Han Yu never expected that after completing Cyberpunk 2077 yet again, an easter egg he had never heard of or seen before would suddenly pop up on his screen.
As he controlled V to breach Arasaka’s underground Mikoshi server once more, blasting Adam Smasher’s corpse with a shotgun, then gazed down upon Night City from an aerial vehicle as the king of the city, a line of text abruptly appeared on the screen.
[Are you satisfied with the outco of this story, with everything that happened in this cyber world?]
[1. I am satisfied. After all, the word "life" is always filled with regrets.]
[2. I am not satisfied. If it’s all destined to be a tragedy, why did I even start this journey?]
Satisfied?
Jackie’s dual pistols were gathering dust in the storage room of his in-ga apartnt; David, Rebecca, and others were reduced to cold lines of text in the cetery; and V, the protagonist, still had only a few months left to live.
How could he possibly be satisfied?
Driven by this dissatisfaction, Han Yu decisively selected the second option.
But it seems like no one has triggered this easter egg before? I’ll reload a save later, record it, and see what’s up online.
Sitting up, Han Yu stared intently at the screen, fascinated by this sudden dialogue box.
[Then, are you willing to try again, to make up for everything, to see if you can truly save a city... or burn it all to ashes? Even if this ti, you might be the one to burn?]
[Think carefully and give your answer. Once you make your choice, there is no turning back!]
[Player, make your choice.]
[1. Forget it. V is V, and I am . No matter how strong I am in the ga, it’s all fake.]
[2. From this mont on, let this tiny spark of mine ignite!]
No question about it, he was definitely picking the second option!
But the mont Han Yu made his choice, he suddenly sensed sothing was off.
This option felt different from the usual ones encountered in the ga. The mysterious dialogue box seed to be addressing not the in-ga character V, but rather the player beyond the screen.
Still...
Wasn’t that even more intriguing?
Excited, Han Yu took a sip of his ice-cold cola and eagerly read the text that followed.
[Then, choose your beginning. Out of kindness, I offer you similar choices.]
[Choice 1. A nomad of the Bakker family, a foolish netrunner who stood at the edge of the Blackwall out of curiosity.]
[When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back at you.]
[Choice 2. A netrunner from the Arasaka Netrunner training facility, ordered to dig for Old Net data beyond the Blackwall as part of the job.]
[A foolish grave robber.]
[Choice 3. A Voodoo Boys street kid, diving deep into Cyberspace with friends, ignorantly summoning demons.]
[A pitiful nobody.]
After just a quick read, Han Yu had plenty of thoughts.
First, all three options provided by the ga were related to netrunners, or rather, Cyberspace, the Blackwall, and AIs.
Could it be that the one talking to is an active AI? Han Yu ca up with a relatively plausible hypothesis. After all, according to the ga’s setting, the player themselves was most likely a rogue AI, while the protagonist V was rely a puppet controlled by the player.
As for the identity choice, Han Yu didn’t find it difficult to decide.
First, the third option, Voodoo Boys street kid, was imdiately ruled out. When he played the ga, he hated the Scavengers the most, and the Voodoo Boys were a close second.
The Scavengers were organ dealers who lurked in the streets, making a living by stripping corpses or even kidnapping and killing people to harvest their cyberware for sale.
As for the Voodoo Boys, they were traitors to humanity with an extrely strong racial consciousness.
Primarily composed of the nomadic Haitian community, the Voodoo Boys were a gang active mainly in the digital world, possessing formidable netrunning skills and their own large-scale server, Rezo Agwe.
Not only were they extrely xenophobic, they were also surrenderists. In a cyberpunk world where humans and rogue AIs were sworn enemies, their ultimate goal was to breach the "Blackwall", the firewall preventing AIs from invading the real world.
They hoped to release the AIs, let them take over the world, and then serve as their lackeys, becoming the top henchn for the AIs in their new world order.
They were hardly human anymore.
The second option, the Arasaka background, seed sowhat familiar.
In the Cyberpunk ani Edgerunners, the female protagonist Lucy had escaped from there. It was called a Netrunner training facility, but in reality, it was a concentration camp for human mining rigs.
Arasaka gathered children with netrunning talent and threw them in, forcing them to dig through Cyberspace day and night for data from the Old Net era.
Honestly, Han Yu found this starting point quite intriguing.
As for the first option.
The Bakker family was actually the background family for the protagonist V in the Nomad life path. V had left this family and wandered all the way to Night City.
From a background perspective, it didn’t seem to have any major pitfalls, and it might even offer a chance to connect with the protagonist V.
Wait, the chatbox didn’t specify which year I’d be sent to, did it?
Please don’t send further into the future, straight into the Fifth Corporate War or sothing.
However, before Han Yu could make his choice, the options on the screen suddenly began to flicker. Before he could react, the first option representing the Bakker background vanished completely!
Now Han Yu didn’t dare hesitate any longer and imdiately selected option two; he’d rather be a mining rig at Arasaka than start with the disgusting Voodoo Boys background.
Muttering to himself, Han Yu pressed option two, his heart filled with both anxiety and excitent as he waited.
But the mont he made his choice, the computer screen in front of him suddenly switched to the ga’s main nu. Then, the screen began to flicker uncontrollably.
At first, the flickering resembled the visual effect of activating "Overclock" in the ga, with red and blue flashes along the edges. But soon, the entire screen dissolved into pixelated chaos.
In the instant the black and red lights flickered wildly, Han Yu’s vision went dark. The next mont, his hearing, sight, and sense of touch all vanished, leaving only a dead, silent darkness.
Faintly, a line of text flashed by in the haze.
[Intruding...]
[Intrusion complete.]
—--
The mont the text disappeared, Han Yu’s eyes snapped open.
No, it wasn’t just Han Yu. Fragnted mories of a boy nad rcer flickered through his mind. As a sharp pain pierced his skull, he instinctively reached behind his ear.
But even such a simple movent now felt agonizingly difficult, as if his entire body were being torn apart and boiled alive.
"Fuck!"
With a trembling, almost reflexive curse, Han Yu’s shaking hand finally grasped a data cable behind his ear and yanked it out violently.
Instantly, a chaotic cacophony erupted in his ears. The room lights flickered several tis before extinguishing completely, while the nearby computer screen and server unit a short distance away burst with a loud pop, spewing acrid black smoke and sparks.
In the darkness, only a few LED lights glowed red. In his panic, Han Yu rolled over and tumbled right out of the Netrunner Chair.
"Cough! Cough! Fuck!"
Struggling on the floor, he tried to push himself up, only to be t with a piercing alarm sound.
"Beep! Beep! Alert! Alert! Unknown data surge detected! Server overload!"
"Rogue AI attack confird. Protection mode activated!"
Blinding red ergency lights suddenly flooded the room. Dazed, Han Yu looked around and saw rows of Netrunner Chairs arranged around thick data cables.
On those chairs, seven children who appeared to be between twelve and sixteen years old were removing their netrunning gear.
Beside him, on the adjacent Netrunner Chair, a young boy lay dead, smoke rising from his head, blood streaming from his nose, mouth, and even ears.
[Welco to the world of Cyberpunk, my friend.]
A flat, chanically synthesized male voice suddenly spoke in his ear.
What the hell was that noise?!
The unexpected voice in his head sent chills down his spine.
Han Yu’s mind was still foggy, but the children who had removed their gear were now all staring directly at him.
"What’s wrong with rcer?"
"Hey, are you okay?"
"Whoa, the server’s smoking!"
"Tony? Tony!"
"...Tony’s dead."
[System reboot complete.]
[Biological monitoring back online.]
[Arasaka Mk.3 cyberdeck reconnected.]
[Arasaka Mk.3 RAM Upgrade reloaded.]
[Arasaka...]
Han Yu, or rather rcer, felt a stabbing pain in his head, as if soone were drilling into his brain with an electric drill. The sensation was utterly nauseating, nearly paralyzing his ability to think straight.
Amid the surrounding noise, rcer instinctively turned his head and t the tearful gaze of a girl with twin tails.
Just as the girl seed about to speak, a pale hand from beyond his line of sight grabbed his wrist, trying to help him up.
"Hey, rcer, are you okay?"
rcer turned and saw a beautiful girl with iridescent short hair looking at him with deep concern.
Why does she look so familiar...
Ah!
Lucy! rcer’s eyes widened slightly as he imdiately recognized the girl before him, that pretty face and distinctive rainbow-colored short hair were unmistakably the likeness of Lucy, the female protagonist from the ani Cyberpunk: Edgerunners!
"Lucy!? I’m... okay."
Almost instinctively, he replied with those words, but then a sudden wave of dizziness and nausea overwheld him, sending him crashing to the ground once more. This ti, he fell into complete unconsciousness.
Vaguely, he could faintly hear a few cold, almost inhuman voices.
[Code: FF:06:B5 operation successful.]
[Can this really change everything?]
[I’m not sure.]
[But it’s the best choice we have.]
[Then load the program.]
[Understood.]
[Comnce operation.]
[Operation codena: Ragnarok.]
[From this mont on, let’s ignite this small spark, my friend.]
The voices in his ears gradually faded, leaving behind only a pitch-black, deathly silence.
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