Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

All of Pacifica was bright; here, the machines that the corpos used to make their hot desert city regularly rain were shut off, monitored by the people who owned them to make sure that no one in the abandoned district could benefit from the free rainfall (not that it was much use to collect it in bulk, as most of their water purifiers were small-load). Once in a while they would turn them on in an attempt to flood the rebels out, but Pacificans were as stubborn as they were resourceful: rain or shine, they would be out about their business, up to their ankles in water or carrying newspapers and umbrellas over their heads to block out the harsh, unyielding sunlight while just one district over the clouds gathered for yet more rain.

"This almost feels nostalgic, V," Johnny said, sprawled out on a stone bench too hot for anyone corporeal to sit on. Evidently the corpos—and it'd been so long she couldn't even place who technically owned them now—had chosen drought lately, and V sweltered even in her thin black bralette. Badlands had nothing on the winding and blinding paths of concrete and steel when it got hot. "You holding out on me?"

"You said you seen my memories," she argued. "At the very least you've heard me talk. I'm fairly certain even you could put together that I'm Pacifican."

"Sure, but then why the hell is your apartment in Northside? Wasn't under the impression your type travelled much."

"Careful now…" she warned. If he wanted to talk types, she'd happily talk types with him. He was a walking, talking personality; she could win that argument no problem. Tough women who care enough to try and fix your shit? Men who worship you, are a little afraid of you? Whatever vice you can get your hands on, whether or not you actually enjoy it? Dad rock from last century? "And it's...complicated."

"More complicated than the rockstar in your brain?" he prodded, and she rolled her eyes.

"The only thing complicated about us, Johnny, is the neuroscience. If you gotta know, I went from VDB netrunner to ripperdoc, and certain...players, in the gang, felt that I offered my services too generously. I left to avoid setting off the powder keg that my clinic had become." It hadn't been everyone—the majority of the community had been happy to not have to step aside for the VDBs when it came to healthcare—but Placide loomed like a giant in her life and still in her heart, despite everything; she could no more avoid him on his own turf than she could avoid high tide nipping at the foundations of her clinic, especially when he took no special pains to avoid her.

In chilly silence he'd show up with some meat, a little produce from the greenhouses, a firmware update...but no words. In this isolation, she'd met Jackie (who staggered into her clinic, bleeding and laughing so hard she'd thought he'd hit his head), and he'd introduced her to Vik, and from there...well, it'd been the nail in the coffin for her and Placide, and she'd moved to where a ripperdoc was worth her weight in gold: to the Maelstrom.

Not even an email from her home on what felt like the other side of the world, from the moment the ennies left her account for her first rent payment.

And now here she was again, back as a stranger. It'd been easier to miss home while she was too far away to remember all the fights her and Placide had while she tried to convince him that working with 'borgs didn't make her one, and even if it did (even if he caught her exchanging friendly emails with Dum Dum or Brick, even if they sent some guys down to Pacifica with materials and guards) then it didn't make her any less loyal.

Placide suffered from what many of the VDBs suffered from, though: a lifetime of trauma, passed down and down and down from parents to children and down further still. Haiti loomed in the minds of great-grandchildren who'd never seen it, and the throat stopped, choked with fury still about the corpo rats who'd left their stranded and vulnerable ancestors, the builders and designers of Pacifica, to their own devices next to the churning sea once it became clear to their spreadsheets and bank accounts that the mall wouldn't turn a profit soon enough to bother finishing it.

No one in the city knew them, understood them, and they all resented them for having done what they couldn't and exiling the corpos for good...what could easily be pride and determination turned into isolationism and suspicion, and there were more than a few noisy pricks who were happy to shut out the world and make everyone else do the same: isolationism disguised itself as loyalty, suspicion as caution. Placide felt her pulling away, even as she was tightening her grip.

"Even your tragic backstory is boring, V. Have I taught you nothing about showmanship?"

"Self-delusion, maybe."

"Don't be a cunt."

"Then stop being a dick." He flipped her off and she ignored him, stepping through his projection because she knew it annoyed him.

"Let's just get this fucking show on the road. You got some kind of plan?"

"Some kinda one," she murmured back, her eyes scanning the horizon.

Johnny materialized at her side to scan with her: absently, she wondered what he saw. He tasted what she tasted, felt pain that she felt: even if it was on a delay, could he see what she saw? Or did he have his own visual input? She refrained from asking, though, as the answer would probably depress both of them: they didn't need any more mindfucks. "Looks like something's going on at that big ugly church."

"Always something going on. That's what it's for." Not like those awful Valentino churches that Jackie and Mama had brought her to every now and again, all dark and looming, making her feel like if she breathed too loudly then an angry god would break all the windows. The chapel in Pacifica was built to both let in the sun and forbid it as necessary, and judging by the crowd...the windows would be shuttered for a funeral.

Who died? It was likely no one would tell her, whether or not they recognised her; if it was a VDB, they would be protective of their identity even in death (maybe especially so, given what Arasaka was capable of), and if it wasn't then it was no one's business but their own. The people out front wept, though, and held each other in a way that V'd craved since the moment Johnny's smashed her head against the window in her apartment.

"Let's get this over with, then." Johnny disappeared, evidently sensing that she'd already decided to check out the chapel. She crossed the scorching concrete, stepping around a kid with a broken down drone.

"Hey—you a 'runner?" the little girl asked, her braids swinging in the sunlight. Evidently the funeral didn't concern her much.

"Yeah. What's up?"

"I already scrubbed the drone, but it's not turning on," she said, seething with frustration. V ran a quick scan.

"Militech. You gotta have Maelstrom tech to scrub it without the failsafes blowing a fuse," she explained, gesturing to the interior panel laid bare to the sun with her cyberarms' tapered nails. There was a subtle but noticeable scorch mark, partially obscured by a bundle of cables. "Swap out for a generic motherboard and some third party 'soft."

She whistled between the gap in her teeth, diving back into the guts of the thing with her box of mismatched tools. "Thanks."

"No problem; hey, you know who died?" she asked, and the girl glanced at her uncertainly. No doubt she'd only approached V because of the familiar accent, but anyone from Pacifica wouldn't have to ask. "I've been away a while," she explained, and combined with her help on the drone, that seemed to satisfy the kid.

"Granpapa Michel," she said, and V's heart sank.

"You know him?" Johnny asked, appearing purposefully away from the kid as if to herd her towards her goal.

"Everyone knows Michel. He was the last of us from Haiti," she told him, the news sitting like a rock in her gut. If Michel is gone, that means Brigitte's in charge. She'd been acting leader of the VDBs since Michel got too frail to run, 'Net or otherwise, but her ascension boded poorly for V's work here. Michel would have the VBDs work for her regardless, but Brigitte was single-mindedly focused on ops. If V wasn't useful to her, then she wouldn't spare the resources.

Come to think, that explained who Evelyn had met with.

"What does this mean for us?" Johnny asked, his demeanour not improving in the face of her grief. She didn't know what had possessed her to expect anything different from him.

"Valere?" A man stuttered to a halt in the doorway of the chapel, causing a pile-up of attendees until he quickly staggered out of their way. "Shit, are you my contact?"

No was poised on the tip of her tongue, but Johnny shook his head. "You got a better plan than this V? Play along."

"Depends on who you're shilling for," she said vaguely, folding her arms over her chest. She recognised him now: James had been a low level VDB, signed up at the same time as her and Placide. He never went far, but he'd never expressed any particular desire to; he was perpetually happy to play middleman and not have to risk his brain in the 'Net or his guts in the streets.

"Placide's gunna be pissed off when he finds out Mr. Hands sent you," he said with a shake of his head, not even bothering to answer her unspoken question. Of course he still shilled for the Boys; there was no other game in town. "What are you soloing for?"

"Placide's hiring mercs?" she asked skeptically, trying to suppress her suddenly-fluttering heart at the mention of her ex. He didn't comment on how she'd sidestepped the question about her solo work: it wasn't any of James' business how she'd formally parted ways with Maelstrom after Royce's coup, nor what that'd done to her bank account.

"Hey, don't ask me. I'm just here to shepherd: go to the butcher. He'll be there waiting, but he won't be happy."

"Is he ever?" It was cruel to say, because she knew better than all of them that he could be. Another problem with Brigitte's leadership: she would have already split the Boys into 'runners and everyone else. If Placide had stayed on course, he'd be just behind in her in rank...but her leadership wouldn't distinguish between him and street fodder, if only because he didn't ride the chairs.

So, she wasn't going to catch him in a good mood.

She didn't bother to say goodbye to James, leading herself and Johnny back down into the squat rows of shops taken up residence in abandoned corporate strip malls. "So, what's up with this Placide guy?" Johnny asked, falling into step beside her.

"Nothing," she said immediately, which only tipped him off to the fact that it was definitely something. "You seen my memories. You should know."

"You know, it's not often that memories come with an encyclopedia of all the shit you know. Maybe I seen him, maybe I didn't." She noted that once again, he claimed to have seen her memories but didn't elaborate as to what he saw. She wondered why: they had to pull over and have a heart to heart every time she saw him light a cigarette in 2020, but she didn't even know what he knew about her.

"Well, ask after you see him then." She didn't feel like getting into it with him. Wasn't like he was giving her the rundown about Rogue, and he kept mentioning some 'runner named Alt—Johnny Silverhand really didn't seem the type of man who kept the company of women he wasn't, at least at some point, fucking. Dick must be insane, she decided, laughing faintly to herself as she stepped into the butcher shop.

Sitting inside in a peeling old diner chair was James' mother, whose eyebrows shot into her hairline once her eyes fell on V. "Valere?" she exclaimed, casting an uncertain look at James' older brother, Marc. He was the butcher—had been for just short of eternity, and V was grateful for that amount of consistency in her homecoming.

"In the flesh. James sent me to see Placide," she explained, careful not to let on how little she actually knew about the assignment. The two exchanged looks again.

"I don't know that that's such a good idea, cheri mwen," she said gently, speaking over Marc who clearly wanted to just tell her to get out. "It's been hard, since Michel died."

"He hired a merc," she insisted, swallowing down the kid inside her that wilted at the idea of an argument with an adult. "It isn't a big deal."

"Bullshit," Marc snapped.

"Marc!" his mother hissed. "But he's right, Valere. Now is a bad time: you tell your fixer that he requested someone else, and give him my number. I'll make excuses for you, and no one will be the wiser."

Her gut grew cold: she didn't want this anymore than they did, but if Placide slipped through her fingers then she had no chance in hell of catching Brigitte. "Ma'am, it is…very important that I see him. It'll be fine."

Silence rang through the shop, until Marc reached up to tap the lip of a worn out scanner. "Look into the camera. Thought you ran off to be a ripper."

"I did," she said, her eyes focused on the machine. Could he see her? Surely not, or else he'd've already told Marc to send her away.

"Lotta rippers doing merc work in the city?"

"You worried about me?" she asked harshly, turning away with her face hot. "I gotta do it, for now. Not a big deal." There was no time to explain that everything in the city cost money that nobody had, least of all her...but by not explaining it, she knew what they were both thinking. Did I fail? Was all this for nothing?

"You say not a big deal a lot for someone who's about to level the block. He's downstairs: find Junior, and he'll take you there."

"Mèsi. Good to see you, ma'am."

"Wish I could say the same, beloved."

V rushed into the back, at the very least desperate to be away from their searching eyes and suddenly very grateful that she'd decided against actually attending Michel's funeral. If two familiar faces levelled me, they'd have to bury me beside the old goat if I'd dared go inside, she thought grimly.

"So, you were definitely fucking this guy." Johnny said, leaning against a wall just ahead of her.

"You're a genius, Silverhand."

"You sleep around a lot?" he asked, like he was genuinely curious.

"What the fuck kind of question is that?!" she snapped out loud, hoping that Junior was at least working a meat grinder or something else too loud to hear her over.

"Only saw one sex scene, so if you were only fucking him then I know who to expect."

"Does it even matter? Is you recognising him going to make a huge amount of difference?" she hissed.

"So no, you haven't had much sex and all." And he looked smug, like he was fucking Sherlock Holmes doing some excellent fucking deduction. He was right, but it annoyed her that he was assuming that he was right because she didn't want to give him her sex-resume and not because he'd only seen her fuck one guy while he was coasting through her brain. "Coulda guessed that."

"Shut the fuck up Johnny." She turned the corner (through him, again) and nearly bumped into Junior, who was all dressed and made-up to work the meat grinders, like a Valentino with less gold-plating. His eyes bugged out of his head when he saw her, and he quickly dropped the stack of trays he was holding.

"Are you nuts?" he asked, and she frowned.

"Don't fucking talk to me like that."

"You're not my babysitter anymore, Val, I'll say whatever I want. What the hell are you doing here?" He cast an uneasy glance back, deeper into the warehouse, and she tensed. He's back there. She could see his broad shoulders moving behind the plastic, distorted and shaded like a dream.

"He hired a merc," she repeated helplessly. Every time she said it, it felt more and more flimsy: what would she say if anyone asked her for details? Doesn't matter now, she thought firmly, trying to control the trembling of her hands. I just need to see Placide.

"He didn't mean to hire you," Junior emphasized, and she scowled.

"Don't you think I fucking know that?"

"Then go." He said it like it was the most natural thing in the world, but V'd made it this far already and she needed to speak with Brigitte. Even if Placide wanted nothing to do with her, she was going to get an audience with Brigitte, whether the new head of the gang wanted to see her or not.

"You said it, not me," she said, smiling sweetly and slipping past him.

"Valere!" He hissed it as quietly as he could, but from behind the plastic she could see Placide freeze. He didn't turn, as if ignoring her could make her vanish, all the way until she slipped past the curtain and saw him plainly.

He looked tired, which was an easy observation. The gang'd been restructured, it was possible he had new responsibilities, and the black armband told her that Michel's funeral hadn't been a drawn out thing: everyone, including him, was still in mourning. It was telling that during the funeral he was down here with a plucked bird, brooding in the dark: and now that he'd seen her, he stood stock still with the butcher knife clenched in his fist like he wasn't sure what he'd been doing moments before. "Hey," she offered softly, and he nodded his head. "I'm sorry to hear about Michel."

Another nod.

"Placide, you have to speak to me," she said, trying not to get frustrated this early into the conversation.

"No, I don't," he ground out.

Ouch. She smiled and nudged his shoulder, barely budging him from his rigor mortis. "Gotcha." He didn't seem to think it was very funny, but she also noticed he avoided her eye altogether now, so maybe she wasn't completely out of her element.

"What are you doing here?"

"You hired a merc." It sounded lame now.

"You are a ripper, not a merc."

"You know, I'm almost tired of hearing that. I'm here now, aren't I?"

"If your clinic didn't work out, why didn't you come home?" he asked shortly. Good question. After the Maelstrom coup, she'd still worked with some of the gang who were willing to pay for her services on their own. It wasn't the same as having a Maelstrom contract, though, and she refused to work with Royce who was, in her opinion, no better than a monster. Coups happened, she knew, and the inner workings of the gang were none of her business. Brick hadn't been a saint and she still liked a lot of active members, but there was something just a bridge too far about Royce.

That didn't answer his question, though. The pure and simple truth was that by then she was afraid that she would start to resent her home by returning because she had to: it was easier to just struggle to keep her hands on the motel where she was holed up, grit her teeth, and start working with Jackie. She wasn't much use in a direct fight, so she put Jack back together when he hit the ground and tried to stay out of sight, uploading quick hacks faster than her last-gen hardware could refresh.

"Lots has happened since then," she said, instead of that. "I'm here to talk about that."

"Thought you were here for work." Shit.

"You got me: James pinged me and I lied. I had to see you."

"You seen me. Go now." He also muttered something unflattering about James, who V actually felt a little bad for exposing. It was sloppy work, but it wasn't like he'd handed the job over to some 6th Street fucker who wandered into town. Despite everything, she was still one of them.

"I can't, Placide. I need your help."

"Get that big Valentino you left with to help you," he snapped, and her teeth clacked together with the force of her jaw clenching: wisely, her former lover wavered almost as soon as the words left his mouth.

"Jackie Welles kept me off the streets of Night City out of the goodness of his fucking heart, and I held his hand while he bled out in the back of a fucking cab. Don't you ever, Placide, speak bad of him to me," she all but growled, making eye contact if only because she knew he didn't like it. He deserved that little discomfort for his petty jealousy of a man who'd never even considered him a rival.

"Fine. Sorry. Didn't know the gonk anyway," he groused. "Didn't know he died."

"He did. That's...part of why I'm here, I guess. It's the start of a sad story."

"Go on," he said, but she shook her head.

"Later. Right now I have to talk to Brigitte." She did her best to say so confidently, even though asking for the acting head of the Boys at any given moment was monumental, and she imagined more so now that they obviously had something big brewing behind the scenes.

"Can't," Placide said shortly, starting to butcher the bird again just to have something to do with his hands.

"Konpeki Plaza ring a bell?" she asked, heaving out a sigh. "Evelyn Parker?"

"Not one of us."

"Clearly, since you fucking fried her." There'd been dull horror in her gut when she realised what'd begun the rapid degeneration of Ms. Parker. She was supposed to have died, V knew; no matter how much the VDBs disliked having to hire out at all, let alone when those hires went and fucked all their plans, they would hardly orchestrate what happened afterwards. Evelyn wasn't meant to survive was some cold fucking comfort, however, at the end of all things, and so V hadn't said it to Judy as she'd bawled into the heels of her palms.

"I didn't do shit. Never heard of her," he insisted, his eyes not leaving the chicken on the table. "Heard of Konpeki Plaza, but don't know what it's got to do with us."

"Don't be coy, Placide: me and Jack were the mercs Evelyn hired to klep the chip. I know everything." Bizarrely, that was when he turned to look at her, his dark eyes drinking her in like he'd finally given up and dove headfirst into her. There was hurt in his face, and maybe relief: or she could've been imagining that he was that happy to see her alive after all this time.

"Do you?"

"I know a lot," she amended. "And I want to know more. I have the chip Brigitte wants, and I need her help to get it out of me."

"Can't," he repeated, averting his gaze.

"Please, Placide. She wants it and it's killing me."

"You never seemed real concerned with what the VDBs wanted," he said, and she wondered if he was teasing her or really just angry that her goal of a public clinic had ended with her working for another gang. "You can't want to please her that bad."

"No, Placide, it's not killing me that I have it and she wants it: the chip is killing me. I'm dying." His knife clattered to the table and he turned, scowling at her. "It's a long story."

His jaw clenched and unclenched, and then he quickly reached out to wrap the bird in newspaper. "Follow me. You can tell me somewhere with no eavesdroppers," he said, his eyes sliding to Junior who was studiously pretending to work. She gnawed at the nail of her cyberarms, sure now that he would dart upstairs as soon as she was gone to tell his mother and brother about how Valere was dying and had come to see Placide about it. "We'll go out the back," he said, eyeing her face.

"Mm." She knew the way, and followed him out into the hot sun. Someone had a tinny radio playing, and a gaggle of kids had abandoned their jump ropes in favour of fanning each other in the shade. "How long has it been since it rained?" she asked, and he shrugged heavily.

"Haven't checked: been busy since Michel died." That was unlike him: Placide made it far in the VDBs if only because he was well liked and conscientious, taking care of the community beyond the data fortresses of Agwe. It was why she'd long suspected that he'd been talked in to thinking that her clinic was a bad thing; he of all people should've understood what she was trying to do, but clearly someone had poured poison in his ear before she could explain herself.

She wasn't above suspecting Brigitte.

"I need to stop at Grann Ertha's," he said, holding up the packaged chicken.

"How's she holding up?" V asked habitually, and he shrugged.

"Been hard since Michel died. Not everyone's happy Brigitte took over."

He said it in just such a way that it felt like old times, back when he was still willing to tell her what he was thinking. "Are you?"

"Not your biz." Ah. Not quite like old times, or at least more like the recent old times. As much as things changed, though, obviously some things had stayed the same. People called out to Placide as he passed, and he waved them off: she couldn't help but notice that a lot of them gawked at her too, even people she didn't recognise. "Grann Ertha!"

"Placide—and Valere!" Her eyes widened and V smiled awkwardly.

"Hello; I'm sorry to hear about Michel." Ertha had cared for her father even after the VDBs had all but moved on; V couldn't imagine what it'd been like even later in his life, as it seemed unimaginably painful even when she'd been around.

"Thank-you. May I ask what you're doing home?" For once, the question didn't sound like an accusation.

"I need to see Brigitte," she admitted, and Ertha's lips pursed.

"Ah. I see." V felt the bizarre need to justify herself, but Placide interrupted them by placing the wrapped chicken in front of her and her face softened. "Oh, cheri mwen, you shouldn't have. There are others who need it more."

"I'll get to them," Placide said, gentle but firm. "This one is yours. I won't take no for an answer."

"If you insist, and...how are you?" Her eyes didn't slip over to where V was standing, but the glance was definitely implied.

"Ask me in an hour." With that he stepped back and gestured for V to continue to follow him. She nodded quickly to Ertha and then darted after his lumbering form, frowning. Is he limping? With every passing second she was dreading her meeting with Brigitte more and more, but she had to keep reminding herself that this was bigger than her and Placide. Her life was at stake: she could return to her concern that the VDBs weren't treating Placide well when there was something she could do about it without burning out on the pavement.

He led her through Batty's, even his occasional comments petering out as they made their way through the guarded hallways of the upstairs offices. It wasn't until she was seated in front of his desk that he finally looked at her again, his expression unreadable. "You said you are dying."

"Yeah. Died once already, actually." He tried his hardest not to react, but frowned anyway.

"You look pretty good for a dead girl."

"Don't feel as good as I look."

Johnny materialised behind him, watching the back of his head with a disturbing amount of concentration. "This is definitely the guy I watched you fuck," he announced.

Would you fuck off? "So, I said already that Jackie and I were the mercs that Evelyn Parker hired to klep the chip from Konpeki; except it went wrong, obviously."

"Was that the night the old man died?" he asked, and she nodded. "H'm...thought so. Medias didn't know what to report, so all of them waited for scripts from the corps."

"I missed coverage. I told you that Jackie bled out...he died that night. Chip had to be inserted in my head or else it was gunna fizzle out, and when I went to report the job done to the fixer...he uh, shot me in the head."

"He what?"

"Yeah. Flatlined me and threw my corpse in the dump."

"Which fixer?" he asked, his eyes glowing a dark amber colour. She smiled faintly.

"Does it matter?"

"Which fixer, Valere?"

"Dexter DeShawn. He died trying to turn my twitching corpse in to Arasaka."

"Good," he whispered, his eyes returning to normal. "Good."

"Mm...maybe. Would've liked to handle it myself, but I wasn't in a fit state to stand then. See, the bullet went through the port with the chip in it. That jolted me back to life, but the chip had already started to work while I was dead: it's overwriting my neural net, replacing me with Johnny Silverhand."

"From Samurai?" he asked, confused. Johnny straightened.

"Big dick and good taste. If you're looking to get laid again, I could sit through a few more rounds with this one."

"Johnny!" she snapped, out loud. Placide stared at her. "Yes. From Samurai. Sorry, I...he's a construct, right?" She shrugged and he nodded, glancing around the room. It was comforting: where Viktor saw a decaying neural state and Misty saw fate binding two souls together, Placide saw a piece of technology doing its job. "He likes you," she said, an unfamiliar desperation welling up in her stomach. There were precious few people so far that she'd been able to really share Johnny with; somehow she wanted it almost as much as she wanted the hug.

"Oh?"

"Yeah. You're one of the first people we've encountered who hasn't called him a terrorist."

"Mm. Don't care about corpo towers; no skin off my nose."

Johnny nodded, then looked at V. "You didn't tell him the dick thing. Don't editorialize."

I'm not telling him the dick thing you fucking gonk.

"So, the chip is overwriting you?" he asked, fighting to keep the expression off his face.

"Yeah. Need to see Brigitte: have to show her the chip and get her to take it out without killing me." Nothing too hard. The difficult part was going to be ascertaining what she wanted with Johnny, and to keep her from going too far if it wasn't something that either of them could live with.

"What makes you think Brigitte wants it?" he asked, and she frowned.

"Because of Evelyn Parker."

"Don't know who that is." This time when he said it, it sounded less like an insult he would level at any man, woman, or enby who was stupid enough to not live in Pacifica; and it occurred to her for the very first time that Placide hadn't been present in any of the scrolled footage from Evelyn's brain. He hadn't even been on the phone.

Did he not know?

"Brigitte hired Evelyn Parker, a doll from one of the sex clubs in the city, to scroll footage of the inside of Yorinobu Arasaka's penthouse in Konpeki Plaza. Brigitte wanted to know where the chip—the Relic, Johnny—was. Evelyn got her the footage, but then went behind her back to hire a fixer and two mercs to steal it out from under everyone. She wanted to sell it to NetWatch." With every word, Placide's face grew more stormy. When she finished on NetWatch, his jaw clenched.

"You and the Valentino were those mercs?" he asked, and she nodded. "H'm."

"Did Brigitte not—"

"No. Clearly not." He avoided her eyes and she gnawed on her nails again. "Fuck. What the hell would she want with Silverhand?"

"I can tell you what women usually want with me," Johnny said with a leer, and she rolled her eyes. Placide frowned and she held up her hands.

"Sorry, Johnny again. It gets easier to respond to him when people don't think I'm a cyberpsycho for doing it." Placide nodded, then held out his hand.

"Here. Let's link." He took her personal before she could really examine the potential consequences, jacking her in to Agwe for what felt like the first time in ages. The familiar layout, the rush of data, even the faint jolt it sent up the wire...all of it was enough to make her eyes fill with tears. She tried to discretely wipe them away while he set up the connection, and then she could hear his voice rumble through her tech like thunder. "There. Look at Silverhand." Her eyes travelled up and Placide nodded. "I see."

"You do?"

"He does?" Johnny narrowed his eyes and moved to crouch in front of Placide, waving his hand.

"I do. Hear, too." Johnny kept trying to make him blink or follow him with his eyes, and eventually V shook her head.

"Johnny, he's seeing you through my eyes. He can't see you from his own perspective."

He sat back on his heels, still focused on Placide's face. "Trippy."

"Mm. What happens if you overwrite Valere's brain?" he asked, and Johnny shrugged.

"Dunno. Her ripper says that instead of V in there it'll be me, but I fucking doubt there's a lot of precedent for this. Could be we both fucking bite it and her brain shorts out altogether." Then, after a moment of contemplation, Johnny snickered. "I could get used to having someone to talk to besides V."

"Nothing wrong with her," Placide said, despite the memories Johnny had surely seen of them fighting. Towards the end, there'd been more of that than fucking. "Get out of her brain if you don't like it."

"Ain't you VB types supposed to be tech junkies? What makes you think I'm in here willingly?" He stood and lit an imaginary cigarette, his fists tightening in frustration. "Don't want her body. It's too much of a hassle, and I'm pretty fucking attached to having a dick."

"What will you do, if you take over?" he demanded, and V impulsively reached out to squeeze his hand.

"You're bumming me out, Placide," she scolded.

"Answer," he said gruffly, squeezing back.

"I don't fucking know. Probably go finish what I started with Arasaka." Placide huffed and shut his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Doesn't matter, though—take her back there to see the scary motherfucker that hired the doll and we don't gotta worry about how I'm gunna use your girl."

"You came at the worst fucking time," he ground out from between his teeth. "Brigitte can't see you."

"Why the hell not?" Panic rose in her and Johnny reached out to squeeze her shoulder: a gesture that made Placide flinch.

"She's not here. Come." He stood again and led her into the server room, where it became very obvious what the problem was. Jean-Luc bounced between the twitching bodies of Brigitte and Ti Neptune, both of them sweating with their eyes rolled back in their head.

"They were burned?" she hissed, but as she said it Jean-Luc—some young gun who'd signed on after them, notable if only for how fucking agreeable he was that you almost felt bad to give him an order—took hypo of coolant and slammed it into Ti Neptune.

"They're alive, but trapped in ICE...NetWatch ICE."

"From where?" The NetPigs weren't supposed to be able to touch Agwe, but had managed to, at minimum, catch the two 'runners as they travelled between networks.

"We think it's the Grand Imperial Mall: we checked the security feed. A van stealthed inside and then an hour later the place was flooded with Animals." Then, awkwardly, he nodded. "I hired a merc because I needed a honeypot."

"Merc either jacks in to the NetPig to kill him, or connects with him to collect some kind of bribe, and..." she trailed off. Boom. Just like Evelyn.

"Got a complex program: would've travelled along their network and taken out everyone with a direct line. Maybe we wouldn't get everyone, but maybe they remember not to fuck with us."

"Let me do it then," V said impulsively. Wasn't hard to sneak around Animals, and no NetPig would be a physical threat to her.

"No. Program burns everyone on the network, including the user: I can't use you."

"Modify it!"

"Too volatile: power over precision." The unspoken implication was that he wasn't able to do much with the VDBs two premiere 'runners under ICE. "It's a ticking time bomb, and I won't rely on another miracle chip to save your life."

Johnny perked up a little bit when he said that, and she wondered if her rockerboy brain buddy had ever seen his intrusion into her body in that light. He should ask me, once in a while, what I think.

"Then I'll go in and kill him the old fashioned way."

"Can't. He could burn both of them in a heartbeat, and we don't know what intel he has on Agwe."

"Then what do I do, Placide?"

"Let me think!" he snapped. "Let me think."

"I don't have time for you to think! You think I was lying about dying?" she snapped, her hands shaking at her side. Her vision swam and glitched blue and red, a headache ripping through her as Placide's mouth moved soundlessly, static roaring in her ears. "Johnny?" she asked helplessly, reaching out for the hologram that reached right back for her.

"Valere!" Johnny fizzled out as Placide turned to stare at the spot where he'd been. He darted forward to catch her when her knees gave out, her eyes rolling back up into her head as she started to seize uncontrollably. "Valere!"

Chapter Text

V jerked awake with a gasp, immediately trying to crawl to her feet in the unsteady hospital bed she was in. A hand wrenched her onto her back again and she swung out hard, her fist passing through Johnny's pixels and making his image shiver. "Chill out, V. You're in the back with the 'runners." Her head swivelled around the room—she'd never had the clearance to be here before—and sat back when she saw Brigitte and Ti Neptune.

She brought her knees to her chest, the crinkling of her jacket mirroring the creak of the bed beneath her. Her fellow patients were alive, but clearly under duress—whatever pig had them was playing with them, keeping them running too high to self-sustain but not high enough to indicate any actual attempts to burn. She had no love for Brigitte, but it was disturbing to see the woman prone, twitching and sweating with her thermal jacket thrown over the bed behind her. She was no more powerful than Ti in that moment, in the same sweaty jumpsuit, fighting for their lives.

"Valere." They turned their head, sharper than warranted because it was only Placide. He was framed in the doorway, his broad shoulders slouched and his deep brown eyes heavy with fatigue. "What happened?"

"Johnny's chip," she explained, tired of having to explain it. "I'm not going quietly, or else he's not letting me."

"How often? How long in between attacks?" he asked, and she shrugged—a harsh and indelicate gesture.

"I've never tracked it."

"Why not?"

She let her head loll against her knee, laughing darkly. "Placide...there'd be no point. I don't have many of these in me."

"So you give up instead?" he demanded, his voice betraying his fear.

"No. Hard not to, though, when my best lead is trapped in the 'net, after I spent months tracking a doll she fried through a factory full of scavs and seeing all the horrendous shit they put her through—"

"I checked out records. Brigitte burned the doll," Placide said firmly. "She died shortly after you hit the Plaza."

"She didn't. It fucked her system but she was alive, for months afterwards." She left it at that: she didn't blame Placide for what'd happened, as clearly he'd been left out of the op entirely—not that he would have been a voice in favour of letting Evelyn live—but he wasn't entitled to her story either. V felt some responsibility towards the doomed doll: a ripperdoc could never hold their hand to their heart and swear that they'd never been part of a harmful ecosystem that enabled scavengers. Maybe she didn't buy snuff porn, but the 'borgs hadn't brought her parts fresh off the factory floor either.

Placide sat on the edge of her bed, and the gravity of the gesture brought her minutely closer to him. He smelled faintly like sweat and the chapel—probably where he'd been while he waited for her to wake up. "Forget the doll. She was meant to die: it was not our intention to prolong her suffering, but her chooms probably don't care." V laughed, not because she found Placide's stoic indifference to the people of Night City charming, but because he was right: everyone else who had wronged Evelyn in this story was dead, except for the villains that V loved. Neither her nor Judy had spoken it out loud, but it hung between them like a blood-streaked corpse.

"Any progress with Brigitte and Ti?" she asked, instead of beleaguering the topic. He shook his head with a heavy sigh, his shoulders slouching further under more bad news.

"The script is encrypted. I know how it works, but I don't have Brigitte's credentials so I can't change it even if I could figure out the logic."

"If it's a standard honeypot, then there'd be nothing you could do anyway. The program would need to launch the burn signal before it left its host—it works almost like a contagion hack. It can't get to the next target unless the system is traumatized, which launches the failsafe protocol that broadcasts the attack to the whole network." Such code took advantage of the cold indifference of the tech giants that ran their lives—it made everyone around a person with a virus vulnerable to attack, but made tracing patient zero of an attack easier for authorities.

"You could trigger the failsafe manually," he mumbled, trying to modify code he couldn't see. "Or else put in a function to force the signal." It felt like the old times when she reached out, squeezing his shoulder tight enough that he could feel it through his jacket. She was nostalgic for his skin, and it suddenly felt awful to her that she might never feel it again—that they might not move past this awkward, formal dance before she flatlined.

"Why don't you leave it with me?" she asked softly, or voice soothing and sweet. "I don't have her creds, but I used to run—maybe I'll be able to hack it." He huffed, and his eyes glowed as he sent the folder to her over Agwe. She noted, with some distant bemusement, that it meant he'd unblocked her signature, and accepted the message—and then unzipped it and ran the program. "H'm...tough, like you said. I'm gunna rest for a while longer and try to puzzle it out."

"V, what are you doing?" Johnny asked, his voice harsh. Placide wasn't linked anymore, though, so V ignored him.

"Use a computer if you like," he offered tersely, clearly not sure whether or not he wanted to—or would, under normal circumstances, be allowed to—give her the privilege of a local network. She smiled.

"My gear's still good to run, don't you worry about me."

"The fuck it is, V, what are you doing?" Johnny asked again.

"I-I...I am worried," he admitted, his voice low. "Things are busy, and I have to find a new ranyon to send into the mall, Michel's funeral needs to be cleaned up, Agwe must be watched now alongside Maman Brigitte and Ti Neptune...and you."

"Don't worry about me," she said, sitting back. "I'll be good and sit right here until you have time for me."

He cast his eyes down. "H'm. You never seemed to care for that before."

"I never used to have major seizures triggered by nothing," she said with a shrug. It was the wrong thing to say, as his face grew stormy—she needed him to leave without setting someone to watch her. "Placide. For now, I'm home—let me help by staying off your mind."

Johnny appeared in front of her, not corporeal enough to shove, for once, no matter how hard he was trying to stop the slow way that Placide rose to his feet. "V, why did you just install a fucking virus on us?"

"Jean-Luc comes in on the hour—maybe more often if their vitals look bad on his monitor. Ask him if you need...anything," he said. There was an awkward, aborted gesture where he seemed to want to take her hand, but abruptly thought better of it. "We will fix this, Valere. You're home now."

She smiled, only letting it drop when his footsteps retreated down the stairs and back to the lobby. She slouched, letting her head rest against the hard plastic mattress behind her. "You wanna tell me what the fuck's going on now?" Johnny snapped.

"You're a smarter man than people give you credit for, Silverhand. What do you think our plan is, with limited time and two lives that rely on the patience of a NetPig?" she asked wearily.

"You'll get burned," he snapped, and she smiled.

"My failsafe is broken, or else I would be constantly broadcasting a very noisy distress signal that would have no doubt been pinged by now."

"So the code won't even work?"

"It will. I'll need to be linked to the NetPig to do it, but the code will run—and the burn will be distributed between me and the agent. If I know Brigitte, half power will be more than enough to flatline him, but the code won't be deep enough in our system to kill us. Hurt like a motherfucker, but we'll live."

He sat back, still looking put out which she suspected was at least half because he didn't understand her explanation outside of her plan being to drop for what could be up to an hour, defenceless. "Why don't we just go zero this guy?"

"Because I look like them, and we can't risk putting their lives," Ti and Brigitte stirred restlessly as she gestured at them, "at risk by trying anything that might scare him into killing the hostages. I need him to link to me thinking that I'm on his side."

"So we face him head on, after we sneak out of here under the big guy's nose?"

"Bingo."

"I don't say this often, V, but this plan is so crazy that we're both gunna fucking die. Fuck you."

Chapter Text

It wasn't hard to creep past Animals—they didn't possess any of their namesakes' better instincts, only their presumed size and ferocity. Johnny walked fearlessly out in the open while V crawled under tables and ducked behind plants, pressing her back against a wall and holding her breath as a guard stomped by, making nonsensical rounds around an imaginary perimeter.

She was pressed into a tight alcove, shielded enough to catch her breath and regain her composure, when a call came through. The image was the same VDB skull it'd always been, no different from what any young, stupid banger would plaster all over his sig to impress groupies—Placide kept it, not out of pride or as a flex, but to keep himself forgettable.

"Alo," she whispered, keeping her eye on the listless guard.

His voice was clear as a bell, and she consciously turned down the volume. "Where are you?"

"Guess."

"W ap se san reflechi," he hissed, and a dull thud made it sound like he'd hit his fist off his desk. "Did you crack the code?"

"Do you want me to say yes?"

"Valere, don't do this. If it fries your brain—"

"There's a 75-90% chance that it doesn't," she said, and Johnny glared up at her from the floor—she'd painted him a far rosier picture, admittedly, but Brigitte favoured power over finesse, which was rare for a runner but not unheard of. "It can't trigger the broadcast on its own," she explained. "If I link to the pig, then the detonation is split between us—kills him, but isn't deep enough in my system to kill me."

"A quarter of a chance of failure—"

"A three-quarter chance of success." He swore, faintly, and she heard the sound of his keyboard being dragged across the desk, as other items were pushed away.

"Connect to Agwe again," he ordered sharply.

"Here?"

"You force my hand, Valere. Do it." She reached out for the Rezo Agwe, always there in the corner of her eye. Over the years, it'd been difficult to resist the urge to connect, to draw attention to herself in her small, cramped apartment in the crowded city where people bought things to replace the home they'd never been allowed to build with each other. Her home had been right there, the whole time, more than just a little to the southwest, still in her deck despite everything.

She felt a soft jolt when the network accepted her, and felt the amber glow of Placide's eyes through her own. "You see?" she asked.

"Mm. Anyone see you yet?"

"Of course not."

"Then get to the van. It's on his network." She peered down from her perch and nodded, slipping back to the floor and starting to creep over to the conspicuous vehicle left jackknifed in the centre of the mall. "Can you upload the virus to the van to take him out?"

"Possible the Animals are using the same network, so it'd burn them before touching any of the pigs, giving them time to stop it," she said, barely mouthing the words. "If they aren't, then my burn is split with the van and it takes out the network, maybe before the virus even reaches our pig."

"Mèd. Fine. Then it will tell us where he is." She didn't keep him waiting long, relieved at the wide berth that the guards gave to the machine—likely something they didn't understand and weren't paid enough to care about. She plugged in, letting the info wash back to Placide. "They hunt Agwe."

"They always are."

"Child's play to find him now. Head to the theatre."

"On it." She felt herself relax, maybe for the first time since she left home. There was a rhythm to how they worked, with him in the network and watching through her eyes as she worked her way silently through the mall, using his voice in her ear to avoid enemies she couldn't even see. Nostalgia battled longing, and the dread of knowing that he was going to be angry at her again when she returned.

She stepped lightly forward, towards the nearby lower entrance to the defunct movie theatre that the two of them had snuck into as teenagers. There'd been no films, but it was easy enough to rig a laptop and a projector to play a movie file that neither of them paid any attention to. The gate slammed shut almost against her nose, and she heard Placide grit out a curse. "On your six." She rolled to hide behind a large, fake plant as a couple of guards staggered over, examining the noise.

"Shitty mall, shitty Pacifica," one groused. "All this shit and they don't keep it fixed up."

"Whatever. Creds are for keeping them out, not home improvement." They slouched away and she sighed, making a beeline towards the stairs. A sign beside her glitched, then glowed with bright red letters: TURN BACK.

"He knows you're there," Placide said, an edge of urgency to his voice.

"It's fine," she hummed, smiling when she found a pair of double doors ripped off their hinges. Keep me out now, fucker.

"Eyes open now," Placide urged. "The boss is up ahead—the boss of these Animals. Scan, don't engage."

"There's an employee service tunnel just past her," she whispered, squatting behind a large cart covered in boxes.

"If she catches you—there's no Valentino to help you now, Valere."

"There hasn't been for months, Placide," she said coldly. His silence was brooding, but he wisely decided not to pursue the topic of whether or not she needed support she couldn't get. "She won't catch me."

"Mm." V all but crawled through the wide, open room where the boss—an enormous woman, whose muscles were so thick as to look painful—and felt cool rivers of sweat running down her back. The adrenaline shrunk her lungs and tunnelled her vision towards that hidden divot in the wall where she could duck right into a large screening room.

She didn't inhale properly until she was safely in the dark, and only then did she allow herself to laugh. "Told you I could do it," she whispered to Placide.

"You know that's not my problem," he hissed. "You do everything without thinking."

"I'm on a tight schedule." If she thought about things too much, then the horror of what she faced would make her crumble like a corpo budget overpass. "Now hush. And trust me."

"What does that mean?" he asked, but both of their attentions were drawn sharply to the screen, where an old western stuttered to life. She pressed her lips together and took a deep breath, stepping out into plain sight. "Valere!"

"Shhh..." She jogged up the stairs and into the projector booth with all the confidence that she used to when she was fiddling around with the sound system to impress Placide.

Unsurprisingly, she found her pig there, a slight middle aged white man with greying hair and ostentatious cyberware. He looked more like a model in a magazine than a real person—delicate little pencil-pushers were rarely bold enough to live out their dreams of looking like some kind of discount robo-cop, like all the ads promised they would despite their pressed shirts and sensible shoes.

"Bet he thinks it looks cool as hell," Johnny scoffed from behind him, leaning up against his desk. "Wakes up every morning with a half-chub, thinking he's got some kind of secret dark side."

"Who the hell are you?" she asked, her voice taking on the sort of accent she'd carefully practiced in Night City. It got her further in the 6th Street controlled areas of the city, it kept vendors from shooing her away from their stands, and it didn't make cops friendly, but they had the capacity to be very unfriendly and it usually kept her from that point.

He brought out his badge, eyeing her carefully—curiously. Evidently he'd seen her face and expected something different from her. "Bryce Mosely, NetWatch special agent. Who are you?"

"Donna." She picked a name at random, one with an old enough ring to put him at ease. He didn't want a street name or a Kreyòl name—Bryce Mosely wanted a name that he had some authority over, a college dropout who made bad decisions and couldn't back them up. "Some guy in Pacifica said you'd be here."

"What guy?" he asked, bemused, and Donna kicked her leg out.

"Like I know. Some weird scary guy said he'd pay me to come find you, and I'm not scared of Animals."

"Brave girl," he said with equal approval and patronization. "He fix you with a spectre?"

"What?" she asked, narrowing her eyes.

"Did he install anything on you before coming here?" he repeated slowly, and she snorted.

"Like hell. He wanted me to jack in to his computer but I told him to fuck off." Mosely's eyes narrowed as he took that in, trying to decide what it meant.

"He's paying you for information then? How many Animals, how many agents, where the van is, who I am?" he asked, smugly solving the riddle she'd laid out for him. She pressed her lips together and shrugged.

"Maybe he is. What's it to you?"

"I don't know what Pacifica is paying you, but it's not even a quarter of what we could," he said.

"You think I'm a sellout?" she scoffed, and he smiled.

"I'm sure hoping you are. Everyone does it, why not you? And why not for a big fat deposit?" She pretended to consider, then shook her head.

"I need an in with Maman Brigitte," she told him, her voice low. "Money'd be nice, but I'm not competitive if Pacifica won't do business with me."

"Maman Brigitte and Ti Neptune are frozen in our ICE," he told her, and she jolted back with a start, visibly trying to school her expression. "Bet nobody told you that before they sent you here, huh. You know why?"

"Do you?" she asked, lashing out blindly in the frustration she imagined this sellout merc version of herself would feel.

"Because you're a ranyon—a disposable outsider." It took her considerably less effort to invent an entirely new persona on the spot than it did not to laugh at his piss-poor pressed-slacks ass accent. "If you go and tell him everything you saw here, you're not gunna get the creds you were promised: you'll get a bullet in the forehead. It's their MO—if you're not one of them, then you're nothing. You're less than nothing."

She worried the toe of her boot on the ground in sullen silence. Johnny scowled at the back of Mosely's head. "This guy really fuckin' thinks he's doing something here."

Good. He's supposed to.

"He'd live longer if he didn't."

He would.

She peered up at Mosely, loosening her stance. "You got proof? That they're using me?"

"Did the big guy's eyes glow when he was talking to you?" he asked, and she nodded.

"He was scanning me."

"No, he was bugging you. Run a system scan if you don't believe me sweetheart: you're infected." She glanced down at herself like there'd be some evidence of corruption, doing a poor job of concealing her panic.

"I-I don't know how to do that. How do I do that?" she asked, and he frowned.

"You know where your settings are?" he asked, and she shook her head, her fidgeting getting worse.

"No, I don't. Fuck man, if you're NetWatch then fix it! Fix it, get it off of me!"

"Calm down, just—here, lemme see your link." With shaking hands she pulled the cord from her wrist, holding it out to him. He slotted it in, and she smiled.

"Kochon," she snorted, diving into his system. All she had to do was—

There.

Agwe lit up around her in a thousand colours, like spilled oil cooling in the rain, or a swarm of soft pink soap bubbles flying past her head to the surface. Placide surged forward and punched through the ICE holding Brigitte and Ti using the vulnerability that the virus introduced—V managed a quick surge of satisfied pleasure before the colours turned to heat and agony.

And then V woke up.

. . . . .

Mosely's glassy eyes were so close to Valere's when she came to that she started to her feet, fumbling for a hard surface to prop herself up on. "You all right, V?" Johnny asked, managing to look annoyed and concerned all at once.

"Yeah, yeah. Fuck." She turned from the body, to the blurry western still playing on the screen, her shaking arms pushing her up on a bench kicked up against a wall. "How long were we out?"

"Laptop says an hour. Let's not fucking do that anymore, V. We got enough problems without your boyfriend blasting his payload into your brain."

"Gross, Johnny." She stood to stagger over to the laptop, scanning the hardware for any taps, then the software for the same. Corporate paranoia triumphed over corporate greed, and it turned out that the laptop was untraceable, so she slung it in a nearby messenger bag and threw it over her shoulder.

"Better get back to Placide," Johnny said, disappearing and reappearing by the doorframe. "He probably thinks he burned you."

"Ah, shit. Right, let's get out of here." She slipped through the back exit of the booth, through to a wider network of employee tunnels, but it turned out her caution was unwarranted: when she hit the ground floor expecting to crawl around turrets and guards, she found a ghost town instead.

"Guess the creds ran dry," Johnny said, glitching out into the open.

"They didn't steal the laptop, so they definitely didn't find us back there." She stepped out after Johnny, cautiously at first and then letting her whole body sag with exhaustion. "You know, you're being weirdly considerate."

"Why, because I asked how you were after you flatlined for the second time this year?"

"No. You suggested we go see Placide, not Brigitte." An unexpectedly dark cloud rolled over Johnny's face, and he shrugged.

"Got some experience with watching runners burn out," he said, his voice heavy with meaning she couldn't glean. Just as quickly as she noticed, though, it was gone, replaced with typical bravado. "Plus we still don't know why Brigitte wants me. She's just about the only person in Nighty City with no motive."

"That's true. You're not Pacifican and barely even chipped in, let alone tech savvy."

"Hung out with some real chair jocks, though," he said thoughtfully. "Seems like a lot of work on their part to resurrect a dead guy just to ask him if he knows Spider Murphy's address."

"Plus you wouldn't know. Can you think of anything you would?" she asked, and his mouth twitched restlessly for a moment, then slowly opened—

—and then he glitched away just as a loud whistle jolted V from the conversation entirely. "Well well, look who finally crawled out of the GIM," James shouted slowing his car down alongside her. "Way I hear it, you must be all kinds of fucked up, girl. You want me to take you to Placide?"

"Wi, but quiet down a little. I got a headache," she groused, slipping into the backseat and crawling over the console to get to the passenger's side. Once she was comfortably seated, she let her whole body relax.

"Brigitte and Ti are up," James reported.

"How do you know?"

"Because Placide's got a face like a slapped ass again," he snorted. "Not in control anymore, and gotta do his stupid job while he tears his hair out about whether or not you're coming back."

"Did he send you to watch the mall?"

"With Brigitte back, Placide can barely order me to stand up straight. Her and Ti have all of Batty's on high alert, so he runs around like a chicken with its head cut off—I figured, though, someone oughta wait around to see what happened, so I told them I was headed out scout the Animals and nobody blinked twice." V sank into her seat, almost disappointed that Placide was, as ever, Placide, and put the gang before himself or anyone else. James ducked out of work on the off chance that she limped out of the GIM, but Placide hadn't even sent anyone out on his behalf.

"Thanks," she offered, resting her head against the door.

"Don't feel too bad about it, eh? Something big's brewing down below, and I think this whole NetPig business put them behind." Johnny materialized in the back seat, stretching out flat—maybe her exhaustion was finally seeping into him.

"Guess they're gunna be real happy to see you then, huh?" he asked, and she sighed. The anxiety of meeting Placide face to face for the first time since their break up, and then the adrenaline of confronting NetWatch, had briefly replaced the very real anxiety of having to confront Brigitte instead of Michel. On a regular day, the new head of the VDB's was clipped, blunt, and unsympathetic, let alone one where she considered herself behind schedule.

Plenty of the gang liked that about her—they didn't join a gang with expectations of being coddled and mothered, and it made them feel tough to see someone in a position of power give them less than a quick once-over before setting them to work. It was good for them to have someone who knew what had to be done and had a precise plan to make it happen, even if it involved stepping in herself. If they needed a sympathetic ear, they went to Placide: the listener, the one moving the pieces based on personal knowledge of his people and the city, the one who knew their manmans' names.

"So the scary one is the one who wants what's in your brain?" Johnny asked, and she nodded shortly, passing it off as a gesture to get more comfortable. "Great. Should've known this wasn't gunna end in the back-breaking orgasm I was hoping for."

You wanted Placide to fuck you out of me?

"I don't think it's too much to fucking ask that this shitty chip works the way I want it to for once." James pulled up to strip mall, parking just before the staircase that led up to the hotel.

"You good to get up on your own?" he asked, eyeing her slouch.

"Yeah, I'll live." For a while, anyway. "Thanks for the ride."

"Mm. Hope you're okay, Valere." She was almost surprised, before remembering that Junior had been eavesdropping on her and Placide in the butcher shop. Christ, half of Pacifica must've heard by now, she thought irritably.

"Me too," she said, stepping quickly out of the car and bolting up the stairs. She didn't exactly have those kinds of energy reserves, but she had to be away from James' prodding concern. It was the middle of the night, so the streets were thankfully a little emptier—teens lounged around together, lit by their phones as they passed memes and music back and forth, while people on the night shift, nudged each other as they passed by, too groggy to stop and chat but unwilling to let one other pass unremarked upon.

The guards at the staircase of the hotel startled upon seeing her climb the stairs, but let her through without issue. Nobody stopped her, even as she crossed back into the server room she was sure she didn't have the clearance to access, peering around for somebody to direct her.

Ti Neptune was sitting up in bed, already busy at a tablet, with the haggard, sunken eyes of a person who'd just surfaced from the 'net. "Oh," li said, noticing V standing there. "You're alive."

"Yep." She didn't know what else to say.

"Good. Placide thought he burned you."

"Nope." She suspected that Ti occupied the authoritative space that Placide ought to have, because of Brigitte's aforementioned single minded focus on ops that required seasoned netrunners. Placide was no slouch, but it hadn't been him trapped in the ICE next to Brigitte, and it wouldn't have been.

"He also said something about a chip." Ti considered them carefully, evidently waiting for more details. V didn't feel up to sharing, and she couldn't tell how much Ti knew.

"I need to see Brigitte. Placide first, then Brigitte."

"They're both in the back, going over reports for the last couple days." V peered over to where li indicated, to Placide's broad back bent over a desk, flipping through digital notes listlessly while Brigitte nodded. The woman looked tired, and deeply annoyed—V imagined it was embarrassing for her to be so thoroughly taken out of commission during what had to have been a chaotic time for their presumably failed operation.

"Thanks Ti," she mumbled, moving back towards the glass server room. Ti grunted at her and went back to work, another treasured trait in Brigitte's inner circle.

The server room was akin to a library in V's estimation—there were smaller ones scattered around Pacifica that she had had access to, back in the day, and they were all largely the same. There was a low hum through the wires and a persistent warmth that they couldn't banish entirely, more akin to cool summer days than hot computer rooms. Besides the hum, it was pin drop silent—a good place to sneak a nap or to retreat to when the noise outside got to be too much.

"So the doll was alive?" Brigitte hummed. "Too bad. Do you know if she had any further contact with NetWatch?"

"Only some Night City techie named Judy Alvarez. Luckily, she seemed determined to learn nothing of the entire affair, only urging her to remain under the protection of the Mox." Placide's voice was low and uncharacteristically weak. He spoke little, but decisively—now he forced himself through the report with the energy of a wounded man.

"She should have," Brigitte decided. "I'll look into the code we ran." She looked up for a chance to stretch her neck and look away from work, and caught sight of V standing there. "Good. See Placide, you had nothing to worry about."

The man turned and his eyes widened as they landed on her. He stood and she held up her arms defensively. "Trouble later, please. I was out for an hour."

"I felt you burn out, you... I should have sent someone for you, to check."

"You should have. James found me on my way out and drove me back. Animals bailed without finding the corpse, and I brought a present." She held out the backpack with Mosely's laptop, which Brigitte reached out for before Placide could decide whether or not he wanted to take it.

"Placide tells me you're having hardware problems," she said shortly. "I don't know what you want us to do about it."

"Evelyn Parker," she said firmly, and Brigitte's head swung to face her, her eyes narrowed. "Konpeki Plaza. The death of Saburo Arasaka."

"Ah. You were V, then." There was a new look in her eye as she was forced to consider V literally, not just as Placide's prodigal girlfriend. "It makes sense now, how little we could find about you."

"DeShawn kept notes, then?"

"He did. Plenty on the Valentino, but little on his accomplice. We assumed another Heywood kid." Huh...Placide knew Jackie. Strange, then, that he'd never connected the dots between V who worked with Jackie Welles, and Valere who had left Pacifica with Jackie Welles.

She turned to look at him, and found his jaw clenched. Ah. Nobody told him. Apparently he'd been left wholly in the dark when it came to Johnny, even after the fact.

"Well, now you know."

"So what, you want money for the Relic?" V snorted, because of course—Brigitte barely knew her, and now her entire frame of reference was that she lived out in Night City. Still not a sentimentalist, then.

"DeShawn shot me. The bullet damaged the chip, and now if I take it from my port, I die. The longer it stays in, it kills me. I need it safely removed."

"I can do that," Brigitte said without hesitation. No scans, no context, not a minute of thought...

"Don't talk down to me," she snapped, her heart sinking. "You can't. You're just agreeing with me—but if you take Johnny out of me, he dies too." That gave her pause, and V nodded. "Now we're on the same page." Johnny materialized behind her with a frown.

"Cheap lie. She must think you were born fucking yesterday."

She thinks that of everyone.

"Fine, yes. I cannot take it out—or I suspect I can't—but if you help us, we will lead you to someone who can," she said, and V rolled her eyes.

"Why should I believe you now?"

"You say you have Johnny, yes?" she asked, and V nodded. "Then I suspect I don't need to prove it to you, but to him."

Johnny straightened, moving in close to examine Brigitte's face from unnecessary proximity. "Starting to like the VDBs more and more. Nobody else talks to me like I'm actually here."

"He's listening," V said shortly.

"The one we are seeking, and the one who will have the knowledge to separate the two of you safely, are one in the same. She is the reason we need Johnny: we are looking for Alt Cunningham, beyond the Blackwall."

Johnny's engram didn't have much capacity for emotional displays: she suspected that not being wholly connected to a body made it difficult for him to process all but the most extreme emotion, the sort he couldn't wipe off his face. So when she felt her own face go hot with blood and her heart stammer in her chest, while Johnny's face went slack, she suspected Brigitte had finally levelled with her.

Chapter Text

V staggered towards the exit of the chapel, shivering and nauseous. Placide leaned up against the wall, straightening when he saw her, and V remembered with a rush of fury what Brigitte had said. Placide is yon bèt debaz, she'd dismissed when grilled about why Placide, her second, hadn't known anything about the biochip.

You say that to my face? she'd snapped back, and Brigitte shrugged.

You want to see Alt or no? For now, we are stuck with each other.

"Valere. You fought with Brigitte," he said, and she rolled her eyes.

"Yes I did, Placide. She wants to take everyone behind the fucking Blackwall, and she made a deal with an unstable AI to do it." He clenched his eyes shut, squeezing the bridge of his nose.

"Had to be something. Of course it had to be fucking something." How novel, for once, that Placide seemed to disagree with something a high ranking VDB said. "Doesn't matter. The fighting doesn't help. It never did."

"Fucking save it. You know the shit she says about you, and you still jump to her defence?"

"I don't defend her, I'm telling you that you can't shout her out of bad ideas. You fix things by being here." Sickness rolled in her guts, making her skin clammy and her mood worse.

"I don't think I can fix anything here, least of all what's killing me. I'll see you later, Placide—I hope you don't dive past the fucking Blackwall just because Brigitte tells you to." It was cruel to say, because both of them knew she wouldn't even think to include him in her crazy Jonestown bullshit.

. . . . .

V stood on the roof of the Pistis Sophia, her head throbbing. She'd been away from the chapel by the time she'd blacked out, and Johnny had dragged her as nearby as he was able without alerting anyone. They'd had their heart to heart about Alt and the things he'd hidden from her, so there was nothing left but to get right back to work.

It was hard, though. It was hard to leave Pacifica behind, hard to get right back to Night City as it did its best to kill her alone in an alley and hand some silly gonk her body to drive. "Johnny?" she asked softly, and he materialized beside her.

"What?" Clearly he'd been hoping for a break after heavy conversation earlier.

"I need to ask you for something harder than dying for me."

"Yeah sure, I'm your most reliable fuckin' friend. Hit me."

"If I die—"

"Jesus Christ V, we were just over this."

"Shut up. If I die and you get the body, I need you to tell Placide what happened. Tell him it's okay." She wasn't sure to what degree he would care, but it felt right to let him know. Maybe they would have a funeral, although it was difficult to picture him weeping for her. Would she still have a soul to lay to rest at all, or just total obliteration?

"Can I email him about it so he doesn't fucking clock me?" he asked shortly.

"He wouldn't hit you. You'd be me," she reminded him. "Plus who knows what he'd say? Maybe I told her so."

The sudden sound of heavy footsteps and the metallic shoving of the door behind them startled her, and she turned to gawk, embarrassed, as Placide scowled. "You think I would say that?"

"Christ he moves quiet for a guy his size," Johnny said with a grimace. "I'd still fuck him though, if you wanted to float that idea."

He's bi, but not much of an exhibitionist.

"H'm...plug into him again and I'll see if I can change his mind."

"I was just talking to Johnny, Placide, I didn't mean anything by it," she said, rubbing her forehead to try and banish Silverhand the Horny Ghost from her consciousness. The more got piled on her plate, the more tempting it became to sit back and say fuck it, to start to indulge Johnny. He wanted her to fuck and he wanted her to smoke and she was quickly losing track of the reasons she wasn't pulling over in her life-saving quest to do it.

"I came to check on you," he blurted, looking uncertain, still upset but maybe scolded by her low opinion of his feelings. "I don't always show up for you, but I try. I'd care if you died, Valere."

"How'd you even know I was up here?"

"You're still connected to Agwe. I thought it meant...I thought there was a reason." There hadn't been—she'd passed out without disconnecting. The familiar glow of the network was warm on her neck, though, and she swallowed dryly at the thought of giving it up again for the cold, corporate 'net that Night City operated on. "Was I wrong?"

"No," she started, then shifted. "It was an accident. I had another seizure and never disconnected."

He couldn't hide his disappointment, but took a deep and unsteady breath. "I see. Are you good?"

"As I can be," she said, her eyes downcast. "Johnny helped me here to wait it out."

"Come see our ripper. Maybe he knows something your city medic doesn't."

"Placide, I have medication."

"It's not working."

"I'm...not taking it."

His eyes narrowed in frustration, finally approaching her properly to hang off the edge of the building beside her. "Why not?"

"It'd suppress Johnny," she explained, then hung her head in her hands when he turned to stare at her. "He's invisible data when he's not with me," she said urgently. "Arasaka killed him and put him on a chip then trapped him in a data prison for fifty years, I-I can't subject him to that. No matter what kind of dick he is."

Johnny materialized with his hands on his hips, considering Placide. "Huge, both metaphorically and physically. If he's curious."

"Not even if it would save you?" he asked, and she shook her head. "That...sounds like you. Mèd, Valere, why didn't you just come home?"

The sun set like molten fire over the gentle ocean—the same one that had swallowed Haiti, and the same one that had lapped at her toes when Placide had first kissed her, hiding under the dock by the rollercoaster. "I didn't want it to have been for nothing. I didn't...I didn't want to come back a failure."

"We would have rather had you home."

"But everyone would know. Even today, people stared at me, wondering why I was here and not in some 'borg clinic putting pincers into split open Maelstrom faces." She folded her arm protectively over her chest. "And I did fail. I'd been edgerunning with Jackie to pay my bills because every time I tried to open a clinic, something else went wrong: rent went up, it got raided, some gang-affiliated ripper muscled me out off turf. I just...I wanted to feel like I could keep hold of something. Now look at me." Broke, nowhere to sleep, no skills, and a worm eating my brain.

"Pretty good for a dead girl," he said, glancing over at her. "I'm...sorry."

"Ah, you didn't fuck up my life."

"I'm sorry you didn't feel like you could come home." He reached out for her hand and she let him take it, her eyes welling with unexpected tears. "The gang's always been my life. It might always be," he said with a twist of his mouth. Evidently he'd just learned a lot more than he bargained for about Brigitte's plans. "But I can...change. I can work on it."

"I'm dying, Placide," she reminded him, her voice cracking dangerously. Above them, clouds began to roll in with unnatural speed—rain flickered against the concrete around them, casting shiny puddles on the ground as whatever corp with their hand on the system decided to flood them all out again. "There's an invisible countdown and I don't know what number it's on. I could be Johnny tomorrow. I could be dead on the sidewalk in an hour."

"You think I care about that?" he asked sharply. "I've been waiting for you to come home, Valere, every minute since you left."

"You never called," she said, indifferent to the rain as it wrecked her hair and made her clothes stick. "Once I left it was like I didn't exist."

"I thought it was what you wanted. We fought and fought and then you left with the Valentino. What was I supposed to think?"

"You could have asked!" Thunder rumbled ominously. "All I wanted you to do was talk to me, Placide." The rain grew heavy, making it difficult to keep her eyes on him in the clear, confrontational way she wanted to. Rivulets of water slid down his nose, like down the face of a fountain statue. He was that to everyone—a pillar, a rock, a cinderblock in whatever storm Brigitte or the corps conjured for them. They looked to him, but V knew him better than anyone and only wanted, for a little while, for him to look to her.

"Tell me about the Valentino," he said finally, and V stepped back, disappointed.

"I can't do this. I can't rip his spirit from his rest because you're jealous."

"No. Tell me...tell me about the man who kept you safe in the city," he said, haltingly. "Tell me what kind of food his mother cooks. Tell me where you live now, if you like it...if it's safe. Tell me about your new ripper and what kind of car you drive on those miserable highways." He stepped closer and she felt herself go boneless as he brought her into his arms, his head pressed to hers. "Tell me about Silverhand, if he is being decent to you. Tell me about your plans to get him out of your brain. Tell me how I can help."

She laughed, incredulous and bitter all at once. "Last I checked I have to get into Arasaka to plug the AI Brigitte is gunna get eaten by into their data prison."

"No one cracks a data prison like us," Placide said firmly. "And Brigitte won't take me into the Blackwall even if I were stupid enough to go, so I'll...I'll be here for you." They both heard the way he hesitated, not from lack of follow-through, but because Brigitte would take the most talented of the netrunners and leave chaos in her wake: his utility to her would be greatly diminished even as he took charge of the gang that was left.

Still, she looked up at him—a boy who'd let her speak for him because she was quick and clever and knew what he wanted to say, a man whose façade of stoicism she'd taken pleasure in breaking down while they dated, and the person she'd built up in her head to represent all of Pacifica in her heart, from the VDBs to the street vendors, down to the waves rushing against the concrete barriers between the hungry ocean and her clinic—and quickly stood to her full height to kiss him, hard.

He responded in kind, enthusiastic and relieved, like a burden had been taken off his shoulders. She parted his lips and he groaned softly, letting her shove his sopping wet tank up his belly without even a glance down to the street. "Ah, wait," he said, short of breath and shaking. "Back to my apartment and out of the rain, before the cold kills you."

It'd have to get in line, she thought wryly, but obediently made for the stairs—then paused, to see Johnny leaning against the railing there. "Shit, wait—Johnny's engram, he uh...I can't really shut him down."

"Oh?" Placide kept for the stairs and she felt her fingers tingle. She'd missed everything soft about him, but was remembering that there was also an unyieldingly strong side as well. His magnetism was an invisible thread leading her around by the throat, and the part of her that was a little more Johnny than she would have ever admit trembled with the anticipation.

"He's not always present, but he has...access, I guess, to my senses, my memories."

"H'm. He got a problem, then?" he asked, and she covered her mouth with a snort, shaking her head.

"No. Do you?"

"I'm fine. You're fine with it?"

"I'll live." Johnny, visibly, wasn't her type—all reedy and prickly with the kind of unpredictable energy that feral animals had—but she supposed if he was willing to die for her, then he was willing to allow her this amount of privacy.

He appeared beside her as if summoned, keeping a lazy pace almost in spite of her urgency—it was, tragically, a fucking hike to Placide's from the Pistis. "If you fucking insist, but I can't promise it's not going in my spank bank." She rushed up alongside Placide, near frantically trying to stay within his orbit as her imagination indulged the myriad ways in which the man who knew her best could help her, for a little while, forget what Night City had done to her.

Not even Johnny could ruin that.