404: Doom Not Found

- 11 years before canon - 

"Lesson time, old man."

V clicked open the screen on her cracked shard and refreshed the feed from her recent messages. Nothing. No ping from Victor.

Not a delay. Not a postponement. Just nothing.

She scoffed, tossing the shard onto her ratty couch, then leaned back against the armrest of her tiny apartment's second-hand recliner. One of the springs inside let out a noise like a dying cat.

"He probably fried himself trying to be clever," she muttered, chewing the corner of her thumbnail.

Still, her gut wasn't sitting right. The way he carried himself… Victor Von Doom wasn't careless. He was many things—arrogant, standoffish, rigid like old-world marble—but unreliable? Nah. Not even close.

She flicked on her holo-projector, a busted display illuminating the corner of the room. Static. Then feed. She tapped through old videos, a few logs from when she spied on him through one of her network pings.

Training, running callisthenics, typing rapidly with surgical precision into a build matrix. Man had the hands of an engineer and the paranoia of a corpo exec on a synthetic coke bender.

"He doesn't miss meetings."

She stared at the flickering footage. He wasn't a friend. She didn't owe him shit.

Still…

He had saved her life once. Dragged her ass out of a corner when she was bleeding from the neck. He hadn't even asked for anything in return. Just walked away with that same cold judgment behind his eyes.

That made it worse somehow.

She leaned forward, hands clasped, elbows on knees. Her apartment was still, save for the buzz of neon through slatted blinds.

"You're an idiot if you go looking," she told herself.

But silence answered.

Then the silence lingered.

Her fingers slowly reached for her old burner shard, the one with pre-built location tools and dirty net channels. She flicked open a stored ping from a backup tracking drone she'd casually linked to his datapad once during one of their sparring banters. Not malicious—just standard V protocol.

Nothing. Offline.

Dead silence.

And the bastard never turned it off.

That gnawed at her.

It was like watching a building collapse from a mile away and pretending you didn't hear the echo.

Finally, she stood. Grabbed her jacket. Her pistol. Her modded eyes flicked to full spectrum.

"Fine. Fuck it."

She wasn't doing it for him. It was just weird. And weird was dangerous in Night City. If he were dead, maybe she'd find something worth selling.

Yeah. That was it.

She pulled on her boots, reached under the couch, and grabbed the lockpick set she'd never had to use—until now.

Then she stole the nearest car she could find.

Crash! 

The car smelled like menthols and sour synth-meat. V barely noticed as she leaned into the wheel, eyes darting between traffic feeds and her wrist shard. Stolen vehicle, no plates. Good. Fewer eyes on her.

She drove first to his workshop to find the place thrashed. Someone had ransacked the place, and blood still tinted the walls. The numerous tools and equipment Victor worked with were destroyed and burned to ash. 

A scuffle and a fight had occurred.

"Fuck... What Gonk could force Victor of all people to go silent..." She murmured, her eyes gazing towards the street cameras around. 

"Let's see where you went, pretty boy..." 

Using her deck, she easily accessed footage but found discrepancies. Footage between the time she called and an hour before and after was wiped. 

Someone was cleaning house.

Taking a detour, she noticed a pattern: all local cameras, to a degree, lost footage of the time.

Flicking through, she eventually found one camera, a few metres away from the workshop, but managed to capture a tiny figure in the back being chased away. Three figures appeared to converge on the one. 

The blurred figures appeared closer by and seemed to swarm to his location, their faces blurred. She appeared to get closer before shutting the camera. 

This meant he was being hunted and most likely wounded. He didn't seem the type to retreat unless absolutely; he had that corpo ego to him. 

Though she didn't stop there, she had to get names and figures. 

"I can at least do this." She murmured before noticing a destroyed drone, its optics fried, but its memory disc still present.

It didn't appear to be looted, a possible lead. 

Finding a safe spot, she looked at her BD scroller and mentally prayed to herself. 

Taking a deep breath, she went in raw. Her eyes rolling back, with her body collapsing. 

Seeing her mind was collapsing, she scored, celebrating mentally. Going through it, she finally saw an overview of the scene and the local gangers shooting it down. The image of a wounded Victor passing by. 

Her deductions were correct. 

Going back two hours revealed a tall figure alongside two others, the drone facing them. The woman's face was blurred, but the two solo's behind her seemed to lack the kyroshi optics to blur their face.

Leaving the BD for later, she began to hypothesise. 

"Come on, where would a stuck-up bastard like you crawl off to…"

Victor wasn't some chrome-head with a Trauma Team platinum plan. No backup. No fancy SOS button to ping. Just brainpower and a spine made of steel. And he bled just like the rest of them.

V drummed her fingers against the steering wheel, thinking. Her first guess had been a bust. Rip-Rack down in Charter Hill—where most rookie solos and edge punks went to bleed—was too far beneath Victor's standards. He'd scoffed at the place once during a conversation about field injuries, saying he'd rather bleed out in a back alley than trust "a butcher with discount scalpels."

Besides, Victor wouldn't travel that far out; he'd most likely bleed to death before he did. Fuck where are you choom Fine. Scratch that. She thought, scratching her head. 

She tracked any subtle and professional Ripperdoc and found one that matched the description. Nothing fancy, but nothing negative either. It bordered between the line of corpo financed and privately owned. 

Perfect place for a person like Victor to attend. 

Reaching 

The clinic was dark. Shutters down, signage off, and the front security lock blinking red. No hum of machinery, no patient groans, no street doc working the night shift. It was the kind of quiet that Night City didn't believe in.

V stood outside, chewing the inside of her cheek.

You sure about this, chica? Her thoughts whispered.

She wasn't. Most back alley rippers weren't friendly, and seeing as how it was dark, it meant unmarked territory. 

The ripperdoc wasn't someone she knew. Kept a low profile. Supposed to be legit. Which meant breaking in was a bad idea.

She scanned the alley, double-checked for cameras, and flipped the hood of her patched jacket up. One small shock charge under the keypad was all it took.

Bzzzt!

The lock blinked green.

She slipped inside, boots silent on the linoleum. A half-lit hallway stretched forward, the air reeking of antiseptic and solder. Tools glinted on trays. Cyberware diagrams lined the walls. The hum of backup power thrummed low in the distance.

She had taken two steps before—

Click.

Cold metal pressed against her temple.

"Name. Now," said a gravelled voice, measured but deadly.

Her hands went up.

"Easy, choom," she said slowly. "Name's V. I'm not here to steal meds or chrome your fridge."

"You broke in."

"No shit. The door was locked, and your patient might be bleeding out somewhere."

A long silence. The gun didn't lower.

Then: "You know Victor?"

She hesitated. "Not biblically, no. We work together. He was supposed to ping me. Didn't. So I followed the scent."

The weapon was slowly pulled back.

The man behind it stepped into view—older, tired eyes behind a cracked optic. He was built broad, like someone who'd taken too many punches and given back just as many. His name tag was missing, but the arms—arms-grease-stained and strong—said "ripperdoc" more than anything else in the room.

"Viktor," he said simply. "You're not wrong. Kid came in bleeding like a stuck pig."

She exhaled. "So he's alive?"

"For now."

A flicker of guilt crossed her face. She hated that it mattered.

"Where is he?"

"Out cold. Gave him painkillers strong enough to knock out a synth bear. Burned, shot, bruised. The works."

V looked down the hallway again, her jaw tightening.

"I need to see him."

Viktor studied her for a long second. "You gonna cause problems?"

"Only if he's already dead."

"…Alright," he grunted. "Come on."

He led her down the hall to the backroom, where the dull green of an operating lamp illuminated the battered shape on the table.

Victor lay motionless, chest wrapped in temporary mesh, one shoulder half-bared and stitched. His face was untouched, mostly... A fresh burn scar ran from cheek to jawline, faintly glossy in the light. 

In Night City, that was a miracle; most who went against solos with nothing but makeshift gear would've died. 

V didn't say anything.

She just looked at him.

"You care?" Viktor asked, arms crossed.

"No," she said.

Too fast.

He didn't press her.

She stood there for a moment longer before backing away.

"I'll keep him under for now," Viktor said. "He wakes up too early, he'll rip half his stitches fighting ghosts."

V nodded once, her voice lower now.

"Tell him he still owes me net lessons."

Viktor raised an eyebrow. "Seriously?"

"He'll know what it means."

She turned to leave, hand already reaching into her pocket for a burner shard. She stopped at the doorway.

"Thanks, Doc. Not every ripper would've helped someone like him."

Viktor didn't answer right away. When he did, it was soft—gruff, but honest.

"He's a good kid. That's all, oh and if you need a ripper. Don't be afraid to stop by."

"I'll sleep on it." 

Then she was gone.

Back into the night.

Back into the chaos.

And Victor Von Doom slept beneath the glow of the lamp, unknowing that someone had come to check he was still breathing.

Back in her cluttered apartment in Watson, the air was thick with the scent of reheated instant noodles and burnt wiring. A busted oscillating fan clicked rhythmically in the corner while V hunched over her deck, fingers dancing across the scratched display of her portable terminal.

The lights were low, the curtains drawn. It wasn't paranoia. It was muscle memory.

Victor was alive. She'd seen it with her own eyes.

But that didn't mean he was safe.

And if someone was throwing hitters like that at him, they were either rich, desperate, or both.

She slid a shard into the port beside her terminal and pinged one of her old contacts.

"Yo, Z. I need a pull."

A few seconds later, a digital face flickered into view. Static obscured most of it—a stylised skull mask stitched into a ratty hoodie. She couldn't remember if Z was ever on her side or just liked the sound of her voice.

"Someone pissed in your preem cereal?" Z said.

"Don't have time for cute. Three solos. One bruiser, one sniper, and a netrunner built like a tower. They came after a friend of mine."

Z let out a long whistle.

"Friend? Ha, don't joke, V." 

"I'm serious..." 

"Suuuuureee. Anyway, got tags? Images?"

She slid over a the memory chip. 

Z nodded slowly. "Okay… Okay. Gimme a minute."

The line held silent for what felt like an hour. V stared at the cracked screen of her device, occasionally biting her nail. Z finally returned with a muted hum.

"Alright. Partial hit. Crew goes by no consistent name, operates freelance. All off-grid. No recent contracts logged in the usual fixer boards. That means someone paid them direct."

"Profiles?"

Z flipped through them as if going down a list. Each image grainy, out-of-date, like ghosts that refused to sit still.

"Leader's the woman. Ebony skin, high-strung build, uses alias MM for Mother Midnight or just Midnight, depending on the year. Cold as ice, quiet on ops. No record of official merc affiliations. Shits near scrubbed clean if it weren't for the fact they were logged in the systems awhile ago. Two counts of contract termination gone wrong—one in Seattle, one in Paris. Last traceable appearance was two years ago. She's got netrunning capabilities and leads from the front."

V narrowed her eyes. "She's the one feeding the other two commands. Makes sense."

"Next up… Sniper. Alias: Jäger. Eastern European, ex-Gliński Division from the Polish Free State. Black-bag background. Got cyber-optics with long-range uplink. Rumours say he popped his CO after a bad op and ghosted from the military."

"Sharp aim," V muttered. "Tagged my friend before he even got through the front door."

"Yeah, wouldn't surprise me. Last known contract? Eastern Bloc private security out in Prague. No digital trail since. Likely running merc under burner IDs."

V leaned back, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "And the big guy?"

Z scrolled down. "Local. Born and chromed right here in Night City. Goes by Ruckus. Gorilla arms, dermal weave, EMP-threaded. Used to work low-tier protection detail for Braindance pushers, then vanished after burning a club down over a fight. One confirmed death. One. That we know of."

"Streetdoc who patched him?"

Z snorted. "Dead too. Overdosed or silenced. Hard to tell which."

"And now they're working together?"

"Someone brought them under one banner, yeah. That doesn't happen by accident. They're professionals—washed, maybe, but trained. Efficient. The problem is... everyone's profile on them dries up around 2062. Since then? Silence. Like they dropped off the map."

V frowned. "Or someone made sure of it."

Z paused, tapping fingers against something off-screen.

"You think your friend was the target?"

"Definitely."

"And you're helping him out of... what? Guilt? Curiosity?"

"I don't need a reason, Z."

Z chuckled. "Yeah, that tracks."

"Send me everything you've got. I need to know how deep this hole goes."

"Will do. But V?"

She looked up.

"Whatever this is… it ain't street-level anymore. These chooms were polished for bigger gigs. And if they're moving in, Watson? Someone must've made a serious enemy. You gotta hit a big pile of shit to move around Maelstrom teritory."

V's mouth twisted. "Yeah. He does that."

She killed the line and slumped into the cracked leather of her chair.

Victor was being hunted. That much was clear.

But what wasn't—what gnawed at her gut—was why.

Someone out there had spent money, resources, and silence to hire a ghost crew with no footprints.

And if this was just the beginning?

Then they'd all need more than luck to make it to the next sunrise.

---

He woke to the scent of disinfectant, something metallic and acidic under it.

Pain greeted him first. Then clarity.

His shoulder burned. His ribs ached. His coat was half-charred, blood dried across the inner lining like cracked paint.

Victor Von Doom sat upright in a dim, forgotten maintenance closet. Not Viktor's shop. Not a clinic. Somewhere he'd crawled to—his mind too fractured to recall.

He had left in the night, refusing to be administered like a wounded dog.

Not again, never again.

He was alive. Just barely. But that was enough. 

He didn't speak. He reached into his inner coat pocket, fingers finding the small, flat rectangle he'd buried there days ago: a burner ID chip—clean, low-grade, and untraceable.

Or at least to a degree. 

He slid it into the side of the cheap throwaway phone he'd yanked from a junk vendor earlier that week, just in case. A contingency. Of course, he had one.

The screen lit up dimly.

He scrolled past the handful of numbers he'd programmed—Vik, the burner fixers, a couple of dead drop relays. Then he stopped on hers.

Gina J.

He stared at the name for a long second, thumb hovering.

It clicked.

The call connected with a shrill ring.

Three beats. Four.

A pause.

Then—

"...Hello?" Her voice was slow, cautious. Then sharpened. "Who is this?"

"You sound disappointed," Victor said, voice low and dry. "Guess I didn't die like you planned."

Silence. Then a hiss of breath.

"Vic?—You're—how the fuck—?"

He cut her off. "Don't insult both of us by pretending to be surprised."

"You're calling me? After you go off the grid for two days—bleeding, hunted—I vouch for you—"

"You sold me out." His voice didn't rise. It froze. "You knew they were coming. You let them get that close."

"I didn't let anyone do anything!" she snapped, fire in her voice now. "You think I wanted that heat anywhere near my name? You think I'd toss you for free? You're not that important."

"Not important, but useful enough to throw under the truck when it slowed down."

"Don't get dramatic," she spat. "This is Night City. We all sell each other out. The question is whether it buys us time or buys us a bullet."

Victor said nothing.

Gina exhaled. "Look. I didn't send them. You were a problem, and someone capitalised. That's the truth."

"And Bubbles?" he asked, voice tightening.

Another pause.

"I haven't seen him. But if you're smart, you won't go looking either."

His grip on the phone tightened. "So that's it? That's all you've got for me?"

"You want a refund?" she scoffed. "You want an apology?"

"I want answers."

"You want your pride back, you mean."

Victor's silence was louder than any curse.

Gina sighed, something softer slipping through the edge. "You think I don't know what you are? You, Corpo dropouts, don't understand what life for us street kids is like. You walk in like some high and mighty ghost with a God complex, making enemies just by breathing. That's your vibe. You scare the piss outta people who should've stomped you by now. But Night City doesn't care about intellect. Or manners. Or vision. "

"Then what does it care about?" Victor questioned, his teeth gnashing at the idea of this fixer attempting to stand on the moral high ground. 

Who was she to question the great Doom?

"Power," she said flatly. "And who's left standing at the end of the day. You don't got enough muscle to be a kingpin. Not yet. But you? You've got the anger. And the burn. Which means you'll keep getting back up."

"I'm not done," he murmured.

"I know. That's why I'm still talking to you."

Victor closed his eyes, "When I find you, we won't be allies." 

"Wouldn't put it above you, but the feelings are mutual. Watch your back."

"Enjoy the next forty-eight hours, Gina."

"Likewise," she said, voice unreadable. "Oh, and Welcome to Night City—for real this time."

She hung up.

Victor stared at the dark screen. His reflection was barely visible in the gloss. Part of his left cheek was still raw, the flesh tender and marked. The bruiser's fist had almost taken his jaw clean off.

He turned toward the shattered mirror on the wall.

They had dared to touch him, dared to touch a God. 

They would pay, suffer for crossing Doom. 

What looked back wasn't just bloodied. It was changed.

There were no theatrics in his eyes—just decision.

It was time to rebuild.

It was time to hunt.