The Melody

It all started in a single building, the Tygers' base as the hypocenter.

While Sora fought against Ishii and his Soulcode against the green AI Muse, Cortana jumped from white-tinted server to white-tinted server, totally unprotected and accessible to her.

Influenced by the mysterious emotions she was feeling coming from the matrix in her hands,without being able to explain them or having felt anything like them in her short life as Ai, almost overwhelming her.

For her, it was as if the matrix in her hands and the strange language in which it was written did not carry information in them like the rest of the known codes, but rather a will or feeling within them.

And with Cortana having direct contact, she was feeling them herself;

An immense concern, and a deep will to protect someone dear, which, although it was illogical for Ai, made small bits of redundant information escape from her eyes, almost seeming like tears...

As she connected the servers she entered to the mysterious matrix in her hands, which shrank each time she did so. Creating a link between the server with the Getsuga white replica on the Tygers server

Simultaneously emitting whatever kind of file the irrational code was transformed into, during the server connection.

Causing a reaction in the physical world. When from the speakers, screens, and holograms of Night City, their mundane programming filled with advertisements and corporate advertising was interrupted.

To retransmit, if the server had an audio output, then transmit the beautiful piano melody and if the server had a video output, then a brilliant blue sky and a crystalline floor that reflected it and in the middle of that idyllic scenario, a white silhouette of a young man playing the beautiful melody on a large black grand piano.

What started to be heard in a single building quickly spread throughout the street and then throughout the block, flooding the screens and holograms of the Japantown sub-district and reaching the entire Westbroock district, finally reaching every district of Night City, even infecting the corporate center by changing its usual carps hologram to the reproduction of the white silhouette playing the piano.

Stopping the city and its confused drivers in their vehicles when all the traffic signals went out, forcing them to stop in the middle of the street, and from their radios, all they could hear was the same melody on all the channels.

Managing to disturb the citizens of Night City who thought it was some kind of computer virus or a cyber attack. But as the music continued to play and nothing dangerous happened, seeming more like a performance than a cyber attack.

They began to enjoy the melody, making them infect them too, as they are doing with Night City servers, without being able to explain or control it, causing a sudden emotion and concern in them.

However, not all citizens of Night City felt infected by the melody. Some were too busy, annoyed that their plans had been interrupted by the chaos on the roads, while others simply remained indifferent, without feeling the influence of the music at all.

But those who did and stayed watching the video of the figure playing the piano began to recognize the white silhouette resembling a certain Cybertube artist who used a similar silhouette for his videos, when one of the pedestrians who was recording on his pad and broadcasting it on the network finally said when he realized;

"Wait.... isn't that...?"

-

Causing the future person in charge of facing the legal shitstorm that was about to happen to put their hands on their head as he recognized the silhouette, realizing it was one of their clients.

Thinking that if he could recognize him, so could everyone else, as he watched what was happening on the streets of Night City from the glass wall of his office in the downtown. Harvey could see how the holografic Carps in corporate center had been replaced by a video of his clients, that was hacking a private server to upload a recording of a silhouette of himself playing the piano.

Unlike the people who were enjoying the spectacle, Harvey shouted, "That Kid!... What the hell is he thinking!" When his brain finished processing what was happening and he thought about what to do next, drawing Donna's attention with his shouts.

"Harvey?" The loyal red-haired secretary who had been working for him for years entered his office, surprised by her boss's unusual outburst.

Without turning to face her, Harvey leaned resignedly against the glass wall and said.

"Call Litt, tell him to cancel his trip to Crystal Palace and come back to the office right away. Gather all the interns in the office, and those who have already gone for the weekend, tell them to come back if they want to keep their jobs. I want them all together, starting to come up with any subterfuge, legal demand, anything they can think of to slow down any corporate, federal, or Netwatch orders seeking information about an anonymous artist, even if it's just to waste their time reading it!"

"I... Okay," said Donna, not understanding what was going on but wasting no time in following Harvey's orders.

As she was about to leave the office, Harvey called out to her again, "Donna!"

"Yes?" said Donna.

"Put me in touch with the CEO of Cyglee," Said Harvey as he sat behind his desk of his office, filled with vintage sports objects from before the age of cybernetic augmentations in sports. As He continued to look seriously at Donna and add, "I have to talk to him about one of his content creators. And when you're done with all that, send someone to find out the extent of what's happening outside. Knowing him, I doubt it's only happening on the streets."

As Harvey had correctly guessed, it wasn't just happening on the streets. When Cortana finished with the city's large servers, she began to connect to the smaller personal servers in the apartments of Night City.

-

In Santo Domingo, Sub-district Arroyo, in apartment 0716 located on the 8th floor of the Megabuilding H4,

"Mom, I'm bored," shouted an 11-year-old boy to his mother, out of sheer boredom.

"Do something to entertain yourself. Dinner will be ready soon," replied his mother.

"Okay," the boy said, growing a smile as he got up from the apartment sofa and reached out to grab a yellow guitar-shaped instrument. However, before he could pick it up, his mother interrupted him.

"And for the love of God, leave the bass alone for a while, David! You're driving me crazy... play any Qpc game as any normal child would do" Gloria Martinez said to her son David, who hadn't spent a single day without tormenting her since he received the bass, in the most unpleasant part of playing an instrument, the learning.

But to Gloria's pleasure and dismay, her son had become so obsessed with the gift from "Jackie" - the young man who saved them from being robbed - that he hardly did anything else but play. Forcing Gloria to have to make a deal with her son for a reasonable limit of daily hours of bass practice, for her physical and mental health.

"Ah!... tch, okay," said David, annoyed, turning on the QPC and putting on the second-hand, almost-in-good-condition virtual reality goggles he had bought.

And when he was controlling the Qpc from his virtual reality goggles starting to open a game installed.... something happened that made him scream like a little girl from the shock and surprise, falling to the ground, when suddenly a beautiful blue-coded woman sneaked inside his Qpc

"MOM!!!"

"David, what the hell is going on?" Gloria asked, rushing to check on David.

"Naked-Woman-Blue-Qpc" Finding her son on the floor with his goggles out of place in his head as he pointed his hands at the apartment Qpc while barely speaking a few words, still surprised.

After hearing her son's cryptic message that included the words "Naked" and "Woman," Gloria looked at him with a reproachful face and she went to check the Qpc output on the apartment screen and was surprised to find, contrary to what her son words, a video of a familiar white silhouette playing the piano in a beautiful scenery.

Both Gloria and David were surprised when they saw the familiar white silhouette. With Glory being the first to speak.

"It's Jackie!" Said Gloria after immediately recognizing the figure, similar to the one Jackie uses in his videos. That now that they knew who he really was, they could realize that he actually used his featureless silhouette for his videos.

Surprising Gloria when she was the first and only to react, she turning to David who still hadn't said a word, since the piano melody started playing. Disconcerting Gloria when she saw her son, with tears in his eyes.

"David.... why are you crying?" said Gloria, over her son's sudden tears.

"I-I don't know... it's just that the song..." Said David holding his hand to his face, not even himself knowing why he was crying, unable to help it as he listened to the somewhat familiar melody.

-

And he was not the only one who was going through something similar when hearing the emotional melody.

In the middle of one of the streets of Night City.

"Are you...?"

"What?"

"You're crying, Lucy." Kiwi said, who had met Lucy for the first time since they arrived in the city.

"No-no I can't," Lucy said, unable to believe that she was crying, bringing her hand to her eyes surprised to realize it was true.

"It doesn't matter if you don't want to say it, but it's silly to deny the obvious. Anyway, who the hell is capable of something like this? It has spread to several districts of Night City. Are you telling me that the person capable of hacking on this scale... is using it for a damn concert? Are you kidding me?" Kiwi said, having a hard time believing that all this was just a simple concert.

"I don't think it's just for that," Lucy said after wiping her eyes, while continuing to look at the nearest screen or hologram, still watching and listening to the mysterious melody that inexplicably made her cry.

"What do you mean?" Kiwi replied.

"I... think what we're seeing is just a side effect of the program that's infecting the city's servers, as a form of payment for borrowing the servers, maybe? Have you noticed? There's no data extraction. Whatever is hacking the servers is using them for something, instead of stealing or leaking their contents..." Lucy said, supposing what was happening on the network.

"Hmm," Kiwi said, listening to Lucy as his eyes lit up and using scanning programs on a white-tinted server in the Cyberspaces, being only able to send a programs as she was not connect herself to cyberspace. "You're right. Whatever is happening, it's making the servers it takes work, but there's no data copy...."

"Wait!" Kiwi exclaimed in surprise for a moment as the data she was downloading from her program, checking an infected server, spiked for a second before returning to zero, as if the ridiculously large number she didn't have time to read had been an illusion.

"What's wrong!?" Lucy asked, bewildered.

"It's nothing," said Kiwi, unsure if the number she had seen had actually happened or if it had just been a glitch for a moment.

-

The melody of Sora's Soulcode even reached indirectly off-earth.

When Hanako received a call from Oda while she was in the stratosphere of the planet, riding on Arasaka's Blackbird, a private jet used in case of emergencies.

This jet does not fly around the Earth at high speeds, but instead ascends to great heights, almost escaping the Earth's atmosphere, and then performs a direct fall to the destination, following a parabolic trajectory around the Earth in order to reach the destination as quickly as possible.

Due to the high costs associated with each trip, even for Arasaka, the Blackbird was only used in cases of emergency.

Oda informed her of the strange events happening in Night City during the call.

Leaving a worried Hanako speechless, wanting to jump out of her seat, which was secured by several seat belts, and cry and scream with joy upon learning that she was right and that her invention had really come to fruition.

When she saw and recognized what the white silhouette playing the piano on all the screens and holograms of Night City really was, in the images that Oda was sending her.

She was interrupted by the speakers in the passenger section of the Blackbird, where the pilot politely and with a touch of fear in his voice said to his only passenger, "Ha-Hanako-Sama, it seems that something is happening in Night City and the city's airspace control tower is denying our access."

"Tell them we're going anyway, and if they have any complaints.... let them dare to stop the plane in which a Arasaka is on board," Hanako said into the air without the need to press any buttons or raise her voice, knowing that the pilot could hear her.

Seconds later, Hanako was able to hear the nervous response from the pilot.

"Yes-yes, whatever Hanako-Sama says, prepare for landing, as you requested it will be rough due to the speed we are reaching. I'm sorry, Hanako-Sama!" said the pilot, almost shouting in the last part.

"Stop talking and do it, I threatened you myself to go as fast as you could, I won't complain about the consequences of my decisions," Hanako said, as a smile grew on her face as she looked again at the images sent by Oda, fading away shortly after, concerned about Sora's well-being, in which after seeming to receive some bullet impacts, all the data she was receiving from the Nanobots was cut off.

-

In front of the base of the Tygers branch of the deceased Shigeo. Three individuals were approaching the entrance of the pachinko parlor that served as a false entryway for guests to the private bar within the Tygers' base.

After finally arriving from Afterlife, after dealing with the city's rush hour traffic with most people leaving their jobs and flooding the roads and highways, they were lucky enough to arrive before the current collapse, where traffic lights were turned off.

Caused by the strange melody and recording that was spreading throughout the city, drawing their attention but with no time to be distracted, as they finally reached their destination.

They could see that the building had several holes in its facade from explosives. They stood there, staring at the hole in the third-floor wall, where smoke was still billowing out, indicating it was recent.

Nervous about the combat signs exhibited by the building, Pilar said, "What are we waiting for? Let's go."

He was interrupted by Maine, who grabbed him by the shoulder and said, "Wait!" as he looked toward the hole again in the third-floor wall, where a loud noise started emanating from it.

Causing Pilar to speak again as he heard them too. "What the hell is that?"

Referring to the sound of heavy footsteps being heard, which changed Maine and Dorio's expression as they, unlike Pilar, were able to recognize the sounds of something like a heavy military level exoskeleton would make when moving.

As they recognized the sound and it grew louder, they were able to see the back of the exoskeleton with heavy legs, walking backward as if something was pushing it from inside the building.

As the exoskeleton took its last step backward and fell from the third floor of the building was when Maine moved, grabbing the surprised Pilar and getting out from under the falling trajectory of the exoskeleton.

When it fell, created a loud noise and a dust cloud due to its heavy weight. The three approached to check on the person inside, they saw a young Asian man with bloodshot eyes and black, pasty blood oozing from his mouth and other facial orifices. With expressions of pain on his face, and what looked like tufts of hair still clinging to his exoskeleton arm

After seeing the state of the body, the three raised their heads to check the third-floor hole again. They looked at each other without needing to say anything more, and ran towards the building to find out what had happened and free Pilar's sister and the kidnapped Minis.

Without noticing, how at the same time they entered the Tygers' base, two AVs from different directions were also heading toward the same building.