Chapter Text
Three hundred-forty eight hours, twenty-seven minutes and sixteen seconds.
That’s just about how long it took for V to realize she fucked up, monumentally. V had made a lot of gonk decisions in her life; like the time she moved in with an ex boyfriend after the third date, or the time she broke up with him a month later by ignoring all his calls and texts. Like the time she got so wasted at the club with Jackie that she tried to kiss him and was so humiliated that she picked a fight with a bartender just to make him forget about it and got them both kicked out; or that time she lost all her money at the pachinko parlor and was eating scop burgers out the trash for a week between gigs and spent a very long night spent sleeping on the floor of her bathroom. And then there was the time she agreed to steal a valuable relic from one of the most powerful corporations in the world and got herself and her best friend killed — yea that one held the top spot for dumbest fucking decision, until now that is.
V was a lot of things; stubborn, impulsive, reckless, careless, overly optimistic at times, but not naive; at least that is not a word she would use to describe herself, but if something walks like a sheep and baas like a sheep, then it’s probably a sheep and when a sheep trusts a wolf they get bit, and V is beginning to realize just how much that fucking hurts.
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Two hours and twenty-nine minutes since she accepted Hanako’s offer and V is stumbling into the elevator of Arasaka Tower when white hot agony bursts behind her eyes, pain searing every neuron in her brain as sharp prickles travel down the expanse of her arms to the tips of her fingers. Her vision begins to blur, her surroundings distorting in a static haze as she tries to blink away the pain and steady her trembling legs, but the ground gives way beneath her and the world begins to fall away around her as she is engulfed in darkness.
It feels like only a brief moment before V’s feet find solid ground again, or something like it, as she finds herself surrounded by an endless expanse of nothingness, save for the cascading lines of code that flicker like stars in the distance. She turns to find the same blue lines stretching out in front of her before forming a pyramid like structure in the distance — Mikoshi.
Her feet carry her forward as she climbs the stairs of the pyramid, each step bringing her closer to her fate, her survival; a second chance at life. At the top of the stairs V finds a bright yellow light glaring at her like the gates of heaven, beckoning her forward; the silhouette of a man with his back to her awaits. Johnny. She recognizes him immediately, like recognizing her own reflection in a mirror.
“Johnny!” she calls out, but he doesn’t turn to her. She calls out his name again, taking another step towards him, and then another, until she finds herself running the rest of the way, reaching out to grab hold of him. “Johnny, I did it! Hanako, she’s gonna help me, just like she said,” she says and pulls him around to face her but falters at the last moment when she looks up to find a different face staring back at her.
“Jackie?” she chokes out as the eyes of her best friend bore into her, the eyes she remembers as kind and warm now cold and empty. The usual playful smile of his lips was replaced by a firm line. Red lines of code run down his face from his eyes and the corners of his mouth, like blood. Her stomach churns at the sight and she recoils. This wasn’t how it went.
“Who are you?” the digital shell of her best friend spoke, his tone flat, robotic. His face remained unchanged, stiff and lifeless like a wax replica.
“What? It's me, V,” she says, reaching a hesitant hand out to rest against his cheek, and somehow she believed she could actually feel the warmth of his skin, the roughness of the hint of stubble on his jaw. The feeling was subtle, muted, more like the memory of a feeling than something truly tangible.
“No,” he responded.
“What’re you talkin’ about Jack, it's me.”
“No,” he said again, louder this time as his expression distorted, shifting into something angry as his eyebrows pulled together and his lips pulled back into a deep scowl. “You’re a liar — a traitor!” he shouted at her but the voice was no longer his, but Johnny’s.
V flinched as she pulled her hand away from him. This isn't right, it wasn’t how it went. She backed away from him, only to meet a solid wall behind her before a pair of hands grabbed hold of her arms, the grip painfully tight as it held her in place.
“You let them cut me out, cut us out.” Johnny’s voice came from behind her now, his venomous tone scorching hot against her neck. V’s heart thrashed in her chest and she struggled against the hold on her, fighting to free herself. “What happened to loyalty, V?” he hissed, “You betrayed us, betrayed yourself.”
No. No, it wasn’t like that she thought to herself. She didn’t have a choice, what other options did she have? Even with Alts help she was as good as dead, but Hanako could save her — with her help she could walk away from all of this alive and wasn’t that the fucking point of all of this? Everything she did from the moment she woke up in Vik’s clinic after the heist was in an attempt to save herself. It was what Johnny wanted; he promised he would agree to be wiped, to give his life up for hers, but what kind of sacrifice would it have been if she still ended up dead? It was the smart decision, the logical one; a path led by reason, instead of her heart, because what her heart wanted she knew she could never have.
“Coward,” he hissed again. “You didn’t even try,” said as if he had read her thoughts.
V opened her mouth to protest but the words caught in her throat as she was freed from his grip before a force pushed her forward sending her to her knees, catching herself on trembling hands. The digital image of Johnny’s boots appeared before her and she peered up at him. Even from here, even in this vague digital form made up of code, V could see the pure hatred that swam in his eyes and she thinks if she could throw up in here she would.
“Johnny, please,” she said in a shaky breath, whispered like a prayer — pleading for forgiveness, for understanding. Johnny crouched down before her, his face only inches from hers, but V looked away, overcome with shame, unable to bring herself to meet his gaze.
“Go to hell, V,” he spat and V gasped as the solid surface beneath her disappeared and she was left falling, the lines of code around her ceasing until she was surrounded by a blanket of complete nothingness.
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Arasaka Orbital Station
2077
V woke with a startle as she blinked against the harsh fluorescent light of her room. The cheap disposable gown she has been in since she first awakened on the Arasaka Orbital Station clung to her sweat slick skin. A dull pain throbbed deep behind her eyes as she sat up in the bed. Her throat was painfully dry as she peeled her tongue from the roof of her mouth.
Nausea churned in her gut as her senses came back online, still a jumbled mess from her operation. She was tasting colors and seeing sounds and none of it made any sense.
“Shit, Johnny…feel fuckin’ sick,” she groaned out, struggling to swallow what little saliva her mouth was producing, only finding minimal relief, before realization sunk in and a tightness weighed down on her chest. Right, she thought. Johnny wasn’t in her head anymore, wasn’t waiting around to make a snarky comment in response. It had only been a day and half since the relic was removed and V has spent most of it asleep, only waking up sporadically from nightmares, calling out for Johnny but he never called back out for her; never would again.
V pressed her hand against her chest, digging the heel of her palm across as if to scrub away the discomfort that was burrowing into the hollow feeling left there, like a chunk missing from beneath her rips.
The door across the sterile white room groans as it slides open and a woman walks in. “Please get ready,” the woman says in greeting, crossing the room to meet V at the desk beside her bed. “Testing will begin shortly.”
“Testing? What testing?” V asks, warily, as she struggles to sit up in her bed. This was the longest she has been awake since arriving and her mind was still groggy, her muscles weak and her nerves still on high alert; the last thing she clearly remembers was fighting her way through Arasaka Tower, facing Adam Smasher, blood spilling from her side where a bullet buried itself deep into her tissue. V reaches down, her fingertips skimming the bandages wrapped tightly around her stomach. In the moment V was sure she would die for good then, was ready to give into the pain and exhaustion —- she’s doesn’t remember why she got back up.
“We must complete a series of tests. Please do not hinder or delay,” the woman responds before taking a seat at the desk, sliding the tablet in her hands into a slot at the desk before typing away. V opens her mouth to ask again exactly what kind of test they are doing. “Parietal lobe examination,” the woman answers before V has the chance to even ask. V closes her mouth and pulls her lips into a tight line. She wasn't sure what she had expected but something perhaps a little bit more hospitable; a simple good morning would have sufficed. “Please use your Kiroshi scanner and read the displayed text.” The woman looks up from the screen and gestures towards the TV screen mounted above her bed.
V sighed and looked towards the screen as lines of text appeared, using her Kiroshi’s to scan and zoom in for a closer look. She clears her throat before she repeats the words that appear on the screen. "And it was a sight to behold, he said, how a soul would choose its life. Sometimes pitiable, sometimes laughable, at times wonderful and strange..."
“That’s enough,” the woman cuts her off and the screen goes black. “Cognitive function test. Solve the cube.” V turns her attention back just as the woman shoves a Rubik's cube into her hand.
V turns the familiar toy in her hand, one she often played with as a child, but the colors are muted, all blending together until V isn’t sure she can tell the difference. But she has solved this puzzle a million times over and then some, she could probably do it with her eyes closed; it wasn’t really about the colors, it was about algorithm; a specific sequence of moves that will inevitably lead to the solution but when V wills her fingers to move, trying to remember which direction to start with she falters, she isn’t sure anymore. She turns it one way, and then another as she becomes less confident in her decision each time.
The woman reaches forward to grab the cube and V tightens her grasp on it for just a moment before she reluctantly releases the toy from her hands.
“Please link yourself to the device,” she says and turns back to the screen once more. V pulls the personal link from her wrist, plugging in into the port on the side of the device “Higher-order representation formation - initiating test. The patient is ready to be examined.”
“What's this thingamajig for anyways? What exactly are you guys testing?”
“Initiate device calibration,” the woman responds, ignoring V’s questions. “Respond to the keywords - no thinking, just the first word that comes to mind.”
V shallows thickly and nods. She doesn’t appreciate the fact the woman refuses to answer any of her questions, but she can only assume these tests are related to her operation, to see how she is recovering, and the sooner she gets it over with the sooner they can tell her she is fine and she can go back home.
“Journey,” the woman says.
V’s mind scrambles for an answer, not sure what to say as various words scatter around in her mind. What’s the right thing to say?
“Please respond to the keyword - the first word that comes to mind,” the woman repeats. “Journey.”
“Odyssey?” V says in a questioning tone. The woman doesn’t say anything, just continues to type on the computer. V shifts uncomfortably, flexing her clammy hands in her lap and keeps her eyes fixed on them.
“Home.”
“Night City,” V responds.
“Enemy.”
“Arasaka,” she blurts out the first word that comes to mind, like instructed, but cringes the moment the word leaves her mouth. She glances over at the woman, expecting some sort of reaction but she is met with the same emotionless expression focused on the screen.
“Principle,” the woman gives the next keywords.
“I- I dunno,” she mumbles out, the tightness in her chest becoming more uncomfortable.
“Betrayal.”
“Johnny,” V breathes out and suddenly the discomfort in her chest becomes a sharp pain, like a knife digging deep into her flesh, and the walls begin to close in on her. Her body tenses as every instinct in her body is urging her to get up and flee.
“The heat has made your mouth dry and sticky… newborn field mice around their mother…Your mouth begins to water…” The sound of the woman’s voice is drowned out by the rapid beating of V’s heart in her chest. Her head feels too heavy for her neck and she can’t seem to understand anything the woman is saying. Her words sound jumbled and foreign as they echo heavy in her ears.
“Enough, I don’t want to do this anymore,” V chokes out as she pulls her link from the port.
“Hmm. Yes. Right,” the woman says as she finishes typing, pulling her tablet out from the slot and rising from the chair. “Measurement complete.” V lets out a sigh of relief as her muscles begin to relax.
“So, how’d I do?” V asks, hopefully. The woman says nothing, as expected and walks over to a treadmill tucked into the corner of the room. V gets up from her bed with a sigh and walks over, obeying the woman’s request to link in for another test. Pain continued to throb between her eyes and her limbs ache with exhaustion.
V stepped up on the treadmill, turning it on and beginning to walk at a slow pace, keeping a hold of the handles at each of her sides. She kept her gaze focused on the wall in front of her, taking a heavy breath as an ache blooms in her side.
“Please control your breathing,” the woman says and V didn’t even realize she was practically wheezing as she struggled to fight air into her lungs. “Accelerate by three,” she says and V does, swallowing thickly as her legs work to keep up with the track below her, trying to inhale deeply through her nose, but before she knows it her legs are giving out from under her and she is falling off the back of the treadmill.
Pain explodes in the side of V’s head as she feels it make contact with something solid before the rest of her body follows her to the floor and the room finally closes in on her. She groans, her head lulling to the side as a pair of leather boots approach her while spots dance in her vision. She tries to look up, tries to get a hold of herself but gravity grip her tightly, like every limb in her body weighs a ton.
“Gotta get out here, V. I’m waiting,” Johnny’s voice echoes in her mind, his words the last thing V thinks she can hear before her vision goes black.
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