Chapter Text
I’m Johnny Silverhand. I’m in Mikoshi. I will destroy Arasaka.
Johnny had never thought about memories as something tangible, material, something you could own, but when you are a mere pile of ones and zeros, even your own past is something you can lose. He was trapped in a model of a place he once knew, a place he once hated and had a meaning. But he couldn't remember it. It started with little, stupid things, like his favourite food, or the place he was born, or the colour of his eyes. Then he had forgotten how he lost his arm, how he got there in the first place. He had started to gather the few pieces of information he had left, repeating them like a mantra, endlessly. He didn't need to stop. He mustn't stop. All he did was repeating those words, trying to not choke on his fear and fury. But, the truth was that those words didn't mean a thing anymore, yet he was horrified at the thought of the empty void he was probably destined to. All he had was this burning rage and terror inside him and the more he forgot why he felt like that, the more it grew in him. He had tried to escape, at first, trying to tear down the walls of that prison with his bare hands. Useless. The more he found himself helpless, the more rage arose in him until there was just that, until he was only that. Rage and fear.
I’m Johnny Silverhand. I’m in Mikoshi. I’m going to destroy Aras—
And then, as most miracles happen, just when he was about to lose all hope, when was about to give up and just let go , something in that endless nothingness changed. Something, someone tapped on his shoulder. He turned, abruptly, fearing he had finally gone insane, not capable of letting himself hope. Right before him stood a woman — the word emerging without a real significance.
“And you? Who are you?” he asked before the world around them crumbled and it was only white.
It was like dreaming of falling and waking up.
In front of him stood a woman, leaning towards him. She had hair like fire, wild and frizzy, untamed. Her eyes were cat-like, feral, piercing through him over sharp cheekbones like she could see his soul. Her golden skin was covered in blood, but it wasn't as scary as the look on her face. It was the same woman he had seen in the prison, just more vivid, more firm.
Before Johnny could ask her where they were, something arose inside of him, something primal, horrible. He was choked by a sense of loss he had never felt in his life, so raw, so direct, so sincere and for a brief moment he thought he'd die.
It’s... grief? What am I grieving? What have I lost?
His arm flashed a punch toward the woman but before he could even register the fact that he did not move it, a mirror between them broke. No. Not between them. It didn't make sense. how could it—
The realization hit him like a gunshot: he was inside another body, he was a passenger in a car that had another driver. He was not alone inside here.
As soon as the thought formed in his mind, a sharp something cracked and images poured into his mind, a face of a man with a big nose, the desert, a woman hitting him —her?— hitting her, a little girl, the taste of tequila, his laugh —Jackie, she thought, Jackie, a promise never fulfilled. And rage.
The body pushed herself away from the mirror and turned towards the door. He didn't have the time to analyze what was happening, where he was, who that woman was — how the hell did he get himself in another person?
Before Johnny stood a fat, black man. The body opened its mouth, the words already filling his mind — what now? when he felt a sharp pain in the back of his— her, their head and they were falling onto the floor. Someone had hit the body on the back of her head. Her vision went dark and so, Johnny realized, went his. She tried to get up, but a kick right in her gut sent her back to the floor, the impulse to throw up eclipsed by another kick on her back that made her scream.
The fat man — Dexter, a voice inside him provided — was over them, a gun in his hand.
Am I going to fucking die again?
But his irritation was shadowed by the pure fear in their guts.
“Can’t risk it.”
“What the fuck, Dex?” Her voice was low and sharp with panic.
“Seems I’ve chosen the quiet life.” He aimed at their head and she lifted her hand, trying to do the impossible, trying to protect herself from the bullet. “No blaze o’ glory for me”
Then there was nothing.
In his life, Johnny had been through some bad shit. But if he had thought he knew what pain was, he had to reconsider it. When his consciousness emerged again, he thought he had been sent right to hell. His head was on fire, his skin was on fire, every muscle, every bone, every fucking piece of his body was burning. The first breath he drew he thought he had swallowed thousands of razors blades, cutting him from the inside. It was too much. He felt his consciousness slipping away, trying to shelter itself from the pain.
I’m not dead yet.
Something feral inside him made him snarl and he remembered all of a sudden that that was not his body because he wasn't the one who started moving. A low growl escaped her throat, scratching like sandpaper in his chest. Both of the body's legs were broken, but that didn't fucking stop her. She dug her nails into her palms and used the pure force of her upper body to move. One painful, impossible push on her arms at a time. She crawled out of the pit someone had tossed her just with the strenght of her arms and her pure will.
If someone had told Johnny that they had taken a bullet to their head, woke up in a dump, and crawled out like a fucking zombie with both of their legs broken he would've laughed , he would have laughed. Hell, he would have brought them a drink for the most bullshit story he had ever heard.
But she did it.
After taking the first breath out of that grave like a newborn, her vision blurred and the last thing he felt was falling.
They woke up and it seemed that it had only passed a few moments, a stabbing pain caused by being moved. She fought to stay awake, the fatigue of what she had done before heavy on her eyelids. Before them stood a man dressed in black and something inside Johnny's mind fought to emerge, a memory, a notion. But he didn’t have a chance to grasp it: as soon as the body's attention fell on the other man, a rush of pure terror filled him. The man who shot them seemed to have come to finish the job.
Fuck.
“Ugh... heavier than she looks,” he said, a hint of humor in his voice. But the other man seemed unimpressed. Her fear blinded her perception of the situation, unable to focus on the fact that the two men weren’t friends. At all. “Now listen, dawg, I’ve done exactly what you asked, so le’ss you an’ me figure this ou—“
The other man aimed the gun fluidly and shot him in the head without hesitation.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Now she seemed to catch up on the situation.
The man in the suit made a few steps towards Dex and shot another bullet in his skull just for good measure. He walked towards them and she wanted to move, to escape, but it was useless. Even if she didn’t have both of her legs broken, she couldn't have outrun the man. He leaned over them and when he started talking the words opened a door inside Johnny’s memory and a name arose, a name filled with rage, and hatred, and guilt: Arasaka.
“Fuck...” she exhaled, pushing on her arms in a helpless attempt to move.
“Silence.”
The Arasaka dog hit her behind her head, hard, and Johnny felt a pull in the middle of his chest and fell into darkness
Thunk, thunk, thunk
He didn’t know where he was. He had woken up in a slum, a few vague images of a chase, the fight against Arasaka's specialists, a doctor. And her fear, her pain, stinking up every corner of his conscience. He looked at the body, asleep. He didn’t know how they got here, who undressed her, what day it was. There was nothing inside him. He didn’t remember a goddamn thing.
Thunk, thunk, thunk
He did remember where he had been before all of this. The word Relic emerged in his conscience, filled with fear and helplessness, a suffocating sensation that spiked his restlessness. He remembered being caged there, endlessly, he remembered how he had nothing to cling to, no memory of his past, of what had happened to him. There was nothing. But it had felt like purgatory, an endless, numbed void. This? This was hell.
Thunk, thunk, thunk
At first, he had tried to run, to escape: he had a body, he could see his reflection on the glass, he could feel the fabric of his pants under his fingers. He had tried again and again and again, but every time he couldn't go beyond the door of this shithole. He had fled his prison only to be forced into another one. But here the realization of being on a leash was made perfectly clear by the presence of that woman. Her thoughts, her feelings, her sensation suffocated him, wave after wave, not giving him the time to emerge, to think.
He couldn’t even smoke.
Johnny looked at the body in the bed, dreaming of some bullshit desert he didn’t give a fuck about. She was small, even for a woman, lying on her side, arms close to her chest, like a baby. As she was now, she seemed no older than twenty-five maybe, her face calm, peaceful. He had the sudden urge to shake her like a puppet. She was so weak, pathetically exposed. Vulnerable. He clenched his jaw, as images of kicking her, hitting her, smashing her face against the wall, filled his mind.
She moved a little, maybe feeling his anger boiling like lava.
“Gotta get out of here, understand?”
She didn’t react. In a blink he glitched over her body, leaning in, so he could see her bloodied eyes.
“And I’ll kill anyone who gets in my way, you included.” He felt a spike of fear coming from her, then nothing more. She was gone again. “Fuck.”
Thunk, thunk, thunk
How could he even make those sounds against the glass?
She was lazily starting to wake up again and he hit the glass harder. “Need a smoke, where’d stash yours?”
He felt, in his fucking mind, her blinking once, twice, felt her confusion slipping into his conscience like a fog. He ground his teeth, feeling them creaking inside his mouth, and harder hit the glass behind him.
“Don’t... smoke,” she mumbled hoarsely, while trying to get up. She wasn't even capable of standing on her own two fucking legs.
“Then go out and get some. Just need one last time!”
She was so slow, looking dully at him like some goddamn fuckwit. She had a body, fuck, thanks to him, she had another shot at life. She could at least go and buy him a smoke.
Fear built inside her slow and steady. We all have a survival instinct.
“Fuckin’ fuck.”
She turned towards the door, in her mind forming some kind of plan involving a ripperdoc, and he was done.
He pushed her down, and it was easy, as easy as pushing a baby. It only spiked his rage. She turned, trying helplessly to escape, but there was none. For the first time in ages, Johnny felt in control again, adrenaline rushing through his veins, the intoxicating feeling of having someone at his mercy. It felt so damn good, it made his head spin. He was ready to punch her when he froze. She wasn't afraid. Or rather, she was terrified, but there was another expression on her face, one of pure satisfaction. And she wasn't trying to cover herself, to escape. No, her hand was behind her, closed into a fist, almost as if she was on the verge of—
He slowly looked at his hands and the body did the same.
“Fuck...” she breathed, but Johnny was too caught up in his own thoughts. Flashes of his death appeared before his eyes, Saburo, Soulkiller, the excruciating pain of slowly being erased. He moved his hand behind both his and the body head and her thoughts confirmed what he had feared.
“Fucking chip...” rage meeting the memory of his own helplessness “... rip the thing out myself!”
He pulled at the chip, hard.
“No!” She screamed before his vision blurred like old cable tv and all went dark.
“Fuck” Johnny growled, emerging again.
He couldn’t rip the damn thing out. The body was knocked out, again, lying there like a mannequin. Her mouth was slightly open and her face partially covered by her flaming hair. Again, she didn't even try to fight back, she just laid there, almost accepting her fate.
It should have been my body. I know what to do. I deserve it.
She seemed to come back again, weakly trying to get up and using the glass as support.
“I’ll take control.” He gripped her head and slammed it against the glass, hard. She tried to fight him, but she was too weak, and he held her head tighter by the hair. “I’ll find a way!” The second hit broke her skin, and he smiled as he saw blood. She was so pathetic. “You hear me?!”
He slammed her head again, feeling an echo of her pain in the back of his mind. But he didn’t stop. He rejoiced of the feeling of her head in his hand, of the little resistance she gave, of the sound of her forehead on the glass. He slammed her again and again until he realized she had fainted. Again. He let her head go with a groan, the echoes of her pain hitting him hard.
“I’m going to get out of here. I’m going to kill Saburo and the whole pack of those Arasaka dogs, and you will not be in my way!” he growled, gripping at his head.
He was going to find a way out. He had to. Flashes of his past filled his vision — or was it, his past? Did he see his friend die before him? Did he detonate that nuke on the Tower? Did he take a bullet to his head? Fuck, what the hell was happening? He needed to do something. He was going to fucking control that body and use it for the greater good. He needed to move, now, needed to call Rogue, maybe Saburo was still in Night City, and they could find him, maybe—
“See you never, asshole.”
She had something in her hand, some pills. Just like before with the memory of his death, in Johnny’s mind an image emerged, a man giving her those pills — these are omega blockers, should help you control the engram.
He just needed to think it, and the next second he just glitched before her from the other side of the room and tossed the bottle on the floor.
“Not like that.” He leaned on his knees to look her in the eyes. “Stick some iron in your throat and pull the trigger.” He slapped her to the floor.
Flashes of a road, a man laughing, her hands on the wheel, a stupid dog’s bobblehead figurine.
“I can feel it... our minds... touching....”
I don’t want your stupid pathetic memories.
“I’m like mold on fruit, creepin' into you.... nothing I can do about it....” He gripped his head, as her fear and pain crept into his conscience. “You hear me?! I’d puke if I fucking could”
This is just some stupid Arasaka shit. I’m not dead, not really.
“It’s just a copy of the engram — I’m out there somewhere... gotta be...”
The moment he realized she had taken the pill it was too late.
He loomed over her as she rolled on her back and — it surprised him so much he forgot for a split-second all his hatred — smiled.
“I’ll fucking kill you.”
Before he could reply, something gripped him right in the middle of his chest and pulled him into the void of the Relic.