The Killing in the Name quest in Cyberpunk 2077 sees you taking an assignment from journalist Nancy Hartley to track down a mysterious entity known as Swedenborg Riviera who’s been sending out anti-establishment messages to the denizens of Night City.
Having trouble figuring this one out? This article will walk you through a quick guide. Spoilers for this quest below.
How to start the Killing in the Name quest in Cyberpunk 2077
Getting Pinged
You can start the Killing in the Name sidequest in Cyberpunk 2077 after you’ve completed Transmission in the main quest line. After this, you get a message from the Bartmoss Collective, telling you to check your personal computer at home, which is your prompt to start this quest.
Contact Nancy
Head back to your apartment and find Nancy Hartley’s post on the Bartmoss Collective website, which says, “Reward for Any info on Swedenborg!” and some information about a news publication that wants to run a story on him.
After this, call your contact, Nancy Hartley from Network News 54. She’s not part of the main quest, so seek her out in the Second Conflict and A Like Supreme sidequests to get her contact.
During the call, Nancy informs you that Swedenborg is potentially dangerous. She’s tried tracking down the IP address the info came from but has come smack up against a brick wall, only finding places the signal pinged from. She sends you the coordinates that the last signal was routed from, but can’t guarantee that will be the end of the journey.
This kicks off the quest.
Cyberpunk 2077 Killing in the Name walkthrough
How to find and activate the first router
Nancy tells you the first ping they received was from an apartment in Rancho Coronado, Santo Domingo. From here, a marker appears that you can track to the apartment building.
Upon arriving at the lot, Johnny Silverhand appears and talks to you. He doubts the usefulness of finding Swedenborg—it’s interesting dialogue, but not pertinent to completing the quest.
After this, turn your scanner on and look around to find the yellow highlighted air conditioning duct.
Right next to this is a fire escape that you can climb up. Take it up to the third floor and hop the metal fence in front of you. Walk to the end of the platform and turn to the right. Here, you’ll find the first router. Activate it, and you get a message from an unknown number sending you to the next location.
How to find and activate the second router
The next location is out in Jackson Plains, Badlands, in the middle of a vast field. Hop in your vehicle and head over to this location.
Once you get there, you’ll find a burned out car and an assault in progress. Take out the enemies before you can continue.
After this, turn your scanner back on and track the power line highlighted in yellow. This should lead up to the top of the van with a satellite on top of it.
Activate the router, hack in, and after you breach it you’ll get your next location. Before you go, loot the area for rewards.
How to find and activate the third router
The third marker that pops up is at Biotechnica Flats in the Badlands. This is out on a bridge with nothing around it. Turn your scanner on and make your way to the center of the bridge, with an access point that looks like this.
Climb up the yellow ladder at this access point, then all subsequent ladders up to the top of the bridge. Here, you’ll see Johnny looking out over the railing at the night city. Your view should look like this:
Turn a full 180 from the direction you faced when scaling the ladder and walk down that section of the bridge. Here you’ll find the router on the left well in near total-darkness. It’s so dark that it’s not even worth attaching a picture here—you can hardly see it in the game, just stay on the wall, walk slowly, and keep clicking until you find it.
Once you hack this router, you get the coordinates to yet another router, as well as a message from Swedenborg saying you’ve almost found him. Johnny will express disdain and say it’s probably all nonsense. Keep pushing though, you’re almost there.
How to find and activate the fourth router
This final router is all the way out in an amusement park in Pacifica called the Wind West Estate. Hop back in your vehicle and head out there. Around the main structure of this, there are some enemies you can choose to take on or sneak past. After a conversation with Johnny, press on and follow the marker on your map.
Rather than finding Swedenborg, you find a Fortune Teller bot delivering messages similar to the ones Swedenborg sends out.
By talking to Johnny, you figure out that “Swedenborg” is likely a prankster rigging up a fortune teller to spew anti-establishment propaganda as a joke. Johnny will find this endlessly funny. The last router is on the side of the Fortune Teller bot.
The Final Choice
Here, you’ll be presented with a choice: whether to hack, disable, or keep the Fortune Teller machine active. Cynically, Johnny Silverhand tells you that you should leave it active, letting people think the messages are deep.
You can disable the bot and tell Nancy you found nothing, collecting your money and killing off the prank. You can also keep the bot running and tell Nancy exactly what you found, which she and Johnny will be excited about.
If your intelligence is high enough, you can also rig the bot to spew out complete nonsense. Your choice here ultimately doesn’t have any affect on the outcome of the quest, so have fun and roleplay it any way you’d like to.
