When your back's to the wall with an army of fuckers coming for your dome, you do what you gotta to survive. Beat, maim, murder, the works. They seem to think it's all a fair game, but they're the ones that made the rules. They want you to twist in the wind while they cut corners, pretending like they've suddenly got an edge. They want you to play against a stacked deck.
If that's the sitch, I say we fuckin' play.
"NCPD!" River shouts, his revolver leveled as he sweeps the room. He expects a lot of things: surprised shouts, crashing bottles, even incoming gunfire. He is disappointed on all these fronts; all he hears is a desperate moan and the squelch of rending flesh.
She stands in the middle of the room, naked as a Jig-Jig whore and smeared with gore, silhouetted by the burning rainbow of holo-adverts beyond the window. Her arms raise as if in exaltation, except that her hands are clenched into fists and the synthskin plating of her antebrachial implants have peeled back. Huge back-hinged half-swords sprout from her wrists like hellish insect mandibles. Those swords are currently speared through a man's chest.
"V!"
She lets the man drop like a sack and throws herself into a spinning, leaping strike that buries one of the half-swords straight through another man's face. The razor tip erupts with the force of a volcano from the back of the man's head in a fountain of blood, brains, and shards of bone that glisten in the gloom.
"Fuck!" River can't help but shift to cover his face. Blood splatters his jacket.
Her face snaps toward him at the sound of his voice and he stops in his tracks. There's something in those eyes that makes his blood run cold. She's never had that look before, not even during the most hectic of firefights. It transforms her utterly until he's not sure he's even got the right woman.
She wrenches her arm free and throws the dead man at River's feet. Red blood and off-white cybernetic lubricant splashes his boots. There's a cavernous hole where the man's face used to be, oozing with gore and sparking as the severed implants inside discharge their last spurts of flatlining charge. He glances between the corpse and the woman and takes an involuntary step back.
"Ah," she says. Her voice is a low, snarl, shot through with a dry, sneering tone he's never heard from her throat before. Glowing eyes move up and down his form, studying him as if it's the first time she's seen him in the flesh. "The fucking pig. Expected to see a lotta worthless dick-strokers here tonight, but you weren't on the list."
She pads up to one of the bodies, bare feet squelching through blood. A furious hazel gaze descends upon the dead man and her fingers flex into fists. Open, close. Open, close.
"Sons of bitches," she growls. She spits on the corpse.
"V?" He dares to creep over the body at his feet.
Her shoulders hunch without warning. Mantis Blades shimmer wetly in the dim and flickering light. She shifts to face him again and bares her teeth. "Back the fuck off."
He freezes and is about to say something when a shout cuts him off. A man charges from a side room with a nail-studded bat, swinging for V's head. V spins to face him before River can raise his sidearm. In the blink of an eye, the man's hands are gone. A short uppercut carves his chest open like butter. The next slice opens his throat. Then those blades bury themselves in his chest, like his buddy from before.
If V notices the fresh spray of blood that hits her face, she doesn't acknowledge it. Her eyes are narrowed slits that carry an unnatural gleam, Kiroshi implants overcharging to see in the dark. She stabs the man again, then again, before hauling him up over her head and hurling him at the wall. The corpse slams home with enough force to crack concrete and leaves a swathe of dark scarlet to mark its path to the floor.
V swipes empty air with a scream. Her feet shuffle in the blood slick. She looks around, disoriented, and mutters, "The braindance fucker. Stefan. Imma carve out his fucking insides!"
She clutches at her head. "Thinks he can pull one over on me? Thinks one zap to the brain and he can cart me off to the fucking scavs like every other streetcorner thumbsucker? Huh? Me?!"
"Fuck." She shudders violently and beats at her temples with clenched fists. "Fuck. Fuck!"
River watches her without a word, face drawn as he takes in every detail. His first thought is cyber-psychosis, but the symptoms aren't right - CP is a gradual process, and it doesn't crop up overnight. This is something different. Something he's never seen before.
He hazards a step closer to her. She ignores him, still pacing back and forth and digging her bloodied fingers into her scalp. She's muttering something, something like, "fucking need a smoke."
That flips some switches in River's brain, thinking back to their last conversation. The conversation. The one he can't stop replaying over and over in his mind.
"V?" He takes another step closer. "Or... is it Johnny?"
That gets her attention. Those burning eyes snap to him again, and for the first time, her attention is solely on him. It's not a comfortable feeling. "What the fuck did you just say?"
He raises his hands, putting his revolver on clear display to show it isn't a hidden threat. "Easy. I only wanna talk."
"About fucking what?" she demands. She looks down at herself, naked and covered in the blood of at least six dead men. Just her eyes snap up to look at him now, and there is a hellish kind of delight sparkling there. "Gonna cart me in? Straight to lockup, do not collect two-hundred dollars? Fuck you. Fuckin' pig."
"You're not acting like yourself. You need help."
A scornful laugh. "Yeah? You think she needs your help? What, just cause you fucked her, you think you're her knight in shining armor?"
River winces at that but can't let it distract him. There's no question she's dangerously unstable. She's faster with those Mantis Blades than even he had thought. One wrong step and he could very well join the bodies on the floor.
"You keep saying her." He points out. "Who am I actually talking to?"
Her bloodied brows knit together and he has a split second to realize things are about to get bad.
She moves faster than he can see, faster than he can bring his sidearm down, faster than he can begin to convince himself to pull the trigger. She's in his face, giving him no room to maneuver to safety. It's no easy feat to send a big man like him off-balance but before he knows it he's staggering back and pinned against the wall. His head cracks against concrete and stars burst in his vision.
She's right in front of him now. Hazel eyes, wide and unblinking, stare into his soul with a blank fury that sends a chill down his aching spine. It's the look of a madwoman, the look of someone willing to commit murder within the next few breaths.
"You," she breathes, "are in my way."
"V-" he begins.
The Mantis Blades spring free again, spearing into the concrete next to his head. He winces away from a spray of debris chips.
"One more fucking word. I dare you."
His heart thuds a wild beat against his ribs. "C'mon V," he pants. "I know you're in there somewhere. Think. You know me."
"And you think you know me!" she screams. Her clenched fists dig into his chest. "What the fuck do you know? Huh?! What the fuck do you know?!"
"I-I know your real name is Valerie."
A little of the fire blinks out when he says it, so he clenches his teeth and soldiers on. "I know you were born here in Night City," he says, "in some shitty little back-alley clinic in Heywood that even you can't find anymore. I know you like to read godawful romance books when you think no one is looking and that your favorite color is red. I know your favorite ride is your Quadra Avenger because I was there when you bought it off that scummy Fixer, Donovic. He tried to oversell you by at least ten grand, but I helped you talk him down."
He raises his hands. Touches her wrists. Then wraps his fingers around them. Her eyes rake over him, shoulders stiffening at his touch. But she doesn't move to stop him.
"You know me," he repeats. He ever-slowly shifts her hands down, away from his throat. "You know me."
Those empty eyes search his for a few moments. Then suddenly it's like someone slid down a dimmer switch. Her entire body seems to shrink down, muscles relaxing, optics going dark.
"R-River?" She stammers. In a few moments she's back to a V he recognizes and the familiarity of it warms the worry from his bones. She takes a shaky step back. The Mantis Blades slink back into her arms with a low screech. "What the fuck..."
Her knees buckle and he moves forward to catch her shoulders, steadying her. "Hey, hey. Take it easy."
Tremors shake her slim body. She looks around, sees the aftermath of the carnage all around them, and her eyes widen. There's feeling in her gaze now, uncertainty mixed with confusion and a deep-seated terror he doesn't like.
"W-what happened?" her voice is a low croak. "Last thing I remember is... Cherry Blossom Market, I think. Some guy with a BD scroller..." She presses the heel of one hand to her forehead. "Fuck..."
She doubles over and a wracking cough tears up from her throat. In the flash of a passing AV, River sees blood fleck from her lips. He steps closer, puts a steadying hand on her back. Her fit continues for a few moments and she attempts to wipe her bloodied palm against her thigh to hide the aftermath.
"This is about the Relic, isn't it?"
"Jesus, River, I just got my head on straight." She grimaces. "Give me a-"
She coughs again and this time the blood is less a spray and more a flood. The wall is painted with a Jackson Pollock in monochrome scarlet. A rattling wheeze pulls up from her lungs, then she vomits blood across the floor.
"We need to get you to a medcenter." River's optic implants flare orange, already dialing out an emergency number. "Have you got a Double-T account?"
V raises a hand. "Wait, wait! Just give me a..."
She gags again and spews more blood. Her knees go out from under her. Her body hits the blood-slimed floor, hands twisting into spidery claws. Those claws dig into her scalp, hard enough that he can see blood welling around her scarlet-painted fingernails. The passing flashes of light illuminate the picture of perfect torment.
"V!" He moves to kneel next to her.
"J-Johnny?" Her voice is small and weak and though her wide eyes look up at him, they don't see him. Or maybe they do, but in the depths of her malfunctioning mind she sees him as someone else.
"No," he says, holding her wrists before she can keep clawing at her head. "It's River. I've got you."
"B-b-b..." She vomits more blood down her chin and chest. "Blue bottle. Pills. In... my jacket. Find..."
She nods a little, her stretched-wide eyes staring into his soul, pleading to know if he understands. He nods back and takes off deeper into the apartment in search of her discarded clothes.
It's not a pretty sight. Bodies - or parts of bodies - litter almost every visible surface. There's so much blood it seems like the apartment had always been painted red. The few places that feature carpet let out a nauseating squelch beneath his boots.
"Jesus, V," he mutters as he searches. But he can't get distracted. Not now.
He finds her clothes in a pile beneath the hacked-up body of a man in scavver's gear. He tosses the body to the side and scoops up her jacket, rooting around in the pockets in search of the blue bottle. MaxDoc inhalers, old food wrappers, her heavy revolver... there!
He sprints back to V's side, already shaking loose a handful of pills. He has no idea what the dosage is but based on how the merc looks, there can't be such thing as an overdose.
She has a moment of lucidity at the sight of the pills. She snatches three and downs them without a word. Her head thuds back onto the floor, eyes closed. She breathes slow and easy for a few moments, chest rising and falling to an even rhythm.
After a few moments, he risks murmuring, "V? You still with me?"
There isn't an answer at first. Then her expression pulls into a pained scowl and she mutters, "Christ... I need a drink."
V chugs down an entire bottle of vending machine beer like she's been wandering through the desert for the past week. Streams of liquid dribble down her chin and along her neck, but she ignores everything until the bottle is drained. She scowls, then flings the empty down the hall.
"Fuck," the merc mutters and hangs her head. "You got any smokes?"
"You looking to indulge all your vices in record time?"
She glares at him. "Now isn't the time, River."
He sighs. "Don't have any on me."
"Fuck," she spits out again.
They've camped out in the hallway outside the apartment, neither of them wanting to spend a second longer in there than needed. River left his companion for a minute to grab two shrink-wrapped beers from a vending machine down the way. Now they're both sitting on the dingy floor, waiting for a city ambulance and police patrol to arrive. The former to care for V's injuries and the many shards of glass embedded in her feet from running shoe-less through the trash heap of an apartment. The latter to deal with the massacre dealt out at her hands.
She grabs his beer, sitting untouched at his side, and gulps down half of that one too before another coughing fit brings her frat-house chug to a halt. Thankfully, though, this time there's no blood. A sigh falls from her lips and she rests her head back against the wall. She's mostly clothed again, save for bloodied feet that won't tolerate shoes, and River wrapped her in his heavy jacket when she couldn't stop shaking.
"So," she says with a small, exhausted smile. "Was it good for you as well?"
She opens one eye and looks at him. She looks away again when she sees the joke didn't take. After some time, she licks her lips and begins, "River-"
"Jesus, V," he interjects. He shakes his head. "I don't even know where to start."
"I can if you want." She tugs his jacket closer around her shoulders. "Thank you. For coming to find me."
He opens his mouth, then thinks better of saying what he was about to. "You're welcome, V."
"Who tipped you off?"
"Some Nomad. Palmer."
"Panam?" V lets out an exhausted chuckle. "Good to know she's lookin' out for little old me. Seems every time I manage to pay her off, I wind up owing her another beer."
He looks over at her. "So what the hell happened back there?"
She shrugs, then winces. "I made a stupid, stupid mistake. Tried out a BD off a streetcorner vendor. Stefan Somethin' or other. Thought, Why not? Sounds like an interesting pitch. Blacked out when the in-house virus hit my system. Woke up naked in the bathtub back there."
She looks back down the hall, to the still-open doorway of the apartment. "Funny. Jackie and I hit this same place. Forever ago now. Wonder if that's why they hit me back, or if it was just an unlucky fuckup on everyone's part."
"And the rest?" River presses.
"Looking for something hot to put in your report?" There's a note of scorn in her voice that makes him bristle.
"No," he snaps. "I'm looking for something that makes you seem more like a Solo acting in self-defense and less like a chromed-out cyberpsycho on a killing spree."
There's hurt in her expression, but she doesn't say anything. He chooses to press.
"You told me about the Relic," he says. "Was that what I saw back there? Was that you or Johnny carving through those scavs?"
"It..." she sighs hard, rubbing at her eyes. "It doesn't work like that. It's not like he takes over my body like some shitty old-world horror flick. Leastways not yet. It..." She shrugs helplessly. "It wasn't entirely me. But it wasn't entirely him either. It was somewhere in between."
She glances off to the side for a moment, scrutinizing something he can't see, then scoffs and adds, "He says to tell you that if it were entirely him, he'd have distance-hacked the heating system. One shot into the heating pipes would've blown the whole apartment level."
"I know you." He points an accusatory finger down the hall. "That wasn't you. Jesus, you almost took my head off too, V!"
"I know!" she cries. "You don't think I fucking get it? Shit-" She winces and cradles her head in her hands, raking her fingers through her half-mop of scarlet hair - now dyed a darker shade from all the drying blood.
"I get it," she hisses. "Believe me, I do. But what was I supposed to do? Let those scavs have their way, then rip all the implants outta me? I might be dying, River, but I'm not gonna just roll over."
Her slim frame trembles and she tugs the jacket closer around her shoulders. "None of this is easy. None of it's fair. But... but I'm not going to give up. I-I can't."
He reaches down and shakes the bottle of pills. "That what this is for?"
"Mm-hm. A gift from Misty. Omega blockers. Slows things down. At least it's supposed to." She wipes at her lips. "Ugh. Beer didn't do shit to wash the taste of blood from my mouth."
"V," River sighs, shifting to look at her. "What are we going to do?"
"We?" She looks up at him. There's a sad, hesitant look to her expression. "Told you already..."
"I know what you said," he shoots back, a little harsher than intended. She winces and he forces himself to soften his tone. "I... I know what you said. Whatever we were, whatever we had... you made your decision and I respect that. I mean it."
She nods lightly and he continues, "But that doesn't change the fact that you need help. I won't let you face this down alone. I'm not going to roll over either."
"Nothin' waiting for you down that road but pain," she murmurs. "Told you already."
"I know. And I don't care."
She ponders his words for a time, then nods. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay." Her head thumps back against the wall again. She closes her eyes and dozes for a few long moments. Eventually, eyes still closed, she says, "River?"
"Hm?"
"You're a good man." She sighs. "I'm sorry things worked out the way they did."
He shrugs and copies her position, leaning back against the wall. For a long while, all that can be heard is the gentle hum of the vending machine and the muffled squall of the world outside. They seem caught in a bubble, a little sliver of post-adrenaline peace tailor-made for just them. River soothes his nerves by closing his eyes and listening to V's slow breath, relieved that the earlier death-rattle seems to be gone - for now.
Together they wait there in the hall until the walls are painted red and blue from the combined lights of ambulances and police cruisers. Then the quiet moment is over. Time to get back to work.
"I am afraid that all the blood escaping me won't end the pain and I'll be haunting all the lives that cared for me."
- Badflower, Ghost
Author's Note: I had the idea for this scene mere moments after finishing the mission "Sweet Dreams," in which V herself is kidnapped by scavvers. I like the idea of V unrestrained. V uncontrolled. V acting a little more like an unhinged, impulsive, out-of-her-mind Johnny Silverhand than either of the two would like to admit.
Adding River into the mix was just icing on the cake. Originally I was going to have Panam come to the rescue or maybe Judy, but I felt that either of those two would be too intimidated or afraid of V in the moment to truly meet her where she was at and coax her back to control.