23/08/2023
Arasaka Tower, Night City Central District
Night City, California
The Samurai
-
Visions of a time long before V flashed in his mind, there for a nano-second before shattering away and forming into something new.
Clear and viewable one moment, broken and blinding the next.
Johnny Silverhand, the rockerboy and his crew assaulting the Arasaka Towers during 2023, one big 'fuck you' to the corporation that had taken everything he'd cared about and threw it in the shredder.
He'd show them what it meant to fuck with somebody, no matter how small they were. Johnny, Morgan, Rogue, they'd had a bone to pick with Arasaka, but none were personal, it was all just motivated for the message they thought they were sending or the money coming in.
Johnny had nothing left, this, this was all he had left.
The recoil of the Malorian in his hand, the weight of the bomb in his backpack, the terrible shaking that he could feel in his hand when the fighting was all said and done. The amount of booze and pills running through his veins, making him feel invincible.
The fact that he'd even gotten into the tower itself was a miracle, but then again, he was Johnny Fucking Silverhand, he made miracles happen.
Taking a combined heavy machine gun round and a breaching charge explosion from Adam Smasher of all the people, it only made Johnny want to live more. The guy was a fucking monster, and Johnny would have loved nothing more than putting that cyberpsycho in the ground with a full magazine worth of bullets in the skin flap that he called a face.
He had no doubts that Morgan Blackhand probably wanted it more than him, and Adam Smasher wouldn't care if he managed to kill Johnny, he wanted to torture Blackhand for every single failure he'd caused him. The explosive entrance of the borg threw Johnny down to the floor, with Morgan coming from the side to save the day and rip Johnny from the floor, determined to end the cyborg once and for all.
He'd come close, only for Smasher to try and get close and personal with his fists and blades. Johnny pulled Blackhand right out of the fire, forcing the man to run in front of him as Smasher chased them relentlessly through the building.
Running, sprinting, the feeling of burning lungs, yearning for a moment of respite to just breathe deeply and take a single second to stop.
Johnny couldn't stop, he reached the roof, made sure Blackhand was in the escape AV and sent them off.
He had to make sure Smasher never shot them down, never got the rest of them butchered and turned into cyber-enslaved personality chips as they'd done to the one person who'd ever really cared about him, more than himself that was.
He tightened the grip of his pistol, reloading it as Smasher finally arrived on the roof. He'd already aimed at the AV, but Johnny had already unleashed a hail of bullets at the borged-out killer to distract him. One bullet ripping through the skin and muscle and cartilage of his nose, something to remember Johnny by.
The guy who showed the whole world that Adam Smasher was just some fuckin' robot with a skin flap for a face to hide away the fact that he was nothing but some corporate whore-slash-psycho killer with a robot body.
He fought valiantly, for about a minute. It didn't take long to realise how relentless and powerful Smasher was.
His life was over in an instant, one distraction, one moment of hesitation led to Smasher ripping his body apart with one blast of a heavy shotgun.
V felt Johnny's death, his life, his regrets, his every action and motivation for such. The smell of sulphur from Smasher's firearm. Then, he woke up.
-
03/09/2077
Vik's Ripperdoc Surgery, Watson District
Night City, California
Vik, Misty and V
-
The smell of sulphur was the first thing V noticed, not the dimmed lights or the small ringing in his ears, but the smell of sulphur.
His eye fluttered open and closed repeatedly, too fast for him to even register the movements at first. He felt light, unclothed, naked even. Thankfully, he'd been left with some essence of decency and respect from wherever he was. Sliding his head to the left, and then to right, he could manage the fact that he was lying down in some kind of surgical bed, and the fact that it was somewhat comfy and lived in was even better.
He could feel pain, somewhat akin to his hand, no, his forearm tensing and opening and closing up, the movements he used to feel when he tried to look around to get his bearings. He struggled to move, pains in his head and arm becoming stronger and stronger as he attempted to escape his bedridden state. He tugged his left arm, to feel the pinching of wires and syringes hooked into the synthetic systems and wires of his unmolested arm. Monitors began to beep, the sound alert itself speeding up more and more before V finally attracted the attention of the one person, he just couldn't bear to look in the eye.
Misty had rushed to his side almost as soon as she had caught sight of V trying to escape the confines of his bed. She'd seen V and Jackie come back looking rough, even worse than that in some cases. Yet when V had burst through the door of the esoterica she'd almost screamed aloud when she caught sight of the bloody, mutilated mess that V was in. Jackie was nowhere to be found, and in his cries and whimpers, as Misty brought the bloodied solo to Vik's surgery, she could hear him muttering the words 'sorry, Jackie' over and over again. The worst confirmed from what she'd heard, she'd steeled herself for as long as possible.
She took a nearby syringe, a mixture of painkillers and awareness-boosters for V to be able to push through the pain, but to be able to knock back the burgeoning feelings of falling back into unconsciousness again. He'd stopped panicking, the wires he'd pulled out being slowly (and gently) placed back into what remained of his arms and his neck. Fresh bandages covered his missing eye, blood only starting to leak through the stitches and inevitable scarring.
"V." Misty managed to whisper from next to him, pulling a chair next to his bed. "It's okay, you're safe. You're gonna be fine."
V mewled something unintelligible, his missing hand failing to pull the weight of his body, resulting in him limply falling to his side. Misty quickly lifted him up by the shoulders, raising him up against a set of furry pillows. "I… I can't see. I can't… my arm."
Misty's eyes fell to the floor, slowly turning to see Vik typing away at his computer, ordering more stock for the clinic. "You, you lost them on the job. Me and Vik had to patch you up, clean you up and make you look presentable."
The solo was silent for a moment, his remaining eye slowly taking in everything it could from its limited point of view. He raised his arm, drastically shortened in length due to his own amateur surgical attempts, and bandaged tightly by his carers. He could ever so slightly make it the shine of a silver elbow joint, surfaces around his arm converted to pure silver, with no synthetic skin to cover the prosthesis. His arm fell, limply hitting the surface of the bed as he looked away from Misty.
"V…"
"Don't," he whispered, lifelessly. "I can't."
"V, it's okay. I already know."
"I just," V sputtered, his remaining hand trying to hide the tears. "I had to fucking leave him. I tried to catch him but I couldn't and I had to leave him."
Misty remained quiet as V was wracked with memories of the robbery gone wrong. She'd had her worst fears confirmed by the news, as well as the pained whispers of one of her best friends. Jackie had died at Konpeki, killed by security forces and was unfortunate enough to fall to his death instead of being apprehended. There was still bad news to come, but she didn't know if V could even handle it in the state that he was in. She'd tried to soothe, to calm his chakras and to align them whilst he was unconscious. Vik and her had already done everything they could to help him through the pain. Removed what remained of his sliced open eye, cleaned his wounds and readied him for more cyberware, but the damage to his arm was brutal and looked self-inflicted. Whatever remained of the synth-skin and metal underneath had to be removed from the shoulder down.
Viktor had let her take the next few days off, they'd heard the news together but she couldn't allow herself to falter when V still needed help. She kept herself calm and maintained something akin to a silent vigil whenever she could find the time. Jackie had been something else, different but familiar in a way. He'd been one of those who embraced the future, yet remained close to his traditions. His beliefs in the Santa Madre and an Abrahamic God, allowed him to show some interest in her own views of the world, through the tarot cards and her beliefs in reincarnation. She hadn't really met somebody who was really stuck in tradition, her closest reminder being the Valentino gangbangers who would still keep a copy of the old Bible but other than that? Nothing.
"I'm sure you did everything you could, V."
"He probably died thinking that I hated him. Just because of a few fuckin' eddies, Jesus, what a fuckin asshole." V lamented from the bed. "I'm sorry, Misty. I tried, I really fuckin' did."
Misty shook her head, refusing, willing herself to not cry. "V, stop. Please."
"Misty, I…"
"V, please," Misty begged. "I know you did everything you could, I know you wouldn't leave him there if you had a choice. It wasn't your fault; Jackie had already said there was always a chance it could go wrong…"
"But I…"
"But nothing, V. It's happened and now we have to keep going for him. He wouldn't want us to keep lingering on his death, he'd want us to remember him for how he lived."
Once again, V was silent. He didn't know much about Misty, apart from what Jackie had told him and what she herself had said whenever the two could find a small space of conversation. V could see that some of her eyeshadow had been wetted by the tears she'd eventually allowed to fall. He himself couldn't shed one, his Kiroshi visor wasn't fitted to his tear ducts and without his natural eye, that was already a no-go. The one time he wished he hadn't sacrificed parts of his humanity so willingly for power, and yet he couldn't take it back anymore.
What's one more piece to throw away, I've already thrown most of myself away anyway. At least now I can actually see that I'm not pretending to be something I'm not anymore.
V and Misty were quiet for a moment, and with a small movement, Misty had allowed her hand to fall upon V's mechanical prosthesis. The touch, whilst weird to the solo, was warming to the new part of himself. The silence between the two, other than the ambient beeping of machinery as well as Viktor's incessant tapping of his keyboard and phone calls provided enough sound for the two to not be awkward with each other.
"How…" V coughed. "How long was I out for?"
"Four days. We closed up the shop and surgery for most of the first two days." Misty revealed. "Needless to say, Vik was coated in blood and oil by the end, so was I but, it was worth it."
"Had some fun playing nurse?" V managed to joke, his minute smile wilting away as soon as he said it. "What's the damage?"
"Damaged eye, lacerations across the back, concrete shards lodged in your gut, and the arm. Most of it was the arm and eye." Misty spoke, wiping away at her ruined makeup. "I know you wouldn't have wanted us to do it but…"
"But?"
"It was a matter of life and death. The eye-wound was already infected and if we didn't take the arm off, well, let's say you probably wouldn't be awake right now. You're a tough nut to crack, with all that sub-dermal armour and stuff…"
"Militech's finest, at your service."
"V, there's something else."
The solo's remaining eye squinted, looking at Misty with an almost-scowl. "What happened?"
"We had to remove the chip from your slot. The woman that arrived, she said she needed it and took it without a word. Didn't even give you a second glance really, haven't heard from her since but that's not the issue."
The mercenary had remained still as Misty spoke. The awareness-boosters were slowly starting to kick into effect, his memory slowly coming back to him as he remembered the vivid hallucinations of his escape from Konpeki Plaza. Fighting through hordes of Arasaka goons, running through corridors of a skyscraper that V was definitely unfamiliar with. Something from the chip had transferred to his brain, data transferral straight from the biochip to the neural nodes of his CPU just before he began butchering his body for the sake of the contract, it was necessary. It had to be done.
"Misty, give it to me straight."
"It's not terminal, V." Misty managed to smile, it was the one thing she could smile about. "Your OS, Militech Sandevistan, it took one for the team and isolated the harmful data but couldn't get rid of it all. It's sort of, I don't know, Vik said it was stuck in your head. It was a personality engram."
V shook his head, confused. "The chip, it wasn't damaged when I got my eye taken out? I thought physical trauma would have really fucked with the system."
"Data was already set in the system before you got hurt, it's safe and tucked away. You know, Jackie never said anything about stealing a Relic from Arasaka." Misty inquired slowly, focusing on V now as he tried to move his bandaged arm. "You were going to make a fortune, why?"
"I don't know."
"V, that's bullshit and we both know it. That job was bigger than any of us, too big even."
V regretted even talking about the job with Jackie, let alone thinking about the actual job. "It would have meant a clean break, for everyone involved. Now, well, back to reality for all of us. Worse so."
Another eerie silence fell between the two of them, at least before Misty kept the conversation going. "Mama Welles came by, with some of the Tinos. Asked us if she was going to lose another boy."
"I only knew her for a few months," V muttered. Had he really been with them for that long, he knew he'd met her before he lived with her for that sequence of hiding. "I'm not one of her kids."
Misty wiped away some more tears with the arms of her jumper. "She, well, she doesn't see it that way, V. You looked after Jackie as well as you could before the job. You did the best you could, for him and for Mama Welles. I think she might want to speak to you at some point about the funeral."
Before V could even say anything, Viktor had finished tapping away at his keyboard and began his approach to the small hospital bed in the corner of the surgery. He'd affectionately called it V's waiting room whenever he decided to waltz in, but this time there was no smile on Vik's face, and he carried what looked like the rest of V's new shiny prosthetic arm. The forearm down to the hand, all of it wrapped in a shining coat of silver paint. The doctor himself had said very little in that moment, with Misty moving out of the ripperdoc's way so he could undo the bandages, attach the arm and make sure it stayed firm to the joint.
The ex-corpo didn't know what else to say. He'd already paid off Vik more times than he could count, but something about Vik's silence seemed sterner, as the stone-faced surgeon finally finished attaching the arm to his patient. He'd already walked off, readying the next optical implant. Before V could even utter another word about payment, Misty had already wired him up to the numbing machine, with V unable to move. Vik had already taken the latches off, his ripper tool keeping a hold of the new Kiroshi visor as Misty unwrapped the bandages around V's eye.
Vik had to admit, V had perhaps taken the worst beating of his life or at least the worst one since he'd become one of Vik's more common patients. Eyelids had to be replaced with synth-skin, delicately as to not destroy any vital lubricative organs that kept the eye socket healthy, scar tissue had to be removed so the optical device could fit. It hadn't taken long before his new eye was wired up into his central operating system, allowing him full vision again.
"I know it ain't the same as a natural eye," Viktor admitted, cleaning off his tool with a nearby cloth, "but it is blue, so it's one better than not being the original at all, I suppose. That arm has got a Muramasa mod installed on it, shiny red samurai blade installed in the forearm. I know it ain't Militech black-ops issue, but it's the best I could do."
"Thanks, Vik," V muttered, pulling himself up. "How much…"
"Nothing."
"Vik, please."
Viktor shrugged his shoulders before crossing his arms. "I'm not taking any more eddies of you, Kid. You're the closest thing I got to a kid around here anyway, I did this because I cared about you, and Jackie. It's a crying goddamn shame about what happened. I'm sorry, V. I know you and Misty were close to him."
V nodded silently. If he was anything like he was when he was with Militech, then he probably would have shot back with something about Viktor's bedside manner or the typical sympathetic way he spoke, like a doctor from a holo-drama. At that moment, however, he felt too empty to say something smart. If anything, he felt a burning hole in his chest, like someone was burning sulphur in his heart and allowing him to breath it all in. The heist flickered in his memory, moments where pain defined his very existence and where the loss was carved into his very being, physical and metaphysical.
"Look, V." Vik started again, grabbing a case of syringes. "This personality engram, we don't know it's gonna react in your body. Have you been experiencing any side-effects since the data transfer?"
"Hallucinations. Seeing things that ain't there. Walking in places where I ain't ever been before. Seeing people, I know aren't there. I don't know, sensory blocks, too, I guess? It's how I got my back and eye all fucked up."
"Anything else, kid?"
V was unsure, did emotions count?
"I feel, just, so fucking angry. Like, I could rip through walls and doors to just, really hurt somebody. I got this rage, like, a burning fire in my chest. My lungs start feeling dry, shit. Am I gonna be okay?"
Vik nodded as his patient spoke, the case of syringes steady in his hand before he handed them to Misty. He began to write down some notes on a clipboard next to the bed, scribbling them down quickly before he took a syringe from the case. Misty had soon clipped the case closed again, with Viktor soon spiking V in the neck with the sharpened needle. The mercenary sighed loudly, as Vik pushed the plunger down before quickly extracting the metal, throwing the syringe away in the nearby garbage can. He nodded at Misty, who then handed the case of syringes to V. His new hand had begun to take some time, but soon picked up the case from the nurse next to him.
"Those syringes are a mix of Olanzapine and Digoxin. Should stabilise any hallucinations you get, as well as increase blood flow to some neglected areas. That arm should feel like any old arm after a few shots of that." Vik lectured, the mercenary slowly moving before attempting to climb out of bed. "V, I would advise you as your friend to take it easy these next few days. You can't be gallivanting around Night City like this."
"Don't got a choice, Vik," V replied, pulling himself free from the wires and cables and machines. "Gotta job to finish."
"V, as your doctor, you are severely injured. You still need to worry about rejection syndrome from the arm, especially if you take too much trauma." Vik almost shouted, grabbing V by the arm.
V looked at Vik dead in the eye, a look of sadness mixed with a deadly determination. "Look, Vik. Just, tell me you're with me and that's all I need from you. I have to do this."
Vik couldn't look at the young man, couldn't bear to look at him in the eyes. "V, I'm with you. Whenever you need me, just be careful kid. I don't want to lose another kid in this place."
The solo and the doctor took a moment for the other, with a small token of time where V and Viktor held each other tight in each other's grasp in one hard hug. Viktor could feel the cold silver of V's new prosthesis against his back. V soon let go, and Misty had soon offered to take V back to his place so Viktor could finally reopen the surgery for the rest of his clients. V accepted slowly, dressing in some baggy clothes and shoes before V and Misty drove off to Megabuilding Ten with V in the passenger seat. It didn't take long for them to arrive, with Misty placing a small, delicate kiss on V's cheek as he got out, muttering a small thanks to the woman before she drove off.
The walk up to his apartment was long, filled with meaningless chatter from every single soul that lived in the Megabuilding, people V would see every day whenever he decided to have a normal day. Chatter amongst families, kids chasing each other around the food stalls and vending machines. He got into the elevator with a crowd of people who barely noticed his presence, heading up to upper half of the Megabuilding, waiting slowly and painfully as the rest of the men, women and children got off at their stops.
He finally reached his floor, and in silence, he marched to his apartment. Shouts and hollers from Wilson, the gun store owner and some of the gym-bros that were working out and pumping iron landed on deaf ears as V made his way to his home. The door was locked, thankfully, at least Meredith was in his corner. Opening the door and then promptly closing and locking it, V closed the blinds to his window and turned off the holo-presenter. The silence of his room was deafening, V could hear nothing from the outside world and for once was thankful for the silence that he yearned for.
He stripped down, throwing the baggy, itchy clothes into the disposal. He didn't want them, nor did he need them. He threw himself in the shower, allowing a mix of scorching and freezing water to pelt him. The feeling of the liquid run across his body provided him with the calm that he so desperately required. The one constant he had was his presentation, he needed to look good, if not for others but just for himself. As he drifted through memories of nothing, he allowed his new to try and move independently, brushing against his human as well as his synthetic skin in the water. The silver material felt alien, he'd spent so much time with a fake layer of skin over his previous augs he'd almost convinced himself that he was still just another natural human.
His new arm said otherwise.
He turned off the water, towelling and drying off quickly before he took the dog tags, he left on the stand under the bathroom sink and threw them around his neck. His name engraved in the steel, to remind him of his name and where he came from. Turning on the cold-water tap, he splashed his face with the cold streams before turning the tap off and looking into the mirror.
Behind him was a figure, almost similar to himself in some ways and different in others. Greasy, long and wavy black hair with a growing goatee, eyes hidden away behind opaque black aviators. A chain wrapped around his neck, a battered bulletproof vest with maroon leather pants and black leather boots. The body itself was out of place, glitches in his visuals made the man appear and disappear, only to reappear once more in the same position, leaning against the wall opposite V and the sink.
V was silent, observing the largest similarity between the two. He raised his new arm, the full silver prosthesis of his right high in the air as the figure raised his own silver hand, left arm up in the air as a cigarette lulled between his lips.
His eyes weren't fooling him at all. He was looking at the data transfer.
Johnny Silverhand.