Time: Unknown
Place: Unknown
The Samurai
-
Everything felt slow, sluggish and unwieldy.

He'd first felt that when he first got his cyberware, the old silver arm that he'd basically married to a degree. Steel was welded to his skin, but there was always a piece of himself that hated it.

It wasn't human, it wasn't him, it wasn't Robert John Linder. The silver hand represented something else, was latched onto a different person. Robert John Linder wasn't Johnny Silverhand, Johnny Silverhand was not Robert John Linder.

The Central American Conflict took everything he knew in the world at the time, and threw it out the window, blown him away and shown him the truth in the world they lived in. His eyes had been opened, with no grace or tact, he'd been forced to look at the rotting flesh, writhing maggots and dirty rats that infested his country. He'd seen the red guts, how everyone was just being used.

That was how he lost his arm, being blown off by some skull-fucked asshole in the armpit of Mexico. Then he lost his friend, the friend that jumped in front of a bullet that was meant to be planted inside Robert Linder's skull.

Maybe it did, in some ways. Linder was born in Texas and died in Mexico, next to the very same buddy that jumped in front of the bullet. Mexico was where the idea of Silverhand was born, but he came to fruition in some old shithole hotel in the middle of the Pacifica.

So much weighed on his mind, how many people died in Mexico, how many people had been left in Panama to cause a Nomad march. What did he do? Nothing, Linder and Silverhand did fuck all.

Night City had dragged him, just like it did everyone and everything else, sucking in anything that just inched towards the centre of the city's gravity.

Come to Night City, be someone who will never be forgotten, never fade away. Johnny Silverhand got stuck in that nightmare, drifted in and out between the company of so many people he could barely put the right names to the right faces, and when he finally could? Too late, much too late for it to matter.

Were they friends, were they a family in any way that resembled a found family?

Kerry was the one who stuck by him, stuck with him through every single thing that happened until it all became too much. The pills, the drugs, the alcohol and the messages became mixed and blurred and everything became one and the same. He was Samurai, he was the message that the world needed to hear, but it was a message that nobody really understood. They just liked the sound, they just liked the noises and the pretty lights.

Johnny, Kerry, Nancy, Denny, Henry. Names of people who understood him in a way that nobody else did, but it was too late. Denny and Henry couldn't stop fighting, Nancy went to jail for killing her abusive husband.

Kerry? Johnny didn't deserve him. Nobody did.

Alt was just, something else.

She was an enigma, wrapped in a puzzle or a riddle, tied up for him like a present with a bow on top, ready to be unravelled and found out and he just wasn't the one to do it. She stuck around though, managed to make him understand some things better than he could when he was with Samurai. Stopped himself from being blackmailed by record labels like Universal and DBS, made him realise that him being a deserter like so many others wasn't something to be ashamed.

That's how 'Sins of your Brothers' came to be. He told the world, screamed and shouted until his voice was hoarse and scratchy that he was a fuck-up, a deserter that ran from war.

It brought him the one thing he didn't want: success.

He failed her too. He didn't deserve her. How the people like Rogue, Morgan, and Shaitan even managed to be around him was a mystery in and of itself. Santiago, Boa-Boa and Spider were too caught up in their own world to notice, they were outcasts of society. Club Atlantis, The Afterlife Crew, that was what they were. A band of ragtag motherfuckers who could always do the impossible.

Soldiers, criminals, a netrunner, a borg and a rockerboy. It sounded like the start of an awful joke, but for a suicide squad, they did what people thought was impossible. Show Arasaka the middle finger for killing Alt.

Boa-Boa and Alt, dead. Santiago, dead in the Saka raid. Johnny Silverhand, killed by Smasher of all the fucking people.

Was that why he felt such a connection to V, why they managed to work together even if they were stuck together in one brain, in one body?

V knew what freedom was, what it felt like to be thrown into a warzone, put into a position that no sane person would have ever found themselves in. They travelled with nomads, served in the force. All the time, Johnny could only think that V was suffering with him, the soldier and the rockstar forged together in a hellish coupling that would only end with a bullet in the brain for the both of them.

That was before he dug through the soldier's skull, seen everything he'd lived. Those friends dead, the idea that he wasn't worthy of the people around him, encounters with a red-eyed borg with a penchant for bloody fucking murder. A corporation that took everything from them both, destroyed lives on a daily basis, where the only concern was the profit margin and the bottom line.

It needed to go. It needed to stop. His attacks never did anything, and for forty-three years in the nether, everything Silverhand had done was reversed. He wouldn't allow them to do it again.

The City of Dreams, the American Nightmare, just needed to stop. Death was good, but when he woke up to see he'd never died at all, the urge to take the man's body and end it himself was so strong, so powerful that the thought vocalised.

No more Johnny Silverhand.

No more Robert John Linder.

No more V.

Closure and peace were all he wanted now, but if the cost was violence, he'd pay it back in full.
-
06/10/77
The Afterlife, Watson District
Night City, California
V
-
At the time of his awakening, V could not have felt worse even if he had tried to. The room he woke up in was coated in a garish yellow paint, the bed he was lying on was hard, and he could have sworn that felt some of the bedsprings stabbing into his back. His vision had blurred for a moment before he shook himself out of his stupor. There was a buzzing bouncing around his head. How did he ever manage to not get killed?

The buzzing dulled, it turned into a cawing. V managed to push himself up, his neck gliding against unchanged pillows where he could at least see anything that wasn't a warped white roof or the yellow wall to his right. There was a steel cage in the corner, sizable enough for the cockatiel inside to be comfortable while it cawed at the bedridden soldier. Shut the fuck up, V thought, grunting.

He'd grunted and growled, loud enough for the white-feathered bird to caw even louder, drawing the attention of the figure that was sat next to him. Frail and skinny, but her gentle hand that ran across his chest and shoulder was enough to keep V pinned down to the bed in his dazed state. Her face, pale and gaunt lingered over him for a few moments, her eyes peering into what was left of his soul before a gentle push forced him into being enveloped by the mattress.

Evelyn's voice teased him, brushing against his ears, a whisper from the past when she was a vixen of the city's upper-class. "It's okay, V. You're at the Afterlife. Judy saved you. Your nomad friend drove me here. She's with Rogue and Judy right now."

The Afterlife mercenary managed to utter a single groan, the noise erupting deep from his throat as he struggled to get up again. There was a pain in his back, lodged in tight that shot out from his spine. Guiding himself by the wall, his hands brought him up slowly as he swivelled on the bed. His bare feet were comforted by a fur rug, soft and warm as he struggled to stand up. With his un-mangled left arm, he managed to pull himself up to his feet with help from Evelyn.

"Rogue ordered a ripperdoc to come in, he got personally escorted here by some mercs. He and his nurse gave you a check-up before they went out, said they'd be waiting to change some parts. They were nice." Evelyn muttered as she took his unharmed limb and placed it over her shoulder. "So is your friend."

V groaned. "I'm glad you think that."

"You know, I never got to thank you for what you did," said Evelyn, "you saved me from the scavvers, they would have killed me, they did…"

"You don't have to say a word of what they did. I wouldn't want any normal person to go through what they do to people." V managed to groan again. "We both did what we had to do. I don't blame you for what you did, taking the chip."

Evelyn went glassy-eyed for a moment, walking V out of the room and into the cold hallways before they came to the staircase to the main club. "It was a mistake. I should have checked the chip. The data, did you…"

"Yeah, and let's leave it at that."

Evelyn took hold of his limp arm. "You shouldn't be okay, with everything that happened to you. Having another person in there, from what the Voodoo Boys said it's like having a pre-war tumour that's terminal. You should be dying."

The wounded mercenary uttered something akin to a laugh. "Guess the VeeBees aren't as smart or techie as they think they are."

Everything hurt, his back, what was left of his mangled silver arm and his leg. By the time everything was done, whether he was dead or alive by the end, he had no doubt he would be as unrecognisable as he was if V were to compare his human self to his current self. He was already more metal than he was flesh, what was one more arm or one more leg to throw into a trash heap?

Nothing was the truth. He'd come to that conclusion when he got his army-issue cyberware replaced when he made enough money after he'd met Jackie. A pair of gun-metal grey arms, made for use instead of being made for show. They did the job, and they soon came off with the nuts and bolts as soon as he actually got a job at Militech. Neuro-patches slapped over his stumps, each arm and leg replaced, soldered, welded to his joints and tested before he stood up once more and realised what he'd become.

Not human, but a tool. A cog in the corporate machine, grind, grind, grind all day until you drop or get higher. The thought was still recurring, a process that was deemed highly useful at the corp when placed on a highly-trained team of operators. Job after job, assignment after assignment, small break after small break, it all came back to the same place. Get tuned up, get bits taken off and replaced, start again.

The only difference? In the Afterlife, he was raging against a different machine, a much more powerful machine that languished over the city skyline like a lazy god of vice that profited off chaos.

Evelyn continued holding V up as they finally got down the stairs, entering the club room and leaving quickly to get to the small room that was set up just behind the bar. The mercenary and the ex-joydoll ignored the looks given from some of the mercs, some looking roided, others looking cyberized to hell and back whilst others focused on their jobs. Three mercs were charged with counting the dead, men and women closed up in bodybags before they were dragged out to wherever they'd be disposed of.

Evelyn gave a small sigh. "There was another attack last night, more Tyger Claws. Shaitan and… Panam? They fought them off, she managed to drag Emmerich out of the gunfire when he got hit."

"Need to sort this out, ASAP," V grunted. "With the Claws, Voodoo Boys and Arasaka? Those first two need to go before we focus on the corpos."

Evelyn harrumphed; V looking at her immediately. "You can't hurt a corp. No matter how many people you kill, no matter how many buildings you burn down, it all ends in death for the rebels."

"We'll see about that, Evelyn."

The couple walked into the small room, the former joydoll soon being assisted by a familiar nurse. Misty had taken his limp arm, gently applying some devices to the damaged limb before they managed to sit him in the disconnected net-runner chair. Vik was nowhere to be seen, and V was already beginning to feel out of it from what he'd undergone in the past few days since he'd re-entered the city. Evelyn brought Misty a rolling table, the surgical desk filled to the brim with tools and technology that would soon be used to take off V's limbs, only to be replaced with new ones.

V's head turned to the right, drooping loosely as Evelyn soon left the room after a few soft words from Misty, who then turned to V. "So, we meet again, huh?"

The mercenary nodded slowly. "I guess we do. How've you been, Misty?"

"It's been rough, V. You know how it is, but better than I was since the ofrenda. Mama Welles and me, we're getting' on." Misty admitted with a sad smile. "Thanks for helping with her, V."

"Ain't a problem, Misty. Times like them isn't a point in trying to be at each others' throats. It's not what Jackie would have wanted." V managed to mutter, as Misty pushed his head up. "Thanks."

Misty nodded. "What about you, would he have wanted this for you? Tryin' to kill yourself for a cause that nobody took up since the twenties?"

"It's not a cause, it's not some job, Misty." V tried to argue, but his voice was a coarse, hushed tone. "They took everything I had from me. Since I been here, everything I had is gone. Well, most of it."

Misty's eyes seemed to soften, and V could feel his own eyes watering. His vision glitched for a moment. "That nomad girl, Panam. She was sitting by your bedside when we got here, she's got it bad for you, V. Real bad."

"I know, Mist." V whimpered. "I don't even know why; she must be insane. Liking a guy like me, it's basically a death warrant."

The nurse laughed, but the sound was dry. "I guess she can join the club. Me, Vik, Jackie, Panam and the rest of Rogue's goon squad out there. We're all in the same boat. You were here for us, well, most of us and I guess we have to be there for you too whenever you get your ass kicked on a daily basis."

As Misty had gotten closer to him, V had barely noticed that she had the pacification gun in her hand, the silver frame of the injection port hidden away as the two talked. V had looked away for a split second, catching sight of the black and blue-plated arm and leg at the right side of the room, just out of his frame of vision before he felt it. A sharp sting in his neck, a numbness spreading throughout his body that refused to push him into unconsciousness.

Of course, it was all part of the plan when it came to major repairs. Taking limbs off was hardly a peaceful or harmless process, not when it was focused on one side of the body as well, that much both Misty and V knew. He soon felt himself growing heavy once more, Misty placing the pacification gun on the desk in the corner before the door opened, Viktor soon walking through with his apron and toolkit in his hand.

"I ain't gonna tell you what I'm thinking right now, kid," Viktor smirked. "But god damn, if you ain't one of the unluckiest pieces of shit in this city."

V's face morphed into a sneer, one that the old ripper laughed at his vocal cords refused to vocalise his thoughts. Misty prepped the new limbs for the operations, as Vik opened his kit and organised the surgery desk, taking a stool and sliding over. V was slumping in his chair, numbed up all the while as Vik and Misty slowly began chipping away at the neuro-patchwork, peeling it away with the arm as V fell into unconsciousness once more.