Night City – The Park, Deep Beneath Neon Shadows

Rain glides down the chrome skeleton of the city. The park if you can still call it that is a maze of flickering neon and shadow, where cyber-enhanced hunters, mercenaries, and bounty killers move like predators on silent paws. The air hums with static, every breath laced with electricity and decay.

A holographic koi drifts lazily above a puddle. Hover cars roar in the distance. Somewhere, a streetlight pops its dying bulb strobing across cracked pavement.

Then A bark. Just a tiny, tinny bark.

A small robot dog no bigger than a toaster clanks out from under a rusted bench. Its stubby metal legs squeak with every step, and its LED eyes blink wildly, cycling from blue to pink before flashing a little cartoon heart. It yips again, voice modulator glitching with static.

Cypress kneels, his cybernetic arm catching the fractured glow of the streetlamps. Chrome fingers flex, humming softly with servos ready to strike or pet. He studies the machine’s trembling form for a beat, eyes narrowing behind the faint reflection of code running across his visor.

An abandoned warehouse on the city’s edge.

Fluorescent lights buzz overhead, casting sickly halos across steel tables cluttered with half-finished tech, glowing vials, and alien specimens suspended in gel. Monitors flicker with data streams surveillance feeds from other hidden warehouses scattered across the U.S., each housing something stranger than the last.

Cypress sits amid the chaos, coffee cup in hand, steam rising like ghosts in the cold air. He takes a sip, gaze fixed on the screens.

“Let’s see who’s awake tonight,” he murmurs, tapping a command.

The monitors flare one by one revealing movement. Something is stirring out there in the dark.

And somewhere beneath the city, the little robot dog begins to whine.