I hate synthetic donuts.
There. I said it.
Now before you judge me, hear me out. Imagine biting into something that's supposed to taste like sweet, fried heaven—but it crumbles in your mouth like powdered rubber and leaves a tang of industrial bleach clinging to the back of your throat. That's not food. That's chemical warfare disguised in a pink glaze.
So yeah, fuck synthetic food. Just like I said in my motto, which you'll hear more than once if you stick around. The city doesn't make it easy, but I find my ways. I scrape. I scavenge. I score the real deal. That's a win in my book.
Oh, right. Introductions.
Name's Joshua. No last name. Or maybe I had one before the world ate it. Orphaned, street-bred, Night City certified organic human. No chrome. No wires. No neuro dance upgrades. I'm just bone, breath, and blood, baby. And yeah, people stare. Laugh. Some even try to punk me for being "organic idiot" But I'm still here surviving.
Because I can see something that impossible for normal eye.
Not in a mystical, spiritual third-eye sense. Nothing that romantic. I mean I really see. Five hundred meters in all directions—detailed, precise, every damn moving part like it's been high-def rendered by some God-tier editor. And five seconds into the future. Just five. But that's all I need. Especially in this city, where people die in four.
It's a secret. Mine. Not even the rats in my walls know it. You don't share an ace like this. You keep it, you guard it, and if anyone ever even guesses it—well, let's just say I've built a life on making sure they don't.
Anyway.
The city hums outside my window—concrete veins pulsing with neon, rot, and chrome. I'm sitting in my apartment, the only place in Night City that smells like lemon disinfectant and warm floor wax. I clean every inch of this place every night. Yeah, it's obsessive. But it's mine. My scent. My peace. A tiny sanctuary floating in the meat grinder.
On the table: half-eaten real strawberry donut. Cost me four jobs and one sprained ankle. Worth it. I savor it like an old memory, bite by slow bite, because moments like this don't come often.
I've got a gig tonight. Nothing fancy. Courier run. But in Night City, even delivering a data shard can end with your guts out on the street and your brain melted for someone else's amusement. That's where the sight helps.
Before any movement, I run simulations. Routes. Escape vectors. Line of fire. Line of retreat. All within five hundred meters. Every step of my plan exists in a hundred versions before I take the first one.
Mhh that sounds like someone
Anyway
I gear up. My sniper goes in the case, cushioned in custom foam. My daggers? They're already strapped to my sides—ceramic-core blades, wickedly fast, impossibly sharp. Perfect for the close-up arguments I never start but often finish.
Now, let me answer a question I know you're thinking: "Joshua, how the hell do you manage your eddies with no implants?"
Simple. Analog. Like everything else I trust.
I keep physical credsticks. Low-tech, high-security. Each one stashed in rotating hideouts across the city. Some buried in plastic pipes behind public restrooms, others sealed behind false panels in alley dumpsters or slipped inside the stuffing of old plushies at a vendor stall that doesn't even know it's a bank.
At home? I've got a floor tile in the kitchen that lifts with a knife blade, hiding a reinforced lockbox inside. Steel box, no network ports, no RFIDs, no digital anything. You'd need to know exactly where to pry, and even then, good luck cracking the old-school rotary lock.
It's not glamorous. It's not efficient.
But it's mine. Untouchable. Untraceable.
No auto-transfers, no payment daemons sniffing my spending patterns. I don't buy flashy gear. I don't spend on junk. I stack. And save. Because one day, I want to disappear from this city for good.
Anyway—before I step out, I do a last sweep of the apartment. Kitchen? Sparkling. Bathroom? Spotless. Windows? Sealed and shielded. Plants? Watered. Yeah, I've got two. Don't judge. Even I like some green in this concrete hell.
Stepping outside, the city smacks me with her perfume: ozone, piss, burning oil, and sweet-sour soy grease. Home.
I take the side alleys. Always. Main roads are too noisy, too monitored. You don't live long as a solo if you're predictable. I've lasted this long because I don't play by anyone's rhythm but my own.
The gig goes smooth. Almost boring. A handoff behind a noodle shack, one nervous fixer, one twitchy drone in the air. I clock the angles. No ambush. No hidden tail. Shard delivered. Eddies transferred.
On the way back, I take the long path. Past the abandoned markets. Past the rusted skeletons of cars that haven't moved in years. I like the quiet here. Nobody screaming. Nobody bleeding. Just abandoned part of a city that gave up parts of itself before it finished building the rest.
I pause on a rooftop, chewing the last bite of that strawberry donut. Staring out over the city. Five hundred meters in every direction. I see it all.
Drunk nomads arguing over a busted ride.
A netrunner frying their own deck by accident.
A kid stealing food from a vending unit and running.
A ripperdoc selling junkware from a garage with one arm.
So many lives. All in motion. All tangled. All about to change.
And none of them see me.
Which is how I like it
Let me live in peace.
Just one more day.