Cyberpunk: STRAY

Interlude: The Road to Night City

Yangon, Year - 2061

The infant wailed, his tiny voice lost in the storm. Rain pelted the stone steps of St. Gabriel's, running in thin rivulets across the cracked pavement. Wind rattled the iron gate, sending a rusty creak through the orphanage courtyard.

The baby lay in a bundle of thin, damp cloth, his face scrunched in protest, fists clenched against the cold. No note. No name. Just left there, like so many others before him.

From the dimly lit doorway, a figure emerged—Father Desmond, his robes weighed down by the rain. He stood over the child for a moment, sighing through his nose. Then, with careful hands, he scooped the boy up, tucking him against his chest.

The rain kept falling. The night swallowed the city. And inside St. Gabriel's, the infant quieted, his cries fading into the sound of rustling fabric and soft, tired footsteps.

Saw Vincent's world was smaller once. Before the megabuildings, before the endless hum of Night City, before the deals and the double-crosses, there was Yangon. A city of cracked sidewalks and golden pagodas, of street vendors frying samosas on iron skillets, of monsoon rains that turned the roads into rivers.

He was never hungry, not really. He wasn't one of the street kids scraping by, barefoot and sunburnt, fighting stray dogs over scraps. No, Vincent had a roof over his head, three meals a day, and books to read. That put him ahead of most.

He grew up in St. Gabriel's, a missionary school that doubled as an orphanage. A faded colonial-era building with chipped white paint, wooden desks smoothed by decades of restless hands, and the constant echo of morning prayers. The priests and nuns who ran the place were strict, but not cruel. They fed him, clothed him, and drilled him in mathematics and scripture with the same unwavering discipline.

He never knew his parents. Never asked. He had no last name until the school gave him one—Vincent, meaning the "Conquer". Quite the opposite of his nature, maybe.

He wasn't special, not then. Just another boy in a stiff white uniform, lining up for morning roll call, memorizing English passages, and kneeling on hard stone floors during mass. But even back then, Vincent watched. Listened. Learned.

He figured things out early...

The priests weren't saints. Some drank too much, some were cruel in small, quiet ways, and some turned a blind eye when they shouldn't.The rich kids in the proper school across the road never looked twice at boys like him—until they needed homework answers. The black market was everywhere. Vendors selling knockoff BDS and pirated textbooks. Teachers taking bribes to pass students. Even the school had its own economy—favors traded, rations stolen, secrets kept.

Vincent never caused trouble, but he never got walked over either.

He was smart, and in a place like St. Gabriel's, that meant survival.

By ten, he was fluent in English and had a sharper tongue than most adults. By twelve, he was making pocket money tutoring the sons of businessmen who didn't want to waste their time in class. By fourteen, he had figured out the priests' ledger system and knew exactly how much money the school skimmed off donations.

By fifteen, he wanted out.

St. Gabriel's had given him everything he needed to function—but nothing he needed to belong. He wasn't cut out for the priesthood, wasn't stupid enough to fall into Yangon's street gangs, and wasn't rich enough to buy his way into the life he wanted.

So he studied. Hard.

He devoured books on finance, business, history—anything that taught him how the world really worked. How power moved. How money flowed.

When a foreign volunteer left behind an old, battered tablet, Vincent took it apart, fixed it, and found his window into a bigger world. He learned about Wall Street, digital currencies, offshore accounts. About how the rich didn't play by the same rules as everyone else.

Yangon was a dead end. A city where connections mattered more than talent, where the powerful stayed powerful, and where a boy with no name, no family, and no status would always be nothing.

Vincent wasn't willing to be nothing.

So when the opportunity came—when a fixer whispered about work that needed doing, a delivery to be made, a ticket out—Vincent took it.

No hesitation.

No looking back.

And just like that, he was gone.

After moving squatter camps after squatter camps, Vincent left Yangon with nothing but a cheap duffel bag, a half-charged tablet, and enough cash to last a few weeks if he spent it right. He didn't bother with goodbyes. There was no one to say them to.

He took a bus to Myawaddy, crossed into Thailand the way everyone did—under the table, no questions asked. From there, it was Bangkok. Then Manila. Then Jakarta. Never staying long, always moving, always watching.

Southeast Asia was a mess. It had been for years. Corporations squeezed governments dry, proxy wars burned through villages, and the poor got poorer while the rich locked themselves behind armored walls. But Vincent had grown up in Myanmar—he'd already seen enough war, enough death, enough suffering to make all of this feel like background noise.

The military still ruled back home, even if they wore suits now instead of uniforms. The rebels still fought them in the jungles. People still disappeared. It had been that way for as long as Vincent could remember.

He knew what a losing game looked like. And Myanmar? It had already lost.

Vincent's survival wasn't a matter of luck—it was calculated. He never drew attention. Never spent more than he had to. Kept his head down, his ears open. He learned to forge documents, fake identities, move money through places that didn't ask questions. He did small jobs—running messages, delivering packages, setting up firewalled accounts for people who needed to stay off the grid.

Eventually, he caught the attention of someone who mattered.

A Chinese smuggler in Jakarta. A middleman for a corporate black-market pipeline. He didn't care about Vincent's past, only that he was smart, useful, and didn't make mistakes.

"Night City," the man had said one evening, tapping the ash off his cigar. "That's where the real money is."

Vincent listened. He already knew about Night City. The city of dreams. The city of broken promises. The city where you either made it or got swallowed whole.

It was dangerous. Cutthroat. But it was also opportunity.

So when the smuggler offered him a way in—a spot on a cargo ship carrying contraband to the Americas—Vincent didn't hesitate.

He boarded a rusted freighter in Surabaya under a false name, crammed between crates of unregistered cyberware and bootleg medical supplies. The journey took weeks. He barely slept. The food was shit. But none of it mattered.

When the ship docked in Mexico, Vincent slipped into the sprawl like a ghost. He made his way north, hitching rides, dodging corpos and border patrols, the cartels, bribing the right people when he had to.

By the time he reached San Francisco, he was exhausted, broke, and had nothing left but his wits.

And then—Night City.

A metropolis -turned-megacity, a neon-lit hellhole where the rich played god and the poor fought over scraps. A place where anyone could be someone—if they had the guts to take it.

Vincent walked into the City with empty pockets and sharp eyes.

He wasn't the strongest, the fastest, or the deadliest.

But he was smarter. And that? That was enough.

Kabuki, Watson District, Night City - 2077 

The air outside was thick with the stench of ozone, synth-spice, and motor grease—Night City's usual cocktail of humanity and machine. The neon glare bounced off puddles of oily rainwater, painting the cracked pavement in flickering reds, blues, and greens.

Vincent pulled up his hood, hands shoved deep in his pockets, and walked. He didn't have anywhere to be, but standing still wasn't an option. Rita was good to him. A rare thing in this city. She didn't ask for much, didn't pry too hard, just gave him a place to crash, and a little space to breathe. But Vincent had overstayed his welcome. He wasn't built for comfort, not in a place like this.

So, he left. Quietly. No note, no goodbye—just gone.

The streets were alive. Boostergangs loitered outside pawn shops, corpo suits argued with half-burned-out Solos, and a netrunner with chrome-plated eyes sat on the curb, mumbling to himself, lost in some braindance trip.

Vincent kept his head down and walked.

He needed a plan.

No eddies meant no options. He had a few hundred stashed away, but that wouldn't last. Not in this city. Food, safe spots, transport—all cost.

The fixers would have work. Always did. But Vincent wasn't looking for another shit-tier errand gig. No more running packages without knowing what's inside. No more messenger-boy bullshit.

He needed something bigger. Smarter, Information...

The smartest people in Night City weren't the ones with chrome-plated arms or smartgun implants. They were the ones who knew things others didn't.

And Vincent? He was good at listening.

The bars, the markets, the data hubs—everywhere was leaking information. A corpo falling from grace. A gang needing a problem solved. A desperate suit looking for an out. All opportunities.

And opportunities? Opportunities meant survival.

Vincent wasn't just looking to survive—he was looking to win. But to do that, he needed an angle. Something that would give him leverage in a city where everyone was playing the game, whether they knew it or not.

And for that?

He needed time.

Time to listen. Time to think. Time to watch.

And so, he wandered, blending into the city like just another nobody, waiting for his moment.

Vincent walked the streets like a ghost in broad daylight—seen, but unnoticed.

Night City was full of people who wanted to be noticed. Gangers flexing their chrome, corpos showing off designer cyberware, hustlers making noise to prove they mattered. But Vincent? He had no implants, no status, no reputation. That was his advantage.

The key to survival to him wasn't power—it was not being a target.

He moved through the crowd, past the neon-lit food stalls and holo-billboards advertising the latest Braindance porn, cyberware upgrades, and fashion. A group of Tyger Claws lingered near a ramen stand, their leader—*a woman with a cybernetic snake tattoo slithering across her arm—*staring down a nervous street vendor. Shakedown in progress.

Vincent didn't slow down. Not his business.

Further ahead, a haggard-looking corpo in a wrinkled suit sat slumped outside a bar, head in his hands. Probably just got burned—fired, blacklisted, or worse. Vincent made a mental note. Desperate people made good marks.

He turned down an alley, stepping over discarded cans and used needles, then ducked into a no-name diner—one of those places that looked like it had been there before the city even had a name. Greasy counter, cracked tiles, old jukebox in the corner playing some forgotten blues track.

Perfect.

Vincent slid into a booth, back to the wall, eyes on the entrance. He wasn't hungry, but ordered a black coffee just to have an excuse to sit.

Now, he listened.

He ain't got much connections. Yet, he knew where to start.

Fixers.

The middlemen of Night City, the ones who made the calls, set up the deals, and decided whether you got paid or got left to rot in a landfill. But getting their attention? That was the real trick.

Vincent didn't want to go back to the small-time gigs. He needed a play that mattered.

That meant finding the right fixer.

As he stirred his coffee, he scanned the room. People talked when they thought no one was listening.

A techie couple whispering about a stolen military-grade shard.

A joytoy on the phone, cursing out a client for not paying up.

A solo, half-drunk, bragging about how he "iced some gonks for Wakako".

There... A name.

Vincent filed it away. Wakako Okada. A powerful fixer in Japantown. Connected. Ruthless. Efficient.

Not a bad place to start.

But first, he needed more information.

He finished his coffee, left 10 eurodollars on the table, and stepped back into the city's streets.

The city pulsed around Vincent, a living thing of steel, neon, and desperation. He walked with purpose but without urgency—never looking like a man on a mission, but always moving toward something.

First, he needed to clean up his tracks.

He took a detour through a crowded market, disappearing into the flow of bodies. Stalls lined both sides of the street, selling chrome implants, knockoff cyberdecks, bootleg BDs, and questionable street food. He stopped at a nondescript vendor, an old woman with a face like cracked leather, selling secondhand tech.

"Got disposable burners? I need them secure... and preferably...old tech." Vincent asked.

She barely looked up. "Three hundred a pop."

Vincent clicked his tongue and tossed a credit chip onto the counter. A burner phone and a clean shard. He wiped his old deck data, transferred what little mattered, and dumped it into the hands of a homeless kid sitting near a trash heap. "Make some calls, burn through the minutes." The kid didn't ask questions.

By the time he exited the market, his old fake identity was dust.

The Meeting

Aurore didn't do casual meetups. If you were seeing her, it was because she had a reason for it.

Vincent made his way back through Dogtown, slipping past checkpoints, avoiding the eyes of Barghest patrols. No sudden movements. No drawing attention.

He arrived at Heavy Hearts, its once-grand neon sign flickering like a dying heartbeat, The grand architectural beauty of the pyramid themed Night club. Inside, the air was thick with smoke, money, and unspoken threats.

Aurore sat in a corner booth, legs crossed, a cigarette between her fingers. Her French accent cut through the noise as she spoke to a nervous-looking man. She barely glanced at Vincent as he approached, but he knew better—she had already sized him up.

He slid into the seat across from her, keeping his hands where she could see them.

She smirked. "So, monsieur je-sais-tout,(a sarcastic way of saying smartass in French :3 ) what news do you bring?"

Vincent leaned forward, voice low. "Jago's still playing cautious. He wants confirmation before he moves. But he's interested."

Aurore exhaled a long drag of smoke, tapping her nails against the table. "Of course he is. But interest alone won't do it, If he catches on tha you lowballed him? merde... we're both going to be fucked..."

Vincent didn't flinch. "Give me a day. I'll make sure he bites."

A pause. Then a slow smile from Aurore. "Good. Do that, and maybe I won't make you pay for the coffee you owe me, mon chou..."

Vincent smirked back. Business was still on the table. That meant he still had a place in this city.

For now at least....