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Rebecca immediately sensed that something was wrong with David. Her expression tightened into a mask of grim concern as she questioned him.
"What is with you today, David?"
"Nothing," David replied, his voice flat and devoid of emotion, refusing to meet the young girl's gaze.
"I'm only ever looking at you, you know that. David, tell me what happened," Rebecca persisted, clutching her firearm as she hurried to keep pace with him.
"It has nothing to do with you."
"I put my life in your hands every day! How can you say it has nothing to do with me?"
"I'm sorry."
"David, listen to me. Stop installing more gear," Rebecca said, her small frame radiating a fierce protective aura. She raised a tiny, determined fist and managed a fragile smile. "I'll protect you. You don't need more chrome."
Rangiku, watching from her room, felt a sudden warmth blossom in her chest. 'Rebecca... she's actually an angel. Too precious for this world.'
"You? Protect me?" David asked, a soft, weary smile playing on his lips.
"I'm serious."
"Do you remember that Cyberpsycho? The one who killed my brother?" Rebecca's voice dropped, becoming heavy with dread. "I can't... I won't watch you turn into that."
'Hey, stop setting death flags!' Rangiku screamed internally. 'You're making me incredibly anxious right now.'
The question remained…
Was David just suffering from combat fatigue, or was he truly manifesting the symptoms?
As if answering Rangiku's thoughts, the narrative dove into David's mind. It revisited the scene from the start of the episode, his infiltration of the facility.
In his memory, after he executed the manager with a clean headshot, the world began to warp. The manager's headless torso sprouted massive cannons and let out a distorted, maniacal laugh. In a panic, David spun around and saw the woman who had only wanted to go home early to celebrate her son's graduation.
In David's fractured vision, her face rotted away into a mass of pulsating, necrotic flesh, a literal monster. Without a second thought, he leveled his gun and blew her head apart.
But it was all a lie. It was a hallucination.
When the red haze cleared, he realized he had slaughtered an innocent mother who was just trying to finish her shift and see her child. He stared at the photograph on her desk, a warm, happy image of the woman and her son.
It was a mirror image of his own mother, Gloria, the woman who had worked herself to the bone to put him through Arasaka Academy, hoping he would climb the tower, only to be caught in the crossfire of a gang war.
If Gloria was a victim of Night City's systemic evil, then what was David now? This woman had a child waiting for her. She was fighting for her family's future, just as Gloria had. Because of a glitch in David's brain, a family's happiness had been extinguished in a spray of gore.
Intentions were irrelevant.
Accidents were irrelevant.
Gloria died because of Night City's violence. Now, David was Night City's violence.
That night, the crushing weight of his actions kept David from sleep. The psychological pressure manifested physically; his nose began to bleed until he collapsed into unconsciousness.
Rangiku felt a suffocating sense of oppression.
'Who is actually the 'good guy' in this story?'
David kills corporate vampires and blood-stained gang members, but does that make him a hero? Is there even such a thing as justice in the neon shadows of Night City? David was lost, and Rangiku found herself drowning in empathy for his descent.
"It seems the side effects have finally caught up with you. You've held out longer than most, but this is the ceiling," the ripperdoc noted, his eyes scanning David's vitals with interest.
"You're standing on the edge of Cyberpsychosis," the doc added with a twisted, knowing smirk.
"Then give me something stronger! A higher grade of immunosuppressants! Now!" David roared, his hands trembling.
The world flickered again. The doctor transformed into a multi-eyed aberration, his voice a chorus of overlapping whispers.
"Are you already gone, boy? There is no cure for this state!" the monster cackled.
David's reality turned into a nightmare of distorted shapes and colors.
"David!"
Just as he was about to snap and kill the man in front of him, Lucy's voice cut through his mind, anchoring him back to the physical world. He released his grip on the doctor's throat.
The ripperdoc coughed violently, gasping for air, before preparing a final prescription.
"I'm sorry," David muttered.
"Don't be. Once you start taking those, there's no coming back," the doctor said, his voice devoid of pity. "Go on then. Go become a legend of Night City, or whatever it is you 'punks' do."
For the first time, the animation showed the audience exactly how a Cyberpsycho perceives the world: a twisted, grotesque landscape where every living thing is a monster and the only thing you can trust is the gun in your hand.
The fan groups were in a state of shock.
"No wonder they go crazy. If I saw that every time I blinked, I'd lose it in an hour."
"The visual direction for the hallucinations was terrifying. It felt like I was watching a high-budget horror movie."
"That scene with the mother's photo actually made me feel sick. The way the meat was crawling on her face in his vision... I can't blame him for shooting, but the reality is so depressing."
"The cycle is complete. David's mom was killed by violence, and now David is the source of that violence. Haruto is a master in this. He makes you feel the weight of every choice."
"Is David going to kill Lucy? Please tell me no."
"With that Haruto Bastard writing this? It's a very real possibility. He loves making us suffer."