Cyberpunk: XYZ

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Chapter 45: Echoes in the Dark II

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'M. Monster. M. Monster. M. Monster. M. Monster...' X repeated in his mind endlessly, questioning how he didn't realize it before, and making sure he didn't forget again.

He only stopped when he reached the door to his home. He stood before the door for a second, taking a deep breath before going in.

He only took a single step inside, closing the door behind him and then observing the apartment.

The apartment was clean and well organized, exactly how he remembered it to be.

For something to be remembered, however, requires a functional memory. X has no trust in his own memories right now.

He walked back and forth in his own apartment, surveying every corner of it, ignoring Joi who watched him with puzzlement.

Then, X slouched at his desk, staring at the dark screen of the computer in front of him.

Shards of information drifted across his mind like broken glass, each piece sharp and disjointed. The reports, rumors, and whispers all pointed to one name... Monster.

The name wasn't new. It had resurfaced in the last few weeks, murmured in hushed tones on the streets and sprawled in bold letters across the Night City feeds.

A killer, the media said. Or an artist, some twisted voices claimed, reveling in the precision and creativity of the carnage.

But X's mind rejected the thought of entertainment. This wasn't art. It was something else. Something familiar.

X's fingers drummed against the desk, the sound sharp in the otherwise silent apartment.

His memory felt fragmented, disorganized in a way that made him itch.

Z, his mental archivist, was usually precise and efficient, keeping his thoughts and recollections ordered like a meticulously coded database.

But lately, Z had been… off. Files misplaced. Moments blurred. Memories missing entirely. He only started to notice the missing pieces now.

It was only when X started piecing it all together that the realization hit him with the force of a freight train.

The pattern of the killings wasn't just familiar; it was identical. The same signature, the same brutal elegance.

It matched someone X had once known too well. Someone he thought he had buried years ago.

We all have our dark thoughts and our dark desires. I have my dark thoughts and desires personified.

X didn't fear M, he merely wished he just remain hidden in his own dark corner for eternity.

M is a spontaneous impulsive monster. The dark thoughts you had and sometimes wondered why they cross your mind, he feasts on them, and wouldn't hesitate to follow them.

Everything X worked so hard to build would fall apart in a moment if he allowed M to run wild.

So far, however, M seemed to have been pretty tame... That's odd, so was he truly tame?

X turned on his computer and started looking through everything, every known piece of news that circulated in Night City across the past few months.

Then he looked through all of the reports of Monster's known victims, in intricate detail.

It's obvious from the pictures why they call him the artist, how he is able to make dead bodies into gorgeous pieces of art that if looked at from afar; would truly look like art.

In fact, there was such an incident a month ago where a piece of art was left in public for days, and only when the smell got out of hand did people notice that it was a dead body instead of a sculpture.

The signs had been there, lurking in the shadows of X's life. Marrie was one of the first, though X hadn't realized it at the time.

She was left broken, grieving the death of her younger brother. X let Misty take care of her and instructed her to tell Marrie to call him.

Days later, Misty had told him Marrie had called him and found peace. The problem? X hadn't taken that call.

He had thought that Marrie lied because she didn't want to talk to anyone, but today everything changed.

Today, things that he wouldn't have thought much of before; now look very suspicious.

It wasn't just Marrie. Patients from the clinic had disappeared, too. Not in alarming numbers, but enough to make him notice after a dozen minutes or so of research.

People who had come to him for help, left seemingly satisfied, only to vanish into the abyss of Night City's underworld. And then there was Little Monsters.

X pulled up the site again, his fingers navigating the keyboard with the speed of a seasoned Netrunner.

The screen filled with dark, alluring visuals; neon-lit streets, blood-red fonts, and a promise of salvation for the lost and broken.

It was sleek, precise, and disturbingly effective. The Little Monsters site glowed faintly on X's cracked holoscreen, its neon hues pulsing in the darkened apartment.

He stared at it in silence, his jaw tightening as he took in the intricate design.

The site wasn't just a digital artifact; it was a manifesto. A siren song calling out to the broken and the damned, weaving despair and purpose into a single, inescapable thread.

The homepage was stark and direct, its simplicity masking the depth of its psychological pull.

At its center blazed the words: "Born in darkness, we are Night City's true children."

The tagline rotated in soft, flickering transitions: "They called you a monster. Indeed, we are their creation."

Beneath it, fragments of animation painted a haunting picture. Glass fractured with every scroll of the page, rain cascaded in streaks across an unseen surface, and somewhere, faintly, a rhythmic pulse beat like the heart of something alive.

A whispered greeting played the first time he hovered over the main menu, "Welcome, little monster. You're home now."

The voice was smooth, low, and intimate, a sound designed to send shivers down the spine of anyone desperate enough to listen.

X felt his mind stall for a second. There was no doubt this was M's creation, crafted with precision and cruelty, yet wrapped in the guise of salvation.

It's his voice... The same body but acutely different voices. M has a significantly different tone, pitch, accent, speech patterns, and even vocabulary, "It's... It's really you."