David Martinez is a seventeen year old who attends the elite private school, Arasaka Academy, at his mother Gloria's behest in the year 2076, despite the fact they are financially struggling. In order to keep attending class, David modifies his cyberware to avoid paying for a required patch. This is, unfortunately, illegal and also something his mother warns him against.
The modified cyberware crashes the school's system, and Gloria agrees to pay for the damages, despite the fact they can't pay for ten times as much as the patch (that they could barely afford anyway). On the way home, David gets into a fight with his mother before they are caught up in an attempted assassination attempt of a corpo executive, leaving Gloria badly wounded. David manages to access the family bank acocunt to pay for her medical costs, and discovers she had stolen a military grade Sandevistan implant created by Arasaka.
After getting badly beaten by his classmate, Katsuo, who has much more advanced cybernetics, David finds out that Gloria's condition worsened and she died in the clinic. Now completely broke and enraged at Katsuo for insulting Gloria, David meets up with Doc, a local ripperdoc who he regularly buys black market goods from, and requests to have the Sandevistan installed into his own body.
Tropes in this episode:
- Blatant Lies: Katsuo says that he's actually a charitable sort and doesn't mind the poor attending Arasaka Academy. They just have to be able to afford it.
- The Bully: Katsuo is a particularly nasty sort, picking a fight with David on the day of his mother's death.
- Cop Killer: The cyberpsycho particularly targets police officers and kills a dozen before he's put down by Max-Tac.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: The episode opens with an example of cyberpsychosis that has driven a man modified with military-grade hardware insane and sent him on a killing spree against the city's police force. It requires Max-Tac, the city's own cybernetic kill squad, to put him down.
- Disaster Dominoes: David's life rapidly unravels with his near-expulsion, his mother's injury, the massive medical bills, and then his mother's death.
- Establishing Series Moment: The opening scene is one for Night City itself as we witness a cyberpsycho proceed to kill a dozen cops in a seemingly senseless massacre before Max-Tac proceeds to blow it up. This immediately establishes the location as a place of sudden and horrific violence where no one is safe.
- Gang of Bullies: Katsuo leads a pack of rich male students that stand by and watch him beat up David.
- Godzilla Threshold: The Maximum Force Tactical Division, or MaxTac for short, is Cyberpunk 2077's SWAT Team, called in for the most dangerous of criminals when regular police squads aren't enough (particularly those driven insane via cyberpsychosis).
- Good Parents: Gloria is shown to be an overworked but loving woman who deeply cares about her son's future.
- Hope Spot:
- When David sees his unconscious mother outside her flipped car, Trauma Team arrives. Unfortunately for him, neither he nor Gloria are clients, and so Trauma Team abandons them both in favor of them getting picked up by Night City's ambulances.
- David ends up getting another afterwards: the discount surgeon who operated on her said that her operation was a success. A day later, however, David is informed that her condition suddenly deteriorated and that he should look into burial options.
- No Sympathy: Katsuo has no empathy for the fact that David's mother recently died and proceeds to taunt him into a fight so he can justify beating him up. Katsuo later taunts him further, saying he should drop out of school.
- Police Are Useless: The regular police are helpless against the cyberpsycho and it's only when Max-Tac arrives that it is put down.
- Rage Breaking Point: Everything having gone downhill for David in the final minutes of the episode as a result of the death of his mother puts him into an increasingly bad mood, up until Katsuo decides to Kick the Dog and drive the knife in deeper by badmouthing his mother's death, which is the last straw and leads David running up and demanding Doc to put the Sandevistan in him.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Katsuo points out that his father is on the board and that knows David will soon be kicked out.
- Snuff Film: David is introduced watching a Braindance from a cyberpsycho who massacred a bunch of police before getting killed by Max-Tac.
- Struggling Single Mother: Gloria Martinez is an EMT and there's no father in the picture so she works super-hard to try and get her son into a better life.
