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Consciousness came to V in ebbs and flows; a subdermal tide that tested her amenability to the idea of living before retreating once more. Smell came first: sand and CHOO2 and wood-burning fires. Sound followed, the heartbeat-humming of machinery all around her and the gentler, more distant sound of strong winds. Touch came next—though it started off patchy. It flickered in and out across her body in bursts; the stiff foam beneath her layered over with folded blankets, the beads of sweat at her brow and inner elbows, the air as it brushed against her skin, and the cool metal of the necklace pooled down near the nape of her neck.
Sight was a little more difficult. Less of a tide and more of a tsunami. When she creaked her eyes open, it was to sudden pain at the brightness of the world. She slammed them shut, barely prying apart her lashes when she tried again to see her environment. Bit by bit she was able to squint at her surroundings; the dark green canvas of the tent above her, the black metal rods that held the structure up, and the somehow even brighter world beyond the borders of the tent. She groaned, scared to move in case the pain was only temporarily missing, but insisted on shifting her head around all the same.
The sight of the medical monitors at her side helped coax the memories back to centre stage. She was with the Aldecaldos—well, what was left of them anyways. Typical of her to find the “yes, but” to waking up from a medically induced coma. This had been the plan, and if she was awake without the urgent screams of alerts ringing from the monitors then it couldn’t be rock bottom, could it? She shifted a little in the borrowed bed, the movement leaving her feel like she had lead jammed in her limbs. Could she really be that lucky? Could it really have worked?
“Well fuck, V, it took you long enough.” Johnny said from her blind spot. She turned too quickly towards the source of his voice, neck straining at the movement. He sat on a fold out chair near the end of her bed, farthest from the tent’s opening. The sight of him, though initially jarring, only served to fill her up with dread. Then, anger.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” She cried out, voice hoarse from laying dormant.
“Hello to you too.” He replied indignantly, getting to his feet. He sauntered around the bed and bent over to get a good look at her. There was something different about him, but she couldn’t place it; maybe it was just the residual drugs in her system.
“Everything I did…all that time and it still didn’t work.” She said through gritted teeth, so angry she could feel tears welling in her eyes. Why did she think otherwise? Why did she think her shit life and perpetual shit luck would somehow turn into one good break this time?
“Huh.” Johnny stood up straight and turned away from her at that, disappearing out of the tent completely. V sighed, rolling over onto her side and slipping one leg at a time over the edge of the bed. When she could manage it, she pushed off the mattress and slowly got up to a sitting position. The movement made her dizzy, head spinning for a few seconds before everything balanced out. Bracing herself on the edge of the mattress, she hung her head and took several measured breaths to try and ground herself. She’d have to think of something else, some other way to get Johnny out of her head preferably without killing either of them in the process. There had to be other options, right? Somehow, somewhere, there had to be an answer.
“V! Oh thank God.” Panam’s voice was several decibels too loud for the merc’s ears but she was a welcome sight all the same. The nomad’s face was a mixture of shock and relief, all wide-eyes and half grins. She closed the distance between them in a few long strides and immediately wrapped both arms around her.
“Oof. Hey Pan.” V muttered into the woman’s shoulder, wincing at the strength of the embrace. Panam clued into this and released her immediately, sitting down beside her and looking over the merc for signs of illness. “How long’ve I been under?”
“Better part of a month.” Panam answered, chewing her lip. V wondered if she was expecting some sort of seizure or bloody nose to arise and throw everything into chaos once more. But for the first time in a long time, V felt…okay. Definitely better than she was heading into Mikoshi, which was the last thing she could really remember in full. “You got no idea how badly I wanted to rip you outta there on the daily to see if it worked.”
“Yeah, well, sorry to disappoint.” V sighed, looking up as Johnny showed up once more, arms crossed. “Looks like me and my passenger are still ridesharing for the time being.”
“Your…what?” Panam raised an eyebrow, trying to discern V’s meaning. V nodded towards the occupied corner of the tent and her mind, as if it was explanation.
“She doesn’t know.” Johnny said, this time causing V to be the one with the look of confusion.
“Doesn’t know what?” Both V and Panam said in unison. V’s eyes went wide and she looked between Johnny and Panam.
“Wait, you heard him? Shit, are we talking out loud again instead of in my head?” The merc rubbed at her temples as if it could somehow fix things, but the stammering from the nomad stole her attention.
“V…” Panam’s voice was soft, almost baby-speak, as she reached out to lay a hand on her shoulder. When V looked up at her, it was to find a reserved smile on the nomad’s face. “V it worked. The transfer, the dupe, so far as we can tell your pal Silverhand here is just fine, it was you who needed the medical attention.”
“Neural transfer’s a fuck of a lot faster than neural repair.” Johnny quipped from his spot, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it up. She could smell the smoke as it wafted over to her. Before, when he lit up, it was like she was remembering the odor of cigarette smoke. But here, now, she was truly and properly smelling it.
“No way.” She breathed, brain struggling to believe that something had actually gone right, let alone this right. V struggled as she pushed up onto her feet, Panam reaching out to steady her as her legs wobbled. With concerted effort, V took steps over to Johnny until she was within arm’s reach. Reaching out a tremoring hand felt like moving through water but she persisted, touching two fingers to the dead centre of his chest and pushing. She felt the resistance, the undeniable corporeal form, and let out a quiet, borderline delirious laugh. “No fucking way. It worked. It fucking worked!”
Her voice gave out when she yelled but it didn’t bother her. Turning back to the nomad, V didn’t know what to do with herself. She had so many questions, so many trains of thought racing through the same station that the crashes that followed were inevitable. Where to go first? What to do? What to say?
“Sorry V, I don’t know why I assumed he would have told you.” Panam said with just enough of a sneer to make the merc smile.
“I take it you’ve been on the receiving end of some of that signature Silverhand charisma, then.” V shuffled back over to the bed and sank down onto it, wincing as she did.
“Seriously, I got no idea how you lived with him every day.” Panam whispered, as if it were some hush-hush secret that shouldn’t get out. She turned to the rockerboy and shrugged. “No offense, Johnny.”
“Uh-huh.” He replied, taking a deep drag of his cigarette and blowing smoke in her direction. The silence hung between them all for a moment before the nomad got to her feet, announcing she was off to find their ripperdoc so he could do a proper once-over. Leaving the two, she disappeared out of the tent and into the gentle rumblings of the Aldecaldo camp.
V reached out for the nearest bottle of water and struggled to get it open before slowly bringing it to her lips. She took tiny gulps at a time, sighing at the sensation of the cool liquid running down her throat. Whether she’d be able to keep it down was another thing entirely, but it was a risk she was willing to take. When Johnny headed towards her it was to grab the chair and drag it around to the side of her bed, flipping it around and bracing his arms atop it when he sat.
“Gotta admit, I was pretty sure you’d delta the hell outta here soon as you woke up.” V admitted, still not totally clear on why Johnny was there at all. He had his own mind in his own body and even a set of wheels to his name; there wasn’t an easy reason why he wouldn’t just leave.
“Made a few trips to the city.” He shrugged, the double-tinted aviators masking any expression from his eyes. “Maybe I just wanted to serve you up a slice of humble pie for thinkin’ the worst of me.”
“I wouldn’t exactly have held it against you, Johnny.” She admitted, drinking down more of the water. He tapped the end of his cigarette against the back of the chair, clearing it of just enough ash to continue smoking.
“Yeah, well.” He was quiet for a moment, a rarity for him in and of itself, before continuing. “Maybe I didn’t want to kick off my second chance at life by leaving my closest friend in the dust. This is your fuckin’ influence, know that?”
“You’re welcome, Johnny.” She grinned, basking in his discomfort just a little too much. Beneath the teasing, though, she…felt some sort of way about it. Johnny Silverhand had a chance to split and wound up coming back? Without any promise of booze, drugs, or parties? It wasn’t exactly computing too well. “Still can’t believe things actually worked out, let alone for both of us. You, uh, you have any issues on your end?”
“Just that cold storage for fifty years is a real bitch on the joints.” He said deadpan, evoking a small laugh from the merc.
“Is it that, or just that you’re old as fuck?” She teased, finishing off the rest of the water and tossing the bottle on the ground. “Maybe osteoporosis is finally catching up with your 88 year old ass.”
“Ha-fucking-ha.” He stamped out the near-finished cigarette, crushing the embers with his boot, and got to his feet at the sound of people approaching. He faded into the back of the tent, like he wasn’t even there, when Panam entered with the ripper.
While the role of a ripper was usually to tend to chrome and other implants, being an Aldecaldo meant he was more than a little experienced in other related medical matters. The nomads needed in-family experts to ensure they could be self-reliant, and it was sure working out in V’s favour. She played the obedient patient as he ran his scans, did a few tests to see how her neural network was holding up, and make sure she wasn’t one seizure away from death like she was last time.
When it was confirmed that she wasn’t actively dying – at least no more than the average schmuck – everyone let out a sigh of relief. The ripperdoc took a few more readings just to be sure, before giving her a relatively clean bill of health. He shot her up with a mild stimulant to get her past the initial stages of re-entering consciousness and make her body a little less wobbly. Panam thanked him and the ripper left the three of them in the tent. She sat next to V on the bed and Johnny slowly walked back over to his chair, turning it around properly this time and sinking down onto the metal. He unceremoniously propped his boots up on the bed between the two women and laced both hands behind his head.
“So…your contact from Tucson really came through, huh?” V asked the nomad, still having a hard time adjusting to the reality that it worked. Panam nodded, unable to hold back the smile on her face.
“She really, really did.” Then, the smile turned sad and she looked away. “She was Saul’s contact, actually. Old girlfriend, if you can believe it. She was a goddamn force of nature with the blueprints you got from Hellman. Whipped up the right code on her fifth try, got it comfy on an old Arasaka data backup shard that Carol klepped years back. Wasn’t sure it would hold, even with the expanded memory, but…so far so good, right?”
“Seems I’m owing a whole lot of debt to people’s ex-girlfriends lately.” V joked, looking over at Johnny in case it was a sore spot she’d unwittingly prodded.
“From what you told me, it was kind of hit or miss with Alt. She wasn’t…exactly the same, right?” Panam asked, looking between V and Johnny. When he didn’t speak up, V took it upon herself to answer as best she could.
“Yeah, I guess engrams work different—let you stay you, keep your individuality—but when she fled into the Net, she became more like an AI than an engram. She…well, she had to make an engram of me before she could disentangle me and Johnny. From there…”
From there things took an unexpected turn, as if it hadn’t been a bumpy enough road. After losing Bob, losing Teddy, and watching Adam Smasher literally stomp the life out of Saul, Alt told her that the body waiting for her in the real world was fast approaching the expiry date. If she gave it to Johnny, he’d be able to live out his life. If she went back to it, she’d be dead in six months. As if that wasn’t sting enough, the AI wanted to take Johnny with her beyond the Blackwall as if that was some sort of justifiable ending. What was the point of it all if both of them died? What was the point of the whole journey they’d been on—Johnny dying, waking up in her head, killing her slowly against his will—if it was just supposed to end in more loss?
V wasn’t there for it. She wouldn’t accept it. There, in Mikoshi’s digital interface equivalent of a prison set free, V remained defiant and stubborn as ever. She knew she had the full plans and notes from Hellman on the Relic’s software and programming. She had a whole clan of Aldecaldos ready to make use of all the good they’d put into the universe by scrounging up some help—medical, technical, whatever. She would take her chances. She would take her fucking chances. But Johnny? The rockerboy, the rebel, the riot incarnate, he was ready to lay down his arms. One war too many, maybe.
“It’s okay, V. I told you when the time came, I’d give up my life so you could keep your body. I meant it.”
“Fuck that, Johnny. I’m dying anyways; if I’m gonna spend these last few months searching for a way to live, might as well find a way that saves the both of us. So we hit another road bump—and?”
“This is a pretty fuckin’ massive road bump. ‘Sides, enough people have already died to get us here. Can’t go askin’ for more just cause my ticket expired.”
“Yeah, a lot of people have died. Jackie, Teddy, Bob, Saul—you’re really gonna make me lose you too?”
“V…”
“Jesus Johnny, I’m not letting you go off to purgatory in deep web just ‘cause Alt said so. Come back with me. I’ll find a way or we’ll both die like we were supposed to. I’m not giving up. Come back with me.”
She’d held out her digital, blurry hand to him. Even in the strange cyberspace interface, she saw the debate raging in his mind. But he begrudgingly agreed, taking her hand and stepping into the digital ice bath. When they slammed back into her body, Panam was there to lift her out and help her back to the rest of the Aldecaldos.
“Worked out in the end, I guess. Least my luck kicked in when it actually mattered.” V joked, trying to cut the tension she’d accidentally sewn in herself. “Alt disentangled us, you kept me on ice, and Saul’s ex-girlfriend duped the Relic software enough for Johnny’s construct to take. Cue, divergence.”
“Couldda been a little gentler with the brain upgrade, though.” Johnny chided, switching up his feet on the bed to combat the ache of ankles on ankles.
“Oh I’m sorry, we lost our Trauma Team membership card and none of the corpo clinics were willing to put a shard slot in a geriatric patient’s frozen body.” Panam said sarcastically, earning a grin from both of the others. After a beat without words, Panam got to her feet. Holding out a hand, she helped V to her feet and nodded towards the camp. “Got some friendly faces eager to say hi, if you’re up for it.”
“Hell yeah.” V nodded, casting a look at Johnny to try and figure what his plans were. All he did was move his feet off the bed so she could walk past, taking her spot on the mattress and laying down with a thud. Panam led her out of the tent, the brightness not as harsh as the merc originally anticipated. It probably worked out in her favour that she was waking up good and proper to open air and not the stifling smog-filled mess that was Night City. It was a whole lot easier to get your bearings when your eyeballs weren’t assaulted with 12 years of advertisements in 12 seconds.
As they entered the camp proper, it was to much ado from the nomads. They came to greet her from all sides, celebrations of her health ringing out along with a fair share of jokes surrounding her big sleep. Mitch elbowed his way through the others and V willingly embraced him, knowing that things would have gone down a lot differently if he wasn’t around to help her and eventually vouch for her with the Aldecaldos for those who weren’t always sold on Panam’s word alone. She spent some time with them, getting updates on how the clan was faring and if they were making any headway with selling or repurposing some of the Arasaka tech that they klepped during the assault. When she’d had the chance to catch up with the clan, Panam took her aside for a proper sit down.
“So…How does one start repaying a life-debt?” V said as they watched the fire crackle in front of them. “You know, asking for a friend.”
“A friend? Well the going rate for Johnny’s gonna have to be at least doubled. But I think we can work out a discount for you.” Panam teased, leaning over and nudging V’s side with her elbow. “You already know my answer to that, V. You’re family. Nothin’ more to say on that.”
If she had the will to argue, it was buried deep in the parts of her that were still stirring from the weeks-long slumber. For now she would let it lie, but eventually Panam would have to understand that just because the two of them were friends didn’t mean the rest of the clan necessarily shared her opinion on the matter. They sat in the silence together for several minutes before the mercenary found what she wanted to say.
“Panam?” Her voice came out quiet than she planned, but when the nomad looked over at her it didn’t matter as much. “You…You know you’re the best friend I’ve got, right? I’d be dead or worse if it wasn’t for you. So…thanks.”
“Uh huh.” She said with a smile; it had just a glimmer of promise that this wasn’t the last V would hear about her declaration. “Y’know, despite how much of an asshole he is, gotta give Silverhand credit for coming by every day. You must’ve gone through some serious shit together.”
“He…Every day?” V asked in disbelief, wondering if they were really talking about the same person.
“Yup. Crashed here a few nights most weeks, but when he left he kept comin’ by to see if you were ‘dead or dreaming’ as he so eloquently put it.” Panam had just the slightest hint of appreciation in her voice, a sentiment that V shared. “Really didn’t pin him as the type.”
“You and me both, to be honest.” V said quietly, staring off at the tent where her evicted passenger was hiding out.
“So, you heading back to the city?” Panam asked after a moment, turning to look at the merc.
“I guess, yeah. My bike still here?” V looked around as if she could spot it from afar.
“Yep, back by the Panzer where you left it.” Panam nodded, standing only when V did. “You better check in with me so I know your brain didn’t break bad and flatline you after all, got it?”
“Of course.” V promised, not shying away when the nomad pulled her into a hug. They held each other longer than necessary, but after losing out on these moments with Jackie and having left so much unsaid she vowed not to do the same with Panam. With a final wave she set off to the tent that housed her healing body and braced herself on the back of the metal chair. “Headin’ back to NC. You need a ride?”
“Why the hell not.” Johnny said flatly, springing to his feet and walking past her out of the tent. She trailed after him, wondering if he’d gotten here on the very bike they were headed towards. Surely he didn’t somehow get the key off her right?
“Tell me you didn’t drive Jackie’s Arch.” She said woefully, scared to see the condition of it if he in fact had been driving it around. She was more than a little sentimental about the bike, seeing as it was the only real memento she had of her dead friend. Johnny knew that—he’d poked around in those memories before, or at least was present for them when they resurfaced against her will.
“Relax, I didn’t put a scratch on it.” He fished the key out of his pocket and tossed it back to her before turning to face her, walking backwards through the sand. “Besides, you’re the one who drives like a maniac between us.”
“I do not drive like a maniac. Everyone else just drives too slow.” She said in her defence, craning her neck around him as the bike came into view. While she wasn’t prepared to admit it, he at least told her the truth—there didn’t seem to be any damage to the bike. He had done some seriously questionable things to her but somehow totalling Jackie’s bike might’ve been the one thing they couldn’t come back from. “Why the hell were you driving this around anyways? Already crash your Porsche?”
“Needed a paint job.” He said with a shrug. V ran her hands over the smooth metal curves of the fuel tank when they at last made it to the bike, musing at the Valentino paint job that was so overly Jackie’s style that she couldn’t bear to part with it. Slotting the key into the ignition, she pushed it down almost flush and turned it on.
Throwing one leg over the side of the seat she settled in, revving the engine a few times as though it were a piano that needed tuning before a big concert. When she nodded to Johnny he hopped on behind her, although the seat was technically meant for one person, and wrapped an arm around her waist. It was the strangest sensation by far since she’d woken up; he had only ever been a visual presence for her. Maybe a mental one too, but never physical. To feel the arm and know it was his—she was still having a hard time computing that. He curled his forefingers through a belt loop on her pants and lay his chrome hand on the tail of the seat.
She set off without any reservations, immediately gunning it and kicking up a cloud of dust behind them as the bike found traction. It carried them through the sandy hills, further and further from the camp, until they finally met up with the nearest road. Once on flat pavement, she really let the Arch push its limits. She could feel the engine pushing harder with each rotation of its pistons, the crescendo echoing out into the Badlands as they approached maximum speed.
It was a damn good thing the NCPD had bigger things to worry about than someone speeding down the highway.
V tried not to think about how it felt to be so physically close to Johnny; one would think she’d have gotten used to it considering their proximity in her mind. His legs pressing in around her, his arm at her waist, the place on her back where his chest hugged close, it was strange and unusual and she was glad he was no longer privy to the thoughts in her head. The speed she was going didn’t exactly make things easier; without any seat belts or walls of a car around them, close quarters were all but necessary to keep them both on the bike itself and not sprawling into traffic.
As they approached the forking of the highway on the outskirts of Santo Domingo, V banked right at the giant 6th Street motif on the crossroads and headed northeast towards Watson. The closer to the city centre, the denser the traffic, and Johnny’s jape hit a little too close to home as her old driving habits resurfaced. Stoplights were more like guidelines so long as you didn’t hit anyone, right? She wove in between cars, using the sidewalk when she needed to, and felt alive. Not dead, not dying, not decaying internally; thriving, surviving, alive. The music from the radio came up at her from the speakers, all of it a few decibels louder than the cacophony of the streets. She took familiar paths and managed to get around MaxTac descending on some gangoons before they shut down the street.
When at last the giant white numbers marking Megabuilding 11 came into view, V felt like she was properly going home. Her own body, with just her mind, heading to her own apartment. No threat of seizures, or heart issues, or degrading neural networks. V drove up into the parking garage, looping up and around the ramps until she reached her designated parking floor. Johnny’s Porsche sat in the far corner of the garage, scraped to hell on the driver’s side and, if her eyes were working right, sporting a few bullet holes too. She had a lot of questions—why, how, and when he’d decided this was the best place to park it—but there’d be time for that later. Time. Something they could actually say they both had now.
Cutting the engine, V froze as his hand brushed against the bit of exposed skin where her shirt flew up from the ride. He pulled away entirely and got off the bike, reaching both arms behind his back to stretch.
“Home sweet home.” V mused, leading the way towards the elevator and punching in her floor code. They stood on opposite sides of the metal shell; his eyes still obscured by the aviators but his gaze hitting her hard all the same. Gillean Anderson’s face was plastered on the screens, her sky-high hair and neon pink blazer drawing V back, of all things, to the cyberpsycho attack she’d accidentally been drawn into at Jinguji. Served her right for shopping at a corpo store.
When their ascent slowed, Johnny pushed off the wall and waltzed through the doors before she could. Trailing after him, her brow furrowed when he entered her apartment with ease—when the hell did he get added to her access list? She pushed the button to close the door behind them immediately, sealing them in and cutting them off from the raging noise of the atrium. The apartment was no worse for wear than when she’d last been there, but the sight of Nibbles running up to Johnny and standing up to paw at his leg was almost as much of a shock as waking up not dead in the first place.
“I’m gone a few weeks and suddenly you found a new best friend, huh? V said to the cat, watching as she changed course and trotted over. V reached down to scratch behind her ears, smiling at the way the animal nuzzled into the gesture. “Misty feeding you okay?”
“Somebody had to watch your place, so I took over. Found a neighbour lurking near the peephole, you know.” Johnny said easily, walking over to her couch and sinking down. He pulled two glasses into the middle of the table and grabbed the bottle of O’Dickin Whiskey from the shelf behind him. Filling both glasses nearly to the brim, he held one out for her.
“What’re we toasting? Arasaka’s inevitable demise?” V sat nearby but far enough to have some distance, taking the glass from his hand and nearly jolting when their fingers brushed. Still too weird.
“To Arasaka’s flaming pile of shit stock rating and neither of us kickin’ the bucket.” They clinked glasses, Johnny downing his with ease in seconds while V struggled to match his pace. She kept from coughing but the sheer volume all at once was enough to set her throat ablaze. She put her glass down and sat back on the couch, staring idly at the bottle on the table.
“O’Dickin’s was the first drink I had the night I got back from Atlanta. God that feels like it was a thousand years ago.” She mused at the recollection, shaking her head at just how much had changed since then.
“Yeah, I remember. Got your nose busted by some San Dom tweaker. Hurt like a bitch to fix it.” Johnny spoke like it was him who lived it, but it might as well have been that way considering how he was entangled with her memories.
“The whiskey helped.” She smiled at the memory; Pepe led her to Kirk, who led her to Jackie. It felt like her life was split into stages now; her pre-relic life, her life with Johnny rattling around in her head, and now, whatever came next. She looked over at the rebel, the living legend of a bygone era, and struggled to fully stomach that he was there. Really, properly there. He was wearing his old clothes, all the stuff she’d klepped from various jobs that were Samurai fan adjacent. The pants from the psychofan who wanted to look like Kerry, the boots from Nancy’s kid, the sunglasses and jacket remake from rogue. Despite the big sleep and body jumps, he was…whole.
“Say what you gotta say.” He piped up suddenly, drawing attention to the fact that she was accidentally staring at him. He was halfway through his second glass, a refill she refused for fear of messing with her body too much in its state.
“It’s pretty fuckin’ weird for me Johnny. You’re…You were, very much an up-here thing.” She tapped the side of her head but turned on the couch to face him properly. Reaching out, she pressed on his shoulder, his arm, his knee, like he might dissolve and prove everything to be a mirage. But he stayed, and he was very much solid, and he wasn’t dead. Not this time. “I know I was the one who pulled you outta the freezer, but still.”
“Helluva lot better than your backup plan.” He joked, causing her to roll her eyes. He wasn’t wrong, her backup plan really sucked.
Before V went along with Rogue and met Grayson, there wasn’t really much of a thought about finding Johnny’s body. Because where the hell would someone even start with that? The general assumption was that he was long since turned to dust. So she’d planned on finding one of those donors—the donate-my-body-to-science type—and see if they were up for becoming a host for an 88 year old terrorist. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than one or both of them dying.
Grayson, and by extension Rogue, had changed everything though. He had Johnny’s gun, admitted to taking it when he dumped his body in the oil fields. It was jarring at first, to hear the revelation and go to the very spot, but something didn’t sit right with V about it. When she and Jackie escaped Konpeki Plaza and the Delamain delivered them to the No-Tell Motel, she’d asked the cab to take Jackie’s body to Vik’s. She’d hoped against hope that there was still something that could be done. That some higher power would come down from the sky and swap her life for his, because out of the two of them the world needed Jacquito Welles more than it needed her sorry ass. But Vik had to tell her the bad news: that ‘Saka agents took Jackie’s body from his shop. If they did that for a thief, there was no way they’d just leave Johnny’s body with huscle like Adam Smasher after he literally blew up Arasaka Tower.
V went to Afterlife and got help—expensive help at that—from Nix to dig through Arasaka’s storage facility maintenance logs. After a whole lot of collaborative netrunning, they found a few crates in the bowels of the facility that had unusually long-reaching logs of temperature control and automated tasks. She’d certainly taken action on less than that. The industrial park would no doubt have increased security since her little excursion there before the parade, but at least she knew the layout. It was Panam who agreed to be her watcher as she attempted to infiltrate the facility. There wasn’t a better sniper she knew, nor someone she trusted more, and her faith was well-placed.
Of course it was the very last container she checked, narrowly avoiding tripping the alarm or getting caught on several occasions, but when she pried open the corrugated metal doors and found the freezer unit within, hooked up to a single monitor, it made it worth it. Whatever Saburo Arasaka’s initial plans were when he kept Johnny’s body—probably for further tests with the Relic’s development—he had either abandoned the plans or the knowledge died with him. V remembered what it felt like forcing open the lid of the freezer, frost build-up making it harder than it should have been, and seeing Johnny’s face within. It was different than the version that stood at her side, peering into the container, but it was him. At least he was in better shape that Bartmoss—guess that was the difference a billion-eddie company’s funding makes when it came to cryostasis.
He’d told her that it wasn’t worth it, not with the high-alert Arasaka would be on after her adventure with Takemura. Told her a corpse wasn’t worth dying over. But now that she’d made it in and actually confirmed what was really only ever a hunch, there was no way she could leave without him. The trouble was physically leaving, though, and how the hell she could get a human-sized freezer out without drawing any attention.
Cue, Panam. She took a little too much pleasure in blowing things up, and put her skills to use in creating a diversion in the form of several fuel tanks going sky-high. While V slid a set of wheels under each end of the freezer, the weight distribution and calculations courtesy of Viktor, she tied a thick strap around the unit and heaved it out of the shipping container. She made sure to close things up behind her in the hopes that they wouldn’t immediately know what went missing, and timed her return to the surface around the hubbub of guards swarming the place.
The nearest van to the doors she came out of was low on the priority list for the guards and offered the ramp she needed to get the freezer in the back. V had teased Johnny about how heavy he was as she struggled the push the icebox into the van, getting in and closing the doors just as a fresh shipment of guards came by on a sweep. Crawling into the driver’s seat, V edged the car to the exit and waited until the attendant was distracted before smashing through the gate. About six blocks away she met up with Panam, the two of them moving the freezer over to her Thornton and leaving the van—and its tracker—in the dust.
The whole plan had been absolute madness, but it worked. Finding Johnny’s missing chrome arm took almost no effort in comparison; Rogue herself went out to Grayson’s apartment and found the appendage hanging on the wall like a piece of art. Between the stolen gun, and the way he spun the story about Johnny’s grave only after he assumed V was a big fan, there was no way he didn’t take the arm for himself as a trophy along with the gun and Porsche.
Getting his body retrofitted for the dupe of the Relic wasn’t too laborious, but sitting there with him now and knowing that everything had…well, been worth it, it justified all her late night trains of thought and the partial madness she felt indulging in them. Because she’d managed to give the absolute biggest fuck you to Arasaka, the company and the family, and the universe in general for trying so hard to kill her and Johnny and keep them dead.
When V got free of her spiraling mind, her fingers were absently brushing against the dog tags around her neck. The night Johnny led her to his hidey-hole in the hollow remnants of the Hotel Pistis Sophia, after the concurrent betrayals from the Voodoo Boys and her body almost giving out entirely, it shifted things for them. While they hadn’t exactly been at each other’s throats in a while, nothing beyond the usual at least, they solidified the pact, the promise, that they had each others’ backs. It was part of what pushed her to make him leave Mikoshi with her; the dogtags weren’t just a symbol but a promise. He’d had the chance to take over her body completely and leave her in the suspended state he existed in; instead, he used his time to get her body to the safety of the dilapidated hotel.
“Shit, I guess you should have these back now.” She reached behind her neck to fumble with the connector on the chain. The promise had been fulfilled, and he was back in entirety now, so her claim on them felt dissolved. Johnny reached forward, pulling at the tags just rough enough to indicate the effect the whiskey was slowly starting to have on him. With what she could only assume was immense concentration, he worked one of the tags free, leaving the other hanging around her neck.
“Promise is a promise.” He said matter-of-factly, getting to his feet and walking past her to the desk across her apartment. He fumbled through her belongings, all of which he had grown familiar with during his temporary stay in her brain, and fished a rolo chain out from behind a stack of boxes. Looping the single tag onto the chain, he threw it messily over his head.
V got to her feet and went over to where he stood, pulling at his arm to inspect the tattoo on his forearm. The sight of it made her laugh, a god’s honest truth of a laugh, and she knew that things were gonna be alright between them.
When she’d given over control of her body for Johnny to talk to Rogue and get info on Adam Smasher, Johnny had taken a few liberties during his furlough. From drinking enough to almost give her alcohol poisoning, to getting into a car crash, nothing topped the permanent reminder he’d given her. There, on her forearm, a cartoon heart with an arrow running through it, and the words JOHNNY + V within. She remembered his laughter like it was her own—it was, in a sense—as he made the request of the tattoo artist. So, as payback for getting him his own body out from under Arasaka’s noses, V gave him the exact same tattoo. It was a helluva lot cheaper than getting hers removed, and as big of an asshole as he was, it was square at the bottom of terrible things he could have gotten her marked with. While she had done half-ass tattoos before—on synth fruit peels and drunk friends—she’d never done one on a corpse before. Having Johnny watch over her as she did it somehow made it less weird.
“Matching tattoos weren’t enough, huh?” She asked, motioning to the shared ink. “Well, I haven’t had a Best Chooms Forever necklace so I’m touched, Johnny.”
“Fuck off, V.” He pulled out a cigarette and lit it up, no doubt rolling his eyes behind the sunglasses. She grinned, pleased with her ability to push his buttons right back. He loitered for a few moments, looking around her apartment like he was handing the keys over to a new buyer. If he’d really been staying here in her absence, maybe that was exactly what it felt like for him. After all, for better or worse, this had been his home for the past few months too. V saw the faint blue glow of Johnny’s eyes behind the sunglasses before the data made its way to her; contact deets for catching him on the holo. Whether he’d ever answer if she called was another question, but it was a nice gesture all the same.
With that, he headed towards the door and let it slide shut behind him, leaving V with the stunning silence of an empty apartment and empty mind.
Having her life back wasn’t at all what V thought it would be. It used to be running shit jobs with Jackie while they tried to make a name for themselves in Heywood and Night City at large. After the Relic, she was so focused on trying to find a way not to die that the notoriety she’d gained with fixers and in the merc world in general largely flew right over her head. In the midst of what felt like fighting gravity itself, V had…well, made it. Fixers had her on speed dial, and not just for the menial gigs that simply needed closing. She was at the top of the list for most of them, handling some of the more complex asks and enjoying the reputation of being reliable. A go-getter. The kind of merc who got shit done.
Shy of dying and getting a drink named after her at Afterlife, she was feeling the very strange sensation of not really having a direction. No more impending death, no more scraping by on bare minimum eddies; hell, she’d even splurged and bought the very car that Kirk had sent her out to steal all that time ago that led her to Jackie. What was left beyond jobs now? What came next on Maslow’s Hierarchy when all the basic needs were met?
V had taken a few days for the bedrest she was certain her healing body still needed, sleeping more than she ever had—coma aside—and loving it. She reached out to the friends she had; Viktor and Misty and Judy and Mama Welles, playing catch up where background knowledge allowed. She sent a message blast out to her fixers, letting them know she was back in business, and generally reconnected with the world she’d almost been snuffed out of.
She ran a few jobs for Regina and Dino, putting her cyberdeck to good use, and even met up with Pepe to help him with a personal job about his wife. In her nights off, she worked through old gigs to see if there were any that needed a redo ending-wise. For the most part if she got paid she was good with things, but now and then a contract left her with more than eddies. After several days she settled on the borderline creepy gig she’d run for Jefferson and Elizabeth Peralez.
It ended with her getting blocked by the both of them, only after uncovering a plot of subterfuge, mind control, and a mysterious group who covered their tracks with Maelstrom ambushes. It was a mystery that extended past just the Peralez campaign though; V still had a list of the other subjects sitting in a shard on her desk. What happened to them? What would happen to all of them? It may not be an investigation she’d get paid for, but the thought that anyone could be next was enough to chill her to the bone.
V had tried to do some digging on her own, but what she found to be the big factor impeding her ability to think straight was…well, to be blunt, the overbearing codependency she’d unwittingly formed. Pre-Relic, she had Jackie to bounce things off, and boy did he love to talk. While very different personally, Johnny at least shared that trait with her late friend. And while she didn’t think it could ever be possible, she was almost missing his smartass commentary that she never seemed to ask for. While half the time it was pure insults and sarcasm, having another set of eyes on things had helped her more times than she could count.
She was certain that Johnny was out somewhere getting shitfaced, bruising up his car, or generally causing trouble. Would he really want to get sucked into her job again, now that he wasn’t hitching a ride with her? She doubted it, but he had given her his holo, so it had to count for something. Worse case, he’d tell her to fuck off and she’d be right back where she was. V pulled his name up, the very possibility a strange one, and called. It rang, and rang, and rang some more, before cutting off entirely. While not totally surprised, she was a little disappointed. Instead, she fired off a quick message.
Lookin’ into the SSI shit from the Peralez election. If u wanna help me track down these psychos, I’ll be at Coyote in 30. V.
V grabbed her datapad, topped up Nibbles’ food bowl, and pulled on her jacket as she left the apartment. Flipping her hair out from under the collar, she wondered just how bad of an idea it might be to go digging into the mysterious organization. Seeing as how they were able to mess with memories, edit out old ones and sometimes even plant new ones, it didn’t leave much to the imagination of what they could to do her. And yet, in a strange way, knowing Johnny was alive and well somehow left her feeling somewhat impervious to the threat. Whether the two of them liked it or not, he knew her memories, knew her backstory. If she started to second guess, she knew he would remember. He’d be a dick about it at first, sure, but when it came down to it he wouldn’t let them take her memories from her. It was the same corpo greed that he attacked Arasaka for.
At El Coyote Cojo, V walked in to a full house. It made sense, especially for 11pm on a weekend. The Valentino crowd were out in droves, their familiar tattoos decorating every other arm or throat around her. The music may not have been as loud as Afterlife or Lizzie’s Bar, but it was enough to provide cover against listening ears for the work she was prepping to do. V took a seat at the bar, Pepe making his way over to her after pouring several drinks for one of the patrons. He brought over her favourite cocktail, setting it down on a napkin and sliding it over the bartop to her. She thanked him, transferring the eddies and pulling out her datapad.
It might’ve been a little paranoid, but she tweaked the screen to only register with her Kiroshi implant to prevent unwanted snooping. She took the time to go over what she had, trying to work out any connections or better yet some indication of who might be pulling the strings. As she worked, Mama Welles came by to sit with her for a few minutes. It was small talk, sure, but Mama Welles was one of the few people she had a real connection to from her life before who didn’t know the absolute mess of her life with the Relic. It felt strange and somewhat special, like around the Coyote’s proprietress she could be a version of herself a little less damaged.
In the middle of their conversation, voices grew a little louder than the overall din of the bar. Off by the pool table, a pair of Valentinos were getting up in the fact of some sad corpo bastard who’d picked the wrong bar to get wasted in. As Mama Welles took a step in their direction, Padre Ibarra called for her from a table to the right. Torn between the two events, she turned to V.
“Mija, please keep those pendejos from spilling blood inside.” She begged, turning to go to the fixer. “At least get them to the sidewalk.”
V promised she’d handle it, the request reminding her of Jackie. How it would have been the very thing he would do for his mom, and how his physical stature alone would make it so much easier no doubt. She slid her datapad across the bar to Pepe, asking him to hold onto it for her, and pushed off the bar stool. Approaching the group, she told them to lay off the guy.
“What, you’re protecting this suit? On our turf?” One of them said accusatorily, taking a step in her direction.
“Mama Welles said no blood in the bar.” She explained, crossing her arms over her chest. The men looked behind her at where the matriarch was sitting and the same one from before shook his head.
“Nah, she’s over with Padre.” He argued. “Think you just wanna suck some corpo dick and hope he lines your pockets.”
It was comforting, in a very tangential way, that someone in Heywood would still talk to her that way. It proved that even though she’d made it, the same way she and Jackie used to dream about, there would still be people who didn’t know who she was and couldn’t give less of a fuck to find out. It made her smile, that enduring promise of occasional invisibility. Didn’t change the current situation, though, and she’d promised she would handle things.
“Take it to the street, dickwipe. S’all I’m saying—and I ain’t saying it again.” She stood firm, unblinking, in the face of the men to sell her point. They huffed and seemed to think twice before finally settling on abandoning the suit. V walked behind them to make sure they left, escorting them all the way to the front doors and standing on the sidewalk while they collected themselves. When she turned back to the bar, the hard impact of chrome against bone sent her down to the ground. She winced at the pain blooming in her jaw, blinking it away as it came in waves. “Motherfucker.”
She got to her feet, swinging back with vigor and knocking the closest one in the nose. He brought out a knife in retribution, heaving it towards her through the air. She caught his arm, twisting it and plunging the blade through the first piece of flesh she could find amongst his aesthetic chrome implants. Right in the shoulder, the knife slipped between where his joints met with a satisfying pop. While he screamed, the other gangoon came from behind and choked her. V could feel the chrome on his forearm and knew there’d be no prying it off her windpipe with force alone. Instead, she jumped up and kicked off the chest of the guy with the knife, pushing her and her assailant backwards against the brick wall of the bar. His head hit the stone with enough force to loosen his grip, freeing her to take a breath and get free.
Pushing the ‘tino to the ground, she kicked him hard in the face to make sure she broke his nose. The other one, knife still lodged in his arm, used his free hand to suckerpunch her. V felt the skin split on her lip, but moved quick to dodge his follow up throw. Instead she grabbed the knife and twisted it, using the distraction of his pain to hit him with an uppercut strong enough to knock him out entirely. He hit the ground with a thud, the chrome implants scraping against the rough sidewalk. His buddy stumbled to his feet, one hand gripping his nose and a fountain of blood flowing from the obscured appendage. He called her crazy, picked his friend up, and took them both far away from her. Heaving out a sigh, V fell back against the brick wall and slid down to the ground. Letting her head fall back against the wall, she tried to catch her breath.
“You can take the kid outta Heywood…” Johnny’s voice rang out from her left. Cracking an eye open, she saw the rockerboy lighting up a few feet away.
“Thanks for all your help.” She said sarcastically, wiping at the blood blooming from her lip as he walked up to her.
“You’ve put down worse than two Valentinos, V.” He reasoned, blowing out a cloud of smoke. Reaching out his hand, he waited till she took it to heave her up. “So who started it?”
“Obviously them. Were ready to beat on some drunk suit in the bar, Mama Welles asked me to stop it from happening.”
“So you let them beat on some drunk streetkid right outside the bar.” He said simply, earning an eye roll.
“Not drunk. And go fuck yourself.” She heaved the bar door open and nodded for him to go in, taking one last look down the street before following him. He made a b-line for the bar, but wasn’t able to get Pepe’s attention until V made it to his side.
“Dios, what happened?” Pepe asked, brows furrowing at the sight of her. It was a fair question; he had just seen her minutes ago in much better shape.
“Just took out some trash is all. Could I get a Broseph? Leave the lid on.” She turned to Johnny so he could get his order in too, watching as he asked for tequila—the bottle of it. Pepe looked to her, as if verifying it was a legitimate request, before producing the two very different drink orders. She paid for both and retrieved her datapad before heading off towards the stairs.
Johnny followed after her, a few glances thrown his way as they ascended past the large sugar skulls painted on the stairwell. On the upper level, she led the way down the left-most path to the group of booths. Sliding into the last one, furthest from the music and the people, she set the datapad on the table. Johnny already had the tequila bottle to his lips before he sat, but watched as she brought the cold beer bottle to her lip.
“So how goes your unannounced return to Night City?” She asked, leaning back in the booth. While some already knew about him being alive—back when he was still in her body—like Kerry and Rogue, there was just no way he could make it in the City without being recognized. From the Samurai diehards who would recognize him from a million miles away, to the infamy he achieved after dying blowing up Arasaka Tower, he may not have been a household name but he was certainly well known. Somebody like him doesn’t just show up after fifty years with no questions asked. “Make it onto N54 News yet?”
“Ha-ha.” He took a swig from the bottle and pulled the screamsheet leftover from a previous patron over to look at it. “Nancy won’t climb off my ass, askin’ for an interview. Denny suckerpunched the shit outta me when she saw me. Henry thought he was havin’ a psychotic break. Poor bastard.”
“That all sounds about right.” V mused, rotating the bottle on her lip when it got too cold. “Guess you can’t exactly sit down to talk with Arif Iqbal and explain you were stuck in a merc’s head after Arasaka imprisoned your soul.”
“Yeah, might not go over too well.” He replied, eyes lingering on hers for a half-second too long. “For you too. Don’t need you on any more hitlists than you already are.”
He wasn’t exactly wrong. While she couldn’t confirm if the shattered remains of Arasaka ever found out it was her who kicked off their demise, the threat still loomed. With Hanako’s very sudden death, V assumed Yorinobu had eliminated the last of the resistance to his regime within the company. If he found any indication of her conversations and meetings with Hanako, it was safe to say she had a target on her back. Add to that the Voodoo Boys who, while she may have helped, knew that they fucked her over and lived despite it all. Punching Placide square in the face was probably not the smartest decision in retrospect, but he had just used her as cannon fodder to meet his own ends. Half of Maelstrom probably had it in for her between the All Foods incident and killing Royce. There was a long list of minor players she’d pissed off along the road too, so Johnny was pretty accurate in his comment.
He alternated between the cigarette in his hand and the tequila, relaxing back in the seat and propping both feet on the table. When the pain in V’s lip had somewhat subsided, she set the beer bottle on the table and touched a fingertip to the split skin, pressing gently against it to see how bad the swelling was. Johnny reached out and took her beer in his chrome hand, using the sturdiness of the fingers to pry off the lid with ease before sliding it back to her. She gladly drank down half the bottle, happy to accept any of the buzz it could provide that might keep the growing headache at bay. V used to think that Johnny’s arm was entirely there for aesthetic purposes, like so many peoples’ chrome nowadays. She was very clearly proven wrong when the memory of getting his arm blown off in the war hit her brain full force one day. She didn’t blame him for wanting to reinvent himself after that, cut ties with who he was.
“So. Is it weird for you too?” He asked, tilting his head back and letting a cloud of smoke rise up through the harsh green lighting in their corner of the bar.
“What, being on a hitlist?” She tried to make a connection to what they had last spoken about.
“The echoing silence in your head.” He corrected, meeting her eye with unwavering seriousness. It took her a minute to understand what he meant, but once it clicked, she was all but overcome with relief.
“God, yes. I thought it was just me.” She admitted, heaving out a breath. “Never thought I’d say it, but it’s…weird, I guess, not having some asshole’s commentary for background music.”
“Had no idea I’d actually miss your fucked up psyche riding shotgun with mine.” He mused, stomping out the last of his cigarette on the table. He followed the nicotine with more tequila, shaking his head at their dilemma.
“Uh, you were the one riding shotgun in this dynamic. Remember?” V crossed both arms under her chest, adamant to maintain her sliver of autonomy.
“Ah, you know what I mean.” He waved her off. His head snapped around when the group occupying the booth at the far end broke out into song, their offkey drunken tune enough to make everyone else wince. V watched him, wondering what it was they’d be to each other in a month, a year, a decade. She thumbed the dogtag hanging from her neck, noticing he was still wearing his. They were, against all odds, friends. Right?
“Glad you didn’t die, old man.” She said sincerely, unable to get too real with someone who struggled with mustering kindness until it was somewhat life-or-death. As if illustrating her point, Johnny flipped her off in response. She couldn’t help but smile at the gesture, masking it slightly by taking a drink.
“So, what’d you call me to this shithole for?” He asked, nodding to the datapad between them.
“Yeah, about that…” She set the bottle down and messed with the settings on her datapad to remove the screen settings. Pushing it across the tabletop, V watched as Johnny picked up the device and scanned over what she had. “That shit with Peralez—SSI, the secret room, that van we followed, remember?”
“Uh-huh.” He said flatly, handing her back the datapad.
“Been bugging me, not really getting closure on things. Knowing whoever did this is still out there, still going. Figure the chance to end mind control counts as fun in your books, and though I’m sure I’ll regret this later, we did make a pretty good team.” She finished off her beer and set the bottle on the back of the booth behind her. “Feel like one last hurrah? For old time’s sake?”
“You know if you’re lonely, pretty sure your barkeep friend downstairs would love to fuck you.” He said after a moment, completely throwing V for a loop.
“I—what?” She stammered, head spinning trying to keep up with his logic. “Pepe is so in love with his wife it hurts. Y’know they have a kid together. And what does any of this have to do with SSI?”
“Could love his wife to the moon, he still wants in your pants.” He shrugged, taking some sick pleasure in the way she squirmed.
“Fuck you, Johnny.” She got to her feet and grabbed the datapad, stomach spinning at how badly she must’ve misjudged things. The rebel took his feet off the table and reached for her wrist before she could get too far, holding it firm in his chrome hand. He stared at her for a minute, unable to work an apology free, and settled on pulling her into the booth beside him.
“What’ve you got?” He asked, taking a deep drink from the tequila bottle. She debated whether he was just fucking with her some more, but caved and sat back, scrolling through her datapad.
She went over what they already knew: someone or some group, through SSI, was actively infecting the minds of Jefferson and Elizabeth Peralez among at least a handful of others in Night City. Maximizing their neuroplasticity, remotely re-networking their neural pathways, and adjusting their cognitive patterns as the group saw fit. While Jefferson, the now mayor, was one of the most frightening case so far thanks to his position of power, he wasn’t the lone victim of the organization.
V pulled up the data she klepped from the surveillance van that tried to use a Maelstrom gang to her out when they were made. Besides the longitudinal brain scans of Jefferson and Elizabeth, there were a wack of study notes, authorizations, and files for other Night Citizens. The names and faces didn’t stand out to either of them as anyone important—at least not as noteworthy as Jefferson—but offered insight into the type of people this operation was being run on. Josiah Guerrero, Aminah Bolton, and Liberty Patel were all in city planning. Low level corpos. Fred Ward and Hector Byrd were NCPD beat cops, nothing unusual about them except perhaps a lower incidence of accepting bribes. Keira Knight was the outlier, the only subject who seemed to have no job other than selling used clothes in Kabuki.
“So…there’s a lot of people this could be. You said maybe a rogue AI from Bartmoss’ time, might be worth talking to Nix to see if he can help on that front.” V said apprehensively, knowing that while having the data was definitely a good start, they were pretty far away from bombing-arasaka-tower-level action.
“Well, I’m all for frying the bastard, ‘ganic or digital.” Johnny said with ease, finishing off the last of the tequila and sliding the bottle across the table away from them.
“I’m not gonna lie, I’m probably on this group’s hitlist too. Could be you get dragged into it. You saw how they scrambled my brains for a bit, and that phone call I got before meeting with Jefferson.” It wasn’t like he didn’t know or didn’t remember, but this was her offering an out. Maybe he changed his mind about getting involved, maybe he didn’t want to commit to anything. So she gave him a fire exit, neon signs and all. “I get it if you’d rather not be on their radar after what they did to me.”
Johnny stared at the datapad for a few moments, either thinking on her words or drawing out for suspense alone. Eventually he shifted to face her, propping his chrome arm up on the top of the seat.
“Nah. Nobody Fucks With Your Head But Me.” He asserted, a fleeting moment of sincerity that had her doing a double take. “Sides, don’t wanna see half this city leashed and collared like corpos.”
She didn’t respond, not right away. While he certainly had the gold medal for mind fuckery in her books, it was some distant cousin of comfort to know he hadn’t really and probably wouldn’t use his habits for any real harm. The worst by far, at least intentional on his part and not some side effect of the Relic, was his little furlough trip with her body the first go around. Even that left him feeling regret that reverberated into her consciousness from his. He really hadn’t anticipated that back-to-back pseudoendotrizines would mess her up that badly. And while it laid her out something fierce, she couldn’t really blame him, not all the way.
“Alright then.” There was a finality to it, a verbal equivalent to a handshake, that solidified their still non-existent game plan. “So, there was also that chip we got from that meeting Gary tipped us to.”
“Right, the techno-necromancers and our pals in the mysterious black van.” Johnny recalled, cracking the joints on his organic hand.
“Our Jane and John Doe, yeah. Well, I decrypted that shard I picked off one of them, and check out what it says.” She opened up the file on her datapad and turned it around for him to read. It was a whole lot of nonsense words, but when she took just the capital letters it spelled out something else: Project Oracle Command Execute Plans.
“Like a good ol’ crime time vid.” Johnny mused. “Project Oracle, like in the messages on those SSI gonk’s computers at Peralez’s?”
“The very same.” She nodded, the thrill of weaving connections in such a high-stakes hunt flooding through her system. “So: we’ve got SSI, the shadow group pushing the buttons, and a group of people being monitored who are primarily low-level corpos. Whether they know they’re being followed is…it’s…”
Her mind trailed off, standing right on the edge of a memory that suddenly felt extremely important. What was it? What was she remembering the outskirts of? Something about being monitored, being followed, that deep paranoia that Jefferson showed after V told him what was going on…
“Shit, tell me your brain ain’t short-circuiting on me, V.” He leaned a little closer, as if anticipating her previously semi-frequent seizures and blackouts. She shook her head to answer his question, scrolling through her memories to find what it was she was forgetting.
“Sandra…” She murmured, the thought suddenly coming back to her. V turned to face Johnny, speaking with too much urgency as the memories fell into place one after another. “You remember Sandra Dorsett? She asked us to go get her databank back from the Scavs. When we dropped it off at her apartment, she had all those diary entries about being followed, stalked, spied on. Whatever was on that databank, must’ve been important right? I mean no Scav is gonna waste their time blackmailing a corpo if they found nudes. She was really scared—of losing her databank and just in general.”
“You think she was on their list too?” Johnny pulled up the profiles of the others she’d snatched from the van before being booted from the server, scanning through them.
“Dunno…but I told her I wouldn’t look at the data and I didn’t.” It had been a specific request, but she should have known better than to be so honourable to someone who didn’t bother going through a fixer.
“Well that was a fuckin’ gonk move.” He criticized. She rolled her eyes at the comment, heaving out a sigh.
“Yeah, well, I kept a copy of it didn’t I?” She said defiantly. “Collateral, in case she was trying to fuck with me for giving her that airhypo before Trauma Team arrived. Shit, right, you weren’t there for that part…”
“I remember it.” He asserted, eyes stuck to the screen. “So where’s your copy, then?”
“At my apartment.” She pressed at the split lip, content that the beer bottle helped stave off some of the swelling. Along her jaw there would be a bruise, that much she could feel already. Johnny nodded for them to go, so V got up and locked her datapad, dragging it off the table and tucking it under her arm as they descended the stairs.
Mama Welles stopped her before they could make it to the door, taking her chin in her hand and inspecting the injuries. She promised a few rounds on the house, and told her to come around for dinner that week. With a simple look she offered her displeasure for V’s current company, but didn’t go so far as to make a scene. The two of them went out the side door to where V parked her Aerondight. As she fished out the keys from her pocket, Johnny practically begged her to let him drive. While her gut reaction—especially in light of how much he’d managed to mess up his own car in such a short time—was a flat-out no, she recalled the condition she’d found Jackie’s Arch in after he’d driven it.
Handing him the keys, she couldn’t deny knowing the exact thrill of driving the car for the first time. She’d built up that anticipation, the night she went to steal the exact same model for Kirk in order to pay off Pepe’s debt. While it certainly didn’t end the way she’d planned, going after the Rayfield Aerondight Guinevere had in fact led her to this very moment. She slid into the passenger seat, watching with a small smile on her face as he took in the feel of the car for himself with his own two hands.
While he managed not to crash her ridiculously overpriced car, the way he drove removed any claim he used to have for calling her a crazy driver. He was just as bad, if not worse. Maybe I really did rub off on him. He took the long way back to her apartment, and she wondered if the memorized route was from his time in her head or from flat-sitting while she was being put back together. With the music blasting and the neon encapsulating them, the very life blood of Night City felt like it was running through her veins, electric. The city was a goddamn nightmare and as cruel as anything, but by God it was hers.
Parking was the easy part; it was moving through the atrium that proved the more difficult part of the evening. If it wasn’t Wilson trying to sell her on a gun far inferior to the one she already had, it was Coach Fred trying to convince her to finally do those boxing matches. Between the two of them and the unrelenting adverts calling out to her, the familiar quiet of her apartment was a welcome sort of peace.
Once inside, Johnny peeled off his jacket and tossed it into the bottom of her wardrobe on the right, strutting over to the couch and pulling out a cigarette. Nibbles almost immediately jumped up onto his coat, nestling into the clump of leather contentedly. The rockerboy set his feet on the table as he lit up, claiming her half-finished NiCola and downing it himself. V set her jacket on the back of her desk chair before immediately searching for where she put her cloned shard of Sandra Dorsett’s databank. Shuffling through the clutter of her desk, she kicked off her shoes and rerouted towards her bed. Leaning over the mattress, she went through the crap in her bookshelf. Item by item, she sighed when she came up empty.
In the background, Johnny turned on her television while her search continued. He flipped through the channels rapidly, seeming to skip any time he landed on an ad. V abandoned the shelf and went across her apartment to the mini-armory she’d set up. Rummaging through the boxes of ammunition, piles of scopes, and various weapons, she found the small collection of Fuyutsuki readers under the desk. Bringing the box with her over to the couch, she kicked Johnny’s feet off her table in one rough jab.
“Keep those dirty ass boots off my table.” She chided, sinking down next to him. He responded by blowing out smoke in her face, earning a look from her. V took out the handful of readers and sifted through them, checking the labels she added to differentiate them. When she found the one marked S.D. she opened it up, pulling out the shard. “Okay, need a millisec to decrypt.”
The merc felt his eyes on her as she slotted in the shard, the interface opening up in her visuals. She took a minute to study the ICE, route the path she’d need, and then launched her daemon to pry open the decryption key. Once she broke through, the program unscrambled everything and left her with what appeared to be a memo. As V read the contents, she felt a little shellshocked.
FOR NIGHT CORP INTERNAL USE ONLY
The tests have come back successful. The artificial intelligence CN-07 has proven itself capable of bypassing commercial, device-specific and macro security systems accessible to NightCorp employees of the lowest ranks. None of the test subjects were aware that this experiment was being conducted on them.
In compliance with the orders it was given, CN-07 focused mostly on subject HK-13, which at the time of the experiment's commencement was classified as "calm and empathetic." After a period of subliminal conditioning, as we predicted, HK-13 began to display acute psychopathic behavior. The highlight was a dispute over coffee, during which HK-13 strangled one of their colleagues, then jumped out of the 16th floor window of the research facility.
We will soon commence the next phase of the procedure and install CN-07 onto the devices of our actual target.
“Holy shit.” She breathed, slowly ejecting the shard. Johnny was watching her, waiting for some explanation of what she found. She handed him the shard, still shaken by what she’d read, and watched as he mimicked her process to read the shard’s data. “This is…worse than I thought.”
“Fucking Night Corp.” Johnny hissed, tossing the shard onto the table when he was finished. “Well, guess that answers who’s behind it all. Assholes really do want their hands in everything.”
V got to her feet and went over to her computer, rolling the chair up close and slouching down as she typed. She started on Night Corp’s main page, going over the basics as if it might help paint out the corners of the picture. She saw the usual stuff about their work on the city’s infrastructure, but as Johnny walked over to her side she found something that piqued her interest.
“Jefferson—he was Heywood born and bred, right? You only get out of Heywood my way or the ‘Tino way.” V thought out loud as she ran through things in her head. “Except, Peralez was part of their scholarship program. Would have had access to him from a pretty young age.”
“Wonder if the other schmucks were recipients too.” He braced a hand on the back of the chair, leaning in to read the screen with her as she searched. When she tried through the NCPD directory she hit a wall, prompting her to quickly jack in to the computer and fight her way into the database. Sure enough, Ward and Byrd had also been part of Night Corp’s scholarship program. “Must be when they started the selection process. It’s like the a fuckin’ cold war—corpo edition.”
“This is really fucked up.” V breathed, staring at her screen for a moment before jacking out and shutting off the terminal entirely. Turning to face Johnny, they sat too close before she backed up out of habit, still not entirely used to him being tangible. “We should probably come up with a plan before I go deep-diving in everyone’s files.”
“Tomorrow.” He waved off the idea, straightening up. Whether it was the full bottle of tequila or just the sheer fatigue of being alive, she could see how tired he was. For some reason, she hadn’t thought where he’d been staying before that moment. Realistically, he had no job, Samurai wasn’t playing any reunion tours, and Night City didn’t exactly offer social assistance programs. So was he couch surfing or using his car? Maybe that was half why he’d been looking after her place while she was comatose.
“You can crash here, if you want.” V said casually, walking past him so as not to put him on the spot. Johnny was an asshole, but he was also prideful. Even if he wasn’t, she couldn’t imagine a scenario where someone would be happy to admit they needed this kinda help—at least, not in Night City.
He said nothing but she didn’t hear the door either, so she assumed the answer was yes. Crouching down at her laundry basket, she pulled a loose crop top and pair of shorts out of the bin. Keeping her back to Johnny, she peeled off her shirt and replaced it with the top. Kicking off her pants, the shorts came up and swayed at her thighs. Whether she liked it or not, Johnny had gotten eyefuls of her body on multiple occasions, so changing wasn’t exactly too high on her list of concern. When she turned back towards the room, Johnny was sitting on the edge of the couch, an unusal look on his face. He met her eye and with complete seriousness launched a question she didn’t expect.
“How come you never took the Omega-blockers, V?” His voice still bore a faint twinge of his usual cockiness, but it was overtaken by a softer tone, the kind she’d really only heard when he found Alt lying half dead in Arasaka tower. The merc felt a little frozen by the question, not knowing what brought it on or what he wanted her to say. She shrugged after a few moments and walked to lean against the wall close to him.
“Dunno…I mean, I guess cause construct or no you were—are, whatever—a person. A life.”
“Said some really fucked up shit.” He countered, as if she was lying to him or holding something back. “Wouldda been easier to shut me up.”
“You lived in my head, Johnny, you know it wasn’t that simple.” She refuted, waiting till he looked up at her again before continuing. “Wasn’t as simple as slamming a door in your face or driving off to cool down. I didn’t know where the fuck you’d go if I took them. Didn’t know what they’d do to you. Vik said they’d slow down the Relic making you take over, but I don’t think any of us knew if it’d erase parts of you in the process.”
He went radio silent at her words, averting his eyes and focusing on finishing her stale NiCola from the table. He crushed the empty can in his hand and tossed it back onto the table, wiping at the corner of his mouth. V was trying to remember if she’d ever heard him quiet for that long when he heaved out a sigh and got to his feet. He went to the large window overlooking the cityscape and crossed his arms.
“Listen…I realize I fucked up a lotta things. Either let down or used every last person who gave me their trust. Blind, selfish bastard that I was. But I’ve managed one thing for now.” He turned to face her and motioned between them. “Not to fuck this up, what we have.”
To say V was shocked would’ve been a massive understatement. “It’s been a long bumpy road, but we made it.”
“Most people I thought were my friends, they couldn’t even stand to be in the same room with me. You were fuckin’ closest to me by a long shot. There twenty-four seven.” He took a step closer, scrutinizing her under his gaze. “And yet, you don’t seem to hate my living guts. Gotta say…of all the heads I couldda popped up in, hella glad it was yours.”
The sincerity of it was almost too much for her to process. She spent so much time thinking he tolerated her at best, except for brief fleeting moments like him getting her to safety in Pacifica after she blacked out or the real regret he seemed to feel for how his very existence was killing her. To hear all that, though, it…well, it really did fuck with her head. Stomach too, from the way it was turning over. Unsure just what to say, she came out with the first thing, a deep-held thought, that came to mind.
“I’m glad you didn’t stay in the Net.” She admitted, looking him in the eye. “I’m glad you came back with me, Johnny.”
He watched her for a moment, jaw clenched, before turning away and walking towards her bed. “Still think it was a gonk move on your part. Stubborn as fuckin’ usual.”
She laughed, a stifled gesture, but watched as he plummeted down onto her mattress. For a brief moment it gave her pause; they weren’t kids having a sleepover, after all. But he had, for all intents and purposes, shared her bed with her for what sometimes felt like an eternity. Only, it was usually him sitting on the edge of it or off in the corner reading the covers of her magazines until she passed out. This was…different, but it didn’t have to be, right? She followed after him, nudging him closer to the wall so she wasn’t sleeping on the edge.
Crawling in next to him, V killed the lights in the apartment and plummeted them into the soft glow of the neon cityscape pouring in through the window. Rolling onto her side with her back facing her stowaway incarnate, she heaved out a heavy sigh and shut her eyes, wondering just how far down this Night Corp rabbit hole she’d have to go down before everything was said and done.
It was strange to feel his body behind hers, to know the weight on the mattress behind her was real. No nightmare, no intruder, no hallucinatory side effects of a bad trip. Just a person, one she’d invited, one she’d depended on when it was probably safer not to. She could hear the soft sound of his breathing, real lungs taking real air and making his body keep functioning. There was a previously unknown peace to him, hearing something as sheltered as sleep-bound breathing. No fidgeting, no smartass commentary, no back-alley gunfights or sneaking through gangoon hideouts. It was like everything their whole relationship had been built on was stripped away in that moment and they were left with nothing but the bare bones fact that they were alive. Breathing, beating-hearts, set bones, bullet-less. Two bodies that had both been destined for their respective graceless burial sites, both somehow brought back.
As V drifted closer to sleep, her spiralling thoughts growing weaker and foggier, the sudden howling of a Trauma Team’s sirens startled her awake. The AV flew right by the window, shaking the panes with ferocity, but even once she registered what the noise was her heart was still racing. She crashed back down onto her pillow with a sigh.
“Speakin’ of corpo assholes…” Johnny muttered in response to the disturbance. V smiled faintly at his words but tried to settle down again. He rustled behind her, trying to get comfortable, but in the process she felt him draw closer. V went through her brain trying to remember the last time she had actually slept in the same bed as someone. Anyone. Even if she was hooking up with someone she was gone soon after, never holding on. Hurt herself before they could.
What made her freeze, though, was the sudden presence of a warm arm around her middle. There was no joke to accompany it, no sleep-talking to explain it away, and no attempt at a segue. What was it for, comfort? When was the last time he slept in the same bed as someone? It was too much to think about, too many crossing wires shooting sparks in her brain. It felt just like it did on the ride home from the Aldecaldo camp. Security, that’s all this was. Or maybe this was just how he slept. V tried to work past the fidgety feeling in her stomach, tried to smother the sensation brewing in her gut. Sleep, that’s all she needed to focus on. A good night’s rest so they could properly figure out how to begin dismantling Night Corp in the morning. The feeling of his hand sliding slowly over her skin, slipping further south, made her breath hitch.
“Johnny?” Her tone was caution, warning, confusion.
“V?” He replied indignantly, fingertips pausing just beneath the hem of her shorts. She knew what he was doing; she knew he was waiting for a refusal, a rejection, a swift kick in the ass right out of her apartment. The silence was there as her fire exit, and he was holding the door wide open for her to walk through.
But she didn’t. He waited, a heartbeat longer than necessary, and slipped his hand right down in one smooth movement. V gripped the edges of her pillow, eyes crushing shut as his forefingers slid through her folds. He moved in slow circles, just barely touching her clit, and kept it up until the tiniest noise of frustration escaped her. When he drew close and pressed his lips to her neck she took a sharp breath in, musing at the way his teeth followed close after with a painful pinch.
Between her legs his fingers started to work her in earnest, fluttering over her clit in intervals. Now and then he would dip down to her entrance, pressing but nothing more, and dragging back up to focus on her. It figured that the guitarist would know how to work her. He pushed up her crop top and immediately dropped down to lick her down. V could feel how wet he was making her, the slickness coating his fingers, but he captured her attention as he moved atop her. His fingers were teasing her entrance now, the promise of what was fast approaching lighting a fire in her belly.
What completely threw her off, though, was the way he leaned down close to her face. She pulled back before he could kiss her, pressing a hand against his chest that made him pause. How did she say what she needed to say? He had seen some of her worst memories, knew the things that fucked her up worst in her life, knew what shaped her. She hoped that he had those memories in his head before he initiated this. So how did she get that across?
“I’m not Alt, Johnny. And I sure as hell ain’t Rogue.” It was the best she could come up with. She wasn’t going to be a stand-in, couldn’t handle being one step above a joytoy. Not after everything they’d been through. Johnny reached up with his chrome hand and grabbed her jaw, as if to drive home his words.
“I know who the fuck you are, V.” He replied, waiting for any further hesitation on her part. When none came, he crashed his lips down on hers and pushed two fingers inside her simultaneously. Her body rose up at the sensation, chest pressing against his. It was too much at once—his tongue fighting against hers, lips coming at her over and over like it was his job, and the sudden rapid pace between her legs—and yet she couldn’t bring herself to pull away. The ache of her split lip resurfaced at his force, a pulsing pain emanating through the kiss. Instead, it was him who stopped. Altogether and all at once, he pulled away from her, just long enough to issue a command. “Get those fuckin’ clothes off.”
V’s gut reaction, at all times, was to do the opposite of what she was told. Especially, especially, when it came from Johnny. But she fought the impulse and decided on a compromise, slowly peeling her top off and setting her feet on his lap as he leaned back. He tossed his tank behind him on the bed before noticing her intention. His fingers wrapped around the elastic of her shorts and underwear, ripping them down her legs in an instant and throwing them to the floor.
He pushed her legs open and lay on his stomach, pressing his chrome arm across her hips before she knew what was happening. He used his free hand to spread her wide, the warmth of his tongue pressing against her in calculated waves. She tensed under his touch, but the weight of the metal kept her from squirming. Instead, she was completely at his mercy as he alternated between long strokes and focused flicks.
The scruffy hairs of his beard scratched her up as he lapped at her, the pace bordering on painful. V was able to somewhat keep her sounds to herself, but when she heard the noises of satisfaction coming out of him? Well that just wrecked her resolve like nothing else. To know he was getting pleasure simply from giving her the very same, it did something to her insides. Before she could linger too long on the thought, he slid his fingers down her slit and slipped them back inside her. V felt herself tighten around him, but the second she did he bent his fingers and pressed against a bundle of nerves that lit her up like a Christmas tree. She cried out, feeling the way Johnny’s lips curled into his smirk against her, but couldn’t bring herself to care.
Maybe it was impatience, or maybe he was spurred on by the break in her defenses, but he picked up his momentum until her whole body was begging for release. It was too much attention all at once, too many signals racing from between her legs to her brain. Against her better judgement both hands slid into Johnny’s hair and grabbed hold tight, nails digging against his scalp as she inched closer to the edge. His muffled sounds of enjoyment at the sensation were what broke her, sending a ricochet through her body. Her legs shook as the pleasure ran its course, Johnny keeping her fully pinned for the entirety of it.
He knew the precise moment to pull away, a nanosecond before she needed to push him off. He sat back and took in the sight of his work, how he’d left her a breathy mess, and wiped his mouth. As she tried to get her head free of the fog, V absently watched as the rebel undid his belt and stripped down to match her naked state. In one of the few bouts of fairness between them during his stay in her head, she had in fact seen him this way before just as he’d been privy to her body. Arasaka didn’t much care for giving him any attempt at modesty when they’d shoved him in a freezer, after all. She hadn’t been able to hide her shock when she’d seen him, not with the asshole right in her head. Turns out, that ride with Panam, on the way to taking out the Kang Tao AV, Johnny hadn’t been embellishing when he said he had an impressive cock.
“C’mere.” He said in a rough voice, reaching out for her hands and heaving her up to her knees. A hand reached up and grabbed a fistful of her hair, yanking it hard to offer up her neck. He bit down, hard, and followed up with sloppy kisses. She closed her eyes at the goosebumps that sprung up as a result, hating just how easily he hit her favourite spots. Maybe he also picked that up from his little vacation in her psyche. He kissed down her collarbone and littered her with marks that would no doubt bloom into bruises by the morning. When he was finished he kissed her, just as rough, and turned her around so she was facing her little bookshelf.
Bracing both hands on the lower shelf, she prepared herself for what came next. He sidled up behind her and pushed her legs apart, reaching down and dragging the tip of his cock up and down her slit a few times. When he was through with teasing, he lined up with her entrance and pushed himself deep inside. V’s fingers scraped at the cold shelf, hand hanging down as she settled around the size of him. With his chrome arm keeping her flat against his back, he braced his free hand on the wall before them.
Pulling out halfway, he pushed back into her with vigor, the strength of the movement surging her body forward. He repeated the gesture, over and over, each time with increased speed, until he had built up a momentum. Johnny’s breath was hot and ragged at her ear as he took her, tongue flicking out against her neck like she was a bottle of booze. The sounds that he dragged out of her only seemed to push him harder, the rebel fucking her harder and deeper with each pass. The bed creaked and shook beneath them, threatening to break beneath their pace, but she somehow doubted even that would have slowed the two of them.
V’s hands reached out for purchase on her bookshelf, accidentally scattering the books and knick-knacks in a clatter. Johnny paused at that, giving the both of them a millisec to catch their breath, before he reached for both of her hands and pinned them behind her back in his grip. His chrome hand slid up her stomach, between her breasts, and settled firm around her throat.
“Fuck, V.” He mused in her ear, keeping her tight against him as he railed into her again. There was nowhere for her to turn, no support she could seek out except for his. The more he moved, the more he kissed her neck and shoulder, the tighter the pleasure wound up in her core. And for better or worse, he knew it. Every move was carefully calculated to lead her on this very specific trajectory parallel to his.
He had somehow memorized every last miniscule movement she made and what thought it corresponded to in her head, adjusting his grip or where his lips brushed before she could even completely form the thought herself. Even if he didn’t, the rate things were going she couldn’t entirely count on her mind for a cohesive thought in the moment. It was all hedonism and pleasure, focused on keeping enough air in her lungs to let her heart keep her body alive long enough for the fireworks.
And he certainly made the destination as worthwhile as the journey. Their bodies, tangled together in a sweaty mess, offered alternating audio tracks of satisfaction as the two of them edged forward. V went first, her whole body seizing up around him as she cried out. He followed soon after, gripping her tightly as he spilled inside her.
V slumped forward against the bookshelf, Johnny releasing her hands in time for her to brace herself and avoiding faceplanting. He dragged his hands down her back and settled them on her waist before easing out of her. She took a few moments to stop her legs from shaking before falling backwards on the mattress, Johnny mimicking her.
The mercenary still felt the twitches of her orgasm flicker through her as she slowly wound down from the high. Swallowing hard, her mind started to catch up with what had just surmised, as if she had been stuck in a haze and now the fog was clearing. Was it how she expected the night to go when she invited Johnny out? No, not one bit. Was she okay with what surmised? No question about it.
“So…that been on your radar long?” She asked into the darkness, chest still heaving slightly from the marathon. Johnny reached up for a cigarette off the shelf and lit it up before collapsing beside her. He took a deep drag in before answering in a cloud of smoke.
“Since I had to watch that cop fumble all night tryin’ to make you come.” He shook as head at the memory, and V couldn’t help but raise her eyebrows at the timeline. She’d fucked River a while back.
“Mm, so you were jealous that he was trying to get in my pants.” She took some solace in the fact, remembering Johnny’s snide comments when she broke into the facility with River in search of clues for his nephew.
“Never been so frustrated—couldn’t tell if it was me or you. Knew exactly where he shouldda touched you, and kept seein’ him do the opposite. Gonk. S’what you get for pickin’ a cop, you know.”
“Oh get fucked, Johnny.” She rolled her eyes at his words and sat up, swinging her feet to the floor and standing up.
“Kinda just did, V.” He replied smugly. She ignored his commentary and went to the bathroom, quickly peeing and cleaning herself off. He did the same when she was finished and she pulled her clothes back on, crawling into bed. He followed soon after, the high spiralling through her body as she lay in bed.
It wasn’t long before sleep came for her, softly first and then all at once.
Somewhere in the slumber her mind took a turn for the dark. Literally, at first, as she found herself in a lightless void. But bit by bit the shapes bloomed to life, an all-too familiar scene weaving together around her. She knew what was coming but couldn’t wake herself up, couldn’t do anything except feel the fear rise in her chest in rapid increments. The gaudy colours and patterns of the motel room, the subtle stench that the cleaners never bothered to eradicate, all of it was riding backseat to the memory-version of her mind. It was too full to pay attention, to hung up on the horror, the grief, the fear, the utter disbelief. If she had been on her game, she would have seen it coming. If things hadn’t completely gone to shit, she would have heard the click of the gun and seen the suckerpunch before it landed. She saw the orange light glimmer on the metal muzzle, could smell the gunpowder as the bullet ricocheted through her skull. She felt herself sink into that cold, dark void like it was a riptide pulling her down. There was no help, no light, no way out. No way out.
Her whole body felt like it was shaking, the movement increasing in ferocity until the dream snapped and she slammed back into the waking world. A stuttering breath left her lungs and she sat straight up, brain trying to make sense of her environment. Bed. Blanket. Books on the wall. Hands—one cold and one warm—on her shoulders. Shaking her? Johnny. Johnny.
“V, you good?” He asked, eyes fully alert as he watched her with a furrowed brow. She scrambled out of the bed, stumbled over to the window and bracing herself on the glass as she tried to catch her breath. “You were screaming.”
She shook her head, the feeling of Jackie’s blood still warm and sticky on her skin despite having washed off a lifetime ago. The rough, matted down carpet fibers burned against her cheek where she’d fallen. Above all, the echoing of the bullet leaving its chamber. A bullet of betrayal, a would-be finalizer. Her fleeting flatline wrapped up in iron, drilling through her skull and brain in a cacophony of blood and grey matter.
“Deshawn again?” Johnny asked, slowly walking over to her. Of course he knew the exact night terror that gripped her—he’d endured this scenario a dozen times over when he was living in her head. The same death dream gripped her time after time, and despite it being prime content he never offered commentary. Maybe it was because he experienced the gut-wrenching betrayal through her eyes, or maybe it was because he had his own share of nightmares from his time in the war. He used to just sit there, just barely in her field of vision, and somehow the presence alone was enough to help coax her out of her panic.
Now, though, he had genuinely materialized. She felt the apprehensive hand on the small of her back and flinched at the contact before slowly calming. V couldn’t remember ever being so grateful for him choosing not to be a dick about something. She had her share of trauma from growing up in Night City—nobody in Heywood got out unscathed—but nothing had ever messed her up as bad as the night she died.
“I really wish I could’ve fuckin’ killed him.” She admitted as her breathing finally slowed. While she was glad the fucker was dead, and lucky enough to have seen it with her own eyes, she couldn’t help but wonder if it would’ve helped her to be the one to pull the trigger. Really mess him up, make sure there was no coming back from it.
“Wouldn’t change things, if that’s what you’re thinkin’.” Johnny said easily—his tone indicated experience in the matter. V turned away from the window and watched him, a heavy sigh escaping her. “Dreams won’t stop for a while, but they’ll slow. Then they’ll just fuck with you time to time. It’s a shitty process you can’t get free from.”
“Noted.” She nodded, rubbing her face and trying to subtly wipe at the tear on her cheek. She hated that the fixer haunted her this way, but she really wanted to believe Johnny that time would make things better. She touched her hand to his arm, a silent word of thanks, and walked past him to crawl back into bed.
V moved over close to the wall, pulling the blanket halfway up her body, and nuzzled into the pillow. It smelled like Johnny—something she’d never really had the chance to know before. It was nothing special, just alcohol and cigarettes and a little bit of gunpowder, but the exact combination was uniquely his and maddeningly comforting. Not nearly as much as the feeling of him sinking onto the mattress behind her, legs brushing against hers as he pulled her flat against him. Had she ever been held that way before? In such a vulnerable state, with so many opportunities for ridicule or worse, abandonment? She didn’t bother fighting the next tear that worked free, and instead lay one hand atop Johnny’s. The chrome was cool to the touch but responded quickly to her warmth, and she hoped the sensors in it relayed the sensation to his mind with accuracy. Maybe things would be shit for a while, but she wasn’t in it alone.
When sleep took her again, it was the peaceful void it was meant to be. She slept—perhaps more soundly than she ever had—and was spared any mystical concoctions in her fucked-up brain. A glossy abyss, the melatonin kept her wrapped up tight so all she could do was rest. No worrying, no planning, no threat detection running in the background. Pure, inimitable sleep.
As her body was slowly released from the REM cycle, it was to warm sunlight filtering through the slightly busted blinds above her bed. The rays hit her sporadically, but the gentility of them felt sweet all the same. As she stirred, and turned over, it was to an empty bed. V rubbed the sleep from her eyes and sat up on her elbows, staring out into the apartment. Getting to her feet, she could feel her stomach drop as she ventured towards the bathroom, and found no one. Maybe she should have expected it. Maybe it was just too much at once. Too domestic, too comfortable, to…well, what the fuck did she know.
“Mrr!” Nibbles’ soft vocalizations drew her attention, and V watched as she pawed at the door to the armory. Curious, V walked over to the stash room and pushed the door open.
She had to bite back the smile that wanted to crack. There he was, boots up on her table, Malorian pistol in hand, tinkering away on the gun. He had a cigarette hanging half out of his mouth while he worked, the look of concentration on his face only briefly disturbed by her entrance.
“Hey.” She said after a moment, leaning in the doorway. He nodded to her in response, putting the last of his gun back together. He pulled back the chamber and took aim at the wall, testing out the sights, before spinning the weapon ‘round his finger. He set it on the table and spun in the chair to face her, feet planting firmly on the ground. “Stickin’ around, huh?”
“Someone’s gotta watch your back.” He said simply, reaching into her case of pistol ammunition and filling up several spare clips.
“Mm, good thing I picked an eighty-year-old with nuclear tendencies, then.” She teased, reaching down to pet Nibbles as she strutted into the room. By the time she straightened up, Johnny had risen to his feet. One hand went to the back of his neck, rubbing it as he looked to the side. She felt tense, seeing the look on his face and trying to brace herself for what was coming.
“V…We both know I’m no good at this shit. But I’m not fuckin’ walkin’ out on you, got it?” He said firmly, like it might slip away from him if he didn’t say it now. She felt her insides scramble at his words, scared to believe him and scared to think he was lying. But he no longer needed anything from her; there was nothing she had that he depended on, not really. So she had to, on some level, accept it might be honesty. “Whatever this is we got…it’s ours.”
“Good.” She nodded, letting the smallest of smiles break through her walls. The mercenary stood there for a moment, eyes fixed on his, before summoning the strength to move. She turned to go get changed but he grabbed hold of her waistband before she could, yanking her over to him. Reaching his hand to the back of her head, he pulled her into a rough kiss. It grew softer by the moment, deeper, almost too sincere for her to handle. But she held onto him all the same, kissed him back eagerly, and sighed when he pulled away. He picked his pistol up off the table and slotted it into his holster, then tilted her chin up so she was looking him in the eye.
“Now let’s go fuck up Night Corp.”