404: Doom Not Found

- 11 years before canon -

The battlefield had quieted—but not stilled.

Smoke clung to the alley's edge like a breath held too long. Down in the yard, bodies steamed where chrome met blood, the corps' solos either scattered or dead, Maelstrom crawling back into their rust-choked corners. MM's crew hadn't lost a soul.

But Victor had waited long enough.

He slipped through the ruins of an old tenement overlooking the scrapyard. His boots made no sound. No scent. No data trace. This wasn't just stealth—it was practised erasure. A man-shaped absence in the grid.

Jaeger hadn't moved.

The sniper lay prone on the top-floor balcony of a collapsed apartment block, watching the yard through a scope dulled from overuse. Not shooting. Not repositioning. Just scanning. Holding high ground as a spotter. Composed. Calm. And blind to the shape rising behind him.

Victor emerged through the stairwell shadows, low and deliberate. The wind covered the soft hiss of his breath. He moved with the confidence of someone who knew every step before he took it. Every motion mirrored the simulations he'd already run in his mind a hundred times.

He didn't need to see Jaeger's face. The outline was enough—flat against the railing, scope glinting in rhythm with the dying neon below.

Victor raised the suppressed pistol.

Pew!

One shot. Back of the skull.

Clean.

Jaeger jerked once. Then stilled. No alarm. No noise.

Victor crouched beside the body, already scavenging. Snagged two mags, a comm shard, and Jaeger's deck-linked optical uplink—fried now, but worth a look.

He rolled the corpse gently and kicked the rifle off the ledge. It fell into wreckage below, unseen and unmissed.

Then Victor stood and looked down.

Ruckus.

The bruiser was limping, dragging himself between shipping crates, slick with blood and leaking hydraulic fluid. One arm clutched his shotgun tight to his side, the other hung like snapped cabling. His coat was shredded. One eye blinked erratically.

But he was still moving.

And worse, he was angry.

Victor lay prone, steadied his newly acquired rifle on the balcony rail. He marked the slope of the crate. Calculated wind. Waited.

"How ironic, you were allowed to test the mantle of Doom-"

Bang!

"And failed," He finished. 

The shot snapped through the bruiser's shoulder.

Ruckus roared, a wet animal sound, and half-spun behind cover.

Victor waited.

Ruckus tried to move again. His head rose.

Second shot—knee.

He dropped with a crash.

Victor adjusted. The third round cracked through the soft hinge of the throat beneath the chin. Ruckus twitched once. Slumped.

Done.

Victor watched the corpse for three seconds. Counted breath.

Nothing moved.

He clicked his comm open. "Two down."

V's voice crackled through. "You took out Jäger?"

"Affirmative, Jäger had left his rear naked. A fatal mistake. Ruckus, on the other hand, failed from the very beginning. He died not knowing where I struck from."

"Damn," she whispered. "You're a mean killer, you know. Didn't take you for a sniper..." 

"All tools are proficient within my hands. Nothing is useless."

"Sure, and I guess a pencil is just as ruthless?"

"More so, they never see it coming." 

"Remind me not to leave my pens around you..." 

"My hands would be enough." 

"Way to make a girl feel special." She voiced jokily, although only half so. 

"Doom has his way." 

She paused. Her HUD pinged. A heat signature blinked to life just west of the wrecked relay stack. Subtle. Low profile. Human, but not rushing.

"She's on the move," V said, voice cooling. She blinked twice, switching to thermal and wide-net scan. "I'll track her down."

Victor's reply was a click on the line. Short. Trusting.

V exhaled slowly and began to move.

Her boots whispered over crumbling gravel and ash, silent save for the hiss of her breath and the faint buzz of a damaged neon sign above the junkyard gate. She pulled her deck closer to her hip and toggled the passive surveillance crawler she'd hand-coded. The script launched—hungry, curious, slow.

"This one's not scavver-dumb," she muttered. "She's obfuscating her own heat trail."

Which meant MM wasn't just skilled—she was paranoid. Good. Paranoia could be tracked.

The crawler returned faint anomalies: light voltage disruptions near relay junctions, split-pings bouncing off walls where there should've been none.

V narrowed her eyes. Decoys.

She adjusted her route, slipping between stacks of rusted metal, broken vending machines, and half-burned corposuits. The sky above was muddy orange, light pollution thick enough to choke stars.

Halfway to the next position, she crouched behind a collapsed fire escape and activated a dead-zone mic. The frequency static blurred... and then focused.

A whisper. Too faint to decode. But it wasn't Maelstrom. Too clean.

She rose. Inhaled.

"She's cutting around the block," V said under her breath. "Probably thinks I'm on a trace delay."

She shifted left, quick-stepping through the alley shadows toward a stairwell that might give her a better line of sight.

That's when her signal flared again—too close.

The ping spiked directly behind a ruined kiosk.

V drew her pistol but kept her hand low. No sudden movements. Her fingers danced along her deck's control pad, prepping a fastkill ICE shard—

Too late.

The screen glitched. Her input slowed.

MM had already tagged her interface.

"…shit."

She should've known the alley was a trap the second the signal went quiet.

MM's heat signature had flared—third floor, side building, angled window—and vanished. V ran three quicktrace pings across relay nodes she'd masked earlier.

No response.

Which meant MM was already inside her grid. Inside her.

"Fuck," V hissed, ducking behind a cooling vent.

Her HUD flickered.

A flicker wasn't normal.

Not a crash, not a spike—a flicker. Like something was rewriting her display preferences one line of code at a time. Slowly. Deliberately.

She pulled a blind ping and aimed it at the last known position—MM had crouched near the relay box by the bait car. If she was still close—

Ping return.

Hit confirmed.

V lunged, lobbed a signal jammer toward the alley's edge—fast, hard.

It landed—

Black.

The world turned off.

Her optics died. Her earpiece squealed in one long static moan. Her vitals monitor blinked off. For three horrifying seconds, her entire neural OS froze.

Then it rebooted.

But not properly.

Lines of error code rolled across the inside of her vision:

[ERROR 0231-OS: SYSTEM CORE CORRUPTED]

[NEURAL I/O SYNC FAILURE]

[DECK BINDING LOOP DETECTED]

[EMERGENCY SAFE MODE ACTIVE]

V's breath caught. She tried to move her right hand.

It didn't listen.

Her left foot twitched without command.

She wasn't just hacked—her OS was frying. MM hadn't launched an attack to disable her. She'd aimed to gut her operating core.

The world around her stuttered as the emergency safe mode fought to keep her conscious. She felt her teeth grind together. Her implants were heating up, not from exertion, but from overload.

"She's inside my motor cortex," V muttered.

Then MM stepped from the shadows. 

No rush. No fear.

Her tall ebony frame was elegant but ominous, like a panther stalking its prey.

Her long legs were riddled with scars, her eyes telling a story of it's own. 

She was a hunter and an experienced one at that. 

V staggered. 

"You're using a hybrid OS," MM said, tone almost curious. "Open kernel. Modified. Probably built it yourself."

She leaned in, tilted her head.

"You really thought that was enough?"

V tried to stand.

MM tapped her deck once—no gesture, no theatrics.

V slammed to the ground as her body locked. One half of her spine felt frozen. The other screamed with feedback.

MM walked forward.

"You have instincts," she said. "But you're not upgraded enough to run with wolves. He's been protecting you, hasn't he? A street rat like yourself doesn't come close to that demon."

V reached for her sidearm.

MM pointed at it.

The smartlink glitched, sparked, and died.

"You are clever," MM admitted. "But clever doesn't beat built."

V gritted her teeth and tried to crawl, using only her muscles now.

Raw, terrified defiance etched in her very fibre.

Her mind screamed to escape, to defy the steel that replaced her organic body, but it denied her. 

It denied her call to answer. 

MM crouched next to her. "That's the spirit."

She activated her ICE blade.

It shimmered from her wrist like a ghost made of code—humming silently with the promise of permanent erasure. No ping. No echo. No reboot.

"I'll give you two more chances," MM said. "Tell me where he is."

V spit blood. "Eat chrome."

MM raised the blade, awaiting to execute the young netrunner. 

"Tal-." 

Thoom!

The bullet tore through her ribcage.

MM reeled. The glow faltered.

Crack.

"Ugh-." 

MM collapsed like her strings had been cut, her exposed trachea open like a bloodied rose. 

V lay still, gasping, unable to respond.

The glow from her OS flickered one last time—and then shut down completely.

Total black.

[Emergency core reboot initiated. No visual. No auditory interface.]

For twenty seconds, she floated in digital darkness.

Victor responded quickly, ensuring her vitals remained.

"Breath stable, heartbeat and pulse stable... Consciousness... Digital." 

He laid her down with the care of a sculptor setting marble.

V trembled beneath the remnants of a world gone molten. Her breath rasped, dry and jagged. The scent of burnt polymer and neural gel clung to her skin like funeral incense. Her eyelids fluttered, but she saw nothing. Her ears, Victor knew, heard only the static scream of dying code.

Applying a gel-like substance around her wounds and Cyberware, he then applied an emergency stim to energise and awake her body. 

She would live. For now.

Victor turned toward the door as the last contractor stepped through the haze.

Alone. Burnt at the edges. Rifle lowered—but not out of peace. A man who'd seen gods and realised they weren't on his side.

Victor didn't move.

"Walk slowly," he ordered, voice measured like still water. "And speak with intent."

The merc froze, then relaxed—just enough to feign courage. "You're the one carrier?"

Victor said nothing. Just raised his hand and activated the holopad.

No flourish. No declaration.

Just proof.

A flicker of light. Images surfaced like ghosts surfacing from the Styx—charred armour, fractured helmets, internal diagnostics glitched mid-death. Three confirmed kills. One blacked-out neural shard.

The merc's jaw tightened. "You killed all three?"

He felt his voice betray him; the scene only linked to one conclusion, yet it felt impossible.

His comrades had been completely outclassed and nearly finished in the span of five minutes.

Their cybernetics were compromised, leaving them stunned and unable to operate complex maneuvers; it was as if a wolf lost its teeth. 

Yet a single operative had managed to not only kill both but also come out unscathed. 

Victor tilted his head, slow as the movement of a falling star.

"By design and orchestration, their attempts were futile."

He swiped left. MM's corpse appeared. Neutral pose. No blood. Just the stillness of a queen toppled in her own court.

No name. No ID.

But a profile blinked into view.

Spec-class ICE engineer. No listed faction. Solo-adjacent, but not trained by them. Burned registration. Black-level aptitude clearance.

The merc paled, shoulders tensing like a wire drawn taut.

Victor saw it. That flicker. Recognition not spoken, but felt in the marrow.

Good, he recognises his greater, Doom thought disdainfully.

That silence said more than any oath.

The solo's hands trembled. Just a little. Then steadied. "I need to call it in."

He turned, murmured into his comm. A beat passed.

The voice on the other end crackled like frost: "Report."

The solo hesitated. Glanced at Victor again. "Extraction failed. Team eliminated. Hostile solo intervention."

A long pause.

Then: "Explain."

The merc swallowed. "He's still here. Solo class unknown. Masked. Efficient. The case is intact."

"I see... The Iron ghost... Is the item confirmed?"

"Yes."

"What's his demand?"

Victor stepped forward.

No threat. Just presence. Like a shadow made of brass.

"Twenty," he said flatly.

The comm crackled again. "Ten was the contract."

"Must I remind you of the volatile nature of this case?" Victor questioned.

"I won't negotiate with a street dog, should I remind you that you are but a human? Iron Ghost, do not underestimate the resources at my disposal."

"On the contrary, you underestimate my capabilities. Gina J had the same tone in her voice when she defied me. I wonder if you will have the same?" 

The comm went quiet.

Then, at last: "Fine. Twelve for the case. Six for hostile neutralisation."

The contractor's hand moved subtly—personal transfer initiated.

Victor's holo blinked.

:: +18,000 eurosdollars ::

The merc lingered, awkward.

Then, quietly: "Two more. From me."

Victor didn't blink.

:: +2,000 eurodollars ::

Victor deactivated the pad. Slid it into his coat like a blade sheathed in silk.

"Tell your people," he said softly, "that I, Doctor Doom, came, saw, and conquered."

The contractor stiffened.

"They will forget my face. They will erase my shadow from their logs. But they will remember this."

A beat.

Then Victor's voice darkened—quieter, heavy with intent.

"Be wise now and leave my presence."

The merc's lips parted slightly.

But he didn't speak.

Didn't dare.

He turned. Took the case with reverent hands.

And walked away.

Victor watched until the sound of boots faded into the wind-rattled echoes of the mill. Only then did he return to the slab.

V still twitched—her body reacting to invisible lashes in her mind. Her neural interface steamed faintly. The stim had kept her breathing, but she wouldn't wake for hours.

Victor sat beside her. Removed his gloves.

And waited.

---

Darkness again.

Not the kind that soothes. The kind that scrapes. Like someone peeling rust off a data cable with a nail.

She couldn't hear. Couldn't see. Only feel—static in her bones, electric nausea rolling under her skin. Her HUD was gone. Not glitched—gone. Like her brain had rebooted into a cold void where the world used to be.

Then—

A sound. Familiar, but warped. Like someone whispering underwater.

Like an old tune, she felt nostalgic, tears dripping down her face.

She couldn't see it, but she felt it.

The warm stream poured from her eyes, and sorrow washed over.

Her body could never mistake that drowned voice.

It was Vincent.

No.

It couldn't be... That was then... Not now. 

She struggled to comprehend the truth, forgotten memories now laid bare.

Memory flickered—wrong, sharp-edged.

A scene played.

A closet door.

 Her knees against her chest.

Her mother's voice, brittle and shrill.

Her father was stomping, slurring.

Vincent was next to her, holding her hand tightly.

"Don't cry. They'll hear you."

She hadn't.

Not that night.

But her hands had bled from clenching too tightly.

Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry—

Her mind flickered again.

Vincent again.

A rooftop.

A fire in a barrel.

He handed her half a bao and grinned like the whole world was theirs.

That smile of his, Unmistakable.

"We're gonna be legends, sis," he said. "Like Blackhand and Smasher, choom. This city's gonna remember us one way or another. And when we're done, we'll be the strongest!"

She remembered those words, hopeful and clear.

Back when she felt like the world wasn't so bleak.

But times like that were short, and reality came crashing down. 

It started with the Scavs. 

Then the alley.

Then his blood.

"Run."

Running within her clouded mind, she felt the scenes flicker to grey. Time seemed not to exist, and all she could fathom was her pulse.

Pain jolted through her, present now.

Not past.

Real.

She gasped.

A voice—sharp and dry, like gravel dressed in velvet—cut through the haze.

"Still breathing. Good. Saves me from carrying a corpse."

Victor.

He was close. She could feel the weight of his presence like gravity.

Her throat worked. No sound.

"You always show up late?" She asked jokily.

Yet Victor, over her tearful eye, offered no comfort or response. He merely stood in his position, silent and sharp.

She swallowed.

"She almost killed me."

Victor's voice didn't shift. "Yes."

"Why didn't you shoot sooner?"

"You weren't dead yet."

She almost laughed. Instead, she coughed—sharp, wet, real.

"I froze," she said quietly.

Still nothing.

"Vincent wouldn't have. He—he always moved. Always faster. Smarter."

His mind wandered on who Vincent was; from her tone, Victor pieced together the identity. No doubt a person of importance. He calculated his response before responding.

When he did it was sharp, factual. It tore like a sharp blade through a sheet of paper.

"He's gone. You're not."

That was all.

She closed her eyes. Not because she wanted to—but because it hurt too much to keep them open.

"He said we'd be legends. I made him promise. Said we'd be like Morgan Blackhand."

No reply.

She didn't expect one.

The cot hissed beside her. Victor adjusted a dial. She felt the dermal patch tingle under her skin—stims kicking in.

She bit her lip.

"You think I'm weak?"

Victor didn't move. Then:

"I think you're still alive."

She let that hang in the silence.

She wanted to scream. Wanted to cry. But all she could do was lie there numb, hurting and blind.

"You're not much for bedside talk, are you?"

Victor grunted. "I'm not a bedside."

And that, somehow, was comfort.

She felt the cot shift slightly. Victor stepped away.

"You gonna leave me here?"

He didn't answer.

But the air said no.

That was enough.

For now.

---

Author note:

If you would be so kind as to offer me your stones, that would be splendid. Consider supporting by commenting on your ideas and thoughts. They help encourage me to continue writing and allow me to further engage with the story.