The megatower loomed over Watson District like a rotted tooth, its shadow swallowing Carl whole as he stepped outside. Fragments of intel surfaced in his mind like corpses bobbing to the surface of a toxic river.
[WATSON DISTRICT]
Once an industrial powerhouse. Skyrises, nightclubs, corporate plazas. Could've been Night City's crown jewel—until the crash turned it into a festering wound. Now? Poorest district in the city. Home to the worst of the worst: Tyger Claws and Maelstrom, carving up the streets like vultures on a week-old corpse.
NCPD Threat Level: Extreme.
NCPD—Night City Police Department. Even the cops thought this place was a death trap.
Could be worse, Carl mused. At least I didn't spawn inside a Maelstrom chop shop.
His stomach growled like a caged animal. Ahead, food stalls lined the cracked pavement, their flickering neon signs bleeding Chinese characters into the smog.
Of course—Little China.
[LITTLE CHINA]
Meant to be the new downtown after the rebuild. Got flooded with East Asian immigrants in the '40s. Now? Just another corpse picked clean by corps and gangs.
Carl approached a stall where the owner juggled orders with grease-slick hands, the seats torn open, yellowed foam bursting like infected wounds. He chose the least filthy spot, wiping congealed sauce off the table with his sleeve.
"Menu's on the screen," the cook barked, jerking his chin toward the glowing display embedded in the counter.
Pictures of steaming dishes glowed back at Carl—noodles, dumplings, stir-fries—all perfectly staged to make his mouth water.
Too bad he knew the truth.
In 2075, real organic food was for corpos and kings. Street vendors? Their ingredients came from protein farms and All Foods factories. Lab-grown meat. Hydroponic greens. Synthetic flavor packs. The foundation of every meal? Wriggling white larvae and algae paste.
Some less-scrupulous shops might toss in "bonus ingredients," but forget about rat meat—these days, even contaminated rodent was a luxury most couldn't afford. Hell, rats were rarer than honest corpo suits now.
Images of maggot farms and cricket flour flashed behind Carl's eyes. Maybe I don't need to dive straight into the deep end.
His eyes landed on the cold noodles. Looked vegetarian enough—never mind that traditional versions used beef or chicken broth. At least the wheat was probably real.
[PETROCHEM WHEAT]
Only GMO strain approved for U.S. cultivation. Engineered to overproduce CHOOH2—standard synth-fuel. Excess harvests get dumped as "humanitarian aid" or sold to food corps for pennies.
Night City's proximity to Petrochem land meant one mercy—a steady supply of actual wheat-based noodles. Rumor said the GMO strain tasted decent. Carl was about to find out.
He checked the price for what the menu called "Chinese Cold Noodles" (though his memories insisted it was actually Korean). Three eurodollars. In this shithole part of Watson, for a vegetarian dish? Definitely the poverty special.
Three eddies for one meal... Inflation had gutted the currency's value. Back home, three euros would've been about twenty-three yuan. Here? They felt damn near equivalent.
Another piece of the puzzle clicked into place. Another layer of adaptation.
"One cold noodle," Carl called out, already reaching for the stained eurobills in his pocket.
The vendor turned—
—just as the world exploded.
Not a metaphor. Not hyperbole.
One microsecond of unnatural silence, then the air itself tore apart as a hypervelocity round punched through the cook's temple. The man's head came apart like an overripe melon dropped from a rooftop, painting Carl's face in a wet spray of bone fragments and brain matter.
Across the street, a chrome-plated psychopath with optic implants screamed:
"THIS IS MAELSTROM TURF, 6TH STREET FUCKS!"
His voice glitched between organic and synthetic—the telltale sign of a failing voice modulator.
Carl sat frozen, a single chunk of skull sliding down his cheek. The other patrons had already disappeared—not fled, just folded themselves under tables with the practiced ease of lifelong Watson residents.
Carl's mind processed three things at once—not as neat bullet points, but as jagged shards of awareness stabbing into his consciousness:
The bullet's trajectory—that perfect 37-degree angle of entry through the vendor's left temple, the math arriving unbidden like some fucked-up combat calculator hardwired into his synapses.
The shooter's position—triangulated by the shot's echo: 84 meters northwest, near the burnt-out vending machine with the flickering Arasaka ad.
The cold slap of noodles against his forehead, one stray strand of soba dangling in his vision like some grotesque party streamer.
When the hell had that gotten there? During the explosion of skull fragments? While he'd been calculating angles of fire? The absurdity of it—that he could track ballistic vectors with machine precision but hadn't noticed the goddamn noodle plastered to his face—almost made him laugh.
Almost.
The noodle chose that moment to slide down his nose, coming to rest on his upper lip. It tasted like synth-soy sauce and gunpowder.
Somewhere between the gunfire echoing through the streets and the cooling corpse at his feet, Carl's fingers found the Lexington under his jacket. The grip settled into his palm like a lover's hand.
So, this is how Night City serves lunch.
The thought arrived with startling clarity, followed immediately by another:
Fine. Time for a pre-meal workout.