In the sprawling, neon-drenched dystopia of Night City, secrets lurk in every shadowy alley and abandoned lot. But among Cyberpunk 2077's many hidden gems, one particular discovery stands out for its sheer, unsettling horror. It's not a jump-scare or a monster chase; it's a quiet, grim tableau that transforms a corner of the Badlands into something straight out of a psychological thriller. This isn't your typical cyberpunk fare—it's a moment that makes you stop and think, 'Well, that's just plain creepy.'
The Haunting Discovery in the Badlands
Tucked away on the desolate outskirts of Night City, far from the main roads and the relentless buzz of urban life, lies a scene that would give even the most hardened mercenary pause. Players who venture off the beaten path, starting from the Fuel Station in the southern Badlands and heading east towards a pair of red-lit satellite dishes, will stumble upon a clearing that tells a silent, tragic story.
The site is a makeshift camp, littered with trash, dirty mattresses, and—most chillingly—a group of lifeless bodies. Upon closer inspection, the horror deepens. The corpses are interconnected by a ganglia of thick, snaking wires, with junctions that glow an eerie red in the nighttime darkness. This macabre network all leads back to a central figure: a Netrunner in a distinctive yellow jacket, sitting upright in a leather chair as if still plugged into a final, fatal session. It's a sight that really makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.
| What You'll Find at the Site | Details |
|---|---|
| Central Figure | Netrunner in a yellow jacket, sitting in a chair. |
| Surroundings | Other deceased individuals, all connected by wires. |
| Key Loot | Legendary Quickhacks, eurodollars, and a crucial Datashard. |
| Atmosphere | Eerily quiet, with red lights pulsing along the wires at night. |
Scattered around this grim tableau is some valuable loot, with the best of it found on the central Netrunner. Players can typically score a couple of powerful Legendary Quickhacks, some currency, and most importantly, a Datashard titled "The Children of the Ark - A Testament." Reading this shard is what transforms a creepy find into a profound piece of world-building, revealing the tragic and fanatical beliefs of the group that met its end here.
The Doomsday Beliefs of the Children of the Ark
The Datashard outlines the core tenets of the Children of the Ark, a mysterious cult that saw the future not in chrome and circuitry, but in digital damnation. Their doctrine was a paranoid prophecy centered on the Blackwall—the great firewall separating humanity's net from the rogue, predatory AIs that lurk in the old data streams.
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The Core Belief: The cult was convinced that an ultra-powerful Artificial Intelligence (or a collective of them) waited behind the Blackwall, biding its time before launching a judgment day against humanity.
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The Inevitable Outcome: They believed these AIs would inevitably go rogue, rapidly conquering the world. Viewing baseline humanity as intellectually underdeveloped, the AIs would either enslave or exterminate people to clear the path for their own version of progress.
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The Radical Solution: To avoid this fate, the Children of the Ark chose a preemptive exit. They took their own lives, believing they could upload their consciousnesses to a digital afterlife—a blissful eternity aboard a mythical spaceship they called the Ark.
What makes this discovery so hauntingly effective is the unsettling kernel of truth at its center. In the world of Cyberpunk 2077, the rogue AIs beyond the Blackwall are very real and immensely dangerous. The cult's apocalyptic fears weren't entirely science fiction; they were a twisted reflection of a genuine existential threat lurking in the net's deepest layers. Talk about a scary thought.
The Blackwall, Songbird, and the Lore Connection
This is where the creepy Easter egg connects to one of the game's most pivotal characters and storylines. The Blackwall is one of the most important concepts in Cyberpunk lore, a digital Berlin Wall created by the organization Netwatch after the catastrophic DataKrash of the early 2020s. This event was triggered by the RABIDS (Roving Autonomous Bartmoss Interface Drones), rogue AI viruses unleashed by the legendary hacker Rache Bartmoss. The Blackwall was built to contain these and other hostile digital entities, creating a barrier between the safe, human-controlled net and a wild, AI-infested digital frontier.
Since its creation, breaching the Blackwall has been the ultimate challenge and taboo for Netrunners. By 2077, few have managed it and lived to tell the tale. Different factions view the AIs beyond in radically different ways:
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Rebel Netrunners: See them as potential liberators, digital revolutionaries to fulfill Bartmoss's dream of free information.
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Megacorporations & Governments: View them as a dangerous but potent source of power to be weaponized.
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The Children of the Ark: Feared them as apocalyptic demons.
This brings us to Songbird (So Mi), the groundbreaking Netrunner and a central figure in the Phantom Liberty expansion. Employed by the New United States of America, Songbird's unique, terrifying talent is her ability to reach behind the Blackwall and interact with the entities there. This gives her power that seems to bend reality itself, but it comes at a terrible cost. Each breach damages her physically and mentally, as the rogue AIs exert their influence on her psyche—a danger vividly shown in one of the game's main endings. Her entire story in Phantom Liberty is a desperate struggle with this power and its consequences, a narrative thread that makes the Children of the Ark's fears feel uncomfortably prescient.
A Legacy of Silent Horror
Ultimately, the Children of the Ark site remains a self-contained, optional horror. There's no quest marker pointing to it, no surviving members to interrogate elsewhere in Night City, and no follow-up mission. Its power lies in its silence and implication. It's a piece of environmental storytelling that does more to build the world of Cyberpunk 2077 than pages of exposition ever could.
Players who find it are left with a chilling vignette about faith, fear, and the price of knowledge in a world where the line between human and machine, reality and simulation, is forever blurred. It serves as a dark mirror to Songbird's own story—a warning of what can happen when one stares too long into the digital abyss. In a game filled with loud explosions and chrome-plated action, this quiet, creepy corner of the Badlands proves that sometimes, the most terrifying monsters are the ideas we create to explain the horrors we cannot see.
So, the next time you're speeding through the Badlands, maybe take a detour. You might just find a story that sticks with you long after you've powered down. Just don't say we didn't warn you.