The sunlight was at its brightest, as the California heat was starting to take its toll on the citizens of 'the city of dreamers', widely known as Night City. The city of dreamers, huh? Who came up with that? V wondered about the nature of the place she lived in for such a long time, while her and Judy were sitting on the staircase leading up to the entrance to the megabuilding. As they were waiting for a certain someone, the place where the two girls were sitting was sheltered from the overwhelming heat, as the building's shadow was just enough to act as a defense from the temperatures. V noticed Judy shaking her food lightly, in the same way she did on the rooftop, back when… Evelyn. The mercenary frowned at the memory of that fateful night, but shook her head and let the dark thoughts disappear somewhere.

"You nervous?" she chuckled, turning to Judy

"Ha, you know I'm not much of an extrovert" a small smile appeared on Judy's lips, as she ran her right hand's fingers through the unshaven side of her hair.

V was captivated at the sight of Judy's hair moving in the rhythm of her hand moving through it, it felt somewhat mesmerizing to her. It took her a couple moments to return to reality.

"Don't worry about it" V smiled, softly patting Judy's shoulder to reassure her "Panam is like a sister to me. You'll like her."

Judy embraced the mercenary, burying her face into her neck. Since the moment V called her best friend on the holo back when the two were still in her small apartment, Judy was awaiting for the moment she'd finally met her. The fact that V hasn't mentioned the nomad before seemed somewhat strange to her, but she figured she doesn't have to over analyze small things like that. At first, Judy felt a bit jealous about V's relation with Panam, but after the merc repeatedly reassured her that they are nothing more than friends and that Panam is very much straight, the techie let it go.

"She should be here in a couple minutes I think" V spoke after a while "It's kinda a long road from the Aldecaldos camp to here"

"Y'know…" Judy said "Sometimes, I kinda envy the nomads. There's something about that feeling of freedom that comes with living outside of Night City"

"One day…" V swallowed, searching for the right words "one day, we'll leave this city, Judy. Once and for all" Judy looked at her a bit surprised, but didn't say anything "I mean, look how much it took from us. Jackie, Ev… and then I have this fucking chip in my brain that's killing me… When- if I find a way to cure myself, we'll get the hell out of here." she raised her voice at the end, feeling overwhelmed by all the negative feelings that came into her head whenever she thought about all the bad things that happened over the last couple weeks.

Judy frowned at the sound of V correcting herself, saying if instead of when. She could sense that the merc was starting to lose hope. Could she even be blamed for that, though? Honestly, Judy couldn't imagine what she would personally do, were she in V's position. She would probably give up a long time ago, but over the time she's known V for, she already realized that the merc was a fighter and it seemed like the last thing she'd do is giving up. That being said, the thought of her beloved output succumbing to the overwhelming disease was starting to invade her mind again, and processing the possibility of that ever happening was just too much. Before breaking the silence, Judy swallowed up the gulp in her throat, which built up there because of all the bad pictures materializing in her head.

"You'll make it, V." Judy reassured her, a bittersweet smile appearing on her face "I believe in it."

"I know you do." V pressed a soft kiss on Judy's forehead "I know you do…"

The two sat there in this position for a couple minutes, not saying anything. Instead, the silence was filled up by them listening to each other's breathing. Moments like this could last forever, they should last forever. Ever since Judy told V about her abandoned plan to leave Night City behind, the merc has been considering that option more and more seriously. With a little bit of luck, if she manages to make it alive in the end, they'll leave the city and form a new, better life together. The city was like a parasite, chewing up everyone that lived in it and spitting them out when the time came. Keeping in mind everything that V and Judy went through, it certainly felt like they had suffered that fate. Suddenly, V's thoughts were cut off abruptly as she noticed a familiar off-road truck approaching the street in front of her apartment.

"Oh, that's her" V stood up and nudged Judy to do the same

Soon enough, a familiar face exited the car, waving to the two as they approached it. There she was, Panam Palmer in all her glory. The nomad woman was wearing her casual light-green worn out sweater, the same one she wore back then in the Basilisk. V couldn't help but admit that she looked dangerously beautiful in that, but ignored it, as she had Judy by her side, whom she loved and wouldn't have changed for anyone else.

"So this is your output I've heard so much about?" Panam smiled, as the two girls walked up to her

"In all her glory" V smirked, making Judy blush a bit. The techie shot her a look that said 'can you just stop?' afterwards.

"Panam" the nomad said, extending her hand towards Judy

"Judy" the other girl introduced herself, hesitantly reaching for Panam's hand

Panam looked at V with a hint of uncertainty. The merc gave her a reassuring smile, but she had to admit that she completely forgot just how cold Judy was to her when they first met back then at Lizzie's Bar. She could only hope that Panam, with her contagious energy and confidence would be able to lighten up the mood and keep up a conversation. For now though, an awkward silence emerged.

"I thought we could grab a coffee or something and y'know… chat" V suggested after a couple seconds, breaking the silence.

"Yeah, good idea" Panam's face suddenly lit up again "Where?" she asked afterwards, putting her hands on her waist.

"Uhh, Tom's Diner is pretty close, I think" Judy said. V noticed that her output's voice was quieter than usual. She must have still felt pretty shy with Panam.

"I know that place" Panam nodded "We'll use the truck, I don't wanna leave it here on the street" she put an emphasis on the last word, looking at V with a smirk, as if she was teasing her.

"Oh, come on…" V rolled her eyes. "I only do that… sometimes"

The whole conversation provoked a chuckle to come out of Judy's mouth. Putting that fact aside, she observed the two girls' casual conversations in astonishment. She was very close with V, obviously, but looking at how effortless the merc's conversations with Panam were, she kinda felt like merely a bystander in that situation. She couldn't help but feel a bit of jealousy at how V's attention was focused on the nomad instead of her. However, that feeling didn't last for long, as the three entered Panam's car a couple moments later.

"So, how did you guys meet?" Panam asked, turning on the ignition while glancing at the front mirror to get a look at Judy, who was sitting on the backseat.

V was about to answer, but she stopped, deciding to finally let Judy have a proper conversation with her friend.

"Uh, the first time we met was actually at Lizzie's when V was preparing for her Arasaka heist." Judy replied

"Yep." V added "And from the moment I walked into that room and saw 'er, I knew I was in for a treat" she looked at Judy for a moment. A blush appeared on the techie's cheeks, as she rolled her eyes at V's comment.

"Anyway, we didn't really hit it off until… well, until my friend…" Judy swallowed the gulp that formed in her throat at the thought of Evelyn's unfortunate fate. V instantly noticed her output's trouble in finding words and decided to take over.

"Basically, I helped Judy in some tough times, one thing led to another and well… here we are" V said, noticing how Judy's face just brightened again.

"Cute story" Panam smiled "Just make sure to keep an eye on her" she turned to Judy. "V's definitely a keeper, but she's really impulsive sometimes"

The two women chuckled. As more and more buildings of Little China passed beside them, they were already approaching the diner. The streets weren't all that busy at this time of day, as most of Night City's citizens were at work. California's heat at noon surely wasn't anything pleasant - the simple fact of being outside has proven to be quite a challenge because of the scorching sun. You could think about all the poor souls in their old, rusty Galenas, entry level cars that didn't have any air conditioning. Thankfully, Panam's car was equipped with one, as the temperatures on the Badlands often reached absurdly high levels. It took Panam a couple minutes to find an empty parking space, but after a moment her car was already occupying one that was close enough to the diner. The nomad mumbled something in an annoyed tone about how parking space was simply a joke in the City of Night. Well, there was no denying that the planners did a piss poor job in this manner - you could go blocks without seeing a single parking lot. Seconds later, she turned the ignition off and the three girls got out of the vehicle.

As expected, the diner was busy. Fortunately for the trio, there was still one vacant table. Not for long, however, as merely seconds later the mercenary, the Aldecaldo and the braindance expert were already sitting there. Judy sat on the couch just next to V, their bodies almost touching, while Panam got comfortable on the other side of the table.

"Spill" V suddenly said, surprising both Panam and Judy

"Spill what?" Panam asked in confusion

"You've been frowning the last couple minutes." V explained. "What's going on?"

Panam sighed "Okay, here's the thing" she turned to Judy "Judy, I… I can see you're dense, like, as fuck." V noticed in the corner of her eye how her output's face flushed, in slight embarrassment. She softly put her hand on Judy's thigh, as if to reassure her that everything's okay. "My point is that…" Panam continued "Well, it doesn't take a genius to know that you two are fuckin' madly in love with each other. Seriously, I could tell from the second I saw you two there on the staircase." she chuckled, noticing the two other girls blushing "The thing is, Judy, you can relax. As far as I'm concerned, you're family. Because V is family."

Judy looked down and closed her eyelids for a bit, as if she was analyzing whatever words are gonna come out of her mouth next.

"I'm sorry, I just…" Judy stumbled on her words "I just have some trust issues and-"

"It's okay." Panam cut her off, giving her a reassuring smile, as Judy looked into the nomad's eyes "I can see how happy you make V and that's all that matters to me"

With that being said, V gave Judy a small kiss on the cheek, making the other girl blush. Panam couldn't help but smile at the sight of the two lovebirds. After a while, a waitress came, letting all the women order their respectable coffees: ones with milk for Judy and V, a plain black one for Panam, as they sat there in the diner chatting, once the atmosphere got way less dense than at the beginning.

"So, Judy" the Aldecaldo said "What's your line of work?"

"Porn." Judy replied with a delivery so dry that it made V almost burst out laughing, while Panam almost spat out her drink in astonishment, as she felt her eyes widen. The reactions almost made Judy laugh out loud herself.

"I edit braindances for a living." she clarified "And, as you might expect, most of it is smut" she shrugged

"Interesting" Panam scratched her head "So you must know a lot about that stuff, huh?"

"Ya bet" Judy smirked "Got some toys, too" she nudged V's arm playfully, making the merc's cheek flush redder than fresh blood. Panam laughed at the view.

"I just remembered somethng…" Panam laughed, looking at V, who gave her a glare that screamed 'don't you fucking dare', knowing exactly what she's gonna say "Did I mention how V tried to make moves on me?"

"Shut up!" Judy burst out laughing "Did she really?"

Panam nodded, laughing. "Two times, actually."

Meanwhile, the merc sat there, embarrassment apparent on her expression as her cheeks flushed bright red. "Fuck off…" she mumbled, burying her head in her hands and laying it on the table

"So the first time was in this hotel, where she tried to get us a room with a double bed." Panam chuckled, as Judy listened to her story in amusement "The other time was at this cabin, where we were resting after, y'know, your typical high octane merc action. Basically, what happened is that she tried to grab my thigh, haha"

"Hey, hey, hey, in my defense…" V jumped into the conversation, still blushing "You were such a fuckin' tease back in that cabin"

"Not my fault you missed the memo back at the hotel" Panam chuckled, taking a sip of her coffee

V rolled her eyes and sat there with crossed arms, pretending that she was deeply insulted by the nomad's words.

As more and more conversations started and ended, the girls must've already been sitting in the diner for about an hour. V noticed that her coffee was still unfinished, but she decided not to drink it as it's gotten cold a long time ago. After a while, she detected a certain distortion in all the sounds surrounding her, like something straight out of a broken braindance recording. The omega blockers were working for a surprisingly long time now, but the glitches in her hearing might've been the beginning of yet another malfunction of the chip that was slowly destroying her. The next thing that followed was the dizziness and nausea. As she glanced around the room, the vision started to get blurry and her companions' voices were slowly, but surely getting more and more muffled.

"G-give me a… moment" she stuttered, standing up from the table and holding her head. Concern was painted on the other girls' face, but there was no time for explanations right now.

V stumbled out of the diner, supporting herself on the wall with one hand. She walked into an alley and weakly leaned against a brick wall of a nearby building. Helping herself with the seemingly simple act of standing up, she grabbed the wall and looked into a dumpster, puking out the contents of her stomach shortly after. Exhausted, as the feeling of heartburn found its way into her system, she slowly collapsed into a sitting position, leaning against the wall and trying to breathe. In, out. In, out.

"Long time no see" Johnny Silverhand suddenly appeared in front of her, doing what he loved so much - smoking a cigarette. "Damn, V, you look like shit." the rockerboy said after a while, his expression turning into a mix of concern and confusion

"No shit, Sherlock" V groaned. Everything her vision captured started getting distorted by the familiar blue glitches. A headache emerged, being followed by a warning, which the merc hated so much.

RELIC MALFUNCTION DETECTED

"Fuck, I need to…" V mumbled, trying to stand up, but she stumbled just to fall back down "I need to-ARGHHH" a massive, piercing headache appeared, causing her to collapse on her back with a scream.

Her body was shaking on the ground, out of her control. Great, a seizure, exactly what she needed right now. As she looked up, the surrounding buildings didn't resemble anything else than tall, blurry rectangles. Two figures ran up to her, with a look of overwhelming worry forming on their faces. Tears appeared in V's eyes, as the pain was now getting too much to handle. One figure picked her up and put her into a sitting position. Her hands were still shaking terribly, as she couldn't find a single way to control the abrupt movements. She figured the two silhouettes that were trying their best to help must have been Judy and Panam, but she couldn't make out any of their faces, as to her, they were just two blurry messes, resembling a person only by shape. They were shouting something, but V couldn't make out the words that were coming out of their mouths. This was just not fair. Why was this happening to her?

"B-blue pills… j-jacket" she managed to mumble with the last bit of strength she had left

The two silhouettes nodded at each other, the first one searching through the pockets of the Samurai jacket V was wearing. The other one tried to hold the mercenary's hand, but the uncontrollable movements sent a fist flying at the figure, pushing it away. Seconds later, a couple of blue pills were given to her by the first silhouette. Her hand trembling, V somehow managed to shove the pills into her mouth and swallow them.

Her body stopped shaking and as her vision slowly got back to normal, she could finally start to recognize everything that was surrounding her. The first thing she saw was Panam, kneeling at her side with the bottle of pills in her hand and a look of concern, borderline panic on her face. That means… oh, fuck. V looked to her left to see Judy a couple feet away, sitting on the ground. The techie was cupping her cheek, a forming bruise could be seen underneath her hand, as tears were falling from her eyes, all while she was looking at V with horror painted on her face.

"I'm sorry, I'm so fucking sorry, I didn't mean too, I-" V broke down into tears as she saw the conseuences of her attack. She'd just hurt Judy, the only person she loved so much. Through the crying, she was mumbling more and more apologies as if she was repeating some sort of a mantra. Judy noticed this, quickly standing up and kneeling in front of the broken mercenary. She truly hated to see her like this.

"It's okay, baby, I'm here, everything's okay" Judy reassured V, hugging her, while softly stroking her hair. She felt tears soak her t-shirt as her beloved merc buried her head into Judy's neck.

"No it's not okay… nothing's fuckin' okay" V sobbed "I'm a mess, I'm so shitty, I can't do this" she couldn't calm down, despite Judy's embrace. She still felt a massive amount of guilt over accidentally punching the techie, even if she'd never do it on purpose. All while this was happening, Panam was standing a couple feet away, staring in shock. She's never seen V like this and it truly hurt her to see the merc so vulnerable and weak.

"V." Judy said, pulling away from the hug despite the mercenary's groan of protest. She cupped the woman's cheek, looking into her weak, teary-eyed eyes. "You can do it. You're the strongest person I know." she kissed her forehead, making a small smile appear on V's face.

"I'll get the truck ready." Panam quietly said in the background. After she got a nod of acknowledgement from Judy, she walked away.

A couple seconds later, a honk came from the side of the street. The two girls turned their heads to see Panam's truck, conveniently parked there. Judy wrapped V's hand around her shoulder and stood up, supporting the other girl in the meantime. Together they slowly made their way into the truck, both of them sitting in the back. As Panam drove off without a word, an uncomfortable, yet meaningful silence filled the vehicle. V rested her head on Judy's shoulder and seconds later, she felt her eyelids getting heavy…

/

Hours passed and the afternoon approached rather quickly. The trio was in V's apartment. As Panam was pacing back and forth with a frown formed on her face, Judy was sitting on the bed beside a sleeping V, making sure that the merc was feeling okay. She had to be carried to the apartment, sending strange looks towards Judy and Panam from other people living in the Megabuilding. However, taking in mind V's condition, the two did everything they could to not wake her up, as they had no way to know how the Relic malfunctions truly worked and what could trigger them, so they did their best to be careful with the merc. Panam even took the liberty of parking in the building's parking lot, to make the walk back to the apartment as short as possible. Thankfully, Judy has received the entry code from her output a couple days earlier in a message, so there were no problems.

"What's on your mind?" Judy said after a couple minutes of silence, noticing the frown on the nomad's face.

"V's condition." Panam said "It's getting worse. It's the second time she's collapsed like that."

"Third." Judy corrected in a somber tone "She did that a couple days ago too."

"Fuck…" Panam shook her head, looking at the floor. Suddenly, a ring of the holo was heard from her pocket. "Gotta take this, hold on for a moment" she said, answering the phone and walking out on the corridor.

Judy heard the muffled sounds of Panam's conversation, but she paid no attention to it, as she was focused on the sleeping V. For every moment they were happy and tried to not worry about the merc's condition, came another moment which just served as a painful reminder of the depressing truth. She carefully observed the rhythmic movement of V's chest, as the woman peacefully breathed in and out. Judy was at a point where she couldn't spend one second without thinking about V. As much as she didn't want the thought to enter her mind, the techie felt like she had to accept the fact that sooner than later, V's time would be up. And even if it was bad now, the hard truth was that… the worst was yet to come.

Suddenly, Panam entered the room, her moves seemed more rushed than before, as if she was in a rush.

"Sorry, gotta go." she frowned "Mitch wants me to help 'im with something and, uhh, better to not keep the man waiting"

"Alright" Judy nodded. She didn't exactly know who Mitch was, but decided not to ask any unnecessary questions. "Still, it was nice to meet you."

"Likewise" Panam smiled, turning to the door and starting to walk away. Before she exited the apartment, she looked back for a second. "Keep an eye on her, will ya? And if whatever bad happens, don't hesitate to call me."

"I will" Judy said "Thanks Panam, for all the help."

The nomad smiled on her way out and a second later, the only two persons left in the room were Judy and V, who was still sleeping on the bed. The braindance expert sighed, taking a glance at the merc, whom she loved so much. Oh, how she wished that things could just be normal for once. That V would cure her condition and they would head out somewhere far away, leaving Night City in the dust. To spend their lives… to get a happy ending… would that even be possible in this reality?