404: Doom Not Found

- 10 years before canon -

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - Arthur C. Clarke

Three months, and still this world denies me.

No ley lines. No sanctums. No whisper of the Weave.

Only static and steel. Plastic gods and chrome priests offering synthetic miracles to those too desperate to dream of anything else.

They say Night City devours souls. They're wrong.

It starves them.

I sat cross-legged on the apartment floor, a blanket thrown over exposed wiring, a broken incense coil smoking in a cracked tea bowl. Across from me: a makeshift focus—three shards of old cyberdeck ceramic, balanced like the crown of a beggar king.

I closed my eyes.

Breathe.

The storm left me with chaos—pure mana, raw and seething like a shattered star. Not divine, not demonic—elemental in a way even Kamar-Taj barely spoke of. I'd survived it, true. But I did not leave unchanged.

Inside me now was a furnace. Boundless. Blunt. Unformed.

But what is power without discipline? A curse. A sickness.

So I did what any rational sorcerer-scientist would.

I rebuilt.

My fingers traced the mudras I had learned in the snow-wrapped silence of the Himalayas, taught by monks who spoke in riddles and broke bones with clarity. I heard my old master's voice even now:

"To wield magic is to hold back the sea with thought alone. Do not seek to command it—listen."

I listened.

At first, nothing. Just the hum of a neighbour's radiator. The distant static of V's voice chatting to herself in the kitchen. And the whine of the city—a high-pitched ache only I seemed to hear.

Then—flicker.

Within the labyrinth of my soul, a light sputtered.

I reached inward, into that raw cosmic ember the storm had lodged inside me. It burned like an oil fire—eternal, but chaotic. Like trying to sip thunder through a needle's eye.

Still, I shaped it. Gently. Thread by thread.

No incantations. No divine names. Only breath, precision, and the iron will that had once tamed demons.

And then—

My body fell away.

I was elsewhere.

Not entirely. Only slightly displaced—like a ghost on the edge of its own reflection.

Astral projection.

The only spell I had left that functioned at will. A remnant of a deeper, broader arsenal long since locked behind universal mismatch and a severed link to the arcane grid.

I drifted.

Out of the room. Through the hall. My senses extended—loose, ethereal. I brushed against data trails, light, intention. Night City was noisier here than in the physical. Angrier.

No spirits. No echoes of gods.

Just signal.

I pushed farther—and the strain hit me.

The longer I stayed, the more unstable my link became. The mana wasn't compatible. I wasn't supposed to exist like this in a place like this.

I snapped back into my body like a whipcord.

Pain ricocheted through my chest. Sweat soaked my back. I bit down hard on a groan.

Thirty-seven seconds this time.

An improvement.

But nowhere near enough.

This world was a cage without keys. The laws were different. No natural fonts. No anchor points. The storm had severed me from every pact, every invocation, every artifact attuned to my earth's mystical infrastructure.

I'd tried to recreate them.

The Cloak of Levitation? Torn apart by the storm.

The Eye of Agamotto? No longer aligned.

Crimson Bands of Cyttorak? The entity ignores my call.

The Book of Vishanti? Gone.

The Darkhold? Buried in the corpse of a multiverse.

My sigils? Still branded to memory—but memory does not cast spells.

All I had left was knowledge. That and the chaos within me.

But that would be enough.

Eventually.

I stood and looked over the small living room. My "laboratory," V called it. A shrine of salvage: one part monk cell, one part hacker den, one part warlock's tomb.

It was ugly. Crude.

It would suffice.

V knocked once, leaned in. "Hey, Doom. You okay? You're muttering again."

"Only speaking to ghosts," I said.

She blinked. "Cool. Dinner?"

"Leave it at the door."

She vanished again. No questions. A strange mercy.

I stared at the flickering incense, now collapsed into ash.

My progress was maddeningly slow. If I continued at this pace, it would take five centuries to unravel the chaos within me. Five centuries to rebuild what I had mastered before I could walk.

Unacceptable.

But solvable.

There are sources of power in this world. Not magical, not as I know it—but potent in their own way. Data. Energy. Bio-enhancement. Neuroware. Dreams.

I would adapt. As I always have.

If this world will not yield its arcana—

—I will invent my own.

The astral faded, as it always did—too brief to matter, too fleeting to grasp. Power without anchor. Vision without a vessel.

I returned with the familiar ache in my temples and the heavier weight in my chest. Each time, a reminder: the storm left me changed, but not ascended.

Not yet. And in the absence of divinity, I turned—as I always have—to labour.

Steel, circuitry, heat sinks and graft wires. The forge of this city was not magical, but it was obedient. And so I worked within the confines of my new environment. 

It is not a throne.

But for now, it would suffice. 

Merely a room. Two rooms, to be exact—if one generously includes the cubed kitchenette.

The floors creak. The windows hum. The walls are patched with insulation foam and a curtain that doubles as a door to the communal shower. But it's quiet. Dry. Anonymous.

2,500 eurodollars a month, utilities included—bought in V's name, of course. I have no SIN. No legal footprint. That is both strength and hindrance.

The couch is mine. Spartan. Grey. An ancient alloy frame warped by too many owners. I stripped it to its bones and restructured the joints. It no longer squeaks when I rise.

My "desk" is a dismantled streetlight base, topped with a crate and a salvaged med-monitor. Nearby sit bins of tech detritus: burnt-out optics, broken cyberarms, half-dissolved dermal mesh, blackened control nodes. Some I fixed. Others I harvested. All were acquired by trade, barter, or selective extraction from fallen gangers too foolish to encrypt their gear.

They called me a corpse-picker once, I recall, until they saw how clean the gear came back.

They don't call me anything now.

I work three days a week at Viktor's clinic—Watson's quiet cathedral of quiet desperation. Viktor doesn't ask many questions. He knows.

He doesn't say it, but I suspect he recognises the mask, not the literal one, but the aura. The way old warriors can see the long war behind a man's eyes.

Though the pay increased slightly, the clientele increased alongside it. 

I've learned much.

Cybernetics are not unlike arcane constructs—both function by channels, feedback loops, and focal points. Both carry a cost. A price of identity. In magic, one sacrifices belief. In tech, flesh. Night City does not care what you lose, only how useful you are once it's gone.

Sometimes I weld. Sometimes I reprogram. Sometimes I just sit in the back and observe, watching the guts of humanity splayed open like blueprints. All preparation. I will not remain fleshbound forever. But I will not entrust my body to commercial-grade garbage.

In the evenings, I fix appliances.

Old oscillators, synthskin presses, vending reformatters—most left in alleys by corps or scrappers. I clean them, rewire them, and make them run cooler than they did out of the box. Watson's locals love a working coffee pot that doesn't scream. Some pay in cash. Others pay in favours. Information. A silence when silence is useful.

I've made more this way than I did at the clinic. A reputation forms—not for who I am, but for what I fix.

Let it. I prefer myths whispered under breath.

And then, there is Padre.

A fixer in Heywood. Regal, composed, old-world manners tied up in new-world sins. He reached out through a runner two weeks ago.

"I hear there's a technician in Watson who repairs what others bury."

He offered a job. Low-risk, high-value. Fix a military-grade comms relay that had been fried in a shootout near Glen. I did. Quietly. Efficiently.

He paid well. 3,200 eddies. No questions asked.

I didn't need to say much. He saw the result. Word spreads.

He's offered more since then. Not all gigs interest me, but I monitor the streams. Every fixer in Night City thinks they know power. They speak of leverage like it's a prayer.

But power is not currency. It is continuity. The ability to survive one life long enough to shape the next.

I have no desire to be a petty errand boy, but for now, the illusion serves.

Let them think I'm another techie climbing the ladder.

I am the fire beneath it.

As for V…

She adapts. Slowly. Restlessly.

She calls me 'roomie' now. A term I tolerate.

She still limps in the mornings—residual damage from MM's ICEburn—but she's healing. Sharp. Curious. Grit incarnate, I'd say, if I weren't loath to encourage her recklessness.

She picks up small jobs. Courier routes. Sensor sweeps. Hacking synth-stalls for a few quick eddies. She's starting to think ahead now. Less showboating, more patience. A good sign.

I watch her from the shadows of my thoughts. I let her stumble when it's safe. Let her scrape the edge of the fire so she learns the burn.

But I keep a ping on her cyberdeck.

Always.

She was still Reckless, something only time would release.

It had been ingrained within her. 

In this city, the bold were favoured and being something was better than living. 

Night City Legend Johnny Silverhand was remembered for his rock attitude and bombing Arasaka. Not his manifesto, and neither his numerous tours working alongside Militech. 

A supposed anarchist and freedom fighter who opposed capitalism and corporations, working with a corporation?

How ironic. 

But such thoughts would be left for later; my equipment had been updated over the last three months. 

Steel, for all its timelessness, was never the problem. The failure lay in what surrounded it.

Night City's idea of warfare was improvisational madness. Guns looked like kitbashed prototypes from a garage owned by lunatics.

I once held a pistol duct-taped at the grip with stickers of naked anime idols on the barrel—an NCPD badge still scorched onto the slide.

I'd seen rifles with plastic car parts jammed in as stocks, triple-barrel contraptions supposedly "smart-linked" to knock-off neural interfaces, and chrome katana handles welded onto power drills.

This was what passed for military gear here. Corporate chic paired with gangland schizophrenia. An entire armoury designed by committee, forged in discount hell.

I built better from scraps.

And I had.

The mask came first. It was never negotiable. It had been renewed. A hybrid shell—shell-shell-polymer-reinforced alloy forged from scavenged Maelstrom plating and re-tempered surgical steel.

Sleek, angular, and moulded to retain identity and mystique. Synthetic fibres layered through gave it shock resistance, embedded HUD relays, and a light neural tether. It also blurred the face when observing from cameras or scans. Not true armour. Not yet. But enough.

Then came the rest.

The exosuit beneath was simple by my standards. A partial spinal frame driven by a dual-arc capacitor rig. I'd retooled the capacitors from a broken-down TeslaTech cargo loader and a Korean combat drone, each housing a miniature reactor core I'd personally overhauled. These weren't just batteries. They were lifelines.

With them, I could lift steel doors bare-handed. Absorb recoil from heavy ordnance. Stand toe-to-toe with chromed-out behemoths and not buckle. The suit had no smart-targeting, no auto-balance gyros, no fancy Sandevistan slow-time nonsense. It didn't need that. What it gave me was better: raw power, routed through purpose.

The plating was the last to go on. Chest and shoulder pauldrons made from reinforced ballistic fibre and steel-bonded composites, trimmed and angled for glancing impact. Forearm guards inlaid with copper-threaded circuits—future sites for augment control or magnetic relays. I added the cloak because some things are tradition.

But my pride—the signature pieces—rested in the weapons.

The short sword rode my back like a memory. Forged from carbon-folded alloys stolen from Corpo shipment crates, cooled in polymer foam. Not mono-edged, not electrified—yet. But its balance? Perfect. It moved like it remembered my hands from another life. It would be the last weapon I ever let go.

The shock gloves came next. Retrofit from trauma team tech and Maelstrom circuitry, routed through the arc-capacitor. A flick of my fingers, and 50,000 volts could drop a man in full combat gear. Melee in Night City was often a last resort. For me, it was plan A through C.

Then came the firearms.

My tech pistol—a weapon of my own design, cobbled from a fractured Kang Tao coil gun and the remnants of a prototype Vindicator. It hummed with energy, arc-fed through a rebuilt Stark-style focus array. Pulled the trigger, and it launched bolts of supercharged plasma encased in kinetic shells. Loud. Untraceable. I called it "Volta."

The rifle, though—ah, the rifle. A bastard child of Earth and Elsewhere. Frame from a Militech M-66; internals replaced entirely with my own engineering. Barrel stabilised with shock-tracing rails. Recoil corrected via a gyroscopic arc-core embedded near the stock. Chambered for .66 calibre smart-linked ammunition—subdermal explosive tips with ceramic tracers. Brutal. Precise. Not of this world.

No fingerprints. No origin. Not even the corps would recognise the make. I took that as a compliment.

I kept the designs discreet. Nothing flashy. No glowing LED strips or neon-finned cooling ports like the gangers loved. This wasn't cosplay—it was war.

And yet...

I wasn't done. Not by a long shot.

Nanotech—true nanotech—still eluded me. The programming equipment required to initialise nanite swarms didn't exist here. Not publicly. The materials weren't found in Night City at all. Carbon-matrix programmable fluids? Memory-threaded silicon cells? No. I had scraps, not miracles.

But I'd started rough blueprints. Small steps. Swarm protocols. Adaptive response logic. A shell company—Iron Alloy Solutions—run quietly through an old Chinese ghost net. The groundwork had begun.

Once I had the lab... once I had the capital... I would build my armour the way it was meant to be. With mind-linked nanoscale threads that could shift shape, absorb bullets, and weave themselves into new forms mid-fight. Like the future, whispered through steel.

For now, though, I was armoured well enough to be feared.

And maybe that was the point.

I wasn't Chrome. I didn't wear half a hospital suite bolted to my skin. No optics the size of billiard balls. No chrome mandibles clicking at the edge of my jaw.

I was something else.

Something they didn't know how to scan. Or fight.

That made me dangerous.

That made me Doom.