The images showed men and women tied up like cargo.
There was a reason this neighborhood was deserted — the space meant for residents had been turned into storage for people.
As the NCPD and the Mox took over the upper floors, one horrifying picture after another appeared in the database.
Like the Maelstrom, the Brainiacs were heavy chromers — and uncontrolled chromers would do anything.
The old Maelstrom crew, for instance, used to hack off the limbs of random passersby to replace them with junk-grade cyberware. The resulting neural inflammation drove people insane, and mismatched limbs made life worse than death.
Cyber-mod signals would misfire — raising an arm might trigger a spin, gripping became release, walking turned into crouching.
Such absurd errors rewired the brain over time, causing subtle but irreversible mental and neurological damage.
Skill chips — digital implants that control the human body through code — were no different. They required precision.
The Brainiacs needed test subjects — lots of them — to check which black-market, dumpster-dived, or scavenged skill chips were fatal and which weren't.
River pushed open a door. A wave of stench rolled out.
Inside, a neat pile of corpses was stacked like garbage — rotting, bloated, and foul.
Most of them had twisted limbs, displaced muscles, warped skeletons. Skin charred and blistered like it had been torched. Faces locked in agony — nightmare fuel.
They had to be alive when the experiments began. It was hard to imagine what they'd endured.
Beside the testing area stood several deep-dive immersion pods.
But these weren't normal Net-access pods.
The data inside a cyberpsycho's body was chaos.
These "bridgers" — the ones inside the pods — were human data miners, forced to synchronize with the target's pain, both physical and mental. The pods were their "mining rigs."
Victims implanted with bad skill chips usually went cyberpsycho, making their data unreadable.
By using a living person as a neural bridge to read indirectly, the pain could be dampened, and the data became more ordered, more coherent.
Mining this kind of dirty data was as dangerous as corporate divers crossing the Blackwall — except here the damage came from replicating the physiology of a cyberpsycho, not rogue AIs frying you from the other side.
Both methods were cruel — but efficient, cheap, and ensured data integrity.
When there were no experiments, the Brainiacs used virtual illusions to trick people into simple computational tasks, turning them into human servers.
Of course, their processing speed couldn't match trained Netrunners or real servers — but they were cheap. And idle bodies were still useful.
Still…
Two buildings yielded nearly two hundred victims.
Men, women, old, young — all used for processing power. That was no small resource.
And the underground base hadn't even been cleared yet.
[Suzy: These animals!]
[River: This is the sickest crime scene I've ever seen.]
V and Jackie frowned deeply, faces twisted with disgust.
Scavs sold people as merchandise.
The Brainiacs used people as tools.
Same rot, different stench.
"This is straight-up deranged," Joestar muttered.
V shot him a look. "And you, a Maelstrom punk, get to say that?"
"We only experiment on ourselves! We don't pull weak-ass crap like this! That's called dangerous ascension!"
Leo glanced at him — the kid really didn't know.
Maelstrom's victims weren't fewer back in the day. Brick might not have organized this kind of horror, but he sure didn't stop his crew either.
[River: We took down Jotaro the Woodman, and now — right next to the Ho-Oh Club — another Brainiac nest pops up.]
[River: Sometimes I wonder if Night City's just cursed. A place that'll never get better.]
[River: You wipe out one monster, and another crawls out of the same corpse.]
Leo's expression didn't change much, but his disgust ran deeper than any of them knew.
[Leo: There's still change.]
He glanced at Joestar, who was still red-faced from arguing.
[Leo: At least the new Maelstrom thinks only self-mod experiments count.]
[River: So basically… we're comparing "bad" to "less bad"?]
After the bickering died down, Joestar mumbled, "Guess my old lady's still alive after all."
Jackie chuckled. "Honestly, I don't get why you've got such beef with your mom. She raised you, didn't she?"
"Well…" Joestar scratched his head, remembering all her missed calls. "I dunno."
Sometimes when a teenager runs away, it's not even the parents' fault.
In Joestar's case, he just couldn't handle learning what his mom did for a living — and that he'd walked in on it at the worst possible moment.
Looking back, it wasn't even that big a deal.
First off, the "bitch" didn't care anymore — he had his precious cyberware now.
Second, the bastard who stole her away better pray they never met, or he'd end up shredded by Leo's shotgun and Joestar's favorite chrome arms.
Say what you will — running with gangs changes your worldview fast.
[Little Octopus: Boss, I've got a question.]
[Little Octopus: Why are we raising hell here but playing it safe on the other side?]
Leo sighed.
[Leo: We don't choose when or where we're born. Sometimes it's the good era, sometimes it's the bad.]
[Leo: Adapting to the environment is a core class. A world of killers and a world preaching peace and unity — they're not the same.]
[Leo: I just hope that wherever I am, I'm someone who makes things a little better.]
Here, where life meant nothing and killing was routine, minimizing losses was already above average morality.
The whole city ran on high-intensity hostility. Every player was willing to sacrifice anything for profit. You could blame an individual, sure — but deep down, you knew killing a few suspects wouldn't stop the cycle.
In the Marvel world, whenever a big fight broke out, collateral damage — innocent deaths, destruction — always followed.
That's low morality, plain and simple. You could call it villainy and be right.
Leo's always believed in walking among the people — learning from them.
If everyone treats life cheaply, don't blame him for doing the same.
But he wanted to rise above it — not wallow in moral rot and excuse himself with "everyone else does it."
He wouldn't drag this city's filth into the next world.
That's the mindset of someone who threatens people online and starts doing it for real.
[Little Octopus: Got it. Flexible morals.]
"Let's move," Leo said. "Let's see what other tricks the Brainiacs are hiding."
He checked his gear and stared at the passage leading down to the basement.
A lot of people wanted him to block the Eurocorps from entering Night City.
He would —
but not because of politics.
Because he didn't want this barely-improving pile of shit to start rotting again.
In the shadows, a hidden camera tracked the four as they descended.
[Mainframe Log:]
[Surgical augmentations complete.]
[Subjects modified: 14.]
[These techniques are incredible. Everyone loves them.]
[You'll love them too.]
[Sophie: Can it handle the big one?]
[Mainframe: You'll love them too.]
[Sophie: Damn thing's looping again.]
[Elio: Better than before. Stop complaining and help me out.]