Sorry for being inactive these past few days.I'm going through a breakup after a nine-year relationship,and honestly, it's been hard to find the strength for anything.Thank you for your patience and understanding.I'll be back soon—just need a little time to heal.
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Karl stepped out the door and took the elevator up—but something felt off.
No one else was inside, and the lift was running smoothly. Still, the moment he stepped in, he felt it—eyes on him. Like something had locked onto his presence.
Just his imagination?
There were no cameras that he could see. But Karl trusted his instincts.
This wasn't paranoia.
He was being watched.
That fast?
He'd definitely need to bring this up with Ken'ichiro. Maybe the man could reinforce their communications with the same top-grade shielding Haruko used.
They'd only spoken for less than a minute. Nothing was said outright. Yet someone had still picked up on it.
Or maybe—just maybe—the people watching him weren't new at all. Maybe they were operatives who'd been embedded around him for some time, just waiting to be activated.
Karl didn't know the full story.
But he knew this much:
If they weren't even afraid of someone like Ken'ichiro—a Vice President at Arasaka—they weren't just traitors.
They were dangerous.
And they needed to be hit hard.
Tick.
Just as the elevator stopped on the 44th floor, Karl heard the faintest sound—like the swing of a clock's pendulum. But in a city where antique clocks were practically extinct, that sound could mean only one thing:
A time bomb.
It was perfectly timed.
As the doors slid open, Karl saw it—just outside the elevator, the countdown had hit zero.
This elevator's toast. And with this building's maintenance speed, it'll be days before anyone even touches it.
The megatower's elevator wasn't fully enclosed. From the outside, it looked more like a cage of steel bars. And now, Karl was trapped inside—forced to watch the device detonate.
PONG—
A violent blast surged inward, flames and debris swallowing Karl whole.
CRACK—THUMP!
The steel cables snapped. The twisted iron cage tore loose and plunged into the dark shaft below, freefalling from the 44th floor. The wreckage spiraled down, dragging everything inside toward a brutal end—nothing left but a slab of crushed scrap.
No one could survive that.
Not even Karl—one of Night City's finest mercs.
"All comms with the Badlands team are down. Karl probably got his hands on something. We can't let this leak. No one else can know."
On the 44th floor, an Arasaka operative overseeing the op wore a grim expression.
"Proceed with secondary confirmation. Go downstairs. Erase the body."
"Hmph. So that was the legendary merc, KK? In the end, just a pigeon in a cage—flapping its wings, never taking flight."
Beside him stood a ten-man surveillance team. Their squad leader, riding high on the mission's smooth execution, couldn't hide his sneer.
"If we knew he was this easy to kill, we should've moved sooner. Maybe a few more rats in Arasaka Tower would've been caught by Adam Smasher's sweep before they slipped away."
"Stay alert," the operative warned flatly.
Unlike his arrogant counterpart, he didn't underestimate the target. This operative had been brought in from South America after the Arasaka Tower purge. He hadn't faced Karl directly—only seen combat footage. He didn't fully grasp how dangerous Karl really was.
Still, he held respect.
Even if he didn't believe anyone could survive that fall and blast, he wasn't arrogant enough to look down on KK.
That merc… if faced head-on, could've taken the entire squad out in under ten minutes. Today's strike worked only because they had the element of surprise and all the prep.
There was nothing honorable about it.
The only thing that mattered now—was confirming the kill.
Ken'ichiro would soon realize Karl was missing. They had to move fast.
Make sure not even dust remained.
"Secondary confirmation. Move out. Ugh, another damn hike," the squad leader grumbled.
He shrugged and waved his team toward the elevator shaft.
"We'll go floor by floor through the shaft. You can take the stairs, if you're feeling old-school."
The operative frowned but kept silent.
They were equal in rank—technically, the squad leader even outranked him in some ways. And in Arasaka, unless you pulled a direct gekokujō, even a slight edge in status meant your words carried more weight.
Still, silence didn't mean respect.
That squad leader had a glittering résumé: 24 ops in South America, 14 high-priority rescues, 8 successful counter-infiltrations, and a full-blown enemy force eradicated. A rising star.
He fancied himself on par with the legends Arasaka hyped up.
And now, having taken down KK so easily, his ego was swelling. If it kept up, he'd soon stop caring about anyone above him.
That needed to be reported.
As the operative made a mental note—tap.
Someone gently touched his back.
Reflexively, he turned.
But halfway through the motion—he froze.
This floor had been completely cleared. They'd locked it down a month ago. Every stairwell was sealed. Everyone else had gone to the front elevators.
So who the hell…?
There was only one answer.
Karl.
No one should've survived that fall—not from that height, not in that wreckage.
No one.
Unless you were Adam Smasher…
Or unless the "reinforced cage" the building used was made from the same cheap, weak-ass scrap most Night City elevators were built from.
"It was you watching me, wasn't it?" Karl smiled.
As the Arasaka agent froze in horror and the tactical squad stared in disbelief, Karl stood there, grinning.
Damn… escaping like that pushed him to his limit. His whole nervous system was screaming.
And that pain?
Someone was going to pay for it.
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Sorry for being inactive these past few days.I'm going through a breakup after a nine-year relationship,and honestly, it's been hard to find the strength for anything.Thank you for your patience and understanding.I'll be back soon—just need a little time to heal.
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