Chapter 4: Welcome to Night City.

The Shards of Freedom.

Chapter 4: Welcome to Night City.

Chris, Vanguard.

Night city, 2074

Waking up after being sure you were dead isn’t something you get used to as a cape. I’ve been in danger plenty of times. I’ve been hurt, cornered, half-fried, and once literally dropped off a building. But this?

This was the first time I genuinely didn’t see a way out.

Zion losing his mind and deciding humanity was overdue for extinction wasn’t something anyone was prepared for. But thinking about him could wait. Especially since I was obviously somewhere else.

The smell of disinfectants and grease hit me first.

For a second, I thought I was back in the Bay. Maybe Zion got bored and someone dragged me out.

But the place didn’t look like any PRT sanctioned med bay I’d ever seen.

The lighting flickered in the wrong color. Almost cheap, like the kind you see in PRT reports about back-alley clinics villains use when they’re desperate.

Everything else felt familiar. The metallic taste in my mouth. That uncomfortable weight on my chest, like when Armsmaster scanned our insides. The beeping.

But what really woke me up was the voice.

“Easy, kid. Easy,” a gravelly voice said. “Don’t sit up yet. I still need to calibrate your new Chrome. And whatever happened to you two isn’t helping.”

I didn’t recognize the voice.

But I listened. If someone wanted me dead, they’d already have done it. And without my armor… the cold air made that very clear, I wasn’t defending myself anyway.

My eyelids felt like lead, but I forced them open.

My vision glitched, stuttered, then sharpened into… better than before. Too sharp.

A tattooed man leaned over me, his left hand aided by some metallic drills and pins I’d never seen in my life.

Not exactly a weapon, but in my state, he didn’t exactly need one.

He also wasn’t alone.

A huge guy with a mohawk stood behind him, watching me warily. His gold chain flashed every time the flickering lights struggled to stay alive.

I almost snorted, but pain stopped me.

There was no universe in which heroes would use a place like this voluntarily. The room looked like it was deliberately violating every government regulation.

So either things were exactly as bad as I feared and we were all screwed…

Or, judging by how calm they looked, maybe this place hadn’t been hit by Zion at all.

The last person was a woman clinging to the big guy’s arm, worry written all over her face. A non-threat. At least compared to everything else.

I didn’t bother asking where I was or what happened. They probably didn’t know.

So I started the PRT checklist, the one you use when you wake up somewhere unfamiliar.

Vision? Functional… no, enhanced. Maybe another Tinker. Perhaps someone like Amy.

Motor control? Sluggish but responsive.

Pain? Everywhere, but honestly, less than expected considering I was supposed to explode with my damaged battery.

Weapons? None. I could barely move, and my limbs felt… stuck. A bathtub? Really?

God, if Amy saw this place, she’d probably create a plague just to punish the hygiene violations.

I closed my eyes, breathed once, twice… Then froze.

Wait. “Two of us”?

My body screamed when I turned my head, but I didn’t care.

Somehow, I knew she was there before I saw her.

An unconscious Missy, but one that breathed.

A connection tugged at me, faint but real, and I had no idea how to explain it.

I tried to sit up. Pain tore down my spine and emptied my lungs, but I pushed through.

The mohawked guy stepped forward and put a hand on my shoulder. For a split second, I considered trying to grab his weapon… it was a stupid idea, but instinctive, before I let the thought go.

I had no idea what was wrong with me. Or with Missy. And I was no medical genius.

“Who are you?” I asked. “And what’s happening to her?”

The doctor raised a hand, and the big guy immediately backed off.

That surprised me. Usually in places like this, it’s the gangster who gives the orders. Here, he seemed genuinely respectful of the doctor.

“She’s alive. She’ll get better,” the doctor said, eyes narrowing as he studied me. “So will you, probably. Hard to say. No idea what the hell you two did to the Chrome I had to install.”

“Chrome?” I echoed, harsher than I meant to.

Instant regret… all three of them looked at me like I’d grown a second head.

“You don’t know what chrome is, choom?” the big guy said, looking offended.

He glanced at the doc. “I’m telling you, Vik. Something’s off. He was wearing a damn mech suit, and now he’s pretending he doesn’t know what Chrome is?”

His hand drifted toward the weapon at his hip. I narrowed my eyes, calculating distance, movement, my chances… which were not that good, all things considered.

Before I could decide anything, the woman grabbed his wrist hard enough to make him wince.

“Calm down, Jackie. Let him talk. We don’t know if he even remembers his own name. What’s it called, Vik? Amnesia?”

“Is that even possible, Vik?” Jackie muttered, still half-reaching for his gun but not pulling it.

“Hell if I know,” Vik said with a shrug. “Whatever’s in their heads isn’t anything I’ve seen before. Kid, do you remember your name?”

“Chris,” I said. “Don’t remember anything else.”

Vik narrowed his eyes, clearly not buying it, but he didn’t press.

“Name’s Viktor Vektor. That’s Jackie Welles, and the girl is Misty.” He spoke slowly, watching my face. “We found you outside my clinic three days ago, half dead. Misty insisted we save you. Ring any bells?”

“Never heard of any of you,” I said. “But… thank you. For saving us.”

My power stirred the moment I let myself breathe, buzzing under my skin as I scanned the room. Machines, tools, even circuits. Everything could be used, and I was getting so many ideas. It all felt sharper than usual, like I’d slipped into a fugue.

And through it all, Missy felt like a magnet tugging at the edges of my mind. Something had obviously changed with my power.

Misty stepped forward despite Jackie’s quick, protective reach. She placed a gentle hand on my shoulder.

“You’re safe, Chris. You’re in Watson. Do you think… whoever was after you might follow you here?”

“If the one that did this to me was here,” I chuckled darkly before a cough cut it off, “believe me, you’d know. For a full second before you were vaporized.”

Yeah… That didn’t help their nerves.

They were clearly civilians, and deep down I had the growing suspicion that the explosion meant to kill me had done something more than just “hurt really bad.”

I shouldn’t have found any of it funny, but the way Jackie shivered was priceless.

It looked wrong on a guy built like a brick wall playing gangster.

“Really, choom?” he sighed. The tiny smirk ruined whatever anger he was trying to fake. “Not helping your case.”

“Sorry, sorry,” I tried to shrug. “Can’t help it. Dark humor’s all I’ve got left.”

“Too true, my friend.” He nodded, and for half a second, there was something haunted in his eyes.

“Watson, you say? Doesn’t ring any bells.” I glanced at Misty; she was frowning at Jackie’s reaction. “Where exactly is Watson?”

“You survived, so you’re lucky,” Jackie answered for her. “But ending up in Night City? That ain’t winning the lottery, chico.”

I didn’t recognize a single name they tossed around. My blank stare must’ve been obvious because all three of them frowned.

“Vik… he might have amnesia,” Misty whispered, looking worried. “Night City is known everywhere, right?”

Vik hadn’t stopped watching me like I was a bomb waiting to go off, even while he fiddled with machines far more advanced than any civilian gear back home.

God, my hands itched. I wanted to tear everything apart and rebuild it twice over.

“You really don’t know?” Vik asked, glancing between me and the graphs.

I shook my head.

“Fuck,” he muttered. “He’s not lying.”

That’s when I realized how invasive those damn graphs were. He could see everything about me. Everything.

I was suddenly grateful that we spoke the same language, because I could read it all. Too easily.

Easier now, my brain whispered. My eyesight had never been bad, but what I had now didn’t even compare.

Adrenaline, cortisol, dopamine… my entire emotional state lay out like a school’s homework. With this, anyone could tell if I was lying.

Which made me wonder why Vik hadn’t called me out earlier. Might have been because I’d genuinely told the truth. I really didn’t know where the hell I was.

“Night City is a free state, near Southern California,” Viktor explained carefully.

I slumped deeper into the tub.

“Three days, you said?” I cut him off. “Did anything happen while we were out? To both of us. At the same time?”

Vik hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. You both almost flatlined. Whatever’s in your brain went haywire at the exact same second. We had to improvise fast to keep them from overloading.”

Another strange slang. But I made sure not to show my confusion.

Brains… plural. Our powers. The Corona Pollentia.

And “Night City”? That sure as hell wasn’t anywhere in Earth Bet. Or even Gimmel.

There was only one explanation… the explosion from my battery must’ve interfered with the portal. Twisted it.

It must have launched us sideways instead of through. Sent us crashing into… wherever here was, wrapped in fire and molten scrap.

I could still see bits of my armor fused into my skin.

The tech here was… advanced.

Not quite Tinker-tech, but close enough that it made my fingers twitch. And it was everywhere. Jackie and Misty both had implants, which would only make sense if it were something casual. That most people could get their hands on.

And neither of them looked like high-ranking villains or wealthy elites.

This was their normal.

Another planet. Another Earth.

Probably a multiverse jump, because the battery that blew was no ordinary power source. Not after the Behemoth study. Not after the upgrades Dragon and I snuck past the PRT.

A miniature nuclear reactor stuffed between modular plates.

Only she and I knew. Not even Colin.

No wonder things had gone sideways.

I didn’t realize I was laughing until Jackie grabbed my shoulder hard enough to make me wince. Three worried faces stared back at me.

Great. My laugh really did sound unhinged. They would probably get the wrong idea of me.

But I couldn’t stop. What were the odds? Another world. Our powers had mutated.

We probably missed the final fight entirely. And if my timing was right, Zion was perhaps already dead back home… somehow.

And he hadn’t touched this world at all.

“Any of you ever heard of a golden man?” I asked, just to be sure.

Three blank stares were all I received, but they were all I needed.

I started laughing again. Jackie immediately took a step back.

It did make me feel a tiny bit bad.

“You don’t have to worry about the bastard who caused all this coming to finish the job,” I said, waving a hand. Something pulled uncomfortably across my shoulder; my flesh was charred and blended with patches of synthetic skin that matched my tone a little too well.

Missy… had a cybernetic arm bolted into her stump.

A cold knot formed in my stomach. She probably won’t be happy about that. I knew how she felt about cybernetic enhancements, but if my theory was correct, we didn’t have many options.

Before I could spiral again, because I was teetering right on that edge, I forced my brain to focus.

The PRT banned dimensional travel entirely. Which meant we had zero protocols. Zero training. Nothing but Denis’s ridiculous hypothetical scenarios and Colin’s wild theories.

I never thought I’d actually need either.

But here I was. Completely out of my depth. With only the plans of an egoist, but a fellow autistic who took things too seriously.

A free state, Vik called it. Meaning the United States, or whatever passed for it here, was fractured. War? Secession? Collapse? Something big. There was no other explanation.

A city sitting inside old borders but not obeying the country made no sense. Even if this world had capes, which it didn’t seem to, no government would just let a city break off on its own.

Not unless another nation backed it. And even then, it’d be a nightmare.

But… possible. Misty and Viktor weren’t armed, yet neither flinched at the gun in Jackie’s hand. They were used to weapons. To violence. The casual kind.

Jackie didn’t even bother hiding his gun. He probably didn’t need to. Even the Bay wasn’t that bold; gangs usually hid their weapons unless they were rolling with capes.

This place was probably worse than the Bay. And that was saying something.

And the slang was quite interesting and intuitive. They sounded like something people of the streets used, if not everyone.

If this city broke off from the U.S., it meant history took a sharp left turn somewhere along the way.

We weren’t getting backup. Even if by some miracle the heroes did kill Zion, they’d be torn apart afterward.

They will be busy rebuilding, hell… surviving. I doubted they would have time to mourn.

And looking for two missing heroes wouldn’t even make the priority list.

Hell, they probably assumed we were dead.

And honestly? They wouldn’t be wrong.

No… we were alone. And if we ever wanted to go back, we needed to survive first.

I looked at the trio, a slow grin tugging at my lips.

“What day is it, Viktor?”

He blinked as he checked the graphs, “March eleventh.”

My smile grew. It had been June back home.

“What year?”

“2074,” he said, eyebrows climbing. “Are you sure you’re okay, kid? Your cortisol and dopamine just spiked like crazy.”

“I can’t say how I feel, Viktor,” I chuckled, nearly disbelieving the words myself. “But I know what I need.”

I leaned forward, “Think you can get me something to check the net?”