404: Doom Not Found

- 10 years before canon -

The ping came coded, bouncing off three burner nodes and landing in a dead drop mailbox I rarely checked. That was the first sign it might be worth reading.

"Need AV specialist. Low-profile install. No permits. 12k eddies flat. The Mox. Ask for the owner."

Victor read it twice. Not for clarity—there was enough. For tone. Direct. No fluff. Someone wanted real work done, quietly, without the Corpo vultures sniffing around.

He checked the coordinates, slung his tool rig, and left.

This wasn't a job for armour or weapons. This was wiring, rigging, and optimising. Sound and light systems were simple enough. The real challenge was getting them to run cleanly on budget equipment that someone else had already broken.

Victor arrived outside the club fifteen minutes later. Neon peeled off the walls like it was being poured from a wound. Music throbbed low through the pavement, subs hidden well enough to rattle teeth from half a block.

He didn't care.

He stepped past the front bouncer, who gave him a brief once-over and let him through after glancing at a list.

The woman waiting inside—black leather, chrome implants under her skin, eyes like burnt coals—wasn't smiling.

"You're the tech?"

Victor nodded. "If I weren't, you'd already know."

She looked him over again, cautiously. Not suspicious—professional. She gave a nod and turned.

"Follow."

He was led behind the bar, through a side panel door, and down a half-lit corridor that smelled like heat and ozone. The system hub was exactly what he expected: a rats' nest of spliced audio routing, jury-rigged power links, and incompatible software patched together with firmware stickers and chewing gum logic.

"Music drops on sync and some lights keep strobing past the tempo. DJ's complaining. Dancers keep missing their marks. You've got three hours. Less, if you can manage."

"Noted."

She watched him for a moment longer, then disappeared up the stairwell.

Victor set his tool rig down on the nearest flat surface, slid on his diagnostic gloves, and got to work.

Two hours in, he'd rerouted the cabling around a fried limiter and was halfway through building a new sound profile from scratch. It was salvageable. Barely.

He was calibrating the sub-harmonics when the air changed. Not audibly. Not visibly. But something in the atmosphere shifted.

Victor didn't look up at first.

But he heard the heavy footfalls. Three of them. Sharp scents of blood spray, cigarette oil, and synthetic pheromone blends.

Voices. Loud, smug.

"You the guy with the wires?" one said.

Victor kept working. "Yes."

One of them stepped closer. "You look like you're fixing a toaster."

"If your toaster ran two different operating systems and was bleeding voltage from six phantom ports, then yes."

That gave them pause. The leader of the trio leaned against the rack, pushing his shoulder into the cabling Victor had just spliced.

He looked up. "Don't touch that."

"Why?"

"It's not yours."

The man smirked, turning to the others. One laughed—too loud. The other kicked a chair backward into the wall and straddled it like a bored animal.

"Relax, choom. Just admiring the gear."

Victor stood. He wasn't armed to the teeth today, but he didn't need to be. His gloves hummed low, nearly inaudible. Just enough to make metal fillings itch if someone got close.

"I'm here to work. Not babysit degenerates. If that's a problem, I can leave. You won't get another tech to do this for twelve thousand."

The smirk faltered just slightly.

Before the thug could speak again, something heavy hit the back corridor wall. A muffled scream. Then silence.

Victor tilted his head. Not curiosity. Just confirmation.

One of the dancers stumbled past the entry curtain a few seconds later. Blood on her sleeve. Shaking. She didn't say anything. Just moved past them and up the stairs like she didn't want to be seen.

Victor watched her go.

The lead Tyger Claw turned back to him. "You didn't see anything."

"I'm not paid to."

"Good," the ganger said. But his grin had thinned.

Victor bent back over the soundboard. His voice was flat, cold, final.

"Then stay out of my light."

The gangers muttered something and wandered off.

He made a note to finish quickly. Systems could be optimised later.

What mattered now was keeping the job—and the wiring—clean.

And if someone forced his hand?

Well.

Victor still had a few tricks in the gloves.

[]

The girl collapsed halfway up the stairs.

A smear of red traced her path—arterial, fast, uncontained. Her hand reached for the rail. Missed. She tumbled sideways, hit the metal tread with a final clang, then stilled. One shoe still on. Her breath left her body in a sound barely louder than the music's baseline thrum.

Victor did not move.

He was still inside the backline array, kneeling beneath the central AV junction behind the bar, soldering capacitor links to the lighting relay. The synth lighting had a rhythmic delay on the fourth beat—inefficiency masquerading as style. He was correcting it.

Behind him, three Tyger Claws adjusted their collars and stretched their knuckles, satisfied. One laughed. Another spat a lozenge of blood onto the floor, not his own.

They turned to leave.

That's when Lizzie came out.

Boots on composite flooring. Slow. Not hesitant—calculated. Victor could hear her weight shifting forward, each footstep heavier than the last. The club's neon gave her silhouette a hellish cast, and for the briefest second, her shadow looked like something older. Medieval.

She didn't scream. Didn't demand justice.

She murmured.

"…mine. You were mine. They were all mine. Not theirs. Not like that…"

Victor paused his work only to reset the insulation sleeve on a thermal coupler. The metal hissed faintly. He kept his eyes down.

The first blow came with a sound like wet timber splitting.

Victor didn't need to turn.

He knew what an axe did to a human body.

A scream followed—half-born, half-dying. Then a thud.

Another blow. This time higher. Bone splitting at the neck.

Footsteps tried to retreat. One set, only one.

Another crack.

Then silence.

Three bodies now.

Victor stood slowly, adjusted the strap of his satchel, and slung it over his shoulder.

Behind him, Lizzie was hunched over one of the corpses, muttering. She gripped the fire axe like it was her own spine.

"…this is the only way they listen… the only way they understand. Cut it into them. Burn it in."

She dragged the first body to the entrance, blood trailing behind. Hung it by the shoulders using old signage chain.

The second followed.

Victor watched without emotion. Ritual through rage. A message written in viscera. A kind of clarity, ugly and absolute.

The third corpse she hoisted last—barely able to lift him, breath ragged from the effort. But she did. She hung them all like warnings. As if daring the city to forget what happened here.

Victor turned back to the relay, finished his last weld, and disconnected the calibration interface.

There was nothing left to say.

He walked past the bar, past the girl who'd died without a name, past Lizzie, still shaking as she stared at her work.

This place would not last.

He could already see the fire in its future. And the shape of the legend that would rise from its ashes.

But legends were for the dead.

He stepped outside into the cold neon wash, adjusted his coat, and vanished into the static of Night City.

Outside the club, the smell of blood hung thick and metallic.

The three bodies—Tyger Claws no more—dangled from rusted chains, their limbs twisted in grotesque warning. Around the back door, a few of Lizzie's workers huddled, eyes wide, breaths shallow. Their faces were pale under neon glows, shaken and quiet.

Lizzie stood near the threshold, shoulders rigid, eyes burning with something fierce and raw. The axe in her hands still gleamed with fresh blood, but her chest rose and fell slower now. The storm inside her was waning, replaced by a cautious, brittle calm.

Then footsteps—measured, steady—cut through the thick silence.

Victor stepped forward from the shadows, hands in the pockets of his long coat. His expression was unreadable, but his presence was unmistakable: the quiet, confident techie who'd just finished rewiring the club's systems with deadly precision.

Lizzie's gaze flicked to him, a flicker of surprise breaking through the exhaustion. The workers stiffened behind her, glancing nervously between the two.

"My work here is finished. You'll find the audio and visuals are fixed. Adjusted to your liking," Victor said simply, voice low and calm. "Now it's time to settle. I require payment."

Lizzie's jaw tightened.

Her eyes narrowed—not with anger but disbelief. "You want payment… now?"

Victor didn't flinch, his eyes locked with hers. 

"You never said I was to wait. Repairs don't pay themselves."

She took a shaky breath, gripping the axe handle a little tighter. "Didn't expect a man like you to be so… bold. After what you saw."

Victor's gaze didn't waver. "I need not fear what I understand."

One of the workers behind Lizzie stepped forward, her eyes glistening with tears, her voice barely a whisper. "They… they're scared now. All of us."

Lizzie's face softened for a moment, but her voice stayed firm. "Good. Fear keeps you alive."

Victor glanced toward the hanging bodies, then back at Lizzie. "Your system's stable. Sound's calibrated. Lighting fixed. All without a single complaint or call to the licensing office."

Lizzie's eyes flicked away, but she didn't interrupt.

Victor pulled a slim credchip from his coat, tapping it on the palm of his hand to activate it. "Twelve thousand eddies, as agreed. Your silence came at a premium."

Her lips twitched, half-smiling, half-bitter. "I didn't ask for quiet."

"No need to ask when the price is clear." He extended the credchip.

Lizzie hesitated, then took it with steady fingers. Her hand brushed his gauntlet briefly, cold and deliberate.

Victor said, "Don't wait too long to pay. NCPD's appetite for unlicensed tech is legendary, and your Tyger Claws might still have friends listening."

Her laugh was short, harsh. "They won't touch this place. Not tonight."

Victor inclined his head, voice low, final:"Tonight, maybe. But legends don't last forever."

Lizzie swallowed hard, eyes fixed on the street—on her message carved in blood. She said nothing, then disappeared back inside.

Victor didn't move immediately. His gaze lingered on the bodies hanging in the neon haze, the silence thick with unspoken threats.

After a long pause, she returned, clutching a data shard in one hand. She held it out without meeting his eyes.

"Payment. It's late."

Victor took the shard, scanning the numbers on his datapad. Twelve thousand eddies. Enough.

He nodded once. "Acceptable."

Her eyes flicked up, wary. "You're braver than most. After what you saw… what I did."

Victor's voice was flat, almost cold. "Bravery's for fools or saints. I'm neither."

Lizzie's jaw clenched. "And yet you stayed."

He gave a faint shrug. "Because unfinished business isn't mine to ignore."

Another silence stretched. Victor's fingers tapped the datapad once, then he finally turned toward the door.

Victor inclined his head, voice low and deliberate:

"Keep yourself alive, Lizzie. I wouldn't want to lose out on easy business."

He glanced past her to the flickering lights overhead.

"That DJ of yours—or whoever's messing with the boards—will probably break it again before next week. You'll be needing me back sooner than you think."

Lizzie opened her mouth, perhaps to argue, but Victor didn't wait for a reply. He turned sharply, coat trailing in the neon glow.

"Don't waste my time with noise," he said over his shoulder. "This city's full of ghosts pretending to matter."

With that, he melted into the night, leaving Lizzie standing alone amid the blood and flickering lights.

Lizzie watched him disappear into the shadows, the cold neon reflecting off his coat like a specter fading from her world. She didn't speak. Couldn't. Only wondered who the hell she'd just hired.

Slowly, she turned back inside.

The club was quieter now, the bloodied warning still hanging heavy in the air.

Her eyes drifted to the sound system and lighting controls.

She stepped closer, fingers brushing the cold metal switches.

The work was clean. Precise.

Better than she'd expected.

A reluctant respect settled in her chest.

Maybe this techie was more than just a ghost in the machine.