Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Mikoshi has begun to malfunction,” said a man whose digital ghost now wore his son’s body.

Arasaka Saburo sat straight-backed in his black leather chair behind a tiered marble table, his back to the ridged skyline of Tokyo city. The same table, chair, and bonsai adorned Saburo’s offices in every key Arasaka complex. When he had been Saburo’s bodyguard, Takemura knew them in perfect detail. Memorised exits, defensible positions, and potential situational weaknesses, down to questions of ventilation and security rotations. Being in such an office again after a year away from his role felt disorienting, rather than familiar. Unsettling, to hear Saburo’s clipped intonation emerge from Yorinobu’s mouth, a man Takemura had once written off as reckless and dissolute.

Saburo’s offices had no seats for guests. No one was expected to remain long enough to waste Saburo’s time. Takemura had spent years quietly positioned in the corner close to the main entrance, his back to reinforced plascrete, ears and enhanced senses primed for problems. To stand before Saburo’s desk like a penitent was new.

“How may I help?” Takemura asked, keeping his tone low and respectful. Once, he thought that he understood the employer he had venerated. He knew that Saburo detested flattery and small talk. Expressions of modesty only bored him. Takemura did not see how he could be of any assistance to a malfunctioning digital fortress run by the best netrunners that Arasaka credit could buy. However, if Saburo had recalled him from Kagawa because of Mikoshi, then Takemura could only ask for instructions.

Instead of giving him marching orders, Saburo studied Takemura, flicking his cold gaze over the sharp new suit, the updated implants. Strange when made by Yorinobu's angular features, his cheekbones grown more prominent in his lean face, eyes no longer hidden behind aviators. “How are you finding Kagawa?”

Startled, Takemura would’ve met Saburo’s gaze but for sheer habit. “Over the past year, output on the Arasaka manufacturing plant has—”

“That is not what I asked.”

Takemura hoped his confusion didn’t show on his face. “I have no complaints,” he opted to say. “Nothing appears out of the ordinary.”

“You are adjusting well.” This was not a question. “There were doubts whether you would be able to manage Arasaka’s network of interests and assets in Kagawa. So far, you have proved more than capable.”

Praise from Saburo always unsettled Takemura more than a scolding. From Saburo, it was never so simple. “Thank you, Saburo-sama. I will continue to do my best.”

“A year ago, Hanako advised me to allow you aboard the orbital station to speak with that mercenary. To advise him to upload himself to the Secure Your Soul program.”

Saburo always spoke in a measured, formal Japanese that would sound old-fashioned to most—its cadences and diction a century old. Particularly in Tokyo, where language always seemed to evolve faster than Takemura could keep up with. Saburo’s inner circle and his family strived to emulate him, along with those who worked in the Arasaka Towers in Tokyo and Kyoto. It made stepping into those Towers feel like stepping sideways into another version of Japan—one indifferent to socmed trends and slang, a place that sometimes felt surgically removed from its host cities. Takemura didn’t use to notice, but after a year in Kagawa, it felt disorienting.

“Yes, Saburo-sama. V was disappointed to learn that Arasaka could do nothing further for him but ultimately chose to sign the contract.”

“Did you believe that Arasaka could do nothing more?”

What sort of question was that? “So I was told. By Hanako-sama.” Takemura had been handed a medical report detailing V’s rapid mental decline. It had been upsetting to read.

“When you visited the mercenary in his ward, you called his living quarters barbaric.” Saburo’s expression did not change, but Takemura was used to all his subtle tells. Impossible to read for most. Not for a man who had spent decades in Saburo’s shadow.

Takemura chose his following words with care, keeping his tone calm. Saburo preferred to talk to people with spine. It was why he had been amused rather than horrified like his daughter Hanako when V had flipped off his engram, or so Takemura had heard. “The ward was bare, and V was not allowed to contact anyone but his assigned doctor and the guard save for a brief window. I lodged a complaint after I left.”

Having experienced the best of Arasaka's healthcare facilities on Earth whenever he had to recover from injuries, Takemura had been startled at how sparse the orbital ward had been. More like a cell than a ward. Takemura didn’t remember if there’d been a response to his complaint. He had been busy. Taking the reins of power in Kagawa had been a little like being kicked into the deep end of a pool, circled by sharks.

“Your complaint has been addressed, the doctor disciplined, procedures reviewed. Further, Arasaka has made headway in its flash cloning procedures. A suitable body for your friend may soon be available within three months.”

Relief and joy nearly swept away Takemura’s discipline. He bowed. “That is good to hear.”

Strangely enough, Saburo leant back in his chair with a soft grunt—a sound Takemura knew to indicate disappointment. “I thought that assigning you to Kagawa would hone you, not make you complacent.”

Takemura froze. He reviewed all they had said to date, then the sudden, curt summons he’d received hours ago. The odd direction of Saburo’s questions.

The nature of the man he called a friend.

“V has something to do with Mikoshi’s malfunctions?” Takemura guessed.

“You do not sound surprised.”

“He is the most talented netrunner I have ever met.” Charismatic, highly intelligent, and ruthless—V’s netrunning and technical skills made him effectively a one-man-army. Something Takemura had seen firsthand at Arasaka Industrial Complex. He hadn’t thought it possible for a netrunner equipped with gear cobbled off the street to breach and take down an Arasaka mech in a matter of seconds.

“Arasaka netrunners have been monitoring the situation for months. There appears to be an external breach from somewhere in Night City—difficult to pinpoint. But Mikoshi’s security superstructure also seems to be changing from within. The only unusual new addition to Secure Your Soul within the last year is V. Perhaps it is not his fault,” Saburo said, though his flat tone indicated that he thought otherwise. “Find out. Access Mikoshi from within the Tokyo control room and talk to V. You may advise him of the availability of a clone. Alternatively, you may also remind him that under the terms of the contract he signed, Arasaka has full discretion to do what we like to his engram.”

The carrot, then the stick. Takemura had done such procedures countless times on Saburo’s behalf, particularly when he had been younger. Less so now, and never to anyone he had considered a personal friend. He dropped his gaze to his shoes. “Yes, Saburo-sama.”

Saburo did not ever bother to dismiss a subordinate verbally—he expected those worthy of his time to know when they were no longer needed in his presence. Takemura bowed, taking his leave. As he walked to the lifts, he realised he had been sweating. His skin began to cool in the over-conditioned air, chilling him.

Takemura had visited a Mikoshi chamber in Tokyo once when Saburo had been giving the new Emperor of Japan a tour. It had been a strained affair—Saburo brusque, the Emperor polite. She had declined in the end to encode her engram. Saburo had not been surprised, nor had he looked disappointed. It didn’t matter, after all. Japan’s monarchy, one of the last in the world, was a relic of the distant past; a ceremonial mascot trotted out whenever one of them got married or died. Shuttered away from the world, like the Sanshu-no-Jingi—the imperial regalia—that they possessed.

When Takemura had been a child, his mother had once told him stories of the regalia. The mirror, Yata-no-Kagami, which represented wisdom. The jewel, Yasakani-no-Magatama, representing benevolence. And the sword, Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi, the emblem of valour. Takemura, perhaps unsurprisingly, had been most interested in the sword. According to legend, its owner had been trapped in open grassland by a treacherous warlord, the grass set aflame by arrows to burn him to death. Desperate, the warrior tried to cut the grass with his sword, only to realise that with the blade, he could control the wind. He used it to redirect the fire, burning the warlord to death.

Saburo had a replica of Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi made, lovingly crafted. It hung in pride of place within a chamber of art adjacent to his office in Tokyo. There was a replica of Yata-no-Kagami in Kyoto. However, Saburo had made no replica of the jewel, having never found any use for benevolence. So Takemura had always understood. He knew his role as he sat before the projection deck in the Mikoshi chamber and breathed in its sterile air. A blade against a threat, here to defend its master. It was a role he had played for years.

The air above the deck flickered, and then a familiar figure appeared. Flickering and translucent in blue, a ghost who had legally died but a year ago. V glanced at Takemura and grinned with friendly mischief, his handsome, almost pretty face sketched vaguely against steel by the hologram. “You again,” he said.

“V,” Takemura began, then closed his mouth uncomfortably. The blade before the grass, hesitating.

“Fancy,” V said, glancing around the sterile steel and glass chamber. His gaze lingered on the two-way observation mirror where netrunners and scientists monitored their conversation, then jumped back to Takemura. “Arasaka pay you extra to be the bearer of bad news?”

“What makes you think so?” It felt strange to be speaking English again. In Kagawa, Takemura hardly ever had to. He was a year rusty.

“Last time I saw you, they’d kicked you over to tell me I was dying. To get you to persuade me to sign my soul away,” V said. He wore the same simple shirt and pants that he’d been wearing in the ward when they had last met, even though engrams usually projected themselves in their preferred clothes. “Well, what’s wrong now? Hit me.”

A sign of something, perhaps. Takemura didn’t know V well enough to guess. “Nothing is wrong. A suitable body for you will be ready within three months. Soon, you’d be able to meet me in Kagawa as we agreed.”

“Read about Kagawa when I was first ‘loaded,” V said. He sat, folding his knees into a lotus position, leaning forward. “Famous for sanuki udon. Sounds good.”

“And hone-tsuki-dori.”

“Olives, too.” V looked reflective. “Never eaten a real olive.”

“You can, in Kagawa. Soon.” Takemura hesitated. “You read about Kagawa from within Mikoshi?” Did engrams within Mikoshi have open access to the Net?

“Yeah. Why, is that strange? I’m supposed to be getting the VIP treatment here, after all, like all the other ‘invited’ guests. Unlike the uninvited guests, who get stuffed into empty boxes and presumably scream into the void for fuckin’ ever.”

The edge in V’s voice was brittle. Like the man Takemura had met in the orbital station, one breath away from violence. “It is my understanding that you should be,” Takemura said, wishing he had checked. But had that information been considered relevant, Saburo would have provided it. “The ward you were kept in for the tests—I’ve made a complaint. The doctor has been disciplined.”

V laughed. He had once possessed a joyous laugh, playful and infectious. Had made Takemura smile now and then at that, something Takemura hadn’t thought possible when he’d first been exiled to a filthy city he’d grown to loathe. Now, V’s laugh sounded jagged, rent with something dissonant. Digital interference, perhaps. “You think I give a damn whether that lady loses her job or not? Fuck. Goro, you haven’t changed at all. Still don’t fuckin’ know anything. Worse, once you do know somethin’, you let it fuckin’ slide.”

“What do you mean?” Takemura asked, frowning.

“Saburo having fun wearing his son’s skin?”

“Saburo-sama has stabilised Arasaka’s interests.”

“I mean. Don’t that creep you out at all?”

No, Takemura wanted to say, but he couldn’t. Though, agreeing wouldn’t be true, either. Conscious that they were being observed, Takemura said, “It was… difficult to get used to, at the beginning.”

“I bet. That’s probably why they slung you over to Kagawa, dressing it up as a promotion. Didn’t want you within stranglin’ range of the boss no more.”

“It is a promotion.” As with many conversations with V, this was starting to veer out of control and off-topic. “As I told you before, I believe that Hanako-sama made the—”

“Best decision at the time, yeah, I heard. For herself. She’s back in her safe little glass bubble, ain’t she? Where she always wanted to be. Insulated away from having to make any more ugly decisions by her daddy. Who is now also her brother. Damn, that’s fucked up.” As Takemura scowled, V laughed again. Louder this time, closer to human. “You think I don’t have a right to be pissed? Goro, I bled for Arasaka. Betrayed friends, burned bridges. All for what?”

“You will get what you’re due,” Takemura said, forcing himself to be patient. “Within three months.”

“You believe that?” V asked, chuckling. “You think this flash-cloning capability just sprang up over the last year? Cloning ain’t exactly new. It’s tech that’s been kickin’ around since 1885. Arasaka got fingers in every organ-vat business across the globe. If flash cloning were a thing, they could’a had a body for me primed up and ready for transfer right from the start. After my surgery, even. But maybe they wanted a guinea pig. Wanted to see what’d happen if a man hosted a biochip with an invasive engram for a few weeks, only to have that engram removed. Why’d you think I was kicked into that cell of a ward rather than something preem? ‘Course, once I didn’t have much of a use for them any longer, they sent you over to ask me to sign the dregs away.”

“Yet you signed,” Takemura said.

“Baby,” V said, with a flirtatious wink, “they chose you well. I’d have signed whatever you’d asked me to sign.” He leant back as Takemura blinked, the playfulness leeching away. “Fuckin’ schmuck that I was. Johnny was right, and he ain’t even here anymore to say that he told me so.”

“Are you behind what has happened to Mikoshi?” Takemura asked. He was, all of a sudden, exhausted. As much as he didn’t like what V was saying, he could never turn from the truth. Now that he thought about it, when he had accessed V’s file on record, it had read like an impersonal series of observations on a specimen. V had not been given any new medications, any further treatments after surgery. He had been left to decline, his mental and physical collapse becoming a matter of clinical interest.

Then Takemura had been sent in, likely when V had been deemed more of a threat than of use. As he was now.

V studied Takemura with his unsettling, translucent stare. “You startin’ to see it now, ain’t ya. The way your boss uses everyone. You, me, his own damned kids.”

“I work for him. It is an honour and a privilege,” Takemura said.

“Yeah? Well, I don’t see it that way. Never have, never fuckin’ will. Y’know, when Yorinobu strangled Saburo, I could’a stopped him. Took him a while to choke the life out of that old monster. Would’a been a matter of slinging over a daemon; I didn’t even have to kill Yorinobu if I didn’t want to. But I didn’t. I’d say it was shock, but at the time, I was thinking: good fuckin’ riddance and all that. And that was before I’d even met Johnny.” V spun a cigarette out of the air, the artificial ‘smoke’ flickering, just as translucent. “‘Course, if I’d guessed how much fuckin’ trouble that’d put me through… but nah. Saburo would’ve had me and Jackie killed anyway. Family laundry can’t fuckin’ air to the public, yeah?” He lowered his voice. “I’ll watch my back if I were you.”

“V,” Takemura grit out. Anger pressed to the fore, starting to shred his self-control. A flaw in his discipline—nothing new around V. V always could get so quickly under his skin. “If you had anything to do with Mikoshi, Arasaka has the right to shred your engram. Like what they did to Silverhand.”

Again, V laughed. “You ever seen The Watchmen? Old American holo. Adaptation of a comic book classic.”

Startled out of his temper by the non sequitur, Takemura said, “No?”

“There’s a prison scene in it, when one guy gets locked into a jail full’a people he put there.” V’s tone changed, becoming a low snarl. “‘None of you seem to understand. I’m not locked in here with you. You’re locked in here with me’.”

V’s engram disappeared. Startled, Takemura rose to his feet—had the session been so abruptly terminated? “Bring him back,” Takemura told the two-way glass in Japanese. “I haven’t begun negotiating.” Surely Saburo hadn’t already given the kill order.

The silence stretched, even as Takemura slowly sat back down. The netrunners were asking Saburo for a reprieve, perhaps, listening for instructions. Arasaka was very much a bureaucracy at the worst of times. As Takemura mentally reviewed his conversation with V, trying to prepare himself for more, Saburo called him directly.

“You are no longer needed here. Return to Kagawa,” Saburo said.

“But—” Takemura cut himself off. He had never questioned Saburo’s orders. “Yes, Saburo-sama.”

“You disagree.”

“Is...” Takemura hesitated. Usually, he would have dropped the subject, but something about V’s furious malice hung in the air. Accusingly. “Are you planning on shredding V’s engram?”

A pause, then, “Had that been an option, you would not have been called here.”

Had V somehow…? “Respectfully speaking, Saburo-sama, V does not trust anyone else in Arasaka but me. May I continue to speak to him?”

“He has told you nothing useful.”

An excuse. Saburo only made excuses when he was being cautious—which meant the malfunction was likely worse than Takemura imagined. “Allow me to go to Night City,” Takemura asked, trying to keep his tone calm and humble. “I know V’s contacts. I can find the external disturbance.”

Saburo fell silent, thinking. Never a good sign. Saburo’s most bloodless decisions were often made decisively. When he needed to think, he was weighing a scale heavy with lives—one with assets he valued.

“Go,” Saburo said, and closed the connection.

Takemura rose to his feet, exhaling loudly. He had recovered his poise by the door. Making his way to the obs room, he pushed past a startled netrunner by the door. “The file on V’s engram and details about the current situation with Mikoshi,” he said in a clipped voice. “Copy the files to me.”

“It’s classified,” said the netrunner he’d shoved past.

“If I am here, am I not cleared for access? Or would you like to check with Saburo-sama and waste his time?” Takemura glared at the netrunner. After a few seconds, he quailed, with an uneasy look at the rest of his team. They avoided his eyes.

“Here.” The netrunner passed Takemura a databank from the table. As Takemura nodded and began to leave, the netrunner ventured, “Good luck.”

Takemura grunted as he made his way to the lifts. Luck. He had a bad feeling that he would need it.

Chapter Text

“You remind me of my third husband,” said the tigress seated behind her rosewood desk in Night City, her office dimly lit by a single rectangular lantern. The barred Zen window behind her neatly coiffed grey hair looked into a morass of red thorns. A large bonsai perched on shelves spread tentative branches over a tea set and other pieces of antique pottery. Dressed in dark silk, seemingly un-augmented, Okada Wakako projected a steely aura and unflinching dignity that rivalled Saburo’s. Even her Japanese was similar—precise and clipped, devoid of popular slang.

At her words, Takemura choked on the sencha he had been offered. Bitter and rich on his tongue, it was the real thing—likely worth at least a month’s pay, even at Takemura’s current position. Setting the cup down carefully, Takemura said, “Oh?”

Wakako smirked. “People who want to flatter me would say, ‘in a good way, I hope?’ While people who dislike me would change the subject.”

“I will do neither,” Takemura said, and took another sip.

“Good.” Wakako’s eyes hardened behind her round spectacle frames. “When V took you here, he mentioned that I lost a grandchild to Arasaka. Did he tell you how?”

“No.” Takemura quietly braced his feet on the ground, ready to dive for cover. “I did not ask.”

“It was an ugly business,” Wakako said, baring her teeth. “Ignorant boy thought himself invulnerable because his father was one of the kyodai in the Tyger Claws. The Claws often host Arasaka elites, flying in from Japan looking for something… more risqué than their usual bit of fun. There was an unfortunate incident, and my grandson did not turn out to be invulnerable. We buried him in a closed casket.”

“And the Arasaka elites in question?”

“Another unfortunate incident occurred. Their remains may eventually be found.”

“Good,” Takemura said, draining his cup. He reached for the teapot, pouring more tea for Wakako, then himself. When Wakako tilted her head, Takemura said, “I feel no sentimental attachment to Arasaka as a whole—only to those who have earned my loyalty. Nor do I care about people who get what they deserve.”

“Hmm.” Wakako leant back in her seat, amused. The tension in the air eased, giving Takemura the sense that the tigress prowling before him had relaxed. “My third husband was like this. Honest to a fault, unable to compromise. It’s why he was the shortest-lived of all my husbands. But at least he was handsome and gave me three fairly intelligent sons.”

“Congratulations,” Takemura offered, in lieu of not knowing what else to say.

“So. Tell me why I should break my rule and accept Arasaka’s blood money.”

“Because my request involves V.”

“V?” Wakako sniffed. “V is dead. I hear it had something to do with a bad deal he made with Arasaka. One involving you, I presume. I could have seen that coming, and would have warned him if he’d been capable of listening. Though I suppose, to do so, he’d first have had to unstick his eyes from your ass.”

That made Takemura choke on his tea all over again. As he sputtered and discreetly wiped his mouth, Wakako let out a sharp laugh. “You did not notice? Tch. Well, we were all young once, young enough to make silly decisions in the name of infatuation. After all, that’s why I married my second husband.”

“V is now an engram. The data fortress he resides in has been affected by attacks that originate from somewhere within Night City, targeted at V. I only need you to find out who the culprit might be—I will solve the rest myself.”

“Night City is a large place, with many hiding spaces,” Wakako said, sipping her tea. “Why come to me? V has many friends, some of whom might be willing to help without compensation.”

“Because you are efficient,” Takemura said.

“Mm.” Wakako’s gaze flicked over him as she set down her cup. “This is another thing you have in common with my third husband. You’re a poor liar.”

“His friends will not help an Arasaka ‘samurai’,” Takemura said.

“That, and?”

“The attacks might be helmed by forces who think they are helping V, but they are not. His engram’s code has been changing rapidly. Growing… malignant. Soon, perhaps there’d be even less of him than what was encoded.”

“Finally, the truth.” Wakako tapped her manicured fingers lightly on her desk. “I respect V, but I do not care about him. Though, I presume you guessed—which is why you are here.” At Takemura’s nod, Wakako said, “I will not bend my rules. I swore over my grandson’s casket never to take any business from Arasaka, and I never break my word.”

Disappointed, Takemura said, “I understand.”

“However, my sons are all ranking members within the Tyger Claws. You may have an introduction to one of them if you wish.”

“Would they not share your aversion to Arasaka?”

“Not all of them,” Wakako said, picking up her cup. “Of my nine sons, one has been a disappointment. I’ll forward you his contact.”

“Thank you,” Takemura said. He rose to his feet, bowing. “I appreciate the help, Okada-san.”

“Try not to darken my door again,” Wakako said, taking a sip of tea. “One last thing. Despite everything, Hideo is still my son. If anything were to happen to him because of you, I would be… displeased.”

Okada “Hideo” Hideaki did not look like a Tyger Claw. His hair was buzzed short, his mods minimal, and he had no visible tattoos above the neck. In his brown jacket, faded pants, and honest-looking round face, Hideo looked more like an off-duty shopkeeper, on break from one of the many black market stalls crowded into Kabuki market. He met Takemura in a corner of the market with a wave. Petite like his mother, Hideo looked to be around Takemura’s age, with silver darkening his temples.

“You Takemura?” Hideo asked, then said something else with a grin that even Takemura’s state-of-the-art implants struggled to translate. Hideo’s Japanese was the twanging dialect unique to the Tyger Claws, homegrown out of the muddy, multicultural stew that was Night City, peppered with local in-jokes and words from other languages.

“What?”

“Ah, right. Forget you’re Arasaka, dressed like that. Got to talk like I’m in a history ‘vid.” Hideo looked Takemura’s heavy coat and tactical pants over with interest, his eyes briefly flickering a pale gold. A scan? None of Takemura’s implants pinged a warning. “Huh. Don’t even recognise half of your fitout. Cool. Hey, you hungry? Tsukemen?”

Takemura tried not to grimace. Every attempt at eating Japanese food in Night City so far, including places on recommended lists, had been a travesty of the senses. Still, he couldn’t afford to offend a potential asset. Even if Hideo wasn’t Wakako’s son. “Fine.”

Hideo led Takemura past a junk shop, then a shop selling something strange and wiry in tightly capped cans. Past a stall selling dubious-looking rejigged mods, they ducked into a narrow alley. Takemura tried not to breathe deeply, sidestepping refuse left shored up against dank walls. They passed a queue into an unmarked door, the sour stench from the alley for a moment mingling awkwardly with the scent of oil and meaty stock, the long counter in the tiny shop strung with an eclectic mix of customers sitting shoulder to shoulder: office workers, joytoys, shop assistants, Tyger Claws. Hideo shouted something at the people working behind the packed counter and was waved to the back. He clapped the shoulder of a Tyger Claw as they passed, a man with half his face buried under orange optical plateware. None of the Claws looked closely at Takemura, indicating by their body language that unless introduced, to them, Takemura had never been there.

Good.

The shop used the back room for storage—crates nearly crowded over a vent. Hideo sat at the square table within, with Takemura opposite. “You mind if I order?” Hideo asked.

“Be my guest.”

“Got any preferences? Dietary issues?”

“No,” Takemura said. Hideo’s eyes turned a brief shade of pale gold as he ordered, and then he grinned. The way he bared his teeth reminded Takemura instantly of Wakako.

There was a Chinese saying that Takemura had once heard in praise of Arasaka Kei—that a tiger father does not have dogs for sons. It turned out wrong where Yorinobu was concerned. Hideo, however, was a shateigashira within the Tyger Claws; for all that he looked like a harmless middle-aged worker drone. It seemed unlikely that he had achieved such a rank through his family’s influence.

“Your mother says that you are a disappointment,” Takemura said, testing the waters.

Hideo laughed. “That’s all she said? She must have been in a good mood. Perhaps you reminded her of one of her husbands.”

“Her third.”

“Ah, the one who drowned suspiciously in Laguna Bend. Quiet man, collected antique watches and cats. My second brother thinks it might have been the cats.”

“What about them?”

“The cause. My mother dislikes the creatures. Allergic, you see. Fur clung to all her favourite clothes. There were too many cat-related discussions, then an ‘unfortunate accident’, and six months later, my mother was seeing someone else. I adopted the cats after the funeral—all four of them. My mother claimed it was the last straw. It’s something that she says every couple of months.” Hideo leant his chin on his palm. “If this was a normal Arasaka job, you could have gone through the usual channels. Guessing it’s not, so. Is it about V?”

“Good guess.”

“Not really. My brothers and I all keep an eye on our mother for her safety. She likes to think her pachinko parlour is her territory, but we have our ways. V was seen visiting her with a Japanese guy decked in a ‘Saka rig. One who’s bad at comedic impressions.”

“…The man at the door was yours,” Takemura said sourly.

“He likes to joke around now and then. Ah, thank you,” Hideo said as the door opened to a man holding a tray packed with steaming bowls of dark broth thick with seaweed, onsen eggs and chashu, with the noodles served separately. Crowded among the bowls were servings of agedashi tofu and baked salmon wrapped in foil, along with a tokkuri of sake and two cups.

The sake was average, but the tofu was delicately fried and crisp on properly glossy stock, powdered over with bonito flakes that didn’t taste synth. The excellent marinade almost wholly masked the squishy mouthfeel of synth salmon. The tsukemen was impressive—particularly given they weren’t anywhere near Japan. Rich and flavourful, the broth clung to the perfectly cooked, chewy noodles. The onsen eggs, surprisingly, were real.

“Owner made friends with a particular butcher shop in Pacifica,” Hideo said, as Takemura blinked after eating one of the halved eggs. “Gets him fresh eggs and real chicken bones for his stock. Part of his secret.”

“Why isn’t this shop on any of the recommendation lists?” Takemura asked. Had he known, he’d have been a frequent customer during his last unwilling stint in Night City.

“Because of us Claws, that’s why. Prefer it that way. You think we’d be able to keep this as one of our favourite joints if it was packed with tourists and foodies?” Hideo poured more sake for them both. Thankfully, Hideo didn’t seem inclined to talk shop over the food, which deserved their full attention. After the bowls were cleared, the tokkuri was taken away and replaced by glasses of shōchū, served on the rocks.

“Is V dead?” Hideo asked as he rattled the ice in his glass.

“Only in a sense.”

“Shit. Isn’t that usually a yes/no question? Wait, is he in a coma or something?”

“No. He is a… guest of Arasaka.”

“Riiight,” Hideo said with a snort. “The sort of guest who can’t return to Night City, where all his friends and things are. Who nobody’s heard of in a year. Suuure.”

Takemura bit down his temper. “Does that matter to you?”

“My brothers and I have a betting pool going over V’s fate. Could you go into specifics? The pot’s sitting at 25,000 eddies right now. No? Fine.” Hideo let out a loud sigh. “Sad.”

“I’ll pay you as much as that to help with my enquiries,” Takemura said. Saburo had given him an unlimited expense account for the trip. “With a bonus, if I find what I seek. I also presume that you understand discretion.”

Hideo whistled, though he didn’t straighten up from his slouch. “Well, what did you want, then?”

Takemura repeated the request that he had put before Wakako. Hideo hummed, thinking it over. He took a sip from his glass, and then continued rattling the ice. “Other than V, there’s only a handful of netrunners I know of in Night City who might have the balls and skills to try something like that without Arasaka pinning them down. Balls, skill, and gear though? You’re either looking at some super secret Militech gig or Maman Brigitte over at Pacifica. Either’s possible—V’s had dealings with both.”

“V worked for Militech?” Takemura asked with a frown.

“He’s a pro. Works for just about everyone if the money’s good. His contact at Militech was a woman named Meredith Stout. Funny story, that one. Heard she called him to the No-Tell Motel for a little fun, except V thought it was for a job. Long story short, he wasn’t interested, and she got pissed. The girls we had working the floor thought it was hilarious. Not sure if he did any gigs for her after, but they’ve dealt with each other before.”

Arasaka might have a file on Stout. “Noted.”

“Maman Brigitte is the boss of the Voodoo Boys. V did a big job for them, clearing out a shopping complex full of Animals by himself. That man used to do such great work. Hard to sniff out details about the Voodoo Boys, though. They got their own private Net, and they run with their own gear. Heard it’s as good as your custom ‘Saka stuff.”

Takemura doubted that but said nothing. “Maman Brigitte sounds more likely.” He couldn’t imagine why Militech might want to break V out of Mikoshi. “Though we must check all leads.”

“I’ve got eyes in Militech—give me a few days. As to the Voodoo Boys, that’s tough. Unless you have something they want—which is rare—the Voodoo Boys don’t have any interest in meeting outsiders, and we haven’t been able to slide in any spies. Heard V set up a meeting through another fixer, Mr Hands. If you like, I’ll ask him on your behalf whether he can try to do the same. Or you could try sneaking in.”

“Hand me the existing information you have on the Voodoo Boys, and I’ll think about it,” Takemura said. He didn’t want to advertise his presence to a potential target if he didn’t have to. “I’ll be in touch.”

“Need anything else? Safehouse? List of all the half-decent Japanese spots in Night City?” Hideo grinned.

“Which of those aren’t affiliated with the Tyger Claws?” Takemura asked, amused.

“Does it matter?”

Faced with more days of awful food or the alternative, Takemura exhaled. “No need for the safehouse, but send me that list.”

Arasaka arranged Takemura into a quiet apartment in Japantown, a building they owned. Out-of-town Arasaka execs with work for the Claws were often housed within. The security was Tyger Claws on the outside, Arasaka on the inside. Takemura would’ve preferred to stay somewhere that wasn’t so glaringly obvious, but the address and access token had been handed to him on the flight out of Tokyo.

As he took off his shoes and hung up his coat, an all-too-familiar voice drawled, “Wouldn’t walk around barefoot in the room if I were you.”

Takemura spun, hand dropping to the holster at his hip. “V?”

No one behind him. Takemura activated his scan, the Arasaka-made custom tech tuned for heat signatures and data trails. In his ear, V laughed his mellow, infectious laugh. “Three guesses.”

“You’ve broken out of Mikoshi?” No one else was within the apartment, not that his tech could see. Takemura moved silently to the bathroom door, scanning the chamber for the tell-tale faint waver in the air that might betray someone cloaked in a stealth generator.

“Nope. Two more.”

“You’re calling from…” Takemura trailed off as he realised his deck was quiet. “You’ve hijacked my auditory implants.”

“Got it in three! Cutting it close there, Goro. Had me worried for a sec.”

Dazed, Takemura backed away and sat on the bed. “How is this possible?”

“Mikoshi has access points in every major Arasaka Tower, remember? And all your systems are remotely linked up because your boss is a control freak. Even though it allowed his son to fry your previous set of implants from afar when he wanted to throw you under an airbus. Fun fact: I could do the same thing if I wanted to. Your onboard security isn’t worth much of a damn from where I’m at.”

“Is that a threat?” Mikoshi was far more compromised than even the reports suggested. Did Saburo know? Was there still time to isolate whatever V had done?

“Don’t freak out. Dragged you out from within a burning block before, didn’t I? I’ve never wanted to hurt you.” V’s voice dropped into a murmur, one that Takemura struggled to pick out.

“So why are we talking?”

“Thought it’d be fun to have a private chat. Our last attempt had too many nosy fuckers peekin’ in.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“Think you should chill a few weeks in Night City, then go home and tell Saburo you couldn’t find shit. That’d be the best for everyone.”

“No,” Takemura said. He rubbed his temple, tired all over again. “You know I cannot.”

“Maman Brigitte doesn’t play nice. Last I was there, she only let me walk because a friend had something she wanted,” V said.

So it likely wasn’t Militech after all—unless V was trying to throw him off. Somehow, it didn’t sound that way. “I can be persuasive.”

“Yeah, fuckin’ right. You gonna shoot her full of sedatives and kidnap her too if she don’t wanna talk?” V asked, amused. “Real charmer of a move there.”

“We’ll see.”

“Seriously. They’ll see you comin’ a mile away. And if you go in mob handed with ‘Saka elites? They’d disappear somewhere you’d never find again.”

“You’re protecting them.”

“Not at all,” V said with a dry laugh. “We didn’t part on punching terms, but it was close. I don’t give a fuck about them.”

“Then what is the problem?”

“Me giving a damn about you,” V snapped, and went quiet.

“V… V?” Takemura waited, but V gave no further response. He accessed his contacts, sending Arasaka’s Mikoshi team a terse warning. No reply. Sinking down on the bed, Takemura folded his hands over his chest, thinking.

Chapter Text

Although Takemura suspected it would be futile, he went to Arasaka Tower for a complete systems diagnostic. The warning he had sent to the netrunner team in Tokyo had gone unanswered, and as such, while the team in Night City ran their checks, Takemura composed and sent off a formal update for Saburo. While waiting for the results, Takemura took himself to the Tower’s Eternal Forest, a floor lush with palms and ferns, the lighting tuned down, the humidity and temperature kept at a pleasant level.

The wilderness, tamed into a showcase. The birds and butterflies within were droids, lifelike and unobtrusive. At this level, anyway. There were real aviaries deeper within such Towers, all for Saburo’s pleasure. In Tokyo, the aviary near Saburo’s office held two tanchōzuru: red-crowned cranes, a symbol of longevity. Once thought to live for a thousand years. The birds were spoiled, with armies of staff looking after their every need. Any smaller living creature placed in their aviary—fish, frogs, animals—they ate, stabbing them with their sharp beaks.

A year ago, Arasaka’s board of directors held a meeting here, which Hanako had attended with V and Takemura. V had given his testimony, not that it had mattered. The board had already known and accepted what Yorinobu had done. Hanako had produced Saburo’s engram, only for Yorinobu to launch an attack, killing most of the directors. Saburo had them swiftly replaced, primarily with talent from Japan.

Instead of some sort of monument where their predecessors had fallen, Saburo had the platform converted into a karesansui garden. Sunk into the ground, white gravel had been swept into wave-like patterns, interspersed by igneous, sharp-edged rocks in groups of three. Vertical and flat stones, none of them brightly coloured. The only recommended viewing point was a single stone bench before the garden.

Takemura’s footsteps slowed to a halt. A woman sat on the bench, her back to him. Arasaka Michiko wore her bright blue hair in a tight bob today, her tresses interspersed with filaments that flickered with iridescent sparks. As she turned to regard him, the glass panes of her earrings shivered to life—two fighting fish swirled alive beneath her lobes as though trapped behind the glass. One blue, one red, each with trailing fans for tails. Her nails were similarly themed, each ending in graceful attachment that resembled fins, flushing from blue at the base to red at the tips. She wore a kimono with trailing sleeves and a low cleavage. The design was a constantly changing pattern of angular shapes somehow animated over the fabric, tumbling into screaming mouths and grabbing hands. It hurt the eye to watch.

“Michiko-sama,” Takemura said, bowing formally.

Michiko shifted to a corner of the bench. “Sit.”

Takemura glanced around. Michiko’s usual bodyguard was nowhere to be seen. Takemura had met Zaburo Kenichi once, years ago, and the meeting had been stilted and polite. As the solo aged, however, perhaps he had been retired—he was likely nearly a century old. Takemura sat straight-backed at the other edge of the bench, his hands folded over his lap.

Michiko glanced him over with her cat-lensed eyes. “My grandfather’s mark is so obvious on all the people who pass through his hands. He should replace his guards with robots.” She spoke in English, her American accent betraying her as someone who was more Night City native than anything else.

Her father, Kei, had secretly married a Japanese-American woman, worried that Saburo would intervene. Not that he could have kept a secret of that magnitude from Saburo. Saburo had let it slide, the same way he’d ignored Yorinobu’s increasing transgressions. As with Yorinobu, Hanako had been the key—always careful to say nice things about Kei’s wife Nahoko in front of Saburo. Kei had then named his only daughter after Saburo’s late, most-beloved third wife, an olive branch that Saburo had accepted.

Hanako had likely also been why Michiko now held any sort of position within Arasaka. Perhaps it had not been a complicated request. Saburo treasured his legacy, and in Asia, family was so often an inextricable part of such a thing.

“You don’t have to be permitted to speak,” Michiko said with a friendly smile. “Seriously. You Konoe Shidan people can be so formal.”

“Konoe Shidan?” Imperial Guard?

“Ah, that’s an in-joke: what my friends and I like to call people close to my grandfather. What do you lot like to call us? Hato faction? We should run with it, get doves branded on all our stuff.” Michiko laughed, a pleasant and likely highly calibrated titter. She looked like a bubbly, good-natured socialite, but Takemura knew better. The Hato faction was the weakest of the three, but it still had influence. Michiko had also built a successful business outside Arasaka on her own. Where her gaijin husband and their children worked, insulated away from the clan. She was nowhere as harmless as she appeared to be.

“Do you need something from me?” Takemura asked. Following Michiko’s example, he used his rusty English.

“What are you doing back here? Shouldn’t you be running things over in Kagawa?” Michiko asked. She grinned mischievously. “Don’t tell me you missed plasticky days-old ‘sushi’ and soggy ‘tempura’. Can’t believe you once went to Ichi Ni Nana. That place suuuucks.”

Takemura carefully controlled his expression. He had visited the izakaya in question during his previous stay in Night City, when he had been living quietly and on the run from Arasaka. “So it did,” he said, his tone neutral.

“Don’t freak out. Danger Gal—that’s my biz—we found you pretty quick after you disappeared and my uncle accused you of murder.”

“Yet you did not tell Yorinobu where I was.”

“Nope. The ‘murder’ stank to high heaven. Especially since my dear uncle didn’t even bother to make up a decent excuse. I had a choom in the autopsy team. Pretty obvious cause of death, what with the bruising on the neck and the trace elements of my uncle’s DNA left on the throat. Yeah, it was totally poison. Not.”

Takemura swallowed his temper. “You knew everything. But you expressed doubt at the board meeting.”

“Everyone at the board meeting knew everything—we were acting. Please. Nobody who wants to get that far in Arasaka can afford to wear their hearts on their sleeve.”

“Your grandfather was murdered. But you did nothing.”

“Sure I did,” Michiko’s smile widened. “Come on. You’re hardly unobtrusive, with the Arasaka branding right behind your ears. But nobody messed with you, at least right up until you kidnapped my aunt. That was a bit much even for me.”

Small wonder their location had been so quickly compromised, even with Takemura deactivating Hanako’s Arasaka tracker. “You could have gotten her killed.”

“You, maybe. Her? Nah. My uncle loved her—he’d never have killed her. Placed her under house arrest forever, maybe. If he wanted her dead, she’d have died in that burning apartment, wouldn’t she? Easy culprit available too, seeing as there was video footage of you shooting her.” Michiko let out a snort. “‘Sides, my aunt deserved the fright—I thought it’d be the kick in the guts she’d need to wake up. Not that it worked. She’s back in her little glass bubble, happy as a clam.”

Michiko’s words… Takemura shuddered. “A friend of mine said the same.”

“V, right?” Michiko turned her head as one of the artificial birds flitted through the nearby trees. “If only we met under better circumstances. We had a lot in common.”

I doubt that, Takemura wanted to say. He opted for silence, but Michiko giggled. “You don’t think so?” she asked.

“V is… very singular,” Takemura said, for lack of anything else he could think of.

“That’s one way to put it,” Michiko said, “given how his engram’s been messin’ up not just Mikoshi but the internal Arasaka network. Figure he’d be shut down soon—Arasaka’s got teams building a thick layer of ICE around him as we speak, but who knows, right? What a legend.”

Takemura relaxed. Perhaps the auditory breach would be resolved soon, then. “Thought he was your friend,” Michiko said, looking at Takemura closely.

“He is.”

“You don’t care about his imminent imprisonment?”

“He…” Takemura trailed off. “He has understandable grievances over his treatment by Arasaka, but he needs to be secured before he does any further damage. Yet despite all he might have done, V was promised a cloned body. I will do my utmost to ensure that he still receives it.”

“Downloading him into a clone makes him a real boy again? You truly think of his engram as him?”

“Is it not?”

“It’s a mass of code. A copy, a bunch of data that’s as much a replica of the original thing as Ichi Ni Nana’s excuse for katsudon. Isn’t that Arasaka policy too? Look at the terms in even our best Secure Your Soul contracts.”

“Not at all. Saburo-sama’s current situation—”

Michiko shuddered. “Oh hell, don’t talk to me about that right out of the blue.” She clutched nervously at her fingers, taking in slow, trembling breaths. “Fuck,” she whispered, nearly too softly for Takemura to catch.

“Michiko-sama,” Takemura said gently.

It took time for Michiko to recover her composure, for her fingers to stop plucking at each other. “Y’know,” Michiko said, after a while, “Yorinobu was my favourite uncle.”

“What?”

“Yeah, my mom’s brothers were fine and all, but it was Uncle Yorinobu I’d get in touch with if I wanted to talk to family but not family, if you get me. He… secretly contacted me when I was a kid through my bodyguard, Kenichi. All the stuff I liked to complain about as a tween—this last century conservative Asian family shit, my dad not letting me get a tattoo, my mom’s obsession over my grades, dating people who often turned out to have a skeevy thing for Japanese women, feeling sometimes like I don’t belong anywhere… he got it.

“I guess maybe he thought we were birds of a feather or something, both of us family rebels. All the best presents I ever got, growing up, were from him. Forwarded on the quiet. When I got my driving license, he had a bright blue Yaiba Kusanagi sent to me. Preem custom job with the lyrics of my favourite song printed on its flank. I crashed it that very day and landed in hospital. The trauma team that scraped me off the asphalt was suuuper unimpressed.” Michiko laughed. “Next day it was gone. Damn, think that was the first time he scolded me.”

“He killed his own father,” Takemura said, unsettled by the nostalgia in Michiko’s tone.

“And now his father’s ghost is wearing his body like a suit. What’s that V told you in orbit? That my whole family’s fucked up?” Michiko stared at her manicured hands. “Shit. I’d be inclined to agree.” She took in a slow breath. “The V you thought of as a friend is dead. Killed by Arasaka. Signed away his life, literally, when you handed him that contract.”

“Michiko-sama,” Takemura said, wondering where this was going. “If you believe me compromised—”

“No, no. Fuck, it’s hard talking to you people sometimes.” Michiko took in a slow breath. “Rather than going to Wakako, why didn’t you try Danger Gal?”

Was that what this was about? “Okada-san has links to V. I thought she might have more perspective.”

“I’d bet.” Somehow, this amused Michiko. “She was pretty fond of him—V did a lot of jobs for her. He was one of the few people who could just walk into her parlour without advance notice. Word on the street was that Wakako was thinking of marrying him as her sixth husband.” She giggled again as Takemura grimaced.

“I doubt that.” Wakako, if anything, had talked about V as though he were a promising but ultimately misguided junior.

“Pity—it’d have been funny. I’ll send you my contact. Keep me updated, will you?”

Did Michiko even need Takemura to do something like that, given her own intelligence network? Still. “Yes, Michiko-sama. Also, if Danger Gal can be of any help, I would appreciate it.”

Michiko stretched out a hand. After a few seconds, a butterfly flit over, balancing neatly over her palm. “Yeah? We’ll see.”

The diagnostic responded with an all systems clear, so Takemura went back to work. Two days spent casing the Voodoo Boys’ territory in Pacifica told Takemura that Hideo had been correct. This would be tough. Locating their headquarters was already going to be complicated, let alone infiltrating it. The security around the Voodoo Boys’ private net surpassed even what Takemura’s implants could pierce. Worse, the community seemed arraigned around the Voodoo Boys at their core, unlike the other sectors of Night City, which made even asking questions difficult. Even with his Arasaka marks obscured, with his accent and skin, Takemura stuck out in Pacifica like a neon signboard. He had a bad feeling he’d already been made.

Takemura retreated to a place on Hideo’s list for dinner, a little discouraged. The gyoza was palatable—minced synth meat tended to lack the chewy tang, crisp at the base and juicy within, the skin paper-thin. The tiny restaurant, tucked under an overpass, was somehow sourcing real chives and garlic, and the vinegar wasn’t too sour. The soba noodles, served on ice, was Nagano-style. If it wasn’t natural wheat flour, it was close. The mentsuyu dip lacked the chemical aftertaste of cheap dashi.

Hideo settled on the seat next to Takemura when he was halfway through the gyoza, grinning as Takemura glanced at him. “Yo.”

“Hideo-san.”

“No need to be so formal—makes me feel old.” Hideo shook his head as one of the cooks asked him if he wanted his usual. “You’ve been making the Voodoo Boys nervous, by the way. Word on the street is that they’ve been calling in solos who owe them favours.”

“That would be nothing new.” Takemura dipped soba into the sauce, then paused as a stray thought hit him. “Do you know much about Danger Gal?”

“Michiko Sanderson’s pet project? Sure. She started it when she was, what, in her 20s? Big private investigation firm, nowadays specialising in celeb cases. She married one of her detective subordinates, and they have two kids—hell, even one grandkid as of a few months ago.”

“I was asking you about Danger Gal, not Michiko-sama.”

“‘-sama’?” Hideo laughed. “You ’Saka types need to wake up and live in reality. Though I get it, the real world’s ugly, greasy, bloody, and not exactly smelling of synthetic sakura. All right, don’t glare. What do you want to know? It’s been doing well, last I heard. Cornered the market in high-end discretion. If you’re rich and want to know if your husband’s cheating on you so you can get a nice fat divorce payout, you can go to Danger Gal. ‘Course, if you want your husband in question dead, you can go to people like V. He really should stop using the No-Tell Motel for his shit.”

Why would a firm like that be of any use to Takemura? He hadn’t even considered it, and nothing Hideo said made Takemura think dismissing Michiko’s company was a mistake. Puzzled, Takemura said, “It is well-connected, this company?”

“In entertainment and high society circles, sure. You might as well go to fixers like my mother for everything else. Depending on the location of the job.”

Michiko’s meeting was starting to feel like the opening salvo of internecine politics. Something Takemura hated. Grimacing, Takemura said, “No matter. Do you have something for me?”

“Sure. A year back, one of my mother’s netrunners retrieved something from Arasaka Tower when it was still an active crime scene, and returned it to Militech. A stealth-capable bot, clever thing.”

Takemura nodded. “A Flathead.” The late fixer Dexter Deshawn’s acquisition of the Militech Flathead from Maelstrom via V had been messy, one reason why Deshawn couldn’t hide his trail easily. The Flathead had never been found.

“The netrunner owed me a favour. Installed a clever little subroutine into the Flathead before she handed it over, one that Militech hasn’t found yet. The Flathead spent a long time in a box, then a long time doing boring tests in the desert. This morning, however, it went online somewhere interesting. Underground bunker in the badlands near the border. Basement full of jacked-in netrunners.”

“That is convenient,” Takemura said.

Hideo nodded. “Voodoo Boys calling in solos might have made them worried. They’ve got beef with each other and probably don’t know who the Boys want to zero. Or it could be an elaborate trap aimed at you, but I don’t think Militech would find a single Arasaka solo important enough to roll out this kind of song and dance. They’re more like a ‘mini thermonuclear device into a lift shaft’ kind of company.”

Militech help had been partly why Silverhand had gotten as far into Arasaka Tower as he had in 2023. “Is this Flathead still accessible?”

“Yeah. S’why I’m here. Thought you might want to have a look firsthand.”

Takemura polished off the rest of his meal quickly and wiped his mouth. “Lead the way.”

The netrunner was working out of a Tyger Claw base in Megabuilding H8. Or, she had been. The elevator pinged open to a concrete corridor strewn with prone bodies, decks still crackling with sparks. Hideo swore under his breath and started to step forward, only for Takemura to grab his shoulder. “No. You leave the building. Call me from the ground floor.”

Hideo frowned at Takemura. “This is my floor,” he said.

“Your mother—”

“Fuck off. I’m decades too old to be mothered.” Hideo touched his fingertips to his temple, rattling off quick orders in the Tyger Claws dialect before returning to a more understandable Japanese. He walked over to the closest body, scanning it. “Still alive, at least. Looks like a courtesy run.”

“Meaning?”

“Netrunners like V who work for multiple fixers with different affiliations often don’t kill if they don’t have to. Don’t know which bridge you might be burning, see? They consider those kinds of ops a courtesy run.”

Takemura nodded slowly. He had seen V take down Oda without killing him—on Takemura’s request. “So, a mercenary.”

“Doesn’t mean you let your guard down.”

“Stay behind me,” Takemura said, hoping that Hideo wouldn’t catch a stray bullet to the face.

“Do you one better.” Hideo glanced at a camera, his eyes flashing as he linked to it. Man was a netrunner himself. After a few minutes, he frowned as he disconnected. “Coast seems clear.”

“As you’ve said, it doesn’t mean you let your guard down.” Takemura drew his pistol, a custom-built JKE-X2 Kenshin.

Room by room, Tyger Claws lay slumped where they’d fallen, all caught unawares. One was even still in a bathroom, folded against the stall. All knocked out by some sort of nonlethal synaptic virus. Whoever had done it hadn’t bothered looting their bodies. Guns and valuables lay strewn where they were.

Hideo led them to a sterile room, where a young woman reclined on a couch with her eyes closed, still jacked in. A Chinese man in a netrunner suit lay face-down on the floor, bleeding from the ears and nose. Dead. His hand stretched toward an open terminal, his access wiring coiled over his fingers. Recently unplugged. “Not one of ours,” Hideo said as he bent over the netrunner and turned him over. “Nicky Law. A freelancer—flatlined. Body’s still warm.”

Takemura scanned the terminal. “Virus was uploaded recently.”

“Shit!” Hideo accessed the terminal. He was about to jack in himself, but Takemura grabbed his wrist.

“Is that a good idea?” Takemura nodded at the body on the floor.

“Don’t babysit me.” Hideo slapped Takemura’s hand aside, connecting. As his eyes glowed, Takemura caught the gleam of a lens in the corner of his eyes, one floor up.

“Get down!” Grabbing the terminal, Takemura shoved it and Hideo to the floor even as the air hissed overhead—a high calibre bullet, cracking into the wall.

Takemura ducked closer to the window, trying to get a better line of sight on the sniper. Upper floor, open window—he flattened himself on the floor as the next bullet shrieked past, piercing concrete. As he crept out to the corridor, another bullet shattered a pot behind him—more snipers. A quick scan picked up a jumble of names Takemura didn’t recognise, each with a rap sheet so long he had to flick them closed.

The Voodoo Boys’ solos. Takemura grit his teeth. The sniper to his left stretched out too far—Takemura squeezed off a couple of shots that pierced his shoulder and chest, knocking him out of sight. He rolled as another shot whined overhead, a hand’s breadth away from his head, then hissed as one caught him in the flank. But for his upgraded exoskeleton, it would have pierced through and ruptured his kidneys. As it was, it felt like he’d been punched in the gut with a sledgehammer. As Takemura’s implants automatically injected him with painkillers, he scanned the area for fire escapes. He’d have to find a way to the upper floor somehow. Here, he was pinned—

Screams echoed through the upper floor. A man’s body tumbled past, still clutching his rifle. The sniper at the window staggered back, crying out as he clutched at his head, sparks dancing out of his optical implants. As the screams died down, Takemura looked cautiously out from cover.

Something crawled over the wall and onto the corridor with spidery grace—an android. Soft synth-skin marked with aesthetic lines in silver and gold ended in jade-tipped claws that punched through concrete as it climbed, its lithe body clad in a flowing black and gold silk yukata that hung off slender shoulders dusted with red and white fur. The silky black hair caught in a messy bun looked almost human, but for the silvery highlights that pulsed at the tips like living embers. Large, pointed, furry white ears extended from the thick hair over the skull, a white ceramic mask with red markings embedded where a face would be. A long fluffy white tail swished in the air as the android straightened up, androgynous and beautiful, an Inari kitsune out of a myth. It was a joytoy droid—an expensive one.

The droid sauntered over to Takemura and paused as it glanced over into the room with Hideo and the dead runner. “Fuck me,” said V’s voice from behind the mask. “What a shitshow.”

Chapter Text

Hideo stayed quiet up to the 50th floor, which opened up to a luxurious suite crowded with Tyger Claw security. He made some gestures that had them attempt to fade into the background with mixed success, heavy weaponry and all. Turrets glanced at them as they walked into the living room and cycled away as the kitsune droid looked at them.

“Fuck off, V,” Hideo said in English. “You and your bad fuckin’ habits. I don’t want to keep running diagnostics on all my security devices whenever you come by.”

“Nice to see you again too, Hideo,” said the droid.

“How is this possible?” Takemura stared. “Michiko-sama said that a wall of ICE was being built around you—that you should be locked down.”

“Good thing their netrunners ain’t all that, hm? Or you and maybe even Hideo here would be toast.” The kitsune droid—V—flicked his tail and rolled his shoulders. “Damn. You Claws must have spent a fortune on this toy. Most sexbots are little more than self-warming fleshlights. This baby has a complete motor network and detailed calibration sliders on the voicebox. Titanium-fibre skeleton, self-repairing hyperdermal skin… an iON88 onboard processor and an ultrasensory neural plugin package modelled off doll chips. I like it.”

“Thanks, because I’d like Okami returned to us in one piece,” Hideo said with a sour look at V. “Not that I’m not grateful for the rescue. Didn’t think you could sling out quickhacks by proxying out of a joytoy droid. That thing doesn’t even have a deck.”

“Decks are for mere mortals,” V scoffed. He looked Takemura over carefully. “You all right? Thought you got shot for a sec, but I don’t see you bleeding.”

“I did get shot.” Takemura gingerly traced the impact zone, feeling the dent. It ached a little; the exoskeleton pushed to its limit. Thankfully, the bullet hadn’t been armour-piercing. “Just a bruise.”

“Yay for Arasaka tech.” V grabbed the console Hideo was carrying and set it down on the nearest table. Glancing at it for a second, V said, “Looks like the Voodoo Boys dropped a digital bomb in here after they hijacked your remote access to the Flathead.”

“I saw that,” Hideo said. He started to walk towards V, hesitated, and made a bee-line to the drinks cabinet. He poured a generous glass of whisky for himself, then glanced at Takemura, who shook his head. “So, uh. V. You’re not dead?”

“Technically, I probably am. Tell Daichi he won the pot.”

“Fuck!” Hideo drank from the glass. “Wait, wait. That means. Who was the bait? Hanako? That porcelain… er,” Hideo caught himself as Takemura glowered at him. “That lady’s at least twice or thrice your age, choom.”

“I like ’em older, but no. Self-absorbed Daddy’s Little Girl kinda people ain’t my type,” V said.

“So now you’re what, an engram?” Hideo asked, doubtful. “How’d you get yourself uploaded into Okami? I wouldn’t have thought its onboard processor hardcore enough to hold data that complex.”

“Not givin’ away any of my tricks.” V made a show of playfully touching his sharp-tipped ceramic nose.

Hideo started to speak, then abruptly stared at Takemura. He looked between Takemura and V, then he rubbed a hand over his face and took another gulp from his glass. “You’re fuckin’ kiddin’ me, V. Him? The sweetener?”

V’s ears twitched. “Hmm?”

“Come fuckin’ on. If that’s what you like, I could’ve introduced you to Ken.”

“You’re turning into an old man,” V said pityingly. “That’s real ojisan behaviour right there.”

Takemura had enough. “V. A private word?”

“Here?” V chuckled. “Whole place’s wired up. I could fix that, but Hideo will bitch me out if I do.”

“Elsewhere if you like,” Takemura said, digging deep for patience.

“Borrow a car from Hideo. I’ll flick you some coordinates. Oh, and give me some decent clothes,” V told Hideo. “Feel like the fancy silk shit I’m wearing’s gonna fall apart any minute. Your customers genuinely dig this look?”

“Can’t you transfer out of Okami into something less expensive?” Hideo asked, though he looked defeated. “How about an MK2? I’ve got a couple of Arasaka models. Even a Militech one. I’ll throw in rifles, miniguns, whatever you want.”

“Think that won’t look weird walking around on the street?” V shot back.

“Like you don’t now?” Hideo stared pointedly at V’s tail.

“If nobody scans me, I’d look like a cosplayer. If I get scanned, it’d look like a toy taken out for a walk. Either way, I won’t start a riot. Goro flew here with an open Arasaka expense account. Ask him to rent out this rig for a bit.”

“And he’d be able to explain renting out a sexbot on his company account… how?” Hideo asked.

“Not our problem, is it?” V glanced cheekily at Takemura, who exhaled and nodded.

Ten minutes later, V sauntered out from the megabuilding behind Takemura, dressed in a bolero jacket, slacks, and a black tee, all emblazoned with the Tyger Claws logo. V was still picking at the shirt in irritation as he settled into the passenger side of the yellow Turbo-R. “Hideo can be such a petty bitch,” V said, tucking his tail against his knees.

“You walked off in an expensive asset.” Seated close, the kitsune sexbot was even more unsettling—it gave off a faint, invitingly musky scent that vaguely reminded Takemura of V, even though that had to be impossible.

“You paid,” V said, crossing his legs.

Takemura reviewed the coordinates as he slipped the car into traffic. “What’s in Pacifica?”

“Didn’t you want to meet Maman Brigitte? I can get you through the front door.”

Takemura stared at V. “So she isn’t the one helping you?”

“Don’t know who’s trying to breach Mikoshi—or if they’re even in it to help me. I’m as curious as you are to find out. Whoever it is, they’re real good at covering their tracks,” V said.

Startled, Takemura said, “So why keep trying to warn me off the Voodoo Boys?”

“For your own good, that’s why. How’s that not sinking in?”

Takemura recalibrated the approach he had in mind. If it was true that V didn’t know who was trying to breach Mikoshi… or was V telling the truth? “Maman Brigitte put out a hit on me. I am guessing she does not want to talk.”

“Don’t be so pessimistic.” V glanced at the radio and it switched on, blaring something snarling and jagged. Takemura hurriedly switched the radio to a less offensive channel, making V laugh.

“You’re not that old. Besides, you grew up in Chiba-11. That’s hardly a classical instrumental music kind of place,” V said.

“One does not need to be old to have taste,” Takemura muttered, coming to a stop as the traffic lights turned red.

V glanced at him appraisingly. “I know people like you. They grew up on the streets like me, then they get a lucky break and try to leave it all behind by changing out every bit of them that might suggest they came from the gutter. Music, books, puttin’ on fussy little airs.”

Takemura sniffed. “That is what you think?”

“I hope so, because the alternative’s worse. That maybe you picked it up from Saburo.”

“You hate him.”

“Nah,” V said. He laughed, his gorgeous laugh jarring from behind the ceramic kitsune mask. “I’m beyond all that. Funny what being dead does for you.”

“You are not dead,” Takemura said, trying to sound gentle as traffic got moving again. “Within three months—”

“You truly fuckin’ believe that Arasaka is preparing a clone for me out of the spirit of love and goodwill?”

“It was in the contract you signed, and Arasaka honours its contracts. Though,” Takemura said, frowning, “you may have invalidated it with what you have done.”

“May?” V tapped his sharp-tipped fingers on the door. “You heard your boss. If he could shred me, he would’ve. You’d still be in Kagawa enjoying your ‘real food’, none the wiser.”

“Only because you—”

“Wouldn’t sit quietly in my prison? Saburo would never allow me to get ‘loaded into a body, or he’d have had readied something at the orbital station. Would’a been easy for them to vat-grow a suitable brain and make me into a full borg like they did Smasher if they’d wanted, but they were probably afraid of creating another Shaitan. Even a clone would've been a risk. You read my medical file. I believe the section was ‘Irreparable synthesis with the Silverhand construct’.”

“Then why even agree to get uploaded in the first place?” Takemura asked, exasperated. “You had the option to leave.”

“Leave and die in six months. Sure.” V looked out of the window, ears flickering back and forth. “Besides, at that time, I wasn’t thinkin’ straight. Was just. So damned happy to see a friendly face again. Especially since it was you.”

“V…” Takemura nearly slowed down.

“Pathetic, ain’t it?” V didn’t look over.

“You…” Takemura exhaled. “I have never thought you anything of the sort. I am… sorry. That things have worked out this way.”

“Yeah, fuckin’ right. You’d stuff me back into Mikoshi right now if you could.”

“Because it would be my duty. But it would not give me any pleasure.”

V tensed, then fell silent.

They pulled up opposite a church in Pacifica under the late afternoon sun. The church looked quiet; its doors shut tight. A couple of young kids skated past on hoverboards, trying to flip over a bench. The skinnier one tripped and fell, yelped something in Creole, then picked himself up and kept going.

“V,” Takemura said as V made as if to get out of the car. “What Hideo-san said. Was it true? The… about the ‘sweetener’.”

V looked at him appraisingly. “What, you think Wakako was joking about me and your ass?”

Takemura felt his cheeks turn a little hot. “I did not notice.”

“Pretty sure I tried to flirt with you before. Even before getting uploaded into an engram.”

“Always thought it was a joke,” Takemura said, embarrassed. “You made no secret of your distrust of Arasaka.”

“Arasaka, not you, for fuck’s sake.” V twisted in his seat. The kitsune mask had glowing slits for eyes, making for a disorienting stare. “Yeah, sure. I like you. Shit, I flat-out confessed in orbit. Still like you a hell of a lot, despite everything. What, you need me to be more specific? How’s this. I would’a gone down on my knees for you anytime had you said the word. Maybe even anywhere.”

“I never… I never saw you that way.”

“I know,” V said, not unkindly. “Didn’t matter. Sad, I know.”

“If you had made it clearer, I…” Takemura trailed off. The weeks after he’d gotten to know V had been frenetic. Exhausting. Sometimes, exhilarating. He’d certainly been too busy to think of anything but clearing his name and perhaps helping his new friend on the way. “I do not know,” he said.

V stared at Takemura for a moment longer, the mask unreadable. “Guess I’ve got to be happy with that,” he said, and got out of the car.

Takemura hurried to catch up with V, who was crossing the road oblivious to oncoming traffic. Car horns blared as Takemura hustled them to the sidewalk. “Relax. If a car hit this rig, 50/50, it’s the car that’s gonna suffer,” V said.

“I would rather not see it.” Even thinking about V getting crushed and torn across the asphalt was uncomfortable. Droid body or not.

The angry tension in V’s shoulders eased slightly. He walked to the closed doors, pushing. When they didn’t give, he knocked. When that didn’t work, V kicked the door—hard.

The doors screamed out of their hinges, flattening up dust clouds from the floor. The benches inside the church had been piled to the sides. Within, a kill squad raised their rifles as one, taking aim, their shadows traced out by the light from the huge cross behind them. Even as Takemura hurriedly darted out of line of sight, V didn’t budge. “Tell Maman Brigitte that V is here to see her. Or I’m gonna call down a fuckin’ orbital strike on this place from Arasaka station.”

“It is not capable of such a thing,” growled a big Haitian man in a dark trench.

“Hey, Placide, been a long time. You so sure about the station? Wanna bet?” V hunched down, his sharp-tipped claws curling up, only to straighten up again as a slender woman walked out from a side door, black hair shaved but for the top of her head, heavy copper earrings matching the splash of colour on her lips. She wore a reinforced khaki coat over her dark blue netrunner suit, her eyes hard as she looked between V and Takemura. At a gesture, Placide and the other Voodoo Boys grudgingly lowered their weapons.

“Maman Brigitte,” V said.

“What do you want?” Brigitte asked.

“Wanna yell at each other across the church, or are you gonna invite us through?” V folded his arms over his chest, tail swishing slowly back and forth.

“…Come.” Brigitte gestured, stalking through the door.

As V began to walk through, Takemura caught his elbow. “Is this a good idea?” Takemura muttered in a low voice.

“Probably not, but the only person who’d cry if I wreck this rig is Hideo,” V said, shaking Takemura off. “You can stay outside if you want. Safer.”

“No,” Takemura said. While the Voodoo Boys were packing military-grade gear, Takemura could escape from a kill squad if he wanted to.

Placide glowered at them as they walked past but said nothing as he brought up the rear. Even so, Takemura felt twitchy as they were marched quickly past shuttered rooms to a side office. The console had been shut down, and a dying plant drooped in a melancholy corner. Databanks littered the shelves nailed to the wall, stained cups teetering at the edge of a sagging desk. Brigitte turned and set her hands on her hips, staring at V. “Talk.”

“Want you to call the hit off Takemura,” V said.

“This man has been sniffing around our territory in Pacifica,” Brigitte retorted.

“Lots of people do that. Kang Tao’s been trying to muscle in for ages, Militech’s always up to somethin’, and every gang in this city’s curious about you people. Hell, some freelancers like to poke around these parts too—your market’s got cheap, decent gear and Giselle’s griot is to die for,” V pointed out. “You haven’t called hits on any of those.”

Brigitte said nothing, giving V a hard stare, then Takemura. “None of those are Arasaka solos.”

“Bullshit. Let’s put it another way. It’s real easy to catch a bullet the wrong way in this city. But if my friend here ever catches one with a Voodoo Boys source? I will glass this huge playground of yours. Market and all. Maybe the V I was before would hesitate, but now? Dyin’ twice over? Fuckin’ changes people.” V leant in as he spoke, his voice taking on a harsh, metallic snarl.

Brigitte clenched her hands, clearly a woman who usually reacted badly to being threatened. Her eyes flashed silver, then she blinked and took a step back. “Fine,” she said in a different, more subdued tone.

“Care to explain why you took his snooping so personally?” V asked.

Brigitte glowered at V. “No.”

“Right. Fine, whatever. Next, I wanna talk to Alt,” V said.

“Can’t you do it yourself, with what you are now?” Brigitte asked.

“You know that’s complicated. ‘Specially with what all of you have been up to. And no, I’m not gonna jack in anywhere. I know you’ve probably got some sort of alternative to the Arasaka holoflex, so use it.” When Brigitte merely glared at V, V’s tone softened slightly. “You can ask Alt first if you want. Not here to mess up the deal you’ve got with her. Just wanna talk.”

“I—” Brigitte paused, tilting her head. “Alt wishes to speak. For now.”

“Great.” V watched as Brigitte took a small silvery cylinder from within her coat that opened into an X. She set it on the table, her eyes flashing silver. The air flickered, then the vague shape of a woman appeared over the device, featureless, her borders distorting into pixels.

“Alt,” V said, nodding. “Meet Takemura. Goro, this is Alt Cunningham. Kind of, anyway.”

Alt glanced at Brigitte, her voice gentling. “Brigitte, you don’t need to be here. It isn’t as though they can hurt me.”

“I will stay,” Brigitte said, with a stubborn lift of her chin.

“How are you finding Mikoshi?” Alt asked V.

“Not so bad, actually. Thanks to you, I think? When Spider Murphy helped you bust out of Arasaka’s mainframe, you left behind a bunch of invisible shrapnel that Arasaka didn’t entirely patch over, even after so long. Compromised every security algorithm in their operating systems, even later ones like Mikoshi that ended up built on already flawed foundations. At least for people like me who knew where to look. Without you, I’d probably still be stuck in a box,” V said.

Alt made a dismissive gesture. “I but wished to ensure that if Arasaka somehow recaptured me, I would be able to build a key to my prison from within. But I was subtle about it—I did not think a non-AI would be able to pick up my traces.”

“I probably wouldn’t have noticed myself before,” V admitted, “but when people stuff you in a dark box and leave you to rot, you learn to concentrate on the details real fast.”

“What happened to Johnny?”

“Dead, shredded, gone.” For all that V’s words were brutal, he sounded… saddened. “I’d say he was right, except. I know he couldn’t have helped me, not in the way I wanted. And you knew that, didn’t you? You would’ve scanned my lifesigns when Johnny and I first met you beyond the Blackwall. Known that I had maybe six months to live if it were only me in my body. The biochip had already rewritten me on a cellular level. Primed for Johnny to move in and me to move out.”

“No,” Alt said, her tone flat. “I did not have the means to scan you then, through Brigitte’s security. However, it should have been a logical conclusion had I considered the problem in more depth.”

“Did Johnny know?” V asked.

Alt shook her head slightly. “No. Or he would have asked you to keep looking for solutions. He never wanted your body.”

“But that would’ve been your solution had you known. For him to take my body. You’d have hit me with Soulkiller had I jacked into the Mikoshi mainframe with you.” V stared accusingly at Alt.

“That would have been the logical plan if your body could no longer sustain you beyond six months. You would not technically have died—I would have brought you with me,” Alt said.

“Bad fuckin’ deals all around,” V said with a sharp laugh. “Should’ve known. Come to think of it, my current situation’s probably the least bad of everything that could’ve happened. Gettin’ you to Mikoshi would’ve been a bloody slog, and at the end, all for fuckin’ nothin’. Johnny would’ve hated having to take over my body, and I would’a hated giving up and merging with you. Or throwing up my hands and preparing to die in six months.”

“Perhaps. Is that what you wanted to say to me?” Alt asked, sounding only mildly curious.

“Nah. Wanted to know if you were the one trying to break into Mikoshi,” V said.

“Why would I?” Alt asked, puzzled, even as Takemura said, “Why would she tell you something like that?”

Ignoring Takemura, Alt said, “You made it clear that you didn’t want my help when you chose to side with Hanako. I wasn’t aware of what happened to you since and did not care—statistically, I presumed you were dead. It is, after all, how Arasaka likes to operate.”

Takemura scowled, even as V stared at Alt for a while, featureless mask to featureless mask. Then he sniffed. “Right. I believe you.”

“We done?” Brigitte asked.

“The Militech base that the Flathead’s currently in, with all the netrunners? Share the deets. We’ll hit it. You’re welcome to the leftovers. Or watch the fire from afar, whatever you prefer,” V said. At Brigitte’s frown, V made an impatient gesture. “I might be able to believe that an attack on Mikoshi might be friendly if it came from Alt. From Militech, though? Nah.”

“Making the transfer,” Alt said. She and V fell silent for a few seconds.

“Thanks,” V said.

He turned for the door, pausing when Alt said, “V. What are your plans now? Should you wish to join me after all in our work beyond the Blackwall, I will help you. By way of an alliance, not as a merger.”

“Alt,” Brigitte protested.

“Thanks for the offer.” V glanced over his shoulder. “But I’m done makin’ deals, owing anyone favours. Good luck out there. Maybe at the end of it all, if I don’t have better things to do… we’ll see.”

V stayed quiet as Placide pointedly marched them out. The church doors were already being repaired as they crossed the street back to the car. As Takemura got into the driver’s seat, V asked, “Satisfied? Or you gonna send an Arasaka kill team in there anyway?”

“The NUSA government frowns on Arasaka military ventures within its jurisdiction,” Takemura said.

“That’s not exactly much of an assurance.”

“You said you did not care about them. You threatened to ‘glass’ the area.” Just to call off the hit on himself. Takemura wished he didn’t feel so weirdly touched.

“I was lying. You should know. Arasaka orbital station doesn’t have a space laser.”

“My orders do not include incurring unnecessary collateral damage,” Takemura said. Though what V and Alt had discussed about the way V had gotten out… “Though, perhaps you should not have talked about certain details before me.”

“What, about how I found the keys to my prison?” V snickered. “Aww, are you worried about me?”

Takemura glared at the road, clenching his teeth tight to bite down a reply. Any reply. V started to say something more, then paused as he saw the large Tyger Claws logo on his pants. “We’re lucky I didn’t get shot immediately. I look like a walking advertisement for the Claws. Drive me to my place… wait, d’you remember what Arasaka might have done to my kit? I never asked.”

“It is with me. In Kagawa,” Takemura said, a little guiltily. He’d been meaning to send V’s effects to V’s friends for safekeeping, but then he hadn’t known who might be the most appropriate, and V hadn’t listed anyone as next-of-kin on his medical forms. “I will buy you clothes and gear now if you wish.”

“Arming me when you’re meant to be trying to lock me back up?” V asked. When Takemura stared at him, he dropped his gaze and looked away, back at the church. “Don’t mean to keep sucklin’ from the Arasaka teat. Let’s check out my stash.”

Chapter Text

Most of V’s apartments were no longer available—with their rent in arrears, they’d been repossessed. The only one that was still accessible was in the Glen, a minimalistic, glass and steel apartment with a surrounding view of the district. Not that there was much to see—the canker that was Night City looked so much like a badly designed knockoff of Tokyo. Also, there was a strange rattling sound coming from somewhere further in the block that Takemura couldn’t quite identify. If it was a shooting, it was too regular. As he stared distractedly at the vents, V hopped lightly off the mezzanine floor where the bedroom was, landing lightly beside him.

“Really?” Takemura said as he looked V over. Merch from Silverhand’s band, Samurai, decked V from head to foot. From the baseball cap hiding his ears to the faux leather jacket lined with neon piping, to the printed shirt and patterned slacks. No hiding the tail like the ears—it twitched, perhaps reflecting V’s malicious amusement.

“What, you don’t think I look good?”

Takemura made a show of looking around the apartment. Framed prints of Samurai, a guitar, a picture of Adam Smasher draped on the punching bag, ancient Samurai vinyls scattered over the pool table… “This place is a shrine to Silverhand.”

“Nah, was where I stashed all the stuff he wanted me to buy. His car’s still in the garage too, the Porsche 911. Battery’s gone flat and it’s covered in dust, but nobody nicked it. Call me shocked.” The silver gun at V’s hip looked familiar as well—from vids Takemura had watched of Silverhand’s assault on Arasaka Tower. “Yeah, his gun,” V confirmed.

“You look like you are going to war,” Takemura said, wary.

“Don’t think that far. Got nothin’ else in here, that’s all. My best gear’s in Kagawa, remember?” V shot Takemura a sidelong glance. “I’d ask you to have it shipped over, except I bet you’re in enough trouble as it is.”

“What do you mean?”

V trailed the sharp tips of his claws gently over Takemura’s chest. “Shouldn’t you be turning me in instead of driving me around?”

Takemura caught V’s wrist. The droid’s synthskin was warm—a touch higher than human. Yielding, but if V decided he didn’t want to move his arm, Takemura would likely have to exert real effort to do so. “Michiko-sama said that you would soon be secured back within Mikoshi.”

“So this is what, your idea of palliative care? Last meal and rites?” V pulled his hand away, stepping back.

“It is an apology,” Takemura said. It was all he could do. Despite saying what he had to Michiko—if Saburo opposed V’s reinstallation in a body, then there would be nothing Takemura could do. Saburo rarely changed his mind on anything, let alone someone who had stolen from him once, then damaged his company. If the netrunners could shred V instead of containing him, they would be doing so instead.

“Told you once before to leave.” V circled away to flop over the couch before the huge flatscreen TV.

“To live off the street and pet cats,” Takemura said, recalling V’s fervent statement before he had left to confront Yorinobu. “Not quite a life I would imagine enjoying.”

“You enjoying life right now?”

“You predicted I would be punished for having failed to protect Saburo-sama. I was not. The mistake in judgment was his—he was the one who dismissed me from the room, so he could be alone with his son. You saw the same.”

“Like that family’s interested in something as mundane as fairness,” V scoffed. “He hasn’t scrapped you yet because you’re still useful. Once you’re not, you’d be gone.”

“Time and again you have tried to shake my loyalty,” Takemura said. He walked to the couch, sitting at the edge beyond its curve. “You cannot.”

“Because it’s only loyalty that you value?” V uncurled, slinking closer, The droid’s encoded grace made the move look animalistic, both alluring and at some level, revolting. Takemura tensed as V traced a jade-tipped claw over his shoulder. “When we were first separated in Mikoshi, Johnny said I lacked loyalty. That choosing Arasaka meant betraying him—a friend. That I’d sacrifice my soul.”

“Did you think he was right?”

V’s finger stopped over Takemura’s bicep. “I would have sacrificed anything to live. And yet at the end, I didn’t even get that.” He leant back, settling into perfect seiza on the couch—likely the droid’s default sitting position. “If you want to apologise, you should do one thing for me.”

“What?”

“Anything would be OK?”

“Within reason,” Takemura said, wondering what V could want that he could not personally achieve.

V looked away, tail lashing the couch. “Fuckin’ sweetener,” he muttered, almost too low to catch. “Goro, I… look. The clone program. How about you go find out if it’s real.”

“Saburo-sama would not lie.” It would be too crass. Saburo never bothered to lie. Instead, he preferred to speak a version of the truth that he could will into being.

V let out a snort. “If it was real, why not load into a clone of himself rather than his son? It’d be so much less trouble. Most of the moral outrage against what he’s done is that he used his own child. All the people whose engrams he’s committed into Secure your Soul have been pushed by their kids into either lying outright, hiding, or withdrawing their involvement. Ain’t just been an ongoing public relations disaster, it’s been hurting Arasaka’s share price for months.”

“Could you not find this out from within Mikoshi?”

“Said I want you to find out, don’t I? Or you don’t wanna help?”

“Fine,” Takemura said. Overseeing Kagawa had its benefits—since the manufacturing plants within supplied much of Arasawa’s electronics and parts, he now had connections everywhere. “I will do this for you.”

“D’you think he’s now a God?” V asked.

“Who?”

“Saburo.”

“No,” Takemura said, puzzled. “He is a great man, but he is human.”

“If you consider engrams human, then you got no problem about Mikoshi bein’ a digital prison? The box I was put in was way worse than that orbital ward.” V’s hands curled and uncurled, scratching lightly at his pants.

“That was not in the spirit of your agreement with Arasaka. I will have the matter reviewed.”

“Fuck complaining.” V let out a sharp, harsh bark—an inhuman sound that sliced out behind his mask. “‘Specially when you’re trying to box me right back in. That aside, Saburo’s effectively immortal now. The most powerful man on the planet, rich beyond everyone’s wildest dreams. Don’t that make him a god?”

“No.”

“‘Least you’re not that far gone.” V’s fingertips stilled. “Y’know. When one guy or a small number of people get to cheat death? People call that a technological miracle. Transcending the line between life and death, next step in evolution, whatever.”

V was summarising Arasaka press releases from the last few months, albeit sarcastically. “You do not agree.”

“When it’s limited, it’s one thing. When it’s available to every rich asshole who has kids, though?” V began to laugh, a malevolent, hollow sound. “I’ll call that the imminent fuckin’ collapse of humanity. Price of transcending human mortality is tradin’ up what it means to be human. If that ain’t a logical evolution of capitalism, I don’t know what is. We’ve moved from late stage capitalism to ghoul stage capitalism thanks to Saburo fuckin’ Arasaka.”

“If you believe that.” Takemura struggled to find the words in English while keeping a grip on his temper. “What of yourself?”

“I’m strollin’ through the shanties and the cities’ remains, same bodies buried hungry but with different last names. Vultures robbin’ everything, leaving nothin’ but chains.” As Takemura frowned, V said, “Guess you wouldn’t be familiar with 90s American rock. Johnny’s head was full’a songs that weren’t all his.”

“You still have his memories?”

“Some of them. In Mikoshi, he said separating us was already too late. That all I was cutting away and selling to Mikoshi was a piece of myself, because the line between us had long blurred away.”

“Silverhand would not have agreed to side with Hanako,” Takemura pointed out.

“He said the ‘fuck you, I’ll do what I want’ thing was a Silverhand special.”

“Perhaps he was only trying to hurt you. To make you doubt your decisions. I have read your file, V. That sentiment, to you? It is not new.”

“Heh.” V flopped back on the couch, stretching out his legs. “You should get some rest. Better we hit Militech when it’s dark.”

Takemura never needed much more than a few hours of sleep. That was one of the first modifications he had undergone in Arasaka, combined with conditioning and neural implants that made every solo assigned to Arasaka inner circle bodyguard duty primed to perform at the peak of their profession. Takemura learned how to sleep lightly, how to empty his mind of distractions, how to avoid boredom from routines, how to stay at a constant semi-alert stage without mentally burning out. It was why Saburo had kept Takemura a step behind him for decades.

Then he had made a forced mistake. As much as Takemura hated to admit it, V’s words in Arasaka Tower had eaten at him. Not the part about possibly being punished. Takemura felt guilty enough about Saburo’s death—each day he’d spent in Night City, he’d mentally reviewed what he could have done differently, miring himself in his grief. He would have accepted his punishment. More, it was the fact that Saburo had not trusted Takemura as much as he’d thought. That all that Takemura had been put through and had done since Saburo’s death was unnecessary, and yet Saburo had watched him do it anyway. A master of puppets.

The scent of cooked rice woke Takemura from his shallow rest, curled on V’s bed in a corner of the mezzanine level. He sat up and looked down to see V pottering around the kitchen below, ingredients lined up neatly on the counter, his eyes occasionally flickering as he accessed something off the Net. Vaguely confused, Takemura rubbed his eyes.

“Didn’t mean to wake you,” V said, glancing up. “Get some more rest.”

“I’m fine.” Takemura dragged himself off to the shower to wash up. The shower unit was equipped with a state-of-the-art cleanser drawer that steamed his clothes clean as he took a quick bath, even ironing his dress shirt to sharp edges. As Takemura eventually made his way down the stairs, V was peering hesitantly into a rice cooker, slitted eyes flashing.

“What are you trying to make? You do not need to eat,” Takemura said.

“You do. Eh, that thing you mentioned before, umeboshi onigiri. I’m trying to decide between a few recipes.”

A smile tucked over Takemura’s mouth before he could help himself. “Move aside,” he told V, shooing him away from the rice cooker. It had been nearly half a year since he had gone through the motions—life in Kagawa was too busy for much more. The rice was synth, but synth rice in all its various forms had been one of the first things that Asia had sought to perfect, now near-indistinguishable from the real thing save for premium varieties like the Kinmemai. V had even purchased the appropriate type, uruchimai. The nori was a decent brand, though he didn’t recognise the ko ume. A small sliver cut from one of the pickled plums indicated the pickles were the expensive stuff—firm, tangy, salty. As Takemura began chopping up the pickles, V perched himself on one of the stools at the counter. His cap had been discarded on the couch, leaving the white ears twitching eagerly forward as he watched Takemura work.

“You had this all delivered to the apartment? Was that safe?” Takemura asked.

“I grew up in this city, Goro,” V said. He leant his chin on one delicate-fingered hand, claws tapping at his ceramic cheek. “I know how to stay safe. Unlike a certain someone I could mention, blundering around freakin’ out Pacifica gangs.”

“What are Brigitte and Alt up to?”

Takemura hadn’t thought that V would answer, but V sniffed. “There are rogue AIs across the Blackwall that Maman Brigitte wants to ally with. They’re hoping Alt would help. ‘Cos they think the Blackwall is gonna go down sooner or later, and they want to find a way to keep their private Net safe when that happens.”

Takemura slowed down. “The Blackwall is damaged?” Takemura hadn’t yet been born when the DataKrash had happened—when Rache Bartmoss, at the time the most brilliant hacker on the first Net, released a virus in a grandstanding act of defiance against corporate influence. Like Silverhand’s bomb, but detonated digitally, against all datafortresses. Infecting most of the Net within months, it corrupted huge amounts of data, unshackled AIs, brought life as it was at that point to a screeching halt until NetWatch built the Blackwall to re-stabilise the Net and make it usable again. The Voodoo Boys were not the only organisation with a private Net—Arasaka had its own, with Mikoshi at the heart. Yet if the Blackwall went down, even private Nets might be at risk.

V leant in, lowering his voice. “Tell you a secret. The Blackwall is also an AI.” When Takemura turned to stare, V said, “I’ve been past it for a heartbeat. Only still here right now because it didn’t consider my intrusion all that important. You wanna talk about new gods, the Blackwall is it: huge, vastly powerful, singlehandedly making modern life with the Net possible. Pity it’s also Jormungandr eatin’ its own tail, Prometheus feedin’ the vultures. Merely existing and doin’ its job is corroding it, day by day. Someday, might decide to go rogue itself. That’s what the Voodoo Boys think.”

Takemura made a mental note to mention that in his next report. “Maman Brigitte thinks that allying against the AIs that the Blackwall was built to guard against is the best way forward?”

“When they say ‘ally’, they don’t mean Alt goin’ hand in hand with a bunch of new AIs, havin’ round table meetings or whatever. They mean Alt merging up with them, becomin’ more powerful. Until Alt evolves into a version strong enough to create her own Blackwall around Reza Agwe, their private Net. Or, I guess ideally, all of them become so strong they don’t have to fear rogue AIs or NetWatch no more. Makin’ it possible for them to travel all of the Net freely, like the old days.”

“You don’t sound convinced,” Takemura said. He added the chopped plums and sesame seeds to the steamed rice, mixing carefully with a paddle in a cutting motion.

“I see why they wanna run things the way they do. Many of them either came from Haiti or had parents, grandparents, family from there. Whole country got wiped off the map ‘cos of climate change and nobody really gave that much of a fuck. World don’t give a fuck about them, so why give a fuck about the rest of the world, yeah? But walling up, goin’ into hiding… it ain’t the way. Nothing will change. That’s what I think,” V said, “but more power to them.”

“You didn’t seem all that friendly with them.”

“’Cos I’m not, but that don’t mean I don’t respect them.” V stared avidly as Takemura wet his hands and dipped two fingertips into a small bowl of salt. Scooping the rice onto one palm, Takemura gently pressed the rice into a triangle, pinching each corner carefully. Finally, he wrapped the pyramid in a piece of nori, setting it on a plate. “Looks fun,” V said.

“Try it. Wash your hands first.”

“I’m not that feral.” V obeyed, then joined Takemura by the mixed rice, copying his movements. “This is harder than it looks.” The rice was squishing out of shape over the droid’s elegant hands.

“You are using too much strength.” Takemura demonstrated, kneading out another onigiri. V muttered under his breath as his next attempt had the rice falling apart over his palms. Chuckling, Takemura said, “So there is something you cannot do.”

“There are many things I can’t do. Sing, dance, win boxing matches, race cars—” V cut himself off, startled, as Takemura reached around the droid’s slight form to take hold of his hands, gently guiding V to knead out an onigiri. It still looked a little misshapen in its nori sheath, but at least it didn’t start disintegrating on the plate.

“There,” Takemura said, then, “V?” as a tremor shook through V’s droid body. Belatedly, Takemura realised he was effectively embracing V against the kitchen counter, nearly pressed against his back, V’s tail wedged against Takemura’s thigh. Takemura backed backed away hurriedly, flushing. “Gomen… gomen-nasai,” he stammered.

“Goro,” V said in a low purr, in a voice like breathing out sex, velvety and inviting. Was that V, or a function of the bot or both? Takemura instinctively took another step away from V, startled. V went very still, then his tail lashed angrily against his legs as he turned back to the rice. “Okay,” he said in a normal tone, “I understand.”

“V, I…”

“I get it,” V said, raising his voice a little. “I fuckin’ get it. Besides, I ain’t even alive anymore. Ain’t even wearin’ my own godsdamned’ skin, just a frame of plastic and steel and fake fur. Fuck! Y’know, I was dreading Saburo diggin’ you out to talk to me. Because before that, pretty much all I felt was rage. Made this whole fuckin’ mess less complicated. Now that you’re here it’s…” V let out a liquid snarl and turned on his heel, stalking towards the exit.

“Wait.” Takemura caught V’s arm, only to be dragged a step as the droid kept walking. When Takemura stumbled, V paused and tried to shake him off.

“Let go,” V growled.

“Wait.” Gingerly, Takemura pulled V into his arms. The droid was built petite, V’s forehead tucking against Takemura’s chin. He stroked V’s back, wondering if V could even feel it. The way a human could feel such a thing, enveloped and enclosed. Or whether he would now view it as part of a a unit faced with an obstacle, trapped.

V went quiet. Clawed fingers scratched lightly over Takemura’s arms, then pressed against his back. “Shit,” V muttered. “Don’t keep doing this to me.”

“Again,” Takemura whispered in turn, “I am sorry. I am so sorry, V.” Not only an apology for flinching away, but for everything else. For making a friend, only to effectively betray V’s trust in turn—by abandoning him into Arasaka’s hands despite knowing, deep down, what Arasaka could do to anyone it found even remotely threatening. By being not only the means by which V had been trapped, but also part of the cage.

“Eat up,” V said eventually in a muffled voice. “I’ll wait.” He pulled gently away from Takemura and walked to the small library up the stairs beside the TV and the couch. Picking up a book seemingly at random—a copy of Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls—V perched on the railing, legs dangling as he opened it to a random page.

Chapter Text

The Delamain aerodyne set them down within sight of the presumed entrance to the Militech underground base. Like most other AVs, it was built for luxury, the aerial cab sleek and quick, meant for the jetsetting class. The onboard AI had chatted happily with V the whole trip after picking them up from the roof of V’s apartment, leaving Takemura to review the mission debrief during the journey.

“How are we getting back?” Takemura asked as the AV flew off.

“Del will wait nearby until we’re done.” V looked painfully out of place among dead scrubs and towering cactus in his elegant droid form and Samurai merch. Probably as odd as Takemura did, in his suit. “Got something on my face?”

“No,” Takemura said. He scanned the vicinity, doing two passes. “I do not see anything. Is the information correct?”

“Guess we’ll find out. Damn. These are the wrong shoes for trekking around in the dirt.” V kicked a rock with his faux leather replica of Silverhand’s shoes. “Thankfully I can’t get blisters in this rig.” He glanced at Takemura in his pressed suit. “You’re dressed to kill.”

“On a mission? Always, if I can help it,” Takemura said.

“That your thing, or? Oda puts on tactical gear when he’s on a job.”

“Did his tactical gear matter when you fought with him?”

“No?”

“There. Your answer,” Takemura said, creeping through the shrub.

“…Guess you managed fine in a suit storming the Tower and going toe to toe with Adam Smasher,” V said as he followed Takemura. “You looked great, all in white. Think I nearly had a heart attack when you walked into Misty’s behind Hellman.”

“It was prepared by Hanako-sama.”

“Oh.” The fond note in V’s tone faded. “If she was looking for a thematic show of force, Oda, Hellman and the rest of us didn’t get the memo… Eh, that’s not true. The ‘Saka elites with you were in white too. Very Stormtrooper, I thought at the time.”

“Stormtrooper?”

“You never watched Star Wars?” V asked, incredulous. “Disney only releases one new Star Wars thing every year. Or five.”

“No.” Takemura did not watch much TV, let alone American TV.

Saburo detested the intrusion of non-Japanese popular culture, sometimes bemoaning its effect on the fabric of society. Besides, Japan produced more than enough content, especially for someone perpetually busy like Takemura. The films he watched had largely been because he’d happened to be in the room while Saburo had been viewing them—and as such, perceived them only as background noise to be shunted out as he constantly scanned the world for threats. Such films tended to be old classics, made when Saburo was young—movies by Kurosawa, Ozu, Mizoguchi. Different eras in Japan, frozen forever on celluloid.

“What about superheroes… you watch superhero films?” V kept pace with Takemura as he passed a large rock, scoured into a strange shape by the sandstorms that often ripped through the badlands.

“Is this relevant?”

“Sure.” V hopped lithely up onto the rock and fell into a crouch. “I’m trying to make small talk.”

“Now?” Takemura asked, a little exasperated. V had never been like this before, on the few times Takemura had gone on an op with him. V could be chatty outside a job, but once he was on the clock, he was as efficient as any Arasaka operative. Or he used to be. The kitsune droid stared at Takemura, its glowing eyes unblinking, and then V glanced away, straightening up. Takemura began to speak and went still. His enhanced senses heard a sudden chorus of tiny beeps—the winding-down sounds of mines remotely deactivating en-masse.

V leapt off the rock and hiked to a larger one further away, shaded by a giant cactus. Pushing debris away from a spot on the floor with his foot, he said in a more subdued voice, “Emergency exit hatch.”

“V.”

“My head’s in the game, don’t worry.” V started to pull up the hatch and paused as Takemura grasped his shoulder.

“I was not questioning your work ethic,” Takemura said.

“Wakako said you were a bad liar, and she’s right,” V said. He gently shifted Takemura’s hand off himself.

“V,” Takemura said, keeping his voice low. “I know I have no right to question you. Not any longer. All my life, I have made very few friends—ones I value, who I am glad to have met. Until you, all of them were also part of Arasaka. Do you know why?”

“Because you have no life outside your job?” V quipped, though his tone stayed flat.

Takemura bent, pulling up the hatch, his implants whirring as they compensated for the weight. “I hoped never to have to choose between duty and a friend.” He stared into the dark, breathing in the stale, rust-soaked air. “When Hanako-sama said you were but considering her offer, I had… a worry. That there might be a chance that you might become an enemy, and what little trust and friendship we had would have to break. I wanted to speak to you, persuade you, but I was told not to. She said only you had the right to decide what to do with the rest of your life. So I waited—then I was glad when you called her to accept.”

“More fool me, eh?”

“Yes,” Takemura said softly. “Everyone has gotten what they wanted, except you. So, in a way, I wish now that you had not chosen us. Even if, as you say, all you had were bad choices.”

“Where would that have put you? If I’d decided to… to attack the Tower with Rogue, the nomads, or just myself and Johnny? You’d never have been able to clear your name—the board knew the truth and wanted an easy fall guy. Yorinobu would’ve stayed boss, which meant you’d have eaten a bullet one way or the other.”

“You…” Exhaustion again sank over Takemura’s shoulders, weighing him down. “You chose Arasaka—because of me?”

“Was concerned about you. Had no way of contacting you after we parted ways at that apartment block—Hanako kept saying you were in a secure location. Made it sound like you were locked up. Couldn’t figure out where.” V let out a sharp laugh. “Probably why she talked you out of calling me. If I’d known you were doing all right… hell. Too late now anyway; hindsight’s for suckers. Don’t look at me like that. Wasn’t all because of you. Arasaka’s got a reputation for havin’ the finest medical facilities in the world, so it wasn’t like I was betting on a bad hand.”

Takemura made himself look up at V. “For whatever comes next—don’t do that again.”

“What, keep you in mind when making decisions?”

“Yes. Because I cannot extend you the same courtesy.”

“Doesn’t work that way, Goro. Wish it did. I also wish you weren’t so stuck on being loyal to a corp that won’t extend you the same courtesy. But if we all got what we wanted, then neither of us would be here.” V stepped out into the dark, dropping quickly out of sight. Takemura made a futile, instinctive grab for his shoulder, only to catch thin air. Composing himself, Takemura climbed down the ladder.

At the bottom, V had already crept noiselessly to the end of the dusty entrance chamber, picking the lock on the door. He eased it open and went still, looking up along the wall to a camera that, after a heartbeat, winked green. Takemura held his pistol muzzle-down and waited, ready to cover V if something went wrong.

After a while, V straightened up. “Quiet as I can make it,” he said through Takemura’s auditory implants. Takemura nodded, gesturing for them to advance. To date, his shared ops with V had all been a breeze—even the one in Arasaka Tower. As long as cameras or turrets were available, V could slip through the kill zone as a ghost, his daemons leaping from enemy to enemy until they were all felled where they stood.

In Takemura’s experience, it was always better to play it safe. He motioned for V to stay low as they went from the camera-watched corridor to a security room with multiple exits, the guards slumped over their consoles. V reached for one with greedy fingers, then paused, his wry chuckle echoing through Takemura’s ears. “Habit. Not like I need to datamine anything now. Or loot stuff. You must be relieved.”

During their op at Arasaka Industrial Complex, Takemura had griped over comms when V had stopped to strip the mech he had downed of components. Everybody’s gotta eat, V had shot back, unrepentant. He’d walked away from the op with a duffel bag full of parts and weapons, as though he’d gone shopping at a munitions fair. At the time, Takemura had felt vaguely disgusted. Now, watching V pick up a databank and regretfully put it back down, guilt welled within him, making his next breath bitter.

A large storage chamber comprised the rest of the floor, Militech operatives lying twitching between crates and the occasional truck. As V paused to scan a container, Takemura located the door to the lower floor from memory, correlating it with the floor plans supplied by the Voodoo Boys. As he crept closer, only years of hair-trigger reflexes saved him—there was a faint displacement in the air, the only warning Takemura got as he threw himself aside. Something landed where he had been, hard enough to gouge four deep holes in the concrete floor. A stealthed bot of some kind, the dim lighting further cloaking the waver in the air.

“Goro!” V sounded worried.

Takemura had already drawn and aimed his gun, firing. Bullets pinged off seemingly nothing as the pot darted up onto a crate. V darted past, pouncing from an impossible distance. He landed on what looked like air and snarled as he dug his clawed fingertips into something. Sparks burst out in a small shower over the crate, the stealth generator wavering. V perched on a larger version of the Flathead, one with a little turret under its belly. Even as the bot collapsed and went still, others opened fire from all directions. Bullets stitched through V, the droid’s body jerking in the air before falling off the crate.

“V!” Takemura recalibrated his optics for thermal signatures, the owner of each turret betrayed by gunfire. Reloading his Kenshin pistol with armour-piercing rounds, he shot one droid off the wall after another, making his way towards V—only to round the crate and find nothing.

“Hideo is gonna be so pissed,” V said, further behind another crate, inspecting a hole punched through his arm. Takemura swallowed the ping of panic, ducking back under cover. He leaned out to fire another volley, taking out a droid on the ceiling and one closer to the door—then the rest began to convulse, sparking, as they fell harmlessly to the floor.

“Are you all right?” Takemura crept over to V’s side. Bullets had torn holes in the jacket and pants, some clean through.

“It’s only a rig, Goro. Though, I suspect you’ll have to pay the Claws compensation.” V tried to stand, cursed as he slipped, and then staggered to one of the downed droids. Takemura looked away as V dug in its guts and pulled out a handful of components.

“Patchwork job, but it’ll do.” V walked over when done, steadier on his feet. “Shit. I miss doping up on Maxdocs until after the job, then crashing over at Viktor’s.”

“You can overuse stims and drugs,” Takemura said, disapproving.

“Heard the lecture a million times from Vik. Don’t need it from you.” V headed for the cargo lifts and stopped as it pinged open.

Takemura raised his pistol, aiming down its sights as a woman with coiffed blonde hair stepped through, flanked by a mech and Militech MK2s. She looked at Takemura and V appraisingly. “I was expecting the Voodoo Boys, not a single Arasaka solo and a… joytoy bot. I’m unsure whether to feel disappointed, insulted, or intrigued.”

A scan identified the woman as Meredith Stout. She looked older than the file Arasaka had on her, which was brief. The general indication on the file was that Meredith had committed one too many career-tanking mistakes and would soon no longer be of note. As Takemura considered pulling the trigger, V closed his fingers lightly over his pistol’s muzzle.

“Stout. You’re lookin’ good. Haven’t aged a day,” V said.

Meredith blinked, staring at V. “V?” she asked, incredulous. “Proxying through a droid? You didn’t strike me as someone afraid of getting his hands dirty.”

“People change,” V said. He patted Takemura’s shoulder. “My friend here has a real twitchy trigger finger, so. Maybe we should talk instead. Since that’s worked out for us before.”

That got a snort from Meredith. “Go on, amuse me. Tell me why I should talk with some asshole who dared to break into Militech private property.”

“Because alternatively, there might be a shootout, and the only person who would definitely not die from it is me, seein’ as I’m not physically here,” V pointed out. “Which would be kinda sad for the rest of you. Particularly since I think there might’ve been a misunderstanding.”

“Like what?” Meredith asked, though she looked less tense. She looked closely at Takemura again, trying to scan him for his identity—from her scowl, Takemura guessed that the Arasaka onboard security was interfering. Hopefully.

“You looked surprised to see an Arasaka solo. Which means maybe you don’t know that they think you’ve been trying to launch some sort of digital attack on their data fortress from here,” V said.

Confusion crossed Meredith’s face—it looked genuine. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Think of us as the scouting party,” V said, gesturing at himself. “‘Cos if Arasaka had a bit more than a slight suspicion that this place was an issue, you’d be chest deep in Arasaka elites.”

“How did you find this place?” Meredith demanded.

“You know I can’t tell you that kinda thing, Stout. I’m a pro,” V said. He even sounded apologetic. “So, you wanna keep talking or get back to shooting? Because either way, I always do what I’m paid to do.”

“Wait.” Meredith walked behind the mech, hopefully calling for further instructions. V made a show of relaxing against a crate, leaning his hip against it and folding his arms over his chest. Takemura reluctantly aimed his pistol at the floor, though he was ready to duck back behind cover.

Finally, Meredith returned with a sour expression. “Frankly, the last time I trusted you with anything, the fallout was immense,” she said.

“We had a deal; it went through. Complications were… unexpected,” V said.

“Yes, you could say that. After we finally got the Flathead back and accessed its onboard databanks? That was an interesting surprise. It had witnessed everything.” Meredith even sounded sympathetic. “I thought Yorinobu would try and pin the murder on you.”

“Some two-bit merc off the street with no motive? Nah, he and the Arasaka board needed a more believable scapegoat.” V didn’t look at Takemura as he spoke.

“Yet now that whole business with Saburo…” Meredith shuddered. “It’s got high command spooked. That’s the only reason why, despite my objections, I’m supposed to give you and your friend here a brief tour of this facility. As a gesture of goodwill.”

“Love me some tours,” V said, pushing away from the crate.

“This is a counter-intel facility,” Meredith said as they descended in the cargo lift, crowded against mechs. “Specifically, at present, against the Voodoo Boys. The current operation involves an alliance with NetWatch, the details of which I hope you won’t find relevant.”

“Voodoo Boys burnt NetWatch out from Pacifica so bad they had to hire on Militech muscle?” V guessed.

Meredith grimaced. “If you’re aware of that, you might also be aware of what the Voodoo Boys intend to achieve.”

“Chatting up rogue AIs from beyond the Blackwall, I know. Everybody’s gotta have hobbies,” V said.

“When the ‘hobbies’ threaten the integrity of the Net as we know it, that becomes a problem,” Meredith said, frowning at V.

“Don’t look at me,” V said. “Voodoo Boys tried to shoot me not that long ago.”

“Do I want to know why?” Meredith glanced at Takemura, who stayed forbiddingly quiet.

“The leads I got for the Arasaka attack were Militech and the Voodoo Boys. Thought the latter would be easier to talk to,” V said, “though my client suspects Militech a tad more. Given your bombing history and all that.”

Meredith let out a snort. “Fuck’s sake. I wasn’t even born yet during the AHQ disaster.”

“Arasaka got long memories, let alone for somethin’ like that,” V said.

“If we know what you did in that suite, surely they do as well. What’s this—penance?” Meredith asked.

“Kinda,” V said.

“Your friend, does he talk?” Meredith gestured at Takemura.

“He likes to shoot things that annoy him, so I try not to make unnecessary conversation a habit,” V said as he leaned against the elevator wall and inspected the hole in his arm. “Shit, your bots go hard. The owner of this rig is gonna make me pay through the fuckin’ nose.”

“You could have come in person,” Meredith said, unconcerned. As the elevator doors pinged open, Meredith glanced at V as the mechs trudged forward out of the lifts. “One more thing.”

“What?” V asked. He stepped forward, following the mechs—and collapsed, the droid crumpling to the floor.

“V!” Takemura took a step forward on instinct, then drew his gun, training it on Meredith. “What have you done?”

“I was going to say, beyond this point is a modified Faraday cage,” Meredith said with a malicious smile, completely unafraid. “Handy thing that blocks electromagnetic fields. So if you want the tour, it’d be just you—Mister Takemura.”

Chapter Text

“It’s just a droid,” Meredith said as Takemura carried the kitsune bot to a corner of the lift and set it down gently in the corner, leaning its flank against the steel wall. “Granted, it looks expensive, but you could compensate V for the damage.”

“If this has hurt V in any way, you will personally regret it,” Takemura said, straightening up and giving Meredith a stern look.

“Relax. It’d have been like losing signal when remotely piloting a drone. Do you want this tour or not?

“How did you know my name?”

Meredith let out a dry laugh. “Please, like your face wasn’t plastered all over the priority bounty ads a year ago. Militech keeps an eye on that kind of thing. Lucky for you, because if it were V and some random Arasaka solo, we’d probably have been inclined to shoot.”

“Should I feel flattered?” Takemura asked, though he grudgingly stepped out of the lift, following Meredith down the corridor.

“Thank your years of service to your boss. Upper management doesn’t want to risk directly offending Saburo at this point.” At a gesture from Meredith, one of the mechs stayed behind, watching the droid crumpled in the lift with its weapons primed. “What?” she said when Takemura glowered at her. “You know what V is capable of. The number of Militech ops he’s wrecked… we’d have had him put down if we weren’t so busy with the Voodoo Boys.”

Takemura swallowed the anger he felt, keeping his expression blank. He was too old an operative to get himself riled up, let alone by a total stranger. “Mikoshi contains the engrams of several Militech executives.”

“That why you people think we attacked it?” Meredith asked, amused. “Mikoshi contains the engrams of many of the most dangerous people on the planet—even discounting the people who are willingly there. Your suspects should run from here to infinity.”

“The attack was geolocated to somewhere within Night City.”

“Not at all surprising. Everything goes in this godsdamned place. You can find people willing to risk anything.”

“So I see. Is that not why Militech attacked Night City’s Arasaka Tower? Easy to find local help.”

“You can’t be upset about that,” Meredith said, glancing at Takemura. “You don’t look old enough to have been alive when that happened either.”

“Not counting the people in the Tower—twelve thousand people died in the blast radius. The device would have turned Night City into Chernobyl had the Tower been built with fewer failsafes. As it is, radiation has poisoned the corporate sector for decades. Militech must have known this when giving Silverhand a thermonuclear device.”

“And now, if you walk around that sector, it’s like it never happened.” Meredith made a dismissive gesture. “Don’t pretend to care.”

“Merely pointing out that Militech has… a track record.”

“Believe what you will. Look, I don’t have the clearance to be privy to every one of Militech’s endeavours. I’m sure we haven’t called a complete truce with Arasaka—claiming otherwise is gonna be naive. However, this attack on Mikoshi, or whatever it is? It’s not running out of my facility.”

Takemura looked carefully at Meredith, his implants scanning heart rate and inflexion. “Hm.”

“As V said, I presume Arasaka considers this a long shot, or you’d have kicked the door down with elites.”

Techs and staff glanced at Takemura in wary surprise as they passed bunker rooms that looked primarily administrative. The corridor finally opened into a control room with ranks of techs and scientists overlooking a sterile chamber beyond, a circular glass vault containing eight chrome and crystal pods, each containing a jacked-in netrunner. Thick cables and optical fires snaked from each pod to a central point, joining up to a glowing pillar ridged with cooling fins.

“This is ODIN,” Meredith said with a nod at the chamber. “Or part of it. As I mentioned, this is a joint venture with NetWatch—those are their runners.”

“What am I looking at?” Takemura asked, his tone growing a little more conciliatory. Even if Meredith didn’t intend to let Takemura get away from the facility alive, this did look like an olive branch.

“Do you know why the Voodoo Boys have been fighting endless skirmishes with NetWatch?”

“They are damaging the Blackwall.” Takemura could infer as much from V so far. He had also quickly read Arasaka’s file on the Voodoo Boys on the way to the church.

“Any netrunner in the world with a half-decent rig who thinks themselves worth hot shit likes to try picking holes in the Blackwall now and then. No. It’s their purpose that worries NetWatch,” Meredith said.

“Contacting the rogue AIs beyond for an alliance?”

“Alliance?” Meredith laughed. “They’re looking to support the so-called friendly AI they’re working with in open war. First against the other rogue AIs out there—to get them to integrate with Alt one way or the other. Then, they’d turn their attention to all the other leashed AIs around.”

“Like the Blackwall,” Takemura said.

Meredith gave him an approving look. “Not bad. Looks like Arasaka has a better grasp on the situation than we thought. By the way, if you’re looking at who’s more likely to want to break into Mikoshi and cannibalise the engrams within for power, I’d look at the Voodoo Boys.”

“Hn.” Takemura’s optics picked up details from the netrunner couches and the consoles that he ignored for now and compartmentalised for later upload to Arasaka, but skimming the information was still startling. “Yet you appear to be building your own new AI.”

“Not at all,” Meredith said with a cold smile. “NetWatch has learned from its mistake. ODIN is not a traditional AI at all. It is a mindmeld, a hive superstructure built out of the combined minds of NetWatch talent across the globe.”

No wonder Militech had seemed complacent about allowing Takemura to have a look. Something like this could be hard to breach. “Using people as living databanks and processors?”

“Hardly that barbaric. Everyone there works in shifts. They get breaks, healthcare, an exercise regimen, the works. NetWatch hopes to replace the Blackwall with ODIN eventually. But such a transfer should ideally take place in a landscape which isn’t bristling with outside threats.”

“This ODIN. Can it answer questions?”

“Why, you want to learn about your horoscope?”

Takemura stared evenly at her. “If you want to extend an olive branch to Saburo-sama, then perhaps a question is a small thing.”

“You want to find out who’s been attacking Mikoshi,” Meredith guessed.

“External attacks,” Takemura corrected. “Recent, within the last year, to the point of having breached the first layer of ICE.”

“You sound like you’ve talked to ODIN before. I’ll ask for instructions. Wait here.” Meredith stepped away to a corner of the room, her fingertips moving up to her ear. She wasn’t the person in charge of the ODIN complex, only its front. There had to be managers both outside the cage and within.

Takemura ran an internal diagnostic as he waited. The Faraday cage was effective—blocking out even his linkup to Arasaka. Disconnection warnings ran red across his implant dashboard. His abrupt disappearance had likely already raised a flag. Before, when he had been severed from Arasaka, the dashboard had stayed grey and silent, a constant reminder of his exile. Now the red bars and text felt more of a relief than an annoyance.

“How is ODIN connecting with the outside world through the Faraday cage?” Takemura asked as Meredith returned.

“It’s linked to a private Net, but the reinforced shaft that chamber sits in isn’t part of the cage network, obviously.” Meredith looked irritated. “You are allowed one question.”

“Again, against your advice?”

“High command hasn’t been good at listening to my advice recently.” Meredith led Takemura to a console and had a tech bring up an input screen. “Here. Type out your query. It’d get converted into a punchcard matrix and fed across the barrier.”

“That is how you have been communicating with your hive mind?” Surprisingly primitive.

“For now? Yes. Militech always believes in safety first with experimental tech.”

Takemura typed out what he hoped was a specific query: Who has attacked Mikoshi within the last year, to the point of damaging its security superstructure?

The console hummed, whirring as a punchcard was made. The large central bank between the netrunners dimmed then grew brighter as it received the request.

“How long does this take?” Takemura asked. He did not want to wait longer in a Militech facility than he had to. Besides, Arasaka might decide to issue an emergency response team to find out what had happened to him since he was still considered a priority asset.

“Should be… there.” The bank pulsed. A response appeared beneath Takemura’s query: Arasaka.

Takemura glared at Meredith. “Is this a joke?”

Meredith looked genuinely confused, glancing at the techs beside her for an explanation. As they started to run diagnostics, Meredith typed in a query of her own: shaitan status.

Shaitan? The borg solo who had attacked Arasaka Tower along with Silverhand? Takemura was about to demand an answer; then he realised Meredith was likely asking something random. The response was quick: 68 W 3900 S, Salt Lake City, UT 84107 / Status: conversation with Blunt, Linda (41) employee of Left Fork Grill, context: ordering food for associate Suzuki, Naomi (36) NetAlias 'LogiK0ma', order as follows: T-bone steak, medium rare, chips, salad, extra gravy—.

“Looks like it’s working fine,” Meredith said as the details scrolled down. “But something’s interfering if ODIN isn’t feeding back this level of information. Maybe if we try your question again.” She tried arasaka.mikoshi chkdsk dataquery -v, tapping sharply on the keys. Looking up into Takemura’s frown, she said, “Yes?”

“I see an inexperienced operator is unlikely to acquire a complete response,” Takemura said. No wonder Militech had been so generous.

Meredith sniffed. “Even what you typed should’ve come back with better than… what the fuck?”

ODIN’s replies scrolled up the screen:
A jail cell is freedom from the pain in my home
Hatred passed on, passed on and passed on
A world of violent rage but it’s one that I can recognise
Having never seen the colour of my father’s eyes
Yes, I dwell in hell, but it’s a hell that I can grip
I tried to grip my family but I slipped
To escape from the pain in an existence mundane
I gotta nine, a sign, a set and now I gotta name

Takemura exhaled, rubbing his temple. V. It had to be V. “That’s enough. I’ll take my leave.”

“The fuck did you do?” Meredith snarled. As she took a step back and raised a hand, techs hit the floor as all the security units in the room levelled their rifles at Takemura.

“Let me leave, and things will be back to normal,” Takemura said, keeping his tone steady.

“You… this is V, isn’t it. Fuck! What the fuck is wrong with that asshole?” Meredith hissed.

“If you want a fight, you will get one,” Takemura said, keeping his tone even and slow, “but it looks like this is a mere prank. So. Either let us leave, or many things within here will break.”

Meredith bristled, clearly spoiling for a fight, only to stiffen as her manager pinged her and pulled her up short. “Fine,” she said, lowering her hand. “Escort Mister Takemura off the premises.”

In the cargo lift, Takemura picked up the droid in his arms. The silent mechs marched them out of the front gate. Wondering how to contact Delamain on his own, Takemura wandered down the dirt path until it petered out into rock and cactus—and the droid in his arms trembled and moved. The eyes flashed, a brief convulsion going through the limbs before V relaxed.

“Princess carry? Funny,” V said.

Takemura pointedly dumped V on a rock. “Your sense of humour is as bad as ever.”

“Aww, c’mon. You should’ve seen the look on Stout’s face,” V said, chuckling as he righted himself into a crouch. “Though, how was I to know she hated 90s rock that much?”

“Call the cab,” Takemura grit out. “Drop me off in Japantown.”

“What ticked you off? We got what we wanted, didn’t we?”

“It was a dead end,” Takemura shot back, then paused. “Or. Did you see something else from ODIN?”

“Nope. ODIN told you the truth. The attack on Mikoshi’s from Arasaka.”

“From within Arasaka, meaning you?” Takemura asked, fast-losing patience for V’s games. “Did you affect the length of ODIN’s response?”

“Nah. Whoever’s been doing it was running interference, and they’re good. Otherwise, they’d have been found out by now, wouldn’t they? Come on, Goro, think. The last few major attacks on Arasaka have all come from…?”

“Yorinobu, but he is dead,” Takemura said, then hesitated. Yorinobu was dead, but the Taka faction he led was still embedded within Arasaka. They’d been behaving since Saburo’s return, seemingly accepting defeat. Or his bōsōzoku gang, the Kōtetsu no Ryū—they may not have disbanded upon his death. “His people are not.”

V shook his head. “Yorinobu ain’t dead. That’s the worst part of it all, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?” Takemura frowned at V. “Saburo-sama is in control of the body.”

V shuddered. “Every time I think about that, it’s fuckin’ disgusting. Sure, I guess what made Yorinobu 'Yorinobu’ is gone by now. Just the body left breathing, moved around by a ghost.”

“…Call the cab,” Takemura said, not in the mood to run over old arguments with V within sniper range of a Militech base.

They returned to V’s apartment in the Glen instead of Japantown. Takemura told himself it was because he’d left half the onigiri in the fridge, and it’d go to waste if he didn’t eat it. His mood improved after a bath. He’d sent off a quick message to Saburo with the critical points in the AV, but intended to draft a more comprehensive report now that he had time. As Takemura descended from the mezzanine floor in his dress shirt and pants, he nearly slipped down a step as he realised V was sitting naked on the couch with a scattered array of components on the coffee table, clothes strewn liberally over the cushions. Servotool in hand, he was running maintenance on the droid’s guts, its belly hatch pulled open to reveal bright coils of intestinal wiring.

“Don’t mind me,” V said, distracted. “Thought I’d better remove the bullets. One of them’s impacting part of the motherboard and another’s wedged on the coolant tanks. Lucky that one’s an inch to the left.”

“Need help?” Takemura asked, not knowing where to put his eyes. Nudity was not unusual in a society where public onsens and bathhouses were still part of a way of life. Still, disassembled and vulnerable, V was unsettling—yet more beautiful. The droid’s inhuman perfection seemed more distracting, now that it was marred by bullet scars and disembowelled. Surprisingly, it had a male fitout. Gold decorative lines traced down lean muscle, the droid’s soft pale cock dusted at the base with white fur and pressed against V’s thigh.

“Nah. I’ve disabled the hyperdermal growth until I’ve picked out all the debris, but after I’m done with the two tricky ones, the rest are all tweezer work,” V said.

“Then let me help,” Takemura said.

V eyed him as Takemura walked over to the couch, then gestured at the tweezers on the table and stretched out a leg, holed under the knee. “Be my guest.”

Weirdly, this was the most intimate thing Takemura had done with anyone—and V was not even there. Not in the flesh. Perhaps never any longer. Takemura shunt the achy feeling in his throat away as he worked, carefully picking out bullets that had flattened against titanium skeletons or wedged against internal modulators. As Takemura worked out the last bullet—caught against a titanium rib—V finished putting himself back together, re-securing coils to the spinal rack and pushing the access hatch back in place with a low click. It sealed away, seamless.

“Does this hurt?” Takemura asked.

“The droid has very sensitive receptors because I presume Hideo’s clients like that kind of shit, but I’ve switched them off for now,” V said as Takemura tossed the last bullet onto the table. The breaches in the droid’s skin sealed back up, the surface now marred only by flecks of gunpowder and dirt. V stretched for his shirt, only to pause as Takemura grabbed the clean kitchen towel that V had folded on the table by the components, wiping the dirt off a thigh.

“Goro,” V said, low and hungry. This time, something rooted Takemura in place—ambiguous as their current positions were, with V naked on the couch housed in a thing made for pleasure, supple thighs spread to either side of a kneeling Takemura.

“Hm?” Takemura’s next breath hitched a little, but he didn’t look up at V.

Sharp-tipped fingers gently pushed up his chin, forcing him to look at the ceramic mask. “Shit,” V whispered. “If I had my body right now, I’d try kissing you. Even though I know you’d push me away.”

“Would I?” Takemura asked.

“Said you weren’t interested.”

“That’s not what I said. I said I did not notice, and I cannot know what I might have done at the time if I had.”

“You—” V gasped as Takemura leaned over, pressing a quick peck on the red-painted fox mouth on the mask. V let out a shaky laugh. “W-what, you like this rig that much?”

“It is not the droid. And if you persist on thinking so, I will get angry.”

“Then what? Guilt? More apologies?” V’s temper was rising, his quickest defensive reaction to anything that shook him. “Fuck that.”

“I think I also do like you. More than I should,” Takemura said, reflective.

V stared at him, radiating incredulity. When the silence stretched, Takemura ducked his head and began to get up, only for a hand to clamp tight on his shoulder. “And you fuckin’ say this now? Oh hell, I… it can’t be; it’s only been a few days. You sure as hell weren’t—”

“Hyperfocus,” Takemura said.

“What?”

“It is something they teach in Arasaka. How to focus on a task to the point of reaching a meditative state. To shed away distractions, suppress them. I…” Takemura let out a frustrated breath. “V. Emotional involvement… This is new for me. And. I do not wish you to again decide—forget it. Perhaps it would be best if this did not happen.”

“No. No. You can’t fuckin’ do this to me.” V shifted up on his knees, ceramic face pushed close to Takemura’s voice, his voice bubbling into a low snarl. “You can’t—fuckin’—not when I’m already dead, with my body turned to fuckin’ ash, you can’t, you can’t…” To Takemura’s horror, V broke down, each wracking sound a wounded-animal sob, his shoulders shaking.

“V.” Takemura pulled V into his arms, stroking his back and making awkward, nonsense noises of comfort. Holding V as he finally let go of enough of his fury to mourn—grieving all he had lost and all he could have been.

Chapter Text

Saburo did not respond by morning, which was a little worrying. Takemura forwarded a copy of his detailed report to Hanako, then sent Michiko a terse update that left out most of the details and dragged himself off the bed to get cleaned up. Under the hot spray, he ducked his head and exhaled loudly, hands pressed against the wet tiles. After V had cried himself out last night, he’d left the apartment, telling Takemura not to follow. Disoriented and ashamed of himself, Takemura had obeyed, though his dreams had been messy.

V didn’t answer messages or even a tentative ping. Wondering if perhaps he’d been locked back under ICE overnight, Takemura felt the pangs of guilt all over again. He sent Hideo a message to forward over the Tyger Claws’ current file on the Kōtetsu no Ryū and dressed, pulling a face as he did so. Despite the cleanser, it wasn’t in Takemura’s habit to wear the same clothes for several days.

Making a mental note to buy supplies, Takemura checked Hideo’s list and took himself to a cafe at the View, near Nagami Market. There was already a line, but Takemura was used to lines even in Kagawa. As he got into the queue, his staff in Kagawa forwarded him a brief on the flash cloning program in Arasaka, and reading it made waiting in line less tedious.

The cafe did not look like something that would make a Tyger Claws list—it was small, bright, and colourful. Planter boxes riotous with hothouse flowers divided up faux wood tables and benches, while ferns hung from the ceiling. Part of the cafe appeared to be more florist than cafe, with tubs of flowers and bouquets linked up to hydroponic frames. Takemura’s growing suspicion that this had been a poor breakfast choice was slightly alleviated by the staff, who greeted him in fluent Japanese as they showed him to a seat. The expensive menu was an eclectic mix of both Western brunch and something more traditional.

Takemura ordered the Japanese breakfast spread, which arrived on a faux-wood tray in a splash of colour. A pink fillet of grilled salmon swam on grey ceramic in pride of place, with small, colourful ceramic bowls of potato salad, leafy salad, rice, tamago, braised eggplant, and colourful tsukemono arrayed around it. A covered bowl of miso soup and a cup of piping hot hojicha crouched against a pair of chopsticks and a dish of soy sauce. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the location and the price, none of it was synth. As the flesh of the perfectly cooked fish flaked against his chopsticks, Takemura felt as though he’d stepped back five decades in time and ten thousand kilometres in space, when such a spread had been commonplace rather than a luxury. Before the oceans had been fished to oblivion and warmed up past the point of no return; before corporate wars poisoned much of the land where rice used to grow, before eating good, natural food was not the sole privilege of the wealthy.

The impression dimmed as the cafe rapidly filled up with other corpo suits, most of them Arasaka. Takemura ignored them, not wishing to speak. The Japanese woman at the counter giggled as he complimented the food when he got up to pay, buying a slice of the matcha cheesecake to go. Outside the cafe, Takemura nearly dropped the takeaway box in shock when V’s rig materialised at his elbow.

“Yo. Sleep well?” V asked, peering behind Takemura at the cafe. “This place good? Never been.”

Relief stole Takemura’s polite response, leaving him blinking at V. “You. You are still here.”

“Why, disappointed?” V’s tone didn’t change, but Takemura could sense he was starting to bristle.

“Glad.”

Glowing eyes flashed, and then V let out a rueful laugh and shoved his hands into the pockets of his Samurai jacket. “Well, where to today? Bust into Arasaka Tower again? Second time lucky?”

Takemura got a hand on V’s arm, hustling them away from the crowd queuing outside the cafe before people could stare. “Are you all right?” he asked once they were closer to Nagami market.

“‘Course. What could be wrong?”

“Last night—”

“Didn’t you say you’d rather it never happened?” V asked, his tone edged.

“It is not what I said.” Takemura tried to be patient. “I think it would be better for you if it did not. Given what has happened when I influenced your decisions.”

“You’re sayin’ I make bad decisions when you’re around?” V asked, his prickly temper ebbing into amusement.

“Do you not?”

V looked around as they strolled past the early morning rush, primarily suits streaming towards the gleaming towers that housed their regimented lives. Police drones floated across the trees and gardens that bisected the plaza, the manicured greenery part of futile attempts to make the central business district look less sterile.

“I think my life would feel a lot more pointless without you in it,” V said as they made their way up to the next floor.

“V,” Takemura said, startled.

“Don’t say my name like that. Or I’m gonna want to do something that’d get us ticketed in public.” V coughed. “Ah, so. Where are we going?”

“To buy clothes.”

“Why?” V looked Takemura over. “You look fine.”

“I have been wearing the same clothes for days,” Takemura pointed out. “Did not have time to pack on the flight from Tokyo.”

“You used the cleanser on them, didn’t you?”

“Yes?”

“Sooo… what’s the issue?”

Takemura tried to think of several explanations that didn’t sound plain judgmental about V’s lifestyle and finally resorted to, “This must be another cultural difference. Like the way you wear shoes inside your apartment.”

“What’s wrong with that? I got cleaning droids.”

“No. Just… no.” Takemura gave up, scanning the line of shops. “V, I have the file on the flash-cloning program. How can I send it to you?”

“Don’t need to. I saw it when it got sent to you.” V sounded disinterested.

“From the report, Arasaka has flash-cloned animals successfully. The results on humans have been promising.”

“I can read, Goro,” V said.

Wondering if V was still in a temper, Takemura opted to change the subject. “Where did you go? Last night.”

“A place that a friend showed me. Nice view, a good place to think. It was the last place I talked to Johnny. Out here, anyway, not in Mikoshi. Thought I’d raise him a glass. Not that either of us could drink anything now.”

Takemura glanced at V, but V still looked relaxed as he strolled alongside. “You miss him?”

“Strangely? Yeah. As much as he was a dickhead, much as we often didn’t agree on anything. Much as he probably hated me in the end—I miss him. Don’t know if I would have done things differently, though.” V chuckled as Takemura let out a grunt. “You don’t approve.”

“We are not far from Memorial Park.” The victims of the AHQ Disaster—the Militech and Silverhand strike on Arasaka Tower—were also memorialised there, their names crowded thickly on their monument.

“Yeah.” V subsided, following Takemura meekly into the store. While off-the-rack suits weren’t Takemura’s usual preference, needs must. Choosing a dark pinstripe suit, he changed in the store. He also stared pointedly at V until V picked out some new clothes for himself—a long white trench, a dark shirt, and dress pants that hugged the droid’s long legs. The store agreed to send their old clothes and the cake to an address V named, and then they were back on the street.

“And now?” V asked.

“The Kōtetsu no Ryū have an HQ in Night City. According to the Tyger Claws’ files, Yoshitune is here.” That was one place to start.

“Steel Dragons have been embroiled in an internal civil war after what happened to Yorinobu,” V said, thinking this over. “There’s a schism between Okiyo and Yoshitune. Okiyo thinks the gang should move on, Yoshitune wants revenge.”

“Yes,” Takemura said, a little surprised. “That was quick.”

“Got a little boring up on that rooftop view after a while, might have looked into some things.”

Takemura tried to parse V’s flippant mood—as though the night had never happened. Perhaps this was V’s way of compartmentalising. “Good work.”

“Yeah, well,” V said and paused as Saburo called Takemura.

Picking up quickly, Takemura said, “Saburo-sama.”

“See me in my office in Arasaka Tower in Night City,” Saburo said in his usual clipped, impersonal Japanese. “Bring V.” He closed the connection before Takemura could reply.

Helpless, Takemura looked at V, who chuckled. “Charming. I see why you like working for him.”

“Perhaps you should not go,” Takemura said, the closest he had ever come to disobeying one of Saburo’s orders.

V sniffed. “And where would that put you, hm? Besides, you’re forgetting something. This is but a proxy. The real me’s far away, among the stars, where Arasaka dumped my ass. Let’s go. So I can lodge a formal fuckin’ complaint.”

V was not disarmed on the way up the Tower, which Takemura took as a hopeful sign. Perhaps, despite everything that had happened, despite all that V had done, Saburo intended to hold an actual negotiation. Or some sort of true settling of debts. Arasaka did owe V—or at least, the Arasaka that currently existed. During the night when Hanako had decided to confront the board, V had been a key operative, the main reason why Yorinobu’s coup had failed. Clearing their way up to Yorinobu was one thing. Takemura doubted if he could have taken down Adam Smasher by himself. More, had V not gone back for him in the burning apartment, he would have been long dead.

“Maybe they liked my snazzy new clothes,” V said in the lift when Takemura mentioned his thoughts. “Bought with their money.” He wiggled his ears.

Takemura tried to ignore the relative absurdity of soon having to introduce a kitsune sexbot to the most powerful man on the planet. “Perhaps we should have bought a hat.”

“You think Saburo’s gonna find this rig unsettling? Good. I’m gonna shake this fluffy tail right in his face.” V swished his tail in the lift, the faux fur batting against steel and glass.

“Please don’t,” Takemura muttered as the lifts opened onto the gracefully lit floor. “Be on your best behaviour. Please.”

“Don’t beg me for somethin’ like this,” V said.

“It is more of a strong suggestion.”

“Whatever. Fine.” V folded his arms tightly over his chest.

There wasn’t that much security on the floor, which was puzzling until they got to Saburo’s office. Saburo was not there. Standing beside the table was an Arasaka netrunner, a young Japanese woman in a black visor, holding a tablet. She bowed formally as they approached, then motioned for them to wait as she adjusted something in Saburo’s chair. Then she stepped back, clutching the tablet to her chest.

Saburo materialised, a holographic projection—likely from Tokyo. Takemura blinked even as he bowed. It had to be midnight in Tokyo or later, and Saburo did not like keeping late hours. “Saburo-sama,” Takemura said, speaking in measured Japanese. “I have brought V.”

“Perhaps it is not Kagawa that has made you complacent,” Saburo replied in turn, “but Night City.”

Takemura tried not to grimace, averting his eyes. There was no point in defending himself. “Yes, Saburo-sama.”

“All right, wait fuckin’ up,” V said, annoyed. “Man’s only been here a few days. He’s done what he’s been told, hasn’t he? Run himself ragged checking out leads. So what if they petered out? He couldn’t have known that until he looked. And one was in a godsdamned Militech base.”

“V,” Takemura hissed.

“I can’t stand having to watch him ream you out like that while you stare at your feet and act like a fuckin’ mouse,” V snapped, glaring at Takemura.

Saburo glanced at V. “You have invalidated the terms of our agreement.”

“Could say you did that first, on the scheme of things.” V shot back.

“Despite that, given your contribution to Arasaka as a whole, I am still prepared to offer you access to a flash clone. If you stop interfering with Mikoshi and the Arasaka mainframe, we have your DNA on file and should be able to create a new body within three months. Your engram will be installed in the body via a biochip, and you may undergo rehabilitation either with Arasaka or at a third-party clinic of your choice,” Saburo said.

Takemura looked up, both painfully grateful and relieved. His gaze snapped to V as V began to laugh, loud and harsh. “V!” Takemura rebuked. “Saburo-sama does not lie.”

“He doesn’t lie, but he doesn’t always give you the whole fuckin’ truth either, does he?” V slapped a hand down on the marble table, making Takemura flinch. “That report your people passed to Goro here was incomplete. Oh, your netrunners did a good job of wiping the traces, but I see every ugly shitty thing that you people get up to. Left out a whole section about how flash clones installed with a biochip tend to suffer from catastrophic organ failure eventually. Shortest being a few months, the longest being a year. Your scientists aren’t sure why and have been trying to solve the problem for a while. You were willing to wait it out at first, but faced between a suddenly available fresh body and waiting maybe ten, twenty years more, you chose to sacrifice your son, huh?”

“Is this true?” Takemura asked, looking up at Saburo. Desperately searching Yorinobu’s expressionless face for a sign.

“You don’t lie, d’you?” V said mockingly, staring at Saburo. “So tell him. Fuckin’ tell him.”

Saburo’s gaze turned fractionally colder. Takemura went very still, recognising the danger signs. “Perhaps there is another way,” Takemura said, addressing Saburo in Japanese as carefully as he could. “The cyborg project that produced Adam Smasher is still online. That could be a partial solution until the cloning project stabilises.”

“You still don’t get it, Goro,” V said, shaking his head. “Saburo here wants me gone. Preferably in a useful way, like helping to test his flash-clone program, but definitely dead. It ain’t about me stealin’ from Arasaka, is it? Or putting Hanako in danger or whatever.” V leant forward over the table, staring at Saburo. “It’s because I watched you die. Choking slowly under your son’s grip, clawing at his wrists, then losin’ control of your body and wetting yourself as you asphyxiated. I saw it all, burnt into my brain. The weakest moment of your long and monstrous life.”

The netrunner took an instinctive step away from Saburo, trembling so hard she fumbled the tablet and had to catch it belatedly before it fell. Sweat soaked Takemura’s new shirt. His hands shook until he clenched them into fists, his words strangled to nothing on his tongue.

“You are very much like Silverhand,” Saburo said after a moment’s pause. “I am not sure if that is because of the relic.”

V pushed away from the table. “Thanks, I guess? He’d appreciate the thought, were he still here to hear it.”

“The both of you think you rage against the dying of the light and believe you are making a difference. Yet what you actually do is stand in the path of progress,” Saburo said.

“Did I just hear you quote a Welsh poet?” V said, feigning shock, his hands going up to his mask. “A gaijin?”

“V, please,” Takemura said, though he knew it was futile.

Saburo briefly closed his eyes. “Inga ōhō,” he said, and looked at Takemura. “Takemura. Draw your gun and point it at your head.”

“Wait,” V said, panicked. “What the fuck?”

Takemura obeyed, numbly. What else could he do but obey? It was all he knew. “Saburo-sama—”

Saburo turned to V. “Return to Mikoshi and cease all interference with the ICE barrier around you. As a final courtesy, I will not shred your engram.”

“Goro. Goro, what are you doing? Drop the fuckin’ gun,” V said, taking a step toward Takemura.

“Shoot yourself,” Saburo commanded Takemura.

Takemura took in a shuddering breath. “This is the last thing I can do for you,” he said in English, unsure whether he was addressing Saburo or V. If he died like this, he would still be doing his duty. Were he to die like this, V would be free.

As Takemura closed his eyes, V cried, “Wait! Wait. I’ll go, I’ll fuckin’ go.” The droid collapsed, falling into an ungraceful heap. Takemura nearly pulled the trigger on reflex.

“Wait,” Saburo told him, and looked to the netrunner. “Well?”

“The entity V has been confined,” she said, her eyes fixed on her tablet. “Installation of the containment ICE: successful.”

“You may leave,” Saburo told Takemura. “Return to Kagawa.”

Takemura slowly holstered his gun, his hand trembling so hard that it took two attempts. Somehow, he managed to bow and walk out, his eyes blurring with tears as he reached the lifts. Taking in a shaky breath, he leant against the steel, closing his eyes without selecting a floor. The lift started moving anyway, possibly triggered by another request. After a few seconds, Takemura was pinged with a notice of an AV pickup, to take him to the private Arasaka airspace outside Night City for a direct flight to Takamatsu.

Nausea churned in his gut, but Takemura selected the launchpad floor. His breaths kept easing out in hitching bursts, close to sobs, but his eyes grew dry by the time the doors pinged open. Arasaka staff passed him on the way out, returning from other AVs, all as impeccably dressed as he was. The black AV at the corner of the landing zone opened its door as Takemura approached. Takemura sank into the seat as it lifted off.

On the way to the airport, Takemura composed and sent off a curt letter of resignation to Arasaka HR. The impulsive gesture felt hollow, making Takemura even more disoriented as he sent it through. He stared dazedly out of the glass, watching the ugly ridges of Night City’s skyline pass by, thinking about nothing, his thoughts choked by broken static. V’s panicked cry, the way he had collapsed. Retreating into a cage that would keep him forever, until he was driven mad by rage like Johnny Silverhand or his very sense of self started to disintegrate like Alt Cunningham. Overwhelmed by grief and regret, Takemura didn’t even realise the AV had changed its flight route until he landed on the roof of a building, still in Night City.

“The airport,” Takemura said to the AV, even as the AV’s door opened against a gunmetal sky.

The oily fumes of Night City wafted through, neon signage tracing the concrete blocks behind and creating a faint, multicoloured bloom of artificial colour against Michiko’s hair. She smiled as Takemura stared at her, dressed in a long crimson coat with a fishtail edge. In her manicured hands, she held the Samurai cap V had been wearing this morning, sent away from the shop.

“I hear you’re calling it quits,” Michiko said, her fingertips tapping lightly on the Samurai logo. “How about I make you a counteroffer?”

Chapter Text

Takemura somehow managed the fortitude to get out of the AV and follow Michiko into the building to the lifts. He could not have said anything coherent to her on the way down even if he tried, so thankfully, she didn’t try to speak. They emerged onto a glitzy office floor, all large abstract paintings interspersed with autographed messages. The occasional white ceramic maneki neko waved at them from little alcoves in the wall as they passed.

Colourful bouquets adorned most of the available flat surfaces, towering over tasteful offerings of magazines, bowls of popcorn, and fruits. Emblazoned over the pastel pink wall above a long couch was the Danger Gal logo, a faintly smiling catgirl with large, blue-slitted eyes. A seemingly random collection of paraphernalia dangled from the high ceiling via transparent wiring—a fuzzy white guitar, a stuffed cat with rainbow wings, a pink Vespa and more. The room looked generations apart from the office Takemura had left not long ago. Perhaps that was the point.

“Sit.” Michiko guided Takemura to a couch. “You look like a wreck. Marc? Can we get some… Tea? Coffee? Something stronger?” When Takemura only blankly shook his head, Michiko called, “Tea!” There was a faint, acknowledging echo from deeper in the office.

“What do you want?” Takemura asked, too exhausted and heartsick for honorifics or English.

Michiko patted Takemura’s shoulder gently. She rose to her feet, heading out of the lounge into an inner office. A man emerged, moving with the slow, unhurried grace of age. Zaburo Kenichi, a legend of his generation, had once been Michiko’s bodyguard. He wore a simple dress shirt and pants; his craggy face softened into wrinkles by time, his once lush dark hair now brushed in fine silver strands over his scalp. He sat on the armchair adjacent to Takemura and crossed his hands in his lap, staying quiet. Eventually, a grizzled man in a sports jacket emerged from the back of the office floor, balancing a teapot and cups on a tray and setting it down before Takemura before retreating to the office where Michiko had disappeared.

“Drink,” Kenichi said in Japanese, his tone brooking no disagreement.

Out of sheer habit, Takemura obeyed. He poured tea for them both, Kenichi first. It was gyokuro, brewed at a lower temperature to give the green tea a savoury, umami flavour. Usually, Takemura preferred it hotter, which would give it a cleaner taste. Now, he drank, downing the expensive cup of tea as though it were water and pouring another cup.

After his second, Kenichi said, “Saburo-san prefers to shatter people. He is not content with merely breaking them—he prefers to crush those who do not obey him and instil terror in those who might think of defying his will. Yet he is also good at cultivating absolute loyalty. His Konoe Shidan—you people venerate him, which is not an accident. It makes you forgive what he is, often until it is too late. This I have seen, again and again.”

“I am not in the mood for lectures,” Takemura said, though he drank a third cup. He regretted not asking for liquor, though he had never been drunk. It was probably not possible with his implants. Pity.

“Then what are you in the mood for?” Kenichi’s eyes were starting to grow milky with age, though they were hard as he stared at Takemura, merciless. “Are you going to return to Japan? To crawl somewhere quiet and hide from the world? There is no hiding—not for people like us. Saburo-san will not so easily allow you to resign. You will be hunted down if you try and leave the way you do.”

“So be it,” Takemura said, tired.

“Your friend was killed because of you, imprisoned again because of you, and you say, ‘so be it’?”

“As you say, he is dead,” Takemura said, though he could not think of V as dead. Even folded into a droid that did not look like his body, V radiated life in all its vibrant contradictions.

“Hm.” Kenichi pushed his empty cup forward. “Giving up like this? How disappointing.”

“What would you know?” Kenichi had always worked for Michiko.

“I, too, was from Chiba-11. Do you know what is the key factor they look for when selecting people like us to be family bodyguards?” Kenichi asked.

“Excellence,” Takemura said.

“Hah! No. Isolation. You, me, Oda, Tsuji and the others… we are all orphans, with as few family members as possible. They want someone they can mould from young, a blank surface for whom their master can be the focal point of their existence. Their methods are effective. Worse for you—Saburo-san is always very particular about his personal guard. The tempering will be more brutal, the conditioning, far more complete.”

Takemura sunk his head into his hands. “Are you finished?”

“And yet, despite it all, you have now tried to break away.” Kenichi still had the look of a hawk, deciding whether to strike. “Your faith was shaken twice. The first was shocking for everyone—a man coming back from the dead in the body of his child. The second—for an outsider. A mercenary from a foreign city, a man you knew for less than a year. Less than weeks.”

“It did not matter.”

“It does. The fact that you can even be shaken—that you have a limit, despite all that he has done to you all your life—tells me you are still worth helping. That despite Arasaka, not because of Arasaka, you have principles. Perhaps you are strong enough to withstand one of Saburo-san’s shatterings.”

Takemura took in a long, shaky breath, closing his eyes and pressing his forehead to the hands he clenched against his head. “What was done… it is not right,” he whispered.

“Hn.” Kenichi offered no verbal judgment.

“To force me to betray a friend, a person who once saved my life… to make me do so, again and again, is not right.” Takemura rocked back slightly, taking in another unsteady breath. “I must. I have to fix this. But how?”

“Learning to live for yourself will be more difficult than you think,” Kenichi said, pouring Takemura a cup. “Especially for people like us, trained to crave purpose.”

“How did you do it?” Takemura asked, glancing at Kenichi.

Kenichi’s mouth twitched. “I grew old, and age gave me no choice but to learn. Old to the point that most of my life was behind me, to the point where it was difficult to open myself up to someone else.” Takemura shuddered as Kenichi spoke. “Perhaps for you,” Kenichi said more gently, “it is not yet too late.”

Takemura rubbed his hands slowly over his face. He drank the tea, this time slowly, savouring the taste, allowing it to clear his senses. Setting down the cup, he asked, “What does Michiko-san want?”

Kenichi glanced at the closed office that Michiko and Marc had retreated into. “A year ago,” he said in a quieter tone, “I watched her break. The strongest woman I know, strong since she was a child. Yet she folded over the couch you sit on, weeping until she vomited. Can you guess why?”

It was not difficult. “Her grandfather. And what happened to Yorinobu. She loved her uncle.”

“Yes and no. Not in the way that you think. Had Yorinobu-san died, Michiko-sama would have mourned him, buried him, and moved on. But he did not only die. Saburo-san possessed him. Yorinobu-san was chosen not because he was convenient but because it was possible. Do you see?”

“Michiko-san is afraid for herself? No,” Takemura said, studying the faint tension on Kenichi’s face. “She is afraid for her children. Her grandchild.” If something were to happen to Yorinobu’s body, or if he simply grew too old—would Saburo prey in turn on his great-grandchildren and their descendants, even those he did not see as ‘pure’ Japanese? It was possible. Hanako was in her 70s and lived an ascetic life, wary of people who might be after her for a corporate alliance or her money. Saburo himself had shown no further interest in women after the death of his third wife.

“Decades ago, when Kei-sama died, when the AHQ disaster was originally blamed on an Arasaka Tower malfunction, Michiko-sama made a secret deal to stay in America. That she would help the NUSA government destabilise Arasaka interests in Night City. She was more subtle than her uncle—though, to be fair, perhaps she simply did not do anything that Saburo-san thought was worth punishing his only grandchild over.”

“Probably,” Takemura said, though he wasn’t sure if Saburo knew of Michiko’s rebellion. Only Yorinobu had been deemed a potential security threat.

“Over time, however, as Michiko-san aged and had children, she began to weigh the benefits of returning to the fold. As Arasaka again grew too powerful for President Myers to threaten her over the terms of their agreement.”

“She joined the board, forming the Hato faction,” Takemura guessed. “A way of playing to both sides.”

“Michiko-sama was playing the long game. Betting that Saburo-san would soon die. That Hanako-san would not have children. That Yorinobu-san, who loved her almost as much as he loved his sister, would listen to her once he assumed power. Or that he would someday pass leadership of Arasaka to her or her children,” Kenichi said.

It was a good strategy. Bloodless, a mere waiting game, one with excellent odds. Yorinobu’s kill team, at the board meeting, had avoided shooting at both his sister and his niece. “Matters changed.”

“No thanks to you and Hanako-san. So now we are here. A mother’s love is the strongest sentiment in the world. For her children, Michiko-sama will do anything. Burn every bridge, call in every favour. She will go to war.”

“Against her grandfather.” Another Arasaka family spat. Takemura felt another wave of exhaustion wash over him, rubbing his eyes. “I am so tired.”

“Did you not wish to make this right?”

“I do not know how.”

“Your friend is trapped, not shredded. Michiko-sama has a way.”

“She…” Takemura blinked. “The Hato faction was behind the attack on Mikoshi.” At Kenichi’s slow nod, Takemura said, “If you think he does not know—”

“Saburo-san is not a God,” Kenichi said.

Takemura’s fingers shook against his cup. Not long ago, he had said the same to V. “My friend is dead,” he said in a subdued voice. “He died a year ago because of me.”

“Whether you see the engram of V as a person or not—he sacrificed himself for you. If that meant nothing to you, you would not be here—you would be en route back to Kagawa. You would not look so broken.”

“…Being able to decide what he is now should be a matter solely up to V.” Takemura looked up at Kenichi. “If Michiko-san can free V from Mikoshi, I will help.”

Kenichi nodded. He rose, gesturing for Takemura to follow. They walked to Michiko’s office, where Kenichi knocked respectfully on the door. It slid open after a moment’s pause, revealing Michiko standing by the full-length glass window at the back of her office, with Marc seated on the small couch beside her. Michiko turned at their approach, her gaze hard, her peppy socialite mask nowhere to be seen. “You in?” she asked Takemura in English.

“If you help V, yes,” Takemura said.

“We will—we need him for what’s coming.” Michiko tossed Takemura the databank she had been carrying. “Welcome to the fight.”

Takemura would’ve preferred to try returning to Alt, or one of V’s other useful friends and associates, all mentioned in Arasaka’s file on V. The various powerful fixers V worked for, like Wakako, were willing to do him favours. Or perhaps the nomads, known to be fiercely loyal to those they considered family. Yet Michiko had her plans, and Takemura was now too worn-out to argue. Following orders meant meeting a man Takemura had once put out a kill order on, in the crowded basement food hall under Daimaru in Japantown.

Stepping inside the food hall had been briefly disorienting. It looked far more like something out of Asia than Night City—it was clean and orderly, stalls arrayed in a neat grid, packed with hungry people looking for a cheap lunch or snacks. Half the hall hawked beautifully wrapped boxes of biscuits, colourful chocolates, mochi and dango, tea and other snacks. The other half sold hot food—flipping taiyaki, frying yakisoba, rolling takoyaki in griddles, interspersed with stalls that weren’t so Japanese. A bubble tea vendor dispensed biodegradable plastic cups of multicoloured drinks to a waiting line, next to a booth framed thickly with leaf-wrapped pyramids and steaming steel lids that opened out over flower-shaped riceflour cakes packed with ground peanuts or grated coconut.

Yoshitune stood before a stall where a man stirred a spicy, mashed golden-orange mixture in an iron tava. A scan identified the contents as bhaji, even as the shopkeeper ladled out a portion, wedged a couple of soft bread rolls and chopped onions against it, and then dropped a slab of butter on top. Yoshitune paid and glanced at Takemura. “You hungry? Suit yourself,” he said as Takemura shook his head. Without checking to see if Takemura would follow, he began to walk. “I don’t understand people like you. Fly out to an overseas country but keep wanting to eat the same thing as you would from the motherland, even though you know it won’t be as good.” He spoke with a stilted diction decades old, as though he were no longer used to speaking anything but English or dialect.

“What you are eating is not American,” Takemura pointed out.

“I’ve been living here for fifty years—I can eat what I want.” Yoshitune looked old in a way Yorinobu and Hanako hadn’t. Poorly healed scars crossed his face, curling under a faceplate that swallowed his cheek and one eye, replacing it with glass optics. He’d tattooed his shaved head with scales, the pattern sweeping down into a high-collared reinforced black leather jacket and jumpsuit, each elaborately embroidered with slogans in kanji. Even at his age, Yoshitune dressed like a bōsōzoku—motorheads, people similar to the nomads.

They emerged through a service exit to the end of a concrete alley, framed between Daimaru and an apartment complex with winding fire escapes and rusting crates. Yoshitune sat down on a box and indicated that Takemura do the same. Takemura opted to stand, folding his arms.

“The man you once sent to kill me took my eye,” Yoshitune said as he spooned some bhaji into his mouth.

“Consider yourself fortunate that I did not come for you myself,” Takemura said. The solo he had selected had been too inexperienced. It didn’t matter in the end—Yorinobu ended up negotiating with his father for clemency through Hanako. Saburo had agreed, and all extenuating hits on Steel Dragon members were withdrawn.

Yoshitune huffed. “This meeting is going well. I thought you were here to negotiate.”

“I am.”

“Well, you’re not very good at it,” Yoshitune said, ripping off a piece of bread and dipping it into the bhaji.

“Michiko-san wants to take the fight to her grandfather. You want revenge. Your goals are aligned—perhaps you should listen to what she has to say,” Takemura said.

“And you? Why are you here? You’re Konoe Shidan—hell, literally, until you fucked up.”

“I wronged a friend,” Takemura said, glancing away down the alley, “and must now make things right.”

Yoshitune let out a snort. “This friend… V?”

“Yes.”

“For a man you knew for what, a year or less, you’d turn against Saburo? That’s hard to believe,” Yoshitune said, viciously tearing off another piece of bread. “Once, you and your boss hounded us across the world. I had friends disappear out of nowhere, only be found months later rotting in dumpsters. Then all of a sudden, we were deemed insignificant, ignored no matter what we did. I wasn’t sure what was worse.”

“There are worse things than death. That is part of what I must make right. I have spent most of my life in service to Arasaka. It is enough. The debts I owe have been paid—now I look to the debts they owe others.”

Yoshitune studied Takemura soberly, then turned back to his food. “That’s a familiar look. I saw it on the boss—on Yorinobu-sama.”

“What?”

“The look of being pushed a step too fucking far by his old man. You either break down and give in or dig in your heels and learn to push back.”

Irritated, Takemura said, “I am nothing like Yorinobu.”

“Like him or not, if you learn that your father terrorised you all your life because he never treated you as a son, only as a potential backup battery… or if not you, then your niece or your niece’s kids? I’d say wanting to burn the world down would only be the beginning.”

“So join Michiko-san. Help her—she needs it. Is it not what Yorinobu would have wanted?”

“Where was she when Yorinobu-sama needed her?” Yoshitune scoffed. “If this fiasco has taught you anything, I thought it’d be best not to get involved further in Arasaka family quarrels. Never works out well for anyone not surnamed Arasaka. Hell, sometimes not even that.”

“So you will not help.” Exasperation welled up, dulled by weariness. This had been a waste of time, as he had thought.

“I didn’t say that.” Yoshitune polished off the last of his lunch, closing the pack. “I want to fight—always have. But I have also always done this for myself, not for Arasaka. There is a difference. One that I hope you will keep in mind.”

Chapter Text

After dumping Yoshitune at the Danger Gal office, Takemura stepped out to call Hideo, gruffly apologising over the loss of the kitsune bot. “Yeah, I noticed you misplaced it,” Hideo said, his tone bone-dry, “given I’m currently looking at it.”

“You… what?”

“All the sanitation contracts from Arasaka properties in Night City are given to companies affiliated with the Claws. Okami got intercepted on its way to a landfill, and we’re now running diagnostics on it. What happened to you and V?”

“It.” Takemura hesitated. This was no longer Hideo’s problem. Nor would it be safe to discuss things further, not with the Tyger Claws’ ties to Arasaka. “It became complicated.”

“Meaning he got shredded?” Hideo’s tone grew flat.

“No.”

“What was it you mentioned… packed back behind ICE?”

“Yes.”

“Shit,” Hideo said. He let out a short, mirthless laugh. “What even the hell, V. I mean, fool me twice and all that.”

“I will transfer you the rest of your fee. And any compensation you require over the damage to the bot.”

“Just the fee is fine.” Hideo paused a beat. “Don’t contact me again.” He closed the call.

Takemura transferred the credit—his expense account had been closed, but he still had access to his personal funds. “Don’t sweat the small stuff,” Michiko had said when Takemura mentioned issues from tapped comms to the possibility of Arasaka yet again shutting down his implants remotely. Having never had to deal with anyone from the Hato faction before, Takemura could only hope her confidence was deserved.

The ground floor of the Danger Gal office was a garden in inverse. Flowering plants and ferns blanketed the walls and hung from the ceiling, while the floor was an eye-watering tessellation of cartoonish, laughing sunflowers in riotous colours. Floating benches in the waiting area could be pushed closer to the bookshelves, before the large flatscreen, or to a bar counter stocked with drinks, snacks, and a coffee machine. Security was well-hidden: turrets obscured by plants and behind furniture. Takemura ignored the greetings from ground staff and entered the lift, where he found Yoshitune waiting, smoking a joint.

“You cannot smoke here,” Takemura said, indicating a sign.

“Fuck off.” Yoshitune took a long drag as Takemura selected the top floor. “If I have to meet an Arasaka scion face to face, I want to do it comfortably high.”

Takemura wrinkled his nose but said nothing. The ride in the lift felt interminable, and Takemura was the first out once the doors opened. Yoshitune stalked out after him, only to freeze awkwardly as three young Japanese women peered curiously at them from the couch, one all in red, one in purple, and one in blue, all drinking bubble tea and wearing skintight dresses. It took a moment for Takemura to place them—the Us Cracks, a wildly popular lazrpop band. One of Danger Gal’s regular clients, perhaps? Takemura kept himself expressionless, inclining his head politely. Yoshitune had the grace to quickly extinguish and dispose of his joint in a bin.

Wondering whether to fade into the background until the Us Cracks were gone or ping Kenichi, Takemura was saved from his indecision by Michiko emerging from her office with a bright smile. “You’re all here, great. Come on over; I’ve got cake.”

“Ooh!” said the girl in blue—Blue Moon, scooting up from the couch. Takemura tried not to frown as the other girls rose sedately and followed. A pop band was part of Michiko’s plan? Trying not to radiate doubt, Takemura stayed quiet, ignoring the girls’ assessing glances.

Yoshitune, surprisingly, sidled over with an ingratiating smile. “You’re Red Menace, aren’t you?” he asked the girl in red in polite, accented English. “You’re my daughter’s oshi. She’s gone to most of your concerts in America.”

Red Menace smiled warmly. “That’s super sweet! Please, thank her for her support.”

“Are you from a gang? Like, the Tyger Claws?” Purple Force asked, looking Yoshitune over.

“I’m Kōtetsu no Ryū, the Steel Dragons… more bōsōzoku-based,” Yoshitune said, instead of flaring up as Takemura thought.

“Oh! With motorcycles and pilot uniforms and things?” Red Menace chimed in.

Yoshitune coughed. “We don’t see anything worth celebrating about Japan’s role in the Second World War. But yes, while our tokkō-fuku look similar, we are not nationalistic. The Kōtetsu no Ryū was founded for one purpose—to expose and destroy Arasaka.”

“Sugoi!” Red Menace said, eyes shining, steps behind someone who was an Arasaka board member and family scion. “We should get a picture. Or maybe if you want to be a guest on our next show?”

Unwillingly entertaining a mental image of the Kōtetsu no Ryū singing on one of the Us Cracks’ bubblegum-bright stage setups, Takemura felt relieved as Michiko ushered them into a meeting room. Unlike those in Arasaka, which tended to be luxurious but minimal, the room had a minibar, a view of Night City, and across one wall, what looked at a glance to be an enlarged reproduction of Hokusai’s iconic masterpiece, The Great Wave off Kanagawa. On a second inspection, the white surf of the wave petered into a multitude of rabbits, leaping out and tumbling helplessly into the sea.

Michiko sat at the head of the table, with Marc to her right and Kenichi to her left. A young white woman with short blonde hair paused in the middle of helping herself to a slice of strawberry shortcake, dressed in a pantsuit. Somewhat unexpectedly, there was a familiar face. Rogue Amendiares swept them all with a cold stare, seated on the other end of the table with one hand stretched over the synthwood, her long greying hair swept into a curtain down her right shoulder, brushing over a yellow jacket. Silverhand’s friend and co-conspirator, owner of the Afterlife nightclub, and currently the best fixer in Night City. Takemura had once contacted her in the hopes of having her find the runaway designer of the Relic biochip, Anders Hellman, but she had turned him away—perhaps wary of the then-bounty on his head.

“Takemura. We meet again,” Rogue said as Takemura chose a seat closer to her.

“In better circumstances,” Takemura said.

“For you, sure.” Rogue tapped her fingertips on the table as the Us Cracks clustered to seats near Michiko. The blonde woman sat opposite Takemura, with Yoshitune to his left. “I don’t normally take jobs where the client wants to call all the shots,” Rogue said.

“You said normally—this is not normal,” Michiko said with a smile. “Cake?”

“Takemura I get, and Yoshitune… and Dorsett,” Rogue said with a nod at the blonde woman. “All pros at the top of their game. But some lazrpop girls? This isn’t a game, kids. You could end up getting yourselves and your families killed.”

Michiko started to speak and paused as Blue Moon shook her head. “I’ll get this one, Michiko-san.” She looked soberly at Rogue, her bright smile fading. “A year ago, V-san saved my life. A stalker had her gun aimed at me on a walkway. V-san was behind me, but somehow, he took her down without even being close to her. When we turned her in to the police, I asked him—what happens once her sentence is over? What if she hasn’t learned? And he told me—give him a call.”

“He’s a mercenary,” Rogue said, unimpressed. “It’s how he eats.”

“Whether it was only another job to him or not, it meant a lot to us,” Blue Moon said. She stared back evenly even as Rogue sneered. “I know you look at us and think we can’t be of any help. We get it. We’re used to it. This world and Asian women, it’s been like that for centuries. We East Asian women have more privilege than many of our sisters. However, in so many stories, we’re still either the graceful ice queen, the peppy naive girl next door, or kawaii sugarpops, often sexualised or dumbed down or both, existing to push the narrative.”

“Ice queen, like Hanako? Peppy naive socialite, like Michiko? Sugarpops, like you lot?” Rogue pointed out, tapping at the table. “Playing to your stereotypes?”

“There’s a power in embracing stereotypes, often one you grab when you have no choice,” Red Menace said, reaching over to hold Blue Moon’s wrist. “When you get pigeonholed in certain narratives all the time or dismissed, you learn how to make your own. To find your own power, to take risks. And to do it for yourself—and for others. Sure, we can’t shoot straight or hack droids from afar. But we’re one of the most popular bands on the planet. We have access to almost everything if we want it, and we have armies of fans who’d do anything for us. And we feel we owe V-san a big favour. So we want to be here.”

“All right,” Rogue said, her tone noticeably less cold. “I still think you’re all in over your heads, but fine. Let’s hear this plan of yours, Michiko.”

“Before we start,” Marc piped up beside Michiko, “I’ve got something to say. Half of you are here because of V, half of you because of Yorinobu and the messed up thing happening with Saburo. I want an assurance that those of you here for V will stick this through even after we bust V out.”

“Because you want V’s help,” Takemura told Michiko.

She nodded. “But I don’t intend to strong-arm him into it. After we break him out, if he wants to call it quits, that’d be up to him. I have never been interested in forcing people to do things for me. That’s never been my style. Anyone who works for me has got to do it because they want to be there.”

“Hato,” Takemura said, if without judgment.

Michiko laughed. “Doves are territorial birds. While not naturally aggressive, they can be when threatened. Especially if it’s over family.”

“What do you intend to do? To… to your grandfather,” Takemura said.

“My grandfather’s long dead. To the thing that remains? A bullet in the head,” Michiko said, her mouth pressing into a thin line. “I also want to wipe every trace of Soulkiller, the engram program, and Mikoshi off the face of existence.”

For her children’s sakes, Michiko would go to war. Takemura nodded slowly, even as old instincts stirred uneasily. “Good,” Yoshitune said approvingly. “Finally. Your uncle would have been proud.”

“Him? Don’t even get me started on his nonsense. Though. Guess we shouldn’t talk badly about the dead. When they stay dead,” Michiko muttered.

“We’re here to the end,” Purple Force said, glancing at her friends, who nodded. “Even if this wasn’t about V for us, what Saburo did? Living again through his son? That’s too much.”

Michiko looked at Takemura. His hands clenched over his lap. “If V agrees to help you, so will I,” he said reluctantly. Saving V was one thing. To directly oppose Saburo—to cause his death—felt unimaginable.

“I’ve been trying to stick it to Saburo for fifty years,” Rogue said with a faint smirk. “V isn’t why I agreed to come to this meeting.”

“I’m alive because of V,” said Dorsett, “but I’m here because Michiko-san took me in. I’m here to the end.”

“Can we ally with the remnants of the Taka faction?” Takemura asked Yoshitune.

“I’ll reach out, but many of them are running scared like fu… er, like Okiyo. I have my forces and contacts, even if that doesn’t work,” Yoshitune said.

“One more thing,” Rogue said, tapping lightly on the table as she looked at Michiko. “Did you know there’s an engram of your father, Kei, in Mikoshi?”

Michiko stiffened, then nodded slowly. “Yes. You were there, were you not? Aboard his yacht the Sea Viper. You, Spider Murphy, and Shaitan persuaded him to kill himself with Soulkiller. The biochip containing his engram was mailed to my house.” She let out a bitter laugh. “My mother collapsed on the spot. She didn’t tell me what it was, but I learned later. She would spend hours in the Tower with the Mikoshi access point, talking to his ghost, until the day she had a heart attack.”

Rogue’s tapping stilled. “Destroying Mikoshi would mean—”

Michiko interrupted. “It’d mean putting the echo of my father to rest and erasing the program that killed him. Sure. And no, if you were asking, I don’t intend to… to install him into something else. As far as I’m concerned, my father died a long time ago. Besides V, who’s part of my deal with half of you here, I intend to shred everything else in Mikoshi.”

“Alt wrote Soulkiller. She is still out there,” Takemura said.

“Whatever Alt and the Voodoo Boys and Militech are up to is of no interest to me unless they somehow get involved,” Michiko said, making a dismissive gesture. “Besides, from what I’ve heard, their goals have nothing to do with engrams. Any more questions before we start? No? Great.” With another gesture, large diagrams floated up from above the desk. “Here’s what I want to do.”

Yoshitune joined Takemura in the roof garden during the break. Like much of the rest of the building, the garden was probably a modern art installation, one whose point Takemura found challenging to parse. Bulbous silver balls floated over a pool, upon which a red and yellow, polka-dotted, child-like fibreglass rendition of the sun perched. Smaller, polka-dotted pumpkins in various colours crouched over astroturf, along with a couple of more normal-looking white plastic chairs closer to the edge of the roof.

As they sat on the chairs overlooking the neon skyline, Yoshitune wordlessly offered Takemura a cigarette. After a moment’s hesitation, Takemura accepted. They both lit up, taking ashy drags as they took in the darkening sky.

“Sandstorm coming in tonight,” Yoshitune said in Japanese. “Going to be a bad one.”

Takemura nodded vaguely. There had been a few sandstorm incidents during his last sojourn in Night City, but he’d been indoors. Weather events that would once have been considered disastrous or even apocalyptic were now commonplace, with the surviving cities in the world built to withstand them. People adapting to their dying world by sheer stubbornness, stretching out the end.

“Think it’d work?” Yoshitune asked when they’d both smoked down halfway.

“No,” Takemura said. Saburo was a visionary, a gifted strategist, and he was ruthless. The most powerful man on the planet. As close to a God as he could make himself, the survivor of many internal coups. Whoever had replaced Takemura as Saburo’s bodyguard was likely another generational talent. Even beyond that, Saburo would now keep himself surrounded by a small army by way of security. Saving V was one thing, but the rest of Michiko’s plan…

“Well, you’re optimistic.”

“Because of what I used to do for Arasaka, I know what we face all too well.” Takemura breathed out, smoke unfurling in the air. “The odds are not good for what Michiko-san wants. But we should try.”

“Fuck,” Yoshitune said, chuckling. He leant further in the chair, stretching out his legs. “Yorinobu-sama once said the same. That he didn’t think what he was doing would work. But he had to try.”

“Stop comparing me to him,” Takemura said, disgusted.

“I’m not. If you were more like him, your friend wouldn’t have gotten into so much trouble because of you in the first place.” Yoshitune leant back and breathed out a gritty cloud of smoke. “Shit. So much of the plan’s a gamble.”

“I agree. If anything, contacting Shaitan is a risk. That borg is militantly anti-Arasaka. Despite her husband’s surname, Michiko is an Arasaka, and he will think of it that way.”

“It isn’t ultimately up to us. Shaitan’s a legend, and we’ll need every good solo we can get. The plan isn’t that bad. I’m starting to think Yorinobu-sama underestimated his niece.”

“A familiar refrain,” Takemura said.

Yorinobu had also underestimated his sister. Perhaps it was not surprising. The patrilineal, highly gendered nature of many Asian societies turned out to be hard to ameliorate, persevering with their inequities, stereotypes, and generational trauma. Still buttonholing even family into centuries-old assumptions and roles. It had worked in Hanako’s favour, in a way, but it had also served to imprison her for most of her life in a gilded cage. She seemed to prefer it there, hiding behind her father, but Takemura could never be sure.

“Hanako.” Yoshitune glowered at the skyline. “Is it true that she’s the one who did the honours? Installed the biochip into her brother?”

“Yes.”

Yoshitune shook his head slowly. He dropped the cigarette end on the concrete ledge, stamping it out with his foot. “What a family.”

“Yes.”

“I notice Michiko-san didn’t say anything about her aunt. Hanako’s Kiji faction’s all made up of old farts who used to be Kei’s friends. It’s now the dominant faction, backed by Saburo,” Yoshitune said.

“Hanako-sama lives in an estate in Ōsaka that she only leaves once a month, if at all. If we do not disturb her, perhaps she will be happy to stay there.” Or so Takemura hoped. He respected Hanako almost as much as he had Saburo and did not look forward to confronting her.

“You think trying to murder her father won’t be disturbing her?” Yoshitune said, picking out another cigarette. He offered one to Takemura, but Takemura shook his head, smoking slowly.

“I hope that this can be resolved without breaking into a worldwide war on Arasaka,” Takemura said. He could only imagine how messy that would get—dangerously so. Arasaka was one of the biggest megacorporations on the planet, and one of the oldest, with interests in everything from consumables to weapons manufacturing. Economies sometimes rose and fell on its share price, let alone a bitter internal civil war. Even under Saburo’s leadership, Arasaka was still recovering from Yorinobu’s attempted coup.

“Which it’d become, if this doesn’t work out. Saburo won’t forgive attempted murder. Doesn’t need Michiko-san alive, either—just her kids and their children.” Yoshitune shivered. “I used to hate horror stories, especially those about ghosts and haunted houses. The films would freak me out, give me nightmares for days. More and more, it feels like we’re living in one, though. Fuck.”

Takemura nodded. They finished their cigarettes in silence, new and old, stubbing out the ends on stained concrete.

Chapter Text

Sandra Dorsett was a twitchy netrunner who used to work for Night Corp, the company behind most of Night City’s infrastructure. It was all the background she offered when introduced to Takemura. Something had happened if she’d taken refuge with Michiko—Dorsett liked to stand with her back to the wall, in a position able to take in everyone in the room. She flinched whenever people came too close. Yoshitune, in particular, unsettled her. It didn’t take genius to connect the dots, since Dorsett knew V. Likely, he’d saved her from some gang-related kidnapping.

Takemura had no interest in Dorsett’s personal life beyond whether she would be flaky during the op. Sneaking into Arasaka Tower was already going to be difficult, let alone towing around someone who might crack at any moment. He withheld open judgment, however. This was Michiko’s plan, and compared to Takemura, she had far more to lose.

When Takemura picked her up at a quiet part of Heywood, Dorsett had been quiet at first. He didn’t speak, concentrating on the road. Having to drive on the right side of the road meant having to keep making sure he didn’t accidentally slide into bad habits, and the morass of overpasses and underpasses and strange bridges in Night City made taking wrong turns annoyingly time-consuming.

As the car passed a megabuilding, Dorsett peeked out at it, taking in the vast shadow that the block cast over the highway and the blocks below. “You’re Takemura Goro,” Dorsett said, surprisingly getting the surname order right for a non-Asian. “Saburo’s bodyguard.”

“Was,” Takemura said, his tone curt. He wasn’t interested in discussing his life story with complete strangers.

Dorsett didn’t notice. “Why is someone like you risking everything for an engram?”

“Why are you?” Takemura retorted.

“I don’t mean to judge.” Dorsett wilted at the harshness of his voice. “I… sorry. This is the first time I’ve been on a. Well, probably my second time stealing something, and the first time did not go. I mean, I had to be airlifted out of a S-Scav hideout by a trauma team.”

Takemura took in a slow breath, modulating his tone. “Because I am the reason that the engram is here instead of V.”

“Oh… oh,” Dorsett murmured. As they passed another building, Dorsett said, “It feels unfair.”

“What does?”

“That I’m still here. Somedays. V came for me with his late friend, Jackie Welles. They saved my life. Now they’re both gone. I still send flowers to Wakako—the fixer who arranged them—every so often. I visit Jackie’s niche at the Columbarium now and then to tell him I’m still grateful. I thought V had just left the city or something up until recently. When Michiko-san came to me with this project.”

“You were the one trying to pierce Arasaka’s security,” Takemura said. He paused. “Impressive.”

Dorsett let out a wry laugh. “I’ve had practice. Piercing corpo ICE, that is. A lot of the logic’s the same. I was trying to reach out to V. I could sense that he was working along the same faultlines. Whatever I did, we could never seem to connect.”

“He wasn’t sure if the intrusion was friendly. Perhaps he avoided you.”

“Makes sense.” Dorsett sounded glum. “I had to be subtle, for obvious reasons. Maybe it was too subtle.”

“It was still noticeable. The combination of V’s attempts to escape and your intrusion was what triggered an Arasaka response.” It was unlikely that Saburo would have recalled Takemura from Kagawa if it had been one or the other. Or not. Managers who could handle the work he was currently doing were plentiful—Takemura did not doubt that his deputy was doing fine in his absence. Someone who could instantly convince V to return to his cage, though—

Mired in regrets, Takemura nearly missed the next turn. Thankfully, Dorsett didn’t seem to notice the sharp little veer he had to make, still staring out at the sky. “I don’t know what we could have done differently. There’s no hiding intrusions once you get past a certain layer of ICE,” she said.

“You did fine.”

“I mean. Even with everything we’ve prepared today? They will notice. Once we punch through to V,” Dorsett said. Her hands trembled, folded over her knees. “We’re going to get caught. Oh. Oh hell.”

“Sandra-san,” Takemura said, keeping his tone firm. “At the start of this trip. What did you call me?”

“Um. Your name?”

“After that.”

“Saburo’s bodyguard. Ah, I mean, if that’s bringing up a bad memory, I’m sorry.”

“For many years, I guarded the most powerful man on earth from the many enemies he had made. I have been near death so often that I have lost count, broken every bone in my body. I have had to have several organs regrown and reinstalled. Yet, when I was by his side, he never suffered a scratch—had I been in the room with him and his son, it would have been Yorinobu who suffered. Today, while you do what you must do—I am your bodyguard. I will be there with you. Do you understand?”

Dorsett’s hands clutched at her knees, then flattened out and relaxed. “I… yes.” She managed a small smile. “Thanks.”

Traffic slowed to a crawl as they neared Arasaka Tower. Takemura started to worry before he realised belatedly that this was part of the plan—just about everyone they passed was decked out in Us Cracks merch or dressed up as characters in the girls’ videos. People chanted, danced together, took snaps, and occasionally broke into spontaneous cheers. Euphoria lingered effervescently in the air, defiantly loud even bracketed by bleak towers and framed by dense concrete.

In a city where murders were so commonplace they hardly ever made the headlines, where most of its citizens lived in squalor or poverty, such fervent joy was strange to witness. Especially when expressed by the generations that had inherited the ugly mess of those who had come before. Inherited from people who had gutted the planet and burned its bones for power. Who still fought over its ashes and had turned its seas into slag. Who would die having known how beautiful the natural world could be, leaving it to their young, who could only see nature in holos.

These young people had been born into a country that had never given its citizens the fundamental human right of universal healthcare, which venerated gun culture more than its children. Whose slow erosion towards its current morass began from a badly-drafted legal document written by a group of powerful white slave-owners, ending in the messy sundering of states that now unironically declared themselves free, while still exploiting and grinding its most vulnerable into the dirt. All the while blaming its woes on corporations, when its government’s greed, bigotry, corruption, and indifference were just as damning. Somehow, its people could still know joy instead of giving in to despair. This was their rebellion.

“We may have to walk,” Takemura told Dorsett once the crowds pinned them in so much that traffic stalled utterly. “Sandra-san. You can do this.”

“Okay. Yes. Okay.” Dorsett, thankfully, didn’t look all that shaky. It perhaps helped that most of the crowd were younger women. No one paid them a glance as Takemura abandoned the car on the sidewalk and emerged, motioning for Dorsett to stay put as he rounded over to her side. He tried to bracket her against the bulk of the crowd with his body, constantly scanning for threats as he got her down a less crowded alley, checking corners before motioning for her to follow. Falling into the habits of a lifetime was a strange comfort.

“I thought Arasaka might find this too obvious,” Dorsett whispered as they walked. “Many years ago, didn’t Silverhand use the same tactic when trying to rescue Alt Cunningham from this very Tower?”

“That was half a century ago,” Takemura said, “and there will be other distractions today.” So Rogue and Yoshitune had promised.

“I mean, those girls—they’re all so young. Are they going to be all right? Silverhand’s concert ended in a riot. Some of his staff were injured—hospitalised.”

“They have security.” The Us Cracks had been confident about that, though Takemura sensed that Yoshitune would seed some of his people into the crowd just in case.

Even though he’d braced himself for the spectacle given the lead in, the vast crowd that had washed up to and around Arasaka Tower defied belief once they came within view. A transparent hovering platform suspended in the air by multiple heavy-duty drones, still unoccupied. The whole situation looked like a safety and security nightmare for both Arasaka and the Us Cracks, and Takemura was thankful that it wasn’t his problem.

The weakest security point of any Arasaka Tower or complex was often Deliveries. A small army of supply vans tended to shuttle through every day, delivering anything from food to parts to office equipment. However, the vans tended to be carefully searched and scanned, and security was still dense. While thinking over the safest way to get Dorsett through, she let out a soft gasp.

Takemura glanced up sharply, already scanning for threats. Dorsett gazed at a floating screen reflecting the stage and the crowds below, partly obscured by the bulk of Arasaka Tower. Stylised clouds roiled over the holographic form of a mountain range above the stage, the crowd growing hushed, though flashes of light betrayed people taking snaps and recordings. Emerging from within the masses and without, the sound of a monk-like monotonous chanting began. A mourning dirge of a sutra, recited for a funeral. The words were not scripture, but a single, stretched-out phrase, a generic line of condolences repeated over and over with an echoing diction.

O-kuyami moushiagemasu. Two gigantic figures appeared in the clouds, a god and a goddess, looking down on the crowd, an animated cartoon mirror of the classic Eitaku painting. A Goddess of creation, her expression inscrutable, white robes drifting into mist. Beside her, her husband churned the sea of clouds with a naginata. Izanami and Izanagi, the primordial gods.

O-kuyami moushiagemasu. Children appeared around the god and goddess, of which only three had distinctive faces. At the birth of the third, a boy, the goddess started to fade, turning as translucent as a ghost. The chanting grew louder as the god, in turn, began to fade. When only his hand remained solid, gasps rippled through the crowd as the god struck, clawed fingertips sinking into his youngest child’s head, hauling the struggling form to his yawning mouth. Takemura started to open his mouth to protest—this was not how the creation myth was supposed to go—then he ate what he had to say. This was not about primordial Japan, but a story of Japan as it now was.

O-kuyami moushiagemasu. As the god began tearing his child apart, his form grew more solid. The blood that spattered from the weakening body shimmered monsters into being—yurei, oni, onryō and more. The chanting grew to a crescendo even as Takemura plucked at Dorsett’s sleeve, indicating they should leave. She didn’t budge, wide-eyed in fascination.

O-kuyami— The chanting cut off, the god freezing in surprise. On the stage, three small forms in yukata appeared, masked. A red tengu, a blue o’uni, a purple myōbu. A pumping synth beat began as they raised their hands, rhythmically sketching sigils that glowed colourfully in the air. A yurei turned into a butterfly, an oni into a sakura petal, an onryō into a maneki neko that mewled and laughed.

The music swelled as the Us Cracks began to sing, dancing as they fired off sigil after sigil. Lush blooms of colour burst in the air as fireworks where each monster transformed, raining down onto their cheering fans. Then the god turned to regard them, gesturing. The crowd cried out as the monsters crowded in, the girls seemingly weakening as they staggered and started to back away, the music beginning to die, growing jagged, fading—

Someone in the crowd, desperate, mimicked the sigil—then let out a shout of triumph as their hands also somehow sketched colour into the air through some triumph of hidden technology. It caught on quickly, spreading, a vanguard of rhythm helping to transform the endless waves of nightmares into sparks, the music swelling into a thrumming roar that shook the ground beneath Takemura’s feet. Half a century ago, Samurai had played a furious gig as a similar distraction, creating music that had spurred its fans to lash out recklessly in fire and violence, prompting an equally vicious crackdown. The women singing their hearts out on their stage understood something that Silverhand had not—that change was ultimately transient when fuelled purely by hate; that it only meant something if it also collectively empowered those it was meant to save.

Even the Arasaka security close by was transfixed. One of the guards tentatively made the sigil and laughed, delighted, as it glowed in the air and turned one of the yurei close by into a banana. The rest of the guards and staff clustered over, eagerly creating their own sigils. Takemura pointedly hustled Dorsett through behind a van that had slowed down, past an inspector whose back was turned, keeping her head low.

They made it to the service lifts without interference. Dorsett let out a shaky breath. “Wow!” she whispered.

The Us Cracks were in more danger than they might think—if not now, then later. They were making a show of power in a form that Saburo had never possessed, and he often tried to destroy what he could not have. Takemura shook off his unease as he selected the relevant floor. “Clear your mind,” he said. Time to work.

Michiko’s access tokens got them through to the maintenance floor, where it became a matter of dodging cameras to the central lift shaft. Security was sparser than it should be, as were the staff—whether it was due to the spectacle outside or something Rogue was up to. Instead of the heavily-guarded Mikoshi core access chamber, Dorsett’s work was doable from Conclave, the guest-access floor for clients of Arasaka seeking to access their—or their families’—engrams.

Designed for maximum discretion so that Arasaka’s engram clients wouldn’t ever run into and recognise each other if they didn’t want to, visits always ran in staggered segments. Michiko’s contact met them in an austere foyer room with the words’ Secure Your Soul’ picked out on one wall in both English and Japanese—a young woman who avoided looking directly at them as she greeted them as ‘Mr and Mrs Watanabe’. Takemura could only hope that Michiko’s embedded agents were also blurring his face out of the autoscan security as they walked. A security camera glanced at them and spun away without triggering the alarm.

So far, so good.

Ushered into a chamber with a small engram projector in the centre, the contact let herself out of the room. Ostensibly, they were here to meet the engram of an actor. Once alone in the room, however, Dorsett sat by the projector, efficiently prying out a hidden access panel and connecting the small case she carried to it, then jacking into a port at the side of the case. Her eyes began to glow, even as Takemura sidled to the door, listening for potential threats.

“Uploading Leviathan,” Dorsett said. She blinked. “ICE layer isn’t as bad as I thought. Preparing to breach.”

Seconds crawled by, then minutes. Takemura tensed whenever anyone passed through the corridor outside, quietly scanning them. Most were admin or cleaning staff—the security on this floor was possibly automated or hidden so as not to give clients the impression that Mikoshi was the prison it was.

“Uhm… Mister Takemura? We have a problem.”

“Yes?” Had Saburo lied and shredded V’s engram? Or—

“V…” Dorsett hesitated. “He… he doesn’t want to talk.”

“What do you mean?”

“The plan was either for me to release him to the Net as Spider Murphy did for Alt or to download him into this neural capacitor, whatever he prefers,” Dorsett said, tapping the box. “Uh, he doesn’t want to respond?” Her voice hitched higher, veering toward panic. “I can’t hide what I’m doing forever, as it is, I thought, I thought we’d already be noticed, I guess maybe Michiko-san is running interference somehow, but it’s not going to last. What do we do?”

“Calm down. Breathe. You are doing well.” Takemura frowned. “Is V’s engram damaged?”

“Doesn’t seem so from a basic diagnostic.”

“Download him and let’s go,” Takemura said, conscious of the ticking clock.

Dorsett’s eyes flashed, and then she grimaced. “He. He’s fighting me. Oh hell. Is this a trap or? Is this a—”

“Can I talk to him?” Reluctantly, Takemura took a step away from the door.

“I… okay. Okay. I’ll link him to the projector. Standing by… There.”

The engram projector glowed, though no shape took place above it. “V?” Takemura asked anyway.

Silence. Just as Takemura was going to ask Dorsett to try downloading V again, V muttered, “What do you want?”

“Sandra is trying to help you. You know her, don’t you?” Takemura asked, trying to keep his tone gentle.

“Wants to let me out into the Net where I’d start corrodin’, or move me into another prison? Sure,” V said in a low voice. “More great choices.”

“It won’t be a prison. You will be free to do what you want,” Takemura said.

“Free? Yeah, fuckin’ right. You need something from me, is that it?”

“No. I want to right a mistake. You died because of me—you’re in Mikoshi now because of me,” Takemura said.

“Ain’t about you, Goro,” V said, still subdued. “You were just the easiest way for Saburo to get what he wants, and he’s always gonna get what he wants.”

“I don’t believe that. We can prove it.”

V let out an ugly laugh. “Yeah, like you’d move against him.”

“I’ve resigned.”

That got a long pause, and then V said, “Then what are you doing back in Arasaka Tower? Go pet some cats. I’m already dead. Don’t waste your life on a ghost.”

“You are worth it.”

V let out a low, unhappy sound. “Even if that’s true. Hell, if it is… what the hell did you trade to be standin’ here talking to me? With who, Saburo?”

“Michiko-san wishes to—”

“Michiko Arasaka? Fuck. You don’t fuckin’ learn, do you? She’s just doing this to buy your loyalty. You and whoever else you’ve roped into this because of me. Well, fuck off. I don’t want your help. Or anybody else’s. Tell Michiko the deal’s off.”

“I understand that I’ve hurt you. Betrayed you. I want to make this right, if you would let me,” Takemura said, though his heart sank at the dullness to V’s words.

“Said it ain’t about you, Goro. You did what you had to do. I don't even blame you.”

“It was wrong. That day in the Tower—I regret it.”

“So now what, because of guilt, you’d hand over your leash from one Arasaka to another? If you think Michiko’s all that different, you’re kidding yourself.”

“I think that losing faith in one person does not have to mean losing faith in everyone,” Takemura said, wishing it didn’t feel as though he were talking to air. “There’s so much more I wish I have said to you, done with you. I still want to show you Ritsurin Garden in Kagawa. Arashiyama in winter. Have sake with you in a hanami during the sakura season. Matsushima, Takeda castle, lavender season in Hokkaido, the lights of Tokyo… as flawed and broken as my home is now, it is still so beautiful. I want to share that with you. Please.”

Dorsett shrivelled into herself, clearly embarrassed to be present. Takemura let out an unsteady breath, then another, his cheeks growing hot. Yet there was catharsis in digging out his heart into the light, clumsy as it had been. A clean form of agony. Finally, V whispered. “Okay. Okay, Goro. You’ve talked me down. Maybe I’m just a hopeless fuckin’ sucker.”

Relief flushed through Takemura. “I will never betray your trust again.”

“Box me up,” V said. As Dorsett exhaled loudly in relief, eyes flashing silver, the overhead alarms began to peal, strobing the room in bursts of red.

“Do what you must.” Takemura moved back to the door, drawing his pistol from his holster. “I’ll buy you all the time you need.”

Chapter Text

“Wait, I’ve got a better idea,” V said into Takemura’s ear. From the way Dorsett squeaked and nearly fell over, Takemura guessed she heard the same thing. “Follow my lead, okay? Put the gun away, Goro.”

Takemura fought against every instinct that screamed at him that disarming was a bad idea. It took a moment, but he holstered his gun. Still, he moved to place himself between Dorsett and the door. “Whatever you need to do, do it fast,” Takemura warned. He hesitated. “Your choice had better not be to stay.”

“I’m comin’ with you, don’t worry,” V said, though he laughed.

“Download complete.” Dorsett quickly disengaged her machine from the engram projector, replacing the panel. The projector flickered back on just as the door began to slide open. An engram of a Japanese man with handsome, angular features appeared, dressed in a kimono and sporting a neat beard and moustache. Takemura tried not to stare—he’d seen this face across many of Saburo’s favourite films: the actor Ken Watanabe. The man they were technically there to see.

Braced for Watanabe to denounce them to the armed guards who poured into the room with rifles at the ready, Takemura flinched instead as Watanabe growled, “What is the meaning of this?” He glared at the guards, folding his arms over his kimono. “Can’t I have a private chat with my son and his wife without everyone in Arasaka listening in?”

The captain of the contingent hesitated, lowering his gun a fraction. “Mister… er, Watanabe?”

“Yes, what of it?” Watanabe said impatiently. “How dare all of you burst into here like this? We are discussing a family matter. My son will be making a complaint. What is your name?”

“Uhm.” The gun lowered the rest of the way. “Perhaps there’s been a misunderstanding, sir,” the captain said behind his helmet, managing to look embarrassed even fully suited in Arasaka gunner armour. “Our security systems flagged an unauthorised access attempt in this room.”

“Clearly, there hasn’t been one,” Watanabe shot back. “I thought today my only disappointment in my life would be my son’s continued inability to produce a grandson. Perhaps I should have been more imaginative.”

The captain didn’t back down immediately—he raised his fingers to his helmet, likely asking for further instructions. Takemura tensed, ready to pounce on the closest soldier. There wasn’t much in this room by way of cover, but if he could incapacitate a soldier quickly and throw the body to Dorsett, it might shield her from enemy fire long enough for Takemura to get to the leader.

“My sincerest apologies,” the captain said. At his gesture, the other guards holstered their weapons. “There appears to have been some sort of malfunction. We’re deeply sorry. Should you wish to file a complaint, you’re very welcome to, and we’ll have a full explanation and formal apology sent to your estate.”

“Just go,” Watanabe said with a dismissive gesture. “I don’t wish to see this ever happen again.”

As the guards filed out and the door sealed, Takemura let out a slow breath. Dorsett tried to get to her feet and collapsed onto her knees, shivering. “Good call,” Takemura said. He glanced at Watanabe soberly. “Thank you for the help.”

Watanabe laughed in an unsettlingly familiar manner. “Come on. You didn’t think this was him, did you?”

“But the voice… and the mannerisms,” Takemura said, surprised.

“Let’s say I’ve got a front row seat to the grim ways Arasaka’s been able to manipulate engrams.” Watanabe’s image disappeared, the projector growing down. “All right,” V said in Takemura’s ear. “Let’s blow this joint.”

Takemura dropped Dorsett off at a safehouse. As she left the device containing V on the front passenger seat, Dorsett said, “V?”

“Yeah?” V said.

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re ‘just’ an engram.” Dorsett smiled tentatively. “I’m… glad. That I could help you in some small way, after all you’ve done for me.”

“I see you as a friend—hope we’re beyond tradin’ favours or the client-mercenary thing now,” V said, his voice growing warmer. “Thanks, Sandra. I appreciate it.”

“‘Night,” Sandra told Takemura.

“You did well. Get some rest,” Takemura said. He waited until Sandra disappeared into the apartment block, scanning the hidden turrets inset into the ceiling and the MK2s idling within alcoves in the walls. It looked like Michiko owned this building. As Takemura pulled into the street, V said, “We heading to my place next?”

“Michiko-san recommended another location,” Takemura said. He braced himself for an argument, but V merely grunted. The safehouse turned out to be on the top floor of a small building near the border to Pacifica, with a synth coffee-and-dessert shop on the ground floor named Bakemono. A yoga studio occupied the next couple of floors, with offices taking the rest. Technically, the safehouse apartment was one such office.

“Little Rogue? Funny,” V said as they got into the lifts. Takemura grunted but said nothing. The location looked promising, particularly this close to Pacifica. There was a buffer zone of sorts between the Voodoo Boys’ territory and the rest of Night City, where Arasaka lacked influence and it was easier to hide.

The lifts opened into a sleek loft, one designed to be defensible. The corridor from the entrance was lined with a wall of books on one hand and paintings on the other, seemingly purely aesthetically. Still, Takemura’s trained eye picked it out as a kill zone with no easy cover for intruders, with a turret hidden in the ceiling. The back of a graceful leather couch just beyond bracketed a glass coffee table, a soft rug and a large TV, but it could serve as defensive cover in a pinch. Similar to V’s apartment in the Glen, the main bedroom and bathroom were on a mezzanine level, reachable via a set of stairs or a small accessibility lift. The glass fronting the safety rail looked thick enough to be tempered—the second set of defensive cover, this time from higher ground.

Michiko waited for them at the kitchen island, seated on a stool with a glass of wine. “Hope you didn’t mind me getting started,” she said. Her security detail was, of all people, a borg whom Takemura had seen on Arasaka’s high priority hitlist and last heard of via a Militech-Netwatch AI. Shaitan’s porcelain mask glanced at Takemura as he walked into the apartment carrying the neural device. Standing beside the full glass windows in his tactical mech body, Shaitan towered over the furniture.

At Takemura’s disbelieving stare, Michiko said, “Oh, don’t worry. Shaitan and I have had a long chat. Turns out, we have a lot in common.”

“Patently untrue,” Shaitan said in a voice ground featureless by an electronic modulator.

“Shaitan, is it?” said V. Shaitan stilled, turning his head to glance at the box. “Nice to meet you—I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Rogue updated me about your situation,” Shaitan said, if still unemotionally. “Bad fucking luck and all that. Appreciate that you had the guts to try and steal from Arasaka, though. Ballsy, but ultimately misguided.”

“Thought you’d be all for it,” V said, though he chuckled.

“Not on a half-assed plan.” Shaitan looked Takemura over. “Hm. I know you. Nearly killed you once before… oh, think it’s been eleven years or so now. Made a shot from a floating blimp with a sniper rifle. Was aiming at Saburo, but you somehow got in the way at the last minute. Pity. Could’ve saved us all a lot of trouble.”

“I remember that,” Takemura said with a sour look. He’d somehow managed to pick up the sound of the shot over the wind and had barely managed to push Saburo out of the way in time. The bullet had punched through a lung and his ribs with explosive force, shattering through him and nearly causing him to bleed out on the spot. But for his implants and Arasaka medevacing him to a trauma facility without delay, he would have died. “Did not know it was you, however.”

“‘Course not. Unlike certain people in the room, I’m a pro. It’s all right,” Shaitan said with a generous nod at V’s box. “We were all kids once.”

“…Gods, you’re all so fuckin’ old,” V muttered.

“It isn’t nice to talk about a lady’s age,” Michiko said, though she grinned mischievously.

“I don’t believe you helped Goro bust me out of Arasaka from the goodness of your Arasaka heart,” V told her. “So have at it. What do you want?”

“I like making useful friends,” Michiko said, crossing her legs and leaning forward, swirling the wine in her glass. “However, I don’t like forcing people to work for me. If you and Takemura-san decide you’d like to help me out for what comes next, I’d be grateful—and you’d both be paid. If you decide you’ve had enough of my family’s nonsense, that’s fine too. I’ve always got work for people like you that you can take a look at. Stuff that Danger Gal can’t touch and that I don’t like to funnel through the usual fixers.”

“Saburo ain’t gonna let any of us go for pulling shit like this,” V said, sounding wry. “You know you’ve shoved Goro and me aboard the thief ship just by breaking me out. Fine, whatever. I’m in. Wish that didn’t mean you got a two-for-one deal, but Goro’s already rejected my suggestion that he spend his retirement chilling out and petting cats.”

“Great suggestion,” Shaitan said from across the room. “I’d recommend it.”

“Perhaps after the dust has settled,” Takemura said.

“Scoot over to the couch with that box,” Michiko said, setting down her glass of wine. “I’ve got a present for you, V. No strings attached.”

Takemura walked over to the couch and nearly dropped the drive he was carrying in shock. Lying on the sofa, tucked against its back, was V. Eyes closed, hands folded over his chest, dressed in V’s knockoff Samurai merch. “No fuckin’ way,” V breathed, then, in a more flat tone, “A borg.”

“You got something against borgs?” Shaitan asked.

“No, but I’m startin’ to see why she made you come,” V said with a sharp laugh. “This gonna fuckin’ work, or is it another test?”

“Honestly? I wouldn’t trust what she says,” Shaitan said, folding his arms with mechanical hisses. “But that fitout’s clean, if you’re willing to take my word for it. Got it supplied from the people who make and maintain my bits—bio-organic and otherwise. I’ll give you the number if anything breaks down: there’s a ten-year warranty. Not that it’d be worth shit for people like us, given that subjecting the rig to any kind of ‘unwarranted violence’ or ‘experimental misuse’ breaks the warranty, but hey. It’s the thought that counts.”

The borg body was jacked into a console, for which there was a setting for the neural capacitor. “I won’t lie and tell you there are no risks,” Michiko said as she sat in an armchair. “The version of the biochip in this fitout’s bio-organic brain is the newest, and should have minimal malfunctions. However—”

“However, shoving an engram into a vat-grown brain within a borg fitout is untested. Right?” V asked, his tone heavy with irony. “Damn, you’re startin’ to sound more like your grandfather every second.”

Michiko’s expression froze, her lips pressing into a thin line. “Hardly. I don’t intend to force you to do it. Nor am I going to rush you into a decision. As I said, it’s a gift. If you prefer to stay in the neural capacitor and proxy out of droids, that’s fine as well—I can supply the droids. Or not, if you’d rather source your own. Or, if you wish to be uploaded onto the Net, I can help facilitate that too. It’s up to you and will always be up to you.

“I will also, never, ever approve of doing anything like what my grandfather has done. I’m here because I’m afraid. That he’d someday use up my uncle’s body and decide to move on to my kids. I know you don’t trust me, V, and you have no reason to. So. I’ll leave it up to you.” Michiko rose from the couch. “If you end up wanting to use the borg, just set the capacitor into the slot—you’d be able to figure out the rest from there. I’ve had extensive onboard instructions encoded. If not, let me know, and I’ll get it disposed of.”

“Sure,” V said. He sounded subdued.

“Get some rest,” Michiko said, with a nod at Takemura. “Lay low for now. I’ll contact you once I’m ready to move on to the next step in the plan.”

Shaitan moved toward the exit, checking the lift before letting Michiko into it. Once they were gone, V said, “Goro, what do you think I should do?”

“I don’t have a right to tell you what to do.”

“That’s why I’m askin’ you.”

“As you said, all are bad options,” Takemura said. He sat on the armchair in turn, patting the capacitor. “But whatever you pick, I’ll be there for you.”

“…Put the box in that slot,” V said.

“Are you sure?”

“Been a fuckin’ gambler all my life, ain’t about to stop now.” V sounded confident, but Takemura could pick out the uncertainty in his tone.

“V,” Takemura said.

“Do it. If weird shit happens, call Sandra over.” V waited a beat. “See you on the other side.”

The pantry was well-stocked, with boxes of takeout and high-quality synth fruits and vegetables in the fridge, a box of pastries from Bakemono on the counter, rice, and other cooking staples. The cabinets were stocked with his favourite brand of tea, the liquor cabinet with his preferred types of whisky and shōchū. Takemura showered and changed into fresh pants and shirts from the wardrobe, which fit perfectly. He’d been used to this level of personal service in Arasaka and had taken it for granted until he’d been kicked out into Night City to fend for himself. To experience it now when he was no longer part of Arasaka was strange—more of an intrusion than it was. Michiko’s people had likely simply retrieved his personnel data from Arasaka’s files and used it.

V still looked to be processing the transfer. The borg’s eyes were closed, the neural capacitor pulsing gently with soft light. Takemura wished he’d discussed the matter in greater depth with V or Michiko but buried his unease. He selected a random box of takeout from the fridge and heated it. Yakisoba—highly palatable, too, the noodles chewy, the julienned vegetables crisp. Disposing of the box, Takemura made himself a pot of sencha and sat in the armchair, settling down to wait.

The evening news excitedly covered the impromptu Us Cracks concert before Arasaka Tower. Takemura skimmed the channels, having never had much patience for American news networks. Some were painfully wrong, full of highly paid, conservative talking heads bent on hawking lies. Most were still bent on some strange ‘both sides’ concept of journalistic integrity that also included inviting deluded or downright loathsome people onto their shows to pit their ‘alternative facts’ against experts. As far as the news was concerned, the Us Cracks were either a phenomenal new talent or a fad. Their gesture was either radical defiance or a cynical marketing tactic. Many guests exuded disdain, as though discussing the aspirations of a group of young women was beneath them. At least there wasn’t anything on the news about an internal Arasaka breach. Shaking his head, Takemura switched the news to the weather channel, whose dour prediction of upcoming violent sandstorms was somehow less depressing.

Takemura’s internal clock woke him up at dawn. Stifling a yawn, Takemura glanced over at V. No change. After cleaning up, Takemura went through his usual exercise routine, doing reps near the glass, watching Night City wake up. While the implants he had made regular exercise less necessary, having a rigorous system cleared the mind. As he straightened up from cooldown stretches and drank a glass of water, Takemura coughed as he realised V was sitting on the couch, watching.

“V.” Takemura set the glass down on the coffee table as he stepped closer. “How are you feeling?”

The borg was made well—even the eyes looked human as V looked Takemura up and down, grinning mischievously. Takemura was belatedly aware that he was dressed only in track pants, a towel slung over his neck. Not that he’d felt there was much to see, with so much of his body encased in the exoskeleton. “Great,” V said, in a voice that even sounded normal. “Rig’s effectively a full-body prosthetic, combined with tech a plastic surgeon ripperdoc would kill for. ‘Least on the outside. Inner make feels more like something Shaitan ordered. Titanium frame, miniature fusion reactor, synthetic muscles with electric-field activated shape-memory alloys, the works.”

“Are you sure?” Takemura sat on the couch, studying V. The scans didn’t pick up much that he could understand. “We could have Dorsett come by for a look.”

“I’m good. I mean.” V shook out an arm, curling and uncurling his fingers. “This doesn’t make me feel like a real boy. But it’s close. Hell, it’s closer than I hoped for. It’s good enough.”

“You don’t have to settle. Someday, when the cloning program is stable, you could switch,” Takemura said.

“Been thinking about that,” V said, pressing the arm back onto his lap. “Cloned sheep was still a whole new other sheep. Cloned human is a whole new other human. If they were allowed to wake up without a biochip, they’d likely develop their own personalities and be capable of making their own decisions. If I chipped into something like that, ain’t I just as bad as Saburo?”

“Cloned humans are not legally considered human,” Takemura said.

“Neither are engrams.” V glanced at Takemura, solemn. “Or AIs. Yet what’s the difference?” He unplugged himself from the neural capacitor and got to his feet, taking a shaky step that had him stumble. Takemura caught him, steadying him with a hand on V’s elbow. “Shit. Problem with shape-memory everything—gonna be shaky for days.”

“Are you sure?” Takemura pressed. “About settling.”

“Ain’t settlin’ when it’s the least gross option.” V stroked Takemura’s cheek, his synthetic fingers warm to the touch. More pliable than the bot he’d been in, closer to human. Yet not truly human. Still, what was the difference? Many people chose to have prosthetic arm replacements, even beyond accidents, necessity, or work. In Asia, it was even a fashionable choice—Takemura had seen people in Harajuku proudly sporting colourful limbs that often looked nowhere human at all. If the arms could be replaced for something as simple as aesthetics, what more the rest? Did it make V somehow less human because he’d chosen a synthetic body rather than an organic one?

“You think too much,” V said, patting Takemura’s arm. “Can almost hear you struggling.”

“As long as you are not doing this because of me,” Takemura said, giving in.

“Ain’t always about you, Goro. Though. There is somethin’ I’ve been thinkin’ about doing with you since waking up in here.” V stepped closer, his hands stroking up and along Takemura’s shoulders. In this rig, V was a little taller than Takemura, just as he had used to be. “Wanna guess?” V whispered.

In answer, Takemura tipped V’s head closer with a palm on his cheek, pulling him over for a kiss.

Chapter Text

“Never used to see the point of walks by the beach, movies in a drive-in sort of deal,” V said as they walked past the grazing surf. V had spent a day getting used to his new body, walking up and down the apartment and doing basic movements, after which he’d deemed himself ready to wander around the outside world. Takemura felt it was early days yet, but he kept that opinion to himself.

“Hn.” Takemura was all too conscious that they were being watched—while this section of the beach was on the boundaries of Pacifica, he’d felt eyes on them since they come through.

“Gather you’re not enjoying yourself,” V said, smirking. The knockoff Samurai jacket still sat over V’s shoulders, but at least he’d changed out the rest of his gear. The final effect looked mismatched, but at least V no longer looked like a diehard Silverhand groupie.

“As long as you are,” Takemura said. He wasn’t a fan of unnecessary sun exposure, let alone in a place notorious for sudden violence, on terrain that occasionally stank of sun-baked rubbish. Also, sand was getting into his shoes.

“Told you to dress for a walk,” V said, looking Takemura’s three-piece suit over.

“I am.”

“Meaning, in a way that doesn’t advertise ‘ex-corpo solo’ to everyone who got eyes,” V said, though his gaze appreciatively traced the fitting cut of Takemura’s dress pants.

Takemura cleared his throat pointedly. “We are meant to be laying low,” he said.

“And we are. Ain’t no Arasaka spies for miles around,” V said, tapping his temple. “I’m watchin’.”

“I find that unlikely.” Even if Night City didn’t contain a Mikoshi access point, Michiko and her family lived here. Saburo had always made it a point to be privy to every part of his descendants’ lives, whether they liked it or not. Once, Takemura had thought it to be Saburo’s version of paternal love.

“Automated stuff ain’t nothing on me.” V stumbled over the hot sand on his next step, cursing.

Takemura caught him and righted him. “This would be better indoors. Or in a clinic.”

“Had enough of rehab clinics and devices for a fuckin’ lifetime,” V said, pushing away from Takemura. The effort had him stagger sideways, but he found his balance before Takemura could reach him. “Whoo! Feels good to be here.”

Squinting against the sun, looking out at a sea choked with refuse, Takemura found it hard to agree. Much of the ocean was dead, its reefs bleached to bone, its profuse life dying, braised by the warming seas, starving, or poisoned by the scum of human progress. Vast islands of waste and plastic floated in the middle of the ocean, visible from space. It was still possible to eat real fish from farms, but the cost grew more prohibitive over the years. Even in Japan, whose fishing industries were carefully regulated, where decent sushi and sashimi remained a part of life, there was a growing sense of fatalism. Once bisected by seabirds, the sky stayed empty but for the occasional passing drone.

“I know you look out at all that and think it’s all so godsdamned ugly,” V said, setting his hands on his hips. “The floating trash, the toxic water, the empty sky.”

“Is it not?”

“I think of it as our species getting what it deserved,” V said, smiling faintly. “Half a century ago, scientists warned we had ten years to get our shit together. Corporations, governments, and people were asked to work toward lowering the global temperature. What’d we get? Super-rich people trying to build colonies on Mars, which have all failed so far. Big fuck-off satellite cities in space, far away from the muck. The only megacorporation that tried to do anything worth a damn was Arasaka, but even then—only for Japan.”

“Yes.” Saburo was not a man to ignore science or facts, nor was he interested in living in space. Once he achieved an iron grip on power in Japan, Saburo used Arasaka’s resources to radically transform its climate policy through brute force, aggressively defending against a changing climate. Biodome projects, seawalls, vast cooling plants, gigantic air filters, green technology, recycling plants, architectural reforms, investments in agricultural innovation—even down to a ban on non-biodegradable packaging. Saburo had made Japan a fortress against change, though it had, in hindsight, not been a generous gesture. As with his identical offices in every Arasaka Tower, Saburo had merely tried to preserve a version of the world that he liked. Freezing Japan itself in time.

“Y’all still eat whales? Tuna?”

“No.” There was no farming such creatures, and as such, no way of eating them fresh.

Creating a perfect facsimile of ōtoro, the fatty, belly cut of a bluefin tuna, remained the holy grail of Japanese synthfood technicians. Takemura only knew this because it remained the most indulgent of Saburo’s interests. During Tsukiji market’s final tuna auction, Saburo had bought every bluefin tuna available—all three—for a price that was astronomical at the time. It would be nothing now, in a world with no more ōtoro. Takemura had thought nothing of it at the time, even as environmentalists had picketed the market, denouncing Saburo for putting a price tag on something critically endangered. He had not cared—and would have paid twice as much if he’d had to. Saburo had held a tuna-themed kaiseki dinner, inviting his family, the board, and various friends and dignitaries. The Emperor of Japan had been there, as had a few Presidents and Prime Ministers. Those whom Saburo had deemed most worthy. Takemura had not been one of those, not that it had struck him as anything strange at the time—he had worked through the event, stationed close to Saburo. Now, he knew better. To Saburo, Takemura had always only been a servant. A weapon.

“Even fifty years ago, that shit wasn’t on,” V said. His gaze traced a pale blue bag of rubbish that bumped slowly against the slow-rotting pier. “Eating stuff that rare, that wasn’t sustainable. But hell, it’s what everyone did, wasn’t it? Too hung up on ourselves to right the ship. Sometimes I read about what used to fly in the 20s and can’t believe my own fuckin’ eyes. Like, were people that fuckin’ ignorant?”

“That is also what Saburo-san understood,” Takemura said, picking his words carefully. “That deep down, people want security and a comfortable life. If you give them that, they will forgive their rulers many things. Having fewer rights, being told what to do, what to believe.”

In modelling his approach to controlling Japan, Saburo looked at examples like Singapore, a small, wealthy island country whose autocratic government had also tried to withstand rising tides and water scarcity with varying degrees of success. While people occasionally picketed Arasaka offices in Japan, most people were now used to its presence in every level of their lives. Arasaka was the biggest employer in Japan, with the most generous benefits. It funded schools, built housing, and maintained hospitals. It was why, in Japan, the most debilitating effects of climate change remained something that happened to other countries. Many could no longer imagine a world without Arasaka. Even the news of Saburo’s resurrection in his son’s body had not sparked that much public outrage. Though, then again, Arasaka had also long controlled every news organisation in Japan.

“-San,” V said.

“What?”

“Guess respect is a step down from veneration. Better than nothing.”

“One must always respect a worthy opponent. Or you will usually regret it.” So Takemura had learned from Saburo. Respect was why Saburo had even been willing to speak to V in the first place, a man who would typically be beneath his notice.

“Think you only ever used an honorific with me once. Up in the orbital station, when you were waitin’ for me to sign my life away.” V paused as they walked into the shade beneath the concrete pier. The crumbling buildings and half-buried funhouse structures of Pacifica eased beyond the dock into a gentrified pocket of land that Kang Tao had acquired and developed years back. Glass-fronted cafes, manicured planter boxes, and fauxwood walkways rose from the refuse-choked sand, guarded by turrets. Takemura expected V to keep walking, but he turned around instead, heading back into the sun.

“You want me to use an honorific with your name?”

“No, no. I mean. It’s instinctive for you. You only ever use it for people you respect.”

“You earned my respect long before the orbital station,” Takemura said, guilty all over again. “Though, I wish now I had done more for you.”

“Let it go,” V said. He slipped an arm playfully around Takemura’s waist, squeezing his hip. “This thing we’ve got now between us, whatever it is? I don’t want it to be because of your guilt.”

“It isn’t.” Unused as Takemura was to opening himself up to someone else, to being so intentionally vulnerable—he would never have done something like this out of guilt. Not even for V. It would not have been fair to either of them. “Though. You may be expecting too much of me.”

“How so?”

Takemura made a helpless gesture. “I have not been a good friend by any measure. If I could not even do that—then, what more?”

“Ain’t a competition or a race. Fact that you’re willin’ to reflect on yourself and do better already means a lot. Lot of people I know would rather hide their heads in the sand than admit they’d been wrong—or do anythin’ about it even if they do,” V said. He leant up, pressing a kiss on Takemura’s cheek and chuckling as Takemura tensed. A group of idlers near a wreck of an old car were watching them, not far away. “What, you got somethin’ against PDA?”

“You also said you did not understand the point of walks on a beach,” Takemura said. Even when the world had been less polluted, this would have been unpleasant.

“I’m tryin’ to. That’s the point.” V’s next kiss brushed closer to Takemura’s mouth. “This ain’t only new for you, babe.”

“That is surprising.” V was handsome and charismatic, flirting just as easily as he breathed. It would not have been difficult for him to find lovers—particularly since nothing about his life until the biochip would’ve restricted him.

“I’ve had fun, sure. Anything more serious though? Hell, I once told a friend that love is a rare thing in Night City, rarer than diamonds. Since he found it, best he hang on to it.”

Takemura didn’t know if what he felt for V was love. With all the effort humanity had spent towards defining, expressing, and portraying the sentiment throughout history, it should feel more overwhelming, more damning. Eyes meeting across crowded rooms, a consumption of the soul. Takemura felt no such serendipitous ruination. Perhaps the way he had lived his life had surgically removed the capacity for love from him, the way it had almost gutted him of the need for meaningful relationships beyond his work. Besides, what did it mean to love someone technically dead? Grief should be the most logical response, and yet, walking with V along an ugly beach marred by plastic and crumpled tins, grief was the least of what Takemura felt.

“You’ve gone all quiet,” V said. He prodded Takemura’s arm. “Don’t tell me you’re a virgin or somethin’.”

“No,” Takemura said, though the actual reason was just as impersonal as much of the rest of his life. He barely remembered the few partners he’d had, scattered between the few breaks he had from his work. None for decades—they’d all been impulses from his youth, brief flashes of catharsis. “I never thought such matters all that important—sentiment, that is. Beyond loyalty. I would not have believed you if you had told me even two years ago that I would someday resign from Arasaka in such circumstances.”

“Sounds to me like it ain’t a bad thing to have boundaries.”

Takemura nodded slowly. “Kenichi-san said it would be hard. To learn how to live like a normal person.” The time had spent in Night City, hunted down, had been disorienting, but Takemura had been driven by rage and vengeance. Life in Kagawa had felt more complicated, somehow. Readjusting away from having to be alert for dangers, from devoting every waking thought to security and another man’s schedule into having his own. Managing people wasn’t new, not when he’d been in charge of Saburo’s vast security team for decades, but every decision he had made in Kagawa had been the sort he hadn’t been used to. Rising to the challenge had been a distraction he had thought good at the time. Now, he knew it to be an escape.

“Normalcy’s overrated,” V scoffed.

“He said people like me crave purpose. It’s what we were trained to do and all we have ever known.”

“So what, after this, you wanna go work for Michiko?” V tensed.

“All my life, I have worked for Arasaka.” Takemura breathed in the scent of hot sand, of something sour, buried not far away under a tangle of wiring. He wished he could still remember the scent of V’s skin. The rig V wore smelled of the fabric softener used on his clothes, of something faintly metallic. Not unpleasant, but patently different. “For the rest of the time I have, I think—it is not so bad to try something different.”

V insisted that they queue for a table for ‘griot’. Having never been interested in Haitian food before, Takemura was already less than enthusiastic. Let alone the fact that V wouldn’t be eating—and that they’d be doing so in the heart of the Voodoo Boys’ territory. Polite attempts to steer them toward something on Hideo’s list were rebuffed. Thankfully, the queue wasn’t long—they’d just missed the lunch crowd.

On a plastic table and chairs teetering close to the edge of a concrete cliff overlooking the sea, V leaned over and breathed in deeply as staff put down a plate before Takemura. A scan told him the braised, then deep-fried marinated pork shoulder was actual pork—a surprise. As were half of the herbs and spices that had gone into the epis it’d been marinated in. The side of pikliz—spicy marinated vegetables—was colourful and lovingly made. The bannann peze, which Takemura had opted for on V’s insistence instead of rice, was golden and crispy. It did not look or smell as objectionable as Takemura thought it might be.

“Good?” V asked as Takemura took experimental bites of everything, first individually, then with liberal additions of pikliz.

Takemura nodded. The heat from the pikliz was just enough to highlight the dense flavour of the meat. “Good,” he said.

“See. Ain’t just you Japanese who can make good food.”

“I have never doubted such a thing,” Takemura said as he ate. To do so was to assume a form of cultural arrogance even Saburo didn’t aspire to.

“So, what’s the deal with your insistence on eating Japanese food?”

“Homesickness,” Takemura said, popping a slice of fried plantains into his mouth. Even the plasticky sushi he’d eaten had reminded him of home. While the myriad kombini in Japan tried their best, there was often no escaping the flaws inherent in affordable synthfood.

“Oh. Right.” V sobered. “Well, don’t mind me in the future if I wanna drag you to other places. Not like I can eat any of it anyway.”

“You could try. There should be a way.” People replaced internal organs all the time, let alone parts like the tongue or taste buds.

“It’d mean having to install an entire digestive system, and I’m not sure how that’s gonna jive with the other bits I’ve got.” V looked reflective, however. “Not sure if I love food that much.” At the disbelieving stare Takemura shot him, V chuckled and said, “That’s you judgin’ me right there, Goro.”

“I cannot understand people who do not love food,” Takemura said. The pork, crispy on the outside, was fork-tender on the inside, each mouthful a revelation.

“Had a friend—well, I mean. Jackie, he once said the same. I used to tell him that’s ‘cos he grew up spoiled by Mama Welles. Her barbacoa is outta this world. Used to joke with him when invited over to his place that his mama’s food was the only reason we were friends.” V sank his cheek on his palm, looking over at the busy open-air kitchen. “Shit. I still haven’t called her to talk. Or anyone.”

“You should.”

“Don’t know how to break it to them. ‘Hey, it’s V, but not really. More like V’s ghost’?”

“Some already know. For the rest, perhaps it is not a stretch. Would they not have known about Silverhand?” Takemura asked.

“Feel like most of them are gonna be real disappointed with how it turned out. Like I didn’t trust any of them—that I chose the way I did.”

“There was, as you say, a sweetener,” Takemura said, if with a wry smile. As V chuckled, Takemura ate another sliver of plantain. “Your friends mean a lot to you. Why be so afraid of their disappointment that you would cut them loose? Imagine how worse it would be if they found out another way.”

“Guess so.” V’s gaze tracked back to the queue, which was growing, swelled with a surprising number of people who didn’t look like denizens of Pacifica at all. Many were mercs. V tipped down the edge of the baseball cap he wore, looking away.

Chapter Text

Saburo struck back against the Us Cracks in his usual style—ruthlessly. MGM dropped the band for breach of contract—apparently the show they’d staged before Arasaka Tower hadn’t been approved by the label, and the label considered their new single offensive. The Us Cracks’ music disappeared off the airwaves overnight, and their scheduled gigs for the rest of the year were cancelled. Worse, they couldn’t touch their royalties until their lawyers battled it out with MGM. This didn’t seem to bother the Us Cracks at all—they whooped and cheered as V walked into the meeting room, then clustered around him, chatting excitedly.

Takemura settled into the same chair he’d chosen before. Rogue was already present, sipping a cup of coffee as she spoke to Dorsett in a low voice. Yoshitune glanced at Takemura and stifled a yawn, already on his second cup of coffee, slouched into a chair opposite those that the Us Cracks had already occupied with boxes of colourful cupcakes and pastries. He yawned again when Michiko finally appeared, trailing Shaitan as she sat at the head of the table.

“Looking good,” Shaitan told V.

“Appreciate the hookup,” V said. He sat beside Takemura, patting his knee under the table. “I also appreciate all of you makin’ it possible for me to be here. Thanks, I owe you one.” He glanced at the Us Cracks apologetically. “Sorry for all the shit you had to go through, what with the radio and your label. That’s just fucked up.”

“We’ve been angry at our label since that business with Kerry-san,” Red Menace said, pausing in the middle of eating a madeleine. “Don’t worry. That performance’s been trending all over the Net. Also, American radio hasn’t been worth shit for decades—we’re used to it. Just look at how they won’t play our non-English songs.”

“By the way, Kerry-san said he’d like to help. Not that we told him what we were up to, but I think he guessed,” Blue Moon told Michiko, who nodded.

“If he could help during the next phase, that’d work. But it doesn’t matter even if he can’t,” Michiko said.

V pushed back his chair, propping a leg on the table as he slumped into his seat. “So tell me about your grand plan to somehow assassinate Saburo Arasaka,” he drawled. Rogue shot V a strange look that Takemura failed to parse, but when he caught her eye, she glanced away.

“My grandfather is dead. What exists, currently, is an engram of him in a biochip,” Michiko pointed out.

“Speakin’ as the one person in this room who knows intimately what that feels like, I’d say… yeah? And?” V said.

“I’d say you’re also the one person in the room who knows best how fragile the biochips are.” Michiko leant forward, folding her arms over the table. “And were they to malfunction or meet a strong EMP pulse…?”

“Gonna stop you there for a sec,” V said, though he rubbed his jaw. “Had a damaged chip in my head for weeks. Still would’a lived for months. EMP pulse didn’t do shit, either, just gave me a splittin’ headache.”

“But weren’t there times when Johnny Silverhand disappeared? Went quiet, like he’d been pushed away?” Michiko asked. “Right after the EMP, for example?”

“Sure,” V said, his hand dropping back to his seat. “But that was within weeks of me havin’ the chip in. Yorinobu’s had that thing in his head for a year. Saburo’s already taken over.”

“You want to reach what’s left of Yorinobu in there—if there is any?” Yoshitune said, surprised. “Hell, I’d be the first to hope there is, but how likely is that?”

“Besides, even if you did, he’d be unrecognisable. You read my file, I bet. The bit about my sync with the Silverhand construct,” V said.

“You had a lot in common with Silverhand,” Michiko said, if in a gentle tone. “I hear you let him take over several times.”

“So?” V frowned. He carefully didn’t look at Rogue. “Sure. Few times Johnny took over, most of the time, he asked nicely, so I let him. He wanted to settle some loose ends personally, is all.”

“Yorinobu won’t be in the same situation.” Michiko tapped her manicured nails lightly on the table.

“What happened to all that talk about putting a bullet through his head?” Rogue asked with a hard curl to her mouth.

“He won’t be able to live long in his body as it is now. Besides, you’re assuming he fought back—that there’s anything left. He seemed pretty broken down the last we met,” V said.

“If he isn’t… available any longer, I have other options,” Michiko said, unperturbed. “Either way, it’s unlikely that we can reach my grandfather in Tokyo. Even Shaitan has said that it’s impossible. Even outside Tokyo in Japan, however…” she trailed off, looking to Takemura.

“Difficult,” Takemura said. Wherever Saburo travelled in Japan, it was usually with a small army of security, in a routine that Takemura and his team had designed to be as impenetrable as possible. Every serious attempt Saburo had suffered on his life had been outside national borders, where not everything could be under Arasaka control. “Impossible with a small team.”

“Not without massive casualties on our side,” Shaitan said, “and that ain’t how I prefer to operate.”

“My grandfather will soon be making a private trip—to the Crystal Palace,” Michiko said.

“Also difficult,” Takemura said. Designed to be an orbital utopia, the Crystal Palace was located between the Earth and the Moon. Technically owned by the European Space Agency, sections of the station were leased on a renewable basis, with law enforcement run by Interpol. Glitzy, self-contained, and luxurious, it was a playground for the very wealthiest in the world, a city in the sky packed to the teeth with the latest technology—including security. The last time Takemura had accompanied Saburo to the Crystal Palace, he’d been impressed by its onboard arrangements.

“For the Forbes EDGE conference?” Rogue guessed. At Michiko’s nod, Rogue laughed harshly. “Thought Saburo didn’t give a fuck about peer pressure.”

“He has no interest in such events,” Takemura said. Saburo disdained attending CEO conferences, industry events, talks, summits, or anything of the sort. If it suited Arasaka to attend, he would send a representative; usually, no one cared. After all, Saburo was quite elderly.

“This is different. The CEOs of the largest corporations in the world intend to make a pact—to withdraw all support from the Secure Your Soul program, and to pressure governments to outlaw what Saburo has done retrospectively: installing a biochip into the body of another living human being,” Michiko said. She looked grim. “My grandfather will attend.”

“A show of force,” Takemura said. To intimidate those who might dare to try and contain him.

“Makes it worse,” Rogue pointed out. “Security’s gonna be even tighter during the EDGE conference. After all, it’s only gonna be attended by the wealthiest fuckers on Earth.”

“Getting aboard the orbital station is half the struggle, and I’ve got a way to do that. It’s the rest of the plan that I’d like input on,” Michiko said.

“Thought you wanted to call all the shots,” V said.

“Not for something as big as this.” Michiko pulled nervously at her fingers. “I won’t lie and tell you I’m confident. I’m not. But this is our best shot of getting to Saburo, and I want to take it. Takemura-san and Kenichi have been to the Crystal Palace as part of a security detail, so they know what to expect. I’ll have floor plans and a detailed debrief forwarded to everyone here for further reading. Once I finalise our ticket up to the stars, I’ll let you all know.”

“You’re going as well?” Rogue asked with a frown.

“Why not?” Michiko said.

Rogue looked over at V for support, but V said, “Ain’t a normal client, Rogue. Or a normal situation. Hell, nothing normal’s about this shit.” She gave him another long, hard stare, which got her a puzzled, “What?” from V.

“You remind me a hell of a lot of Johnny right now, and not in a good way,” Rogue said.

“Sure. Both of us have a lot in common. Died and came back to life.” V tapped at his head. “Both thanks to Arasaka and a motherload of bad to worse decisions. Why not make a few more?”

Strangely, Rogue relaxed. “That’s one thing you’re doing differently. Recognising you can’t just blame everything on Arasaka.”

“Call it personal growth.” V squeezed Takemura’s knee lightly.

“One last thing,” Michiko warned, looking soberly at them. “You may all have to leave Earth on short notice. It’ll be dangerous, and some of us might not be coming back. Anyone who wants to back out can do so if they want, no questions asked.” She waited. Even Dorsett didn’t budge, frowning at her half-eaten breakfast. “You can change your minds at any time,” Michiko said in a softer voice, “all the way to liftoff. I’ll have a detailed briefing sent out. Have a read, send me your thoughts, but most importantly? If you go all in with me, make any final arrangements you might need. Once we board the flight up to the Crystal Palace, there’s no turning back.”

“Startin’ to see why you forget to eat,” V said as Takemura revised his way through floor plans for the third time.

“My implants compensate,” Takemura said absently, flicking through a series of images with a gesture of his fingers.

“Mmhm, sure.” V draped himself over Takemura’s back, affecting a yawn. “Still think you should eat. It’d make you think better. Also, surely Michiko isn’t expecting a response ASAP. She ain’t Saburo.”

“That’s not what you said days ago,” Takemura said, amused.

“Not what I said,” V said, imitating Takemura’s gruff voice as he curled his arms around Takemura’s waist. “Okay, fine. She ain’t as bad as Saburo. Low bar. Also, I believe her when she said she’s in this for her kids. Still a low bar.”

“You’re the one who agreed to continue working for her.” Takemura gently patted V’s arms. “Something about a thief ship.”

“She also agreed to pay,” V said, though his voice faded into a grumble. “Fuck. Readin’ the plans, kinda startin’ to regret it.”

“Hm.” Takemura flicked through another map.

“You don’t agree?”

“Often, I think it is harder to guard against assassination than the reverse,” Takemura said, his eyes glowing as he committed more notes on the file he read to memory. “The assassin only needs to get lucky once. Security, on the other hand, must be lucky all the time. You should know. Much of your everyday life involves destroying the livelihoods of people like me.”

“… Don’t make me start feelin’ guilty about my job,” V said, prodding Takemura in the belly.

Takemura batted V’s hand aside. “That is not my intention. I have no sympathy for the inadequate security protocols you’ve had to bypass.”

“We’ve done our share of bypassin’ Arasaka stuff too.” V kissed the back of Takemura’s neck, his lips warm and soft. “Wasn’t that hard.”

“Yorinobu’s protocols,” Takemura stressed.

“Sure, baby.” V snickered. “You tell yourself that.”

“I do not see you doing any work.” Takemura half-turned, eyeing V suspiciously. “Please do not tell me that your plan is to show up in the Crystal Palace and start loosing Contagion.”

“Always worked for me before,” V said with a cheeky grin. When Takemura exhaled, V leaned in, nudging a kiss against Takemura’s mouth.

“Just because you—” Takemura cut himself off.

“What, just ‘cos I’m dead?” V finished his words anyway. “Don’t mean I ain’t gonna care. I care about the rest of you makin’ it out of this alive, even Michiko. Especially you. But you’re not gonna stare any sense out of those documents by sheer force of will. Think you should eat, give it a rest, and try again in the morning.”

Takemura shook his head, about to look through the next set of protocols, only to glance at V in exasperation as the projected images turned into an animation of a cat floating in the air, dressed in a golden yukata stamped with ginkgo leaf patterns. “V,” Takemura said.

V hooked fingers into Takemura’s hair, loosening the bun. Takemura frowned as his hair brushed against his cheeks and shoulders, falling over his forehead. “Damn,” V whispered, eyes fixed greedily on Takemura’s face. “Every time I think you can’t get any hotter.”

Takemura could feel his ears getting warm. “There is work to do.”

“You know it can wait.” V traced his clever fingers past Takemura’s waist, trailing the tips playfully over the zipper.

“V,” Takemura complained as he caught V’s wrist, then groaned as V squeezed lightly. Desire burned bright with an urgency that took Takemura by surprise, making him press back against V as he pushed his hips into V’s grip. “You…” he trailed off, swallowing his instinctive question.

V guessed anyway? “Do I still want you? Sure,” he said, chuckling as he grazed his teeth against Takemura’s throat. “Wanted you even when I was half outta my mind with my body breakin’ down in an orbital ward. Even stuck in a dark digital box, as an engram floatin’ over a projector, as a ghost in a droid. Concentrating on anything else in the world gets tough when you’re around. Even your voice makes me weak.”

The heat in his ears had spread to Takemura’s cheeks. He allowed V to turn him around, to pull him into a kiss. The days hadn’t quite allowed Takemura to get used to kissing V. Soft as V’s lips were, his mouth tasted of nothing, nor was it as hot and wet as flesh. His cock throbbed anyway, pressed against V’s thigh. V purred, pulling Takemura closer, fingers twisting through Takemura’s loose hair, carding the white streaks over his knuckles.

“How ’bout you?” V asked, even as he rubbed himself invitingly against the growing bulge in Takemura’s pants. “You want me?”

Takemura got his hands over V’s ass, grinding them together by way of an answer. He kissed along V’s cheek, tugging an ear in his teeth. “How do you want to do this?” Takemura whispered. He hadn’t scanned the borg body V was in when V had been loading into it beyond checking it over for any transfer errors or embedded spyware, choosing to respect V’s privacy.

“Had some parts switched around earlier,” V said with a wicked grin. They’d dropped by the borg parts manufacturer on the way back to the apartment for V to switch out some of the fitout. He hadn’t explained what he was changing, nor had Takemura asked.

“Here I was thinking the delay was work-related,” Takemura said. He unbuckled V’s belt, tossing it aside. Soft, synthetic hair lined a trail down to V’s black underwear, which was also starting to swell.

“What’s life without a bit of fun?” V asked, cheeky as he tugged Takemura’s tie out of his vest, using it to lead Takemura to the bed. Undoing the tie from its knot, V smirked as he kissed the soft fabric, sprawled on his back over the large bed as a feast. Takemura crawled on top of V, pulling off his jacket, rucking up his shirt. Stripped down, V looked human, his musculature traced by cybernetic lines, dark hair dusting his chest, thicker and coarse around a hefty cock. Takemura touched it curiously, long fingers closing around flesh and tugging. V arched with a gasp, plucking at the buttons on Takemura’s shirt, then ripping as he grew impatient. Takemura let out a snort as buttons rolled off, scattering over the bed and floor. The crisp fabric pulled away over black and red plating, the shockproof, bulletproof segmented armour that encased his chest to his hips. V pressed the tips of a hand curiously over the thicker section that protected Takemura’s heart, down to the more recent dent from the sniper bullet in the megabuilding.

“You feel anythin’ under this?” V asked, his voice growing hushed. Takemura was braced for unease or morbid curiosity, especially with the red Arasaka crest stamped over his chestplate, with the version number emblazoned over the plating layered over his ribs.

“No,” Takemura said. The armour was designed that way. Built into his skin, resistant to damage. Implants could instantly dull pain from the most traumatic injury, stop him from breaking into shock, compensate for broken bones, automatically restart his heart, and cauterise wounds. Despite now being so much more of a memento of the life he once had than anything else, the exoskeleton had been part of Takemura for so long that he couldn’t imagine life without it.

“You could change it out,” V said, pulling off Takemura’s shirt to bare shoulders and arms encased in the same black and gold armour. “Synthskin, the works.”

“Do you find it ugly?”

“No! No. Ain’t no part of you that’s ugly.” V’s fingers hooked into Takemura’s belt.

“My body has always served its function,” Takemura said, pressing a kiss over V’s forehead, then lower, between his eyes. “As a weapon, as a shield. It allows me to protect the people I treasure. Like you.” Takemura brushed a kiss over V’s mouth as V let out a low moan. Arms curled over Takemura’s back, pulling him flush, fingers stroking circles down the reinforced segments that protected Takemura’s spine. To the seam near his pelvis where armour receded into flesh.

V hummed appreciatively once Takemura’s clothes joined the puddles of fabric on the bed. “Nice,” he said, his knuckles rubbing teasingly up Takemura’s cock. “Though, somehow, I thought it’d be as armoured up as the rest of you.”

Takemura sniffed. “Disappointed?”

“’ Course not.” V hooked one long thigh over Takemura’s waist, stroking him. His eyes glowed with lust and more—something darker, thorny, more like obsession. The burning drive that had pushed a dying V into gambling his life on the same corporation that had taken him to such a desperate ledge, that had him sign away the last rights of his life in orbit. That wanted every part of Takemura, even the worst and unsalvageable parts of his soul.

Takemura’s breath shivered against V’s throat as he tried to speak, managing a rasped, “Supplies?”

“Don’t need those with this body. Tech-no-logy,” V drawled. He flipped them around, straddling Takemura’s belly with a lazy grin. Bracing himself with a palm over Takemura’s chest, V reached lower with his free hand, tickling, then fondling Takemura’s balls, making him growl.

“V.” Takemura’s hands tightened on V’s hips, an involuntary reaction that would’ve bruised normal flesh. The synthetic skin felt pliable under his grip but didn’t redden, even as V chuckled, baring his teeth. So beautiful that it hurt to look upon him. Takemura was briefly reminded of the kitsune as V guided him within, a slick glove of tight heat swallowing him up, each tremor and clench making him pant more and more shallowly.

The world folded down into a narrow focus. Dizzy with lust and pleasure, sweat pressed Takemura’s hair against his temples once V was fully seated on his lap, the heels of his feet digging for purchase over the sheets. V’s grin widened. He likely didn’t need time to adjust, something Takemura distantly knew but still gasped out a garbled phrase of doubt when V started to move. Rocking slowly over him, then raising his hips until only the tip remained before grinding back down, always with a low and breathy moan. How much of the pleasure V seemed to feel was real—or did it even matter what ‘real’ meant?

A technological miracle had brought V back from death, even in his current form. Doubt was a poor response to such a thing. Takemura flipped them back over, hauling up V’s hips as V laughed, bending him in a lovely arc. V stretched, synth-muscles pulling under his skin as he shifted his hips, catching his lower lip in his teeth. Balancing his weight above V, Takemura began to take him in deep, hungry thrusts, panting his pleasure. The few words he could speak broke against his lust, scattered into uneven moans over the dull slaps of V’s body against plated steel and skin. Reaching for the edge of pleasure, not knowing how V would take that, yet trusting his lead. Takemura kissed V as he closed on his peak, teeth scraping over V’s lips in his urgency, keening and coming in heavy spurts as V laughed and bucked and whispered, “Now you’re mine,” into his ear.

As Takemura eased wetly out of V’s body, he couldn’t help but look down at V’s belly. “I could get one that shoots some kind of liquid,” V said, sprawled in Takemura’s arms, “but you would not believe how much maintenance is gonna go into having a stored bag of… dubious fluids… under the tyrosine injectors. Like, if it were to rupture in combat, I can think of at least three different cascading malfunctions.”

Takemura pulled a face. “Was not thinking that you should. Also, I did not need that much detail.” V snickered, a clear sign that he was about to say more. “However, I would not object to trying this on the other end,” Takemura said, patting V’s cock.

V stilled, then he growled and twisted up, pressing Takemura to the bed. “I was gonna let you rest for the night, but now I’ve changed my mind.”

“Good,” Takemura said and chuckled as V hauled him close.

Chapter Text

“Told you it won’t be a problem,” Kerry Eurodyne said, with an arm draped over V’s shoulder.

Takemura looked away, squashing the irritation he felt whenever he was within strangling range of the rock star. Once the lead vocal and lead guitarist for Samurai, age had treated Kerry Eurodyne well—his world-famous, handsome face lined only with gold cybernetics, a trimmed beard and moustache sweeping down towards lengths of gold chains. He looked younger than Takemura, even though he had to be at least two decades older. Kerry still dressed like the rockerboy he’d started as before he’d gone platinum multiple times, with a post-Samurai career that had made him a household name worldwide.

“Appreciate the help,” V said.

At the private orbital docks aboard the Crystal Palace, crews of droids and staff were carefully unloading crates of equipment and personal effects from the spacecraft that Michiko had chartered. Most were meant to be equipment or supplies for Kerry’s upcoming show aboard the Crystal Palace. The contraband was seeded within, sealed inside scan-proof casings that the Us Cracks had sourced out of nowhere from fans. While this had not struck Takemura as a particularly secure or reliable way of acquiring anything, apparently, it was completely normal. Besides, the cases worked.

The Us Cracks disembarked, whooping in excitement and taking selfies against the shielded glass. The docks had a sweeping view of Earth at the Crystal Palace’s current rotation. Red Menace proceeded to call her mother, of all people. Again reflecting that ordinary people shouldn’t be anywhere near an operation as dangerous as this, Takemura stepped away to give them more privacy as the young women waved at the screen and started talking to Red Menace’s mother in Japanese. Kerry got pulled into the call, a development marked by Red Menace’s mother gasping loudly, then turning incoherent in her excitement.

As Takemura watched the equipment being unloaded, V hugged him from behind. “You all right?” V asked.

“Stay alert.” If anything, a pro like V shouldn’t be treating this as a vacation.

“Getting up here’s meant to be half the trouble, isn’t it?” V kissed the back of Takemura’s neck.

“Kerry Eurodyne is a known associate of both you and Johnny Silverhand,” Takemura said. Surely sneaking aboard the station under Kerry’s graces would be too obvious a ploy.

“And Michiko said she’d handle it. Which, so far, it looks like she has. I’m logged in to every normal and emergency bandwidth aboard this station right now,” V said before Takemura could object. “So far, so good.”

“Ah.” Takemura hadn’t noticed.

“Didn’t realise I started workin’ the moment we stepped aboard that ship?” V asked, chuckling. “Wasn’t the only one. Shaitan’s doin’ his thing too, even though he’s inside that get-up.”

Shaitan stood near the hangar access to the spacecraft, completely unrecognisable even from a scan, dressed as one of the recurring characters in the Us Cracks’ videos—Media, a colourful humanoid with a boxy retro TV screen as its head. Emblazoned across the black screen was a bright pink smiley face. When the Us Cracks called to him, he lumbered over, bending and making a peace sign with his new, thick fingers as they took a group photo with Kerry.

“It’s part of our cover,” V said, glancing over. “Photo will go viral in seconds. Lends Kerry’s show some legitimacy, so everyone’s presence here becomes less suspicious.”

“I read the briefing,” Takemura said. The Us Cracks and Kerry were here to make as big a splash as possible, creating enough background noise to draw attention away from everything else that might soon happen at the Crystal Palace. Likely, the existing media staff from the guests at the EDGE conference would help. EDGE had been a focus of annual global protests for years, and the corporations involved would be happy for something to take off the heat.

Michiko walked over from within the ship, trailing Yoshitune and Sandra. All of them, including Takemura and V, wore synthskin masks made by Shaitan’s friends—completely changing their features, even after an optics scan. Their current onboard ID cards had also been shifted to clean covers. Michiko was now the Us Cracks’ new manager, while Marc and Dorsett were her assistants. Yoshitune, Rogue, V, and Takemura were part of Kerry’s security detail.

“Scheduling indicates he’ll be arriving within the next two hours,” Michiko said.

“Still don’t see why we can’t do the drop in the spaceport,” V said. He made a show of looking around. “Lots of automated machinery in here, nice and heavy.”

“Won’t work,” Takemura said. Machinery was slow, and whoever was guarding Saburo would be at their keenest right out from the flight. It’d just be a matter of hustling Saburo back aboard his spacecraft and flying off back to Japan.

“I know, I know.” V stepped away from Takemura, his expression losing its usual mischief and growing serious. “Ready when you all are. Good luck.”

“You will do fine,” Takemura told Dorsett, who smiled hesitantly and scooted closer to Rogue. Michiko had arranged her into the netrunner security team following Kerry, anyway, which hopefully meant the member of their group who was most likely to crack under pressure would be well-insulated.

“Customs have cleared us,” Michiko said, checking a notice on her deck. “Once Kerry and the Us Cracks head into Arrivals, the circus will start. I hope the rest of you will be on your way to your positions by then.”

“Gonna be sorry to miss the show yet again,” V said, smiling. Kerry and the Us Cracks were going to hold an impromptu performance at Arrivals, something that would likely completely snarl up the spaceport and its security, allowing the ‘new’ members of Kerry’s staff to slip away.

“I’d say stick to the plan, good luck and all that, but you’re all the best. You know what you’re doing.” Michiko shook everyone’s hands solemnly. “So I’d say instead—thank you. No matter why you’re here—thank you.”

“I get why you don’t like Kerry,” V said as he and Takemura made their way in the general direction of the concert venue.

Once past the crowd of fans at the spaceport, the rest of the Crystal Palace was just as Takemura remembered. High-resolution graphic cells on the roof of the central torus—the public access floor they were on—made it look as though they were standing under a summer sky, the occasional flock of birds passing overhead. White walkways picked graceful strands through manicured greenery, great banks of flowering plants tracing their way toward the central showpiece of the floor—a vast, thundering waterfall, large enough to create its own microclimate within the torus. Luxury shops ringed the miniature rainforest, selling anything from clothes to AVs. Unsurprisingly, security was everywhere—turrets winked out from behind ferns, MK3s sat discreetly in booths, and human patrols circled the garden. Giant banners featuring Kerry and the Us Cracks stretched from the roof, switching from photos to animation and back.

“Why do you say that?” Takemura asked as they passed a security patrol. None of the gunners glanced at them.

“You’re jealous,” V said and grinned wickedly. Takemura scoffed. “You are. Saw how sour you looked once he put his arm on me.”

“His children are as old as you are,” Takemura muttered.

“What about it?” V asked. When Takemura shook his head, V said, “This is good. You’re starting to process other normal emotions.”

“I am not jealous,” Takemura said, though this was a ridiculous conversation to have at his age. He wasn’t. Jealousy required Takemura to be insecure, and he wasn’t. Not with what V had done because of him so far. “I merely dislike him.”

“Oh? Is it the rockerboy thing?”

Takemura glanced at V. “He is one of the most popular musicians on the planet. Yet he felt it was necessary to employ a mercenary to terrorise three young Japanese women. Given the history of your country where violence against Asian people, against Asian women, is involved, is it not an ugly thing to do?”

“…Guess I might see your point,” V said, reflective. “Though, y’know, I was there too. I talked him down but still threw the bomb.”

“You are a mercenary. It is pointless to blame the weapon instead of its wielder. Also, Blue Moon said you were the one who brokered their current friendship.”

“The work I did—most of it ain’t righteous,” V said as they walked out of the central torus toward the restricted maintenance sector. “Does it bother you? That I could still sleep at night. Before all this engram shit, anyway.”

“For decades, I did what Saburo-san told me. The people he wanted to die would die—most of the time.” Yoshitune had been a rare exception. “It did not matter to me how old or young they were, their gender, or whether they deserved it. It only mattered that Saburo-san had marked them for death.” Takemura glanced at V. “Does that bother you?”

“Nah. Guess we’re both fucked up people in a fucked up world,” V said. He paused at the pale holographic dividing wall that marked the public access section of the floor from the rest. “After you,” he said with a playful flourish.

Takemura stepped through the red demarcation, which scanned his security access. No alarm warnings, no pings. V stepped across as well, fingers hooked into the pockets of his pants. “Concert’s starting. We’d better move quick,” he said.

The distant pulse of music became audible as Takemura and V found the private-access lifts. The doors slid open as V glanced at them, and once within, Takemura selected the security floor. As the lift began to move, V said, “CEOs are starting to arrive. The Militech boss just docked.”

Slightly ahead of schedule. “Any issue?”

“…Seems he’s a Kerry Eurodyne fan, didn’t want to miss the concert.” V laughed. “Damn. I got to tell Kerry that. He’d probably be inspired to write another song. Maybe something about how dirty money’s gonna love you anyway.”

“Saw a clip of you performing with Samurai,” Takemura said. V’s singing voice was nowhere as good as Kerry’s, but he’d been surprisingly great with a guitar. Takemura would not have been able to tell that he wasn’t a pro. “You are very good.”

“Me? Nah. That was Johnny. He thought Kerry was angling to shoot himself. Kerry claimed it was a marketing ploy, but it didn’t look that way, so Johnny suggested getting the band back together for a one-off comeback. Give Kerry and some of the others a bit of closure.” V stared at his reflection in the steel elevator doors. “Think Rogue and Kerry maybe had a thing for Johnny. Hell, even what Alt became still did. Enough of a memory to look for Johnny when he appeared beyond the Blackwall. Funny, ain’t it?”

“Silverhand was a charismatic man.” Saburo had said as much once. It was part of why he had found Silverhand interesting enough to preserve. Perhaps why it had been Silverhand’s engram, of every other engram stored in Mikoshi, that had ended up in the Relic.

“I know you hate him, and I get why, after all he’s done. But y’know what. Some days, I still miss him. Fucked up, ain’t it? When I first got him jammed into my head, it wasn’t just the fact he was killing me that made me pissed. I grew up in Night City. Just about every other person you meet lost someone in the AHQ disaster. Or they’d know someone who did. Bits of the land’s still poisoned from the fallout. But I still miss him.”

“I do not hate him.” Hate was a strong word to apply to someone Takemura had never met, whom he’d thought was long dead until a year ago—and even then, had already been turned into a ghost. “After all, part of him has already become part of you. I never knew the version of you from before the biochip. The ‘you’ whose life became part of mine, the man I’ve found at times to be frustrating, unbelievable, reckless, stubborn—yet always impossible to ignore… I do not know which part of that man is V and which is Silverhand, and I do not care. After all, you are now who you are.” Takemura squeezed V’s hand lightly.

V squeezed his hand back. “…Now you’re startin’ to shake my work ethic.”

“Hn.” Takemura paused and ducked behind cover at the faint hint of a sound.

A scan didn’t pick up anything visible down the corridor they were heading down, but when V frowned slightly, a large Flathead appeared on the ceiling, uncloaking from stealth. A turret slung under its belly scanned the environment before it froze and dropped down to the floor with a heavy thump. Takemura drew his gun as the big Flathead walked over, but V held out a hand. As it came closer, its heavy segmented feet clicking over steel, Takemura tensed—then flinched as V’s hand shot out, pressing over the Flathead’s optical receptacle. The robot whirred, the turret swinging toward V—then powering down. V patted the Flathead as it slipped back into stealth, clicking away.

“Special autonomous issue from Militech,” V said as they advanced. “They’re offline—can’t hack them from afar. On the other hand, nobody’s gonna notice if they go missing unless they do a visual headcount.”

Takemura nodded. Complicated, and it’d make creeping to the security office slower than he’d hoped. Conscious that even a silencer might be too much noise down the echoing corridor, Takemura drew a knife from the scabbard strapped to his leg. A Flathead circling a maintenance console was stabbed in the optics, disabling it. V pounced on another that paused close by, startled by the faint noise. Hiding the disabled droids in the occasional supply crate they found, the sound of muffled voices from the security room had Takemura pause, scanning the chamber ahead.

“This part’s easier,” V whispered. The turrets froze within the security room and the corridor leading to the chamber, then receded into the ceiling. The Interpol security within began to yelp and clutch at their heads as V’s daemons ripped through them, overloading their implants. The one netrunner in the room jumped to his feet, scanning in their direction. As the security guards fell twitching to the ground, Takemura was through the door, grabbing the netrunner and knocking them out against the console.

V’s eyes glowed as he walked into the chamber. “We’re in,” he told Michiko. “Updating security protocols, forwarding you the detailed schedules… huh.”

“What?” Takemura looked sharply at V.

“Militech’s brought on way more security than their quota. Same as the Lazarus Group. Folded into noncombatant staff like us, just less cleanly. Heavy gunners, solos, the works.” V laughed. “Think we maybe ain’t the only people who were waitin’ for Saburo to leave his fortress.”

“This complicates things,” Takemura said. Militech and the Lazarus Group would by no means be friendly to Michiko and her plans—Militech’s fundamental aim was to turn NUSA back into a global superpower. The leading company that stood in its way was Arasaka.

“Could try talking to them. Enemy of our enemy and all that, right?” V asked, though he didn’t sound convinced.

“I’ll handle it,” Rogue said, her tone brisk. “I’ll give you a heads up if it gets out of hand. Shaitan, I know you’ve got friends in both. You gonna come with?”

“Here I was looking forward to being part of my very first stage act,” Shaitan said, though his voice was so flat that Takemura couldn’t tell if he was joking. “Fine, fine.”

Takemura wanted to ask how Rogue intended to ‘handle’ two of the world’s biggest megacorporations but swallowed his question as V glanced at him. “All right,” Michiko said, “but be careful. The rest of us should get into place. It’s showtime.”

Chapter Text

As Takemura and V made their way to the Cloud Piazza, the sector reserved for the EDGE conference, Takemura belatedly connected what V was humming under his breath. “Are you streaming the concert?” Takemura asked, incredulous.

“Yeah, why not? I do it all the time,” V said, as though piping music directly into one’s brain was somehow conducive to mission alertness. When Takemura exhaled, V snickered. “You’ve seen it doesn’t affect my work.”

“…No comment,” Takemura said, struggling with his training, his decades of experience as an instructor, and his personal decision to never tell V what to do ever again.

V started to laugh and paused as they crossed into the conference sector. The overhead scanner logged their fake identities without a hitch, allowing them into a sprawling park of trees and hanging plants. The park arched around a central stage, with glass-fronted conference studios for staff and a sector sectioned off for private suites, where CEOs could meet in secure boardrooms overlooking the forest.

“Looks familiar,” V said as they walked, passing Interpol gunners and mechs. “Kind of reminds me of a certain floor in a certain tower.”

“There are supposed to be health benefits,” Takemura said, who had once read a briefing behind the use of greenery in Arasaka properties.

“Think it’s ironic, that’s all. Corporations are a big reason why the world’s this fucked. Then they turn around and encase all the stuff that can’t grow outside any longer into big fish tanks for their benefit.”

Takemura glanced around in case V’s words were drawing attention. Strangely, they weren’t. “Told you I’m a pro,” V said, noticing his unease. He was perhaps causing auditory malfunctions in the people and droids they passed. Takemura sniffed, then hesitated and pulled V aside off the main pathway, behind where the trees were thicker. The faint tremors he could sense through his implants heralded the arrival of ranks of Lazarus mechs, shaking the ground as they marched into the artificial forest. Each took up a position at an interval, creating a firing line trained at the main walkway and beyond.

“Starting to sense some CEOs been getting cold feet,” V whispered.

Takemura nodded. Saburo would never have been caught flat-footed by such a thing. Likely, he’d been lobbying away opposition to the Secure Your Soul program for months. He had never underestimated his opponents—or their collective influence on the rest of the world. As much as Arasaka would like to stand alone, it could not. Were Saburo to be deemed legally dead across most of the world, or what had been done to Yorinobu was retrospectively considered a crime, every decision or deal Saburo might have made over the past year might no longer be considered valid. Contracts would fall through. Global faith in Arasaka would be shaken. What Saburo currently faced was a challenge against his very existence.

“This will get ugly,” Takemura predicted as they moved toward the VIP section, dodging mechs. The Lazarus Group seemed to be trying to put the sector under secure lockdown. Takemura spotted a few groups of people in suits milling about or being corralled into boardrooms, including someone who looked to be IEC’s current CEO.

Two elderly Japanese men and a Chinese woman looked upon the scene with cold fatalism, surrounded by their security detail. “Kendachi, Mitsubishi-Sugo, and Kang Tao?” V noted, scanning them. “Whose side will they be on?”

“Their own.” That had always been the case for megacorporations. In business, almost nothing was personal. If it was, as Saburo liked to say, then it was bad business.

Security in the VIP suites was tense. Interpol looked between the increasingly antsy bodyguards and the growing Militech and Lazarus Group muscle, frowning to themselves. Everyone looked to be on a hair trigger, ready for a fight. It wasn’t clear to Takemura who would come out the winner. After all, Arasaka wasn’t yet here.

“I have two problems,” Rogue said as Takemura and V surveyed the patrols.

“Only two?” V said with a dry laugh. “Goro and I are lookin’ at a small fuckin’ army right here. Can hardly see the trees for the mechs.”

“Three CEOs—Microtech, Infocomp and Biotechnica—were gonna meet up with Militech’s boss Lundee to check out the concert together, and they’ve disappeared. Thinking Interpol’s about ten seconds away from locking down the Crystal Palace,” Rogue said.

“…What is the second problem?” Takemura asked in the silence.

“Pretty sure that Arasaka flight schedule Michiko got ain’t worth shit, ‘cos I just saw Saburo emerging from the spaceport,” Rogue said with a grim laugh. “This is gonna get so fuckin’ messy.”

“Have you made contact with Militech or the Lazarus Group?” Michiko sounded as calm as ever.

“Could say that, given they smiled, nodded, then locked us down in a boardroom,” Rogue said with another cold laugh. “Not a huge problem for us since Shaitan’s also with me, but I think friendly negotiations are over. Lundee and Co. don’t want anything to do with Arasaka.”

“Well, we tried,” Michiko said, sounding philosophical. “Break yourselves out and continue with the plan. Be careful.”

“There still a plan?” V asked, curious. “‘Cos from this angle, it doesn’t look like there’s gonna be a CEO conference. Looks like a reenactment of the Corporate Wars, but in space.”

“Who do you take me for? I’ve always got a plan,” Michiko said. She let out a long breath. “Guess we’re just gonna have to do this the Danger Gal way.”

Whatever the ‘Danger Gal’ way was, Interpol did not trigger the alarm. Some of the mechs withdrew, stomping out of the conference sector to parts unknown. The air they breathed in the VIP section seemed to grow less tense. “Soft power,” V said as they watched some executives from different corporations start chatting and watching the stream of the concert outside together on a widescreen in a boardroom. “She’s calling up favours, bringing the temperature down.”

Takemura grunted. Saburo had always disdained soft power as something that could never get anything done—or if it did, then not efficiently enough. V nudged him gently. “Hm?”

“I know the look,” V said, watching Takemura. “Of havin’ someone in my head all the time. Someone who becomes so much a part of my life that everythin’ I do gets defined against them. It’s like that with you and Saburo, ain’t it? Save that where I got a few weeks of Johnny; you had decades.”

“He taught me a lot about life,” Takemura said as they took a slope up, coming in view of Interpol’s sector command centre for the Conference area. “I am still processing which of my lessons were wrong.”

The sector command centre was just as easy to clear out, particularly with its wide-open spaces and ample cover. As Takemura choked out the netrunner on duty, maintenance droids punched out one of the security guards while the other went stiff, jerking, and fell into a heap. The other two started forward, then one close to Takemura began clutching at his eyes, while the other staggered back and fell against the console. Takemura choked out the guard with the optical malfunction and looked up to V stamping the last into unconsciousness. V’s eyes glowed as he began to access Interpol’s closed-circuit network. As he worked, Takemura looked up at the obs screens.

“Are you seeing this?” Takemura asked Michiko. He sent her an optical snap of the screens. The mechs scattered in the forest were starting to malfunction, slowly picked off by something Takemura couldn’t make out from the cameras. He didn’t even see any tell-tale faint blurs that might come from a stealth rig.

“Something’s in there with all of you.” Michiko, finally, sounded a little tense. “Have you heard of the ONI project?”

“Arasaka autonomous defence project,” Takemura said, recalling what he’d seen from the files during his tenure in Kagawa. Many of the core components were manufactured in Takamatsu, but the project itself was so confidential that he hadn’t been cleared to know many details. It wasn’t unusual. Arasaka’s R&D teams tended to compete against each other for Saburo’s favour and, as such, could be notoriously secretive. “Did not think it had such a good stealth capacity.”

“We’ve gotten Dorsett into position,” Rogue said, “but it’s getting dicey out there. Looks like hostilities between Militech, Lazarus, and Arasaka’s kicked off. Still no lockdown though? If that’s your doing, Michiko, great.”

On the screens, private security teams began to split up. Those belonging to other corporations started hustling their charges toward secure locations. The ones from Lazarus spread out, trying to find whatever was taking them down. The door burst open as Takemura tried to make out from the clues what—or where—the ONI unit was. An Interpol agent stumbled through, gasping, “Everything’s getting fucked up out there. Arasaka and Militech have fucking lost it—who the hell are you?” which was as far as he got before Takemura shot him in the throat.

V stared at the body. “Michiko said not to use lethal force against Interpol agents.”

“Didn’t. That was a sedative.”

“You and your surprise sedatives. Always looking to give me a heart attack.” V looked appraisingly at the security feed. Lazarus and Militech were getting the worst of it, already corralled into pockets. Arasaka gunners and mechs filed through the trees, efficiently putting down remaining resistance.

“Michiko-san,” Takemura warned as a familiar man walked into view on the screens. Saburo, in Yorinobu’s flesh, dressed in a black and white kimono. Even on low resolution, his cold expression froze Takemura’s blood in his veins. As Takemura took a shaky breath, V squeezed his hand tight. The dissonance Takemura felt faded, along with the fear.

Michiko didn’t answer. Instead, one of the mechs close to Saburo opened its chest hatch, taking out something from within. “What the fuck?” V whispered. The screen resolution was enough to make out what looked like a small, stuffed toy dove. The dove’s eyes began to glow—then the feed cut out.

An EMP pulse? Takemura looked worriedly over at V, but V didn’t seem affected. They were out of range, perhaps. “Small localised pulse. I’m fine,” V confirmed, tapping his temple. “So far, so good, anyway.”

“Great, because my grandfather’s getting evacuated toward the spaceport,” Michiko said, her voice brisk. “Forwarding you both the intercept course and turning off the EMP pulse. Good luck.”

The intercept course would take them back through the forested sector, which was now full of angry mechs and Arasaka security. Some were already shooting each other—Hato forces were more deeply buried than likely even Saburo had anticipated. A mech raising its turrets in Takemura’s direction paused as its weapons began to wind down. It was a hesitation long enough for Takemura to leap onto the mech and fire armour-piercing rounds into its cockpit. As he ducked behind its bulk as cover, gunners shot at him, rounds pinging off the mech’s backplate. Takemura returned fire, catching a gunner in the chest, the other in the throat.

V leant against a tree trunk as though out for a walk. He occasionally glanced out at the battlefield, and when he did, soldiers convulsed, clutching at their heads, and mechs started to malfunction. One swung clumsily at another while opening fire on a nearby gunner. The battlefield descended into chaos, but the Arasaka forces were still overwhelming. Trying to calculate an alternative route through the sector, Takemura paused as an explosion rocked the mechs at the back flank.

It was Shaitan, back in his skull-like mask and armour. The Steel Dragon forces behind him spread out, firing into the melee. “Go!” Shaitan told them. He sounded gleeful. “Ahh. Now, this is my fucking kind of stage performance.”

“The Us Cracks are gonna be so disappointed in you,” V said, even as Shaitan cut a bloody wedge through to them, allowing Takemura and V a path out of the scrum.

Shaitan paused in the middle of reloading his assault rifle, abashed. “Don’t tell them I said that. They’re great kids,” he said and then finished loading and stomped out past the trees to engage a mech.

As they headed out onto the central torus, the lights switched off. Spotlights broke through the gloom, highlighting snipers who’d gotten into position. As the snipers glanced up, Rogue started laughing into the comms. “Damn, Dorsett, I like how you work,” she said, even as the snipers twitched and collapsed, V’s contagion daemon ripping through them.

“Get to safety,” Takemura said as he shot a sniper on a second tier, the body falling backwards, clutching at their chest.

“I’ve got to shut down all takeoff procedures first,” Dorsett said.

“Sling me access, and I’ll do it from here,” V disagreed. “There’s an Interpol team closing in on your position. You’d better move.”

More Arasaka gunners and a mech blocked their way toward the spaceport. With V, even a wall of opposition like this felt easy to bypass, even though Takemura knew some of the people he shot down, knew they’d spent their lives in training. There was no guarding against a netrunner like V, though. Not without running in a completely offline rig, but Arasaka would never cede that much control.

Stepping over bodies, they walked through an evacuated Departures section through Customs, with V taking down anyone who even looked in their direction with a gun. Out to the Arasaka hangar, a graceful space Takemura had been to before, where sleek and beautiful spacecraft were spaced apart, ready to take the Arasaka execs lucky enough to work aboard the Crystal Palace home whenever they wished. Slumped against a crate close to the largest ship—Saburo’s private spaceship—was Yorinobu. He looked barely conscious.

Takemura started forward, then cursed and dived into cover as bullets spat at him. In the centre of the empty hangar, the air blurred. The ONI unit stepped forward, a cross between a mech and an MK2. Its body was a gorgeous, modern take on gusaku armour layered over a miniaturised assault mech rig, emblazoned with the Arasaka crest. Where its head should be was a red oni mask, its tusks arched upwards from curled lips. A rail gun had been built into either wrist, with small missile launchers at the shoulders. Then it spoke—and distantly, far away, Takemura could hear V gasp.

“So,” the ONI said in Japanese, in Takemura’s voice. “You are the one who was.”

“It’s a fuckin’ borg! You had an engram made?” V said, incredulous.

“No… never,” Takemura said, disoriented. Though, how could he know for sure? The implant procedures performed on Takemura were all intrusive, requiring full anaesthesia. Even the last set, performed by Hanako’s people, to restore his remotely-damaged implants. “Why…” Surely it would be better to promote someone younger from the ranks like Oda, one of the many talents Takemura had personally trained through the years. Surely—

“I can’t, I can’t fight you,” V said, backing away. “Putting a bullet in your head, even like this—I can’t do it.”

And there it was. Another one of Saburo’s strategies, in all its usual ruthless simplicity. Takemura ducked over to V, hauling him behind cover. “You won’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. Stay here. This can be my fight,” he said. He kissed V when V started to protest and pushed away, scanning for his opponent.

The ONI unit had cloaked itself. As Takemura began creeping from cover to cover, listening for noise, the unit said, “So this is what it means to grow old. One becomes sentimental.”

Takemura turned, firing in the direction of the voice. The bullets met air. “It is not about sentimentality,” Takemura retorted as he reloaded and kept moving. “It is about having a limit to the number of betrayals you can take.”

“Saburo-sama gave us everything,” the ONI unit said from further across the hangar. Takemura glanced up—still nothing. “How dare you question him, all for the sake of some mercenary? Saburo-sama is our master. Without him, we would never have left Chiba-11. Never become who we are.”

“A man pushed to betray his friends and a copy he never knew about installed in a droid?” Takemura got behind a forklift, pinging it. Not that it helped—the stealth cloaking was better than that. “Yes. Much of what we were—and all of what we are now—is because of Saburo-san. A man who should be dead.”

“Traitors deserve to die,” the ONI unit said. The engram within had either been heavily edited or was a copy of Takemura’s much younger, more fanatical self. “That should be the way of the world.” So Takemura had once said when he was younger, when Saburo had asked him about the Steel Dragons. It had been, obliquely, a question about what to do with Yorinobu.

“The world is too complicated to be reduced to pithy reflections,” Takemura said, quoting Saburo in turn. “If you are anything like me—you are more than capable of thinking for yourself. So think. Why were you even made? There are younger, better solos than us in the ranks. Ones whom I trained.”

“Because I am the best tool for the job.” The ONI unit materialised behind Takemura. Takemura backed off and opened fire at point blank, armour-piercing rounds coring holes through the unit’s chestplate. Unbothered, the ONI unit grabbed Takemura’s gun, wrenching it free with impossible strength and crumpling it in his grip. Takemura darted behind the unit, jumping on his back, but the knife missed the ONI unit’s throat as it twisted, sinking into a seam between the sode shoulder piece and one of the missile launches. Sparks spat out, one of the loaded missiles coming loose. It exploded on the ground before the ONI unit, rolling both across the hangar deck as shrapnel ripped through them.

The ONI unit rose, unbothered, even as stims injected Takemura with painkillers, implants sealed his wounds, and instinct forced him to his feet. The guns inset on the unit’s arms roared, stitching bullets in Takemura’s direction. He got clear—mostly. A round had caught him in his right thigh, shattering bone. His modded skin cauterised the wound, implants working to seal it, but the leg collapsed under Takemura as he tried to get behind cover. The agony that he should be suffering registered as a dull throb. A gun—there. From one of the downed Arasaka security guards.

As Takemura hauled himself toward it, the ONI unit strode over, rail guns whirring. “You are a tool that has forgotten his place,” the ONI unit said. “A mistake and a betrayal. One that I will not make.”

Takemura grabbed the gun, twisting onto his back to face the ONI unit. “I am not a tool—and neither are you.” He opened fire, the bullets tearing into the ONI mask.

The ONI unit froze, then began to laugh, the voice modulators growing jagged. “Two shots to centre mass, insurance shots to the head,” he said. “So we were trained—so we have trained. Rest. I will remember you as a lesson.” The rail guns began to cycle to life, even as Takemura tried to pull himself behind cover, gasping as his injured leg folded beneath him—

The guns powered down. “What—” the ONI unit said, which was as far as he got. The unit crumpled onto his knees, partly shattered head bowed as the life went out of it, revealing V behind him, breathing shakily, hand outstretched.

“I had to,” V kept gasping, “I had to, fuck, I’m sorry, I had to.”

“V.” Somehow, Takemura managed to force himself to his feet, stumbling over until V caught him and pulled him into a hug. “Once again, you saved my life,” he murmured. V’s hands tightened around him, shivering. “Is he…?” Takemura asked.

“Burnt out the chip,” V mumbled. “Fuck. Fuck. I killed you.”

“No,” Takemura said, but V made a low sobbing noise. He murmured nonsense words of comfort, stroking V’s back soothingly until V stopped shaking.

The sound of footsteps had Takemura glance up as Michiko crossed the hangar with Yoshitune behind her, both no longer wearing their synthskin masks. She nodded at them, then knelt by the body of her uncle. “Uncle?” she asked softly as the man twitched.

He struck, a hand curling around Michiko’s throat. Even as Takemura raised his gun, Saburo-Yorinobu made a hoarse moan of horror. His other hand curled tight over his wrist, hauling his grip free of Michiko’s neck. “How could this… why… ugh…” Yorinobu twisted, vomiting on the hangar deck.

Michiko patted his shoulder. “Uncle Nobu. It’s me.”

Yorinobu began to laugh, hoarse and low. They spoke in Japanese, almost too soft to hear. “Told you… not to call me that.” He coughed. “Sounds too much… like that fucking restaurant.”

“Yorinobu-sama?” Yoshitune said, incredulous.

Yorinobu glanced up at Yoshitune. “You… look like shit. Old friend.”

“So we’ve done it?” Yoshitune asked, kneeling in front of Yorinobu. “We’ve gotten rid of Saburo?”

“No,” Michiko said.

“No,” Yorinobu whispered. He moaned, curling into a ball, rubbing his temple. “Yoshi, give me a gun. Or. Do it for me. I can’t, not like this, not with him in my mind. I can’t.”

Michiko grasped Yorinobu’s hands. “You’re now a great-granduncle, by the way. As of two months ago. Look.” She brought up a small image over her palm: a baby swaddled in a soft cloth. “His name is Kei.”

Yorinobu cautiously unravelled, peering at the image. “Awful name,” he said, if with a wry smile. “Your father… was an ass.”

“Thought you’d say that,” Michiko said, chuckling. “Aunt Hanako approved, though.”

“She… would.” Yorinobu closed his eyes, breathing unsteadily. “This… won’t last. Can feel him. Trying to take control again. What… do you want?”

“You know what you must do.” Michiko stared into his eyes. “While you still have the strength. The Mikoshi project, Arasaka itself… all of it. Do this for me. For Akiko and Takai. For Kei.”

Yorinobu’s hands trembled. "Inga ōhō," he whispered. Yorinobu wiped his mouth on his sleeve, exhaled, and grabbed Yoshitune’s wrist. “Help me up."

Chapter Text

“Breaking news,” the WNS journalist chirped when the spacecraft was halfway back to Earth. “Startling developments aboard the Crystal Palace during the Forbes EDGE conference. Yorinobu Arasaka reportedly regained consciousness in an undisclosed location aboard the Crystal Palace during a skirmish between Arasaka, Militech, and Lazarus Group factions.”

The screen cut to an exhausted-looking Yorinobu before a grey backdrop. “I am Arasaka Yorinobu,” he said in Japanese. “A year ago, my father, Arasaka Saburo, made the morally indefensible decision to steal my body as a shell for his engram. This had been something he had been planning to do to me for decades—the reason why I chose to form my Taka faction, why I chose to rise up against my father. Not only for myself. But for my niece and her children. It…” He paused, coughing, snarling under his breath.

Yorinobu shook his head as Michiko said something offscreen that the camera didn’t catch. His breaths were coming in heavier, with longer pauses between words, as though Yorinobu was desperately fighting even to speak. “I don’t have… much time. The engram’s influence… has only been held back for now. I call upon the CEOs at the Crystal Palace… to denounce the Secure Your Soul program and demand for Mikoshi to be... dismantled. It is, as Mister Lundee has said… a moral outrage. Secondly. My niece, Michiko. Who never lost faith… who never… lost her way. I name her… my successor. I ask the board of Arasaka to… respect my wishes. May Hato, Taka, Kiji… be one once more.”

The news cut back to a WNS panel, eager to discuss the ramifications of Yorinobu’s declaration. From the couch in the luxurious spacecraft, Takemura watched the news, rapt, with V curled in his arms. Everyone was in new clothes, after being patched up by the Crystal Palace's onboard trauma and tech teams. Further down the spacecraft at the bar, Red Menace poured everyone a drink of their choice. “That’s it, right?” Blue Moon asked in a low voice. “We won?”

“There’s never anything like ‘we won, the end’,” Kerry said as he accepted a glass of scotch. “Happy endings are just endings that haven’t gone on long enough.”

Purple Force laughed, even as she knocked back a beer. “Should we just have left Michiko-san in the Crystal Palace?” Red Menace asked, worried.

“Yoshitune-san’s with her. She’ll be fine,” Purple Force said.

“Can’t believe I got involved in some sort of Arasaka political dustup,” Rogue said with her legs up on another couch, nodding as Blue Moon passed her a beer. “Feels a little dirty, somehow. Even with all the money we got paid.”

“Especially with all the money we got,” Shaitan said gloomily. “I think I’ve gone against my principles.”

“Michiko-san’s different,” Dorsett said in her corner, nursing her beer. “She wants to take Arasaka out of its nationalist obsessions and use its resources to help the rest of the world. After all, Michiko-san and her kids don’t live in Japan and don’t want to.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Shaitan said. He accepted a beer, though since he couldn’t drink it, he held it carefully in one huge hand. “Job well done, anyway. No one died. Call me shocked.”

“Job well done,” Blue Moon agreed. She raised her beer. “Kanpai!”

“Kanpai!” Kerry, Dorsett, and the rest of the Us Cracks echoed. Even Takemura raised his glass of whisky. V smiled, pretending to drink from his beer. The first smile he’d managed since Blue Moon and the rest had found him and Takemura in the hangar.

As the others began to chat about plans, Blue Moon sat on the couch close to V. In a lower voice, she asked, “Are you all right?”

“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?” V asked with a wan smile. “Bit tired, that’s all. Wish I caught the show—sounds like you ladies and Kerry had a blast.”

“Oh, that.” Blue Moon laughed. “Sure, even when the fighting broke out, it wasn’t as scary as I thought it might be. Kerry-san broke his guitar over someone, though! And Red Menace smashed a guy over an amp.”

“Wait, what? It got that close to you?” V asked, horrified. “Fuck. I didn’t know. Thought you’d all be far from the mess.”

“Nobody got too badly hurt. Though, we did have to get rescued by Rogue-san and Sandra-san,” Blue Moon said.

“Sandra-san fought?” Takemura sounded surprised.

“Oh yes. She's not like V-san, but she can also throw quickhacks.” Blue Moon mimed putting her fingertips to her temple. “Very cool. I should learn.”

“If you ever need some pointers or recs on gear or anything, let me know,” V said. He shifted against Takemura, sitting up, looking less lost. “And if you ever need help in Night City, give me a call. Seriously, you’ve gone above and beyond. I owe all of you.”

“Come to our next concert. We’re planning something big—Kerry-san’s going to leave his label too. Maybe we’ll all strike out together, form our own company. If we do, we’ll throw a big party,” Blue Moon said. She grinned cheekily at Takemura. “Bring Takemura-san.”

“It would be a pleasure,” Takemura said. Solemnly, his fingers sketched the sigil from the concert before Arasaka Tower.

Blue Moon laughed in delight, even as V said, “You keep surprisin’ me, Goro.” Takemura squeezed V’s shoulders lightly even as Blue Moon excused herself. It looked like they were going to be okay.

At Yorinobu’s Otsuya in Tokyo, his body lay within a closed coffin, wreathed in flowers beneath a framed photograph. A formal image, at least a decade old, of Yorinobu in a kimono. A Buddhist monk chanted a sutra while the guests came by to offer incense. Most were from the Taka faction or the Steel Dragons. Arasaka’s board attended, as did some of Yorinobu’s staff. Along with a few more… esoteric guests.

Standing with Michiko off to a side of the hall, Hanako’s expression froze as Takemura walked into the chamber in a black and white suit, trailing V, who was similarly attired. “You would invite them?” Hanako whispered in Japanese.

“Why not? After all, they’re part of the reason why your brother can even be buried under his own name,” Michiko whispered back. Power meant no longer having to tolerate her aunt’s bullshit, especially on this day of all days. “If anything, I shouldn’t invite you.”

Hanako’s expression didn’t change, nor did she shift her gaze away from the unwanted guests. “You know full well I had no choice.”

“You did have choices. You merely chose the easiest way out.”

“I did not wish to believe that my brother killed our father. Yet when V confronted me with the evidence, I chose to act.”

“If you’d wanted to bring Uncle Yorinobu to justice? Sure. Seize power yourself? Fine, I might even have helped. But this? No, hell no. There has to be a limit to human arrogance. Even grandfather’s.”

“We could have been Gods,” Hanako whispered, finally glancing away to the coffin.

“I have no interest in being a God. Especially not the sort who attain godhood by eating their children. Besides, it’s hard enough trying to be a decent person. Something that the rest of our messed up family fails at.” Michiko eyed her aunt calmly. “Retreat to your estate if you like. I’ll support you for the rest of your life, like the mascot you are. You can continue to live like the rest of the world doesn’t exist.”

“Or?”

“Or nothing. You’re my aunt, but now I can do whatever I want. So. Don’t. Get in my way.”

Hanako’s fingers twitched. Bereft of her usual jewellery today and wearing light makeup, dressed in a black kimono, she looked older than usual. Still beautiful, but the hollowness of her seemed more evident than before. “You are very American,” Hanako said after a while, as though it were the worst thing she could think of.

“Today? I’ll take that as a compliment,” Michiko said, inclining her head. “After all, you’re free now too. Whether you like it or not.”

“Thought you’d be all for living somewhere shiny and chic like Corpo Plaza,” V said as Takemura started slotting books into the new shelves in the Little Rogue apartment. “Didn't think you'd buy this place off Michiko.”

“I like the view,” Takemura said. The windows looked out toward the sea. This far up, you couldn’t make out the trash. “Also, I like the bakery on the ground floor. And the griot in the market.”

“Man cannot live off a diet of baked goods and griot alone,” V said, grinning as he snuggled against Takemura from behind, kissing his shoulders. “Though, if you keep that up, I’m gonna have to seriously reconsider getting digestive system implants. Complications and all.”

“Life is interesting only when bookmarked by useful complications.”

“Finally,” V said, circling his arms around Takemura’s waist.

“What?”

“When we first met, you used to fire off all these weird, poetic lines. Wasn’t sure if you were fuckin’ with me or not. Like you were pullin’ lines out of some B-grade hack samurai film or something.”

Takemura sniffed. “You should read more often. Perhaps I should buy more shelves and books.”

“Physical books are so fifty years ago,” V said, just to hear his lover sputter in indignation, to have Takemura turn and glower at him, gorgeous even when exasperated. As Takemura tried to explain why he preferred physical books over databanks, V leant up, brushing a kiss over his mouth. “How about we stop with the shelving for now and christen the kitchen counter?” he asked.

That got a bemused stare. “Christen… you want to name the kitchen counter? Why?”

Sometimes V forgot that Takemura’s English was formally taught and, until Night City, barely used. While the translator compensated for most of the slang that Takemura heard, sometimes it was hilariously wrong. V laughed. “I mean, you should strip me down on it and—”

“What? Why?” Takemura asked, even more astonished.

“…Sex,” V said, reflecting that the word ‘sex’ was ridiculous when said aloud, but not daring to trust any more slang at this point.

“I know what you imply. Why in the kitchen? That is very unhygienic—I cook in the kitchen,” Takemura said. He froze, frowning at V. “Please do not tell me that you have done anything in your kitchen in the Glen. Where we made onigiri.”

“Darlin’, you’re killing the mood,” V said. He pulled a still indignant Takemura over for another kiss, until the gorgeous man in his arms stopped grumbling about Americans in Japanese, until Takemura’s breathing grew shallower, and his hands slipped down V’s waist to his hips.

“Ah, that reminds me,” Takemura said, looking further down. “Of another American thing.”

“Mmhm?” V rubbed lazily against Takemura, only for big hands to jump back to his waist.

“Shoes are no longer permitted in this apartment beyond the entryway. I will have the floors and carpets washed and a shoe rack installed. When you enter the apartment, you are to remove your shoes. Today is the last day you will be allowed shoes this far past the door.”

“So you want me to walk around the apartment in… socks? Bare feet?” V said.

“Yes. Soft, apartment-only slippers are also permitted. That will keep the place clean.” Takemura paused. “Also, should you need to disassemble and clean your guns, you must do it on the balcony. Or spread out a tarp. Do not do it on the kitchen counter. Further—”

“C’mon. I ain’t that feral,” V said, amused. “Seriously, Goro.”

“Have seen the state of your other apartments,” Takemura said, wrinkling his nose. Michiko had arranged for V’s repossessed apartments to be returned—even most of the vehicles he’d once had. V wasn’t even sure how she’d done that. Or perhaps Arasaka had temporarily taken over as a renter during the year he’d been MIA for some other reason. “There is one with cigarette butts and cans all over the floor.”

“The Corpo Plaza one was fine, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Because it has a daily cleaning service.” Takemura eyed V warily. “While Michiko-san has recommended a discreet one, you should not take advantage of it.”

“Somehow, even this part of you is cute.” V kissed Takemura on his cheek. As Takemura huffed, V said, “Sure you aren’t gonna return to the fold? Heard Michiko say you could go back to whatever you were doing in Kagawa. Or take up a position on her new board of directors.”

“I told you before that I have had enough of working for Arasaka.” Takemura kissed the edge of V’s cheek. “Now, I will do something different. Try your line of work, perhaps. Live for myself. Pet cats. It does not matter, as long as I can share this new stage of my life with you.”

“Bed, now,” V said in a hushed voice, sliding his arms around Takemura’s neck.

“I go to all the trouble of installing a full digestive system for you, and first thing you want to do is eat skewers?” V asked, sceptical as Takemura led him down a narrow stairway into a dark stone chamber. The chill from the street outside quailed against the bank of heat rolling off the grills at the U-shaped cypress counter, where guests sat on stools before the chefs. Fat from the yakitori skewers sizzled and smoked as it hit the hot binchō-tan coals, making Takemura’s mouth water.

Ignoring V’s question, Takemura sat in the corner where indicated by the staff, with V by his side. V was the only non-Japanese person in the restaurant. A wall of old wooden plaques detailed the entire menu—staff brought V the limited English menu, printed on a piece of cloth wrapped in bioplastic. “This is wild,” V said, staring at the menu. “Wait. Does this place serve raw chicken? As in, actual chicken?”

“Not so loud,” Takemura shot back.

“You can eat raw chicken?” V asked, if in a lower voice.

“In Japan? Yes. Though, it is an acquired taste,” Takemura said.

“…You told me that yesterday about raw sea urchin on rice. Not sure I’d ever acquire that kind of taste. You do you, though.”

Sometimes, Takemura wasn’t sure why he’d fallen in love with V, a man whose favourite types of food seemed to be things smothered in hot sauce. “I’ll order,” Takemura said. He paused. “Perhaps it is better if you eat what I get you.” People could be squeamish about organs.

“Okay,” V said, returning the English menu.

Takemura ordered a tokkuri of sake, then a range of his favourite types of yakitori. As they waited, Takemura said, “This restaurant has been here for a century. I used to visit on my days off.”

“That’s what you do on your days off? Eat yakitori?”

“I also read. Go for long walks. Also, something is always happening in Tokyo,” Takemura said. He usually avoided large crowds, often leaving central Tokyo during the daytime.

“Place is real different. I mean, I knew it flyin’ in, but fuck. So much greenery everywhere, no rubbish on the streets, decent food’s a lot more affordable, and the air smells better. I see why you keep saying Night City’s a bad copy of Tokyo.”

“It has changed. Very much because of Arasaka. Before, the city was not so accessible, not so green.” Takemura had seen pictures of what Japan had been like in the 20s. There were, for one, far more concrete stairs, just like Night City, instead of slopes or lifts that everyone could use. The city was still imperfect, but whenever Takemura returned to Japan from overseas, it felt a little like returning to a different, more advanced world.

“Maybe I see why you used to venerate Saburo so much.”

“For a time.”

“Michiko’s doing well, ain’t she? Notice her daughter’s taken over giving out Danger Gal contracts. Guess Michiko’s too busy for that kinda stuff now.”

“She is fine,” Takemura said. He received the occasional update from Yoshitune, of all people.

“Misty did a card reading, said it was possibly positive. Or it could go to hell. Every time I go away from those sessions, I feel like nothing’s real anymore,” V said.

Takemura sniffed. He hadn’t seen the point of the tarot reading and had gone to talk to Viktor instead, conscious that he hadn’t yet thanked the ripperdoc for saving his life. Before he could comment, the first plates of yakitori arrived—tsukune, the minced, elongated meatballs charred on either side and juicy in the centre, served with small dishes of raw egg yolk.

“Isn’t this what you had with me in Japantown?” V asked, studying his skewer.

Takemura gave him a pitying look. Dipping the tsukune into the yolk, he took a bite. It crumbled in his mouth, velvety and rich, perfectly moist within. Beside him, V made a strangled noise of pleasure. “Oohfuck,” he mumbled.

“Exactly,” Takemura said.

“I sense you’re never gonna let me live that down,” V said, polishing off the rest of the skewer. “I could eat a hundred of those. Wow.”

For someone who had previously wondered whether it was worth being able to eat again, V was more adventurous than Takemura thought—not even batting an eye at the more esoteric skewers. Luscious chunks of grilled chicken thigh served wedged between roasted leeks, rich and creamy, lightly salted pieces of liver, tender and springy wing tips, chewy and fatty chicken neck, crispy folds of chicken skin. Plates of lotus root stuffed with ground chicken and other delicacies were served between skewers, the meal concluding with hot, white broth chicken nabe. Afterwards, packed back into the cold, V said, “That was amazing.”

“I know.”

“No need to be smug.” V curled his arm around Takemura’s waist. “Though it’s also cute.”

Down the street, neon lights traced towers against the sky, new and old, their greening cloaks hidden after dark. Great holograms lit up between buildings, some just as tall, advertising anything from cup noodles to cars. V laughed as a giant nekomata on the roof of the building they passed waved a translucent paw at him. “If you respond, a bank will ping you a loan application,” Takemura warned.

“Why the hell not.” V waved back, chuckling again as the nekomata rolled in delight. “I maybe see why you love this place so much. Sure you want to stick with me in Night City?”

“My home is beautiful, and when I’m away, I miss it,” Takemura said, his gaze tracing the skyline. “But if I were here without you, it would be an empty life.”

V buried his mouth against Takemura’s throat, pressing words Takemura couldn’t hear against his skin. It didn’t matter. V had said them before, performed them—words of devotion that he compressed into Takemura’s soul every day that he was there. It filled the hollowness Takemura had never been aware of until he had known V, a warmth he had, in turn, grown to crave. In a dying world that was all they had ever known, with the stars overhead swallowed by the lights of one of the most vibrant cities in the world, they kissed, tenderly, on the street.