POV: Elias

Elias should’ve let her die.

That thought had been circling his head ever since he pulled Sasha Yakovleva’s half-flatlined body out of the wreckage.

It would’ve been the logical thing to do.

The right thing, even.

Dead netrunners didn’t cause problems. Dead netrunners didn’t compromise careers. Dead netrunners didn’t sit across the room, alive against all odds, staring him down like they were already planning a way to put a knife in his ribs.

His fingers tapped against the desk-soft, rhythmic, controlled. A bad habit he never shook.

His gaze flicked to the monitor in front of him. Sasha’s medical file was still open. Stabilized. No longer critical. She was alive.

And that meant he had a problem.

2060

He used to think he was lucky.

Back in the first few days-when the realization hit that he’d woken up in the world of Cyberpunk-he’d actually thought he had a chance to change everything.

Fix the tragedies. Derail the worst events before they ever happened.

For about a week, he had a plan.

Then reality kicked his teeth in.

The first red flag? His body.

He was supposed to have an edge. Some kind of isekai protagonist buff. Instead?

Below-average cyberware tolerance.

The first implant surgery wrecked him for a week. The second left him with a migraine so bad he blacked out for two days.

By the third, the ripperdoc told him flat-out:

"Kid, your body ain't built for heavy chrome. Best you stick to the basics-, Kiroshi optics, maybe a cyberdeck if you’re lucky."

That was the moment it sank in.

No Sandevistan. No Kerenzikov. No full-body chrome warrior bullshit.

Just him.

So he adapted.

If he couldn’t rely on chrome, then he had to outthink, outmaneuver, and outwork everyone else.

Cybersecurity and netrunning were the only fields he could try to succeed in. He studied harder than anyone else, aced the entrance exams, and landed a scholarship to Night City University and landed a job in biotechnica.

Not a high-flying merc. Not an edgerunning street legend.

Just a corporate suit in training, learning how to survive.

2069

The Unification War didn’t care about neutrality.

It didn’t matter that Biotechnica wasn’t officially involved. That didn’t stop the cyberattacks, riots, and data breaches from gutting the company’s Night City operations.

He was just an assistant back then. A no-name mid-management cybersecurity specialist, working under a no-name manager.

Then the first wave of cyberattacks hit.

Militech and Arasaka weren’t even targeting Biotechnica. They were too busy ripping each other’s networks apart to care.

But the crossfire? The collateral damage? That was another story.

The first data breach fried half of their security network. AI watchdogs glitched out. ICE defenses crashed. And every netrunner above him? Dead within minutes.

He should’ve been one of them.

He wasn’t.

Because he was too low-ranked to be sent in first. Because he hesitated while his higher-ups and coworkers got fried.

When the dust settled, most of Biotechnica’s cybersecurity team was dead.

And he was still breathing.

A promotion followed. Then another.

Not because he was the best but because he was there

2074

Despite his hard work, his rise in the company began to stall.

Elias Novák had learned the rules of the game a long time ago.

Competence didn’t get you anywhere. Leverage did.

A brilliant mind wouldn’t save you if someone dumber but better connected decided you were a threat. A flawless track record didn’t mean shit if the people above you saw you as useful, but replaceable. The only thing that mattered was positioning. Knowing when to make noise and when to wait.

Richard Holtz understood that.

The head of cybersecurity in Biotechnica’s Night City branch had gotten his position not through skill, but through the right friends, the right deals, the right balance of knowing just enough to sound competent while never doing any real work. Elias had watched him rubber-stamp outdated security policies and cut corners on infrastructure just so he could free up budget space to line his own department with personal projects.

It was pathetic. It was obvious. It was also completely untouchable.

Nobody in Biotechnica cared until something went wrong.

So Elias had spent years pushing for better security. He had laid out the risks, the weaknesses, the inevitable consequences of Holtz’s cost-cutting. Every report had been ignored. Every request shot down. He stopped caring about fixing the system a long time ago.

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Instead, he started planning around it.

Holtz wasn’t invincible. One day, he would fuck up. He would leave a blind spot open long enough for someone to exploit it. When that happened, he’d need a scapegoat. Someone to take the fall so he could keep his job.

Elias wasn’t going to be that scapegoat.

He was going to be the guy with the answers. The one who had been right the whole time.

It was just a matter of waiting for the disaster.

And now, in late 2075, he knew it was close.

He had been waiting for her.

Sasha Yakovleva.

Not an employee. Not a contractor. A freelancer running small jobs, slipping through the cracks of Biotechnica’s security.

He knew exactly who she was. Knew what she would do.

He had watched it happen before.

A memory-not from this life, but from the one before-Sasha breaching Biotechnica’s networks. Leaking their secrets. Getting caught. Dying for it.

He stayed away from the department that would eventually handle the breach. When internal reshuffles happened, he made sure his name was never in the rotation for network monitoring teams. If something went wrong, it wouldn’t be his responsibility.

He pushed for better security, just enough to be ignored. Every few months, he submitted reports outlining how Biotechnica’s outdated ICE defenses could be bypassed by a competent netrunner. He worded them carefully-clear, but not urgent. Concerning, but not enough to force action.

Holtz ignored him every single time.

That was the whole point.

The more he pushed for better security and got dismissed, the more evidence piled up that Holtz was asleep at the wheel.

And when Sasha finally broke through, it would be Holtz’s failure on record.

The moment Biotechnica needed a replacement, Elias would be the most qualified person left standing.

It was a long game. Months of sitting back, making the right moves, and waiting for the inevitable.

2075

The alarm came in.

Elias Novák didn’t move.

He sat in his car, watching the data stream across his optics in real-time, just as he remembered it.

Unauthorized network breach detected.

Threat level: High.

Source: Internal terminal, Biotechnica Night City HQ.

He exhaled slowly, fingers tapping against the desk, right on schedule.

This was the moment Sasha Yakovleva sealed her fate.

She had entered the building less than twenty minutes ago. Maine had set up the comms jammer, but it wouldn’t last.

She was already deep inside the system, pulling the data she came for.

CHOOH2 financial records.

Immunosuppressant prototype 0.091.

She should have left after that.

But she wouldn’t.

Because in the next few minutes, she would find something else.

Securicine.

Elias already knew how this played out.

Sasha would find the hidden internal reports-the ones Biotechnica had buried. The ones proving that Securicine caused irreversible neurodegeneration, that they knew, and that they kept selling it anyway.

She would recognize the name instantly.

Her mother had died on that drug.

And that would be enough for her to throw the whole mission away.

She would change the plan. She would upload the full report to Network 54’s news tipline. She would prioritize the leak over her own survival.

Elias watched the logs shift.

There it is.

Instead of extracting and logging out, Sasha was sending an external upload request.

Network 54.

Exactly as he remembered.

He exhaled softly through his nose. She had just signed her death warrant.

Another alert flashed across his screen.

The comms jammer was disabled.

The building’s automated systems were back online.

And that meant security had her location.

Biotechnica’s security AI reacted instantly.

Threat detected. Deploying response units.

Elias could already picture them moving before the logs confirmed it.

Three mechs. Standard loadout. Designed for containment and elimination.

They were already en route to her position.

Sasha knew she was caught.

She locked the doors, set up explosives, and cut off Maine’s call.

She wasn’t planning to leave.

That was the thing about Sasha Yakovleva. She wasn’t the type to run. Not when she had something to prove.

She had decided that if she couldn’t escape, she would take them down with her.

And that meant there was no outcome where she walked away from this.

His fingers hovered over the controls.

He could still let it happen.

He had already positioned himself outside the direct chain of responsibility. If he did nothing, Holtz would take the fall for this security failure.

Sasha would die, just like before.

He would get promoted, just like before.

It would be clean.

Effortless.

The plan was working.

And yet-

His fingers tapped against the desk again, faster this time.

His breath was slow, steady. His heart wasn’t racing.

But something about this moment felt different.

Not because he didn’t know how it ended.

But because this time, he was near the building where it happened.

It wasn’t just a story beat anymore. It wasn’t just something he remembered reading, watching, speculating about in a past life.

It was happening.

Right now.

Sasha held her ground.

The robots breached the door.

She stayed at the terminal.

Holding the connection.

Ensuring the upload went through.

She didn’t even turn to run when they opened fire.

Elias watched her vitals spike.

The first shot went through her side.

The second tore through her shoulder.

The force sent her flying back into the window-

Glass shattered.

Sasha Yakovleva fell.

It should have ended there.

She should have hit the ground. Should have died on impact. Should have been found by Maine, broken and lifeless, just like before.

The logs confirmed the explosives had gone off inside the office.

Everything she had touched was incinerated.

Security would recover nothing.

They would assume she was dead.

His eyes flicked back to the virtual optics screen.

Heart rate: Faint. But still there.

Still alive.

His hand moved before he could think about it.

One command. One manual override.

And just like that, Biotechnica’s official records confirmed her death.

Elias left his car.

The smart move would be to leave it alone.

But he wasn’t about to let her story end here.

Not this time.

Not like this.

He was already moving before he could stop, heading out of the parking garage and slipping past security unnoticed. The wreckage wasn’t hard to find.

She had landed on a passing car, metal crumpled under her weight, body barely holding together.

Still breathing.

She had minutes left, at best.

He could still walk away.

He should.

Instead, he reached down, pulling her out of the wreckage, supporting her weight as blood soaked into his sleeves.

He had spent years playing this game.

Waiting for the right moment to move.

Watching things happen exactly as they were supposed to.

But some naive part of him still wanted to save a character he pitied from another life.