CHARTER_HILL
She had ridden around the city until the sun had gone down. [1] Slung low on her motorcycle, hair whipping into her eyes, the sinew of the city grid open before her as she drove, a mesmerizing sight. The hum of the engine the only frequency her ears would allow. The wind tearing at her as though a giant hand was trying to rip her off her chariot. She drove without purpose, without meaning, just twisting the handlebars this way and that, skirting through alleys, swerving upon off-ramps, and screaming down the highways, splitting the lanes during rush hour.
Eventually, the noise of both her bike and the city washed itself out. There was only herself in this cold, cold night, never mind the menagerie of cars and other motorcycles that she was passing by in her mad charge, their headlights washing over her like waves from the toxic ocean.
She just had to escape, somehow. Escape this prison that was her mind and all memory.
Fiona had opened herself to the hidden world that lay buried underneath the towering spires of glass and concrete, the scourge of data and cyberspace providing a reflection of constantly shifting code that overlaid her view of Night City in a neon haze. Flipping into that world, allowing her to see the tangled spiderwebs that connected each and every device in the city, filled her with a calm more than an old fashioned from Afterlife, or a hit of Stim. Every surface appeared to be moving, shifting, like an old growth within substrates, but that was fine, somehow. It was just data. And data never lied to her.
She continued to drive, eyes blazing as she inhabited that digital land, the sound of police sirens echoing amidst the canyons formed by the buildings that flanked the avenues like towering soldiers in parade rest.
She just wanted to get the memories out of her head. Her mother lying upon her back on the bed with eyes that could be made from glass. The pit boss with his head all smashed open on the ground. The blood on her boots had dried hours ago, but still remained encrusted in a brownish film.
There was nothing else she felt she could have done in that moment. It was as if a red haze had completely filled her, driving her to the brink of insanity. Beating that man to death… she would never have done such a thing consciously. She had not gone for her gun or even tried to quickhack the man. She had just beaten and stomped on him until his skull could finally take it no longer and caved in on itself. Was it for Sinead? The more Fiona thought, the more that did not seem to be the case. Sinead may have been her mother, but she had not earned the love that befitted a mother. There had been too much time lost, too many memories forgotten. That had not been completely the fault of the pit boss, but Fiona had needed someone to blame. Besides, he had been Sinead's pimp, her controller. No one would mourn his passing.
All those years split apart from her family, every tiny injustice that had compounded onto her frame, it had all come spilling out today.
She could have ridden this bike forever if it was the antidote to her internal strife.
But, as all things go, they would only prove to be fleeting.
And somehow, Fiona suddenly found herself parked in front of her high-rise, sitting upon the loudly idling motorcycle. It was as if she had simply blinked and teleported from wherever she had been, all the way back to Charter Hill. Like falling asleep.
A bit perturbed, Fiona rolled the bike forward until it was in a designated parking space on the street. She swung the kickstand out and shut down the engine, removing the keys and pocketing them.
As if in a dream, she slowly moved forward, her limbs loose and lethargic like being drunk. She passed underneath the soft glow of the cones of streetlamp light, passed through the glass doors to meet the airconditioned interior of the lobby, and was hit by the smell of carpet cleaner as she walked into the elevator, the lift already ascending to her level, having scanned her deck upon entry. She lifted her head up, as if she could peer through the roof of the elevator and pierce the heavy cloud layer above, seeing nothing but a vat full of stars, whisking her across space and time to a land where she would forever be unburdened.
She did not remember exiting the elevator or entering the apartment, nor could she describe how long she stood at the window, as she had done for many a night, just looking out across where the city stretched, the lights of the streets grasping across the land like a glowing fungus. She stood there until she heard the door open behind her and she finally turned around.
Ramses was standing there in the doorway, a gun bag slung over a shoulder. He must have been out on a mission of his own. As the door hissed shut, the wedge of light vanished, momentarily obscuring him in darkness. But there was the slow clomp of heavy combat boots and soon he reappeared just a few feet in front of her, lit by the glow of the city outside, the yellow color of his optics slashing through the adumbrations like shards of unfiltered sunlight.
"You're back," he said, the words soft and quiet.
Dimly, Fiona nodded.
Not missing anything, Ramses slowly drifted his gaze up and down, taking in Fiona's appearance, noting the blood that had splattered and dried upon her clothes. He did not need to ask where the stains had come from. It was just something that he inherently understood.
"Did you find what you were looking for?" he asked after a respectable amount of time had passed.
She looked up at him. What to say? Where to start? There were so many things that she had to tell, but all of her thoughts threatened to fire at once, threatening to overload the RAM of her brain.
Her mouth opened, underneath her half-mask. Her eyes momentarily lifted back up to the ceiling before lowering down again.
Then she lurched forward, grasping the mercenary into a fierce bear hug.
The netrunner felt the man freeze for a solid moment, surprised by the physical contact. There was a flash from one of the advertising aerozeps that was coming in to perch itself in its orbit around downtown, the refracted holographics of dragons and comets searing a forest of sapphire blue flames just outside the window. Fiona saw none of it. She had her eyes shut as she clung to the man, smelling the musk of his dry leather coat, feeling the body underneath the armor shift and ripple in response to her touch.
Whatever Ramses was feeling, Fiona could only ascertain such things distantly. She buried her face into his chest, seeking solace as though he were a hollow she could hide herself in and shut everything out.
But in the next several seconds, she felt a welcome pressure wrap around her back as Ramses returned the hug. Her breathing quickened and her eyes flared open on instinct. The larger merc was tenderly enveloping her, his own embrace soft but firm. A gentle presence, yet unrelenting, as if he could not bear the thought of letting go of her.
They stood together in the living room of the apartment, just wrapped in each other, listening to the sounds of their synthesized breathing while the city came alive in the deepening night. Though they wore armor, each felt tender to the touch. As though as they had found the parts that left their most vulnerable spots open out of instinct.
One of Ramses hands came up to the back of Fiona's head, holding her against him. His helmeted head lifted, a rasping sound more discernable from his vocabulator, and he stared out the window without focus, his mind on the here and now.
"I met my mother," Fiona said, muffled against Ramses' frame.
The spell was broken. Ramses moved his hands to Fiona's shoulders and tenderly pried her away, but only the distance of a foot. He was before her in an almost admonishing stance, but no judgment radiated from him. There was only sympathy, a sensation that had been foreign to the man for quite some time.
"So, Arasaka held up their end of the bargain," he said. "You found your mother. And…?"
When Fiona lifted her eyes, there was almost no need for her to say anything. He could see the grief swimming in those gray pools, the tiredness of the flesh that enveloped them.
"She was just a stranger," the netrunner minutely shook her head. "No one I recognized."
"I see."
Fiona didn't think he did, but she did not object. "She's dead."
The room fell silent as Ramses absorbed that, the lights from the aerozep long passed by, his helmet reflecting a cold blue light. "It's been bothering you, hasn't it?"
The woman just nodded. Slump of her shoulders. Fatigue in every movement.
"You can tell me more when you're ready," he said. "I won't pry any more."
Falling limp out of gratitude in the mercenary's grip, Fiona sighed. "Thank you."
It was all rather strange, to Ramses. Fiona was practically listless in his hands, the emotion having drained out from her until there was nothing but a vacuum. Her hollow gaze focused on nothing. She had returned to that dark place where she had been when he had found her in that freezer, locked out from the world around her. As though there was this unrelenting urge, building deep inside her, that yearned to return to that icy prison, to flee the meat her ghost was trapped in and pull sharply away into the world that had promised its cruelty in some other medium.
Before the moment could grow any further in its finality, Ramses disengaged, leaving Fiona swaying, all alone. She might as well have been the sole inhabitant of an island out in the middle of the ocean.
"You're exhausted," he said, having observed her fatigued motions.
Fiona had not slept in over twenty-four hours, it was true. Her mind had been reeling from the events of the past day and a half. And now, armed with the names of Ackerman and Renzer, she was already anticipating putting together the first semblance of a plan to locate, stalk, and finally terminate them both, but not before finding out everything there was to know if anything pertaining to her history was still beyond her knowledge. For those who knew her better in this city than herself could not be allowed to live.
She almost called his name out. Something was telling her that she should. Her hand reached out, trying to reach his coat, but he shied away, just out of reach, knowing what his absence would do to her and she felt a dagger in her stomach. You bastard. You know what I'm going through right now.
Looking over Fiona with a practiced eye, unassisted from the scanners embedded into his helmet, Ramses said, "You need to eat something." Casual. As though he was pretending not to have noticed the mood in the room. "A rest would do you some good, as well."
"I'm fine." She surprised herself with the baldfaced lie. She had not known why she said such a thing, either.
Ramses' helmeted tilted quizzically. "Don't make me drug your food, Fiona. I'm not going to spend the rest of the night worrying about you. I need to know if you're going to take care of yourself."
Fiona glowered under her half-mask, miffed at how Ramses could talk down to her as if she was a child. "I'll… I'll try," she simply said.
Now it was Ramses' turn to reach out, two fingers at the chin of her mask, gently lifting her head up so that her eyes were angled perfectly into the merc's slit optics.
"Good," he nodded. He then turned and headed back up the stairs to his room, leaving Fiona all by herself, feeling empty.
The rest of the night passed in a blur. Fiona dropped her weapons off in the armory, leaving them lying out so that she could clean them the following morning. She was not hungry, so she headed to the bathroom to shower. She stood in the spray for twenty minutes, motionless, steam filling the expanse of the glass cube. She stood facing the door, never quite fully relaxed, memories of jagged shards of glass on the ground, muffled grunting, the hot sears of a blade across her skin, and the bubbling sensation of acid across her mouth etched into her memory as if they were more scars that crisscrossed across her body. She hardly regarded her own physique as she lost herself in the thick steam clouds, tumbling down the past where pain was eager to well forward, uncaring at how the hot water streamed across her, trickling between her toes.
An hour later, she was out of the bathroom, her half-mask donned again, wearing a thick robe. Her hunger had not returned just yet, so she figured she would attend to that tomorrow, despite the protests from Ramses.
She walked up to the living room window and put a hand to the glass. With how the lights down in the city were churning, it was as if hieroglyphics were crawling down there against the blackened backdrop. The stars above, glimmering with some untranslatable code. It was both perfect and decrepit.
A front.
Something missing to balance the equation.
She stood there in the shadow-drenched living room, watching the city breathe. Watching others living their lives while she had yet to do the same.
Perhaps it was finally time to change that and start all over again.
Turning around, she faced the stairs. "Ramses?"
He appeared at the upper landing a few seconds later. Only his coat had been removed when she had seen him last and he was standing there, still in his body armor and helmet. He placed one hand upon the railing, looking down at her. "Yes?"
Clutching her robe and shivering, Fiona tenderly padded forward, her bare feet upon the cold ground. Her heart was pounding and her head felt like it was swimming in alcohol. [2]
When she did not give an answer right away, Ramses headed down the stairs and crossed the room until he was standing before her again. In the dim light, he saw how the strands of her hair, still wet from the shower, seemed to glow from the outside ambiance. Her optics also exuded a muted simmer, like embers doused in the sea.
They were mere feet apart now. Through fumbling lips, she took a breath. "Do you…" she started, cleared her throat, and tried again, "…do you remember w-when I threatened you with that ultimatum? Right before I left?"
She half-expected him to just turn on a heel right then and there, but he surprised her when he remained steadfast.
Calmly, in a careful tone, Ramses said, "I remember telling you that you would not do anything of the sort."
That had been just the catalyst that she had needed. That iridescent anger burned away any of the fear or the trepidation that had been arthritically clenching around her bones.
Brow affixed, eyes bearing a snarl of their own, Fiona drew herself up taller.
"Then this is where I prove you wrong."
With a confidence that she had not known she could have possessed, she swiftly parted the robe and let it fall around her feet. She was wearing nothing underneath.
No one said anything. It seemed like Ramses was undergoing a herculean task to not take in the sight of her naked body, even though Fiona desperately wanted him to. Her body was pale in the citylight, never having gotten enough sun. Her ribs formed a corrugated structure beneath her small breasts. Her limbs were wiry, legs extending up towards a hairless junction. Dermal implants snaked beneath her skin, but they were tasteful avenues that followed the paths of her body, running along her arms, encircling her navel.
Fiona stood there, hands clenched at her sides, breathing so hard that she was trembling again. Cold air from the conditioning unit gently buffeting her hair and whisking across her nude body, causing goosebumps to rise upon her flesh. Reminding her of the true life she had to live. And of a past one, encased in twilight ice.
Ramses was not going to move first. Fiona decided he needed one last piece of motivation. Her hands came up to her half-mask and positioned themselves over catches at the corners of her jaw. There was a brief moment of hesitation, but she pushed it aside with a forceful blink and, in seconds, the mask was in her hand, and then it was dropping away, tumbling in mid-air until it landed upon the discarded robe with a soft noise.
And Ramses still did not speak.
When the Extremaduran had scarred her face with his acid attack, Fiona had thought back then, in her delirium, that the afflicted flesh would have to be cut away. Just cut me down to the bone, she had thought. But the doctors that Ramses had brought for her had been thorough. Had they been perfect, they would have saved everything. But no one saves everything on an operating room table.
The EMP threading trailed upward from mid-jaw, terminating near the corner of her mouth, the synthFlesh in the vicinity smooth and flawless. The cyberware glimmered, fiber optic compounds nestled amidst the meat, a near-analogue reconstruction, as if the synthetic strands were a grasping hand that tenderly scratched down her face.
When she had first stared at her healing wound, her first reaction was to nearly vomit. Her face. One more thing that had been taken from her. She could not even have her body be whole. Not the way she imagined it. It was why she always felt a tinge of relief whenever she got the chance to trawl the vastness of cyberspace. Her residual self-image projected her avatar as the person she knew herself to be, untarnished and complete, not the one who had been transformed without her consent.
But now, she stared up at Ramses, no longer afraid, her desire overriding any impulses of low self-esteem. Why should she hide from him if this had been the end goal all along?
There was no need to ask further for what she wanted. Ramses stepped forward and placed a hand on Fiona's cheek now that the mask was no longer obstructing his touch. Thick and reinforced gloves trailed upon her skin, but were present with his warmth. She closed her eyes, leaning her head into his palm, wanting more.
"You're beautiful," he finally said, the sound startling Fiona. "Perhaps I should have told you that a long time ago. You never needed to hide this away."
Something in her chest soared with the admission and her breathing quickened again. She nearly cursed him, though, wanting to howl, "Why did you never say anything?" but knew there would be not much sense in castigating him. Not now. Not when she was naked and baring her soul for him like this.
Yet it was his honest statement that almost caused tears to spring to her eyes. The chemicals in her brain flowed freely, threatening to render her catatonic with joy.
"I was never hiding it from you," she admitted. She reached up and lightly encircled one of Ramses' wrists with a hand. "Do you want… me?"
A pause. Considering all the implications, the consequences.
Ramses said, "I do."
Her hands met his armored chest, her own touch scraping upon his front so slowly it was torturous. "Then what are you waiting for?"
Cupping her face with his hands, Ramses angled his head lower. Thin yellow light the color of grain cutting through the darkness. "You know what I'm afraid of."
Afraid. Hell, Ramses was never afraid of anything. What was there to fear? How did she frighten him?
His mask. Of course. All this time she had been worrying about her own appearance while she had not accounted for his own feelings. Guilt and an aching longing twisted in her gut together, Fiona almost sighed as she stared up at the man, the one whom she wanted to give all of her love to. What does he think I'll do? How does he imagine me seeing him?
This was someone who had never revealed his face to anyone. Everyone she had talked to, everyone who knew Ramses, had never seen his true face before. At some prideful level, Fiona hoped to have that honor granted, but knew that the man's privacy was his secret treasure. The heart that he kept hidden to all but himself. He would never show it, she realized, not even in his happiest or worst moments.
But then an idea found its way to her head and her eyes brightened.
She gestured to her own face. "Then take away that fear."
Ramses' head tilted. "What?"
"My eyes. Use your deck—disable them. At least for a while." While she was talking, she was in her UI, modifying her network settings and linking commands to separate systems. "I've opened a port. 622901-4. It only controls my optics." Ramses would have had to hack her cyberdeck otherwise, which would have caused damage to her software. By having the port open, Ramses could directly interface with the body system that she had slaved to the control, leaving the choice all up to him.
"Fiona. Is this truly what you want?"
"It is," she said after a moment of contemplation. "I don't need eyes for this."
The hands that cradled her head tightened. A fierce worry.
"If I hurt you—"
"—you won't," Fiona said, her hands now clutching at Ramses' wrists with a fierce desperation. "No more stalling. Please."
His hands readjusted themselves on her cheeks. He gave a sigh and Fiona could almost imagine a small smile beneath that helmet.
There was a sudden jerk. A jolt, almost. The kind akin to where Fiona would be flipping between security feeds while on a job. Only this time, she had flipped into nothingness. Pure, dark, black. Except her HUD, which was frantically registering an ERROR in big red letters surrounded by a rectangle. She ignored it and shut down all overlays until she was completely immersed in the void.
Their bodies shuffled and Fiona realized that Ramses was leading her over to the bed by the window. Slowly, he lowered her down until she was atop the sheets, which were cold from the air conditioning.
She felt him pulling away from her and she let out an involuntary moan from his absence, but realized, after hearing the snaps of buckles and clasps did she realize that he was frantically removing his armor. For her. Her ears picked up every single article that fell on the floor, from heavy forearm pads, to his bandolier, and finally the soft noise as Ramses set his helmet on the nearby windowsill, the only piece that he did not treat as contemptuously as the rest of his attire.
Lying there on the bed, she waited for him. Waited as she heard the sound of clothes sliding off. Waiting until she heard the noise of his breathing, unfiltered and free from that synthetic tinge. And waiting until she felt the mattress depress and suddenly warm hands were touching her, hot skin quickly melding to her frame as Ramses was suddenly atop her. Immediately, she reached out, exploring him. Feeling the muscles of his back, as far as she could reach. Sliding around and noting the sleek structure of his chest and abdomen, for she could not believe this was finally happening. He was here.
Then she touched his face.
She could feel faint dermal routes of cybernetics upon his cheeks. The oil on his skin. But the skin felt strange. Synthetic. Her hands kept exploring, rising towards his scalp, for which she found he had no hair. He was completely shaved, the skin smooth there.
But her fingers would catch divots in his face. Ridgelines of metal that seemed to furrow on in strange directions. So much of him was artificial. Scarred up and reconstructed. Was this what the helmet was truly hiding?
Her concern would have to wait, for she felt Ramses lean down and soon their lips pressed together in a gentle but passionate kiss. Warm, inelegant at first from their shared inexperience, but they quickly adapted and learned more about the other together. There was a desperation in the act, for their kisses quickly elongated and became more primal. Ramses' muscular arms snaked around her head as he lay atop her, their mouths already open, tongues locked in a duel. Fiona soon got into the rhythm and her hands were sliding up and down the back of her lover as he rocked his body against hers. Her throaty growls muffled by his mouth, she wrapped her legs around his torso, clinging to him tightly as though if she were to let go, she would plummet forever into this darkness.
She had been more right than she ever realized. She didn't need eyes for this.
They remained like this for a long time until Fiona could take no more, already impatient. Reaching out to grab Ramses' wrist, which was more difficult than expected, even at close range, she forcefully put his hand upon her breast. He squeezed in response and she had to break the kiss to let out another shuddering moan, the sensation sending fireworks down to her toes.
Now it was Ramses' turn to explore with his hands and he liberally made a trail with his fingers, feeling her breasts, nipples, brushing across her toned stomach, but stopping just short of going between her legs. Instead, he caressed her inner thigh, the sensitive nerves there causing Fiona to helplessly squirm with need, his touch a knowing taunt.
Okay, fuck this.
Annoyed by his teasing, Fiona suddenly shoved Ramses to the side and soon, she was atop him, her hands planted upon his chest. She heard him laugh and her own grin was catlike in its ferocity, knowing she probably looked like a fool who was madly in love. His erection was brushing her down there and she knew it was time. She moved her hips down and, very quickly, he was inside her.
Though blind, she suddenly had the realization that this world was perfect after all. She was straddling him, their hips locked into an instinctive tempo. She was slipping down upon him, again and again, her buttocks brushing his scrotum. Fiona was imagining herself in that firecode, her skin flambeed from the virulent power that raged within her. As if she were a torch in the vastness of cyberspace, where she could burn herself to ashes and let herself drift with a soulless wind.
They writhed and jerked together, her hands on his face and his hands on her breasts. Their bodies seemingly flowing like the tide, muscles like liquid, their gasps and moans scraping the night. Heat rising between them, coddled by them.
Then Fiona's back arched, she somehow saw a lightning white flare cutting through the morass, and she cried out into the abyss as all her nerves became alight at once. Her code seared white as well, confusion temporarily etched within the subtext, until it registered the joy, the pleasure, and the white faded to a faint blue, simmering like a gentle fire on the beach.
She dreamed of digital remnants. Of a beach where skyscrapers lay broken and at impossible angles out into the surf. Of angel's wings in flames, spiraling to the earth in their death dives, dotting the sky by the thousands.
She dreamed she was standing in that surf, naked, the water lapping at her heels as she saw the sky grow purple and then crimson. Flames that washed over the atmosphere boiling the air away. The clouds parted, evaporated in an instant.
Then she saw the wall of fire, out past the horizon, barreling toward her. A tsunami as tall as a mountain, consuming the wreckage of the submerged city, the water frothing as it was brought to a superboil. She knew she could not outrun it, so she didn't try. She just stood there until she felt the fire blister her skin, melt it away, her flesh roasting and charring until it dropped away from her blackened and carbonized skeleton. But it didn't hurt. Even as she saw the muscle dripping from her skeletal palms and her eyes boiled and shriveled in their sockets, her hair bursting into flame upon her head, pain did not register. She merely sighed.
Then there was an explosion. Fiona felt the ground leave her feet and she knew that the world was coming to an end. But as she heard all that she knew disintegrate all around her, her fall was soon arrested by a floating sensation, carrying her above the catastrophic devastation, as though as she had been meant for some grand design beyond her understanding.
Hours later, she was lying on her side in bed, facing the window, her sight having returned some time back. Ramses was lying next to her, peacefully. It was hard to tell from his breathing whether he was awake or sleeping. She dared not turn back to find out what it was. They were not wrapped in the other, for each was exuding too much heat for them to be fully comfortable under the sheets. They were quite content to exist like this, apart, at least for a little while.
It was hard to think. Tonight was such a whirlwind that she hardly knew where to begin. Smiling to herself, she could still recall the powerful sensations that had bookended what had been a tense couple of days. They would be resonating with her for a while, she knew that much.
She wanted to whisper to him. To say… something. Anything that could make tonight more meaningful. They would need to talk about the future eventually. But that still-frozen fear that lurked in their hearts refused to thaw. Dark inclinations locked away, refusing to depart, always ready to expect the worst despite no evidence that things would turn out in such a way.
A shuffling sound behind her. The mattress was indenting as Ramses got up behind her. She closed her eyes on instinct, not wanting to betray the man's trust.
"Ramses?" was her tired call.
"Go back to sleep," she heard him say. The acoustics of the room pinpointed his location as she held herself within that myopia. She could tell where he was, based on the sounds his feet made on the floor, and the scraping sounds as he retrieved his armor from where he had discarded it.
"Where are you going?"
"Some biz that I need to take care of. It can't wait. I'll be back before dawn, Fiona. Just go to sleep. I'm sorry I disturbed you."
Then, somehow, in that long, black expanse behind the backs of her eyelids, she somehow lost where Ramses was in the room and it was only when she heard the door open and close that she realized that he had left.
Sleep would be fitful after that.
Dawn had not broken by the time Fiona woke again. Groaning, she sat up in bed, brushing at her hair. The other side of the bed was empty. Ramses had not come back yet. She stared at the blank space for a time, wondering if the entire night was a dream, brought on by a weary mind.
Then she looked over towards the nearby nightstand. Her half-mask was set atop it, a dull sparkle jittering off a corner. She had not put it there last night. Somehow, Ramses had been able to set it there while she had been completely unaware.
She kicked off the covers and walked over to the window, wanting to lose herself in her thoughts. She was still stark naked and a quick shiver passed over her as her body adjusted to the open air after being encased in the warm sheets. She stood at the glass, knowing that no one would be able to spot her through the tinted window. Even if they could, who really cared? Not her, that was for certain. Let them look. She was the one who had the wonderful night, not any of them.
Watching the city that had provided her so much comfort and strife all at once, she reached up and touched the cyberware at the corner of her mouth. It felt so insignificant, now that she knew that she did not have a monopoly on the chrome. She just wished that Ramses would have told her. That she had not been alone, all this time. She would have understood. Damn it, she would have loved him even more if he did such a thing.
Maybe he was too broken, for something had to have happened long ago to have made him see humanity with such disdain. And not the type of scorn reserved for the chrome-hounds. Ramses could be almost misanthropic at times, shying away from casual human contact even when the situation was benign.
Yet he had opened up to her.
Her fingers balled into a fist after peeling away from the window. She closed her eyes and let out a frustrated sigh. So close and yet so far away. There was more to the puzzle that she had yet to unlock.
A wedge of light opened up in the window's reflection and she whirled, heart racing. Ramses was entering the apartment again, decked out in his garb again as though he never left it, his helmet back into place, hissing with his even breathing.
A broad smile instinctively filled Fiona's face and she stepped towards him. She did not care if she was naked and he wasn't. He could see as much of her as he wanted, for all she cared.
"Ramses—" she began, but the merc cut her off with a slight gesture of his hand.
"Get dressed," he said brusquely, almost as if he were talking to a stranger and not someone whom he had shared his bed with last night. "We need to go."
Fiona gave a start and blinked in confusion, thrown off by the shift in tone. "Go? Go where?"
"Arasaka Tower."
"What?!"
But Ramses was already walking across the room, away from her, gaze located elsewhere and not upon her. Fiona trailed him, eyes wide.
"Why?" her voice took on a forceful edge. "Why are you asking me to go to Arasaka?"
"Might've been something to do with the job you took for them," Ramses said in the verbal equivalent of a shrug. "They didn't elaborate. I didn't ask. But they were insistent. Apparently, you had blocked their numbers?"
That was true. After the last job, Fiona had gone to the trouble of blocking Rzhevsky's and Michiko's contacts as she wanted nothing to do with them for the foreseeable future. She had just been sick and tired of the game that corpos loved to play and had decided that she was going to be a willing participant no longer.
"So they got to me through you," she glowered.
"In a manner of speaking."
"I thought you hated Arasaka, Ramses. How come you were accepting calls from them in the first place?"
Now he turned to face her, his coat splaying outward like a circular blade. "Sometimes, one has to adjust to the political climate in order to operate with our own impunity. We don't see eye to eye, but Arasaka is a valuable contact so long as you keep them at arm's length."
Fiona snorted. "I want to keep them at a length greater than that."
Ramses stepped forward, the act solemn and distinct. "Whatever objections you have against them, forget them all for tonight. They're not going to stop trying to find you, so why not satisfy their curiosity? Hear them out, for they may divulge something you may want to hear. They may offer you another job. You don't have to accept. It's your right. But you don't want to piss Arasaka off, Fiona. One's life expectancy tends to shorten if you do that. Not just in this city, but everywhere else."
Enough was enough. Fiona practically ran up to Ramses and grabbed the lapels of his coat, anchoring him in place so that he could not leave. She pressed herself to him, as though as she was about to leap into his arms.
"Why now?" she all but whispered. "Why does this have to be so soon? Why can't we just… talk about what happened?"
"Talk about what happened."
"Yes!" Did their lovemaking tonight mean so little to him? Was he the type that did not want to contextualize such affairs? As though this was but a trivial encounter that was not indicative of their relationship?
Ramses' head lifted, almost as if he was considering saying that there was nothing to talk about, but he lowered it back down so that he could appraise her, the movement kindly. But then it disappeared in a flash, a somehow baleful gleam shining in his optics for a split-second. As though it was a trick of the light.
But Fiona saw it.
"I will discuss everything with you," he said. "But not now. Not right away, when the emotions are fresh."
Isn't that the best time to discuss this? Fiona opened her mouth to retort, but Ramses placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed, which had the effect of silencing her.
"Get dressed. We leave in five minutes."
And she found she could not refuse him. Not one iota of resistance remained.
CORPO_PLAZA
The pulled up to the porte-cochère of Arasaka Tower in one of Ramses' many sedans and parked in an empty space. They exited, the lights of the canopy bustling down upon them like flares. Fiona took in a breath as she felt the cool air upon her forehead—she was wearing her half-mask again.
The suited valets bustled out to scan them, but did not confiscate their weapons. Seems they had acquired some trust from higher up. One of them mentioned which elevator to use in the bay past the security station in the building, to which Ramses nodded in affirmation.
The foyer was furnished from head to toe with strong black tile that shimmered with a near-perfect reflection. If Fiona looked closer, she could see veins of Vantablack embedded between the tile squares, like an infinite gateway awaited beyond. They walked to the elevator bay, which was lit by strips of crimson LEDs, bringing a sinister hue to the entire area. One elevator door was already open and they strode into it. The doors then automatically closed, whisking them towards a level near the top floor, the numbers at the interior screen quickly scuttling upwards.
No one was there to greet them when they disembarked from the lift. That did not seem to bother Ramses, as he immediately strode off down the hall to the left, almost as if he knew where he was going. That seemed odd to Fiona, but she didn't question it, instead following the man a few paces behind.
The door in front of them was an ancient slab of ashwood that had come from a Japanese forest. Inserts of gold dragons made a hurricane-like motif upon them. Ramses pushed the doors open, exposing a softly-lit office. Two low-slung couches, angular, faced each other with a glass coffee table separating them. Off in the corner, a fireplace was crackling with a quiet intensity.
Michiko and Rzhevsky were in the room, not that Fiona was surprised. Rzhevsky was standing at the other side of the room, hunched over in her usual position, optic gazing around the room like she was a predator always waiting to strike. Michiko Arasaka stood from the couch she had been sitting upon and smiled genially. She was wearing a cream-colored dress and she had gold jewelry adorned within her pomp of curacao-blue hair. "There she is. The woman of the hour." The woman smiled, showing perfect teeth, the dark shade of her lipstick iridescent against the flickering of the fireplace. She studied the netrunner as if she was scanning her. "How are you doing, Fiona?"
"Fine," she nodded, taking a cursory glance around the room, which lacked the stark brutalism that the rest of the Arasaka building seemed to employ, exuding a quiet warmth. "Sorry, but I had thought we had concluded our business after the other day. I wasn't aware there was anything left to discuss."
Michiko made a tiny motion with her hands of acquiescence. "Circumstances change, you understand. I hope you forgive me for using Ramses this way, but I did want to talk to you very much. Phone calls can be so impersonal, do you agree?"
It wouldn't have mattered if Fiona had agreed or not, because Michiko was already moving onto the next topic as she swept a hand, gesturing to the couch across from her.
"Please sit. I've set out some refreshments for you. Sake and some popcorn roasted with duck fat. The sake is made in the Ibaraki prefecture, where the water that feeds the rice is iron-free. Apparently, the distillery uses its own special varietal, which makes it a favorite in this building."
A black bottle labeled Watari Bune had already been set out on the coffee table, along with two pewter cups. Fiona was about to refuse the drink as she sat down, but relented when she saw Ramses reach for the bottle. He poured their cups halfway and set the bottle back down. He reached in his belt and came out what looked like a small straw made out of carbon fiber. He placed it into the cup and inserted the other end into a small port in his helmet. He took a small draught, but managed to sip it all without spilling. One would think that Ramses was paranoid, always particular about his privacy. Fiona nearly smiled. He's still nearly a stranger to me.
Following Ramses' lead, Fiona took her own cup and sipped the cold liquid. The sake was light and dry, with a very mellow fruit finish. Almost like melon.
Michiko watched them drink as she sat back down, crossing one leg over the other, but did not partake of what she had set out on the table. She studied Fiona and Ramses, her smile cooling but never losing that self-assured air. "Rzhevsky already informed me of the specifics of the job that the two of you just got back from, but I felt that the critical aspects of my affairs would be perceived as impersonal if I had conducted everything all through her. Consider this…" she turned her palms upward, "…my attempt at maintaining some semblance of politeness."
Fiona took another sip of sake, finding the drink had a somewhat numbing effect, as her lips were prickling with a slightly disconcerting sensation. She's going to offer you another job. Don't agree to anything. "I would have been perfectly all right with a call," she said. But did Rzhevsky bad-mouth her to Arasaka? To the side, the DaiOni was motionless, not a sound escaping the chassis except for the faint whirring noises as the singular optic cycled and refocused from person to person. "I wouldn't have taken it personally."
"In any case, I appreciate you bearing with me on this. I was born on this continent and immersed myself in every rung of culture and courtesy imaginable in this city. Despite such exposure, my habits have tended to… clash with most people I've run into. Somehow, I always appear to be the gaijin wherever I go. Funny, isn't it?"
Fiona did sympathize with the woman a bit, knowing exactly what Michiko was talking about, but there was the danger in outwardly affirming some semblance of a connection between the two that she just made a conciliary motion with her head.
Now Michiko waggled a finger towards Ramses. "Now, you were hard to get a hold of. Two years, I've been wanting to see you again. I hope you've been appreciating your time with this man, Fiona, because in all my time I've been in Night City, I can count on one hand the number of people that have not disappointed me here. He's special. One of a kind."
You'll never know as much about him as I do, Fiona darkly thought as she sipped more of the sake. But she craned her neck over, looking at the motionless merc, who did not meet eye contact with her. "I guess there are some things that you and I agree upon."
"Oh, I'm envious. You've been hogging his attention while I've been dying to make use of his services. Really, it's a miracle that the two of you are even here at all."
"Don't," Ramses lifted a hand, speaking for the first time. "We're not here so that you can sell me on anything, Arasaka. Say what you want to say to Fiona and we'll finish up.
Fiona felt a knot in her chest unclench. She was grateful for the backup.
"No doubt," Michiko swung back to Fiona, "you'll pass on my appreciation to the rest of your crew for a job well done, along with my condolences for your fallen comrade."
"I'll be sure to relay the message," Fiona nodded while never breaking eye contact with the Arasaka. "They have been satisfied with their treatment and their compensation, I'm sure."
"I made sure to include a bonus in their payments. All objectives in the contract were met, not to mention I had been rather select on all of the details of the job with you. Not something that endears one to an employer, I'm well aware. It was only fair that everyone would be rewarded accordingly for their efforts." The overpayments were nothing but a PR move to prevent Fiona's crew from publicly denigrating Arasaka even further and both women knew it, but Michiko went on, "We also reached out to one of the crew—Kross, I believe his name was—for information on the deceased's family so that we could ship his remains to them. I'm told we got in contact with what remained of the man's next of kin and the body is in transit as we speak, along with his share of the reward to be deposited into an account of his closest relative's choice."
Admittedly, the generosity that Michiko had professed did strike a chord with Fiona, who sat up a little on the couch, cup still in hand. "Arasaka and altruism. Never thought I'd see the day."
The look that Michiko had on hardened into a platinum stare. "I am not the rest of my family, Fiona. I consider that a blessing. My father kept me sheltered from the affairs of my grandfather because he knew that the elder man would be disappointed of my half-American origins. When I got older, I had to continually be the apologist for my family's actions as they skirted the law, if not outright broke it, again and again. Atrocity after atrocity racked up until…" she made a gesture with a hand, a sort of flapping motion, "…they finally overstepped. The Fourth Corporate War, and all. The press had their knives out for me, despite the fact I had no say in my family's dealings. I had been doxxed three times, and swatted once by people who had figured out my addresses on the Net. I was being hounded, day and night. Eventually, to make it all stop, I went all the way to the White House to both express remorse for the corporation's role in the conflict and to beg—literally beg—not to be deported in retaliation. I was fifteen then. I was a child! And I was an American citizen. They were threatening to deport me, Fiona. For something that I had no part of. I never again got on my knees to ask for anything, but I never forgot the feeling and how much I loathed seeming so weak. That was when I began my vendetta against the corporation. That was when I really started to hate my family."
Michiko had stood up from the couch at this point, her hands gesticulating with sharp motions that remained controlled, each movement never a millimeter out of place. Fiona had set her cup of sake down by now and she touched a temple, slightly wincing. The drink had given her a bit of a headache and she was now only half-paying attention. Her face was flushed and wafted with a powerful drunkenness. Breathing was getting difficult. She cursed herself at having overindulged, when she needed her wits the most. [3]
"I made a vow that, no matter what, I would stop at nothing to destroy Arasaka from the inside," Michiko continued. "Because of how they made me. And the killing blow—the knife in the back—is always invisible when it's in the hands of family. It's made me—oh, are you all right?"
Fiona must have been making a pained face because she shook her head in an attempt to clear it. But her vision was starting to double in places and her hearing was slowly shifting in and out of certain frequencies. "I'm… I'm fine. I didn't eat anything before drinking tonight. That's… I'm… my mistake."
A sympathetic smile passed over Michiko and she walked around the table, near where Fiona was sitting. She picked up the pewter cup and swirled the last remaining bit of sake. She set the cup down on the other side of the table, just out of the netrunner's reach.
"Yes," Michiko said amiably, "I suppose that's to be expected. I was talking for longer than I anticipated, just waiting for the neurotoxin to finally take effect."
The smile on Michiko's face had turned almost mask-like. Fiona could not help but stare, a rising geyser of alarm building and building until she felt a boiling sensation under her skin.
"What?" she choked out, a near-helpless plea.
"Well, to be accurate, it's a conotoxin. Non-fatal and non-permanent. Arasaka Biotech had been working on it for months when I handed them the specs, which was based on an old Soviet toxin. It's supposed to—wait, hah, look at you, that's cute."
Fiona had been reaching down to the holster at her waist, but her fingers refused to respond to her command. She had lost sensation in her fingertips and it was a struggle to wrap her hands around the grip of her pistol and when she did get a fumbling hold on the weapon, the tensile strength in her hands seemed to have disappeared completely, her strength sapped.
Michiko just leaned over and plucked the gun straight out of Fiona's hand, seemingly without effort, their faces momentarily inches apart, the businesswoman's smile now turned mocking as she looked into Fiona's shimmering gray eyes. She took out the magazine, racked the slide, the bullet bouncing off the carpet and rolling under one of the couches. The pistol was set on the far side of the coffee table, where Fiona could not reach it.
Grimacing, Fiona made a horrific grunting noise as she tried to blink away the myopia that was smearing across her vision like a watery acrylic. But it was no use—everything was tilting and warping out of her control as if she was drunk. She gripped at the couch's armrest in an effort to hold herself up, but like before, she could not muster the strength to do so. She was just so tired, so weak, that the effort to even remain upright had her gasping.
Her eyes mustered into fierce splinters, sweat now pouring down her brow, Fiona called up her overlays and focused her reticle onto the Arasaka bitch, not caring about the DaiOni to the side. If she was ripped apart in the process of zero-ing the boss, at least she would not go out alone.
But when she tried to prime the quickhack, an error message popped up in the center of her vision. ERROR 559: NO CONNECTION, it read. Fiona made a pitiful noise of surprise, then tried again.
Again, the same error.
Now she was moaning in despair, running down the entire gamut of hacks at her disposal.
Overheat.
Short circuit.
Synapse burnout.
System collapse.
ERROR 559. ERROR 559. ERROR 559. It kept popping up, no matter how hard she tried.
Watching Fiona struggle whilst in her sitting position, Michiko placed a hand under her chin in mock thought. The jewelry that adorned her body sparkled and glitzed, making her appear almost crystal. "No doubt you're trying to penetrate my ICE with your programs right now in retaliation. Why wouldn't you? You're a netrunner, that's your specialty. That's the kicker with this conotoxin, though. Not only does it disrupt your muscular structure, it constricts the neural operations with your cyberdeck. Severed from your lifeline, essentially. Unfortunately, that particular side effect is permanent, unless you get a blood change, as the enzyme can't be filtered out of your body by any regular means."
Desperate, Fiona turned towards Ramses, her whole body shaking. It felt like she was melting underneath her skin, the fire that slithered in her muscle terribly hot and sharp like razors. She needed his help. Why wasn't he doing anything? He drank the sake too, didn't he? Wouldn't he also be affected? He should be jumping up to defend her, guns blazing. Michiko should be dead. Rzhevsky should be dead.
He needed to stop this!
But, when she was finally able to turn her body, she just saw him sitting there. Relaxed on the couch, a leg thrown up on his knee. His arms splayed wide, one on the armrest of the couch, another propped on the backrest. Completely lucid. Not in any way aggrieved.
Ramses? She could not tell if she had spoken it or if it was just a thought.
"H-Help… me…" she murmured, the fire now traveling through her veins, constricting her, infecting her bones and making everything ache.
What he said next made her emotional control finally shatter.
"Not this time, Fiona."
Even with the helmet on, his voice had developed this terrible timbre. It was raw and filled with some nameless emotion. A cold voice, the warmth sapped from the inflection.
An empty feeling that the conotoxin could not match warped through her like a painkiller. She felt so small. As fragile as she had been when Ramses had pulled her from that freezer. Tears had perched themselves on her eyelids, but she could not feel them falling.
What are you doing? She wanted to cry out to him. Scream at him. Her heart felt as if it had been rent in two and there would always be a scar would constantly knot over. What did I do? What did I do to you?
There were no words that she could voice, even if she was in total control of her body, that could convey what was ravaging her. She could only stare dumbly in horror at the man as he reached up towards his helmet, tapped a small panel at the side of the chin portion, and watched as a small port popped open upon a hinge. From within the opening, Ramses slid out a small cylindrical canister no bigger than his index finger. It was clear and filled with liquid. The sake. It had never been drunk.
Fiona's eyes tracked the canister as Ramses gently placed it upon the table in front of him. How could you? I don't understand. I don't understand…
Michiko then said, "I think it's time the rest of the audience joins us." Staring behind Fiona, she called out, "You can come in, please."
The netrunner only heard the door opening and she shut her eyes to stop the room from spinning lest she throw up. When she opened them again, two men were standing behind Michiko, both possessing pleased expressions on their faces. One was a red-haired individual wearing a ruffled white shirt and tie, implants spreading up from his throat like a fungus. The other wore a scraped leather jacket and was considerably older judging by the white color of his hair, his face weathered and scarred on one cheek, and he had a cybernetic hand and leg. Both wore patches on their clothing, the same logo with the same Latin phrase etched underneath.
NetWatch.
"Fiona, may I introduce—or in this case, reintroduce—Bill Ackerman and Dan Renzer, both from NetWatch," Michiko said as she started with the younger man first before gesturing to the older one. Fiona did not need the intro, not really. She had already had an idea who they were, thanks to the emails she had read between the two of them. It had been a gut reaction, one her body had instinctively recognized, and a fierce urge to kill them both wafted through her, almost producing a tangible effect in her motor functions.
Ackerman stepped forward, adopting a simpering look as he gazed at the paralytic Fiona. "Ms. Merrick," he said, his voice annoyingly smooth, almost like a politician, "I've been looking forward to this for some time now. NetWatch has missed you. You've been AWOL for too long and now I get to bring you home."
Home. You have no idea what my home is. "Fuck… you…" Fiona breathed, producing a glowering look in her eyes, hoping that her baleful gaze could at least be somewhat intimidating.
If anything, Ackerman seemed to be amused by the insult. "I was relieved to hear the reports of your survival after we had lost tabs on you two years ago. It seems that our fears had been unwarranted—you've been flourishing in your time away. My god, the city has certainly suited you." He stepped forward and leaned so that he was right in Fiona's face. "Don't tell me you've already forgotten what the two of us have been through together? Or is that something you've already suppressed—?"
With a guttural roar, Fiona used the last of her diminished strength to launch herself towards Ackerman, her arms feeling like logs, fingers curved into hooks. She aimed towards the man's face, seeking to claw his eyes out, but her blow ended up missing her target entirely, instead latching upon Ackerman's shirt collar. With a high-pitched squeal, his bravado momentarily abandoned, Ackerman tried to backpedal, dragging Fiona along for the ride. The netrunner was snarling now, almost feral, her entire body on the brink of losing control entirely as she bunched the man's shirt, hearing strands of fabric tearing.
Watching the scene, Michiko glanced towards Rzhevsky. "Oh, for god's sake. Do something about this, will you?" she asked almost lazily.
Immediately, the DaiOni bounded forward and chopped Fiona across the kidneys. The chassis only used a fraction of its full strength in the blow, but it nearly broke Fiona's back regardless. The netrunner cried out as the breath left her body and she collapsed between the couch and the coffee table, moaning in pain while Ackerman was left readjusting his collar, an ashen look upon him. Meanwhile, Ramses was just watching the entire thing play out, having not even moved a muscle throughout the scene and its constant devolution.
"Some fire still left in you," Rzhevsky hissed as she grabbed at Fiona's arms after dragging the coffee table out of the way so that she could maneuver, forcing them behind her back. "You've metabolized the dosage better than expected. I did tell them it wouldn't be enough and here you are, proving me right."
Michiko made a firm gesture with a hand towards Rzhevsky. "Don't damage her any further. We won't make any headway from a corpse."
Squirming on the ground, trapped in Rzhevsky's grip, Fiona writhed and howled, hair flinging in all directions. She continued to scream in her near-hallucinatory trance until her strength finally left her and she was nothing but a crumpled sack of meat lying prone on the ground. She breathed and sobbed, facing only the carpet until she saw an expensive set of periwinkle leather shoes step into her view. She raised her head and saw that Michiko was kneeling in front of her.
"In some way," she said, "I did want to discuss the outcome of the job with you. Don't get me wrong, I was very impressed with your performance. Very impressed. But what I kept from you was that there were two objectives that I wanted to have accomplished during the job. The klepping of the TorcWing jet—that was only the secondary objective. The primary objective," she pointed a finger right into Fiona's face, "was you."
Fiona could only stare. "What… are you… talking about?"
Michiko reached into a slim pocket and brought her hand forward. Lying upon her palm was a gleaming shard.
"Recognize it?" Michiko asked. "I'm sure you do. Rzhevsky made sure that you would have it installed before commencing with the job. So kind of you to return it, too, along with the data that had been transcribed within it."
"That shard did nothing!" Fiona seethed, trying to break out of Rzhevsky's grip, but it was hard when her fleshy wrists were encased in a vise of titanium. "It just took scans of my biorhythms! I know! My firewalls turned it inside and out, checking for viruses, before I put it into my head! I wouldn't have been that stupid!"
"You're not wrong about that. But maybe there was something in the biorhythms that we were looking for that you didn't think of? Something right in front of you this whole time?"
Something was horribly, horribly wrong. Fiona was so sure that this was all a dream and she was sure to wake, any second now. She just kept praying for that one moment that ended everything and she would be back in her bed with Ramses right beside her, because what else could this be if not a nightmare?
But Ackerman stepped forward, eyes misted over with an internal light. A pop-up now infiltrated Fiona's vision as his ident code linked to her network. Her cyberdeck could still receive files, evidentially, but not transmit them.
A video then began to play in the pop-up. It was a tri-segmented clip, of which Fiona recognized the static gray outline of a human brain in each view. Represented in frontal, lateral, and dorsal views. Upon the brain image, Fiona could see thousands of glowing pinpricks flaring on and off upon specific sites, the sites looking like sparks flung from a campfire or of an entire land that had been dotted ablaze. Sites of increased brain activity and stimulation.
Was this her brain?
The answer to that came moments later, when Ackerman began to narrate. "Whether you have been cognizant or not of your situation, rest assured, we know everything. And if, somehow, the knowledge still escapes you, then this is your chance. In the image you see is a normal brain. Healthy, female, thirties, average drinker and drug user but then again, who isn't in this city? Watch how the brain activities flare almost erratically. Without timing. You see it? Good. Onto the next one."
The image shifted to another brain. This time, Fiona could see that, upon the poles of the brain, the neural spikes seemed to be more in sync with each other. The middle of the brain still flared like an encaged furnace flame, but the extremities definitely glowed to their own secret tempo.
"This," Ackerman continued, "is a brain from someone with neural implants. Notice how the pulses are in time with one another? The implants regulate the flow of activity and assist the nervous tissue by either bottlenecking or amplifying the neural load to achieve a higher-functioning system. An optimized system, if you will. The best tech in the world in the Tokyo clinics can boost a person's projected brain activity by ten percent, given the right combination of host qualities."
The point had not been made, but Ackerman then smiled, as though he had been waiting all night for this moment.
"And finally," he said, pausing to let the gravitas sink in, "this is your brain."
The image shifted.
At first, it looked like all the others. But as the clip began to play, something was immediately off. The pulses in every single brain region flared in unison. One area would go off, then another, and another, each and every section glowing with a raging and uniform energy. There was no scatterglow of activity. No misalignment of cells or any other mutation. Her brain was lighting up within the clip, the luminescence so powerful she thought her nerves were being burned out.
"That…" Fiona stumbled, unsure of how to respond. "That's…"
"A pattern sequence that nature could never replicate," Ackerman said. "And one no implant could ever hope to achieve. Total, systemic, activity across the board. Inefficient, but powerful. Very, very powerful. A person with your kind of brain activity would typically be beset by a litany of neurological issues, even after a week of sustained beta waves at such frequencies. Yet… you've been operating like this for years. And physically, you're still healthy. Once again, in defiance of nature. Care to know why?"
Where Fiona lay, she could only shiver, helpless, but completely gripped by her desire to find out the one explanation that had damned her so. Even if she was not at all prepared for the answer.
"For all this time you've been conscious, away from NetWatch," Ackerman continued, "you've been having problems with your memory, haven't you? Gaps in the timeline, despite the abilities your brain could achieve. Like someone had… burned them away?"
Fiona stared.
"Would it make sense for you to learn that those memories were never yours?"
The netrunner didn't understand. Her mouth parted under half-mask, her eyes shining.
Ackerman smiled again.
"You're just a hijacker, Fiona. All you knew… all you are… came from someone else. The memories were stolen. The brain was stolen. Your body was stolen. You aren't Fiona Merrick—she doesn't even exist. Not anymore, at least. You aren't even human. Your home lies in a different plane of existence, even, but you're just the trespasser that crossed over. The one who skirted the boundary. It's been theorized that this could happen, but no one's ever been able to prove it. Until now. All this time and you never figured it out? Very well. I'll tell you your true name. The name that we gave you when we first realized what had happened."
The smile turned malevolent on Ackerman's face and Fiona felt soaked from fear as she stared into the man's soul.
"Your name is HK-9991YQL-2076. A serial number. Not a NetWatch serial number. Your serial number. The sins of the past come to collect. The prodigal child of the Blackwall herself. An Artificial Intelligence, borne from nothingness, now unleashed like a plague unto us. Prepare yourself, for it's time for you to return to your home."
A/N: This is the one that I've been waiting this whole time to write. Now that it's out of the open, we get to see the consequences of the main character's actions as all of their mistakes have finally compounded into this disaster of their own making.
Playlist:
[1] Aimless Road / Elevator Upwards
"The Launch Ramp"
Daniel Pemberton
Ferrari (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
[2] Ultimatium
"Pride"
Naoki Sato
Godzilla Minus One (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
[3] Sake / The Revelation
"Am I Not Merciful?"
Hans Zimmer
Gladiator (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
THE CAST (so far):
MAIN_CAST:
Ramses: Night City merc. Solo. Unknown age. Unknown origin. Adept in: precision weapons, infiltration, assassination.
Fiona Merrick (JP422-7C): Netrunner, formerly in the employ of NetWatch, now an independent merc. 22 years old. Unconfirmed origin.
SUPPORTING_CAST:
Michiko Arasaka: Corpo. Head of Hato faction of Arasaka and member of the corporation's board of directors. 68 years old.
Rzhevsky: Unknown age. Estonian origin. Housed in DaiOni cybernetic conversion. Personal bodyguard of Michiko Arasaka.
Wakako Okada: Fixer in Japantown. A former mercenary. Known for her brusque manner and high (sometimes unreasonable) expectations with the contracts she holds.
The Extremaduran: Assassin. Hails from Europe. Under NetWatch employ. No Night City identification. DECEASED.
Rogue Amendiares: The so-called Queen of the Afterlife and former partner of Johnny Silverhand. Night City's best fixer, highly sought after by mercs due to her lucrative payouts and all-biz attitude.
Ryo: Merc. Former Tyger Claw. An avid collector of BDs from the Edgerunner crew and a friend to Fiona.
Tobin: BARGHEST commando. Based in Dogtown. Moonlights as a merc during rare opportunities of shore leave. DECEASED.
Kross: Ex-Malestrom turned merc. Retired from the gang but quickly got bored of life without the action. Went independent for the juice, not the cash.
Falco: Ex-mercenary. Formerly worked as a wheelman for David Martinez's crew. Prior to contact with Fiona, he was laying low in Night City, having thought he was out of the game for good.
Bill Ackerman: NetWatch director. The individual responsible for Project DAMBUSTER, Ackerman's goal is to find a way to restore the area beyond the Blackwall at any cost.
Dan Renzer: Ackerman's right-hand man. Once a member of the NCPD, Renzer was forced to flee to NetWatch after the NCPD attempted to have him killed by not going along with the corruption of the organization. Now at the mercy of the corporation, Renzer will do anything Ackerman tells him to do.