404: Doom Not Found

- 11 years before canon - 

Victor didn't waste time.

He returned to the abandoned workshop with a fire behind his eyes and a list already forming in his head. The moment the steel door clanged shut behind him, he locked the manual bar and began laying out the tools V had given him—basic, but functional: a soldering pen, a circuit printer, a neural-tuning meter, and a portable spectrum scanner with a cracked lens. In this place of rust and silence, they gleamed like holy relics.

The desk was cluttered with scavenged pieces from the bodies he'd stripped clean two nights ago—military-grade fiberjack fragments, two broken Sandevistan heat sinks, and a neural interface jack torn straight from the skull of a Tyger Claw lieutenant. Most were damaged.

All were dirty. But with enough pressure, fire, and patience, they would serve.

He flipped open his notebook—not a digital pad this time, but paper, thick and weathered. Notes in neat cursive, diagrams drawn with obsessive precision.

The neural port he intended to make wouldn't rely on standard cyberdeck firmware. It would be custom-tuned to his own body, his own brain. If they wanted him to swim the net, he'd build his own gills.

There was a knock at the door.

Three quick raps.

He approached warily, hand hovering near the switch on his shock gauntlet.

"It's me, chrome-face," came V's muffled voice. "You planning to eat or just keep brooding in here till your brain rots?"

He opened the door.

"How did you find me?" He inquired, confused, before reaching a conclusion, "You bugged the tablet..." 

"Good boy, you'll catch up soon," She winked, stepping in, "You weren't answering your messages."

"I was working," he replied simply, gesturing to the table.

She let out a low whistle. "Okay, damn. You're not just theory-deep. You're really going for it.

"I require focus."

"You need food and a second pair of hands." She tossed him a shrink-wrapped meal packet—spiced soybars and synth noodles. "That's dinner. And before you go all 'I didn't ask for help,' I'm here because I want to be."

He eyed her. "Pity is not currency."

"This isn't pity." She hopped up on a cleared bench and kicked her boots onto the table, right next to the half-melted heatsink. "You saved my life back there. Even if you were a dick about it."

Victor said nothing.

V nodded toward the schematic. "You're running a triple buffer circuit here? That's... interesting."

"It stabilises neural load without relying on standard firmware governors. Arasaka uses something similar for deep-jack blacksites."

"You've seen Arasaka blacksite tech?"

"Not firsthand," he admitted. "But I've studied their failures."

V leaned forward. "You realise half this stuff is borderline illegal, right?"

"I intend to be functional. Not legal."

She laughed. "You're an idiot. A smart idiot, but still."

Victor turned back to the parts on the table. He began wiring a pair of microfilament strands between the scavenged jack and a stabiliser chip that once belonged to a ruined Sandie. He paused, then glanced over his shoulder.

"You didn't bring payment."

V frowned. "For what?"

"For instruction."

She scoffed. "Dude. Seriously?"

"I assumed you'd require compensation."

"You think this is some corpo mentorship gig?" She shook her head. "You saved me. Shot a guy, dragged me to safety, didn't let me bleed out on some rusty crate. Even if you didn't smile doing it… that counts."

Victor was silent for a moment. Then he nodded once, quietly accepting her terms.

She pointed to the neural socket he'd partially assembled. "Mind if I tune that for feedback resistance?"

He gestured for her to proceed.

They worked in silence for a few minutes—her with a micro-solderer, him rerouting internal traces from a cracked transmitter board. It wasn't graceful work, but it was real.

By the time the mock housing was bolted together—no bigger than a thumb drive—they had something crude but functional.

"You're gonna want to test this before anything gets near your skull," she muttered.

"I will. On a drone first."

"Smart. Didn't take you for the cautious type."

"I'm not. I'm precise."

V smiled faintly, then stood up, brushing her hands on her pants. "Alright, chrome-face. I gotta bounce. Got a lead on some spare Kiroshi parts for cheap. Call me if you don't wanna fry your cortex."

He nodded again, and as she moved toward the door, she paused and looked back.

"Hey," she said. "You're alright, you know that?"

"I'm not."

"Well… keep being 'not,' then."

The door clanged shut behind her.

Victor looked down at the prototype. Rough. Dangerous. Full of potential.

He had a long way to go. But for the first time since arriving in this city, he wasn't walking alone.

---

"Target's name's Gina J. That's all they gave us."

The voice was flat, emotionless, professional. A whisper carried by the silence of an old shipping yard far from the noise of Night City's living districts. Rusted containers lined the alley like tombstones, graffiti half-washed from the steel by decades of acid rain and indifference.

Three figures stood within the skeleton of a gutted freight office. Power was long cut, windows long shattered.

Only the flicker of modded optics gave shape to their faces—if they could still be called that. Off-grid solos.

Deniable assets. Operatives whose lives had been deleted by their clients, left to roam in exchange for credits and silence.

"She's small-time," said the tallest among them. An ebony woman with combat scars down her neck and a voice like razors under silk. "But too many eyes passed her name around for this to be nothing."

"Doesn't matter what's in the briefcase," muttered another. "Client says clean the trail. Start with her."

He sat slumped across his seat, gorilla arms replacing his own. Wearing a t-shirt, the man fired a synthetic cigar, the smoke quickly filling his mouth. 

"What about the runner?" the third asked, resting a heavy sniper rifle across his shoulder, his eyes replaced with optics reminiscent of goggles, the sapphire hue ominous.

"Our intel flagged someone new. Pretty boy—no records, no chatter."

The woman exhaled slowly through her nostrils.

"Unknown variable. A complication."

"No face. No heat trace. No chrome signature."

"A ghost?"

"Maybe. Maybe a merc who knows how to scrub himself."

"Client said nothing about a ghost," the sniper scoffed. "Only Gina."

The woman stepped toward a shattered window. Outside, the city pulsed in the distance, an organism of steel and smoke, breathing through smog and neon.

They were far from its veins, standing in the ribs of its industrial corpse.

"They gave us creds up front," she said. "That tells me two things: one, they're desperate. Two, they don't want to be tied to this."

"You think corpos?" asked.

"They didn't say, but knowing how they work... Most likely," she replied, eyes never leaving the skyline. "They don't care if she knows anything. They just want her gone."

The third solo slung his rifle forward, checking the scope and thermal dampeners. "Why even send us? Could've used local gangers."

"Because they don't want attention," the woman said. "They want silence. And that's what we do. Besides, money's good, is it not?"

"Hmm, could've paid extra. Need new paint on my ride. Little touch up here and there." The rugged man coughed.

"What about the package? We retrieve it?"

"No," she said, tone sharp. "Client said burn the trail. That includes the data. No retrieval. No recovery. We clean. We vanish."

The three exchanged looks. That was unusual.

"Then why the premium?" the second asked.

"They didn't say. And we don't ask."

There was a beat of silence—each of them considering the rule unspoken but understood. You don't ask what's inside the box. You just make sure the box no longer exists.

The woman pulled a shard from her coat and slotted it into a small device—off-network, custom, a black-market locator. It blinked once, twice, then projected a faint 3D map of Gina J's last known territory.

"Her signal's been dark for 36 hours. Word is she's working with someone new. A tech-head. Probably the ghost."

"Friend of hers?" one asked.

"She doesn't have friends. Only people who owe her."

The sniper tilted his head. "Think she knows we're coming?"

"She's not stupid. But if she was smart, she'd already be gone."

The trio began moving out, footsteps crunching on old glass, disappearing into the misted labyrinth of forgotten industrial sprawl.

Above them, a police flier passed overhead, its blue-white light scanning the city like a blind god searching for sinners.

None of the three looked up.

They weren't sinners. They were erasers.

And Gina J was just another name in the fog.

Back at the hideout, Victor adjusted the scope alignment on his kinetic pistol, fingers moving with slow precision. The hissing sputter of a soldering pen punctuated the silence of the dimly lit workshop, its flickering fluorescents buzzing overhead like agitated wasps. Tools lay neatly in rows across a repurposed surgical tray, each calibrated for precision, each placed according to its purpose.

His armour stood nearby—no longer just scavenged plates welded together by desperation, but evolving. Leaner now, reinforced at the joints, ceramic-lined shock guards along the forearms. The jacket he wore had been sewn with a lattice of mesh armour underneath, thickened around the shoulders where recoil compensation modules had been installed.

The gauntlets hummed with a faint charge, high-voltage shock pads coiled with insulated filament. In time, the armour would be perfect—silent movement, enhanced reflexes, full integration with weapon telemetry.

He was getting closer.

A soft chime interrupted the quiet. His datapad flashed. Incoming call.

V.

He stared at the screen for a full breath before slowly reaching to reject it. But before his finger could brush the icon—

"Hey, pretty boy, you ignoring me?"

Her voice erupted from the device's speakers without warning—louder than it should've been.

Victor's brow twitched.

She'd bypassed the security again.

He considered destroying the pad. Briefly. It would've been cleaner, simpler. A minor setback, given his ability to construct another. And yet… the idea of building it all again, rewriting scripts, re-integrating firewalls—

Tedious.

It most likely wouldn't have stopped her from hacking the next one either. 

Instead, he exhaled, snatched the datapad, and turned the volume down manually.

Or tried to.

"Nice try," her voice cackled. The volume shot back up.

He stared at the screen. She wasn't just annoying—she was relentless. Somewhere on the other end of the network, he could imagine her grinning ear to ear.

"So what're you doing, Victor? Still playing with your toy guns?"

Victor rolled his eyes, unplugged the interface cable, and walked across the room. He stuffed the tablet under an overturned crate and padded over to a side terminal, trying to ignore her voice blaring through as if she were seated right beside him.

"Did you mute me? That's just rude. C'mon, throw me a bone. I'm bored. You owe me."

"I owe you nothing," he muttered under his breath.

Still, he found himself returning to the crate, lifting it, and retrieving the pad. The logical part of his mind scolded him. He didn't tolerate inefficiency. And yet—

He reconnected the cable and let the volume run as is. Easier to humour her than to waste time rebuilding what she'd already burrowed through like a digital tick.

"That's better!" she chirped.

"What do you want?" he asked, setting the pad on a cleared worktable and resuming calibration of a shock gauntlet.

"Just checking in. I figure if I don't poke you now and then, you'll disappear under a pile of wires and die tragically. Then I'll have to break into your place to scavenge your stuff, and that's just bad vibes."

Victor shook his head. "You speak with the grace of a feral cat trapped in a vending machine."

"Aw, that's sweet. You're warming up to me."

He tested the gauntlet's energy sync, sending a small pulse across the contacts. It sparked properly—still not refined, but functional. Eventually, he would insulate the outer surface so it wouldn't arc unnecessarily during infiltration.

"You broke through a decoy firewall this time," he said flatly. "Your method was crude, but effective. I had six anti-spam tracers in place. You dodged them."

"Yup. Sloppy work, geek head. I expected more."

"You've seen less than 3% of what I've built."

"And yet I'm already in your inbox. That's gotta sting."

He didn't dignify that with an answer. Instead, he flicked through his notes on the screen. The targeting subroutines for his kinetic pistol had been glitching in the field. Likely an interference problem, perhaps caused by the EM shielding in his gloves.

"Anyway," she continued, her tone shifting a touch more serious, "you still wanna learn more about the Net? I've got some sim code from the old days. The real meat. 'Guide to the Net'—written by a psycho legend named Rache Bartmoss. Name ring a bell?"

Victor paused.

"Briefly. Part of the net worships him. He was a net anarchist. Died during the Collapse."

"Sure, sure. But before that? Dude was a god. Left digital fingerprints all over the world, even after brain death. I'll send you the files."

"Do not send them to this terminal."

"Relax, I'm not gonna dump Black ICE in your toaster. I'll load it on a shard. Clean. Manual transfer. I can swing by tomorrow."

Victor didn't reply immediately. He was already making a note in his datapad to triple-reinforce the firewall and segment the subnet on his systems.

Still, he found himself oddly… tolerant of the intrusion.

She was disruptive, yes. But she was also resourceful.

Useful.

And that was rare.

What wasn't was her yapping. Victor was beginning to regret meeting her. 

Victor pinched the bridge of his nose. The gauntlet calibration was going to be off again—too many variables and not enough silence. V's voice crackled like an off-key synthwave track through the speakers.

"So, handsome," she continued, chewing gum audibly on the other end. "What's your story, huh? You got that angry orphan vibe going on. Lemme guess—corporate parents, tragic betrayal, burnt home?"

He paused for a second. Not because she was right.

But because she wasn't entirely wrong.

The Baron had taken his mother and whisked her to hell.

His father had paid with his life to allow Victor to study. 

He worked sleepless nights on tenacity alone. 

Yet, when he reached hell, he heard her screams and was powerless to save her from the demon that held her captive.

Yet, it wasn't technology that stopped him...

Nor was it the forces of hell.

In Victor's mind, it was Reed Richards. 

He had stolen his spotlight, taken advantage of the designs they worked on together and was attempting to humiliate him. 

In Victor's arrogant mind, no one other than himself was allowed the glory of being known to peer into another realm. 

How could he not prove him wrong? Who was Reed Richards to deny him this platform? This opportunity to showcase his glory to the whole world? To Latveria? 

Victor, thinking back on these memories, clenched his fist hard before returning to normal. His reaction hidden away from the screen. 

"Your projections are asinine," he replied coolly, though his tone lacked venom.

"Aha! He's deflecting."

"I am calibrating."

"You're brooding. Huge difference."

Victor turned from the workbench, stepping toward the back corner of the room where spare power cores were stored.

The darkness there suited his mood. He hated talking about the past.

Not because he feared it, but because it could not be altered—and it weakened the mind to dwell on what could not be changed.

"C'mon," she coaxed, voice lighter now, like a breeze laced with trouble. "You don't get to act like Motham's angriest orphan and not expect people to ask. You've got that whole 'I've-seen-some-things' aura, and I gotta know what gave you your edge. Spill."

He ignored her question and leaned against the wall, silent. But his eyes, for a moment, drifted—not at the cracked tiles, not at the humming lights, but somewhere else. Somewhere far removed from Night City's rust and rot.

A memory stirred. Faint. A face—young, stern, and warm. She'd had honey-brown hair, always in a braid. Eyes like green glass, sharp but gentle. Her name was—no, he would not speak it aloud.

She was reminding him of her, but Victor was not amused. 

Like V, she'd annoyed him. Constantly. Challenged him not with power or intellect, but with presence. Emotion. She was a child of Earth—he, a mind forged in fire. She didn't understand his dreams, but she had listened.

She had made him smile once.

Only once.

"Well?" V pressed. "You go catatonic on me, or are you just real bad at talking to girls?"

Victor's lip twitched. A faint smirk. There and gone like vapour.

"You are presumptuous," he said, voice low.

"I'm bored. Bored people get nosy. It's a survival thing."

"You equate curiosity with survival?"

"In this city? Hell yeah. Curiosity keeps you one step ahead. Unless it kills you." A pause. "So… you ever been in love?"

He raised a brow.

"That's your line of questioning?"

"It's better than asking about your favourite pizza topping."

He sighed through his nose. "Love is a distraction. A chemical imbalance that clouds judgment."

"Spoken like someone who's absolutely been dumped before."

Victor's silence was answer enough.

The smirk in her voice was palpable.

"Wow. You have been dumped."

He turned back to his gauntlets, adjusting the magnetic grip aligners with slightly more force than necessary.

"It was not… a mutual connection," he admitted, reluctantly. "But she was… persistent."

"Ooooh, he has a heart."

"No," he said firmly, without looking up. "Merely an impeccable memory."

There was a long beat of quiet, and then—

"You miss her?"

The question hit like a whisper through a crack in the armour. He didn't answer right away.

She didn't push.

That surprised him most.

Finally, he said, "Sometimes. But memory is not weakness. It is proof I existed before this world."

"…Damn," she said, softly this time. "That's kinda poetic."

Victor narrowed his eyes at the datapad.

"You hacked me again, didn't you?"

"Yup."

"Remove yourself from my systems or I will set off an EMP in this room."

"You wouldn't."

He raised his palm, fingers inching toward a dormant pulse grenade on his belt.

"Okay, okay!" she laughed. "Backing off. Just needed to check if you still had a soul buried under all that tech-bro doom and gloom."

Victor's eyes lingered on the screen for a moment longer before muttering, "Some things should remain buried."

"…Yeah. Same."

For a few moments, silence reigned again, but it wasn't uncomfortable this time. Just two people breathing in different corners of the city, trying to survive in their own way.

Then V coughed.

"You think aliens exist?" 

"..."

"..."

"Yes." 

---