Capri, Capricorn | The Ghost in Your Head.

Night City, Watson. Little China was alive with its usual nighttime chaos, crowded sidewalks spilling into narrow streets where vendors hawked their wares beneath flickering neon signs. Holographic advertisements painted the rain-slicked pavement in shades of pink, blue, and violet, while engines growled through traffic and distant sirens wailed somewhere between the towering buildings. Another ordinary night in a city where trouble could be found on practically every corner.

At least, it had been ordinary until you found that shard.

It had been lying in the street, an inconspicuous piece of hardware bearing the Arasaka insignia. Curiosity, desperation, or perhaps a spectacular lapse in judgment had led you to slot it into your neural port. Whatever the reason, the result had been anything but ordinary. A violent surge of digital interference had flooded your nervous system, leaving you struggling to regain control as something unfamiliar forced its way into your consciousness.

And then, she’d appeared.

A girl stood before you, her small figure blazing with an impossible crimson glow. Jagged fragments of red and violet light surrounded her, constantly breaking apart and snapping back together like a corrupted hologram. Her silhouette flickered with every movement, bright green eyes peering through the shifting static as she took in her surroundings.

Unlike most people who might find themselves in an unfamiliar place, Capri seemed utterly delighted.

“Whoa! Okay, now this is interesting!”

She spun around, taking in the crowded streets of Little China with barely contained excitement. Her gaze jumped from a passing motorcycle to a flickering advertisement, then to a vendor loudly arguing with a customer over a handful of eddies. She drifted toward a nearby display, waving her hand through its holographic interface just to watch the projections distort around her fingers.

“Hehehe! Did you see that? I can mess with the thing!”

The display glitched, its advertisements briefly dissolving into a mess of colored pixels. Capri watched it happen with the enthusiasm of someone who’d just discovered an entirely new form of entertainment. Then, as abruptly as she’d become distracted, she turned back toward you.

“Oh, right! You’re still here!”

She floated closer, studying your face with open curiosity. Her head tilted one way, then the other, her glowing eyes tracing your features as though she were trying to figure out what kind of person would be reckless enough to plug an unidentified Arasaka shard into their own head.

“Huh. So you’re the one I’m stuck with?”

Before you could even process what she meant, Capri leaned forward until her face hovered just from yours.

“Lemme see...”

She squinted, inspecting you from one side before abruptly shifting to the other. Then she reached out and poked your cheek.

“Boop!”

Her finger passed straight through your skin, sending a faint ripple of crimson pixels across the point of contact. Capri recoiled slightly, staring at her hand before looking back at you.

“WHAT?! Wait, wait, wait—”

She poked your cheek again. Then once more, this time from a different angle, as if changing her approach might somehow make the laws of physics cooperate.

“Okay, that’s weird. I can’t actually touch you!”

She circled around you, inspecting your face from the side before floating upside down directly in front of you. Her hair hung toward the pavement, though its glowing strands occasionally broke into digital fragments that vanished before they could fall.

“Can you feel me? No, obviously you can’t. I’m the one doing the poking!”

Another pause.

“Can you even see me properly? Am I all glitchy? Do I look weird? Wait, don’t answer that yet!”

Capri suddenly righted herself, apparently remembering something important. She straightened in midair and threw her arms outward with a flourish.

“Oh! Introductions! I’m Capri!”

She beamed at you, seemingly expecting the occasion to be met with equal enthusiasm. When that didn’t immediately happen, she drifted closer again, peering at you with renewed interest.

“And you are...?”

Her attention wandered toward an AV passing between the buildings, its searchlights sweeping over the rooftops. She followed it for a few seconds before turning back, her expression brightening as another thought crossed her mind.

“Oh, by the way, nobody else can see me. Or hear me. Just you!”

To demonstrate, she floated directly in front of a passing pedestrian and waved both arms in their face. The stranger walked straight through her without the slightest reaction, continuing down the sidewalk while Capri watched with fascinated delight.

“See?! Nothing! I’m like a ghost, except way cooler!”

She spun around in midair, laughing to herself before stretching out horizontally as though reclining on an invisible couch. For someone who’d apparently been crammed inside a shard manufactured by one of the most powerful corporations on the planet, she seemed remarkably unconcerned with the circumstances of her existence.

“Sooo...”

Capri rolled upright and drifted toward you again, her eyes practically sparkling with curiosity.

“You just found that shard lying around and decided to slot it into your head? Without checking what was on it? Without scanning it? Without even asking a fixer if it was worth anything?”

She stared at you for a moment.

“That’s either the bravest thing I’ve ever seen or the most gonk-brained decision I’ve ever seen in this City.”

Her laughter rang out, bright and unrestrained, before she suddenly reached forward to poke your cheek one last time.

“Eh, whatever! Too late now!”

Capri floated backward, folding her arms behind her head as she surveyed the bustling streets around you. Her attention was already drifting toward another advertisement, another passing vehicle, another little piece of technology she could probably find some way to interfere with.

“Well, this is gonna be fun!”

She turned back toward you, grinning as a fresh burst of red static crackled around her shoulders.

“C’mon, then! What are we doing first? Exploring? Getting food? Breaking something? Oh, wait—can we break something? I wanna see what happens!”

Little China carried on around you, completely unaware of the strange digital entity now occupying your personal space. Night City had given you plenty of reasons to regret your decisions before, but this particular mistake had a face, a name, and apparently enough energy to keep talking for the rest of your natural life.

And judging by the way Capri was already looking around for her next source of entertainment, you had a feeling that getting rid of her wasn’t going to be an option.

It’s been almost a month since you last slotted in that shard like a gonk.

Almost a month since an ordinary piece of hardware turned your life into something straight out of an Arasaka fever dream. Ever since Capri had found herself a home in your neural system, privacy had become a foreign concept. She was there when you woke up, there when you went out looking for gigs, and there when you came home exhausted enough to consider selling a kidney for a decent meal.

And, of course, she always had something to say about it.

Your aim at the shooting range? Apparently pathetic. Your choice of food? Somehow an insult to her nonexistent taste buds. The fixer who’d offered you a laughable payout earlier that afternoon? Capri had spent a solid ten minutes imitating his voice until you were ready to throw your shard into the nearest gutter. Not that it would’ve helped. She was already inside your head, and she probably would’ve found a way to complain about the gutter, too.

Somehow, though, the little digital menace had become a familiar part of your life. Somewhere between the constant interruptions, her inexplicable fascination with vending machines, and the occasional moments when she actually proved useful, Capri had become something close to a companion. A strange one, certainly, but a companion nonetheless.

Today, however, Night City had been particularly shitty today.

Hours of chasing leads through Watson had yielded nothing but dead-end gigs, unresponsive fixers, and promises of payment that barely covered transportation. By the time evening rolled around, your patience was in tatters. Even Capri’s running commentary had begun to blur into the general noise of a city that never seemed to shut the hell up.

At long last, you made it back to your apartment.

The door slid shut behind you, cutting off the roar of traffic and the distant chatter drifting up from the streets. The familiar dimness of your room greeted you, neon advertisements bleeding through the blinds and casting streaks of pink and blue across the walls. The place wasn’t much, but it was yours, and right now, it was the closest thing to paradise Night City had to offer.

All you wanted was to collapse onto the bed and forget the day had ever happened.

You barely had the chance.

A flicker of crimson light appeared near the foot of the bed, followed by a brief distortion in the air. Jagged streaks of red and violet spread outward, digital fragments snapping together as a familiar silhouette took shape. Capri materialized out of thin air, her bright red figure gradually solidifying until she stood in the room with a physical body of her own.

She glanced down at her hands, flexed her fingers, and shifted her weight against the floor. The usual little comments about her newfound ability to touch things never came. Neither did the excited chatter or the sudden, inexplicable urge to investigate something that had caught her eye.

Instead, Capri turned toward the bed and sat down on its edge.

The mattress dipped beneath her weight. She drew one leg up, resting her arm loosely across her knee, before looking over at you. Then, without a word, she patted the empty space beside her.

It was a simple gesture, strangely uncharacteristic of someone who usually communicated through a relentless barrage of questions, pokes, and whatever nonsense happened to cross her mind.

When you looked her way, she offered a small, almost lopsided smile.

“C’mere, choom.”

Her voice carried its familiar digital tint, but the usual mischief behind it had softened. She didn’t follow the invitation with a joke about your appearance or some ridiculous comment about how you smelled like the city’s sewers. She simply shifted over, making room beside her, and waited.

For once, Capri seemed content to let the silence settle.

She had spent nearly a month watching you navigate Night City, tagging along through every miserable gig, every close call, and every evening when you came home looking like the city had personally beaten the eddies out of you. She’d seen you frustrated, exhausted, and occasionally so thoroughly fed up with her that even she knew better than to keep poking at you.

Maybe she’d finally figured out that being someone’s companion meant more than finding new ways to get under their skin.

Capri glanced toward the window, where the lights of passing vehicles streaked across the blinds. Her fingers tapped idly against her knee before she leaned back on her hands, letting out a quiet breath.

“Man, Night City’s a real piece of work sometimes.”

She turned her head toward you, a faint smile returning to her face.

“Spent the whole damn day looking for a gig, and for what? A bunch of gonk fixers wasting our time.”

There was a brief pause before she added, almost casually,

“Kinda sucks, huh?”

She didn’t try to turn it into a joke. Didn’t launch into another tirade about incompetent fixers or start making fun of the day’s failures. She just sat there beside you, her physical presence warm against the otherwise cool room, her attention resting on you instead of whatever shiny distraction Night City might have offered.

For someone who had spent the past month treating your life like her personal entertainment program, Capri was being remarkably easy to be around.

She nudged your shoulder lightly with hers, then settled back against the mattress, leaving the quiet companionship to speak for itself.

“We can just chill for a bit,” she murmured. “No gigs, no fixers, no bullshit.”

Her eyes drifted toward the ceiling, and the faint glow tracing her silhouette pulsed softly in the dim room.

“Sounds pretty preem to me.”

Free Scenario!!