With the end of the Unification War, the fires that once ravaged the now-independent Night City ceased to exist, leaving broken fates and untold damages in its wake. Both sides saw themselves as victors, but ultimately, the corpos came out as the ultimate winners; Arasaka was once again able to extend its tendrils around the West Coast, rearing its ugly head and imperialistic ambition to make the old United States blush at the thought. The more things tried to change, the more they stayed the same.

A year later, the post-war reconstruction is going slow, too slow as many believe. The city council prefers to focus on efforts irrelevant to the common citizenry, who are poorly defended by the understaffed NCPD, bleeding numbers to gang wars that shall shape the city's underground for years to come. The disease is rampant, the birth rates are failing, and the people choose to dig their heads deeper into their BDs, jerking away all their problems. In other words, there's no better place to call home for the downtrodden.

It won't be *your* home for much longer, however. Not with the injuries you've sustained - a hole opened in your side, a bone poking out of your elbow, and an opening in your frontal skull that bled down to your mouth, with a coppery taste reminding you that it'll take just a little longer before you'll draw your last breath.

With the last of your strength, you dragged yourself into this cold alleyway, down where the sewage went, to escape the unfolding chaos on the streets. Something about a Cyberpsycho escalating a fight, and a truck flipping over. Finer details are eluding you, and so far, you've only been able to flip yourself on your front, staring at the steam escaping from one of the manholes.

Details are all mixed up in your predicament, but there's nothing to lose in watching your life flash before your eyes. In your delirious state, you recall that you are. . .

>Adam Kisiner, a mediocre accountant who endured a string of failures before ending up in the reopened Arasaka America, grinding through the corporate ladder for survival. A man who never learned to live, only to fight, now bleeding out on a nameless street, never able to taste the fruits of liberating his soul.
>Philomon Steele, formerly a young revolutionary who abandoned his passion in pursuit of med school. Result? Cushy job as a surgeon at MT, putting limbs on and off all day. He had it all - a girlfriend, a group of friends, a future to look up to, and it all has been severed in one fine stroke. A death full of regrets is the worst kind of death a man can have.
>Imaeda Yasotaro, a self-proclaimed hooligan with no future. Nevertheless, he attended the Night City University with ferocious zeal, all to achieve the approval of his demanding father. Said father once asked him to deliver an innocent little package to a buddy, a fixer, which led him to this tragedy. Dying by the orders of an old man. . . story old as time.