No one wins in Night City.
Cyberpunk 2077: No Coincidence is a novel by Rafat Kosik set in the Cyberpunk 2077 setting.
A Ragtag Band of Misfits are assembled by a Ripperdoc in order to rob Militech of a bunch of high-end hardware so they can all get the upgrades they want. The heist manages to be pulled off despite the constant screw ups and bad planning that characterized it from the beginning but, no sooner do they rest their laurels, things begin to go sideways. They stole a mysterious container during their heist that their employer will do anything to acquire.
The members of the heist team include:
- Zor: A Badass Normal street merc who wants to make his name in Night City.
- Aya: A beautiful exotic dancer who wants to take care of her mentally disabled child but needs the Eddies to do it.
- Albert: A Teen Genius netrunner who lives with his mother and wants upgrades to be able to compete with real Edgerunners.
- Ron: A ripperdoc with ambitions of catering to a higher end of clientele.
- Borg: A violent party animal with poor self-control.
- Milena: A jaded 52-year-old corpo looking for something substantial.
Has an audiobook narrated by Cherami Leigh, the voice of the female version of V in Cyberpunk 2077.
- Abusive Parents: Albert's mother subjects him to near constant insults, calling him lazy and saying he was a waste of money.
- Action Mom: Aya has a mentally disabled young daughter named Juliena.
- Adaptational Villainy: Dum Dum is the most Affably Evil of the Maelstrom gang in Cyberpunk 2077. Here, he's a raging terrifying psychopath that tortures as well as kills anyone who stands in his way. He also hunts down the Caper Crew for no other reason than they pulled a job in their territory.
- Advert-Overloaded Future: The protagonists are routinely assaulted with commercials for ridiculous products and services like Real Water (almost as good as the real thing) or pornography brain dances.
- All for Nothing: The container that the Impromptu Gang and other parties are desperate to obtain and end up dying over is completely empty.
- Artificial Limbs: All over the place as per usual with the setting. In particular are Ron's six-fingered hands that allow him to perform surgery more efficiently, and Aya's complex limbs that require expensive maintenance to prevent her body from seizing up and eventually dying.
- Back-Alley Doctor: All Ripperdocs are this, being back alley cyberneticists for Edgerunners. Ron, in particular, is sketchier than most.
- Badass Normal: Zor is a former NUSA army member that has no combat implants. He eventually upgrades with several high-end implants and becomes nigh-unstoppable in combat.
- Being Evil Sucks: In full effect here. By the end of the story, most of the criminal characters are either dead or worse off, with only Warden, Katsuo, and Stanley coming out relatively unscathed. This doesn't even get into the innocent people close to the Impromptu Gang who suffer as a result of their actions, such as Juliena, Morris, and Albert's mom.
- Brain Upload: Albert has ambitions of using his technology to do this and escaping past the Blackwall. He disdains Soulkiller tech to do this despite, well, being exactly what it is designed for. His attempts ultimately end in failure. Though successful in creating a digital copy of himself and breaching it through the Blackwall, it's immediately destroyed by the malevolent AI outside, and Albert himself is killed before he even sees it happen.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Zor's memory as a NuUSA soldier were all implanted in him by Militech along with his memories of his wife and child. He was actually a Trauma Team pilot named Jay that was gunned down trying to save a child.
- The Brute: Borg's the most muscular and visibly chromed-up of the gang, displays a penchant for violence, practically strongarms his way into the second Militech heist, and quickly becomes belligerent when things don't go his way.
- The Caper: The crew proceeds to pull a couple of these, robbing Militech, and each time gets them into more trouble.
- Caper Crew: The protagonists are all members of one, assembled to do a couple of jobs together by a Fixer, then Ron.
- Catchphrase: Ron is fond of yelling "Fucksicles!" whenever things start going south.
- Celibate Eccentric Genius: Albert is incredibly tech-savvy for a 17-year-old, and is disgusted by the concept of sex itself, let alone the other gang members engaging in it in his own apartment.
- City of Adventure: Night City is a place where there are constant violent heists by criminals against the megacorps that the police barely interfere in.
- Crapsack World: It wouldn't be Cyberpunk if it wasn't. Most of the gang are just barely scraping by, street violence is the norm, malevolent corporations pull the strings behind the scenes while the general public is left to fend for themselves, and even basic things like clean food and water are a luxury reserved for the ultra rich.
- Crusading Widower: Zor was once married with a son but they died in a military strike carried out by Arasaka. This turns out to be a fake memory implanted by Militech. He may have never had a family to begin with.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: The Maelstrom gang are shown to be malevolent barely-human cyborgs more obsessed with their hardware than lives.
- Cycle of Revenge: Happens in rapid succession, no less. Ron guns down Dum Dum during the massive basement shootout. This sends Karla into a rage who immediately kills Ron and is herself taken out right afterwards by Zor and Milena. Later on, Dixie kills Albert to get revenge for Dum Dum and Karla, using a shiv made out of one of Karla's own mantis blades.
- Deconstruction: The book pulls no punches in showing how the City of Adventure setting can very quickly go wrong and be far from an idealized power fantasy. The Impromptu Gang are not hardened and experienced mercenaries, but amateurs plucked from different walks of life and forced to commit crimes to make ends meet. As a result, they are often ill-equipped for their capers and make mistakes that create more problems for themselves in the long run, leading to their eventual demise without ever coming close to reaching their goals. "No one wins in Night City", indeed.
- Dirty Coward: Borg immediately sells out the rest of the gang upon being captured and interrogated by Dum Dum. It does not save him.
- Downer Ending: The entirety of the party is wiped out, Juliena is adopted as one of the Maelstromers, and the corporations will just continue the experiments they'd started with. Even Albert's attempt at sending his digital copy outside the Blackwall ended with it getting torn apart by malicious AI.
- Dumb Muscle: Borg is shown to lack common sense in a couple occasions, such as resting a gun on his shoulder when the barrel is still burning hot after being fired, as well as choosing to hit up another strip club after a heist when laying low would have been the much smarter option. The second example ends up getting him killed and causing all sorts of problems for the Impromptu Gang.
- The Ending Changes Everything: The entirety of the heist crew's adventures were all arranged by Militech as part of a plan to try and create an AI/Human hybrid that would allow them to pierce the Blackwall but remain in control of the being who could do so. Zor was their attempted agent with false memories they were using to try and manipulate him into killing an Arasaka executive. The case that everyone was chasing after the entire time? It was empty and just part of the experiment.
- "Everybody Dies" Ending: The entirety of the cast is killed by the end of the book with only Liam, the Hero Antagonist, making it out alive.
- The Fixer: Warden has this as his ambition but he's actually an assistant to a real one.
- Fluffy the Terrible: You'd think someone with the street name of Dum Dum would not be a threat to anyone. You'd be dead wrong.
- Forced into Evil: All of the criminals in the heist group but especially Aya who needs to pay for the brain surgery necessary to cure her daughter's condition.
- From Bad to Worse: Each time the Impromptu Gang commits crimes, it only brings more heat on them from multiple factions, forcing them to take even more desperate measures that continue to not pay off.
- Gambit Pileup: The exchange at the abandoned building's basement turns into a massive face-off between the Impromptu Gang, Brenner's forces, Maelstrom, and the Animals, leaving many of them dead by the time the dust settles.
- Gunship Rescue: The gang attempts to save Juliena from Maelstrom after hijacking a medical AV. It fails: Not only does Juliena end up running back to the Maelstromers, but Milena is fatally wounded in the escape.
- The Heavy: Dum Dum, despite just being another Mecha-Mook to V is a terrifying Serial Killer who starts hunting down the heist crew one by one.
- The Hedonist: Borg more or less blows the money he earns from the capers on prostitutes. This gets him killed, as he ends up living it up at a Maelstromer-owned club immediately after raiding the Militech warehouse on their turf, which makes it easy for Dum Dum to track him down.
- The Hero Dies: Zor, Aya, Ron, Milena, Albert, and Borg all die by the end of the book.
- Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Aya is a dancer rather than hooker. She, however, is the one with the most gentle heart as well as moral motivation to do crime.
- I Have Your Wife: Aya's daughter, Juliena, is taken by Maelstrom halfway through the book.
- Inspector Javert: Liam Reed is between this and a Hero Antagonist, trying to find the protagonists for the many crimes they have committed.
- Justified Criminal: Aya wants to provide for her daughter's brain surgery, as well as to fix her failing body implants before they kill her.
- Mad Artist: The murderous psychopath Karla puts on a show at one point, demonstrating her art form by slicing up a corpse with her mantis blades in front of an audience.
- Mêlée à Trois: A huge gunfight breaks out between several factions at once: The Impromptu Gang, Brenner's gang, Maelstrom, and the Animals. The Impromptu Gang prevail with help from Warden, though not without a casualty.
- MockGuffin: The container that everybody fights over and believes to house something incredibly valuable turns out to be empty and just part of a Militech experiment to turn Zor into an AI/Human hybrid soldier.
- My Beloved Smother: Albert's mother treats him, well, like a teenager but also constantly belittles his dreams of going to college as well as making a living on the computer. She ends up murdered by Maelstrom.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Liam Reed gets promoted to Chief Inspector and is immediately forced into retirement for actually trying to arrest the heist team. Notably, he wanted to find out who committed a number of murders and rescue a young girl.
- Older Than They Look: Played With in regards to Milena. She looks much younger than 52, but one of the first things people wonder when they look at her is how many anti-aging procedures she must have had.
- Perpetual Poverty: A problem that everybody in the gang (except for Milena) has.
- Pet the Dog: The Maelstrom gang is implied to have repaired Juliene's medical issues out of the kindness of their chrome hearts.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Even by Night City standards, none of the heist crew are actually professional criminals but a bunch of gifted amateurs going from one job to the next. They even come up with the name "The Impromptu Gang" as a reference to their haphazardly-founded nature.
- Sex Is Evil, and I Am Horny: A Downplayed Trope example, Melina finds the emotionless constant hook ups she engages in to be boring as well as degrading but has no other way to spend her time or money.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: Despite their increasingly desperate attempts to escape their situation, the entire Impromptu Gang dies without achieving any of their goals. Even if they hadn't died, the container they were risking everything for was empty, so they would all still be in serious trouble with debt collectors, hostile gangs, corporations, the police, and their own crippling poverty.
- Short-Lived Aerial Escape: Zor and Aya attempt to fly out of Night City via a hijacked Trauma Team AV with the container. However, it suffers too much damage from the initial hijack, their botched attempt at rescuing Juliena, and fending off an attack drone, and they end up crash-landing in the desert where they both eventually die from their wounds.
- Sociopathic Hero: While hero is a stretch, Albert is someone who is incapable of feeling shame or empathy about any of his actions. He doesn't even feel anything when his mother dies and is mostly annoyed at not being able to feel anything since that means he's "broken."
- Soul-Crushing Desk Job: Aya gets one of these when she's hired to handle customer support at a braindance company. The customers are beyond stupid in their complaints while verbally harassing her.
- Spanner in the Works: Albert's mom forcibly yanks him out of cyberspace and destroys his netrunning gear to nag and belittle him. Too bad he was in the middle of coordinating a heist, which indirectly leads to the Impromptu Gang having a run-in with some Maelstromers and incurring the wrath of Dum Dum.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
- Ron keeps his finger on the trigger at all times—so he ends up shooting himself in the leg.
- Borg rests his gun across his shoulders after he just fired it and immediately has to remove it when the barrel starts burning his arm.
- Teen Genius: As a netrunner, Albert has created numerous programs he's sold on the net and made money from them. He's also qualified to help in the heist.
- Thrill Seeker: Milena feels bored with living the rich corpo life, citing that life without risk is barely a life at all. Just before she dies, she admits to Aya that Warden never had any dirt on her to force her into joining the Impromptu Gang. She did it solely to feel alive. Crosses over into Death Seeker territory once her lover Ron dies.
- Too Dumb to Live: Rather than lay low after their Militech warehouse heist, Borg immediately goes on another bender in a strip club, one owned by Maelstrom in the turf the heist took place in and after he had been seen by multiple Maelstromers. It's little wonder why Dum Dum scoffs at Borg's pleas to spare him and let him join their crew.
- Transhuman: Albert wants to equip himself with high level cybernetics in order to no longer be a pathetic nerd who lives with his mother.
- Viewers Are Morons: In-universe example. Aya gets a job at a braindance technical support line and every caller is a complete idiot, ranging from The Fundamentalist to a woman who wants to hire the actors as prostitutes to someone who doesn't know why she can't watch her favorite program now then pay later.
