404: Doom Not Found

- 10 years before canon -

The steady whine of a micro-drill echoed through the workshop. Victor's hands worked with precision, soldering a broken relay node into the guts of an old Sandevistan.

The synthetic casing had cracked—likely from a street brawl—and the wiring was fried from poor overclocking. He'd seen better tech salvaged from gutters.

The ping came mid-weld.

> ENCRYPTED LINE - PADRE

Victor didn't flinch. He steadied the thermal tip, finished the line, and only then tapped the receiver embedded in his collar.

"Speak."

Padre's voice was hushed but taut. "I know you don't take calls after ten, but this one's different. Lizzie Borden. Lizzie's Bar."

Victor leaned back, setting the solder down. "Already fixed their A/V array. If the subwoofers caught fire again, tell her to buy proper insulation."

"She's not calling about music," Padre said, grave now. "She's under siege. Said to contact you, specifically. Four solos dead. She's been swarmed by more than one squadron of Tyga claws. This is retaliation, or cleanup."

Victor was quiet. He remembered the three corpses Lizzie hung outside her bar like skinned warnings. The look in her eyes—not grief, not panic. Fury. Old-world fury. It made sense that someone wanted to erase that kind of memory.

"Normally," Padre continued, "this wouldn't be your jurisdiction. I know. You're a techie, not exactly a solo. But she named you."

"Convenient," Victor murmured. "Her other options died. I'm not interested in charity gigs."

"She's offering 10k upfront. Another 20 if she walks out alive. Offer extra as well to sweeten the deal. No questions asked."

Victor's hand paused mid-reach for his toolkit.

Padre continued, "Split's bad. Two-eight in your favour. I'll take the smaller cut for broker rights. Chalk it up to desperation."

Victor didn't answer right away. He adjusted his mask on the workbench, its cold touch a reminder of what was. 

He thought of the bar.

Not the noise or the lighting, he'd corrected. Not even the bodies.

But the moment Lizzie looked at him, after the blood had cooled.

A flicker of understanding—unspoken.

She knew what kind of man he was.

She called him anyway.

"I'll need a route," Victor said at last. "And time."

"Already sent," Padre replied. "You've got twenty minutes. After that, she's gone."

The line went dead.

Victor stood, locking his toolkit. One by one, weapons slid into place—the tech pistol, the arc-enhanced rifle, the shock gloves. He strapped the sword across his back last. The armour hissed closed over his chest, folding into itself until only steel remained.

> OBJECTIVE: CLIENT EXTRACTION – HIGH RISK (SOS)

LOCATION: LIZZIE'S BAR – WATSON

PAYOUT: 10K CONFIRMED / 20K PENDING

He moved toward the exit, pausing only to cloak the workbench. The Sandevistan flickered behind him, forgotten.

Somewhere in Watson, people were dying.

Victor didn't care about the politics, the sentiment, or the name.

But money and memory? That was different.

Lizzie called Doom.

Now, Doom would answer.

---

The rain had turned acidic again.

Victor stood on the northern overpass, peering down through a cracked holosign as red tracer fire stitched the sky above Lizzie's Bar.

The street-level braindance hub was unrecognisable now—glass shattered, signage shredded, neon choking in its own static.

Smoke bled out from the upper facade where one of the rooftop access points had been blown inward.

A Tyger Claw lieutenant's voice crackled through an open comm channel—Victor hacked it three blocks out.

"Sweep the upper levels. We leave no one breathing. She dies last."

He traced the source: second lieutenant, male, ex-Sino hitman from the cadence. Smooth, authoritative. 400 eddies said he was ex-corp turned local executioner.

The thermal scope mounted to Victor's optics cycled through calibrations. Nineteen bodies lit up across the map. Heat signatures. Tyger Claws. Spread across two alley choke points, one rooftop, and three breach paths. They were coordinating.

Victor zoomed on a rooftop squad—a sniper and two suppressors. Their chatter pinged through the comms.

"Sector C clear. Got eyes on the north stairwell. She's still under."

"Hold position," another voice snapped. "Waiting on Cutter to finish breach."

Below, near the bar's back entrance, three Claws were welding through the fire exit. One held a portable breacher, military-grade. Another had a shotgun slung over his back, and the third wore a bright red bandana, low over cyberoptics.

"This ain't like the last time," Red-Bandana muttered, voice tight. "She killed Muto and the others. Axe, like some horror flick shit. Hell, she hired some solos when some of the boys got heated and came back for blood. We'll make sure she pays."

"Then stop talking and do it," his partner growled.

Victor moved.

He dropped from the overpass like a shadow peeled from the concrete, landing behind the alley fencing with a muted thud.

His suit absorbed the shock. A light shimmer glitched across his armour as the active camouflage re-stabilised. It blurred his figure through cyberspace, but not in person.

He pulled his sidearm—his custom-built tech pistol, reactor-charged—and took a breath.

Two steps forward.

His HUD tagged the first target on patrol. A heavyset Claw with dermal plating and a cheap wrist launcher. Solo-adjacent. Armed, not trained.

Victor crept closer, ghosting between the edge of a dumpster and a flooded stairwell.

He remembered Lizzie's face—not the rage or the axe—but the moment after. That quiet, shaking moment where she didn't beg for help.

She just looked at him like he was expected.

He raised his blade.

Meanwhile – Lizzie's Safe Room

The lights flickered once, then stabilised under battery backup.

Lizzie Borden sat against the far wall, legs drawn up, a pistol balanced across her lap. Her shoulder was wrapped in old cloth, blood soaking through. The wound was a deep—grazed artery, maybe. But she'd live, if only barely.

A battered terminal in the corner blinked red—loss of external feeds. All cameras were gone.

Someone had overwritten her security systems. She broke the cameras lined in her room, but her audio systems couldn't be.

If need be, she would speak her final words to vulnerable sex workers who were constantly exploited.

Her breath shook as she keyed the mic to her internal uplink.

"Still here. The room's locked. Still here."

No answer.

She looked at the names written in chalk on the far panel—her fallen girls. Some real. Some are just placeholders. Markers for the ones who vanished before she ever got to know them.

Then her comm pinged.

> PROXIMITY SIGNAL DETECTED

INCOMING IFF: UNREGISTERED // ALIAS: DOOM

RESPONSE CODE: VALIDATED

Lizzie exhaled, bitter and exhausted.

She didn't pray.

But something in her face eased.

Back outside, Victor gripped the edge of a drainage pipe and launched upward. He cleared the fire escape railing in silence, landing behind the rooftop sniper just as the man turned.

Too slow.

Victor grabbed him by the optic rig and twisted—quick, final. The sniper's body dropped limp beside the antennae as Victor lifted the rifle, scanned the breach teams, and marked the lieutenants.

Two targets.

Better gear.

Better habits.

Still meat.

He adjusted his mask and began to hunt.

So it begins...

Victor slid through the narrow back corridors of Lizzie's bar, the hum of distant chaos vibrating through the walls.

The ventilation shafts, meticulously rigged earlier, hissed quietly as a thin cloud of gas spread throughout the room above.

It wasn't lethal, but it was enough to dull the reflexes of anyone breathing it in. He had created the concoction for such situations. The Tyger Claws—fast, violent, and wired to move like lightning—would find their edge blunted.

His vision narrowed beneath the mask, night-adapted optics flickering as he cut the power with a sharp snap of a switch.

The bar plunged into darkness, neon signs sputtering out and plunging the room into near pitch-black. The sudden blackout was part of his plan—he knew that even a fraction of light meant life or death when facing foes with Sandevistan reflex boosters.

Victor's heartbeat steadily, but his senses sharpened. He wasn't superhuman. His reaction time hovered at the peak of human ability, but that was enough if he controlled the environment.

With the power out, his enemies were blind; with his gas, their lightning reflexes dulled to sluggishness. It was the equaliser he needed.

Silent as a shadow, Victor moved through the gloom like a predator stalking prey. The first Claw came charging, blade swinging wildly through the darkness.

Victor sidestepped with precise calm and responded with a brutal jab of his shock gloves, electricity arcing along metal and flesh. The thug collapsed, twitching.

Switching effortlessly, Victor drew his short sword from a sheath at his side. The blade gleamed faintly, synthetic alloy catching the scant light of his visor's HUD.

As another enemy charged, Victor met the attack, parrying the wild strike before slashing deep across the attacker's forearm. The cry was muffled in the dark, but enough for the others to hear.

The ambush was on.

Victor spun, firing his tech pistol—a compact weapon supercharged with a mini arc-reactor that spat small, sizzling energy bolts.

The first shot struck a Claw in the shoulder, freezing his movement as the electric charge spread. The second shot cracked the jaw of another.

He moved like water—flowing, unpredictable—switching from blade to rifle, rifle to pistol. The rifle was a custom M4, sleek and deadly, firing heavy .66 calibre rounds with recoil tamed by a built-in arc reactor.

Each shot was deliberate and precise, a Mozart's symphony of violence.

Minutes passed, the dance of death moving steadily through the rooms. Victor placed small, hidden landmines at key exits—silent but deadly traps waiting for the unsuspecting. As a group tried to break through one door, the explosion rocked the building, throwing bodies to the floor.

The gas seeped deeper into the bar, dulling senses and slowing the Tyger Claws' pace further. One by one, Victor picked them off.

The deadly precision of a demon, weaving through the darkness with the efficiency of a blade and the firepower of a rifle.

Two shots to the chest, one to the head.

One bullet to the knee, one slice to the throat.

He knew the lieutenants were coming—the two most dangerous threats. One wielded a Sandevistan and mantis blades.

The other moved with a sniper's cold efficiency and a cybernetic arm rigged with built-in weapons. 

The two stood near the entrance to Elizabeth Borden's safe room. 

Ahead, the sounds of heavy footsteps echoed. Victor's breath slowed, focus tightening. He crouched low, waiting.

Four Tyga Claws remained.

Although not for long.