Mox members surround their test subject, unloading round after round. To him, it was practically a stage play.
"Defensive algorithm efficiency is within expectations. The support nanobot network inside the module enhances defense by approximately 20%. Combined with the corp's Series 2-11 dermal plating, the subject can shrug off most standard munitions."
The techie relayed calmly.
The team leader gave a distracted nod and began drafting the experiment report on his retinal HUD.
Suddenly, the recorder remembered something.
"Wait—what if this drags in MaxTac? There's no way the subject survives if two or three teams show up."
"Relax. The company's plan was always to let MaxTac wrap things up. This whole incident'll just be flagged as another cyberpsycho rampage. Then we retrieve the body through our channels and toss a few more eddies at the NCPD. Problem solved."
The leader didn't even look up as he spoke.
"Oh. Well, in that case, we're golden," the recorder replied.
Pathetic creature.
He glanced at the raving test subject below and couldn't help the thought—but felt no pity. This wasn't their first time doing something like this.
But it was the first time they'd turned a healthy human into a full-blown cyberpsycho... by forcing him to harm the one he loved.
Flashes of that experiment played in his mind—and a smile tugged at the recorder's lips.
It had been kind of thrilling.
As the on-site documentarian, he'd filmed everything—every stage of the subject's transformation from ordinary man to monster. Every step had been recorded in exquisite detail.
He'd watched the pain unfold. Live.
Tonight's "incident" was just another in a long list of "accidents."
A few bodies. Maybe some public outcry. But in the end, it would all be blamed on a gang skirmish with the Tyger Claws.
Even if someone dug deeper—so what?
You think trash like them could take on a megacorp?
Even if MooreTech wasn't in the same league as Arasaka or Militech, no gang in the city could compete with that kind of power.
With that comforting thought, the recorder cheerfully watched as the brute grabbed a Mox member in one hand.
Finally, some blood.
But then—an instant later:
"Holy shit—what the fuck is that!?"
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