Chapter Text
In one afternoon, V took down a netrunner ‘psycho in San Domo, won a boxing match against an Animal, and managed to cinch out a peaceful resolution between Claire and one grade-A corpo asshat.
Yet why is V still lying awake at night thinking of everything that happened before lunch even hit?
“Face it, V,” she heard Johnny say from the couch, blowing smoke out from a cig that never seemed to go out. “Shit’s just not gonna resolve itself.”
“I fucked up, I know. Johnny Silverhand always knows best,” she said, managing not to groan out as she closed her eyes. “Liz said not to. Did everything right there, didn’t I?”
“Did ya?” She heard him snort. “Didn’t know lying to the client was what made you Night City’s finest. Dexter DeShawn had you dead to rights.”
V shot straight up from her bed to shoot Johnny a glare, but he’d already fizzled out of existence.
Fucker, she thought viciously as she glared at the space he left behind, in the hopes that he’d come back to give her the real fight she was looking for the entire day.
Real mature, he replied back, laughing around that non-existent Yeheyuan. Sure showed Peralez, huh?
She sighed, flopping back down into her bed. V always wanted to shoot the damn thing out of his mouth, but was always too chicken to accidentally shoot a civ’s eye out in the process.
But here V lay: nothing to fight, nothing to investigate, nothing to wrap her hands around to just strangle the life out of. Sure, there were plenty other things to do in Night City. She could hunt Tygers for Ev’s BDs until she felt entitled enough to want Jude to come back. Fuck, Cap had been practically ringing her non-stop until she reinforced her no-holo policy unless it was a rescue op.
But V just thought.
Incapacitated Maelstrom bodies that she briefly left before she found their heads unplugged from their borg bodies. An invisible AV she couldn’t seem to hack for the life of her.
Made no fucking sense why someone who could spike her from a distance wouldn’t just kill her instead of the dozen other gonks she took down gently who then got eviscerated from an angel they heard from up high.
V sighed again, tossing and turning despite Nibbles’ quiet meows.
Stupid of her to think she was ever gonna forget the cold rush of red entering her vision, ice trickling down the back of her neck—a half hazy dream that only felt like deja vu—trying to cup Real Water that only ever seemed to spill from her hands. There was a buzzing in her fingertips that didn’t seem to leave no matter how hard she gripped the steering wheel of the Mackinaw, or punched the living daylights out of Rhino. Static television, dead but somehow calling.
Calling.
Calling.
Calling.
What did it want her to hear?
Carpe Noctem. Of course.
“Shit’s so on brand that it’s obviously a marketing scheme.” Johnny’s construct leaned against the wall of the elevator. “Think that Dorsett chick is onto something?”
V scoffed. “I think that if she fucks up a second time around, I won’t be able to save her.”
Johnny remained quiet the entire ride down, only to pop up again as they stepped back into the light of Night City. “V, they had seven versions of that Carpe Noctem shit.”
V’s lips pursed. “Yeah, thanks dipshit. Caught that too.”
“You don’t fucking get it, do you? Soulkiller had two and look where that fucking got us. Seven iterations of the brainwashing shit that’s got the Peralezes hooked up—“
“That’s enough,” she snapped. V swung a leg over her Kusanagi and clicked her goggles on. “We don’t hear shit, we don’t see shit, we don’t think shit. Capisce?”
His scowl was mighty enough to defy the tint of her goggles. “You’re a fucking pussy.”
“Johnny, we don’t even know who they are. They spiked us and sent us to the ground in half a second. I didn’t even feel the damn intrusion!”
“In a public place! That meeting spot had half a dozen buildings around it ‘cus Corpo Plaza was built by a bunch of self-important cunts with something to compensate for and you know it. Non-human or not, scale any bunch of those fuckers and you’ll be able to find them.”
V just revved her Kusanagi and headed south for Pacifica. Christ knows she didn’t need to think about the non-existent low-flying AVs she kept picking up from her fucked up audioreceptors. At least she didn’t have to hear them there.
V stared at the empty mattress by Misty’s Esoterica, her ears still ringing. She knew damn well that she was the one who shoved the NCPD runner up against the alley wall, and yet somehow she was the one feeling as if the air was punched out of her.
For the first time in a long time, she had to admit that Johnny was right.
Fucking finally.
Fuck you, she snarled back. You think that just because I don’t down half a bottle of pills every day that I still like you? That I’ve forgiven you?
Johnny went quiet, and half the dopamine that came from the Swedenborg-Riviera chase evaporated along with him.
V exhaled sharply with what little breath she had in her lungs. Samurai was a mistake. Kerry was a mistake.
She didn’t even bother saying hi to Misty; she just hopped on her bike and rode it straight to Kabuki Market. She hadn’t been in three days, sure, but fuck did she need this.
Most in Night City had braindances, V had this.
V knew to park her bike in the garage she klepped Sandra’s datapad from, stealing away past the boxers who always seemed to be going at it. Made her way to the one place she’d always find herself alone in.
Back in the day, one of the few things she invested while living in Mama Welles’ house was her own den—something she could come home to without anyone breathing down her back. Not even Nibbles. Never took a soul, never even imagined breathing a word about it to anybody. She’d punch in that code and find herself kicking up her boots to the grating sound of some shitty run of ads next door over.
But it was hers. There was a small niche of space in Night City that belonged solely to V. She didn’t need to hide away in a small cramped up weapon’s stash with clinical lighting for a small slice of peace (even if that apartment did have Nibbles in it).
Her fingers typed in 605185 like clockwork, and barely glanced at the choomba she flicked a few eds to for watching the damn thing. It opened and shut behind her as she rolled her shoulder, finding grace in the room barely lit by the red flash of servers and the neon Kiroshi sign. There, a netrunner chair was prepped for her, and an IV bag hung up in its stand for the days she barely remembered to feed herself.
These days, she barfed more than she managed to get down. It had only worsened after Johnny’s trip-induced blackout.
V sighed, rubbing a hand over her face as she tossed her goggles to the couch, unclasping her leather jacket so she could get at her arm.
Then paused.
There was a half-eaten sandwich by the computer.
The Malorian rang out, and Dante Caruso’s body fell right beside Bree Whitney’s.
Johnny’s tongue clicked as he sat atop the console. “Jesus, V.”
V tuned out his preaching, bending down to jack into Caruso’s socket. The data extracted from the Cynosure terminal was so recent that V barely had to skim his memories to find what she was looking for. Or more specifically: what Dante Caruso thought Militech would find useful enough to send back.
V hummed to herself as she stood up, knowing that she didn’t give the Militech agent enough time to delete anything on the terminal with her money request. Which was stupid from his end honestly, ‘cus she would’ve just stolen it off his corpse anyway. V reached through Johnny’s projection to wipe off his spattered blood to activate the data terminal once more.
Then she filtered. Sorted.
The dates were funky. She’d snagged a few datashards along the way, setting the active dates between 2013 to 2014. But the pre-Krash and post-Krash info had been all over the place, and V had only managed to catch a glimpse of a few e-mails in the office from when she was mine-clearing for Whitney. None of them had clear dates other than that one with the booking for Johnny’s 2013 concert.
Funnily enough, it was booked for October. V briefly wondered if he had that concert planned before or after Alt’s death.
“Careful,” Johnny warned.
V ignored him, trying to categorise different workers of Cynosure into pre-Krash and post-Krash. The new computer set up near the entrance was between Evan McRay and control. Probably team head, with a title like senior research specialist. 2068 to 2069 this time.
So Evan McRay, Lisa Smith. A Caesar Mijares was mentioned by Dante Caruso. Kevin Staff in Caruso’s shards. A few more to fill a skeleton crew, maybe, enough to take control of Site C.
If there was a Site D, then logic followed that there were at least four Cynosure sites. Unknown whether all were located in Pacifica, given that they had to fucking e-mail each other when they found Site C. Cynosure could be spread throughout Night City like a sprawling network of tunnels and caves. It wasn’t like Dogtown’s borders existed in 2013. Either way, a small team had to leave both because the war started up. Militech probably felt the pressure from Myers and pulled the project straight away when they heard they’d probably be landing troops in Pacifica. Maybe Midnight Storm was landed specifically in Pacifica for Cynosure but V waved that off as far too much conjecture. She was not named Garry.
But then Kevin Staff got shanked in 2070, hunted down by FIA in a bar downtown. That marked the beginning for the great Cynosure silencing.
V sighed, trying to ignore the fact that she probably should’ve started taking notes the moment she got dropped in Dogtown by Hands.
“Or, y’know, asked me.”
“Nobody’s asking you, Johnny.”
2068.09.25
2068.10.31
2068.11.11
Fifty days isn’t enough to make a dent in any research project, especially not in AI development. Just because the DataKrash happened in a day didn’t mean that Bartmoss wasn’t building up to it for years on end.
But shit gets real funky when you introduce the Blackwall into the mix.
V cracked her knuckles. She quickly made a copy of everything saved over from 2013 onwards and got to work decrypting what little she could. At the very least, maybe she could find where Site C was so she could bomb the living shit out of it.
She’d deal with Hands when she got to it. Fuck knows she was only giving it to him once she scraped off half the important shit.
Cold digital red flashed through the edges of her lenses, making her feel as if she had been spiked with a neurovirus. An unknown number rang through her holo, with a profile of a bird splayed out over the world.
“V? Can you hear me?”
Everything burned. Sent to her knees, her hands twitched from the overload. Yet throughout the numbness that filled the electric cold in her fingertips—stupidly, dumbly—she could hear it chanting.
V soldiered on through the tunnel, Myers at her heels. She had to stalk forward so that Myers couldn’t see the way she glanced at the entryway to Site D.
Solomon Reed said he’d call, yeah. But God knows if Myers had explored with what little time V used up to contact the guy. So V went straight down to the tunnel, half a dozen mollies, frags, and EMPs looted from Barghest airdrops strapped to her waist. If she could, she would’ve went back home to pick up a few more charges to detonate, but she didn’t want to risk it and wait for the FIA of all people to secure previously lost data. Blackwall data.
‘Atta girl, a voice echoed in her head. V couldn’t stop the smile that formed on her face.
Alarms blared all around, lights briefly red. V wondered how she could’ve been so blind to its traces when it’s all been she’s been able to think about for nights on end. The Blackwall felt so foreign, so unknowable that it could’ve only ever been one thing. There’s no world in which V doesn’t know the rush of an orgasm from the rush of a good kill. Why wasn’t able to tell this one?
The cold of the plunge, with the dissociation of her hands turning into code before her eyes. Pulsing and pushing, sentient but not living—all wanting to escape. V understands, intrinsically, what it’s like to want to become more. It’s the nature of an edgerunner. Of course she’d understand the desire to evolve, to devour greater kills, hunt faster prey.
V is both living and dead, human and code. The Blackwall neither fries her nor repels her. Ever so slowly, she’s turning into Johnny Silverhand, whose Relic version had only ever been machine despite dreaming of humanity.
V watched Reed walk away, ready to face the rest of the Voodoo Boys. She wondered if she’d see the Blackwall’s traces swallowing Slider’s eyes whole, if she just tilted his head back the slightest. She wondered what it would be like to plunge through its darkness.
That flash of red. Again. Cynosure. Again.
V remembered Songbird’s hand, barely skimming her face. She didn’t know how to distinguish the rush that came with it—the way she projected herself afterwards, still cupping V’s cheek despite having last walked away.
“Fuckin’ focus, will ya?” Johnny said, smoking another cig. He’d never changed from the tac vest ever since SF1. “Birdie says that the shit she wants to use got AIs from beyond the Blackwall and you're off moonin’ at her? Fuck’s sake.”
V huffed. The plasticky green suit she’d donned crinkled as she crossed her arms. “Least I figured out it was from Cynosure. Dunno which site Hansen picked it out from, doubt he’d let D go unsecured though. If it’s C he got it from, we’re toast.”
A curl of smoke came from the end of the Yeheyuan. “Shit ain’t gonna matter much though if Birdie likes keeping shit from you ‘till the end.”
V exhaled. “Like the Blackwall.”
“Yeah, that. And Cynosure.”
Lizzy floated up to the top of the Black Sapphire like somebody’s personal Jesus as V slotted in the shard.
“Yep,” Johnny said, popping the ‘p’. “Better buy some lotto ticks ‘cus you fuckin’ guessed it.”
“...Well, she’s been infected with something from beyond the Blackwall. A consequence of her service to the NUS and President Myers.”
But V’s already focusing on the shard’s info: Netwatch had a file ready and waiting for Songbird’s Blackwall breach. Breaches.
Fuck.
“The cure is an AI that ‘lives’ on a neural matrix,” Alex interrupted from across her, shard read-out shifting to the bunker ware. Cynosure was at the top corner. “Hansen possesses said matrix now. We aim to seize it.”
Funny how connection to the network was forbidden without Cynosure engineer supervision when more than half of them had their suicides framed by the FIA. Fuckin’ hypocrites, the lot of ‘em.
Wanna prod ‘em a bit?
V rolled her shoulders back. Sure, let’s see what they wanna hide. “So, this neural matrix—how much do we know?”
Alex scooted her seat, spinning forward to face her. “Experimental tech nested in a mainframe that someone dragged up from deep beneath Dogtown.” Alex paused, glancing slightly at Reed. “From a bunker, to be exact.”
V almost let out a sound, but held her breath.
“Part of Project Cynosure,” Alex continued. “A joint US-Militech operation mounted in a bid to counter Arasaka’s Soulkiller.”
And aren’t we familiar with that? Johnny’s voice echoed in her head. V would’ve genuinely been happy if Alex had stopped there. She was looking at Reed the entire time too. And yet…
“The matrix itself is a functional container. It houses an AI from beyond the Blackwall, and its design lets the user deploy the AI for a specific purpose—in our case, to fix you and Songbird.” Then Alex wheeled herself back, facing away from her, and left only Reed.
Reed started briefing on the twins, but V couldn’t get over the fact that Alex had just laid out Cynosure like that. As if it was nothing. The fact that the 2068 team was able to find something past the Blackwall and catch it all in fifty days, even after having to find Site C. Fuck, even confirmation that though Cynosure could’ve been made pre-2013, it came to form post-Arasaka Soulkiller. Post-Alt Cunningham kidnapping.
Things had been set in motion long before V could’ve had any say in it—before Myers. What the hell had Kress been planning?
Then it was, what, shut down post-Krash and Militech had to give up net superiority to Netwatch and Arasaka? Hah. Militech wouldn’t fund the ‘23 bombing for something as petty as that.
“All clear?” Reed asked. “If you have any questions, now’s the time to ask.”
Fuckkkkk.
Red streaked throughout V’s optics—glitching and bursting until V thought she was about to fry. She could no longer tell what was real and what wasn’t. Digital residue seeped through the walls and through the mainframe, and blasted her to the ground.
Everything went dark in the stadium.
The wind rushed past her, the stench of polluted sea having settled as the sky went dark. Pacifica could even be considered peaceful, at this time, lit only by burning refuse and muzzle flash. The gunshots resounding through the air were almost rhythmic. V understood why Hansen wanted to lay himself to rest here, near the stormchannel, though she thought Jago did well enough without the folk band.
But instead, V found herself at the edge of Dogtown and greater Pacifica. The coordinates she klepped from Site D pointed her to the general direction, and before Hands called, she’d been scouting the area for an entry point. And when she couldn’t find one…
“Damn,” Johnny whistled, framed by the giant smoldering hole left by the Behemoth. The wind that rushed through the gaping chasm whistled louder than he did. “Not one of the gonkest things you’ve done, but it’s up there. You do know you’re supposed to be hiding from the FIA, right?”
V took his place, stepping over the threshold. But Johnny, forever narcissist, teleported his form five steps in front of her. “Songbird asked you to lay low, so you decide to play hero and let the FIA get a heads up when you breach Cynosure.” He cocked his hip to the side. “Honestly, pull a fast one over Myers like that, and you might even come close to getting second place to ‘23.”
“This isn’t about Myers. Or Songbird.”
“Shit, you really are becoming like me.”
She clenched her fist, sirens rumbling through the air. A quickhack, and the Behemoth was backing out slowly, being directed straight into the sea. “‘M not expecting you to understand. Not about to ask you either.”
Nec plus ultra, it read.
V stepped into the clawing chaos.