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Even in cyberspace, V feels her stomach drop when Alt announces that she was still going to die if she returned to her body. If she hadn’t already been sitting down opposite Johnny in this coded approximation of the booth at Tom’s, she gets the distinct feeling her legs might have given out from under her. Johnny, bless him, is already riled up against the AI spectre of his lost love, all that familiar rage boiling up again in the face of the one thing they would never be able to change about this whole fucked situation. And god, she can’t help but love him for it. He’d been so doggedly determined that she would be the one walking out of here that he’d never even considered she’d be a dead woman walking anyway.
She gets up from the table to pace as Johnny continues arguing with Alt, folding her arms across her chest and chewing on her thumbnail out of habit. She’s been coming to terms with the idea that the Relic would end up killing her, but a part of her had been so caught up in Johnny’s sheer determination that she’d be walking out of here that she’d almost dared to believe it. If only there had been some other way to -
“Oh fuck.”
Her rapid footsteps falter as realisation hits her like a tank, arms falling to her sides as she breathes out all at once. She’s suddenly aware of Johnny and Alt’s attention turned in her direction again, and she has to let out a disbelieving laugh.
“What?”
“Fuck Johnny. We’re a couple of gonk-brained morons,” she replied, “There’s been another option in front of us all this time. Hellman practically fuckin’ said as much and we never realised.”
“What are you talking about?”
She strides over, planting her hands on the table to lean in and stare him straight in the eyes.
“You were almost assassinated by Biotechnica for an album called Clone Wars.”
He slumps back in the seat to openly gape at her, and she almost wants to burst into hysterical laughter that she has managed to render Johnny Silverhand speechless.
“Fuck.”
She whirls around to the immense form of Alt behind them, mind racing a mile a minute.
“Alt, you’re in all their systems, right? Got access to all Arasaka’s dirty little secrets?”
“Correct.”
“Can you search them for any references to cloning? Genetic research? Hell, cryogenics if you need to. There’s gotta be something.”
The immense form of the AI goes quiet for a moment, and V feels Johnny stand up to move beside her. She almost doesn’t want to breathe in case this wild plan holds no ground.
“Cryo?”
“You think Smasher dumped your body in an oil field or Saburo kept you on ice somewhere so he could slot in the first corpo fuck who was willing to pay out the ass for your old life?” she murmured, only sparing him the tiniest of glances. She almost doesn’t want to give in to the hope that her racing mind has conjured but there’s so much of these whirlwind months that had never completely made sense until now, “‘sides, if Relic 2.0 was meant to stay in house for Saburo, you can’t tell me he wouldn’t have looked into the possibility of a custom job for a new body. He isn’t gonna just take some random person off the streets.”
“There are files within the Arasaka subnet that contain mentions of a Project Argent,” Alt interrupted, and though her voice is as steady as it’s ever been, V can almost believe she hears surprise, “It appears that your estimation of Arasaka’s future plans for the relic hold some truth, though I do not know if your theory regarding Johnny’s body is accurate.”
The laugh that breaks from her almost verges on hysterical delight as she whirls to face Johnny, grinning from ear to ear as she grabs his arm.
“You’ve gotta go back in my body.”
“Hold the fuck up. No,” he replied, “We made a deal, V. You’re the one who’s walking out of here.”
“Listen, Johnny,” she placed a hand on his cheek, and even in cyberspace, she can feel the texture of his stubble as she caressed his cheek with her thumb, “If you go back, you have the one thing I don’t to try and fix this for both of us: time. I’m a goner in six months. You’ll at least have longer than that.”
Beneath her hand, V can almost feel how that frustration and rage of his that had started bubbling up in him had calmed at the possibility of a plan. They’ve become so entwined over these last few months, she can understand exactly how those emotions in him had resulted in Arasaka Tower’s fiery destruction.
“There a way to keep her in cyberspace without crossing the Blackwall?” Johnny asked, turning back to Alt as he took V’s hand in his metal one.
“I can create a construct to contain V’s engram and tether it to a local data fortress, though it would not be an infinite measure. With Netwatch’s oversight, they would likely discover any deviation from usual Net constructs and aggressively pursue its destruction. There is only so long that I would be able to protect the engram.”
“How long would we have altogether, if Johnny left right now?” V asked.
“Approximately nine months of safety is what I could guarantee. Anything beyond that, I do not know.”
V squeezed Johnny’s hand, looking up at him with a soft smile.
“We’ve gotta try.”
“The Well will return Johnny to V’s body, but I suggest you make haste in your decision.”
As Alt disappeared to allow them a moment to themselves, cyberspace shifts to present a shape similar to the cooler her body was sitting in back in realspace. It still feels like the goodbye they had been about to go into before the realisation of this new potential resolution to everything they’d gone through together that neither of them wants to vocalise.
“You remember what I said when you asked what I’d leave as your epitaph that night in the oil fields?” V asked quietly, words still almost deafeningly loud in the expanse around them.
“Course I do,” he replied, “Sure that opinion hasn’t changed?”
“Nope. Now you just get to follow through on it,” she’s painfully aware that she still hasn’t relinquished her grip on his hand, “I’ve seen you take down Arasaka Tower with a pair of nukes and a death wish. This should be a walk in the park.”
“If something goes wrong - “
“I have faith in you,” she turned to face him again, giving him her best reassuring smiile, “This isn’t a goodbye so we’re not gonna fuckin’ treat it like one, okay?”
Rather than using words, Johnny pulled her into a kiss, everything they couldn’t say pouring out between them. As they broke apart, V squeezed his hand, wordlessly guiding him into the well. The last thing Johnny would remember of this would be her hand in his until the last possible moment, and her voice echoing in her ears.
“See you soon, Rockerboy.”
— — — — —
He returns to realspace to the shock of the coolant like a thousand tiny needles against his skin, driving him to the edge of the pool with a cry of pain. It’s disorientating and he’s crushingly aware of the absence of V inside their head. Even when she’d taken those stupid pills for the sake of his last wishes or he’d been forced to take over when a malfunction had almost flatlined them, she’d still been there. Now, there’s only silence. Johnny flinched back as hands closed around his arm, suddenly bracing for a fight, before he realises there’s no aggression in it as they help heave him out of the cooler.
Oh right. She came with Panam.
“V, c’mon, we have to get out of - “
Any concern that the nomad might have had for V flitted away in an instant as she crashed her fist into his jaw, almost sending him to the floor again. In this moment, he doesn’t blame her righteous fury against the man she believes has forced her best friend out of her own skin.
“What the fuck did you do to her, Silverhand?!”
“Nice to finally fuckin’ meet you too, Panam,” he growled, rubbing at his jaw - V’s jaw - to try and ease the pain of her punch, “And for the fuckin’ record, I didn’t do shit. She sent me back because we might finally have a fuckin’ way to save us both.”
“Bullshit.”
Blessedly, almost on cue, the red lights that had signified Alt’s presence within the Arasaka systems flickered for a moment to almost a shade of purple he couldn’t imagine they were actually programmed to be, and as soon as V’s voice echoed through the systems, that familiar pain near V’s heart ached in his chest. Maybe it hadn’t just been V’s feelings that had provoked that reaction.
“Fuck, I hope you get this, Panam, but for the love of god don’t kill Johnny. He’s got more time in my body than I’d have to try and pull off this fuckin’ insane plan. Alt’s gonna download what she found into a shard, and you need to get it the hell out of here. All goes to plan, I’ll see you in a few months. Stay safe.”
The lights flickered back to red once more and Johnny can’t hold back a wide gesture at the room, almost daring Panam to challenge him bow V had sent word herself.
“Fuckin’ believe me now?”
“V requested I pass on that message before I shielded her engram,” Alt’s voice rang out, “There is a shard in the central column that contains the relevant information.”
Marching past the conflicted nomad to retrieve the shard Alt had told them about, he had to pause as he caught his reflection in one of the stupidly shiny panels of the machinery around them. It hadn’t been the first time he’d been in control of this body, but as much as the Relic had torn down V in preparation for wiping her from existence so he could take over, there’s something so undeniably wrong about his being in control this time when he’d sworn to her that he’d follow Alt.
He shook himself free of that train of thought, pulling the shard free of its slot and tucking it into the port behind his ear, scooping V’s Archangel off the floor as he turned to stalk back out of Arasaka Tower.
“Do what you’ve gotta do, Alt. And keep her safe,” to Panam, he only gives her a nod. She at least seems to have pulled herself around to the idea that they truly might be able to save V with the trade off of him taking control of her body in the meantime, “We’ve got a job to do.”