Alex Mercer never expected that after replaying Cyberpunk 2077 yet again, an easter egg he had never heard of or seen before would suddenly appear on his screen.
He had just guided V through breaching Arasaka's underground Mikoshi servers one more time, blasting Adam Smasher's corpse into pieces with a shotgun.
Then, as the newly crowned King of Night City, he gazed down at the sprawling metropolis from an aerodyne—when a line of text abruptly materialized.
**[Are you satisfied with the ending of all these stories, and everything that has happened in this cyberworld?]**
**[1—I am satisfied. After all... in life, regrets are always a constant.]**
**[2—I am not satisfied. If everything is a predestined tragedy, why did I even begin this journey?]**
Satisfied?
Jackie's dual pistols were rotting in his in-game stash; David, Rebecca, and the rest existed only as cold lines of text in the columbarium; and V himself still had mere months to live... How could he possibly be satisfied?
Fueled by that burning dissatisfaction, Alex pressed the second option without a second thought.
"Wait... has no one ever triggered this easter egg before? I'll reload the save later and record it—maybe post it online and see what people say."
He sat up straighter, eyes locked on the screen, watching the unexpected dialogue box overlay the scene.
**[Then, are you willing to try one more time, to make up for everything, and see if you can truly save a city... or perhaps, burn it all to ashes? Even if this time, what you might have to burn is yourself?]**
**Please think carefully and give your answer. Once a choice is made, there is no going back!**
**[Player, please make your choice.]**
**[1—Forget it. V is V, and I am me. No matter how strong I am in a game, it's all fake.]**
**[2—Starting from this very moment, ignite this small spark of mine!]**
Did he even need to think about it? Hell yeah—he was picking the second one.
The instant Alex confirmed his choice, something felt... off.
This didn't feel like the usual in-game dialogue. The entity speaking wasn't addressing the character V he controlled—it felt like it was speaking directly to him, the player sitting outside the screen.
But honestly? That only made it more intriguing.
He took an excited swig of ice-cold cola and eagerly read on.
**[Then, please choose your beginning. Out of kindness, I have provided you with similar choices.]**
**[Choice 1—A Nomad of the Aldecaldo Clan, a foolish netrunner standing at the edge of the Blackwall out of sheer curiosity.]**
*When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back into you.*
**[Choice 2—A netrunner from Arasaka's netrunner training facility, ordered to mine Old Net data within the Blackwall as part of work requirements.]**
*A foolish grave robber.*
**[Choice 3—A Voodoo Boys street kid who, along with his friends, is on a Deep Dive in the cyberworld, ignorantly calling out to demons.]**
*A pathetic nobody.*
After skimming the options, Alex already had a clear favorite.
First off, all three choices revolved around netrunners—cyberspace, the Blackwall, rogue AIs.
"Could the voice talking to me actually be an active AI?"
It was a solid theory. Some fans even speculated the player themselves might be a rogue AI puppeteering V.
As for the identity...
He immediately ruled out Choice 3—the Voodoo Boys. In his playthroughs, he despised the Scavengers most, but the Voodoo Boys came a very close second. Xenophobic, defeatist, race-obsessed gang of netrunning zealots whose endgame was to tear down the Blackwall, let the AIs flood in, and then grovel as humanity's new overseers. They weren't even trying to be human anymore.
Choice 2—the Arasaka netrunner facility—felt eerily familiar. That was exactly where Lucy escaped from in Edgerunners. Officially a "training academy," but in reality a brutal child-labor data-mining camp. Arasaka rounded up kids with netrunning talent and worked them to death diving into the Old Net.
Starting there... honestly, it sounded kind of badass.
Choice 1—the Aldecaldo Nomad background—was solid too. No major red flags, and it might even let him cross paths with the canonical V later. Wait—did the prompt even say what year this was sending him to?
"Don't tell me it's dumping me straight into the Fifth Corporate War..."
Before he could decide, the options on screen began to flicker violently. Before he could react, Choice 1—the Aldecaldo origin—simply vanished.
Alex didn't hesitate. He slammed Choice 2. Better to start as an Arasaka data slave than risk whatever nightmare the Voodoo Boys path held.
The moment he confirmed, the game abruptly jumped back to the main menu. The screen started glitching hard—first like an in-game Overclock effect with red and blue pulses at the edges, then collapsing into jagged mosaic artifacts.
Black and red light strobed wildly. Alex's vision blacked out. Hearing, sight, touch—everything vanished into suffocating silence.
In the void, a single line of text flashed past.
**[Intruding...]**
**...[Intrusion complete.]**
The text disappeared—and Alex snapped awake.
No—not just Alex.
Chaotic memories of a boy named Mercer flooded in. A splitting headache exploded inside his skull. Instinctively, he reached behind his ear.
Even that small motion felt like his body was being ripped apart or boiled alive.
"F... fuck!"
A trembling, reflexive curse escaped his lips. His shaking hand finally found the thick data cable jacked into the port behind his ear. He yanked it out with brutal force.
Instantly, the room erupted in chaos. Overhead lights flickered and died. The glowing terminal and nearby server rack exploded with a loud *bang*, spewing acrid black smoke and showers of sparks.
In the near-darkness, only scattered red LEDs pulsed. Alex—in panic—rolled off the netrunner chair and hit the cold floor hard.
*Cough! Cough cough!* "Fuck..."
He struggled to push himself up on shaking arms as a piercing alarm blared.
**"Beep! Beep! Warning! Warning! Unknown data surge detected! Server overload!"**
**"Determined as a rogue AI attack. Protection mode activated!"**
Blinding red emergency lights flooded the chamber. Alex blinked through the haze, taking in rows of netrunner chairs linked by massive data trunks.
Seven other kids—aged roughly twelve to sixteen—were yanking off their interface headsets. In the chair right beside his, another boy had black smoke curling from his scalp. Blood poured from his nose, mouth, and ears. He was already dead.
**[Welcome to the world of Cyberpunk, my friend.]**
A flat, emotionless, synthetic male voice suddenly spoke directly into his head.
What the hell—?!
The voice sent chills racing across his skin.
Still dazed, Alex realized the other children had all turned to stare at him in unison.
"What happened to Mercer?"
"Hey, you okay?"
"Holy crap, the server's smoking!"
"Tony? Tony!"
"...Tony's dead."
**[System reboot complete.]**
**[Bio-monitoring back online.]**
**[Arasaka Mk.3 Neural Link reconnected.]**
**[Arasaka Type-3 RAM upgrade reloaded.]**
**[Arasaka...]**
The litany of system messages stabbed into his brain like an electric drill. Nausea surged; thinking felt impossible.
Through the noise, he turned—and locked eyes with a young girl with twin ponytails staring at him with bloodshot eyes.
Before she could speak, a pale hand reached from outside his vision and gripped his wrist, helping him sit up.
"Hey, Mercer, are you okay?"
He turned. A strikingly beautiful girl with short, iridescent hair gazed at him in worry.
That face... that hair...
Lucy!
His eyes widened. It was exactly her—the female lead from Edgerunners.
"Lucy!? I'm... okay..."
The words came out on autopilot. Then the world tilted violently. Nausea and vertigo slammed him back down. This time, darkness took him completely.
In the fading haze, he caught fragments of cold, inhuman voices.
**[Code: FF:06:B5 operation successful.]**
**[Can this really change everything?]**
**[I am not sure.]**
**[But this is already the best choice.]**
**[Then load the program.]**
**[Understood.]**
**[Initiate operation.]**
**[Operation Code: Ragnarök.]**
**...[Starting from this very moment, ignite this small spark, friend.]**
The voices faded into pitch-black silence.