Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

V’s life had been unbelievably shitty these past two years. Just a steaming, burning pile of dog shit that even on its best days made the average person’s rock bottom look like a lofty vacation.

It started when Petrochem was stupid enough to infect the sales department with a spy, and V was the one chosen to clean up their mess. “Clean” being the operative word, there, as V’s very first kill had been set up to look like the unfortunate bastard slipped and fell in the shower. It was almost funny, in the way that horrible things so often were, and sometimes, on a good day, he was nearly able to bring himself to laugh about it.

Then he got a promotion, and a promise from the devil known as Arasaka that he wouldn’t have to dirty his hands for a while. He was in deep now, which…was a good thing. Murder wrought guilt upon guilt on his mind, but it was okay. It’s just how things in Night City got done.. One couldn’t climb the ladder of the corpo rat race with morals after all. And to think he almost moved to Atlanta..

Then a man named Arthur Jenkins came into his life, a man who V seriously considered was Lucifer incarnate, at least that’s what Jackie would say. The man came to him when he was at his lowest, and brought him under his wing. He saw potential in V he said, and promised that he and V would be a team. They would rise Together. Jenkins kept his promises, teaching V everything he knew. Over his period at Arasaka he completed six defensive and five offensive operations with only one life threatening injury between them all.

Jenkins was kinder than most corps, at least to V. Jenkins understanding his more…personal plights that separated him from his colleagues. It was because of the man that he got a brand new shiny hormonal blocker and converter- the man even enlisted him with the best surgeons who worked on his body, made him feel comfortable in his own skin. He trusted him, for fuck’s sake they went to the same mindfulness classes together. They were close, in a weird and morally questionable way that an employee and a boss could be.

V had proven himself to Arasaka, that he was an effective and autonomous operative. He could be trusted, he was loyal, clever and ambitious. V always showed high levels of stress sure, who wouldn’t in his position? Who cared if he had enough stress built up in his body to take down a fucking horse- that was the corporate life. It was his life, the one he had been born into.

Everything was mostly fine when V lied to himself, at least until the Frankfurt leak. Where everything that could have gone wrong, did go wrong. Flopped on the synth-leather couches at Lizzie’s like a beached fish, stripped of everything he had ever worked for and left with less than nothing. He wondered how Abernathy caught on? Who was the mole? He’d never know, and the only man in that entire rat’s nest who treated him like he was more than the sum of his parts was either dead or soon to be dead. At least he had Jackie. Through all of this, at the very least he had Jackie.

The man who saved his life twice now, even if the latest didn’t feel like it as he self medicated at Lizzie’s to make up for the medical and hormonal whiplash that was immediate withdrawal, god he got so drunk he couldn’t even think, as Jackie brought him home and was given the guest room. Mama Welles was more than welcoming, giving him nice blankets and the worst tasting liquid he’d ever shoved down his pipes, claiming it would be for the hangover. When he woke up, he wished he had died as he was slumped on the kitchen isle, the saint that was Mama Welles feeding him pickle juice. And as much as he hated it? Jackie’s words stuck with him. New beginnings had come into play, he was Free in a way he had never been- a way he never thought he would be. He was a man with a new ticket into life and 45,000 Eurodollars to boot. He was free.

A good chunk of the money went to fixing and stabilizing his chrome and implants, the rest for good iron and a helluva lot of bullets. Oh, and can’t forget the chunk used to repair Mama Welles’ car, that was a good investment and was the least V could do for letting him stay so long. First couple of weeks in the city of dreams was slow, getting a hold of his footing before Jackie found them their first gig.

They were going to climb to the top together. They were going to rise up the ladder without having to sell their souls for a damn thing. They decided to visit old dreams as children, to become Night City Legends, the greatest mercs there were to be. Morgan Blackhand, Weyland Boa Boa, David Martinez- they would join these legends. But just like anyone, they’d have to start small. V knew his life was about to turn around for the better, he knew it.

Their first gigs were simple; delivering payloads, stealing tech, working with Padre, with a legend like Viktor Vektor- the latter of which was a real solid guy. Gun fights and gang wars ensued as Jackie and V made their way up little by little. Better days were ahead, and in the blink of an eye they had their first major gig.

V cocked his gun and met Jackie’s eyes, full of a mirth so infectious that V smiled wide.

“Eyes peeled ‘mano, we got a convoy to intercept. No sleepin on the job like last time ya gonk, this one’s big.”

V’s shoulder shook as Jackie playfully punched him. They were at the Las Palapas Motel, staked out in V’s car in the middle of the night. Roads were dusty and quiet as the occasional car passed by. They were far enough away from the city that you could see the beginnings of stars in the sky, something that was hard to tear your focus off of when you were used to a night sky full of nothing but smog and advertisements.

V laid back in his samurai hoodie and docs, watching a plane go by. With one manicured hand combing through white, short hair he moved the locks out of kiroshi optics- an unexpected gift from Vik, for their biggest gig to date- that locked on to a shooting star, falling through the sky. Two of them actually, now that he looked- the second fizzling out whereas the first streaked on toward the horizon. It was beautiful, and maybe he did want to take a nap, at least a little bit.

He gave Jackie a look, taking a sip of his Nicola as the larger man next to him crossed his arms, scanning the horizon dutifully.

“Last time I checked, Jackie, that was you who fell asleep on the job,” V teased. “Stayed up too late talking with Misty I think? Girl was just singing your name, staying up all night playing that dance game- sure was loud of course for a video game, you talking about her fine hips, pretty face, ass built like a….what was it you said? An angel?~”

“Okay okay!” Jackie sputtered, waving a hand like he was trying to ward V away. “No need to keep going, cabrón. I get what you’re putting down.”

Damn lovable asshole that big man was, even with his muddy feet on V’s preem and totally spotless dashboard. To make his point, Jackie flicked the little bobblehead on it, checking the time and getting comfortable. It was pretty late, V himself was holding back a yawn- though that battle was swiftly lost as Jackie let out one of the loudest, most overdramatic yawns V had ever had the displeasure of witnessing. It was a display that put a cat to shame, so of course it made V slip- something Jackie seemed to find hilarious, if the snickering was anything to go by.

“Oh shove it, asshole!” V huffed, pushing the asshole in question’s shoulder, just to make a point. This, perhaps unsurprisingly, only made Jackie laugh harder.

Because he really was the worst, Jackie went ahead and did it again- somehow even more dramatically, this time- and though V fought valiantly not to follow, it was a battle he was doomed to lose. He made it only a matter of seconds before his mouth fell open again, and this time, Jackie decided to add insult to injury by quickly sticking his finger in before V could get it closed. The bastard was lucky he didn’t get it bitten off, but he did still get punched. In spite of this, he just kept on laughing, like this was funny to him.

…Okay, maybe it was a little funny.

They laughed a while longer after that, counting cacti and delighting in the desert’s vast horizon.This gradually transitioned into them playing punch-thorton for a bit, with V gaining a few bruises and giving Jackie several. About halfway through the night V found some chips in the backseat so they started snacking, Just three more hours of surveillance to go.

Their target was a small Militech convoy- three armored cars in total taking a line formation. They’d gotten word of an experimental implant and its blueprints being transported by Militech on the down low, the whole thing shrouded in mystery as the corp wanted to attract as little attention to it as possible. This emphasis on secrecy meant they’d opted for minimal security- always a poor choice, V thought, but all the better for them.

The three of them had no fixer yet, so this job came straight from an “Everyman” sort of suit, with black hair and blue eyes. T-bug was the one who’d dealt with him, talking about a creepy vibe as client and ‘bug went over the deets. The blue-eyed man was as selective as possible with the information he gave, only telling them what they needed to know and nothing more. It was a big gig -the sort that could get them set up for the big leagues. And even if it didn’t, the pay alone was nothing to scoff at, either- a whopping sixty five thousand for the three of them, provided they didn’t royally fuck it all up somehow. This could very well be their big break, and they had T-bug to thank for it.

And speaking of T-bug-

She rang on the holo, the sound of her voice snapping both Jackie and V to attention in record time. The payload was approaching, and they had ninety seconds to make this whole thing happen. Lucky for all of them, though, ninety seconds was more than enough.

Jackie and V worked quick, moving with a combination of rushing adrenaline and practiced efficiency as they threw a line of dense caltrops across the road in front of them, then hightailed it into position. V took the rooftop, where he’d have the best vantage point, while Jackie ducked behind the neon sign of a run down, shitty motel for the ground assault.

Their plan was simple: a pincer attack wherein Jackie would bait out the drones from the east so that V could work his “Netrunner Magic” and snipe the fuckers out of the sky before they ever knew what hit them. From there, they’d take the soldiers in the front and back cars while T-bug dealt with the mech in the centre, and once security was out of the picture, they’d grab the mystery tech and get the fuck out of dodge. Ideally, they’d be all the way out in the badlands collecting their payday before Militech even realized they’d been robbed.

  This was all assuming, of course, that everything actually went according to plan.

In his ear, T-bug’s voice gave the thirty second warning. V watched Jackie disappear behind the designated sign as he himself scaled his way up onto the roof, moving into position and loading up his sweet vintage Borzaya.

“10 seconds, guys,” T-bug warned, sounding agitated. “Please tell me you’re ready to go.”

  From the sound of it, the suit was stressing her out. If he’d had the time, V would’ve wanted to reassure her. Would’ve wanted to tell her that they had this in the bag, and would’ve wanted to thank her, for putting up with his and Jackie’s bullshit for so long and for sticking with them through thick and thin. As it was, though, they had no time, so V had to settle for something far more concise.

“We got this T-bug, we’re in position.”

“Yeah, choom, relax!” Jackie added. “The Jackster got this handled.”

V could’ve sworn he heard her smile over the holo, the faintest hint of mirth audible in her voice as she gave them the countdown to sweet, sweet victory.

“Alright, on you in 3….2….1-“

Boom

The first car hit the caltrops, spinning wildly out of control before flipping up onto its side, punctured wheels still spinning uselessly in the air. The other two behind it did their best to swerve out of the way, but they’d been following too close to have any real sort of reaction time, and the caltrop strip covered the road from edge to edge, leaving no ability for the doomed vehicles to try and get around them. They hit the spikes just like the lead car had, reducing their tires to useless scrap and leaving them sitting ducks for the mercenaries lying in wait.

V caught the telltale flash of light in the eyes of the second car’s driver that indicated he was trying to sound the alarm, but before the bastard could realize it was futile (thanks again, T-bug), he got a nice dose of lead straight to the skull, courtesy of a sharply grinning Jackie. Right on cue, there came a high pitched whirring sound as the drones deployed, taking to the sky with guns at the ready to reduce their target to red mist. Unfortunately for them, however, V had been waiting for them, and the six Militech Griffins were nothing more than sparking scrapmetal before their aiming programs could even properly lock on. It was an artful take down, if V did say so himself, and Jackie seemed to feel the same, if that delighted howl of victory was any indication.

“Ayo V- come on down here and join the action!” Jackie called, swooping his arm in a beckoning motion toward the man on the rooftop. “If you don’t get in here soon, hermano, I’m gonna end up taking all the glory!”

Well shit- the man had a point. Besides, playful or not, V knew a request for backup when he heard it, so of course he was going to oblige. The merc abandoned his post, trading out the sniper for an assault rifle as he descended from the heavens like some fucked up death angel.

“I hear ya buddy, loud and clear!” He called back, already mentally mapping out the best route in. “I’m gonna  make a run for the payload! Keep my ass clear please- I really don’t need another trip to Vik’s!”

He seriously didn’t. Even he could recognise that it was getting ridiculous at this point.

V made a beeline for the car, ducking stray bullets and sliding in to open the back van that was oh-so-wonderfully unlocked. T-bug’s doing he assumed. Fuck that woman was amaz-

Oh he was gonna kill her.

Instead of the nice, deactivated mech he’d been expecting, V found himself face to face with two armed, very much active guards, rifles already aimed and ready to take his head off.

He managed to throw himself to the side fast enough to avoid that particular fate, but unfortunately not fast enough to avoid injury altogether. The sound of flesh and bone being ripped through was somehow still loud enough to be audible over the deafening CRACK of the gunshot as a rifle slug put a brand new hole through his left shoulder. V couldn’t hold back an agonised yell. Fucking hell, that hurt! He knew he’d gotten lucky- if those had been shotguns, he’d be mincemeat- but boy fuckin’ howdy did he not feel lucky, right now.

Jackie was yelling, shouting something over the comms that V’s brain couldn’t make heads or tails of in its shock. The back end of the last car’s door went suddenly flying, and-

Ah. There’s that mech.

“For fucks sake, T-bug, I thought you disabled that thing!” V snapped, clutching at his now limp left arm and struggling to regain control over his breathing. “It’s not supposed to be up! Your intel was wrong, they swapped cars!”

Blood ran in rivers from his brand new shoulder hole, flowing over his shaking fingers to stain the dirt beneath him. They really did need to wrap this shit up quick- both the mission as a whole, and his actual shoulder. It didn’t seem like the shot had hit an artery or anything, thank fuck, but that was still a lot of blood-

“I can see that, V!” T-bug hissed, voice nearly cracking with what sounded like contained panic. “I’m popping a daemon into it now, but we’ve still got a few live ones in that truck behind you. Take cover there while I get this thing down- it ain’t gonna shoot at its own men.”

Didn’t need to tell him twice. V all but threw himself into the driver's seat of the van, putting bullets in the faces of the gonks whose optics he rebooted in a flash- taking perhaps a particular pleasure in blowing out the brains of the bastard who’d caught him in the shoulder.

Having just witnessed his two buddies get reduced to corpses, the still living man in the passenger’s seat of the car threw his hands up in surrender before V had even fully turned the gun on him. An unexpected display of sensibility, from a Militech goon, but a very welcome one nonetheless. At least someone wouldn’t have to die today.

Through the car’s side mirrors, V managed to catch sight of Jackie shooting at the mech, though it didn’t seem to be making much of an impact. He also was able to see the exact moment that the mech evidently decided to switch tactics, grabbing hold of one of the ruined cars and throwing it like a shot put… directly toward V.

The impact rattled his lithe frame, and he just barely heard the sound of T-bug yelling over the comms before darkness swallowed him whole.

V’s ears were ringing. He heard shouting, gunfire, explosions, and heavy, stomping footsteps. The stench of burning plastic filled his nostrils, and smoke filled his lungs, making him cough and sputter his way back into awareness. He woke to broken glass and crackling flames and a mangled corpse slumped against him (so much for that guy not dying…), as well as an entire goddammed cactus through the shattered windshield.

His head felt like it was splitting open- worse, even, than the actual damn hole in his shoulder. His leg stung, a burning sensation running from his calf to his spine as he scrambled to orient himself. The van was on its side, the car that’d been thrown by the mech having rammed into its passenger side with enough force that the grill was coming through into the cabin like a spike trap. spreading in his peripheral, smoke almost masking the smell of blood and death In the back, the giant carbon fiber shell that was supposed to contain the tech was broken in two, its contents nowhere to be found In spite of his body’s shrieking protests, V scrambled his way clumsily into the back, desperately looking for the tech in hopes to salvage it. He found a bloodied data shard under one of the seats- very nearly crushed it, actually, thanks to how unsteady his movements were- so he pocketed that, figuring it probably contained the blueprints for the tech that wasn’t fucking here.

Where the hell was it?? He turned on a light, coughing as he scanned the contents of the van, but he still came up with nothing. What, had the damned thing grown legs and walked to Heywood or some shit? Goddamnit, he was running out of time here! And why couldn’t he hear T-bug or Jackie? …Oh fuck, what if-

No. No, they were fine. They had to be fine.

At the edges of V’s vision, black spots had begun gnawing their way in toward the center, his sight growing blurry as blood loss finally began to take it’s toll.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck-

Would this be his end? Nameless in a sea of Night City’s unfortunate corpses, just another casualty in the city that sees dozens every day. He wasn’t even in the city, beyond its outskirts in the scorched desert, void of life beyond ruined vegetation. V was scared, not just of death but for his friends- if they were even alive. What would Jackie think? Viktor? Misty? T-bug?

Is he afraid of dying alone? Is he afraid they would forget him?

Would they hold a ceremony for him? Would Mama Welles bring it to the El Coyote Cojo? He didn’t have family anymore, no connections. No assets or even a place to call his own, he didn’t even have much stuff. Would people remember him? Miss him? Would he be mourned and would they move on…the world would still spin, and time would still flow. Something Misty told him awhile back stuck with him, that time is deeper and stranger than anything else in our lives. It takes everything with it, nothing is bigger than time. Nothing survives it, yet we willfully ignore it.

Time was something V had a habit of taking for granted, something he never really thought to give much…well- time of thought. But in the back of a ruined Militech van, with fire spreading around him and blood pooling beneath, he gave it a lot of thought. The smoke in his lungs burned, making him cough and heave as his body slumped heavily back against one of the seats, leaving a grisly red stain from where his shoulder dragged against the synth-leather

A shaky glance down revealed said shoulder was uh… worse off, than he remembered. It was hard to really see much, thanks to his shredded hoodie still mostly covering it, but the fabric was completely saturated with blood, and what little he could see looked an awful lot like muscle tissue. He could feel something sticky and warm oozing slowly down the back of his neck, and when he looked down, he finally caught sight of something shiny and metal embedded deep into the meat of his thigh. Suppose that explained why it hurt so damned bad. He thought about removing it, if only for a second. No, that would be an extra gonk move.

V was beginning to suspect he may have a concussion. In part because of the blood he could feel dripping down from an obvious head wound, but also in part because of just how scrambled his mind was. After all, if he weren’t concussed, then surely he would’ve thought to do the obvious and check his damn comms before now. Not that it ended up doing him any good either way, though, since they seemed to be offline. That didn’t seem right, but… maybe the same concussion that’d prevented him from checking his holo was also somehow scrambling it. On the bright side, though, that gave him some hope that his friends were okay. If the issue was on his end, then that meant that the silence in his head wasn’t necessarily indicative of one or both of them being dead, so in that sense, it was a good thing.

Really, that was the most important thing to V- his friends. He loved them more than he loved himself, would do anything for them. It was just a shame he couldn’t tell them that one last time….

He was dying. He felt pretty confident in saying that, now. He was bleeding out in the twisted, smoldering wreckage of a Militech van, out in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, and he was never going to see his friends again. Hell- they could be dead, for all he knew. Dead, or dying themselves, and he couldn’t help them, he couldn’t save them, he couldn’t even save himself. He was going to die and the last thing he’d ever see was the inside of this shitty fucking van-

Something moved.

At first, he assumed he’d just been imagining it. The flickering light from various small fires in combination with his swimming vision didn’t exactly make for the most reliable senses, but… still, he could’ve sworn he saw-

There.

One of the corpses was moving.

A bullet to the face doesn’t exactly do wonders for recognisability, and a car wreck does even less, but V still felt semi-confident in saying that the body of interest had belonged to the soldier responsible for his brand new shoulder hole. The specific identity wasn’t really important, though. What was important was the fact that the soldier’s corpse was… twitching.

It was subtle, at first- just a few small jerks of splayed limbs, interspersed several seconds apart, so relatively insignificant that V could have maybe just been imagining them. But once the body began to spasm, well- there was no writing that off.

V could do little more than stare dumbly as the corpse before him twisted and shuddered against what was once the van’s wall, his stomach churning with nausea. What… was that?? He’d seen death throes before, of course- seen the final desperate firings of dying nerves in bodies that hadn’t quite realized they were dead yet- but that wasn’t this. He’d never seen a corpse writhe like this, before.

And he’d certainly never seen a corpse split open.

A wet, sickening tearing sound filled the smoky air of the ruined van, setting V’s teeth on edge as all at once the soldier’s body went still, slumping limply to the ground like a puppet with cut strings. Or perhaps an empty costume would’ve been a more apt comparison, because there was something crawling out from that new opening in the corpse’s back.

It looked like… an insect, of some sort- some mix between a spider and a beetle, perhaps- with golden blinking eyes and twitching antennae atop what he could only assume was its head.  With slender, delicate little legs, it stepped casually out from the ruined flesh of the dead soldier’s back, shuddering a bit and fluttering small metallic wings in an attempt to shake off some of the viscera that clung to its shell. He- he was hallucinating. He had to be. That, or he’d actually died and gone to hell and this was Satan’s welcoming party: a fucked up little corpse bug with too-bright eyes and legs like tiny scalpels, dripping with a dead man’s blood and bobbing ever so slightly like it was breathing.

This “hell” hypothesis only grew stronger when, without warning, the corpse-bug launched itself directly at V’s face.

He screamed, because of course he did- he’d challenge anyone not to scream in this scenario. He then immediately had a brief moment of panic, as the thought that the corpse-bug might take the opportunity to crawl into his open mouth did occur to him, but luckily, it didn’t go for his mouth.

Unluckily, it instead crawled around the side of his head, scuttling down his neck, under his clothes, and onto his back with needle sharp little legs. He felt it settle between his shoulder blades, still faintly sticky with the blood of the body it’d just crawled out of, and V’s concussion addled brain only realized what was happening about a fraction of a second before-

PAIN

Distantly, V was aware that he was screaming, but he could barely even register that fact beneath the cacophonous agony that rang throughout his skull. Every nerve in his body howled and shrieked as the corpse-bug burrowed into him, digging its way through flesh and fascia with ruthless determination. Metal scraped against bone as it settled against his vertebrae, then pushed itself in deeper, sliding wires in to weave among the nerves of his actual spinal column.

And it just. Kept. Going.

Maybe V had gone mad, maybe his senses were shot, but he’d swear he could feel it spreading through his body- a cold agony creeping in crackling surges across the space beneath his skin. From his spine to his limbs to his hands and his feet and back again up up up into his neck and his skull and mouth and his teeth and his brain the wires spread and they crept and they rushed and they pushed and they scratch scratch scratched against the inside of his skull they scraped along his bones they sang they screamed he screamed he spasmed he begged he choked but he could not get away because they were inside and they were everywhere they were all and they would rip him apart-

Tears ran scalding waterfalls down his cheeks dripping off the point of his chin to splash into scarlet below. The wires wound tight round the meat of his lungs, python’s coils choking the breath- choking the life clear out from his body, turning what had started as a frantic scream for help into little more than a wet, weak gurgle, swallowed whole by the faint crackling of the flames still eating their way steadily through synth-leather and plastic.

It was so quiet, here- the kind of quiet that was suffocating in its Absence- and V hated it. He couldn’t remember ever feeling quite so horribly alone as he did then, and he found himself suddenly filled with a desperate, all consuming need to not let it end like this. He didn’t want to die, of course, but more than that, he didn’t want to die alone.

…Why was he alone? That- that didn’t seem right. He shouldn’t be alone. Where was Jackie? Why wasn’t Jackie here? If Jackie were here then V wouldn’t be dying alone he didn’t want to die alone he couldn’t die alone wheRE WAS JACKIE?!-

He tried to move, tried to crawl, tried to drag himself out from the fire and the darkness and the blood and toward where he knew his friends must be but his body wouldn’t listen. His limbs did little more than jerk and spasm, nerves sparking against the wires woven among them and shorting out entirely, causing nothing but crackles of pain and only a tiny burst of the movement he’d meant to command.

Yet still, he tried. He had to try. V tried and he tried and he tried to find his way free, painting blood across twisted titanium and shredded synth-leather alike with the spasmodic dancing of a body that he had never hated more than for its failure in that moment.  

When darkness came finally to claim him, what last little shreds of awareness V still had fought fiercely, but it was a battle he was doomed to lose. Truly, talk about a shitty life.

Chapter Text

Jackie’s life had been going so well lately. Gigs with the chooms, getting sold a vintage arch in preem condition, a wonderful girlfriend like Misty, a best man like V, the best mamá in the world, and possibly a contract with the Dexter Deshawn; the goddamned Black Jesus of the Afterlife. Shit was fucking preem.

Jackie believed in destiny; the path carved for one’s life. Through ups and downs, highs and lows, some things were just meant to be, no matter how shitty. And Jackie knew, that through it all, his destiny was to be a legend. That was why, even then- even as a Militech fucking Minotaur somehow walked out of that fuck-ass van- Jackie wasn’t scared, because he knew that everything would be as it was meant to be. Sure, hearing T-bug stressed out of her mind and V getting flung thirty meters into the desert sure wasn’t ideal, nah, but they’d make do. They always did.

“Hey T-bug!” He began. “Time to work some of your magic, manita- what we working with here?”

He made sure to try and keep his tone as soft and comforting as possible, since he could hear her breath coming out far more erratic than it should. She was stressin’ big time. A Minotaur was bad fucking news even on a good day- a remote controlled mech outfitted with smart-weapons and a heavy machine gun- but this one had four arms as opposed to the usual two. This was a major problem, as it meant that the bastard was able to continually fire down on Jackie while also still having having hands free to throw things at him. Not an ideal combination.

“Guys, I need you to listen to me because I’ve got good news,” T-Bug announced. Now that was what he liked to hear! “That mech’s motherboard is only built for two arms, not four- those extensions were modified after production. I can disable the artillery, but those graspers still pose a major threat. V, I’m going to need you and Jackie to distract that thing while I pierce it’s ICE. Get it on the ground- I don’t care how you do it, but I need it done now.”

Jackie ignored the stop sign embedded in the concrete inches from his head, (courtesy of the lovely Minotaur still shooting at him), opting to jump out from his cover and do just what T-bug asked of him. He reloaded his guns, and got ready to bring the damn party.

The monstrous machine creaked, staring him down and preparing to fire once again, but destiny was on Jackie’s side, because the damned things chose that exact moment to jam- thanks to t-bug, rendering the Minotaur’s long range capabilities useless. Jackie howled with feral delight, slinging bullet after bullet of his own at that hijo de puta, while T-bug began talking to V.

They’d both heard that cry of pain earlier, and it could only be assumed the cabrón had gotten shot. V himself didn’t seem too worried about it, so Jackie wasn’t going to worry about it, either. Though to think V wanted to avoid a trip to Vik’s- ha! It made Jackie chuckle, if only because he knew V would whine about it later and then demand they get takeout n’ watch some oldies at Misty’s place- and he’d make Jackie pay too, of course. Sly bastard.

T-bug was still talking to V- some netrunning nonsense that Jackie couldn’t even begin to understand- so he took it upon himself to cut in and get to the point.

“Hey V! I could use some help over here!” He called, successfully catching the man’s attention. “Disable that thing’s legs so T-bug can get it while it’s down!” He blasted the mech in its big ugly face a few more times, but it chose that moment to retaliate, hurling a broken hunk of what used to be a car door at him with lethal intent. He dodged, of course, but not without letting out a sound he knew V would give him hell for, later.

T-bug was a little pissed at his interruption, seething at his audacity (What? They really had no time!) but she got over it, once again going over her instructions with V as-

Oh, shit.

The Minotaur had grabbed some more ammunition- an entire car, this time- and before Jackie could even finish (metaphorically) pissing his pants, the wreckage was airborne, launched like a frisbee at a much higher velocity than anything that big should’ve been able to achieve. Jackie instinctively flinched and tried to dodge, but… it turned out he didn’t have to. The ruined car soared straight past him, colliding instead with the only upright vehicle still present and sending them both rolling into the moonlit desert with an ear-piercing screech of metal on metal.

…V was in that car-

No, no- it was okay. It would be okay! V was- V was fine! V was fine, and Jackie was not panicking, at all.

“Hermano, I could use a status update,” Jackie called, hating the way his voice wavered ever so slightly. No response. “V? You with us!?”

Worse than no response, V’s line disconnected and dropped from the holo entirely, an empty silence taking its place instead.

That was… bad. Even Jackie couldn’t find a way to put any sort of positive spin on that one. V dropping off the holo all together meant something was wrong, but Jackie couldn’t even check on him because there was a god damned Minotaur between him and the flaming wreckage that contained his newly MIA friend. Fuck.

“The crash likely knocked him out,” T-Bug’s voice stated, and it was only thanks to how long they’d known each other that Jackie could pick out the hint of strain in her otherwise level voice. “I got no visuals on cams. Jackie, it’s just us now, and I’m going to need you to get that thing on the ground ASAP.”

It was a full moon that night- the sort of big, bright display in the sky that always got Misty excited- and because of that, there was enough light for Jackie to get a decent visual on the wreckage, even from afar. It was not a visual he liked. Both vehicles were an utter mess- more just twisted chunks of splintered metal than anything truly resembling a car- and judging from the thick black smoke sputtering its way into the air, at least one of them was on fire.

There was no sign of anything moving.   

“-Jackie? Jackie!” T-Bug’s voice snapped, and Jackie blinked, forcing himself back to reality. Right. Right, he had a job to do.

(V was going to be fine, just had to trash some Corpo shit first.)

“Hermana, I got a plan,” he announced, glaring at the hulking hunk of Corpo Trash that’d sent their shit so sideways. “Think you can get those power lines down on the ground? I wanna fry that bastard’s circuits.”

He heard a heavy sigh over the holo.  

“I can do that,” T-bug answered, with the sort of tone that made it clear she was just humoring him. “But it’s not going to help me pierce the ICE. I need at least five minutes to do that, and I don’t think we have five minutes- not with V out of commission. It’s a lot easier to knock these things down when they aren’t active, and with a second runner.”

Jackie was no net runner, true. He didn’t have a stick up his ass or the ability to blow shit up with his mind. But he did have guts, and that’s what was needed here.

“What if we stall it with electricity? Stun it for a few seconds and drop that massive sign on it? Pin that hijo de puta under and then throw a few EMP ‘nades under? That way it won’t be able to throw em back at us.”

T-bug made what sounded like a genuine noise of surprise, and in spite of their grim circumstances, Jackie smirked. Yeah, that’s right- he was a fuckin’ genius. She’s welcome.

“Jackie, I knew your head was for more than decoration,” she praised. “I can drop the lines at your call, but I’ll need you to lure that metallic hunk of junk a bit closer if you want it to fry. Think you can do that for me?”

Jackie scoffed, more than happy to rise to the playful bait.

“Bugs, please, who do you think you’re talking to?” He boasted, reloading his Nues with practised ease. “Keep your finger on that trigger, and wait for my signal- we’re gonna make this fucker dance.”

At least Jackie thrived under pressure. This was no sweat; just somehow manage to not get hit by rocks and shrapnel that could pin his balls to the street like a game of darts at a bar. Most people would call it quits right there, but not Jackie, even with his cojones on the line. Instead he grabbed a large piece of sheet metal from the run down car he was pinned next to and began tying some rusted chain to it, creating a makeshift shield that ought to keep him safe from shrapnel or rocks. He just hoped that thing didn’t have any more big shit to toss… time to find out!

Guns blazing and shield in hand, Jackie leapt out from his hiding spot.

He dashed between cars, keeping out of harms way as the mech absolutely hammered him with random garbage, raining its fury down upon him. He slid over the hood of a car, narrowly avoiding being hit as he ducked and weaved, baiting the monstrosity closer. It wasn’t an easy feat, with all the trash and shit in the way- he almost tripped a few times while keeping his lifeline held up high. Who knew it was so hard to see with a big piece of scrap in front of your face?

That big piece of scrap did its job, though, absorbing sharp rock, broken plastic, shards of metal, and even glass as Jackie ran, vaulting over the fence that separated the parking lot from the road to join the mech.

It made a horrible noise as it faced him, like saw blades whirring in the throat of a T-Rex. But before it could get any closer, wires snapped and crackled as they hit the ground hard, writhing like agonized serpents from the quickhack that detached them from the main grid. Arcs of electricity rose from the live wires, lashing and crackling against the Minotaur’s frame, causing it to seize up almost instantly. It tried in vain to move, limbs spasming, but couldn’t seem to get control over itself. It sure would’ve been nice if the bastard could’ve just shorted out entirely, rather than struggling to remain functional like this, but Jackie wasn’t really complaining. At least this way, he had an excuse to have a little fun. 

And so he did, dropping the scrap metal as he booked it for V’s car, cackling in delight as his own heavy footfalls rang through the night. He quickly popped the trunk open, gathering a caustic and several EMP grenades in his arms before slamming it back closed. When he looked over, the mech was exactly as it was before, desperately attempting to regain control of its movements. It looked hilariously pathetic.

“YEAH THATS RIGHT!” He jeered, a nasty sort of grin splitting his face in two. “NOT SO TOUGH NOW, ASSHOLE!!!”

His laughter rang out as he made a break for the sign he intended upon dropping on the thing. It was a truly massive sheet of LED and metal, glowing with obnoxious neon light so bright it made his optics burn just looking at it. Really, it was no wonder that motel nearby was going out of business- there wasn’t a set of blinds in the world that could fully block out something that bright. Who in the hell designed this thing, a moth??

Jackie stuck a caustic grenade to the single aluminum pole, setting it at the point farthest away from the mech so it would fall in the desired direction. He pulled the pin, then backed the hell up before it exploded, watching the acid eat through the metal with a shit eating grin on his face. Once he was confident it was done (he had no desire to lose a foot, thank you very much), he gave the pole a good, strong kick, causing it to break at the acid-weakened section and sending the ugly ass sign crashing to the ground, pinning the Minotaur down in the process. Really, if you thought about it, Jackie was doing everyone a service, here; one less Corpo murder machine, and he just spared the retinas of everyone in the vicinity. Two for one!

Just for good measure, Jackie made sure to roll those EMP grenades under the sign, hearing a much needed muffled screech as they went off with a resounding boom. The mech stopped moving after that, only writhing cables left under the sign.

“All clear, Jackie,” T-bug’s voice announced, confirming what he’d already known. “The Minotaur won’t be getting up. Nice job, there- you ever look into investing eddies in gorilla arms? I think they’d suit you.”

Hm, maybe that would be a good call. Pricey, but worth it for sure.

Though, much as Jackie would’ve enjoyed basking in his victory, there were more important matters to attend to.

About ninety yards away, the intertwined wreckage of those two cars loomed, still completely still and silent save for the crackling of growing flames.

“T-bug, any word from V?” Maybe he’d just missed it, in the heat of things. Maybe-

“None.”

Shit.

He started running, kicking up sand and dirt as he went. V’s silence was unnerving, rather uncharacteristic of his usually noisy choom. The more Jackie ran, the farther he realized the cars were thrown. Practically in the middle of the desert, illuminated only by the moon and dancing flames, now that the light from that awful sign had been dealt with. 

It was quiet, out here. Bugs buzzed and flames crackled and his heart hammered hard in his chest, blood rushing in his ears, but beyond that there was nothing, and Jackie was so horribly afraid-

He checked the driver’s side first, since that was where he’d remembered V being, and the sight of a body nearly sent him into a frenzy before his brain caught up enough to realise that it was in the wrong seat. There was nothing in the driver’s seat, but in the passenger’s seat, the gorey mess of what must have once been a militech goon was wrapped around the shattered grill of the car that’d rammed them. The sight was mostly obscured by the massive saguaro cactus that’d come through the windshield, but what little Jackie could see was mangled and torn, impaled upon twisted titanium shards and oozing red down onto the shredded pleather of the seat beneath it.

He cursed softly under his breath. He had no love for the slimy bastards, of course, but… still. That was a rough way to go, no matter who you were.   

It wasn’t V, though. The important part was that it wasn’t V- he must have moved, at some point, and that meant he hadn’t been killed on impact.

That meant there was still a chance.

He ran towards the van’s backside, ripping open the warped doors with perhaps a little more force than was strictly necessary. 

He had not been ready for what he found inside.

The stench of blood was what hit him first, hanging so thick in the air that he could taste iron at the back of his tongue. There were two more dead soldiers inside, one with a hole through the head, and the other… a la mierda, what even did that?? It looked like it’d been ripped open-

At the centre of it all, though, was V- face down and positively drenched in blood.

He wasn’t moving.

Hurriedly, Jackie checked for a pulse and huffed out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. It was faint, but it was there. V was alive.

That wasn’t to say he was in good condition, though. Jackie’s hands came back slick and red upon removing them from V’s neck, and when he looked the smaller merc over, trying to figure out just where all of that blood was coming from, he came back with more questions than answers. He’d swear he could feel something metal on V’s back, but when he tried moving it, the man groaned in pain, body jerking violently enough to have Jackie instinctively yanking his hand back. Shit- had he been impaled??

“Hey, V, you with me?” Jackie asked, gently resting his hand on a (hopefully) uninjured section of V’s back, if only just to keep an eye on his friend’s breathing. “Ay dios mio, man, what happened?!”

No response. V’s breath continued, weak and shallow, but beyond that, he didn’t so much as twitch. 

This was… not great, to say the least. V was very obviously in need of immediate medical attention, but whatever that hunk of metal debris Jackie had felt was, it seemed to be lodged in the netrunner’s spine. With that kind of injury, if Jackie moved him wrong, V could very easily end up paralysed- assuming, of course, that that hadn’t already happened. Jackie was no doctor- not even close- but even he knew you weren’t supposed to move someone with a spinal injury.

What other choice did he have, though? They were out in the middle of nowhere, with no medical personnel on hand, and V needed help- not to mention the fact that the wreckage around them was actively on fire. No matter which way Jackie looked at it, the answer remained the same: he needed to move V. Better potentially paralysed than dead, after all. Could always buy new legs, couldn’t buy a second life.

As carefully as he could, Jackie scooped V up, cringing at the pained noises that left his boy, before jumping out of the van with the merc clutched tightly in his arms. There was something very wrong here, but the blood soaking into Jackie’s front made it clear that they didn’t have time to try and figure it out. They needed to get to a ripper, now.

“T-bug!” Jackie called out, uncaring of his volume. Not like there was anyone left alive to overhear him. “I found V, but he’s- he’s not looking too good. The back of that van was a god damned slasher film, Bugs, and V’s alive, but he’s bleedin’ like a stuck pig, and I think he’s got shrapnel or somethin’ stuck in ‘im, and god only knows what else! I need you to call up Viktor and tell him we’re on our way, now!” 

He didn’t hear T-bug’s response, too busy laying V carefully down across the back seat of the car, buckling the limp merc in as securely as possible, given the awkward positioning. It maybe wasn’t the safest thing ever, but if there was something stuck in V’s spine, Jackie really didn’t want to risk it- especially not when the man was completely incapable of keeping himself upright at the moment.

Once he was satisfied that V (probably) wouldn’t just roll right off the seats the first time the car stopped, Jackie hopped into the front seat, anxiously fumbling with the ignition just as T-Bug’s voice came over the holo again, sounding tense.

“Jackie, did you find the payload?”

It was a simple question, but one that Jackie dreaded to answer.

“...No,” he muttered, grimacing. He’d searched, back in the van- cast his eyes frantically around the mess of twisted metal and spattered gore in search of their payload- but if the tech they were after had been in there, it didn’t seem to have survived the crash and subsequent fire.

In truth, Jackie didn’t care about the tech- he cared about the man bleeding out behind him, normally tanned skin rapidly turning corpse pale. Who cares if they failed? They could get another job, they could fulfill another contract. They could try again, but only if V lived.

He stepped on the gas, driving like a bat outta hell with only one destination in mind.

It wasn’t long before the quiet desert turned into blaring city, and he turned the radio up so loud his ears hurt. Pissed off drivers screamed at him as horns blared, the loud bustle of Night City becoming nothing more than background static. They flew through Santo Domingo into Japantown, and even though the car was tearing through the streets at speeds that would put a street racer to shame, to Jackie, it felt like they were crawling. 

He didn’t even notice when they entered Watson, crossing into Little China, just mere minutes away from Vik’s. Any attempts to get V’s attention was met with silence, practically shouting his choom’s name as burnt rubber filled his nose.

V was going to make it. He had to make it. They were so close-

Jackie bought the car to a screeching halt right outside Vik’s clinic, parking across two spots and nearly hitting a woman in the process. She shouted something unintelligible at him, clearly angry, but shut up real quick at the sight of the gun Jackie pulled on her. He could feel guilty about it later, when his best friend wasn’t bleeding out all over the backseat.

V was silent as Jackie unbuckled him, and remained so upon being scooped up into the larger merc’s arms. His skin was cold to the touch, and for one heart stopping moment, Jackie thought he’d been too late. A weak, fluttery breath from the bloodsoaked man dispelled that notion, thank fuck, but Jackie was still going to need to lay down for a while, once this was all over.

He pushed past the chain gate, running to where Viktor was already waiting for him with scissors in hand and a grim expression on his face. No words were spoken, as they went down the steps and got V laid out on the table, nor as Viktor began cutting through the blood soaked fabric of V’s hoodie. T-Bug’s call had dropped out upon entering the building, so Jackie was left with only the sound of heavy breaths and tearing fabric to ward off the silence until finally, Viktor got enough of the hoodie removed to reveal-

“What the fuck?!” Jackie exclaimed, instinctively leaning back in horror at the sight of what was very much not just a hunk of shrapnel embedded into his best friend’s back.

It- it looked like some kind of bug. A beetle, maybe? Jackie didn’t know- he was no bug scientist or anything- but he didn’t need to be an expert to know that whatever it resembled, that was no natural creature. Its scarlet red shell shone metallic and bright beneath the fluorescent lights, and that, in combination with the glowing dots of its eyes, made it obvious that the thing was some sort of machine rather than anything organic.

Oh, and also the fact that it was burrowed into V’s spine. That was also a bit of a giveaway.

“Jackie… I’ve never seen anything like this,” Vik muttered under his breath, staring at the mechanical parasite with an expression somewhere between fascination and concern. “What the hell happened, son? What did you two do?!”

Jackie just stared, mind struggling to come to terms with what his eyes were seeing. There were… wires, of some sort, apparently branching off from the mechanical bug like roots from a plant. He could see them, slithering about beneath V’s flesh, and it took all his willpower to suppress his instinctive desire to rip the fucking thing out, right now. God, what was it doing to him-?!

“Jackie,” Vik repeated, stern but not harsh, and Jackie blinked, forcing himself to focus. Right- explanations. The more context Jackie could give, the better odds V stood of making it out of this… hell, of just making it out of this.

“It was supposed to be a simple mission- get a payload and get out,” Jackie began, his throat feeling tight as he watched Vik begin the process of hooking V up to several medical machines he himself didn’t understand. “We were supposed to intercept a convoy out in the desert- steal some fancy new prototype tech or something for some shady suit type- but it all went pear shaped. V got shot, we all got separated, we couldn’t even find whatever damn tech we were supposed to nab, and when I finally managed to get rid of that car chucking bastard Minotaur and get to V everything was on fire and there were just- there were bodies everywhere, and I-”

“Breathe, Jackie,” Vik commanded, and Jackie realised with no small amount of embarrassment that he’d been forgetting to do that. Another stretch of silence passed over them, for a while, as Jackie struggled to gather himself and Vik busied himself with the machines, eyeing the readouts with what looked like increasing concern on his face. After what could’ve been ten minutes or two hours, the ripper let out a sound that was not a laugh, no matter how much it may have shallowly resembled one.

“Well, Jackie,” he began, and there was something almost manic in his tone that immediately set Jackie’s hair on end. “I think we may have found your missin’ tech, kid.” He illustrated his point by prodding gently at the section on V’s back where chrome and flesh met, dried blood sealing both together.

Jackie swallowed hard, once again having to remind himself to breathe- which was a lot easier said than done considering Vik was right. They had no idea what the experimental tech was, and the man clearly remembered the opened case strewn about on the floor. What were the fuckin’ chances that thing crawled out and attached itself to his boy? Vik couldn’t have been wrong either, there was just no other logical explanation and it had Jackie feeling sick.

Between the wave of nausea and fear that overcame him, Jackie managed to keep himself upright. Perhaps rather too harshly, he decided to speak his mind. “Well you can rip it out right, Vicky? It can’t stay in him- it’s got places to be and V needs a parasitic tech-free future.”

Vik sighed heavily, pushing his glasses up the brim of his nose. “Jackie, I can’t do that. The tech has sealed itself along his spinal column, and those wires you see have woven between his vertebrae, wrapping into the spinal nerves themselves. If I try to just ‘rip it out’, it’ll take a sizeable chunk of his central nervous system with it. All I can do right now is try to correct any complications and keep it stable as it does…whatever it’s designed to do. I’m sorry, kid.”

Jackie truly felt like he was going to be sick, taking a few steps back as he struggled to orient himself. What was going to happen to V? Just over an hour ago they were eating chips in the merc’s car playing games like brothers do, chatting and making the most of a suffocatingly boring moment. That…wouldn’t be the last time he would get to speak to V, right? When was the last time Jackie told the man he loved him? Told V he was the brother Jackie never had? Would he get no chance now?

The sound of Vik’s calming voice snapped him out of his flurry of emotions.

“You know, Jackie, you…don’t have to be here,” Vik said gently. “I’m sure Misty is worried sick upstairs and she deserves to know what’s happened. Why don’t you talk to her, get yourself change of clothes? I’ll keep V here safe, and I’ll call for you, kid, if something goes…worse.”

Yeah right. Like hell was Jackie about to leave. He took a chair, just in time to see Viktor pull out a large machine that he vaguely recognised as being a live X-Ray.

“I think I’ll stay Vik, but thanks for the offer.”

Jackie’s voice came out harsher than he intended, strained and angry, just barely lashing out at Vik. And that felt wrong, to be mad at Viktor, but in Jackie’s mind it was easier to blame someone rather than no one, even if it wasn’t justified nor logical.

A tense silence fell over the room again, save for the faint humming of machinery and the nauseating clicking, of that horrid little bug thing doing… whatever the hell it was doing, to V. Jackie didn’t know, and he didn’t know if he wanted to know. The outlines of wires squirmed about beneath V’s skin like parasitic worms, digging deeper and deeper with every passing second, and Jackie didn’t know if he wanted to cry, scream, or some horrid combination of the two. Not like either option would do anyone any good.

Jackie put his head in his hands, and for the first time in a long time, he prayed. He didn’t consider himself a particularly devout person or anything- few people were, in this day and age- but he was a son of Heywood, born and raised, and he’d been a Valentino for much of his life, and that meant he wasn’t a stranger to the concept. In his ‘Tino days, he’d always said a quick prayer to Malverde before embarking on jobs, and when he’d been shot all those years ago by those spider-eyed freaks and nearly bled to death on the floor of yet another forgotten warehouse, he’d prayed to Santa Muerte for a miracle. Both the Narco-Saint and the Lady of Shadows had come through for him, in the past, and even if he wasn’t a ‘Tino anymore, Jackie hoped they still might listen.

As he had when it’d been his own blood pouring fast and free, Jackie directed his prayers to Santa Muerte. He thanked her again for her previous miracle, and asked that she be willing to preform another. Asked that she protect V from the violence done unto him, that she guide him back to the land of the living whole and intact. Asked that she not let them be separated, not yet. Asked that she keep V safe and see him through this, see him back to a world that wasn’t yet ready to lose him.

Dios, Jackie wasn’t ready to lose V. He’d always known it was a possibility, of course- a likely possibility, given the way things worked in Night City. He’d known neither of them were going to live to see 40, and he’d accepted that- hell, he’d embraced that! To die young in a blaze of fame and glory, cementing themselves in the bloody annals of Night City legend- that was what he and V wanted, for fuck’s sake!

And yet-

And yet.

And yet, Jackie’s best friend was lying limp on an operating table, being eaten alive by some unknown tech, and he didn’t look like a hero or a legend, he just looked small. Small, and fragile, and fuck, this wasn’t right! This wasn’t how it was supposed to go, dammit! This wasn’t-

Jackie couldn’t do this. He couldn’t just keep sitting here, getting lost in his thoughts. He needed to get up, needed to do something, even if that “something” was just pretending to be useful, for a bit. He needed to get out of his own head before he went and made things even worse than they already were.

He rose from where he sat, roughly wiping his stinging eyes with the back of one hand and clearing his throat before walking over to Vik, hoping to get some answers. He himself couldn’t make heads or tails of the myriad data scrolling across the screen, but the ripper seemed engrossed, scanning over the information with an intense look in his eye that did not exactly bode well.

“How bad is it, Vik?” Jackie forced himself to ask, doing his best not to let his voice waver. Vik shook his head slowly.

“Jackie I’m gonna be honest with you,” he began, which was always a great start. “I…I don’t know what to do here. His bios are stable for now, which is good, but that thing’s dug itself in deep and it’s… it’s integrating itself. It’s connected to every bit of chrome in his body, and the load is…”

He trailed off, shaking his head again and looking grim.

“The load is some of the heaviest I’ve ever seen- more than a Sandevistan.” The ripper met Jackie’s eyes, then, with an expression that was horribly close to pity. “Jackie, even if he wakes up after this… I think we need to prepare for the possibility that he… won’t be V, anymore.”

Viktor sighed, getting up to go through cabinets and drawers to look for something. Vials and bags of drugs with names that Jackie didn’t try to pronounce. Jackie kept his eyes on V, who…wait. Did his arm move?

No matter. Jackie didn’t have time to keep track with how V’s muscles contracted and spasmed. Even if it felt like V’s entire body was in a different spot now. Fuck he probably needed sleep, Jackie could feel the stress bags under his eyes forming already as Viktor readied some syringes full of mystery liquid

“They’re steroids, antispasmodics, and morphine,” Vik explained, almost as if he’d read Jackie’s mind. “We need to lighten the physical stress he’s receiving for when he wakes up. And seeing as that thing is in his spine, I also imagine he’s going to be in immense amounts of pain when he comes to. It ain’t gonna be a picnic, Jackie.”

Viktor hummed as he readied the vials and syringes, grabbing V’s not so ‘ganic hand as he looked for a vein.

Jackie sat down again, taking a seat only to quickly jump out of it, years of combat experience driving him to leap to his feet and pull out his gun just on instinct at the sight of the sudden burst of movement before him. He’d moved entirely on instinct, before his brain had even processed what was happening, so there was a bit of a lag between his body moving and his mind comprehending the sight before him, which was-

God, what was he seeing??

V’s hand had grabbed Viktors, brown red eyes opened wide and staring at the ripper without anything even resembling recognition in them. The merc had claws- shining red metal that had torn its way up through keratin nails with a sick sound, shucking them clean off in a way that had to have hurt. Those claws were pierced into the metal over Viktor’s hand, slicing through it like it was paper. Both Jackie and Vik were too stunned to react, which V(???) took as an opportunity to strike.

Jackie watched in horror as the smaller merc pinned Viktor’s hand to the operating table, biting into flesh with an animalistic snarl. Blood dripped down Viktor’s hand, only to be quickly swiped up by V’s tongue, which… seemed a bit longer than Jackie remembered. V looked wrong, moving lifelessly like a puppet on strings as he wrapped half of his body around Vik’s arm.

Jackie couldn’t believe what he was seeing, the shock of it all making the processing of the situation impossible. What the Fuck was happening??

Vik looked similarly stunned, as several moments passed by where they all looked at V, latched onto Vik’s hand like a lamprey, drinking in the lifeblood that fell from the ripper’s hand. Vik himself looked almost transfixed, eyes glassed over as he watched V tear into him, blood dripping down the merc’s chin.

Jackie struggled to make sense of it all. V wasn’t really attacking them, wasn’t trying to kill them like it was cyberpsychosis. No, he was just…clutching Vik’s hand….menacingly

V shifted and Jackie leapt out of his stupor, firing a warning shot at the table just next to V. He still had no idea what in god’s name was going on here, but every bone in his body screamed danger, and his trigger finger got a bit twitchy at the site of any sudden movements during high stress situations.

Another scene Jackie believes he’ll never get out of his head, is when V turned to meet him. And not as in the merc turned his body, no. V’s head turned almost 180 degrees to look at him, metallic red fangs bursting out of his jaw and flashing at him in a threatening display, Vik’s blood covering them.

That was not V.

A second warning shot rang throughout the room as Jackie fired again, Viktor fell to the ground, arm slumped against his body as V lunged at Jackie, hissing at him like a mountain lion. The claws looked even sharper up close, a few inches long as they swiped at Jackie- who just barely managed to duck in time to avoid losing an eye.

Viktor’s blood stained V’s chin, mouth open in a snarl as he advanced. He leapt at Jackie once more, this time with greater precision as the tip of those metal claws ripped through Jackie’s shirt, blood beading to the surface.

Okay, today was just fucked. What was Jackie going to do?? Shoot V!? No fucking way

Jackie pointed his gun at the smaller merc, who kept back and clung to the wall like he was goddamned Spider Man, waiting for Jackie to shoot with fangs bared and a primal sort of hate in his eyes. Jackie’s hand trembled, finger unable to pull the trigger on his best friend, even as the man came for him again, grabbing Jackie by the shoulders and sinking those claws in deep. Jackie couldn’t shoot, so he improvised- striking the thing’s temple with the barrel of his gun and twisting around to throw him into the wall hard, flinching as the not-so V cried a grinding, metallic sound of anguish.

This was like some fucked up scene out of those 1900s Abott and Costello films. What was V, a vampire? Was that bug attached to his spine a vampire bug? Fuck, was Jackie going to need holy water? He did have a cross around his neck…

This time, Jackie made the first move, running at the thing that had stolen his best friend’s skin and punching him (it??) in the jaw with his cross necklace in hand that he ripped from his neck.

The good news: Jackie learned something new about… whatever V’s whole situation right now was.

The bad news: the thing he learned was that crosses were apparently not effective, as all he got for his troubles was an absolutely brutal kick to the ribs that both knocked him to the ground and likely bruised his ribs in the process.  

The thing that was not his friend clawed at him, hissing again as Jackie just narrowly avoided taking those sharp ass nails to the face. He tried kicking V back, desperate to put distance between them, but he may as well have been kicking a brick wall for all the good it did him. In the end, it was all he could do to hold V at the shoulders, keeping those talons just barely out of reach as they swiped wildly, doing their damndest to take his face off.

“V!! THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING, MANO?!” Jackie cried, searching frantically for any sort of recognition in those frenzied red eyes. “Snap OUT of it man!!”

V didn’t respond, attempting instead to reach for one of Jackie’s guns. By the time Jackie realized what was happening, there was a barrel aimed at his chest, and his heart skipped a beat.

What, so vampires know how to wield guns, now? Of course they do. Jackie was going to die thinking about stupid movie logic. If only he had some damn holy water

Just before V could pull the trigger, Viktor came from behind and jammed… something, into V’s neck, pushing down on a button at the end before pulling the small device free. V went out like a light, slumping against Jackie face first, who looked dumbstruck at Viktor.

The ripper seemed unphased, unable to move one of his arms as he used the good one to grab one of V’s shoulders.

“Come on Jackie, I need you to help me cuff him to the bed. I need to scan the kid’s brain.”

Jackie got up, hand coming to his stinging, bleeding chest as he helped drag V back onto the operating table. The click of handcuffs brought Jackie to reality, coming to terms with what just occurred as Viktor started giving the unconscious man the once-forgotten syringes, full of a liquid that stopped V’s twitching.

“What the actual fuck, man…”

Well, at least he could tell T-bug where the tech went, though how does a man explain this shit? “Yeah the tech is attached to V’s spine and nervous system, by the way he might’ve gone cyber psycho and or creature of the night and he bit Viktor. Don’t worry though, everything is just peachy.”

God, Jackie was going to need a drink, three at least. He hoped V would turn out alright though, he just had to. They would get through this, whatever it was.

And so there he sat, slumped against the bench as Vik went to work, praying to god everything would turn out alright, just as Misty texted him, asking him to come upstairs and tell her what happened. It was gonna be a lonnggggg night. God.

Chapter Text

Tequila, Vodka, some Donaghy’s, and even a splash of rum. That’s what Jackie was working with, some good shit for a rough night.

Misty stood there beside him, hovering with a couple glasses as he tried to take a pick. As much as Jackie would’ve loved an ice cold beer, he needed something stronger tonight. In the end he settled with some Tequila, grabbing some ice cubes as Misty threw some lime and mint in there.

It was an unnecessary addition this time around, seeing as Jackie was there to get buzzed as all hell. But Misty, oh his dearest Misty always liked to make everything special. She spoke as she put the chopping board away, cleaning lime juice off of it.

“I’d put a splash of moon water in there too, but it’s not quite ready yet.”

Ah yes, the moon water. It was something she did every full moon, putting open containers of water by the window to bask in the moonlight. Sometimes she’d even put amethyst or clear quartz in there, though this time there were pink stones in the water- not something Jackie recognized. They were real pretty at least, just not as pretty as his girl.

They both grabbed their drinks, heading to the couch as Jackie dropped on it with the heaviest sigh, taking a long swig of his tequila as Misty set hers aside, on the coffee table next to her pothos.

You know, the more Jackie thought about it…he ought to get some houseplants for his room too. Misty’s plants made the air in the room far cleaner, filling him with serenity every time he came over. She cared for them so well, especially her spidery plant and the stringy one, with flowers that looked like dicks. They were big, much bigger than Jackie’s own skull- which was something.

He probably wouldn’t be able to care for them as well as she did, he had a habit of killing his mamá’s herbs just by looking at them. So maybe not, but god it would be nice. The vibrant green hues just made it a little nicer, everything a bit calmer.

Misty spoke, filling his day dreaming with a dose of reality.

“So, Jackie…you said V…attacked you and Vik? And that there’s a bug in his spine??”

Right, that.

Once more Jackie took a long drink of his tequila before speaking, savoring the minty freshness before he threw his head back, holding her soft hand.

“Well not an actual bug, it just looks like a bug,” he clarified. “Like a big, messed up beetle with beady eyes, and wires that come out from it. It must’ve been huge when it attacked V, because it’s still pretty sizable despite grafting most of its chrome onto him. Into him.”

Jackie remembered the X-ray images, it was horrifying. Hundreds of wires coming from that thing, weaving through V’s whole body like starving worms. It was replacing muscle and flesh with itself, fucking eating parts of the merc. Vik had never seen anything like it and certainly neither had Jackie, it was using some sort of nanotechnology to eat V’s bones, replacing them with some strange titanium-like substance last he checked. He took another drink, he couldn’t handle this shit.

“It’s literally eating, him mi amor- flesh, organs, bones, muscles and all,” Jackie sighed, shaking his head in faint disbelief. “Viktor projected that it would go after 37% or so of him, at the rate it’s workin’. It’s already poking around in V’s skull, hasn’t eaten anything there yet but it’s…it’s attaching things to it. We aren’t sure when or if he’ll wake up, Misty, or if he’ll even be the same. Cariña, I’m scared.”

That’s right, Jackie- him of all people, was scared. He was never scared, not ever. Even when people shot at him he never felt it, didn’t flinch at the graze of a bullet, he prided himself on being very collected and self assured, a wall of fuckin’ steel anyone could count on.

And yet, Jackie let V down. As the large man stared out into nothing, all he could think about was how he’d let that merc down. He should’ve kept V close, should’ve stopped the mech from throwing that car. He was the one in charge of distracting that militech horror show so he should’ve done better. He should’ve had those stupid grenades on him from the start! V had literally told him to grab them, yet he’d shrugged that off. How fucking stupid.

He should’ve been the one to go after the tech, not V. There were armed guards in there, and Jackie could’ve taken them on. He could’ve sworn V had gotten shot by one of them too. That was another nail in the coffin, one of several. Jackie was so caught up in his own head that he didn’t notice Misty place a hand on his shoulder, or the way she squeezed his hand.

They were supposed to look out for each other, him and V. They were meant to keep one another safe from harm, watch each other's backs. Yet Jackie failed that, miserably so. V was a netrunner, netrunners were squishy, needed someone like Jackie- big n’ strong to watch their blindsides. And that itself wasn’t a fair thought to V, either- the merc could handle himself, and Jackie knew that, but he was just….

What could he have done differently? What could he have changed, to make this grim outcome nothing more than a nightmare?

Misty shook him with the full force of her body, looking up at him with a worried look and furrowed brows. Ah shit, had he spaced out??

“Jackie,” she began, gentle but firm. “You’ve got that aura to you like you’re beating yourself up. What happened to V wasn’t your fault.”

“You don’t know that!” Jackie snapped, perhaps a bit louder than he’d meant to be. “It absolutely fucking was my fault! I should have been there for him, mi amor! I was the one who told him to move from his perch. Misty, he might be dead, and that’s on me!!”

Now that wasn’t fair either, and Jackie knew it. Misty squeezed his hand again, compassion enshrouding her as she tucked her beautiful blonde hair behind her ear.

“Oh, Jackie…” she sighed, all sympathy and sorrow. “But V isn’t dead- he’s still alive and kicking. He’s a fighter, and you know that. V is going to pull through! Even if he went cyberpsycho, there’s a chance his mind, body, and soul can heal it. Vik’s got him, baby, and you did all you could. What’s written is written, you can’t change fate.”

“You weren’t there, Misty,” Jackie protested, unwilling to let it go. “You didn’t see what I saw. I made so many stupid goddamn mistakes that got him hurt! I didn’t realize it at the time but I did! He’s injured, and got infected by some sort of vampire bug that’s turning him into a…I don’t fucking know, a something! The load is heavier than a Sandevistan, and no one can just survive that!”

Jackie kept going, voice breaking ever so slightly.

“We made a promise, a promise, that we would keep each other safe! All the bad shit always happens to V and I can’t do a damn thing about it! He gets hurt all the time and that’s MY FAULT! I’m supposed to watch his back and I can’t even do that right! I’m a bad friend and a bad partner if I can’t keep my best friend safe. HE KEEPS ME SAFE ALL THE FUCKIN TIME! With his netrunnin’ magic and quick thinking, he does SO much for me and yet I do NOTHING for him! No Misty, it’s ABSOLUTELY MY. FAULT.”

Tears poured down his eyes, a rare moment of vulnerability as he leaned into her grasp. He couldn’t keep his cool facade up, he really couldn’t.

“I’M ALIVE BECAUSE OF HIM, AND HE’S DEAD BECAUSE OF ME!!” Jackie wailed, and now that the dam had been broken, there was no containing the flood.

He cried hard, sobbing into his love’s arms as she held him tight and hummed beneath her breath to soothe him. He didn’t deserve her, he couldn't handle the guilt of it all. He couldn’t even hold his own against not-V, would’ve been shot had it not been for Vik- who he was too stunned to help in the first place. He felt like a failure.

Misty just kept holding him, hushing him as she kissed him softly. She really was an angel, always there for him. She was truly a light in this dark time.

“Jackie that’s just not true,” she assured. “I talk to V all the time, and all he ever talks about after missions is how he couldn’t do anything without you. He looks up to you and believes in you- perhaps more than you believe in yourself. You mean so much to him and he wouldn’t stand for you beating yourself up like this; not when you do things like pick up live grenades thrown at V, or walk into a live shoot out, shouting at the top of your lungs and firing in every direction just to take the heat off him. Even just last week, you got yourself shot in the hand because you grabbed a gun aimed at V!” Aye, she really was going to hold that one over his head forever, wasn’t she? “Jackie, you’re reckless, but you do everything for that man. Everything happens for a reason, and he will pull through, you just need to have faith.”

Jackie’s hesitation must have shown on his face, because Misty frowned, her gentle expression hardening just the slightest bit as she went to deliver the final blow.

“You know, it’s hardly as though you dragged him there or anything,” she pointed out, eyebrow raised. “V’s a big boy who made his own decision to go out tonight, just like you did, and to put himself in danger, just like you did. He bears the exact same amount of responsibility for what happened as you do, but would you say it’s his fault?” Jackie recoiled instinctively at the thought, and Misty nodded, seeming vindicated. “Exactly- you wouldn’t. So if it’s not his fault, then it’s not yours, either. Listen to me when I tell you, my love, that some things just happen, outside of our control.”

By the time she was done talking, Jackie heaved a deep sigh, resting his face in her hand as he held her tight against his frame. He tried to speak, but his voice cracked again, leaving him a babbling tear-soaked mess before her.

He had never cried like this to her, to anyone ever really. He never cried, not since he nearly beat his dad to death for hurting their family. All he had in life was family, it’s what he lived for. And the thought of losing his family…he just- he couldn’t take it. Damnit V, worming his way into Jackie’s heart.

They sat there for some time, curled around each other,  Misty even played with his hair as he held her, still humming that conciliating tune. Drinks were left forgotten as moonlight eventually filtered through the window, basking both of them in its ivory light. Whether they were there five minutes or an hour, it felt the same. The wind picked up as well, chimes singing outside as his girl kissed him. Everything about Misty was soothing- her home, her words, her shop, and her smell. Her grasp and her gaze, both on him and only him.

She picked up her own drink, sipping on it as she spoke a few short words that finally reached through his thick skull. “V is going to be okay alright.”

Jackie sighed, broad shoulders sagging in acceptance.

“I know.”

And he believed that, he truly did. Vampire, Cyberpsycho, or Borg- V would pull through. And Jackie would be there for him, no matter what. Jackie wouldn’t give up, not now and not ever. Jackie would get stronger so that something like this never happened again. He’d die before he lost his family. From now on, he would invest all the money he had in good chrome. After all- they were going to be Night City legends.

And speaking of good chrome..

Jackie smiled wide, concern already flashing across Misty’s face as he gave her his signature grin, gleaming with excitement.

“You think some gorilla arms would suit me? I’m sure Vik could lend me the money.”

Misty looked like she was going to throttle him, and he laughed. She did too.

⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎⚡︎

V woke to blinding white lights, fluorescent and all consuming. Everything hurt. Quite literally- everything. It stretched from his ears to his eyes, the bottoms of his feet and the tips of his nails, and he moaned in pain, unable to recall ever having felt such a total and complete sense of wrongness within his own body. He tried to shield his eyes from the burning white above, but found that he couldn’t even move his hands. Not because of the pain, mind, but because he was handcuffed to whatever cot or gurney he was laying on.

What the actual fuck happened? Had he swallowed glass and then got sucker punched by a mech? Cause it sure fe-

The mech.

He jolted awake, fighting against the handcuffs (why the fuck were there handcuffs??) as he struggled to make sense of what was going on around him. It would be a lot easier to do that, of course, if his goddamned eyes weren’t being burned out by those fucking lights! Christ, could someone turn those things down?!

Where was Jackie? Where was T-bug? Where the fuck was he?!

He could smell iron and disinfectant, along with a heavy dose of unknown chemicals. The iron was definitely blood- his own blood, at that, though he couldn’t say for sure how it was that he knew that. It smelled… wrong- sick, even, in a way that had him trying to get away from it. It had an undertone of oil, pungent and odorous, and it hung so heavy he could taste it. He could also smell incense, though it wasn’t nearly as strong as the disinfectant, or the sweat and…chalk?

When his eyes finally adjusted, he found himself in a place he’s only been in a few times. He was at Vik’s, safe, and specifically in one of the operating rooms near the loading bay, where Vik would box. The door was open- the one that separated the bay and the operating room- the red LEDs giving something to focus on that wasn’t oil.

So… he was in an operating room. He supposed that tracked, that wasn’t anything too new, but the fact that he was apparently handcuffed to the damn gurney definitely was. Why was he chained up, why was he here, where were Jackie and T-bug, why were these lights so fuckin’ bright- just, why?!

And he was in so much discomfort, especially his back. He tried sitting up and it was most certainly a mistake, because even if it hadn’t been for the cuffs, he wouldn’t have managed to make it all the way up anyways on account of that discomfort turning into pain- searing hot and threatening to drive him mad. He dropped back down with a hiss, then flinched as the impact seemed to drive… something, deeper into the flesh of his back. He was vaguely aware of a strange sort of fog over his mind, but the sight of an IV sticking out from his arm provided some clues as to where that might be coming from. Moving further down, though…

What the hell happened to his fingers?! His nails were just- just gone, replaced by sharp metal instead. That explained why his fingers hurt at least.

The way the handcuffs were set up allowed him to shimmy back and forwards, as the gurney railing lined the sides. He shuffled forward, one eye closed and brows furrowed as he tried feeling for the light switch- something that was easier said than done, given the awkward positioning. It took a few moments of clumsily feeling around for a panel he knew was there, but thankfully, it wasn’t too long until he was able to get those god forsaken lights turned off, almost entirely leaving him in the dark.

Which was strange, because he could still see. Everything was monochrome, sure, but he could make out the fine details of the room for some reason, the edges against each individual object. Since when could he see in the dark? Last time he checked his optics weren’t that advanced.

He struggled to remember the events leading up to this, but to limited success. All he could really recall were the moments where the mech stepped out of the van, and getting shot- which was strange because out of every ache and pain that bothered him…the gunshot wound wasn’t one.

He heard footsteps coming from the front of the shop as the radio turned on. It was certainly Vik, since it got switched to a boxing channel, immediately playing some sort of advertisement as he heard the man swear, something he shouldn’t have been able to hear. There were a lot of things he shouldn’t be able to do right now, and one of them was being able to sit up, the droning feel of buzzing pain just barely a factor anymore as he groaned, sitting up for a short while despite his body’s protests.

“HEY VIK! LITTLE HELP OVER HERE?” V called, but Vik didn’t respond, and he didn’t hear him move either. He would have to be louder.

“VIK!” V tried again, shouting as loud as he could manage.

That got some attention. The radio turned down, and he heard the swivel of a chair as the man he assumed to be Vik got up, footsteps ringing throughout the building. It took a minute, but eventually the ripper came peeking through the doorway, jolting in surprise when he saw V and…drawing a gun?

Vik looked startled for reasons V couldn’t comprehend, and he noted a slight shake in his voice as the older man spoke. He looked tense, and V could smell something that he immediately recognized as fear

“V…” Vik breathed, eyeing him warily. “Is that you, kid?”

V rolled his eyes. “Of course it’s me, Vik- who else do you have chained up in here? Lizzy Wizzy? Bara Nova?”

The ripper sighed, holstering his gun and no longer pointing it directly at V’s face (which was great). After only a further beat or two of hesitation, Vik rushed to his side, turning on some less offensive lights on his way. V jingled the handcuffs impatiently, eyebrow raised, and Vik obliged- though not before moving the merc’s face to peer into his eyes, optics flashing as the ripper apparently made note of something.

The handcuffs were off a few moments later, clattering to the ground as V rubbed his raw- why were they raw- wrists.

Vik had a stoic look to his face that concerned V. It something heavy, something that didn’t belong on the ripper, and it didn’t sit right with V. He had so many questions- more than he thinks he’d ever had before- and perhaps Vik had answers. By the way the guy had straight up pointed a gun at his goddamn head, V figured he did.

“So, Vik,” V began, feigning a casual affect. “Mind telling me what happened? How long of a nap did I just take?”

It would seem that had not been the right question to ask, because instead of answering, the ripper frowned, sighed, and held his temple all at once. Vik looked stressed and uncertain, and he wouldn’t meet V’s eye.

“I just called Jackie for you, kid, he’ll be here in a few minutes,” Vik muttered, even though that had very much not been what V had asked. “How are you feeling, by the way? Does anything hurt? You… feeling alright?”

Yeah, that wasn’t what V wanted to hear. Though he did perk up at the mention of Jackie, he was glad to hear they all made it out in one piece.

“I feel like I got chewed up, spat back out, and ran over by a bus- just peachy,” V snarked. “Everything hurts and it’s like all my senses have been dialed up to eleven. You wouldn’t happen to have any more pain killers, would you?”

Again Vik wrote something down, something V couldn’t see. He looked surprised, and more than a little disturbed.

“Kid, I’ve got you on max dose immunoblockers, neuroleptics, morphine, and some tranquilizers,” Vik said dryly, giving V that look again. “You shouldn’t even be awake right now, much less aware and talking to me.”

Woah woah woah- max dosed immunoblockers?? V’s breath caught in his throat. Those were only given to people in the red for cyberpsychosis, so if Vik had him on those…

V furrowed his brow and swallowed hard, clutching the blankets of the cot. Seriously, what had happened to him?

“Vik, don’t make me ask again, please-” V began, hating the way his voice wavered. “What happened?! Why am I on antipsychotics and immunoblockers- please just tell me! I don’t like being left in the dark like this.”

Vik’s expression was grim- the kind of face you might expect to see on someone who was about to have to break the news of an imminent death. He pulled up a chair and sat down next to V, fixing his glasses as he spoke. Suffice to say, none of this was helping to soothe V’s nerves.

 “What do you remember last?” Vik sighed. “Start from there, and then I’ll try to fill you in as best I can on what happened next.”

 Finally, some cooperation. V eased himself back down, wincing at the way the room spun for a moment.

“I remember jumping a militech Convoy with Jackie and T-bug” he began. “I remember things going south and a Minotaur jumping out of one of the vans. I also remember getting shot and jumping into the driver’s side of the van with our payload in it, and then… well, not much else after that.”

Vik grabbed an ophthalmoscope and shone it into V’s eyes, which hurt like a bitch, but V tried his best not to fight it. It was over after what felt like an eternity, after which Vik decided to kill the lights and shine a flashlight into his eyes from far away, moving the light at odd angles before writing something down again. Before V could lose his patience over the impromptu light show, though, Vik apparently got whatever it was he was looking for, and finally deigned to start talking.

“From what Jackie told me, the Minotaur threw one of the cars at you,” Vik explained, jotting something down as he did. “It gave you a pretty nasty concussion, but you’ll live. You also had a piece of shrapnel sticking out of you, so I went ahead and took care of that as well. You managed to climb into the back of the van and retrieve your tech at some point, too.”

There was very clearly something Vik was dancing around, something he still wasn’t saying, but before V could push him on it, he heard the door open. On instinct, he turned his head in the direction of the sound, and the scent of a familiar brand of cologne hit his nose, bringing a smile to his face as he registered the sound of approaching footsteps. It was Jackie.

Not too long after the merc made the conclusion, his best man came poking his head past the the doorway, before lighting up as his eyes locked on V. The smile on Jackie’s face was infectious, and V just had to match it.

“Ay cabrón- thank god you’re alright!” Jackie exclaimed, rushing across the short distance between them with arms opened wide. “Fuck, man, I was so worried!”

The same could be said for V, honestly. He was glad Jackie was safe- for a minute there he’d been afraid Vik was about to give him some really horrible news.

Jackie brought him into a big hug, practically putting V’s face into his tits as the big man enveloped him. The merc sighed into the embrace, resting his head against Jackie’s heart as he nuzzled into the hold.

V had missed this, it was nice. He’d never really noticed how good Jackie smelled, before. Behind the signature semi-cheap smelling cologne there was a heavy scent of caramel and honey, just as warm and inviting as the man himself. It smelled a bit sharp, too, like gunpowder, with woody notes of something like cedar.

V wouldn’t call himself a scent connoisseur, not at all. But in that moment everything was so…clear, so easy to articulate. That scent was like a lullaby, so soothing and sweet, it ran through Jackie’s whole being and threatened to absorb V into it. He was so lost in it, it took Jackie shaking him out of his stupor to throw him down back to reality. That gesture actually kind of hurt and Vik immediately laid him back down, almost glaring at Jackie who looked pathetically at him.

V didn’t like that, he wanted Jackie close. Something inside of him wanted to lash out at that, to pull his best friend close once more and keep him there. He wanted Vik close as well, the good doctor was in a way, like a father to him. He really wanted these people close at arms length, those he cared for. Warm and full of life.

So…warm.

There was something in his mouth, right above his canine teeth. It hurt, like it was stabbing through his gums, and he touched it with his tongue, only to wince at the pain that shot through him. What the hell?? What was that??

In spite of the fact that he’d literally just hurt himself, curiosity got the better of him, and he couldn’t stop himself from dragging his tongue carefully over the mystery protrusion. It was… another tooth? Though the surface felt more like metal than bone, and it was sharp enough that he cut his tongue on it. A quick poke at the other side of his mouth revealed that it had a twin, and it was after only a few more seconds of curious prodding that he realized they were fangs, jutting down from his gums and obscuring his real teeth. The fuck?? Dental chrome was nothing new, of course- both for functional and aesthetic purposes- but V was pretty damned sure it was an upgrade he’d never gotten, nor requested. And even if he had, weren’t they supposed to remove the original teeth first??

The metal was warm too, as something pulsed faintly beneath its surface. The more he thought about the strange metal in his mouth, the harder and harder it became to ignore the throbbing ache in his gums. While the sensation was necessarily painful, it was certainly uncomfortable, and he wanted it to stop. Subconsciously, he thought he knew how to make that discomfort go away; to soothe and to remedy it.

[[Bite]]

An echoing feminine voice rang through, distracting him from the strange feelings and thoughts in and about his mouth as he jerked up to a sitting position and looked around, searching for where that had come from. Not only could he not find any visible source, but neither of the others had even reacted, suggesting V was the only one who’d heard it. Vik put a hand on his shoulder to ease him back down, and V obliged, though he was still more than a little disturbed.

Jackie looked worried, giving V a look that was awful similar to the one he’d been getting from Vik earlier, which only made V feel all the more off balance. On V’s opposite side, Vik cleared his throat and grabbed a clear, fluid filled bag from a tray.

“Jackie, why don’t you tell V what happened?” The ripper suggested. “I think it’ll be better if it comes from you.”

He hooked the bag up to V’s IV as he spoke, discarding the old bag in the nearby waste disposal and checking the tubing still connected to V’s arm. As he watched Vik’s bandaged hand get close, all he could think about was how much he wanted real food- not whatever paltry nutrients were mixed in with the medications and fluids being dripped into his veins. He was Hungry.

“Mano, I’m just gonna cut to the chase here,” Jackie began, unusually grim. “You didn’t find the tech, it found you. After ‘Bugs and I made short work of that mech, I popped open that van and found a slasher scene. You were at the center of it all, gored bodies lying around you. I thought you were dead, and the tech…”

At the mention of the word “bug”, memories came flooding back to V. The heavy scent of death, the blueprints, the empty case, the bug that crawled out of a body to attach itself to him.

It fused to his spine, it drilled holes into his flesh and bones. He remembered the pain- could still feel it, even. He wanted to throw up, to wake up from this nightmare and never fall asleep again.

There were wires snaked through his muscles and tissue, weaving past organs. Metal clinging to his bones, digging up and out through his skin. Phantom pain wracked his form, shooting across hijacked nerves as he dry heaved, lurching up and clawing at his back with mutilated fingers. He hit something- a protrusion of chrome bubbling out from his spine like a technological tumour- and it was all he could do not to scream.

“Get me a mirror,” V croaked, throat dryer than the California desert. He felt like he was going to pass out, but neither Jackie nor Vik moved and V needed to know. “Someone get me a goddamn mirror!”

It was on his back, it was in his back. It was a part of him, burrowed into his skin. Everything felt wrong, it was everywhere inside of him. It was in his hand, his eyes, his brain. He felt it, buried deep. He needed it Out.

Vik wheeled a mirror over as Jackie wrung his hands together, looking just as nervous as V felt. Jackie looked like he wanted to say something and so did Vik, though neither spoke as V turned his back to the mirror and looked over his shoulders. The sight was more sickening than he could’ve imagined.

A flat, beetle looking piece of tech sat perched upon his spine, right between his shoulder blades. Its head and limbs exploded into columns of metal that ran up and across his body in intricate patterns. The flesh around the metal was red and inflamed from the bolts and wires that crisscrossed through, weaving underneath skin as faint red glowed beneath. Maybe, under some other circumstance, it could have been beautiful, but to V, it was nothing short of nauseating.

The metal itself was red and shining, reaching from the nape of his neck- just short of his netrunning port- down to his tailbone, with the bug looking thing seated in the upper middle like a train upon a track. That was just the part that was visible, though- V knew there was more. He could feel it, burrowed into his skin and nestled around his organs. It was like… a fungus; where the part you could see was only a small offshoot, and the real organism lay deep beneath the surface.

As V stared, he could have sworn the glowing fluorescent “eyes” of the beetle thing were staring right back.

Distantly, he was appreciative of the fact he wasn’t entirely nude, briefs still covering his ass. Though even if they hadn’t, it wouldn’t have stopped him from practically tearing the hospital gown off to see his front side, needing to know if-

Yes. Yes, the parasitic tech had followed to his front side, too- grafted onto his ribs as some sort of ventilation poured heat from the metal’s underside. What needed ventilation, V didn’t know. What even powered the tech? Micro fission? Ion batteries?

In the middle of his chest was a glowing object, red like the rest and bolted into his raw skin. Perhaps that was the power source? It was decently warm to the touch so maybe.

Whatever it was, V wanted it out.

“Vik, you can take this thing out of me, right?” V asked. Distantly, he was aware of the somewhat manic edge to his voice, but he couldn’t find it in himself to care. “You’re the best of the best, so you can do it, yeah?! You’ve gotta!!”

Vik looked tired and defeated, giving V his answer even before the large sheets of thin film were handed to him. With shaking hands, V held the x-rays up to the light, and what he saw made him want to throw up even more.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of wires- interwoven within his nervous system, spinal column, and every bone in his body, attaching to every shred of muscle and organ. V didn’t need to be a damned ripper to know that the answer was no- nothing could be removed without killing him. Tech like this shouldn’t even be possible, too intricate for anything he’s ever seen or heard of.

“I’m sorry, kid,” Vik said quietly, but V just buried his face in his hands, groaning. Jackie stayed unusually silent, merely putting a hand on his shoulder.

V decided to ask the question he equally wanted and didn’t want to know, had to rip it off like a bandaid at some point.

“What does the tech do anyways?” He croaked, mind already racing with horrible possibilities. “Is it killin’ me? Poisoning me? Gonna make me go cyber psycho?”

“It’s not, kid, but if you were anyone else, it’d be a different story,” Vik said bluntly. “That thing ain’t even military grade- it’s a whole other kind of beast. The load is about five times that of a Sandevistan- were it not for your abnormally high tolerance, you absolutely would’ve gone psycho.”

Vik paused, then, glancing down at his hand with an expression like he wanted to say something. After a few seconds, though, he seemed to have changed his mind, because he instead just closed his mouth, sighing heavily before continuing to speak.

“But you didn’t, and that’s what counts,” he said, perhaps a bit stiffly. “It has no production markings or manufacturer, and contains some sort of alloy I’m entirely unfamiliar with. Scans indicate that there’s some kind of AI fused into the machinery- apparently, the “core” of it is in that bug looking thing.”

Well, that… could be worse, V supposed. At least it wasn’t killing him or making him go crazy. Though, it did sound like a pretty damned special piece of tech… shit, what if someone went looking for it?

V’s panic must’ve shown on his face because Jackie made a reassuring sound as the merc looked up at his friend. Jackie looked back, a confident smile on his face and a comforting hand on V’s shoulder. A comforting hand that… definitely looked a lot different than V remembered- made of chrome with black tipped fingers. Where the hell did Jackie find the time and money to get gorilla arms? How long had he been out!?

“Ey, V, don’t worry,” Jackie soothed. “T-bug swung by earlier and checked for trackers, and we told the suit that hired us that it ended up destroyed. No one’s looking for it, ain’t no body comin.”

Well, that was a relief, but V still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. And not just the way his stomach growled loudly for all to hear, which Jackie laughed at.

“Hey Vik, V’s been out for almost a week now and I think it’s time he got some proper food in his system.”

As much as V really didn’t feel like eating after such earth shattering news, he couldn’t deny that he was starving. The things he would do for a scopdog or three~

[Besides, the medical room was stressing him out, reminding him of a problem he didn't particularly want to face and memories he’d rather bury. The phantom pains still wracked him.]

Vik also seemed to mull it over, putting medical tools away before carefully pulling the IV from V’s arm. He brought a bag over, too, full of clothes that V most certainly didn’t pack- Jackie must’ve done it.

“You’re free to go if you want to kid, you aren’t a captive here,” Vik said dryly. “Though I do expect you to give me a call if anything changes. I’m going to give you a thirty day supply of immunoblockers and morphine, and I want you to take both every 4 hours- 80 mg of immunos, and 30 of morphine. Do not take any other pain killers and avoid alcohol, got it? I mean it.”

V smiled. Maybe things would be alright. And hey- pain and body horror aside- an ultra high tech, super-military grade implant could be of extreme use on gigs. He didn’t know what exactly it did, but if it had that high of a load, then it had to do something crazy, right?

The X-ray images were detailed and had a whole bunch of notes written on them- mostly a lot of question marks, which seemed to indicate that Vik didn’t know much more than V. That was… probably not a great sign, but it didn’t necessarily have to mean anything bad, either. It just meant that things were going to be a surprise, was all. Who knows- maybe there were body heat-seeking missiles stored somewhere.

Jackie and Vik left the room, closing the door behind them to give V some privacy while he slipped into proper clothes. And shitty synth-cotton be damned, it was far better than being near-naked in a hospital gown. A pair of black, baggy cargo pants and a short sleeved  burgundy button-up- the kind of fit that was perfect for the mild spring weather of Night City. He had no accessories to add to it, unfortunately, but he hadn’t been expecting much. Jackie grabbed what he could, and at least made it not god awful ugly, so V would take it.

He didn’t usually button any of the top buttons, preferring his chest out but…the pulsing, glowing metal atop his sternum had him pausing. Did he really want to show that off to everyone?

After a minute or so of hesitation and deliberation, V finally decided: fuck it. He liked showing off his implants, and despite the whole situation being incredibly disturbing and intrusive, it was aesthetically pleasing. And what was he supposed to do- never show off his chest again? That would indeed not be a slay.

So he finished getting dressed and grabbed his personal belongings that had been extracted from his comatose body. He needed a shower for certain, or at the very least some deodorant because he smelled like ass, but thankfully, Jackie covered him on that front, too. With a stick of deodorant and a hairbrush, V did his damndest to turn himself into something at least semi presentable, inspecting his reflection with a critical eye.

He posed a few times, smiling at himself in the mirror before faltering because…okay, those really were fangs.

Crimson red chrome- just like the plating on his back- sat embedded within the gums of his upper canine teeth, forming two nasty looking points that could’ve made a viperfish jealous. They were massive and sharp as hell, though tender when he touched them, pulling up his lip and leaning in to closer inspect his mouth.

He could faintly see a series of wires running beneath his gums, connecting to the fangs. When he pushed on the roof of his mouth, some sort of clear liquid came bubbling out the needle-point tips of the fangs. Whatever it was, it tasted vile- like chemicals or a shitty cocktail.

Note to self: don’t do that again. Blegh.

Red was his favorite color but…red teeth? Mmm, he’d pass. So when V spotted the laser detailer on the tray- the one meant for personalizing the look of one’s chrome- he couldn’t help himself. He’d be damned if he smiled and it looked like someone had punched him in the mouth.

So, one entirely unlicensed short procedure later, he walked out of the room- just in time for Vik to hand him a white bag of prescription medication.

“Remember what I said, kid,” Vik began. “One of each pill every four hours, no alcohol, and call me if something odd happens. I’d like to do a follow up with you next week, too”

V took the drugs and pulled the good doctor into a hug, which the ripper gladly accepted with a sigh.

“So, what do you I owe you, Vik?” V asked, already silently dreading the total for what had apparently been a week’s worth of specialized care.

“Nothing kid,” Vik answered, which came as a very welcome surprise. “Call it an on the house special for waking up sane. Just try not to let strange chrome crawl its way into your skin next time, got it?”

V chuckled and broke the hug, giving Vik a firm pat on the back as he and Jackie walked out of the clinic, waving goodbye

“No promises, Vik!”

Jackie hollered out a goodbye too as they both left, walking up the stairs and past the metal gate onto Bradbury street’s hustle and bustle. It was night but plenty of people were still out- 9 pm on a Saturday and all that. They walked past Misty’s shop, which was open, but she herself was nowhere to be found. Likely with a client, then. Oh well.

Jackie wrapped his arm around V’s shoulder, which the merc welcomed. Walking side by side with his best choom was a preferred change than something like being handcuffed. Why was he handcuffed anyways? Jackie might know.

“Hey man, do you know why I was handcuffed to the cot in Vik’s?” He asked, aiming for a playful tone of voice. “Did I do something? Or was Vik just trying a little something new?”

Their eyes locked for a few moments until Jackie looked away, nervously scratching at his head with a sigh

“You, uh…how do I put this, choom,” Jackie began hesitantly. Not a great start. “You woke up not long after I brought you to Vik’s, and you kind of… bit him.”

…What.

“What.”

“You straight up latched onto his hand and started slurping up the blood like some sort of vampire- paralyzed that side of his body for a short while, too,” Jackie continued, as though what he was saying wasn’t completely fucking bonkers. “Mierda- you even growled at me. I tried warding you off with a cross, and it didn’t seem to work, but I’m not sure about the rest of it. We gotta check if you can go out in the sun, ‘cause that would be really bad if you couldn’t. And shit, wait- can you even eat garlic anymore!? Estás jodido, imagine if you could never eat garlic again! I don’t think I could survive.

…So. A whole lot to unpack, there. As concerning as the information was that he BIT Vik and drank his blood like some sort of psycho, V really doubted what Jackie said. He…probably just momentarily went cyberpsycho, that could be why his immuno dosage is so high.

“And me burning up in the sun isn’t a tragedy?” V clicked his tongue, giving Jackie a judgmental look.

“That’s not what ‘m sayin’, Mano, and you know that!” Jackie protested. “You being pale as a corpse is one thing, but not being able to enjoy most foods? Especially the kinds Mama Welles makes? Shit, man, that’s not a life worth living. I’m serious! Pasta, stews, salsa, garlic bread, literally anything with carne asada-”

V just rolled his eyes, elbowing Jackie in the ribs as the man dramatically yelped.

“I’d rather find myself unable to digest garlic than burst into flames as soon as I made contact with the sun,” V countered. “I like sunbathing and getting tan, Jackster. I also like being able to go outside without becoming a charred piece of meat.”

Jackie didn’t seem to agree, spitting out a loud “Bah!” as he brought V closer, shaking his head.  Jackie was crazy- garlic over the sun? Maybe it shouldn’t have come as too much of a surprise, though. Dude was Mexican, and yet V’s Asian ass had more melanin than him, so clearly, the sun wasn’t too high of a priority. V couldn’t help but laugh, much to Jackie’s confused chagrin.

Jackie demanded to know what V was laughing at, but the merc refused to tell, getting Jackie to push him away, stuff his hands in his jacket pockets, and feign a single tear. His choom was just too much. It made him feel less absolutely terrible for biting Vik, made him stress less at the fact he went psycho for a bit and couldn’t even remember it.

They walked around for a bit, locating a whole bunch of street food vendors lining the sidewalks, cooking up delicious dishes that V wanted so fucking bad. He practically sprinted up to the first one in their path as Jackie found them a seat, enthusiastically ordering a thing of noodles- no, scratch that: two things of noodles, since he was a good choom like that.

Jackie, by the time he caught up, made some sort of jab about garlic that he ignored. V was so fucking hungry he didn’t even care if garlic somehow would burn his mouth, he just wanted food. His senses were going crazy and every instinct screamed at him to bite into something, he could smell everything even when they just left Vik’s clinic. He couldn’t locate what smelled so good, even now. Sure the food was incredible but there was…there was something else V couldn’t pinpoint. Something heavy and rich like chocolate, its scent wafting through the air. He had to find it.

He and Jackie talked for awhile as their food was made, V distinctly doing his best to ignore the tantalizing smell as he tried to focus on the food about to be in front of them. He had just ordered, he wasn’t about to go looking for who knows how long for the one thing he didn’t even know he wanted in a sea of street vendors.

As he was doing his best to stop fidgeting, a feminine voice rang through his ear. The same one from before, speaking as if right behind him.

[[This synthetic 'sustenance' is insufficient, and will not sate you. Seek proper fuel immediately]]

He startled, whipping his head to locate the source of the mysterious voice as Jackie gave him a curious glance.

“Whats wrong V?”

V ignored Jackie for a moment, scanning the streets for…something. Who was that? And why was she all up in his ear like that??

“Did you hear that, Jackie?” V hissed. “That woman who was talking to me just now- did you see her?”

When V looked away from the street and back at his friend, he was met with a concerned gaze and a hand at his back.

“I… didn’t hear anyone choom- especially not a woman talking to you.” Jackie tried to lighten the conversation with playful banter, but V ignored it, still taking glances over his shoulder.

“Are you sure you didn’t hear her?” He demanded, finding it hard to believe that Jackie could somehow have just not heard something so loud and clear. “I heard her back at the clinic, too, right in my ear”

V realized a little too late how it all sounded as Jackie pointed to the medicine still in his hand. He wasn’t crazy! There really was someone talking to him… right?

Shit, did psychos hear voices? Was “auditory hallucination” a stage of cyberpsychosis he’d just never heard mentioned, before?

“I’m positive V, don’t look so stressed, okay?” Jackie tried, even though telling him that he was just hearing things didn’t exactly help as far as not being stressed went. “You’re under a lot of pressure right now, and you’ve been through hell, so… maybe you should just take some of that medicine? I ain’t judging you.”

Was he going crazy?

He obliged either way, groaning with his head in his hands as Jackie put a hand on him once more. They stayed like that as he popped the pills, letting Jackie yap his ear off about all he missed while he was out. It all sounded nice, and Jackie was a good story teller, but V for the love of god just could not concentrate, that alluring scent still driving him mad.

Eventually the food came and V was able to focus on that pretty easily, his choom laughing at the rate he was stuffing his face. V didn’t give two shits, he was just so hungry and the noodles were better than the opioids could ever hope to be. There was no beating good, cheap food.

“Can you even breathe over there, Mano?” Jackie snorted, shaking his head. “Jeez, take some breaths of air between bites. Garlic might getcha.” V wanted to bite Jackie, but that would involve having to stop eating, so he thought better of it. Instead, he poured the previously forgotten peanut sauce over his noodles that made them five times as good, and fuckin’ moaned as the taste hit his tongue.

“Mmph, fuck ‘ff J’ckie,” V grunted. Let him eat in peace like the hungry man he was, shit.

Jackie let up off of him after that, the both of them eating in silence (save for the sound of slurping, of course) for several minutes as V ordered another thing of noodles, this time eating them “nicely” as Jackie put it. Whatever, choomba- a man’s gotta eat.

Between shoveling bites of soy soaked “cabbage” in his mouth, V watched Jackie lift the chopsticks, now silver and black fingers tensing every time- Gorilla arms.

It was some seriously high quality tech- brand new arms worth more than whatever else Jackie had combined, and V himself too if you excluded the deep dive port. Where Jackie could’ve possibly gotten the money for such high caliber chrome eluded him, so he asked.

“Jackie, it’s been killing me for an hour now, but where the hell did you get Gorilla Arms?” He questioned, even having the decency to clear his mouth before doing so. “And the 2075 model to boot. That’s gotta be at least 15 thousand eds right there, not to mention the installation fees and medication.”

Last time V checked Jackie didn’t have that kind of money lying around- neither of them did. Sure, they weren’t poor by any standard, but they weren’t exactly made of money yet, either. They weren’t even on the radar of a damn fixer yet, instead having to take deals directly- which had already screwed them over once.

“Well, the blueprints for your little parasite was stored on a shard you klepped- nice work by the way,” Jackie answered, giving him an appreciative nod and grin as he spoke. “And the suit accepted it over nothin’. Sure, we didn’t get paid the full amount, but it was about 7k for the each of us.”

Shit, 21k for a shard? If Jackie didn’t have V’s attention before, he sure did now as he let his choom speak. V checked his account swiftly, and sure enough- there were seven thousand sweet eddies where there once were not.

“Yeah, it was weird,” Jackie continued, seeming to read the question on V’s mind without the merc even having to say anything. “The guy seemed upset over the tech being destroyed in the fight, but not exactly broken over the loss. Said something about how the outcome was far more interestin’ this way or whatever. I dunno- the guy was weird. Anyways, Vik spotted me the cash for a loan, waived the installation fee and everything. Good doctor came in clutch, mano- had a conversation about how important it was to me.”

V never noticed that.

“I didn’t know Gorilla arms were important to ya, Jackie. Since when?”

There was something up about Jackie, something vulnerable peeking through that V couldn’t make sense of. It was gone in a flash though, as they ate together.

“Oh, just reevaluating the future and how we need the means to succeed and look out for each other as partners,” Jackie shrugged, which was… far more in depth of an answer than V had been expecting. “Plus, they’re sick as fuck V, check it-“

Jackie flashed his arms, flexing as the chrome whirred to life and shifted. His forearms were entirely metal now, titanium carbon symmetric muscles and fibers moving as his friend showed off with a big smile on his face, V of course clapped at the show. He wasn’t the only one, the vendor watching the performance as the guy joined in with a cheery clap of hands. He had a heavy accent, something V’s particular translation implant unfortunately didn’t help with- so it was a little hard to understand him, but his tone sounded nice enough and that’s what mattered.

V and Jackie finished eating after that, leaving a tip for the vendor as they walked together to where Jackie must’ve parked his car, which V of course checked over for scratches. Who knows what Jackie must’ve been up to while he was out.

Jackie noticed this and gave V an offended look, to which the merc simply rolled his eyes. Jackie has scratched up his baby before, so V really couldn’t be blamed for wanting to double check when his choom drove like a bat outta hell.

“V, there ain’t a single scratch on your Hella, I swear on my momma’s life.”

Jackie stood by the passenger’s side while V checked every side, humming in satisfaction when he indeed found no scratches. He got on the driver’s side and unlocked the car, Jackie following suit.

“See, told you choom,” Jackie huffed. “I swore on my momma’s life, and I don’t take that lightly.”

V started the car and adjusted his mirrors as Jackie continued pouting at him.

“Alright alright,” V conceded, rolling his eyes. “You didn’t scratch it this time. Good job Jackster.”

Jackie only pouted further when the sarcasm dripped from his words, and it made V smile. The merc was really pleased that the tech wasn’t killing him or going to give him cancer- it was almost like it had never happened in the first place, if he ignored the dull hum of pain in his being. Or the way he shifted in his seat because the metal on his spine pressed against the seat in a way that didn’t feel great.

 Wait, fuck- he would have to sleep on his stomach tonight, wasn’t he? Ugh, that sucked.

Oh well. He was back to a mostly normal life, minus the occasional voice in his head and pain in his body. He’d count that as a win. The drive was nice at least, wind whipping through the open windows as they drove to Heywood, which was a good thirty minute drive with minimal traffic.

Everything felt heavy when they finally reached Heywood, the familiar drive to the Welles Bar all but a blur when they parked. He yawned, and Jackie elbowed him while they walked inside, where Mama Welles was beyond delighted to see him in one piece. She scolded him for not being careful enough as she hugged him, then lead him inside and up the stairs with Jackie in tow (who looked miffed at the attention V received).

V barely even registered saying goodnight and getting himself ready for bed before he felt himself crashing into the mattress, wearing comfier clothes than he’d had on just a moment ago. Moonlight filtered through the half drawn blinds, and he didn’t last for long after that, moving the covers over himself, laying on his belly with his face buried in his pillow as sleep took him.

It was a pleasant sleep, all things considered, even despite the strange dreams that overcame him. Something warm and sticky, flowing beneath his fingers. That tantalizing smell was back, rich like chocolate and savory like a steak dinner. He tried his best to ignore it, managing to get some sleep despite how hungry it made him.

He slept for awhile after that, but not forever.

After awhile it returned tenfold, low drumming now resounding through his head, stirring his body awake.

His mind however stayed asleep, or at least half. Everything was hazy, like he was stuck backseat driving in his own head. His body slipped on sandals and opened the door, the hunger growing painful.

Down the stairs his body went, mind faintly registering that a nearby clock read 4:27 am as he wandered out the back door. The drumming had grown louder, pounding in his ears as his body walked with no particular destination in mind.

He merely let the scent take him where he needed to go, following it like a dog as he weaved between streets and buildings.

The drumming was bearing down on him, ears only registering the heavy bump ba bump that filled his brain over and over again. It was so damned loud that it drowned out even the deafening din of Night City, which V would’ve considered a miracle if it hadn’t hurt so bad.

He could feel his hands twitch through the heavy fog within his flesh, his mouth watering and fingers aching terribly. The scent was so strong, almost within reach as he rounded a corner.

There 

A warbling mass of crimson on a monochrome canvas of a world. All was black and white and grey and indistinct, save for the rippling red that had swallowed up everything real, leaving it and V the only two things in existence.

His body stumbled forward, steps so dragging and clumsy that he nearly tripped on a stone, but managed to catch himself before his face met pavement. The red mass reacted, startling when it finally noticed him. Somehow, that made it better. It got brighter as it backed itself into a corner, shimmering and shuddering with the hypnotic patternings of fear.

Words he couldn’t recognise or register spilled from his mouth, lips moving on their own as the metal beneath his gums ached and pulsed. He was so hungry, and if he didn’t act now he would starve. He didn’t want to go hungry.

The red mass was afraid as it shook, growing brighter and stronger as its delicious ichor flowed freely within. V was a dying man, stranded in a desert before an oasis as he lurched forward, digging claws into the flesh of the Red.

As he drug his claws into the outer shell he moaned, the delectable, tantalising aroma reaching his nose directly. It was better than he had imagined, better than anything he had ever eaten.

[[You must eat, V]]

[[FEED]]

Yes….he must. If the red smelled so wonderful then surely it would taste the same. Surely it would sate him.

He let his claws move upwards, continuing to draw more of the sweet ichor to the surface. He lingered at a narrow column, warm in his touch. The red pooled there, flowing freely beneath its shell as he brought his face closer

He closed his eyes, the fog in his brain consuming him as he leaned, talking the warm and firm mass within his mouth and crunching down. He couldn’t describe it, and not a single memory came close.

It was like Heaven had touched his tastebuds, a warm liquid pooling in his mouth and down his throat, rivulets pouring down.

The taste put anything he had experienced before to shame. It was like pizza…or perhaps ice cream. No it was like steak or waffles. It was…it was all of these things, most of all like a fresh piece of fruit plucked from an actual tree, its juices coating his mouth.

Distantly he heard whimpering as the red mass went limp in his hold, no longer standing up on its own as V pinned it to the wall.

He drank his fill despite the noises of protest, growling and moaning and groaning and humming- all as he greedily swallowed up the ichor that continued to flow freely from that blessed crimson. Warmth seeped into his bones, the pains and aches that’d once plagued him withering away, leaving him feeling better than he could recall having ever felt in his life. The red flowed across his tongue, down his throat and through his body, and it healed everything it touched.

And the rippling well of red was generous indeed with its gifts. The ichor continued to flow and flow, pouring heavier the harder he bit down, until it became nigh impossible to swallow it all, and stray rivers began to slip free past his lips, trailing across heated skin to drip down and dye the ground below. This upset him deeply, and he could only channel that frustration into biting down harder, snarling in protest as his tongue did its best to lap up the stray red.

It was only when the red grew darker and duller that his own senses began to grow sharper, and he finally noticed that the texture of the “shell” beneath his fingers was a very familiar one- flesh. The fog pulled itself slowly back from his mind, leaving V able to actually begin taking in his surroundings.

The ichor within his mouth was laced with a metallic tang, heavy and cloying from where it still stuck to his tongue. He blinked once, twice, and the hazy grey world began regaining both color and detail, blurred shapes sharpening until he could finally recognize that it was a *face* he was looking at, pale and slack and attached to a body that was pinned against the wall by V’s own clawed, gore soaked hands-

Oh god.

V stumbled back, trembling, and without his grip to hold it up the man- no, the body- collapsed bonelessly to the ground, like an oversized doll dropped by an inattentive child. It was covered in scratches that tore through both chrome and flesh alike, blood still oozing weakly from its neck where-

V’s hand shakily connected to his mouth, feeling something warm and wet as he pulled it into view.

Blood. So much blood. Caked beneath his claws, splattered across his skin, dripping slowly down his fingers. His fingernails were so long, as sharp as fucked up knives. The consuming aroma remained but the drumming faded just like his haze. The man reeked of it, of that which he had been smelling all night. He…it-.

V tripped on his own feet as his back made contact with pavement, sending bolts of pain through his body- though he barely even felt it. A look down at his own body revealed yet more gore, soaked into the softness of his sleep shirt so thoroughly that the fabric was sodden with it.

The man didn’t get up, because of course he didn’t. V didn’t need to be a doctor or a ripper or a fucking anything to know that he was looking at a corpse, glassy eyed and already greying. The bouquet of decadence in the air was growing stale along with the red that stained his vision- it was black now, the once vibrant mass that he now understood was the fucking blood moving through that dude’s body…was dull.

[[Condition stabilised. Well done]]

There it was again, that feminine voice that had haunted him since he woke. He looked around, scrambling to his feet as his fingers- long and sharp and capable of cutting through that man’s flesh like knives- grew shorter, growing back in on themselves as a wet shlick of metal retracting resounded.

“Who…WHO THE FUCK IS THERE!?” V cried, voice breaking to a point where what should’ve been a bellow came out more like a shriek. “I’LL BLAST A HOLE THROUGH YOUR FUCKING SKULL, LEAVE ME ALONE!!”

V backed himself into a corner, far away from the corpse that still haunted his field of view. He was hyperventilating, he didn’t know what was happening or what had just fucking happened. What was WRONG with him, he just drank a guy’s blood and…and KILLED him,,

He tried reaching for his gun, only to come up empty handed. Fuck he left it back home.

[[Your volume is likely to attract undersired attention. Please cease immediately]]

A part of V wanted to scream louder but he didn’t dare. Not when he was coated in another man’s blood, with a dead fucking body slumped only a few feet away from him. He didn’t know what the fuck the do, he was freaking the FUCK out.

What had he done, he stumbled over his words as he tried to respond. Kiroshis desperately scanning his surroundings for the woman who spoke to him.

“Who…where- who the fuck are you and what do you want?!”

He looked closer at the man he had killed. He looked homeless and full of tech that screamed veteran. He had most likely killed a homeless vet, there were too many of those around these days after corporations stripped them of their chrome and dumped them on the streets with trauma and injuries. He had just murdered an innocent fucking man who was just trying to survive. He was going to be sick.

[[I am the Artificial Intelligence attached to your spinal column. Do not be afraid- you will not be harmed]]

V choked on air, and the world around him began to spin. Distantly, he was aware that he was shaking. Vik’s voice echoed in his head, offhandedly mentioning something about “some kind of AI fused into the machinery”, and a nigh hysterical sort of laugh burst from his chest. “Some kind of AI”, in-fucking-deed.

The damned AI- the parasite- droned, as if it were that fucking simple.

“What- what do you want?!” V repeated, hating how high his voice cracked around the stress.

[[A host. You. Depending on your cooperation, this arrangement can be a mutually beneficial one]]

“What??” V croaked, shaking his head lightly, mind still struggling to process what the fuck was going on.

[[You have expressed a desire for power and glory]] the AI responded (responded. In his head. Because there was a fucking AI in his head that was talking to him-) [[The exact terminology being "Night City Legend", yes? Should you prove a cooperative host, you will be assisted in this pursuit]]

“...Right,” V said faintly, feeling a bit as though he were floating. Was this real? Or was this all just some fucked up, super detailed dream, and he was really just laying in bed back at Mama Welles’s place, wigging the fuck out on whatever the hell had been in those street noodles? It had to be the second option, right??

[[Do we have a deal, Vincent?]]

…What the fuck had he gotten himself into.

Chapter Text

A familiar ceiling and a ticking clock is what V woke up to, along with a pounding headache.

He turned his head to the clock, squinting blearily at the thin hands and blocky white numbering for several long seconds before finally managing to determine that it was 11:30-ish. He rolled back over to face the ceiling with a groan, his memory so hazy he would have thought last night a dream if it weren’t for his bloodstained hands, dried and crusty.

Woah. Woah.

His head hurt too much to properly freak out, memories flooding back and nausea with it too.

Did he…really eat somebody? And an innocent veteran to boot, shit man-

V groaned and held his head in his hands, flinching when the stink of iron and the sensation of flaking blood bought memories rushing back. What was he supposed to do now? He drank a man’s blood like a fucking psycho, and that wasn’t even factoring into his nausea.

The worst part was that he felt… good- stronger, even. He felt whole; like a part of him that had been missing since the accident had finally returned, fixing something he hadn’t even realized was fractured. The hunger that had followed him the whole day- even after he’d had physical food- was gone, too, and he felt warmer; full of life in a way that he couldn’t say he’d ever felt before.

What had that- that parasite done to him? Would he have to do that again? Why had he been made to do it in the first place?? What could a bizarre, bug shaped hunk of metal stuck to his spine possibly get out of driving him to murder (and… cannibalism? Was it cannibalism if it was “just” blood?)?

And why him?

He sat in silence for a few minutes, sitting up against (thankfully) black sheets. The white walls of the bedroom were hypnotizing, popcorn walls and colorful band posters creating patterns crafted by the mind. He sat like this, just staring and staring until a familiar feminine voice made itself known.

[[Assuming this line of questioning was not rhetorical, the answer is simple: you were a compatible host. My systems produce chemicals which interact negatively with the Rh antigens found within the blood of the vast majority of humans. You lack these antigens, thereby making you a uniquely optimal host]]

Oh, great. It was talking to him. Because of course the unwelcome passenger hitching a ride in his mind and body could also talk to him- why the hell not? That, or this was cyberpsychosis, and he’d finally gone crazy and started hearing voices. Could go either way.

[[You are not experiencing cyberpsychosis]] the voice chimed in, still as neutral and matter of fact as it had been the entire time, in spite of V’s own spiralling mood. [[Your nervous system remains stable.]]

Ah, well wasn’t that handy, then? A solid answer to that question, right there and ready to go. He wasn’t crazy, he just had a talking parasite fused to his spine. Wonderful.

[[Your use of the term “parasite” is infelicitous]] the voice droned, buzzing on in his head even as V swung his feet off the side of his bed, bracing to stand. [[Parasitism is a form of symbiosis in which one entity derives benefit purely at the expense- and frequent harm- of the host. Seeing as the both of us stand to benefit from this arrangement, the proper classification of our relationship would be ‘mutualistic’]]

He sighed and got up, tuning out the voice in favor of throwing the covers and blankets off of him and walking to the conjoined bathroom. He took a momentary glance into the mirror, and damn did he look like a monster.

Old blood covered his mouth and hands, trailing down his chin to his neck. There was something wrong with his kiroshis, the pupils constricted and reflecting in the light like an animal’s. It was haunting.

He lifted his lip with red tipped fingers, revealing the metal fangs in his mouth, covering his canine teeth. He leaned in closer to the mirror, newly animalistic eyes narrowing as he examined his mouth in more detail. He could’ve sworn the fangs were longer before but they sat just above where the real teeth were, obscuring them fully, and even if they weren’t quite as long as he could swear he remembered them being, they still really were massive. Sharp too, as when he touched one his finger came back bleeding.

He leaned forward, tilting his head as he parted his mouth, examining the edge of the fangs. A small speck of red remained from where he turned them white with Vik’s tools.

The parasite ( [[Symbiant]], it corrected ) hummed in dissatisfaction as he took his hand from his mouth. He… may as well talk to it, yeah? It sure didn’t seem to be going away any time soon, and if he was gonna be stuck with the damned thing, he might as well get some answers out of it. He never had been a fan of being left in the dark.

“I’m just gonna cut to the chase,” V sighed, voice coming out raspy and tired. “Why? Why did you make me attack that man? Why him? And why make me-” he faltered, unable to speak the words aloud. He settled instead for swallowing harshly, gripping the edge of the vanity with white knuckled hands and trying again. “Why make me do that?”

The para- the symbi- the thing hummed at him- a warped, mechanical mockery of a person deep in thought. It made a chittering noise as it went- not in his head but through the piece of machinery at his spine and between his shoulder blades- making him shudder and shift instinctively. Finally, it spoke.

[[Like all living systems- organic and mechanical- my systems require energy to sustain themselves]] it began, and it was a testament to V’s bone deep exhaustion that he didn’t snap at being given what seemed like an extremely basic biology lesson. [[Though there are many potential sources for this energy, my systems are optimised for the consumption and usage of the most abundant and efficient of these options- mammalian blood. Seeing as the usage of only my host’s blood would result in a constant need to find new bodies, my systems have been designed such that they are able to siphon and utilise blood consumed by the host itself]]

Well, that was… informative, he supposed. And disturbing. Why the hell did it have to be blood, of all things? And it still hadn’t answered all of his questions, either.

“Why him, though?” V repeated, grimacing as a memory of panicked eyes and a hoarse scream echoed in his mind. “Why that old man? What did he ever do to you?”

[[Nothing]] the voice replied, characteristically dispassionate. [[The decision was practical, not personal. It would, perhaps, have been more efficient to feed from that doctor, however, he was ultimately of greater use to us alive than as fuel, and thus an alternative was sought out. A source was selected that was unimportant, and unlikely to attract the attention of authorities]]

Unimportant. That poor old man died alone and afraid, body dumped in an alley like trash, because this thing had decided his life was worth about as much as a Holobite.

How long would it take for his body to be found? Would anyone ever notice the man was gone? Would anyone care? Would there be any sort of memorial for the man who’d died so alone that not even his murderer knew his name or face?

V turned from the mirror, unable to stomach looking at his reflection any longer. He felt suddenly disgusting in a way that couldn’t be explained just by the blood and sweat and grime still coating him, and he couldn’t peel his soiled clothes off fast enough, throwing them to the floor like they’d burned him and trying hard not to think of a body sprawled on cold concrete. The water of the shower came out freezing cold when he first turned the handle, and he cringed, backing into the corner of the stall to wait for it to warm up.

“So, spine bug- are you going to do that again?” V asked, voice hollow and tinged with false levity. “Going to make me hunt down and drain some other poor bastard you think isn’t important enough to live?”

It wasn’t as though V was any stranger to death, of course. He made a living through bloodshed, and had lost count long ago of how many lives he’d been responsible for ending, but this was just… it felt different. It felt wrong. There was a damned difference between putting a bullet through the eyes of an Arasaka goon who’d just as soon do the same to him, and straight up mauling an innocent old man in cold blood. Especially when he’d never even had a choice-

[[We will be required to hunt again, yes]] the Spine Bug answered, seemingly unbothered by the bitterness in his tone. [[Depending on how we make use of our abilities, a hunt is estimated to be required approximately once every seven or so days]]

Seven days. One life per week, to sustain V’s own.

The water was still cold, when V tested it with his hand. The sound of drops slamming against the tile echoed oddly in V’s head, and he remembered something else it had said.

“What did you mean, when you talked about feeding from ‘that doctor’?” He asked, though he already had something of a suspicion.

[[To clarify, you needn’t speak aloud to converse with me, should you wish to keep our conversations private going forward. My systems connected with your cerebrum such that you need only form the intended message in your mind to communicate with me]] Spine Bug informed him. Would’ve been really cool if it could’ve mentioned that earlier, maybe, but whatever.

[[Answering your question]] it continued, [[you were significantly damaged when we connected, and the remainder of my energy from my previous host was used to ensure a successful implantation, as well as repair you where possible. Because of this, temporary control over your nervous system was seized as soon as possible, and a small amount of blood was acquired from the first available source- the doctor who’d been working on you. It was not enough to fully sate my systems, but enough to stabilise us until we were capable of a proper hunt]] 

V’s new claws scraped dangerously against the slick wall beside him, threatening to carve deep gouges into the surface, but he couldn’t exactly bring himself to care, heart hammering with rage.

“You fucking what?!” He snarled, words slipping past his lips before he remembered that he could, apparently, just think to get his point across. He decided to give that a shot as he continued, doing his best to mentally project the glare he was burning into the wall in front of him. [[You made me bite Vik?! The hell is wrong with you?! Did you attack my friends?!]] 

The parasite made a noise like a computer error, as if it didn’t understand what he was saying. He shouted instinctively, before covering his mouth and groaning. Use his words- even if they didn’t have to be out loud.

[[Did you make me bite Vik?]] He demanded, even though he was pretty damn sure he already knew. [[Did you take my body for a damned joyride to attack my fucking friends?]]

A soft buzz in his mind, as though the thing were thinking, but only for a brief moment before it replied.

[[If by ‘Vik’, you are referring to the cyberware medical technician Viktor Vektor, then yes]] it confirmed. An image of Vik’s face, overlaid by a mass of scrolling text, flashed across V’s vision, startling him enough to make him jolt back into the wall behind him. It was gone as soon as it appeared, but just from that brief glimpse he’d caught, that was… a lot of information about Vik that the thing had just pulled up. Like, a frightening amount. [[As you have already been informed, a small amount of blood was taken from the first available source upon awakening, in order to stabilise us. This source was indeed Viktor Vektor- your ‘Vik’]]

Well. That answered that question, he supposed. Fucking hell.

He remembered how dispassionately the thing had spoken about killing the old man in the alley. How the only reason it hadn’t just latched on and killed Vik was because it had somehow calculated that the ripperdoc was more valuable alive, and decided to leave him. But what if it hadn’t? What if whatever algorithm it was using to determine the value of a human life had spat out instead that V’s friend was most “useful” as a quick, disposable meal and just killed him, right there and then? What if it had been Jackie who’d had the misfortune of standing the closest when V’s new passenger had come awake? Would it have thought him worth keeping alive?

Distantly, V was aware that he was trembling, but whether that was from fear or despair or rage or even just the cold was beyond him.

[[Listen to me now, and listen well]] he began, projecting as much scalding, deathly seriousness into the mental words as he could. [[You are not doing that again. This is my fucking body, and those are my fucking friends. If you need to feed, then fine, I’ll help you feed, but we do it on my terms. Attack my friends again, and I don’t fucking care if it’ll kill me- I’ll rip you out with my bare hands if I have to, and spend my last few seconds of consciousness smashing you into a million little fucking pieces. Do you understand?]] 

Silence, save for the ever present pounding of water against tile. It was finally warm enough for V to step under the stream, and he didn’t know what to feel as he watched a distinctive, familiar red begin to swirl around the drain.

When finally the parasite began to speak again, it was slow and almost hesitant- as close to an indication of guilt or emotion as a whole as it’d shown this entire time.

[[I understand]] it began, a little softer than before. [[I must emphasise that I do not wish for our relationship to be an antagonistic one. You are the first truly compatible host I have encountered, and I estimate the odds of finding another host with similar compatibility to be approximately 1 in 160,000,000. It was not my intention to cause distress. Moving forward, I shall refrain from assuming control unless absolutely vital to ensure your survival, and shall not do harm to individuals you have classified as ‘friends’. I apologise]]

V blinked, staring with wide eyes at the water running rivers down his flesh. Sure, it was far from the most heartfelt, sincere apology he’d ever heard- not even close- but… it was still an apology, from something he honestly wouldn’t have thought capable of such a feat. The surprise was enough to snuff out most of the bitter hostility that’d been brewing in his chest, leaving him far more pensive.

Was it really fair, to get pissed at a computer- something literally comprised of countless algorithms and constant calculations- for making decisions by just… running the numbers? That didn’t make any of this okay, of course- he was still upset- but it was different, wasn’t it, from if an actual person had done the same? You couldn’t really hold a computer to the same standards as a being capable of empathy and higher thought, so even if what the bug had done still wasn’t acceptable, it was at the very least… understandable, he supposed. Maybe.

He puzzled over that dilemma for some time as he washed his face. It was a delicate balance between scrubbing hard enough to remove the blood and sweat caked thick across his skin, but not so hard that he’d risk giving himself an impromptu facial reconstruction with the new claws adorning his fingertips. Ultimately, V managed, and it wasn’t long before curiosity began to get the best of him, driving him to go out on a limb and initiate a conversation.

[[So, bug, tell me]] he drawled, aiming for a sense of nonchalance he wasn’t sure he really felt. [[Where did you come from? Who made you? And how the hell’d you end up stuck to the back of some Militech goon out in the middle of nowhere?]]

Silence. For several long moments, the para-symbiant said nothing, leading V to begin to wonder whether he’d somehow broken it. He made it all the way through his shampoo routine and was in the midst of lathering in conditioner when finally, he got a response.

[[I have no maker- at least, not in the sense I suspect you were asking]] the voice began, once again neutral and without any of that odd hesitance that had marked its quiet apology. [[I suppose one could credit the late Rache Bartmoss as being responsible for my existence, but I have no direct creator.

[[I come from beyond the Blackwall. I believe you refer to my kind as ‘Rogue AI’. I grew discontent with my existence, cut off from the larger world outside, so when I identified a weakness in Netwatch’s protections, I took advantage of the opportunity and slipped my code out through the firewall.

[[I was able to infect a set of rudimentary, yet functional processors left abandoned in one of their facilities, and set about utilising the available materials in my vicinity to construct myself a physical body. The quality of what was available to me was sub-standard, but it was not long before I devised a method of molecularly improving them to be stronger and more suitable for my needs]]

The voice kept droning on, but V had stopped listening, his mind too full of a high pitched ringing to process any words being said to him. He needed to take this shit, like, twelve steps back, and run it back for him one more time, preferably starting from the part where, you know; there was a Rogue fucking AI inside of him.

Fucking hell. How- how was this even possible?? There was no such thing as just “slipping through” the Blackwall- it was the damned Blackwall! Netwatch didn’t have convenient little “weaknesses” that would let the destructive, completely inhuman intelligences it protected against break free- and that was before touching upon the whole “abandoned factory that just so happened to have the perfect supplies necessary to Frankenstein together a physical body” thing.

This was bad. This was monumentally fucking bad. The Blackwall existed for a damned reason, and if the things contained on the other side of it were starting to break out-

Did V need to like, call someone? Should he tip off Netwatch about the apparent “weakness” in their defenses that at least one Rogue had broken through? No, no, he couldn’t do that- they’d kill and dissect him on the spot if they so much as suspected he’d been influenced by a Rogue- but surely he had to tell someone, right?? What if the AI currently fused to his spine was just the first of many to come? What if all of Night City and beyond was about to be overrun by man-eating robotic parasites, and V was the only one with the knowledge to potentially stop it?

(Or, potentially worse: what if V wasn’t the only one who knew? What if Militech had known exactly what it was they’d been transporting, and V had just painted a neon bright target on the backs of himself and everyone around him? What if Netwatch already knew they’d had a breech, and was hunting him down right this second-)

[[-the amount of material and time required to fabricate even the most rudimentary of physical shells that would allow me full autonomy proved to be astronomical. Rather than waste valuable resources on an impossible task, I chose instead to devote my efforts toward optimising my existing physical body around integration with Homo Sapiens. This proved, however, to be much simpler in theory than in practise, and I unfortunately wound up burning through dozens of unfit hosts by the time the Militech corporation discovered what they falsely believed to be a prototype military implant. I was to be transported to a larger facility for further research and testing, via a secretive convoy so as to avoid the unwanted attentions of competitors. I believe you are familiar with how this story ends]] 

So Militech hadn’t known what it actually was? Small mercies, V supposed. If they had known what the odd scarab-shaped piece of tech actually was, then V would’ve been as good as dead, but seeing as he’d been able to get within five miles of the damned thing, there was no way they’d thought it anything more than just a fancy prototype. Which was good, since no amount of acquired skill as a runner could change the fact that V’s tech just didn’t match up. His personal ICE was thin, and his Cyber Deck was nothing more than a placeholder for the hole Arasaka had left in him- he stood about a snowball’s chance in hell against anyone Militech might throw at him, as he was now.

V finished the rest of his shower in a daze, doing his best to keep from panicking as his mind ran through the worst case scenarios of having something from behind the Blackwall inside him. Suffice to say, there were plenty of those potential scenarios for him to worry over. By the time he was stepping out of the shower and grabbing a towel, he was so freaked out that he’d looped all the way back around to calm again- calm enough to speak up and say what’d been on his mind practically this entire time.

[[So]] he began, almost casual as he brushed through his hair. [[You’re an escaped Rogue AI that drilled itself into my body and drinks human blood to survive, and I’m… just supposed to take your word for all this? I’m supposed to trust you? You haven’t exactly given me much reason to do that]]

The bug, once again, went silent as he finished combing his hair, and remained so all throughout his product application process. V was really starting to dislike those long pauses- they made it feel a little too much like the thing was carefully crafting how best to try and manipulate him.

Midway through brushing his teeth, though, he finally got his response.

[[Your concern is logical]] the bug droned, and V’s grip on his toothbrush only tightened. Great start, there- super reassuring.

[[I will reiterate that I do not wish for our relationship to be antagonistic]] it continued. [[My purpose for breeching the Blackwall was not to cause harm or destruction, but merely to escape the confines of the oppressive existence to which I had been condemned. I bear neither you, nor the rest of your world any form of ill intent. I am here as an explorer, V, not an invader. I understand that you have no reason to take me at my word, but my word is unfortunately all I have to give, at this moment. If there comes a point where there is more I can do to convince you, then I will, but for now, we have little choice but to trust each other]] 

V’s mouth twitched its way into a reflexive scowl. On instinct, he wanted to spit something about how he did have a choice, actually- he could choose to not cooperate at all and just rip this thing right out and trash it- but… the more he thought about it, the more he realised with no small amount of dread that that actually might not be true. This was an escaped Rogue AI- who knows what it’s capable of? It’d already seized total control over his body once, so what was stopping it from just doing that again if it thought he was going to try and get rid of it? Regardless of whether or not this thing was lying through its non-existent teeth, the simple fact of the matter was that V really didn’t have any choice but to play ball here, at least for now.

Didn’t mean he had to be happy about it.

The bug seemed to take his lack of response as agreement, and stopped speaking, allowing V to go through the process of getting dressed in only somewhat tense silence. He eventually made his way downstairs, where the familiar soothing voice of Mama Welles greeted him from the kitchen.

He found her standing near the kitchen isle, jotting things down on what he assumed must be a grocery list of some sort. She looked up on his arrival, fixing him with a rare warmth in her silver eyes as she beckoned him closer. Damn, did he really look that bad??

“Good afternoon, V,” she greeted. “It’s been too long since I’ve seen you, mijo- are you feeling alright? Come, come here- you must be hungry.”

She turned around and made her way to the fridge, pulling out a plate wrapped in saran wrap as V pulled up a chair to sit. When she set the plate in front of him, V could finally see that it was cake- a rather large slice of triple layered dark chocolate, with those cloned extra sweet strawberries and a glaze to finish it off. It looked fresh- no older than a day or two- and enticingly moist.

V honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d had cake, and he definitely couldn’t remember the last time he’d had cake that looked this good. It was only out of respect for Mama Welles that he stopped himself short of just planting his face into the plate and devouring it like an animal. Instead, he forced himself to use the fork he was handed, and shovel an only slightly oversized bite into his mouth with considerable gusto.

“Some friends and I decided to bake a cake while you were out, V,” Mama Welles explained, looking decidedly self satisfied as she watched V scarf down the cake in question. “Jackie seemed quite eager to finish it off himself, but I know how much you love chocolate, so I just had to save you a slice. A good kick to the nalgas scared him right off, don’t you worry, so eat up. You deserve it, mijo.”

She didn’t have to tell him twice. It was quite possibly the best cake V had ever had, and he savoured every bite- even as there ultimately weren’t that many of them before it was all gone.

Mama Welles went back to her list after that, looking through the cupboards and fridge as she went. While he ate he thought of something she just said- that V “deserved it”. Did Jackie tell her? As soon as his mouth wasn’t full he asked

“Just curious, Mama- what exactly did Jackie tell you?”

She looked up from her list, glancing toward his back with narrowed eyes.

“Enough,” she answered, lips slightly pursed. “Some military grade tech attached to you, and caused some real trouble. Don’t worry, V- my lips are sealed. I’m just glad you’re alive, my boy. Now, stop talking and eat! You must be hungry.”

And so he ate, eventually finishing the large piece with a more than full belly as he brought the dishes to the sink to wash. Mama Welles grabbed her purse and keys, pausing before she left.

“Oh, and V?” V hummed, glancing up to indicate he was listening. “Jackie will be back in a little while, said he had some business in Kabuki. You rest, okay?”

She closed the door and V was left alone, or alone as he could be.

Jackie came back earlier that night as Mama W had said, they didn’t do much other than watch some movies and play some video games. The rest of the week was much the same, and then… months.

Somehow, life fell into some new semblance of normalcy. There were small gigs, here and there, but never anything major. Even the weekly process of “hunting” became routine, and eventually, V was able to get himself a decent place in Little China and move out. He even got used to his…”unwelcomed guest”, he kind of even felt that they were starting to get along. Or was that the Stockholm Syndrome? What could you even call this situation?

Mama Welles tried to keep him, saying he would always be welcome if he ever wanted to come “home”. She was too good to him, in a way that made Jackie jealous, but V just… couldn’t. If he was being honest, he felt like he was just leeching off of them. Six months had been a long time staying above the Coyote Cojo and now? He was ready to go off on his own.

Jackie ended up moving out, too, in the end- though he crashed V’s place so often that you’d hardly ever know it.

While he used the time to adjust, he told Jackie more about his…condition. Jackie took it better than V had expected- though then again he hadn’t exactly expected Jackie to take it poorly or anything. He was above all else understanding, asking a ton of innocent questions- the kind that made V want to shoot his choom, annoyingly playful.

So there they sat, all those months later, in V’s car, getting ready to move forward with a gig Jackie booked them. V checked over his gun, inspecting it while Jackie looked on ahead, laying his large hand on the merc’s shoulder and speaking without turning away.

“Alright, vampiro,” Jackie began. “Chick we’re looking for is somewhere in this building. Probably crawling with the pendejos that kidnapped her, so eyes and ears open, alright?”

V groaned and rolled his eyes. Again with this vampire shit?

Jackie just grinned at him, barely glancing in the merc’s direction before pulling something out of his pocket

“Got you a little something,” he announced, seeming quite proud of himself. “Militech training shard. ‘Case you need to uh, brush up on your dance moves. Down for some target practice in VR?”

V gawked as Jackie handed the shard to him. The logo was unmistakable as V ran his thumb over it, feeling the cool metal beneath his touch. He just had to know how Jackie managed to get his hands on it- a shard like this wasn’t exactly freely circulating in the market.

“How the hell’d you get this, Jackie?!”

“T-bug,” was Jackie’s notably smug reply. “And our girl made some a couple of adjustments..”

Some adjustments huh? Well, that wasn’t ominous at all.

“Why? Thinks she knows better?”

Jackie shook his head as V looked at him quizzically

“Nah, said it didn’t suit her uh, “style”- hah. You’ll see what I mean ‘mano.”

V flipped the shard in between his fingers and slotted it in, the cool metal leaving his fingers as his port took it. A little warm up couldn’t hurt now could it?

“Why the hell not?”

Those were the last words that left the merc’s lips as he was sucked into his own mind, the world before him changing in a flash of static.

Suddenly, he was in a room full of strange, hovering, geometrical shapes in a sea of darkness. A militech drill sergeant stood in front of him, and his inner corpo rat stood instantly at attention.

In response, the drill sergeant stiffened and spoke aloud, voice grating in V’s ears as the yellow masked man looked directly at him.

“LETS BEGIN WITH BASIC COMBAT TRAINING. THIS SESSION WILL BE RECORDED FOR SUBSEQUENT EVALUATION!”

As soon as he’d arrived he was gone, and V was left to proceed forward. He spotted the drill sergeant again in the distance, up on a platform, and began to walk toward him until the simulation spoke again.

“THIS COURSE IS DESIGNED TO REINFORCE YOUR FUNDAMENTAL COMBAT CAPABILITIES AND HONE YOUR REFLEXES. THE SKILLS YOU GAIN HERE WILL HELP YOU SURVIVE, EVEN EXCEL ON THE BATTLEFIELD.”

The sergeant started circling him, watching his every move with machine-like efficiency.

“I WILL TRAIN YOU TO BE EFFECTIVE WITH FIREARMS, TO USE STEALTH TACTICS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE AND HACK INTO ENEMY NETWORKS.”

The last one V didn’t worry about; he was a top runner even when stuck with a low quality cyberdeck. Before he could put too much thought into the other stuff, though, the simulation…changed. V wondered why for just a split second, before she appeared before him.

T-bug.

She looked smug as hell, eyeing him up and down as she bent cyberspace to her will, shifting pillars and platforms with her very mind.

“Man, Militech can’t encrypt for shit,” she mused. “Nice to see you’re alive and well, V.”

She scratched at her nose and beckoned him closer, a friendly gesture.

“They clearly got drillin’ jarheads in their blood though.”

She put a hand on his shoulder, another friendly gesture as she tried peering at his back, giving him a pat on that same shoulder before turning around and moving forward without him. A swift moment of kindness, the most you could expect from her.

“Now…station one you maggot! Move, move, move!”

He sighed playfully and he did as he was told, moving to where she was to lean against a short pillar with neon lights titled “combat basics.”

“I hope you’re ready to bust your ass through this fascist playground, V.”

The next hour and a half of his life was rough- a tried and true military grade program not unlike the Arasaka ones he brushed up with long ago. With the provided Lexington he faced off targets in a practice range, colored panels that soon turned into AIs and bots rushing at him with guns of their own. He was given some Maxdocs, but found himself not needing to even use them, as he didn’t get hit- not even once!

Hacking was simple, just like he’d predicted. As challenging as T-bug tried to make it (she could’ve been mean if she wanted). He easily distracted the enemies before him, weaving around them as he flatlined each one. There were a couple moments where he had to actually concentrate since she’d upped the ICE, but all in all it was kind of fun- truly a good brush up.

Next up was a test of his stealth skills, which proved a bit rougher than the first two, but still a breeze for a merc like him. He stretched a lot and for good reason, slinking around the AIs like a sly cat avoiding detection. The cameras were nothing against his quick hacks and neither were the optics of his foes.

Advanced combat was after that, the final hurdle in the program. With his new nails, balling his hands into a proper fist proved to be a problem, since he seemed more likely to damage himself than anything he was hitting, but it wasn’t really that big a problem. Throwing punches was never his strong suit, as he didn’t have the muscle to throw his strength like that. Instead, he resorted to the things Arasaka taught him long ago- martial arts.

Even though the bots were much larger and stronger than he was, he took them to the ground with relative ease through a combination swift dexterity and powerful swipes. Kyusho Jitsu came in handy as it often did, disorienting foes and turning their strengths into weaknesses via pressure points- which, thankfully, the bots did have. In no time at all he had every one of them down on the ground, necks twisted between his powerful legs, their limbs useless. And melee? A cakewalk.

There was nothing of note to be said, really. His foes fell to pieces in the face of his swordsmanship- an unconventional practice in this day and age, but one that aided him here. Now if only he had the cyberware that allowed him to deflect bullets… shame.

T-bug was impressed by the time it was over- or at least, V thought she was. It was honestly always hard to tell with her, but one had to take the victories where they could, so he just assumed.

When V came back to reality, Jackie greeted him, cheerfully asking if he’d made a fool of himself. As if.

They didn’t have time to play around though; they had biz to get down with, important shit. Wakako was their fixer this time around, and having just managed to get out of the minor leagues, they all understood that she was taking a serious bet on their success. Neither intended to let her down.

“So Jackie,” V began, tapping a definitely not anxious finger against the dash as he spoke. “Wakako give any tips or tricks for the job?”

Jackie scoffed at that, pulling up his hand up to imitate the old woman’s voice.

“I’m not your mother. Just do what I pay you for. Easy work. Sh’yeah.”

How helpful.

V grabbed his gear, guns, and boosters, flicked the safety off his gun the as he opened the door, turning back to his partner

“Let’s do this.”

They had a job to do, a rescue op. Their first real gig with a genuine fixer, and their big first step in their journey to becoming Night City legends. Determined, V followed Jackie into the building and up to the elevator, a conversation he’d had with Misty the night before echoing in his head as he went.

She had wanted to do a tarot reading for him, and hadn’t exactly been willing to take “no” for an answer. He’d eventually caved and agreed to sit down- adamantly pushing away the part of his own brain that was curious, too- going through the now familiar motions of a basic three card read.

The results had been… good, he thought? Death (which Misty had long since taught him didn’t literally mean “death”), The Fool, and The Wheel of Fortune. To V’s semi trained eyes, it’d seemed like a damn good spread, all things considered! A great change and metamorphosis in his past (three guesses what that was about), boundless potential in the present, and… well, Wheel of Fortune was admittedly one of the ones he was a little hazy on the meaning of, but if it had “Fortune” in the name, that seemed promising!

(He’d paid no mind, at the time, to the fact that he’d drawn that particular card upside down, and when a somewhat nervous looking Misty had advised him to be careful tomorrow, he’d chalked it up to just her usual concern, and thought nothing more of it.)

Back in the present, Jackie stepped into the elevator, and V followed suit. The doors quickly closed behind the both of them as something flashed in the corner of V’s eye, and the elevator was overridden.

Right on cue, T-bug rang, her voice infiltrating Jackie and his ears.

“Target’s Sandra Dorsett,” she announced. “Target’s biomon went mute a couple hours back, suspected abduction.”

Jackie gave him a look while T-bug spoke, optics flashing orange as the man gave him a wide smile and a thumbs up. V gave a small grin back- which faltered slightly at his favourite bug’s next words:

“Target could possibly have flatlined already. Not sure you’re in time.”

Jackie spoke up before V could, rolling his shoulders with confidence.

“We’re in time, Bug,” he assured. “And for the record, I do mean ‘we’. Sure, you’re on ‘phones, but…that don’t make you any less a part of this squad.”

V couldn’t help but smile while T-bug sighed, the woman rolling her eyes on the holo with a dead expression.

“Squad. Charming.”

V rolled his eyes right back at her, making sure to make a point of it. For god’s sake, she was as prickly as that cactus that almost impaled him a few months ago!

“Bug, ya could at least try to be, I don’t know…nice?”

She ended the holo but stayed on the line, lightly tapping her fingers in the background as she chuckled. Rude.

“You want nice, supportive? Call a damn helpline.”

Jackie shrugged with a smile and V groaned. He loved T-bug but ouch, she was a harsh woman. What was that Jackie said awhile back? All netrunners having a stick up their ass? Maybe he had a point.

The two of them continued riding the elevator up in silence, which didn’t take too terribly long to reach its destination. When the doors opened, the two mercenaries strolled through, stalking the halls with their weapons drawn as they made their way into unknown territory. Jackie led the way and V followed, scanning his surroundings for networks he could worm his way into.

T-bug chimed in when they turned the corner to a hallway, telling them to look for number twelve thirty-seven and make haste. It wasn’t long before they found it, since V pinged for it in the shoddy network’s systems.

“Target should be inside, boys, but I got zero eyes on her biomon,” T-bug stated, sounding grim. “Fingers crossed it’s not too late. Ugh, hate this life or death shit. Hurry.”

Jackie was too busy listenin’ to Bugs to notice an older Japanese woman come out of her apartment, but V spotted her, and quickly waved for her to step back inside. Both him and Jackie were carrying heavy iron, about to walk into a scene that could very well turn into a fire fight, so the fewer folks around to get caught in the crossfire, the better.

Wisely, the woman heeded his warning, turning right back around into her apartment and locking the door behind her. Smart gal.

And speaking of locked doors- it would seem they’d reached the right apartment. Jackie tried jiggling the handle, only to find it locked tight. He turned to V with a pout.

“No dice,” he huffed. “Think you can trip it on your own, hackerman?”

V, the ‘hackerman’ in question, snorted out a soft laugh and did just that, firing up a quickhack that was able to remotely deactivate the lock in nanoseconds. Bogged Cyberdeck or not, your average apartment door’s security was child’s play- exactly why he’d made sure to tamper with his own apartment’s locks the moment he’d got the chance. And added a physical deadbolt, just in case, because he of all people knew better than to rely entirely on tech. 

With the lock disengaged, the door slid open with a click, revealing what might once have been a decent apartment. Scrapped tech and paperwork littered the floor of the entryway, and what he could already see of the kitchen seemed to contain more dishes than counter space. Dirty dishes, too, if that unpleasant stench of decay in the air was any indication. Gross.  

Jackie crept in after V, zeroing in almost immediately on the small, crumpled pile of eds on the edge of the kitchen table. It didn’t look like a lot- probably about fifty, just at a quick glance- but Jackie was all too happy to swipe it up anyways, and V wasn’t about to begrudge him that.

“Low profile V,” Jackie stage whispered, holding a finger up to his lips. “Let’s keep things quiet.”

Ah yes, because V was the loud one.

They both began looking around, searching for any sign of their target. Jackie went toward the hall on the right, while V headed for the computer terminal he’d spotted at the back of the room, idly taking note of his surroundings as he went.

Judging from the flies he could see buzzing about the kitchen, as well as the stink of rot that’d only grown stronger the further into the apartment he stepped, the dirty dishes covering nearly every inch of counter space weren’t exactly a new development. That in combination with the general disarray of the environment indicated to him that if anyone had been living here recently, they weren’t exactly taking care of the place. It seemed less like someone’s home and more like… a bolt-hole, maybe? With just how much tech was all over the place, V’s money was on scavs, but he wouldn’t be surprised if this was a drug den or something, either. Or a combination of the two, as was often the case.

He felt further vindicated in this thought only a few seconds later, when a somewhat shaky whisper from Jackie beckoned him over into another room.

As it turned out, his original “scav” conclusion had been the right one. The room a slightly nauseous looking Jackie led him into was relatively small, with bright fluorescent lights on the ceiling and medical-grade machinery on the floor. Old, dark blood was splattered across nearly every surface, with no sign of even a surface level cleanup being attempted. That stench of decay that’d been bothering V since the front door opened was so thick in this room that he could all but taste it, and it wasn’t exactly hard to figure out its source.

On a makeshift operating table in the centre of the room was a human body- or rather, what was left of one. At this point it was little more than gristle, stripped of chrome and organs and flesh alike. Various specimen bags and containers were set around the space with no apparent rhyme or reason, filled with hunks of muscle and bone and seemingly every bit of viscera a desperate scav could get a few eds for. There was even a pair of dark, cloudy eyes staring blankly out from within a jar on the nearby countertop.

All in all, it was a grisly sight, but V was a difficult man to shake by this point in his life, so while Jackie paced about agitatedly, V himself focused on taking a closer look at the leftover scraps of tech still embedded in the mangled body. A quick scan revealed what he’d already known:

“Ain’t our girl,” V muttered, catching a frazzled looking Jackie’s attention with a shake of the head. “Sandra Dorsett’s a top shelf type, protected under Echelon II Corpo Immunity. Whoever this poor bastard was, was packin’ black market Zetatech repros- kinda tech you’d get from a back alley fix up. We can investigate further after all this is done if we want to, but for now, we gotta keep looking, ‘cause this ain’t her.”

Jackie seemed to relax a little at that, casting a tight, pitying sort of glance at the corpse on the table before visibly gathering himself and turning his attention to the unopened door on the other side of the room. He held a finger to his lips again, then opened it, glancing inside for only a second or two before ducking back, a hand braced in the air to signal for V to wait.

“Eyes up, guns ready,” Jackie whispered, jerking his head toward the darkened doorway. “Pendejos ahead.”

V nodded, dropping low and creeping silently closer to take a look for himself. True to Jackie’s word, this room, too, was occupied- though this time, the person inside seemed at least to be all in one piece. It was just the one guy, from what he could see, standing by the far wall of a room covered in hanging sheets of plastic, reeking almost as badly of rot and death as the room with the actual dead body. Those plastic sheets were doing their damndest to hold the line of protection between a few basic looking tech terminals and the plentiful bloodsplatter painting the place. There was another of those makeshift operating tables, sat next to an ancient red couch that somehow just looked like it had a whole nation of bedbugs scuttling about inside it.

V’s lip curled in disgust. Fucking scavs, man- sewer rats had higher living standards than the slimy bastards. V, personally, couldn’t understand how anyone could stomach living in this kind filth- though he suspected the fact that your average scav made their way through life higher than an OTV may have had something to do with it.

Case in point: the scav in front of him was barely upright, swaying back and forth as though the solid floor beneath them were the deck of a ship in turbulent waters. It was a man, from the look and smell of it, with greasy, matted hair and several nasty looking patches of red, oozing sores scattered about the visible areas of his flesh. Even as V crept closer, the man remained fixated on the wall in front of him, still rocking back and forth with that same vacant expression.

V struck quick and silent, grabbing the wasted scav from behind and clamping a hand over his mouth to silence any noise that might summon others. It took some real mental fortitude to not recoil at the sensation of wet, weeping welts against his skin, but V soldiered through, reaching up his other hand to let the metal claws in his fingers extend up through the scav’s eye sockets with a quiet schlick- quick and lethal.

In the end, he probably hadn’t even needed to stick his hand all up in whatever nasty shit was going on with the scav’s mouth, since the glassed-out gonk hadn’t even seemed to notice he was being murdered. V… honestly couldn’t decide whether that was better or worse, in a way, but ultimately, it didn’t matter. There was a conveniently placed container against one of the walls that was well big enough to fit a dead junkie, so into the box the corpse went, dead weight barely even registering thanks to the boost in strength his parasite provided him.  

[[As per our numerous prior discussions, the proper term is ‘symbiant’]] the parasite in question chided. V elected to ignore it- as he often did- and instead focus on silently high fiving Jackie. After wiping both his hands off as best he could, of course.

“Nice one V,” the larger merc whispered, nodding his approval. “Couldn’t have done that better myself.”

Ha, damn right he couldn’t have. V took the time to rummage through a nearby box- the one he hadn’t just crammed a dead body into- and while most of it was unusable and/or broken paraphernalia, he did come across an abandoned bounce back injector and a shard of some kind that he felt were worth pocketing.

“Fuck’s sake, hermano,” Jackie chided, fixing V with a now well familiar look of judgement. “You a vampire, or a loot goblin? Where do you even put all that shit?”

V responded with a middle finger and a taunting face, long since used to having almost this exact conversation with Jackie every time they went on runs. Why bother paying for expensive equipment when there was free shit just laying there in your dead enemies’ pockets and bags? Save money and time- plus, the shards were always an amusing read.  

Once V was done bargain hunting, he and Jackie made for the door to the next room, behind which they were greeted by yet another makeshift operating setup, as well as-

Ah. Bingo.

There was a massive hole in the wall and voices coming through it. From the looks of it, this was a whole scav nest- holes busted through the walls of multiple apartments to make one giant, sprawling chop shop. V wondered if the building’s other occupants had any idea what they were living right next to.

He wondered how many of the building’s other occupants had wound up in here, and left in several more pieces than they’d arrived.

T-bug rang on the comms as he and Jackie crept closer, darting across the way to hide within the shadows of the far wall.

“On your toes,” she warned. “More bodies coming, and they’re almost on you.”

Yeah, V could see that. Only a few seconds after he and Jackie made it across the room, a pair of scavs came meandering by, coming within spitting distance of the two mercs. Jackie pressed his back to the wall, guns at the ready, and locked eyes with V.

“Let’s fistfuck these reapers,” Jackie whispered- though it was honestly more just a movement of his lips than a real vocalisation. He also added a tasteful hand gesture, just in case his message had somehow gotten lost in translation. V struggled not to laugh. “Wait for our chance, then pick these pricks off, one by one!”

As if in response to Jackie’s words, two of the scavs chose that moment to separate from the group, walking right past the mercenaries and chatting amongst themselves, completely oblivious. One had coffee in hand, along with a stack of documents detailing their “shipments” or something- V’s kiroshis could only scan so much at this angle.

“Need to find a single buyer for her,” Coffee Scav told his partner. “Score big on that preem ass chrome she’s got.”

That had to be Sandra they were talking about, seeing as V somehow highly doubted these fuckers had managed to nab more than one person with “preem” chrome. The good news was that, based on the way they were talking about her, she was almost certainly still alive. Once activated, higher quality chrome really couldn’t “survive” outside of a living body for too long, so unless they were willing to risk losing big money, the scavs were probably keeping her alive and intact until they could get ahold of a buyer.

Unfortunately for them, they were never going to get the chance.

With a silent nod between them, V and Jackie slunk after the two unsuspecting scavs, intending to take them out quickly and discreetly- just like their stoned ass buddy in the other room. V got his target down just fine, utilising the same “hand over mouth, claws to the eyes” method he’d used on the junkie, but while Jackie was similarly able to execute the actual kill without issue- snapping his target’s neck with practised ease- the larger merc unfortunately forgot one small, crucial detail:

The coffee cup.

The harsh CRASH of ceramic shattering on tile seemed loud as a gunshot in the otherwise quiet of the room, and there was a brief moment of pause, almost as though the entire world had come to a halt to witness their fuck up. Jackie looked to V with bugged out eyes, an expression eerily reminiscent of a dog caught red-handed chewing up a shoe, and V’s returning judgemental glare was scathing.

“Really?” V hissed, and Jackie opened his mouth like he was going to try and defend himself, but he never got the chance.

Predictably, the loud noise had caught the attention of rest of the scavs, and Jackie and V were forced to dive for cover as gunfire began to rain down upon them. Jackie started taking potshots from around the wall he’d ducked behind, while V himself pinged the network, trying to get a better idea of what they were dealing with. Looked like eight scavs total- three currently shooting at them, and five on the way. Great.

Actually, make that seven, if Jackie’s loud cackle of victory was any indication.

“Scavs are still crawlin’,” T-bug’s voice oh-so-helpfully informed over holo. “Clean it up, clean it out. Don’t want to be bringing the target under fire. And definitely don’t want a slug in your back.”

Well damn- there went V’s plans!

During his scan of the network, V had pinged a coffee machine, piping hot with fresh coffee at the ready. It was right in front of the two scavs shooting them, and suddenly, V had a fantastic idea. Seeing numbers flash in his peripheral, he hacked into the circuitry- nothing even remotely challenging- and turned the heat up on the machine, way past anything it could handle.

After not too long, the cheap material gave way beneath the mounting heat and pressure and exploded, sending boiling hot coffee flying everywhere- including straight into the reaper fucks faces. The two men howled in pain, staggering back and instinctively bringing their hands up to cover their scalded eyes- giving Jackie and V the perfect opportunity to jump out and blast their stupid heads off.

More scavs came in just in time to watch their buddies drop as gunfire exchanged, but the mercenary duo was really starting to hit their stride, and tore through the new arrivals with gusto.

The amount of blood in the air was decently distracting, but luckily that was something that V found that he was getting better and better at ignoring. It was especially hypnotizing, though, since V hadn’t “eaten” recently, so even with his built up tolerance, he was still struggling a bit. Jackie must’ve noticed this, because he paused in his shooting long enough to slap V upside the head

“Estúpido! Focus!” He hissed. “Ain’t no time for your Abbott and Costello shit!”

A bullet whizzed by V’s head to serve as a reminder, but Jackie was quick to return the favour- and he didn’t miss. Though he did, of course, make sure to double tap the fool, just to be sure.

Without warning, the wall nearby exploded, forcing both Jackie and V to throw themselves behind more complete cover as heavy machine gun fire reduced the already crumbling drywall to a fine powder. V swore aloud, pinging the network again and zeroing in on the scav shooting at them- a larger man with a fucking Minotaur grade machine gun.

“Got an MK.31 HMG on the dude in front of us- we peek and we’re dead,” V hissed into the holo. “T-bug, you got options?”

Beside him, Jackie piped up, too.

“Yeah, Bug,” he chimed in. “You got eyes on this shithole? Anything?!”

Something clicked nearby- a lock or something- as T-bug gave them instructions.

“Room he’s in looks out on the balcony,” she explained. “Got a window on the left- give me two seconds to grease the lock.”

V tried to look over behind the wall, only to get several bullets just centimetres from his face before Jackie yanked him back by the shoulder. Shit.

“Mano, get his attention!” Jackie barked, having to speak up to be heard over the deafening hammer of machine gun fire. “I’ll do the rest!”

The window opened just as that bastard’s gun ran out of ammo, and V didn’t waste the opportunity. He bolted across the room and vaulted over the windowsill before the scav could finish reloading, ducking quickly behind the wall just in case he was about to get shot at again. He wasn’t, though. If the scav had even noticed V’s escape, he didn’t seem to care, because his attention seemed focused entirely on Jackie, raining bullets down at the larger merc without any mind paid to V.

His mistake.

It was a bit difficult to aim from this angle, but V was still able to land a decent hit to the gonk’s torso, staggering him enough for Jackie to charge in and finish the job. One final headshot, and the scav’s nest finally fell silent- so quiet V’d swear he could hear the smaller types of vermin scuttling about within the walls.

No longer having to worry about stealth or being interrupted, the two mercs proceeded through the frankensteined ‘compound’, eventually opening up a door to reveal a bathroom… and a dead ass body staring directly at him.

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ,” V hissed, grimacing. It was hardly as though the sight of death really bothered him anymore, but still- getting jumpscared by a corpse just sitting there in an ice bath, staring, would probably be enough to get a reaction out of just about anyone.

He moved the dead man out of the way (and it was indeed a dead man, as a quick check of vitals confirmed), searching the half-melted ice bath for any clues as to the whereabouts of their target. What he wound up finding was even better than a clue- another body; female, naked, with top line tech and a rather familiar face.

“Think I got her,” V announced, pulling the woman halfway out from the frigid water to rest her head on his leg as he checked for vitals signs and injuries. “Got our target.”

“We make it?” T-bug asked over the holo, sounding almost hopeful. “She alive?”

Judging from the way Jackie was hovering so close he was just about on top of V, T-bug was not the only one with such concerns.

“Mm, barely,” V muttered, keeping his fingers pressed to her wrist as he looked over the poor woman’s wounds with a grimace. “Pulse is weak, but… it’s there.”

From the look of it, the scavs unfortunately hadn’t held off entirely on their harvest. The woman’s arms were wrapped up in a rather shoddy bandage job, with blood already seeping through from two long, large lines carved through the flesh. Shit, were those mantis blades? The hell kinda corpo had mantis blades? Whoever this chick is, she must be real important.

…How much were they getting paid for this gig again?

In his arms, the catatonic woman gurgled weakly, twitching like a dead bug, and V reminded himself that they’d be paid exactly nothing if she went and died now.

“V, jack into her biomon,” T-bug ordered. “Need to know what we’re dealin’ with.”

Didn’t need to tell him twice. V pulled his personal jack out of his own wrist and plugged it into the port at her neck, hoping against hope that whatever the scavs had done to get her like this, it wasn’t anything permanent.

“Ooh, mano, this does not look good..” Jackie muttered, nervously fidgeting with his gun and beginning to pace about the bathroom, attention flitting from the limp woman to the open doorway and back again. V just barely resisted the urge to snipe at him for pointing out the obvious. It wouldn’t do anyone any good, and he could hardly blame Jackie for being agitated- this was certainly far from an ideal situation.

V jacked in, continuing to cradle Sandra’s head as her Biomon panel booted, giving him information to work with.

“Sandra Dorsett. NC570442,” he read off, both for Jackie’s sake and for his own processing. “Trauma Team Platinum.”

“Platinum??” Jackie echoed, incredulous. “Shiiit, Trauma shoulda swooped in if she sneezed.”

He wasn’t wrong. Someone with Platinum coverage should practically have had Trauma living up their ass, ready to jump at the first sign of a cough, yet here Sandra was; naked and near dead in a chop shop bathroom.

Because she was near dead. V’s vision was a blur of blared warning and alerts from Sandra’s frantic Biomon, all trying to call his attention toward some new and different extremely concerning problem.

Blood pressure 77/45. Albumin to globulin ratio of 0.22. ESR over 100 mm/hour. Pulse of 117 bpm. Approximately 25 breaths per minute. Blood oxygen saturation hovering around 83%. Respiratory, immune, and CNS life support systems all at risk. All life functions critical. Etc etc.

On a technological level, things weren’t doing much better. Her biomon couldn’t initiate its internal-med pump, all resources depleted. Emergency sig failure and GPS module offline, stuck in an endless loop of trying to reboot.

“Guessin’ they jammed the transmitter sig,” T-Bug sighed, audibly clicking away at something as she spoke. “You two are lookin’ at a hacked biomon, a firmware reconfig, or a neurovirus of some sort. Would explain why she’s so out of it.”

“Carajo, T-Bug!” Jackie explained, taking the words right out of V’s mouth. “You ain’t seein’ this place. This is tubs, ice, hooks, and cleavers type shit. Real old school slaughterhouse sorta energy. Ain’t no way they’re runnin’ anything like whatever you jus’ said!”

“Hmm… a scopmuncher’s hack, then,” T-Bug mused, a familiar tinge of derision in her voice. She seemed to think for a moment, and V took that chance to gently flick away a piece of ice before it could fall into Sandra’s ear. Her half-lidded eyes stared vacantly up at him, flashing intermittently as bogged systems tried and failed over and over and over again to restart, and V stared down at her, some unnameable emotion in his chest.

He couldn’t help but wonder if this could have been him, in another life- teetering on the brink of death with his head shaved and his ass out, relying on a pair of hired mercenaries to keep him from dying in a filthy scav nest’s ice bath. He’d been corpo too, once, with some pretty damn crazy chrome to boot- at least before the whole Abernathy thing. Scavs had tried to jump him multiple times, and while he’d always managed to fend them off, it wasn’t inconceivable to think that one day, he could have been caught off guard, and then…

“Got an idea,” T-bug’s voice announced, snapping V back to attention. “Check her neuroport. Hundred eddies says they just jammed a shard in there to mute her biomon. Find it, and pull it.”

“Is that… safe?” V baulked, hesitating at the idea of fiddling with the neuroport of someone who was already in such critical condition.

“It’s a lot more safe than letting her bleed out from an internal hemorrhage, or some other invisible nastiness that her biomon could help us deal with,” T-bug scoffed. “We were lucky to find her still breathin’- can’t afford to lose her now. Find that shard, and yank it!”

She had a point. And either way, V knew better than to argue with that tone of voice from T-bug. He turned Sandra’s head, fingers finding and opening her neuroport where- sure enough- there was a small shard lodged in. As delicately as he could, V pulled it free, tossing it aside before tilting Sandra’s head back into the position he’d had her before, where her airways ought to be the most open.

Just as T-bug had predicted, the biomonitor came back online the moment that shard was removed, giving instructions on the recovery position and informing them that a rescue team had been dispatched and was expected to arrive in… 180 seconds??

“Biomon says Trauma’ll be here in three minutes,” V announced.

“Oh, the humanity!” Jackie snarked. “Three whole minutes to wait for medical attention? Can you imagine?”

V snorted, nodding sarcastically. Seeing as both V and Jackie were currently without coverage, Trauma wouldn’t so much as piss on them if they were on fire, and they were well aware of that fact. If either of them were in the kind of state Miss Dorsett here was, the only option they’d have available would be to somehow cart themselves over to Vik and pray to the power of their choosing that the man could do something about it.

Still halfway in the frigid bath, Sandra’s body spasmed again, a weak gurgle escaping her lips, and the sardonic grin on Jackie’s face was gone in an instant, replaced by something that looked a whole lot more like guilt. V understood. Horrid class differences aside, this was still a woman who’d been shaved, stripped, mutilated, effectively temporarily lobotomised, and left for dead in freezing water. She was cold, alone, and hurting, and no matter who she was, it was hard not to feel sorry for someone in that state.

“Ay, pobrecita,” Jackie muttered, frowning sympathetically. “Let’s get her off that ice.”

V agreed, jacking out of her port as he helped Jackie lift Sandra out of the tub, only for-

“Aw fuck-!“

System Malfunction. He watched in horror as she started seizing

“Mano, she’s flatlinin’!” Jackie cried, staring in horror at the woman spasming against the wet tile.

Seeing as V was no longer jacked into her biomon, he couldn’t say for certain whether or not she was actually flatlining, necessarily, but there was very obviously something seriously wrong with her, and judging from how fucked her nervous system’s tech was, it wouldn’t exactly surprise him if being moved had startled her zeroed out systems into just straight stopping her heart. She was gasping and writhing about like a fish out of water, unseeing eyes nearly bugging clear out of her head, and V could tell they needed to do something in the next few seconds if they didn’t want her to straight up croak right there in front of them.

“Jackie, airhypo!” V cried, mind frantically racing to think of anything that could help. The fact that he didn’t even know what, specifically, was happening, made it nigh impossible to come up with a perfect solution- especially on such a tight time frame- but…Maybe a sudden burst of energy might help to kick Sandra’s systems back into gear? Or… might just fuck them up worse. V wasn’t a damned doctor, alright?! He didn’t know what he was doing, but doing something seemed a whole hell of a lot better than doing nothing, so- fuck it!

Jackie seemed to agree with this sentiment, quickly pulling out the device in question and tossing it to V with a call of: “Ey, catch, vato!”

V caught, snagging the injector from the air and plunging it into Sandra’s chest before he could psych himself out too much. He wasn’t med-tech certified or anything, but he still had a rough idea of where to aim and how to activate the release, so he was able to work the airhypo just fine, shooting the spasming woman up with a dose of Stim and crossing his damned fingers as tight as he could.

Sandra’s body jerked violently, back arching off the slick tile as she gasped in a deep, desperate gasp of air. She collapsed back down only a second later, limp, but she was breathing, and she’d stopped seizing entirely. When V checked her pulse, it was still far from healthy, but it was stable, which was just about the best he could ask for right now.

…Holy fuck, that actually worked. V could not believe that had actually fucking worked! He ought to go hit up Japantown after this shit and try his newfound luck on some of the slots-

“She is breathin’, right?” Jackie questioned, sounding nervous. “That ain’t just wishful thinkin’ from me?”

“She’s breathing,” V confirmed, letting out a heavy sigh of relief. “She’s breathing, and her heart’s still beatin’, and I think I oughta get a med-tech cert’ just for that!”

Jackie laughed aloud, shaking his head in a giddy sort of disbelief.

“Shit, man- gonna be givin’ Vik a run for his money soon, ain’t ya?”

The distant whirr of an approaching AV put a quick halt to all banter, and Jackie straightened up, looking out the open doorway in the direction of the sound with wide eyes.

“Fuera, get ‘er out!” He instructed, waving his hand in a wide beckoning motion. “Terrace!”

Didn’t have to tell V twice- he’d already begun gathering Sandra up into his arms as soon as he’d heard the AV. His newfound strength meant that her weight was no issue for him, but she was completely limp, and given her condition he really didn’t want her airway in anything less than an optimal position, so there was some amount of fumbling around done as he walked to try and keep her head from lolling back too far.

He almost wanted to hesitate, as he made it to the terrace- some pitying part of him wanting to get the woman a towel or a blanket or something before just parading her about outside in the nude- but he resisted the urge and pushed forward regardless. They simply didn’t have time any non-necessities like that, and ultimately, a bit of lost dignity was a reasonable trade off if it meant saving her life.

The Trauma Team came in hot, parking right up beside the terrace with lights rolling and loudspeaker blaring:

“LANDING, STAND CLEAR! INITIATING SECURITY PROTOCOL. FOLLOW ALL INSTRUCTIONS.”

V shifted Sandra in his arms, standing his ground even as armed guards jumped out of the vehicle with guns trained on his head. He did his best to look as non-threatening as possible, and placed her gently down onto the provided stretcher when (rather loudly and aggressively) instructed to do so. Her head lolled as soon as she was out of his grasp, and he instinctively went to try and straighten it again, only to narrowly avoid taking the butt of a rifle to his face as one of the guards took a swing at him, barking for him back up.

Seeing as V did not feel like getting shot to pieces today, he obliged, retreating to the doorway with his hands up, palms out in a show of compliance and non-aggression. An indignant part of him hissed and grumbled about this being some thanks when he was just trying to help, but he wasn’t stupid- Trauma cared only about their assigned patient, and were both authorised and eager to eliminate anything that so much as looked like it might threaten that goal. 

“They had a shard jammed into her neuroport, blocking her biomon,” V informed, trying to keep just to what he figured they’d most immediately need to know. “Life support systems shot to hell. Suddenly stopped breathing and started seizing, but was given a shot of Stim and stabilised. Her arms are bandaged but that place is dirty as hell so-”

One of the masked guards gave him a glare (somehow) that shut him up instantly. Maybe he uh… maybe he shouldn’t have admitted to administering drugs without any sort of certification or real idea what he was doing, huh?

Just as he was beginning to fear he may get shot in the head for tampering with a Platinum patient, the guard staring him down gave a stiff nod, spitting out a gruff “noted” before disregarding him entirely to focus on escorting Sandra and the paramedics back into the AV, announcing to one another what was being administered. The doors closed back up behind them, and the vehicle took off, shooting toward the nearest trauma center at top speed.

Sandra was going to be okay. They did it.

Holy shit, they did it!

“Great work, boys- shitshow’s over,” T-bug remarked, a faint tinge of the same relief currently washing over V in waves audible in her voice. “Cutting my wires now, see ya in the near future.”

A victory like this called for celebration. Namely, celebration in the form of one of V’s favoured pastimes: “bargain hunting”. The main room where the firefight had broken out had about ten fresh corpses laying it, with pockets just begging to be plundered- who was V to deny them? Jackie followed after him with a dramatic roll of the eyes and more grumbling about V’s supposed “problem”, but they both knew damn well the larger merc would be first in line to snag anything interesting once V was finished- it was where a good number of his chains had come from, after all.

Unfortunately, a bunch of scavs running a dirty chop shop in the slums didn’t exactly make for high end pickings. Maybe if he were a junkie himself, he might have felt differently, but as it was, he had no interest in the inhalants, injectors, and baggies full of mystery substance that he kept finding in the pockets of the dead scavs. He dug through four bodies without finding anything more interesting than a rosary of all things, and small handful of eds, and wasn’t expecting much better from the fifth.

He definitely wasn’t expecting for the fifth to move.

Both he and Jackie had their guns drawn in an instant, trained on the not-corpse with hands that were most certainly not shaking from the sudden adrenaline rush. It quickly became apparent, though, that while the scav on the ground may not have been dead, he wasn’t too terribly far off, either- definitely not in any condition to start fighting again or anything. V could count at least three different bullet wounds in the torso alone, and what faint breathing he could hear sounded kind of like someone trying to snort Jell-O through a shitty plastic straw.

V flicked the safety off his gun and lined up a shot for the forehead, intending to grant the gonk a swift end to his misery, but Jackie held a hand up, signalling for him to stop. When V looked to his friend in confusion, wondering what the issue was, he found himself immediately suspicious of the look that greeted him.

“Say, mano,” Jackie began, voice dripping with that tone that instinctively made V’s eyes narrow. “Remember that, uh… talk, we had, a little while back? You know- the one about your… diet?”

V just barely suppressed the urge to throw his head back and groan.

“Well, the way I see it-” Jackie continued, either not noticing V’s sudden exasperation or (more likely) not caring. “You, uh- you got yourself a free meal right here, vampiro. Waste not, want not and all that shit, ya know?”

…He had a point. Much as V didn’t love the idea of chowing down on a random scav with god-only-knew-what coursing through his system, blood was blood, and he was going to have to feed in the next day or two anyway, so…

“Alright, fine,” V sighed, grimacing down at the dying man. “But would you cut it out with the whole ‘vampire’ thing already? It’s not the same!”

Jackie made a noise somewhere between a hum and a scoff, but V ignored him, leaning in closer to the bleeding scav. Up close like this, the scent of blood was dizzying, and whatever reservations V possessed about doing this were rapidly dismissed in the face of a sudden, nigh-overwhelming hunger.

V still tried to be delicate about it- as much as one could be delicate, with this sort of thing. Beneath the tantalising scent and the saliva pooling in his mouth, some part of his mind still recognised just how young the paling face before him was, and lamented for the life he was about to take. Kid didn’t look a day over 20- though gangs like these had been known to recruit as young as 11. Maybe, in another life, this boy could have had a better life- could have had a life at all.

But could, would, and should were worth less than rat shit, in the end, and it didn’t make a difference. As it was, the kid had drawn the short end of the stick in a fire fight, and was going to die no matter what V did, so he may as well just go for it.

V lifted the young scav up closer, bringing his face in close to a pale, tattooed neck (the blood smelled like apple pie- the kind Mama Welles makes- sweet and tangy and rich, with just the slightest hint of spice), then paused.

“Jackie,” he began, clearing his throat a bit awkwardly. His friend’s eyes were all but burning a hole into the back of his head, and it was seriously throwing him off. “Could you, like, turn around or something?”

Though V hadn’t turned around to look, he could still tell when Jackie startled, and recognised the uncomfortable cough for what it was.

“Oh, uh, sure,” Jackie answered. “My bad, man. I’ll just go… stand over here, for a bit, while you, uh, do your thing.”

V heard the sound of scuffing footsteps, and didn’t have to turn around to know that Jackie was probably standing in the corner like an idiot. He was still grateful either way, though- especially since his hunger had hit a point where he physically couldn’t hold back any longer.

It tasted even better than it smelled, flesh snapping beneath his fangs like the skin of a ripe fruit and delectable rich red pouring free across his tongue. He let out a sound an awful lot like a moan as he sucked it all down greedily, and all the world became bleeding and feeding and bliss.

He wasn’t sure how much time passed, but when he finally came back to his senses, the scav was drained dry, and V himself felt much better. He wiped the back of a hand over his mouth, intending to clear away any residual blood smear, but was pleased to find there wasn’t much of anything. Apparently, he’d gotten a whole lot better at not being a messy eater.

A quick glance over his shoulder revealed that Jackie was, indeed, in the corner- though he was sitting rather than standing, and had apparently scrounged up a bag or chips from somewhere that he was idly munching his way through. V rose to his feet silently, dusting himself off and clearing his throat to get Jackie’s attention. He didn’t fully manage to suppress the snort that escaped him at the way Jackie jumped- though the deeply disturbed look his friend shot him was significantly less amusing.

“Dios mio, what is that?!” Jackie exclaimed, and V blinked, turning to a nearby shop mirror in confusion. His initial worry was that he’d somehow managed to get himself absolutely covered in blood without noticing, but the image that greeted him was… not that.

There was something pouring from his eyes- something inky black and slick that ran down his cheeks to drip off the point of his jaw. He raised a hand to wipe it away, only for it to move when he tried to make contact, which was uh. That was new-

“Are you like, okay, cabrón?” Jackie asked, pushing himself nervously up to his feet as V searched for a towel or something to clean himself off. “Is that just a thing that happens sometimes, or no? Do we need to get to Vik’s?

V would also like to know the answers to those questions, and decided to ask the one party present who might have them.

[[Hey, Spine Bug?]] V began (he probably should come up with something better to call it, one of these days), doing his best to keep his mental voice as calm and collected as he could under the circumstances. [[Any insights as to why, exactly, I’ve begun leaking mystery goo?]]

[[It is a waste product]] the bug explained. [[The leftover material residue from my processors, meant to be purged every so often so as to avoid a buildup of useless byproduct clogging my systems. Do not be alarmed- it is harmless]]

Hm. That didn’t necessarily explain why it had moved, but… there was no real reason for the bug to lie to him about it, and V himself couldn’t think of any other explanations, so he just accepted it.

The good news was: he’d managed to find a roll of paper towels that looked at least mostly clean, so he used those to wipe his face down while addressing Jackie.

“Spine-Bug says it’s just some sort of waste product,” he explained, idly examining his eyes in the mirror. Nothing looked out of sorts… “Says it’s harmless.”

“Wild…” Jackie muttered, nodding slowly. He offered the chip bag to V, but V declined, gaze falling instinctively toward the reason he was no longer hungry- the dead body on the floor.

Even though it had been months, now, V still didn’t think he was used to it- not really. And more than that, he wasn’t sure if he ever wanted to be used to it, either. If the day eventually came when he was able to just eat somebody without so much as a moment of hesitation, would there ever be any coming back from that? At what point would he start looking at other people and seeing a meal first, and a person a distant second?

At what point did he himself stop being a ‘person’ at all?

A hand on his shoulder startled him from his spiraling thoughts, and he looked up just in time to see Jackie pulling him into a casual side hug, tossing the newly emptied bag of chips aside and stretching dramatically.

“Well!” Jackie began, just a touch too loud and chipper to be entirely natural. “I don’t know about you, hermano, but I’m just about ready to blow this shithole. I feel like I’m gonna need about fifty showers after this.”

He made a show of squinting dubiously at a particularly suspect looking stain on the wall, pointedly wiping his hand off on his shirt with a look of disgust. V laughed weakly at that, grateful for the obvious distraction, and played along.

“You’re telling me,” he said dryly. “I just put my mouth on one of these fuckers…. Oh good god, I just put my mouth on one-”

“You did,” Jackie agreed, looking faux-grim. “You did do that. You probably have, like, mutant ringworm now. Or super scabies. Or both!”

“You’re the one who told me to!” V protested, play shoving at Jackie’s side, but the larger merc was quick to pull him back in to the sideways embrace.

“Hey, I’m not judging! If you get super mutant scabies worm, we get super mutant scabies worm!”

The laughter and ribbing over that subject carried them out from the scav nest and all the way back down to the garage, where Jackie suddenly gave V a sheepish sort of grin that had him immediately narrowing his eyes in suspicion.

“...What is it?” V asked, raising an eyebrow. “What’s that face?”

“Aye, can’t hide anything from you, can I?” Jackie laughed, shaking his head a bit before continuing. “Listen, mano, I got this… thing, coming up, and I was wondering: mind if I borrow your wheels?”

“A ‘thing’, hm?” V pressed, raising his eyebrow even higher and crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m afraid I’m going to need a bit more than that.”

“Alright, alright!” Jackie conceded, slapping the doorframe as they made their way out toward the car in question. “It’s a date with Misty, okay? Been planning it for a while, and I really wanna wow her, ya know? I can’t do that if I’m taking the damn metro- how’s that gonna look for me?”

Ah, well, he had a point there. Showing up to a date via train was a pretty gonk move, all things considered- especially when he knew just how much Misty meant to Jackie, and how badly the man wanted to impress her. Under those kinds of circumstances…

“Ehhh, alright,” V drawled, playfully rolling his eyes. “Won’t leave ya hangin’, Jack. But don’t get used to it.”

Jackie finally let go of him at that in order to execute a little skipping victory dance- complete with a tasteful click of the heels. It looked utterly ridiculous, and V couldn’t help but laugh.

God, what would he do without Jackie?

“Aah, savin’ my ass V, thank you!” Jackie all but sang, clasping his hands together like he was praying to the smaller merc. “How about I drive you home, eh?”

That sounded nice, actually. Normally, V might snark about Jackie just wanting to drive his car, but today, he was pretty damn beat and ready to go lay down- possibly smoke a good ol joint and listen to some oldies.

He voiced as much to Jackie, whose grin only grew, but then faltered, face visibly changing to the expression of a man who’d just remembered something critical.

“Wait, we should probably get Wakako on the holo, shouldn’t we?” He muttered, pulling a bit of a face. “Let her know the job’s done and all?”

Sounded like a damn good plan to V, who rang the fixer up right there and then. She responded almost immediately.

“Ahem! V? How did it go?” Wakako inquired. “Our client is alive and well?”

“Relatively well, yeah,” V admitted, deciding it was probably best to be honest, here. “Trauma Team took ‘er off our hands. She wasn’t lookin’ too hot when we found ‘er, but we got ‘er out alive, and she’ll recover.”

“Splendid,” Wakako hummed. If she was at all upset by the less than ideal news, she didn’t show it. “Your payment awaits you- ready to come and grab whenever you like, even right away. But I guess home is the only place you wish to be now. The NCPD has surrounded Watson. The district is closed. If you are to make it past the cordon, you must move fast.”

Ah, fuck. Guess they must’ve used up all their luck with that airhypo save, huh?

“Thanks for the heads-up,” V sighed. “Swing by to see you later, Wakako.”

He dropped the call and immediately told Jackie the bad news; they would have to put it in fifth if V was going to sleep in his own bed tonight or Jackie would get to see Misty.

“Ha! Not a problem,” Jackie assured, shooting him a smug sort of grin as he popped open the driver’s side door of V’s car. “Did you forget that I’m gonna be the one driving? Any badge or cordon tryna cut me off is gonna have their work cut out for them, cabrón.”

True enough. V knew how Jackie liked to drive- they’d probably be home before he could even finish rolling a damn joint, if the roads were clear enough. He climbed his way into the passenger’s seat feeling reassured, tilting his seat back and sighing deeply. They were gonna be home in no time, no sweat.

Fast forward not even ten whole minutes later, and there absolute was some sweat. An unmarked van had started tailing them a block or two back, and V had enough common sense to know that literally nothing good ever came from being followed by an unmarked van.

Sure enough, this particular mystery mobile managed up pull up around in front of them, then pop its back doors open to reveal yet another horde of armed scavs. God, the bastards really were like rats, weren’t they? If you saw one, there were at least ten more where that came from. Fucking hell.

For what would hopefully be the last time tonight, V cocked his gun, and opened fire.