Chapter 1: Chapter 1: E For Ethan

In between the colorful neon lights that plagued the streets of Kabuki*, a simple restaurant stood across Lizzie’s bar. At a glance, the restaurant doesn’t have any appeal to it, only simple wooden decorations, a couple of tables, a menu list on the wall, and a big sign above it that says ‘Ethan’s Eatery’, and yet everyday, people line up in front of this restaurant, seemingly waiting to taste the food that was cooked in this humble place.

While the restaurant looked simple, there was an abnormal amount of guards protecting the place, as if they were expecting a raid every hour. Unlike many high-end restaurants in Night City, the place wasn’t controlled by corpos*. Usually, restaurants like this tend to not have good food, they tend to have sawdust like quality, packaged meals, or at most fresh noodles and ramen that is easy to make.

Yet this place is different. The menus vary from fast food like Burgers and Fries, Japanese Food like Okonomiyaki and Takoyaki, Chinese Food like Dim Sum, to more ‘exotic’ ones from India and Southeast Asia. All of them looked fresh.

In this day and age, this kind of food is rare and expensive, yet this place manages to sell it at a dirt cheap price with a high quantity of it, so every day, people got what they wanted, and the food never ran out.

In some ways, this place is treasured by the people, be it cyberpunks*, joytoys*, beavers*, bennies*, corpses*, all came to this place, to enjoy the delicacy that the owner of the restaurant offered.

The owner, Ethan, was a simple man with a simple look. He looked plain, not handsome, not ugly, not too eye-catching whatsoever. While his two arms were replaced with two high-end cybernetic black arms, he never really modified any other body parts, at least the ones that can be seen.

A man with a black jacket finally reached the front desk of the restaurant, only to be greeted by the plain owner.

“Welcome to Ethan’s Eatery, so, what will it be?” he said, a warm smile on his face. 

The man in the black jacket smiled back at the owner. “Hey. First time here, any recommendations?”

“Depends on your poison.” said Ethan casually. “We have Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Thai, Indian, American, whatever you like.”

“Maybe something more close to home today. Let’s do a burger.”

“Comin’ right up, choom*.” said Ethan, his professional-self turned towards the kitchen, he shouted a couple of orders to his employees, to which they responded back with the same enthusiasm.

“Heard news about this place.” said the man in the jacket. “Said you sell fresh food, so I came here to check for myself.”

“Well, don’t believe anything you heard on the street.” said the owner, leaning on the counter. “Although, it’s kinda half-truth.”

The man in black jacket raised his brow. “Meaning?”

“We tried to make due with what's available. We used synthetic spices to make the taste as authentic as possible, well, we tried anyway.”

“And the meat dish? Surely it must be expensive to buy fresh meat.”

“We used synthetic meat.” Ethan shrugged.

“That is still expensive.”

“True. But hey, at least I helped a lot of peeps by selling them bourgy* yet good food. My mom always said that a good meal will make anyone’s day better.”

“So you did this is all out of kindness?” said the man with surprise. “Don’t tell me this place is always on the negative?”

The owner just smiled at the man in black. Not a minute later, the burger came, still phizzing from all the oil, and the smell of cooked meat is definitely present.

“Here ya go choom, 10 Eddies total.” Ethan dropped the bag of Burger on the counter, giving it to the man in black.

“10 Eddies? You are definitely on red.” said the man in black as he transferred the Eddies. “You work anywhere else or something?”

Ethan shook his head in amusement. “None of your business choom, now get, the people behind you are getting impatient.”

The man in black turned around, and saw the peeps behind him looking at him judgingly, as if they wanted to pull their irons* at him, to get rid of the obstacle between them and good food.

“Alright alright, I’m not going to risk my life just for asking a few questions.” the man in black chuckled. “Alright boz, good luck on your charity business.”

He grabbed the bag of food, and left the place, and the next person in line stepped up.

The restaurant opens from 8 AM till 10 PM, and it is now 9 PM, yet the people who were queuing seem to not lessen.

—

[Corporate Plaza, City Center]

You are reading story Cyberpunk 2077: Ghostwire at novel35.com

A man in suits was sitting on his comfortable sofa as he was watching the television. It was the news of an attack near his place, a man by the name of David Martinez went Cyberpsycho, and the legendary Adam Smasher himself was needed to stop him.

“—Meanwhile, the rogue Assassin nicknamed ‘Ghostwire’ is still on the loose, targeting Arasaka higher-ups, as well as other corporate staff that live in Night City, so if you’re one of those guys, beware, he’s coming for ya!!”

The man in front of the TV just scoffed at the threat. He took out a cigarette and lit it up, releasing a thick smoke from his mouth.

He was just about to enjoy his cig, but his Holo suddenly rang. He didn’t even have the patience to check who it was, he just rejected it.

But as soon as he rejected the call, the lights around his apartment flickered, the TV in front of him turned off, and the sight of the man in the suit suddenly went offline.

“W-What is this?!” he shouted, standing up from his sofa in panic. He tried to holler the Police, but his interface seemed to not work also. He was blind, even his tracker is frozen, meaning the trauma team won’t know that he had died.

Not a second later, he felt something sharp and hot touching his neck, and then, he flatlined. Dead, zeroed, his head flown out of his body, not even knowing who killed him.

The blood gushed out of his body, tainting the clean furniture around him. When the body dropped to the floor, the lights went normal, the TV turned on again, as if nothing ever happened.

A man in a black netrunner jumpsuit  stood besides the window of the apartment, enjoying the cigarette that the man that had just been murdered had lit up.

“Good work.” said a mature woman’s voice, it was someone calling the man in black. “Eddies transferred. Your track record precedes you E, those corpos are calling you ‘Ghostwire’ now, it’s rare to see a living legend like you.”

“And the other deal?” said the man in black, or ‘E’ as the woman in the call called him.

“Yes yes, your spices and synthetic meat are in the drop point. I must say, for a solo legend like you, you have hella weird requests.”

“Thanks.” E hummed. “Call me if you have anymore assassination jobs. Remember—”

“Corpos only, yes, I’ve heard that a million times.” the mature woman sighed. “Contract closed.”

The woman then hung up, leaving E alone in his thoughts. He puffed up the cig again, but then, someone called again. E picked it up, and a familiar voice sounded from the other side.

“Hey boz, I just checked the storage, we ran out of meat here, can you get more for the restaurant?”

“No problem, I’ll be going to get some now,” said E with a smile.

“Nova. talk to you soon, boz.”

The man hung up, and E continued to smoke. Once the cigarettes were all burned up, the light of the apartment flickered, and once it went back to normal, E disappeared from the place, leaving no trace whatsoever.

---

Kabuki: Sub-District of Night City, located in Watson

Corpos: Corporates

Cyberpunks:  A cyberpunk, that is to say, someone who has immersed themselves in the era of technological change by implanting cyberware, enhancing their abilities, using weapons and/or their cunning and perceptions in order to oppose the megacorporations. Usually working outside the law.

Joytoys: A Prostitute

Beavers: people who lived in corporate controlled neighborhood, middle-class

Bennies: Outsiders

Corpses: low-class corporate workers

Choom, Choombas: ‘my dude’, ‘friend’, you get the idea

Irons: Guns

Nova: describer equivalent of cool or an excited exclamation.

Bourgy:  Common, low class (adj. from bourgeoisie)

You can find story with these keywords: Cyberpunk 2077: Ghostwire, Read Cyberpunk 2077: Ghostwire, Cyberpunk 2077: Ghostwire novel, Cyberpunk 2077: Ghostwire book, Cyberpunk 2077: Ghostwire story, Cyberpunk 2077: Ghostwire full, Cyberpunk 2077: Ghostwire Latest Chapter