"Hey there, Vik."
"Still built like a tank, I see."
Hearing the familiar greeting from outside, Viktor turned toward the voice and only then realized Kai had already walked in through the metal security gate without him noticing.
Viktor wore his usual dark sunglasses, but even through his low, gravelly voice, the surprise came through clearly.
"Well, look at that. Good to see you too, Kai. Jackie said you'd been back for a while already."
"How'd that mess with the Animals turn out?"
"You get hurt?"
Kai grinned and answered, "I'm fine, obviously. Still in one piece. And I even brought two packs of proper dark beer. Can't watch a fight without beer."
After setting the beer down, Jackie grabbed three bottles and walked over with them. He glanced at the boxing match still playing on the screen and complained,
"Vik, you've watched this same fight hundreds of times. How are you still so into it?"
Kai knew exactly why Viktor kept replaying this match.
It was because his favorite fighter had lost this one despite having every obvious advantage.
Viktor had spent all this time trying to understand how that could have happened, but even after watching it over and over again, he still could not make sense of it.
As far as Kai was concerned, there was only one answer.
The fighter had thrown the match.
And that was exactly the kind of thing Viktor hated most. To this day, he still could not accept a fixed fight.
Kai's eyes drifted to the trophies and medals lining the wall cabinet in the clinic.
That was enough to tell him Viktor had never truly let go of the years he spent in the ring.
If boxing had not been so filthy and corrupt behind the scenes, someone with Viktor's talent could easily have become a legendary fighter.
But even now, after seeing through the ugliness of the sport, Viktor still had not seen through the knot in his own heart.
Viktor looked at Kai and Jackie and asked,
"So, the two of you showing up together today... what's the angle? Trouble at the company again?"
Jackie handed a beer to Kai and Viktor and shrugged.
"Vik, you called it. The day he got back to Night City, the Animals greeted him with bullets and an RPG. Arasaka's internal war's gotten so blatant they don't even bother throwing a sheet over the body anymore."
Viktor's tone turned concerned.
"If things are already that bad, why are you still not going through with the implant work? In a real emergency, you can't count on getting lucky every time."
Faced with the concern from both of them, Kai cracked open the bottle and answered with a trace of helplessness.
"I still have some reservations. You know what Arasaka's like. Once I open that door, there's no closing it again. If they ever decide to throw me out, all those so-called top-tier implants become a time bomb inside my body."
Every employee at Arasaka who went through augmentation ended up with one or another piece of high-grade cyberware provided by the company, advertised as a generous corporate benefit.
In reality, those implants were just another means of control.
Maybe not enough to kill someone outright the moment they left, but once the company revoked their access rights to those implants, the result could easily be paralysis or full cyberware-related breakdown.
When Kai had burned his bridge with Arasaka in his last life, the company stripped every one of those premium implants from his system permissions and even planted a virus in his head.
If not for Viktor's skill, he never would have gotten his system and cyberware cleaned out.
Later, after Kai had raised his attributes and turned his whole body into a high-grade cybernetic platform, becoming a top-tier netrunner, he had come to understand the weakness built into electronic augmentation far more clearly.
Back then, his body had been loaded with high-end chrome and combat plugins. He could remotely breach almost anyone who had gone through cybernetic modification.
And in Night City, he was not the only one who could do something like that.
There were also the powerful AIs lurking beyond the Blackwall.
When he had attacked Arasaka Tower in the past, one of those godlike AIs had helped him. A single breach protocol from it had instantly destroyed one of Arasaka's near-orbital satellites.
No matter how he looked at it, Kai was still nowhere near the point where implanting himself was absolutely necessary.
What mattered more right now was changing legendary lives and earning talents and Life Points that way.
Just like he could now see that same life simulation prompt on Viktor.
Only it was still gray and unavailable.
Maybe Viktor had already been a legend all along.
"A drink, then."
Kai lifted his bottle first.
The three of them cracked their caps and clinked their bottles together with a bright tap.
"To our legendary fighter."
"To Vik."
Kai said it and took a long pull.
Jackie flipped his bottle up and drained most of it in one hard rush. For a guy raised in Heywood, that amount barely counted.
When Viktor heard Kai bring that up so suddenly, it was like an old chest in his memory had been opened again, and everything he had stored away for years came back up with it.
He drank deep too.
Jackie let out a loud belch after finishing.
Viktor smiled and said,
"One of you from the streets, one of you from the company. Honestly, I still can't figure out how the two of you ended up together."
Jackie thought about it, then answered,
"Because deep down he's got the same Heywood code running through him. That's what makes a legend, isn't it?"
Kai fully agreed with that take and added,
"You know, in all of Night City, you're the only one actually living satisfied."
Viktor's voice turned a little more reflective.
"When you hit a certain age, you let go of all the illusions. Life gets a lot easier after that. But you two aren't there yet. So go on. Show them what you've got."
"Besides, I set something aside for you. I figure you'll get use out of it."
Viktor rolled his chair backward, opened a drawer, and pulled out a long black case, which he handed over to Kai.
Kai opened it.
Inside was a pair of black-framed smart glasses built on a sleek metal chassis.
The moment he saw the design, he knew Viktor had put serious effort into this.
The circuitry and frame structure blended together almost seamlessly, giving it both everyday practicality and a clean mechanical elegance.
He loved it instantly.
Kai was genuinely surprised. Earlier, he had assumed Viktor meant some kind of implant package. In his last life, Viktor had given him plenty of good gear. Kai had probably even forgotten to pay half of it back.
Viktor laughed and said,
"I heard from Jackie before that you had no intention of going through with implant augmentation. You've always been the type to do things your own way, so I wasn't going to push you."
"So I made this instead. A smart interactive eyewear setup."
"What you see is what you get. I used an old Kiroshi optical platform as the base, but I rebuilt and optimized the internals and added some new functional modules. It should be more than enough for what you need right now."
"You can put it on and figure the rest out for yourself."
Kai eagerly took off the portable comm unit from his left eye and replaced it with the new smart glasses.
The moment he put them on, he felt a faint current pass along the area near his ear bones, and streams of data projected directly across his field of vision. Compared to the old comm unit, this was more discreet and much easier to use.
Most importantly, it looked a hell of a lot better.
"Vik, did you give it a name yet? Something this good can't go unnamed."
Viktor rubbed his chin and thought about it.
"Honestly? No. Haven't really thought about it. But if I had to name it, the first thing that comes to mind is boxing. Even then, it still feels like it's missing something."
Kai took the glasses off with both hands and gave it some serious thought before saying,
"How about Dragon Fist?"
Viktor rolled the name around in his head for a few seconds.
"Dragon Fist..."
Then he nodded in approval.
"Yeah. That works. If you like it, then that's what it's called."
Kai stopped pretending to be polite, put the glasses back on, and said,
"Thanks, Vik."
(End of Chapter)
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