Ghost Synchronization

Should I put some points into my attributes?

Leaving Lucia sprawled asleep across the bed, I stared at the blue window floating in the air. My eyes went first, naturally, to Body and Reflexes. In a garbage-fire world like this, raw strength and reaction speed were essential if I wanted to keep this body of mine in one piece.

But what I needed right now wasn't long-term survivability — it was immediate, practical efficiency.

If I'm spending points, Intelligence or Engineering is the right call.

To maximize my drug-crafting capability, that was objectively the correct answer. And yet, as I combed through the system, something even more important caught my eye. In the end, the core of any playthrough was the perks — those absurdly overpowered abilities that only unlocked once you met the attribute requirements. And one of them had sunk its hooks into me.

Maybe I should raise Reason.

Pump the Reason attribute up to 8, and a perk called Cyber Part Scan would unlock. A high-performance skill costing two perk points, and reading its description made my mouth water: it identified the type and defects of any parts a target had equipped, then even recommended the optimal drug to fix them. On top of that, once my Reason stat climbed higher, those undetectable zones I'd glimpsed earlier through Ghost Signal would start coming into view.

Cyber Part Scan is way too good.

I thought about Suzy's condition. Late-stage Chrome Syndrome. A ticking time bomb with 92% of her neural pathways already devoured by machinery. The immunosuppressant I'd brewed had doused the immediate fire, but that was nothing more than a stopgap. If I wanted to earn her trust and climb to the Upper District, I had to become irreplaceable to her — and the fastest route there was finding and repairing every flaw in the chrome bolted into her body, piece by piece.

Alright. Decision made.

The temptation to invest in combat attributes that could protect my own hide was strong, but it was still too early for that. First priority: lock Suzy — my current backing — down as a solid ally. Without hesitation, I dumped my remaining points.

Ding—!

Now I'm ready.

I turned my gaze toward the bed, where Lucia lay sleeping. With Reason at 8, information that had been invisible to me before should now be within reach.

Well then. Let's take a look.

Scan.

The second entry had been unlocked. Trauma, huh. Apparently nobody in this world came without baggage.

Just then, a line of text I'd never seen before surfaced beneath the system window.

"Synchronize with her ghost?"

The words slipped out of my mouth before I could stop them. An advanced function of Ghost Signal? Well, with me, not knowing something just meant I had to poke it and find out.

Sync accepted.

The moment the decision formed in my mind—

Kzzt—!

My vision cut to black amid vicious static. Every sensation in my body receded into the distance, and it felt like sinking into a deep mire. How much time passed, I couldn't say — but then someone's scream tore through the dark.

"Sis!!"

Lucia's voice.

Is this… a dream?

When my eyes opened, I wasn't in my own body. The viewpoint was locked at Lucia's eye level. Standing before me was a woman who looked just like her — except for a small mole beneath her eye. And her state was horrific. One arm hung severed and mangled, and her entire body was drenched in blood, impossible to say whose.

"I'm sorry, Lucia. You can live without me, okay?"

The woman called her sister forced a feeble smile and shoved Lucia backward.

"No! Sis, don't!"

Her body lurched into empty air. As Lucia plummeted downward, the world above her erupted with countless gunshots.

"Don't kill her! Take that woman alive!"

"Are you insane?! How the hell are we supposed to capture that monster without putting her down?!"

A hail of bullets and hoarse shouting. And then — the back of her sister, bleeding, left behind all alone.

So that's what happened to her.

I watched the image of the little girl who'd fallen into the Lower District, crying endlessly for a sister who never came — and it hurt too much to watch any longer. I ended the Ghost Synchronization.

Kzzt.

My vision snapped back to Lucia's room.

Come to think of it, she's never once talked about her sister.

Did she assume her sister was already dead? I replayed the dream. The people who'd come for her sister had clearly shouted to take her alive. There was every chance she was still out there somewhere. And yet Lucia showed not a shred of determination to reach the Upper District — no, if anything, she seemed to avoid the very word itself.

I was no psychologist, but I could piece it together. For her, the Upper District wasn't a dream. It was the hell that had stolen her sister — a towering trauma, carved into her whole being.

Every time I use Ghost Signal, it leaves me with a strange taste in my mouth.

Prying open the inside of a person's heart wasn't exactly pleasant. It felt like opening Pandora's box. I decided to play dumb until she chose to tell me herself. That seemed like the bare minimum of courtesy I owed her.

Until Lucia woke up, I settled onto the living room couch and turned on the TV. Between bursts of crackling static, a parade of sensational news poured out.

What a fine state the world was in. Gangs raising hell in the streets while a military corporation advertised people-killing weapons like they were selling home appliances. A few hours of channel surfing, and the architecture of this world slowly took shape in my head. The government had long since stopped functioning. Public authority had crumbled before corporate capital, and the megacorps now squatted atop law and order itself, kneading the world in their palms. A place where enough money made you a god — and without it, you woke up on a pile of corpses. I was starting to get a feel for what attitude this world demanded of me.

Lucia slept clear through to the next day. She'd gotten so comfortable that I ended up curling up on the living room couch to sleep myself.

"What time is it?"

Rubbing her eyes as ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠she shuffled out, Lucia asked.

"Eight in the morning."

She tilted her head. "Eight in the morning?"

"A whole day's gone by."

"What? A whole day? No way!"

Pfft. A laugh slipped out before I could catch it. Judging by how flustered she was, the drug had certainly done its job.

"Glad you got some real rest."

Lucia stood there blankly for a long moment, then scratched the back of her head, looking embarrassed. "It's thanks to that medicine you gave me, ahjussi. Thank you. I think that's the first time I've slept that soundly since I got here."

At some point, she'd stopped calling me Jinwoo and started calling me ahjussi. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I was pretty sure she'd said Jinwoo at first. Well, I had no particular intention of correcting her. Maybe it was because I'd glimpsed her trauma through the sync yesterday, but lately I just wanted to embrace everything about her, generously and without complaint.

I rose from the couch and stretched. My joints popped and creaked in protest.

"I should get going."

"Already? At least stay for breakfast."

"Appreciate the thought, but if I'm late, Suzy might relieve me of my head."

At my words, Lucia let out a small gasp and started shoving me toward the door. "Oh no, we can't have that! That girl is crazy enough to actually do it and call it a light trim! Go, hurry!"

"Right. See you later."

Escorted out by Lucia's boisterous send-off, I stepped outside and started walking — toward the abandoned factory that served as the Nemesis Gang's headquarters.

Kzzt.

The moment I inserted the master key, the sentry gun that had been tracking me drooped its barrel, defeated. A beat later, the factory door ground open with a mechanical whine.

"Ha! You actually came back instead of running."

Doomdoom greeted me from the entrance, arms crossed. Door guard duty, then running Suzy's errands — this guy really did live a busy life.

"Hey, Doomdoom."

"It's Doomdoom-NIM, not Doomdoom!"

"Yeah, yeah. Keep up the good work."

I gave him a lazy wave and headed straight for the fabrication room. Inside, silence reigned. As I powered the machines on one by one, steam hissed up in a rush. I was just getting started prepping the materials when a voice drifted down from above the fabrication room.

"Just you watch! I'll make something better than your drugs!"

It was the former gang member Suzy had slapped down and thrown out yesterday. He glared at me with eyes brimming with venom.

"Big talk from a guy who doesn't even have a fabrication room anymore."

When I shot back with a snort, his face flushed red and mottled. "Tomorrow! You won't be here tomorrow. You little bastard."

He slung his duffel bag over his shoulder and added, "Mark my words."

What's he so cocky about?

Unbelievable. Kicked off the job, and still talking that big. Did he have someone backing him up? Fine. Let's find out.

Scan.

…What a raving lunatic.

Raising my Reason attribute had been worth every point. It wasn't just reading his physical state anymore — the specific scheme he was cooking up was being printed out as data. Blow up the fabrication room, huh? And apparently take me along with it.

If I can't have it, I'll destroy it. Classic.

The textbook logic of a third-rate villain.

Well then. Let's dig a little deeper into that head of yours.

Sync.

My vision went dark, and I slotted into Jack's point of view.

Kzzt—!

The Ghost Synchronization severed, and the fabrication room swam back into view.

"…Fucking trash, all of them."

My mouth tasted bitter. It wasn't even the fact that they planned to kill me — it was the way they treated Suzy like a disposable tool while savoring her death that made revulsion crawl up my throat. Well, on the bright side: my hesitation was gone.

Immunosuppressants? Those could wait. What I needed to brew right now was a special compound to fumigate every last one of those garbage heaps tonight.

Time to put my degree to work.

I set up the chemistry apparatus with practiced hands. Who knew my toxicology training would get deployed like this? Better still, this place was littered with hazardous reagents I never could have gotten my hands on back in South Korea.

A guide flickered into my vision.

"Don't need it."

I ignored the recommended path and tuned the formula to my own ratios. An explosion at that level? Boring. I intended to give these chrome-studded bastards a death worthy of everything they'd bolted onto their bodies.

Everything was ready.