Johnny Silverhand

There was a hole where his heart should be. A hole punched through his torso, narrowly bushing by his spine, and leaking a faint trail of… whatever fluid this body used. It wasn't blood, it smelled wrong, like metal and chemical rather than copper and pain.

There was another hole where his head should be, a fractured, shattered tea cup that snapped off right above his left eye. Half of his face was gone, his scalp was completely gone. There was no brain there anymore, if there ever was.

So if he wasn't in his heart or his head… where was 'he'?

He let out a metal bark. Maybe it was laughter, maybe it was pain, he couldn't really tell. Whatever happened to putting dogs down huh? He let his half-smile fall from his face. A bump in the road jolted him in his seat, shaking all his broken components around in a distinctly unhealthy sounding way.

Two legs, most of a torso, a damaged left arm, and half of a head. That's all Johnny Silverhand was after his crowning act.

He had done it. He had cut the head off of Arasaka. He let one fucker off the leash. He got away with his girl.

But… just like he had always feared… the victory felt hollow.

He pulled his gaze up from his fractured legs and to the window. The desert had shifted to tired-looking grassland, then to weary looking forests, and was now trailing up with the ocean in the very distance through the trees.

"...How long since we left Night City?" He asked aloud.

The man driving, apparently one of Alt's contacts, answered him. He sounded fairly tired himself as he did. "Almost two days now, choom. Was wondering if you were still alive back there, to be frank."

So was he.

Alt's presence sent him the virtual sensation of a hug. He sunk back into the old chair and stared at nothing for a moment.

No heart, no head…

He gave an exhausted grin. "Heh, Tinman." He almost chuckled over his own joke. It was hard to muster up energy to do anything when everything hurt so badly. A constant droning agony that sat down beside him and gave its own haggard snores. The rumbling was almost soothing that way.

"We're almost there, choom. We're pulling up on the Hammer estate now."

He almost wished for a smoke out of habit, but there was no need for it right now. The air out here smelled cleaner, purer. It tasted of ash and old and musty, but it wasn't trash and semen and guts, so it was a noticeable improvement in just about every way.

He distracted himself by asking questions. "Hammer estate huh? Sounds like some real posh country club bullshit." He frowned to himself. He didn't mean to word it like that.

The driver chuckled a bit in response. "Yeah, it sounds like there's a golf course, doesn't it? Don't worry, I'll keep it to myself."

He stayed silent, letting the time trickle through his pounding headache like molasses.

Eventually he wasn't thinking again.

Then again, when was he ever doing that?

When was the last time he just… sat down and wasn't distracted by sex or stims or violence?

…He couldn't remember, probably before the war.

"We're here, choom." The voice of the driver pulled him out of his forced introspection again. He looked up, seeing the automated gates of a manor pull away from the road letting their vehicle in.

The area inside was posh in that restrained sort of way. Nothing in it was too expensive looking, but it all fit, it all matched in a way that only dedicated care could give it. He stared for another moment longer, before speaking.

"What's your name?"

The driver smiled into the rear-view mirror and replied. "Totes."

It took him a moment. "Because you tote people around?"

"Because I tote people around."

Johnny shared a small grin with the driver at that as he carefully opened the door and struggled out of the vehicle. "Thanks Totes. I'll leave a tip next time."

"Hah! I'll hold you to it, choom." Totes replied, waiting for him to exit entirely before bringing the car around to the side of the estate. Johnny stared for a moment more, before turning his damaged gaze to the now somewhat imposing building before him.

'...Alt… What is this place?' He questioned, finally working up the motivation to ask.

It took her a moment to respond. '...I bought a few contingencies back in the day. Murphy told me she managed to plug Soulkiller into you before they were forced to run, so after the attack I started… well, investing for the future.'

It was a good thing he didn't need to breathe anymore. 'Murph… Murphy was the one to soulkill me…?'

'Y-yes, you wouldn't have remembered that, I don't think.'

…You're right Alt, he didn't remember that at all. What he remembered was the blurry faces of Arasaka medtechs and Saburo's leer staring down at him, strapped to a table. Or… was that really a memory? He grimaced and shook the thought away. 'So this was an investment… you thought you could bring me back or something?'

'I didn't think, I knew. I knew I could bring you back.' Alt responded confidently, giving the impression of warmth across his artificial nerves. 'I stole some of Arasaka's wealth, and bought some things for us to live off of. This was one of them. Then a friend asked me for help, so I let him use the place while we were… dormant.'

'A friend huh? Anyone I know?'

The door started to open as she coyly answered. 'I think you two met before.'

Standing in the doorway was an old man. Slightly thinning hair and beard, both a dark gray color and streaked in white. His frame was fit, but only as fit as age would allow, thinned by time. He wore a broken-in, old fashioned suit sans the jacket. His pants were held up with suspenders, and his feet were wearing house slippers.

The most noticeable thing about this old man, aside from the familiar almost-smile on his face, was that right arm.

A 'BioDyne' milspec-custom cybernetic clad in pitch black chromatic armor.

BioDyne, the first company to make the 'modern' cybernetic limbs back in 2005. The same corp that he bought his replacement silver arm from after the war was over and he came back missing one. A corp that went bankrupt in 2009.

He turned his stare back to the old man. The same old man that inspired his chosen stage name, back in the day. The thing that defined most of his life afterwards.

Johnny Silverhand was looking at Morgan Blackhand.

There was silence as the two sized each other up for a moment. Eventually, it was broken by Morgan, who's voice still held the steady tenor that it did fifty years ago.

"You look awful." It was a blunt assessment, and from the unimpressed look on Morgan's face, an honest one.

Johnny raised his only remaining brow and pointedly looked up and down on Morgan's distinctly thinner and aged frame. Morgan snorted in amusement.

"No idea what you're talking about Johnny, I only get better with age."

Johnny let out an amused snort of his own. "I've been gone for a while, it seems."

Morgan opened the door wide and waved him in. "And already making headlines. Come on, let's get you into a fresh frame, I've had one of my brats working on it for you."

Johnny stepped into the mansion noticing the butler standing ready with a broom and dustpan to sweep up the scraps he was leaving behind him. It took him a moment to realize what Morgan was saying. "...Ah, yeah… You have one of those human-looking ones? I'm not a fan of all this chrome."

Morgan led him through the house that looked entirely too rich for Johnny's blood. "Something like that. Doubt it's gonna be as nasty as that monster you're in right now. Should be good enough though. I don't know. I leave all that new fangled technical stuff to the brats."

"...You have kids?"

Morgan snorted in amusement. "Not biologically, no. Just a bunch of orphans I found myself with one day. Back in the… God, 2030s? It's been awhile."

"Mister 'I don't need little leeches' is taking care of a bunch of brats? You told me to fuck off the first time we met." Johnny pointed out in wry amusement. "What changed?"

Morgan was less joking that Johnny was used to at that. "Arasaka Tower, 2023. Nuke was supposed to be contained by the basement levels, only taking out the tower proper. Instead it goes off halfway up the tower, and it turns out Militech undersold how big the boom was gonna be."

There was a moment of silence, only broken up with their continued steps through the modest mansion.

"How big?"

"Five times bigger. 0.5 Kilotons instead of 0.1. The entire city center got turned into a radioactive crater. 100 thousand deaths, mostly civilians. Deadliest non-pandemic disaster in USA history."

Blackhand relayed the information in blunt, short sentences. Each one crashed against Silverhand's soul like a haymaker from a heavyweight champion. He was only barely aware of what Blackhand said next. "Even for killers like me… That kinda thing changes a man."

Morgan gave a short, disgusted grunt. "I started introspecting." He spat out the word like a curse. "I stopped taking as many jobs. I started thinking more and more about what kinda man I was. Eventually it finally hit me, Johnny."

He turned to Johnny, and stared, completely serious. "I was having a midlife crisis." He shook his head and kept walking. "So I stumbled across a job to hunt the brats down, and decided 'what the hell'. Might as well start doing things differently now."

"So you decided to raise a bunch of brats?" Johnny finally replied.

Idly, Morgan responded. "Well first thing I did was murder everyone in their new CIA… they called it something different then, ISA I think. After that incident, they tried again a few decades later but a bit more diplomatic-like. It's called the FIA these days."

Silverhand growled out. "The fucking Gang of Four is coming ba-"

"No." Blackhand cut him off, voice hard and flat. "I made sure of that."

There was only silence for the rest of their walk through the mansion.

—

He stared at the face in front of him. Blond hair, brown eyes, high cheekbones, and a little thinned around the neck. The mirror told him this was his face. Alt told him this was his face. Morgan told him this was his face.

He didn't remember it. He remembered his face with dark brown hair that hung long on his head. He remembered slightly thicker lips and a full beard.

He didn't remember this face. No matter how hard he tried to convince himself that this was it, no matter how much others told him this was it, it just didn't feel accurate.

His face was wrong, or his memories were wrong.

How much of him was actually him instead of faulty code.

He exhaled, feeling the artificial lungs of this body rise and fall in his chest. He could smoke again, that was good. Wouldn't do him any good, the nicotine had nowhere to go from the electrical pumps in his chest cavity.

He pushed up from the sink and stepped back from the bathroom mirror, giving his body a once-over for the last time. He stared at his left arm, reaching up to detach and reattach it, watching and feeling the thing seal onto his body.

It wasn't his arm. But it wasn't silver either. It was just… an arm. The synth-skin that covered it did a good job of convincing him of that. It flexed like a real arm, it bent and moved like a real arm, it felt like a real arm.

A very convincing fake. A fake that was supposedly better than the original.

He reached up with it, and repeated the process of detaching and reattaching with his other arm. It popped right off and on again, just like the other. Neither arm was real, but that had been true for a while now, hadn't it? Ever since he woke up in the desert with his mind screaming at him.

These at least tried to be real. Johnny was willing to give them credit for that.

He stepped out, stopping when he saw the butler-guy standing in front of the door.

"Mr. Silverhand. Master Hammer has retired to his reading room. You are welcome to join him, or explore the manor if you wish."

He stared for a moment, before nodding and walking aimlessly.

Eventually he found himself in front of the doors that led outside. Not out the front of the building, but the back of it, far as he could tell.

He reached up with new hands and pushed open the door, stepping outside into what looked like an expansive garden area on a slight hill. It was surrounded by an iron fence, and in the distance a single slightly withered oak hunched over two graves.

He walked up the hill to those graves, each step easy to do.

Eventually reaching the foot of the tree, he read the headstones.

John Linder and Altiera Linder.

He said nothing for a long time, simply taking in the sight and doing his best to process it. He could feel Alt's attention on him as he finally spoke.

"...You said you knew you could bring me back. Not that you already did." He wasn't sure what he was expecting her to reply with.

'I brought both of us back a long time ago, Johnny.' Alt replied, forlornly. 'We're what… what was left behind.'

He didn't know how long he stared at those graves.