"Where'd this kid come from? No implants on him either—some monk off the street?"
"Why ask so much? Just get the cash and get the body in. We tear it apart, job done. Asking questions doesn't keep you long in this business."
"Wait, someone broke into the dorm?"
Yogan, who had stayed up all night gaming, was in a daze as he slowly woke. What puzzled him the most wasn't the sensation of being dragged across the ground, but the strange conversation he'd just overheard—it wasn't in Mandarin, yet he could understand it perfectly.
He felt himself being hauled by someone, but his body wouldn't respond, as if he were paralyzed or under sleep paralysis.
"How did the last batch go?"
"All the implants are stripped. We're still checking if there are any extra components we can squeeze some value from. Honestly, though, these poor bastards didn't have much to begin with."
"What about the shells?"
"Dumped in the tub. With ice. Didn't want the stench drawing in the NCPD pigs."
Wait a second—NCPD?
In Yogan's memory, the only place where "NCPD" referred to a police department was in Night City—that corporate-run dystopia from a game he'd played too much of. Combining this with the earlier conversation he'd overheard, a horrifying possibility struck him: he'd been kidnapped by the Scavs—Night City's infamous scavengers.
"No way... I didn't actually transmigrate, did I?"
The idea hit Yogan like a brick. But he preferred to think this was some twisted prank by his dormmates rather than the truth. After all, waking up in Night City in the hands of Scavs was the definition of a nightmare beginning.
Then, what sounded like the leader of the scavengers asked again, "You scrubbed the comms on these last few loads?"
A voice Yogan didn't recognize replied, "Yeah, they're blacked out. But boss, do we really still need to be this careful? The rest of the crew's already cleared out. It's just us three here finishing up. Besides this one," he gestured to Yogan, "we're done."
The leader said nothing more, only told his subordinates to finish up quickly.
Moments later, Yogan felt himself being dragged into a bathroom-like room. The sound of a heavy door closing and a click as the lock turned echoed ominously. He was trapped.
The solid doorframe cut him off from the rest of the building, and the scavengers' voices faded into muffled grumbling.
Through sheer effort, Yogan finally started regaining control of his limbs. Even before he opened his eyes, he clung to the hope that this was all an elaborate prank. But the moment his eyes opened, he couldn't help but mutter a soft "Shit."
He was staring at an unfamiliar bathroom ceiling.
Sitting up slowly, he tried to get his body back to normal while scanning the rest of the room.
There was a faint metallic tang in the air—a smell he recognized as blood. Though rundown, the bathroom's devices were clearly far more advanced than anything you'd find in 2020.
Aside from a chillingly out-of-place refrigeration unit obviously brought in after the fact, the room's main feature was a massive tub, half-concealed behind a plastic curtain.
With trembling hands and clinging to the last shred of hope, Yogan pulled back the curtain.
What he saw made his stomach churn, and any hope of this being a prank evaporated.
Inside the tub, several dismembered corpses floated in ice-cold water. Hollowed out, missing limbs, and—most disturbingly—one corpse's bloody eye sockets stared right at him.
He clenched his jaw to hold back vomit and forced himself to remain silent, not wanting to alert anyone outside. Knowing he was likely the next "project," Yogan began searching for any possible escape route.
Time was running out.
He tore through the room quickly, but the scavengers had clearly anticipated potential escape attempts. Most fixtures had been removed, leaving only a sink, a toilet, and the tub. The only remaining piece of tech was the refrigeration unit keeping the corpses on ice.
The only potential exit was a small window—barely large enough to crawl through. Thankfully, it hadn't been reinforced. With some effort, Yogan managed to remove the glass and set it aside.
But once he poked his head out, any hope drained again. He was at least twenty stories up. Worse, the wall offered barely any footholds. Climbing down was suicide.
He pulled back in and sat, heart pounding. The scavengers could return at any moment, and his only escape route was a death trap.
"What now? Am I really going to die here?"
Just then, the muffled voices outside grew louder. They must've finished with the last "project" and were preparing for him.
Then, a wild idea came to him—something straight out of a novel.
"Screw it. Do or die!"
"Chains" was one of the older scavengers still operating in the Lijing District. In a trade known for high turnover, he'd lasted this long by avoiding big risks and focusing on small, manageable jobs—the ones most scavvers didn't care about.
Scavengers were a chaotic bunch. Though the real organ trade operations in Night City were run by corrupt hospitals, crematoriums, and NCPD morgues, the public knew the term "scavenger" thanks to the smaller groups snatching victims right off the street.
Uneducated and violent, most Scavs barely understood what a real organization was. Many just fell in with whoever had the guts to lead and chose their "team" based on who they bumped into while fencing stolen implants.
Naturally, this loose structure led to betrayal, turf wars, and even Scavs hiring mercs to assassinate each other. In such a mess, keeping a low profile was the only way to survive long-term.
Chains had done exactly that, keeping his circle small—just him and two other guys. He was the "leader" mostly because the other two were too dumb to make decisions.
Recently, though, Chains had landed a rare, lucrative job.
Two days ago, some street punk—clearly surviving off muggings—sold him a corpo. It didn't take a genius to figure out the kid had botched a robbery and turned a mugging into a murder.
The NCPD usually ignored street crimes unless they involved corpos or left clues behind. To avoid getting caught, many gangsters would call in scavengers to handle the body.
Most of the time, Chains would shake down these rookies, charging ridiculous fees to "dispose" of the body. But when a corpse looked valuable, he was more than happy to make a deal.
This corpo had high-end implants. After some haggling, Chains took the body in exchange for a neural dock and a data chip—expensive losses, but the rest of the body more than made up for it.
Even better, their gang had just moved to a new base, leaving Chains' trio behind to clean up. That meant they could work in peace without paying any cuts or explaining things to higher-ups.
By now, the corpo had been stripped to parts. All that remained was the last piece of business: the monk-looking kid who had arrived recently—seemingly implant-free.
Chains had been practically whistling as he approached the bathroom, ready to finish the job and cash out.
Then he opened the door.
The room was empty.
The "merchandise" had vanished.
All that was left was the ventilation opening—now wide open, gaping like a sneering mouth.
Chains froze.
That kid had no implants.
The building's outer wall had no grip points.
His brain raced.
Then a phrase popped into his mind from some long-forgotten book:
"When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."
The scene pointed to only one possibility…
"Fuck—he's not a monk, he's a fake! Go after him! Now!"
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