404: Doom Not Found

- 11 years before canon - 

A faint whirring followed. Not loud. Not clumsy. Controlled.

Victor didn't need the light to know trouble had breached the perimeter. He could feel it in the pressure drop, the slight shift in air currents, the soft scuff of boots designed not to echo.

It was typical espionage and assassination tactics 101. After engaging the target, ensure the perimeter is surrounded. 

Pulling his sidearm, he crouched behind a supply shelf.

"Yo," a voice called into the dark. Low, amused. Smug. "That's a pretty little workshop you've got, choom. Real cute. Real you."

Victor remained silent, letting his eyes adjust. He followed the voice, not the words, but the rhythm, the ego laced inside it.

He aimed and fired, the bullet following an unusual trail, but for Victor it was all calculated.

The bullet ricocheted and arrived near his earpiece, cutting the connection. 

"Lucky shot..." He voiced, amused.

"It wasn't..." 

"You know, they told me to flatline you," the man went on. "But lookin' at that face? Shame to waste something so… marketable."

A shadow shifted across the aisle. A humanoid figure, shorter than Victor by several inches, but wider. Not in fat—he was built like an overclocked pitbull.

Both arms chromed up with bruised black gorilla-tech, knuckles lined with subdermal reinforcements. The dull matte of his implants caught no reflection; even his goggles were angled for anti-glare. One red lens flickered faintly.

"Come on, pretty boy," the solo said, stretching his arms with a mechanical hiss. "Let's make this fun."

Victor's jaw tightened.

The man wasn't here for professionalism. He was here for sport. He was getting cocky. 

Which meant he was vulnerable.

Victor sprang up from cover and fired twice.

Bang—bang.

The rounds slammed into the soldier's chest and shoulder. He barely flinched, stumbling one step back before laughing like a lunatic. He opened his coat briefly—beneath it was a heavily reinforced ballistic weave. Standard. Functional. Ugly.

"Spicy," he chuckled. "Okay. Round one."

Then he charged.

Victor sidestepped, narrowly dodging the first sweeping haymaker. The fist crashed through an old tool bench, splintering steel like driftwood.

Doom pivoted behind the solo and drove an elbow into his side. It landed, but barely made an impression. The man twisted with alarming speed and struck Victor across the jaw.

Everything jolted sideways. Victor slammed into a wall, tasting blood.

"C'mon, ghost boy. Show me more tricks!" the solo taunted, slowly closing the distance.

Victor wiped his lip and reset his footing. His breathing was steady. Pain dulled by calculation.

He dropped low and engaged—martial instinct taking over.

He moved fluidly, combining defensive handwork with short, precise strikes—each aimed at critical joints, pressure points. Two, three, and four hits landed on the solo's throat, elbow, and knee. But nothing gave.

The solo grunted, swinging again. Doom ducked and spun, kicking off a bench and landing a sharp heel against the man's exposed ear.

A ringing crack.

The solo staggered.

Victor didn't smile. He pressed the advantage, slamming his modified pistol's broken frame into the exposed lobe.

A muffled pop.

The bullet he'd lodged earlier in the wall ricocheted with pinpoint accuracy, striking the same tender spot.

The solo screamed.

"You little—!" he roared, clutching the side of his head.

With his head ringing, his sense of balance slightly shifted. 

Victor didn't let up. He dashed in, grabbing a wrench from a rack and jamming it between the gorilla arm's joint and frame. A twist—hard—and something snapped inside the solo's forearm.

The man retaliated with his remaining arm, backhanding Victor into a stack of scrap plating.

Victor groaned, his shoulder burning. His vision blurred—but he saw what mattered: blood running down the man's temple.

"You cocky son of a—" the solo hissed.

He was limping now, one arm non-functional. Still dangerous. But sloppier.

"You were wrong to step to me", Victor said flatly, voice quiet. "You were sent to die alongside me. They just didn't tell you."

The solo blinked. The bravado faltered for a second.

Victor seized that hesitation.

Smoke grenade—primed. Thrown.

With a sharp pop, the room filled with thick grey smoke. Victor ducked into the haze, legs screaming, ribs aching.

Outside, a gunshot cracked through the air, not aimed at him.

A drone exploded overhead—someone else had seen it.

Victor didn't hesitate. He grabbed a packed tool bag and his backup datapad from the corner desk. His ears still rang. His coat was scorched on one side. He was limping.

But he was alive.

He disappeared into the alley as sirens echoed faintly in the distance, smoke curling behind him.

Smoke clung to the rafters like a ghost refusing to leave.

Victor didn't wait to see if the solo stumbled out after him—he knew better than to assume a single strike, even a precise one, would drop a chromed-out bruiser with skin-embedded EMP shielding and vat-grown muscle. That kind of monstrosity was built to tank grenades, not play fair.

His breath rattled in his throat. Pain blurred the edges of his vision, the sting in his shoulder sharper now that adrenaline was ebbing. His coat, torn and burned, clung to him like wet paper. The blood running down his neck wasn't a gash—it was a trail of heat, a warning that even a glancing sniper shot had nearly become a fatal one.

But he moved. Always moved. He had faced worse and survived. 

Down the alley. Over a rusted fence. Through a skeletal lot of discarded vending machines and half-crushed arcade cabinets.

He ducked beneath a crumbling concrete overhang in an attempt to avoid any obvious cameras. 

The drone above—smaller, sleeker than most—had already stopped transmitting, shot down by some roaming ganger taking potshots at anything with corporate glint. Lucky.

The real threat wasn't luck. It was coordination.

Three solos. One sniper with thermal optics, too far to track without high-grade net support. One bruiser now licking his wounds in Victor's burning workshop. And one... unaccounted for.

The netrunner.

Although it wasn't explicitly stated, he knew the team sent to kill him was operating with at least three people. One to engage from afar, one to engage in close combat quarters and the final to check for police engagement and observe the net to either attack or defend. 

Victor glanced up at the smog-laced skyline. No movement. No chatter. Just the usual urban thrum.

But his systems still blinked red—his tablet's feed jammed, his gear compromised. He couldn't rely on pings. Couldn't trust hardlines. Someone was still in the mesh, ghosting him.

He had to compromise, destroy the tablet or take it alongside him just in case. 

Victor knew better and bashed it against the alley wall. He wouldn't allow himself to be tracked any longer. 

He clutched his ribs, slowing. He needed to think, and every step kept pulling that chance farther away.

"Alright," he muttered, sliding into the shadows of a maintenance tunnel. "Evaluate."

Inventory check. Two EMPs left. No medkit. Pistol wrecked. Shock gauntlet wires frayed. No eyes in the sky. No safehouse. Nowhere to go but forward.

"Next time," he breathed through gritted teeth, "I'm going to destroy them."

His voice echoed down the concrete tube.

Behind him, he heard distant shouting. Gunfire—not directed at him. Probably unrelated. Probably.

He kept moving, ducking low beneath piping and rusted scaffolds. A local booster gang had set up camp in this area last month—he remembered hearing their music blaring three nights in a row from Vik's window.

Now it was dead silent.

Victor felt that whisper of instinct again. Not panic. Just pressure. The kind that told you a predator was watching.

He passed beneath an old bulkhead and emerged onto a side street behind a mechanic's lot. From here, he could see one of the old NCART rails stretching into the horizon. Night City's blood vessels.

He could disappear.

And yet…

He turned, glancing back once, just for a second, at the plumes of smoke still curling above his workshop. His gear. His research. His mask was half-finished. His diagnostics rig was torn apart.

Gone.

A snarl rose in his throat—but he didn't let it out. Anger wasted oxygen.

Instead, he focused on the now.

He slipped into the rail line's shadow and followed it southeast, putting distance between him and Heywood. If there was one thing the attack proved, it was that the claws weren't done with him. This wasn't a warning. It was an execution.

The netrunner was still tracking him. Probably still listening. He would need to disappear again. Not just relocate—vanish.

And he needed to heal.

His leg was cramping. His ribs screamed with every twist. But the worst was the buzzing in his left ear—likely ruptured. He didn't dare check for burns. Later.

He pressed on, weaving through burnt-out cars and scav tents. A man shouted at him once. Another offered a fix. He ignored them all.

By the time he found cover again—an abandoned arcade beneath a broken neon sign—his body was ready to quit.

He collapsed against a row of shattered pinball machines and let the silence take him.

Not for long.

He needed to reach Vik. Not just to patch the damage, but to recalibrate everything.

This wasn't just a bad gig.

Someone in the city wanted him gone.

And they weren't playing fair. But he knew the odds were stacked in his favour.

They failed to kill him.