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The wind won’t let up tonight—cuts loud and fast across the ragged mountain face looming above, and whistles through what little tree cover has survived the acidity of the soil in this part of the Verkhoyansk Range.
When the first flakes begin to fall, tack-sharp in the cold, Denys shivers and stubs his joint out on the roof of the truck.
He grins at Alyx, then shakes his head and mutters that it’ll all work itself out. He’s already clambered down the side of the trailer and taken a few wobbly steps on frozen ground when he shouts back up at her—leaves her with good night wishes and a reminder to bring his jar of kvass inside when she turns in.
As she sends him absent-minded reassurances, Alyx exhales the lungful of smoke she’d been holding: the cloud disappears immediately into the darkness of the valley.
There aren’t stars this close to Yakutsk, not through the smog and snowfalls, so she searches for patterns in the shimmer of the clan’s headlights in the squall.
It’s not written in the scattered light her family brings to the vast and empty wilderness, nor the stars beyond it, but as sure as she can feel the hum of the truck’s generator and the chill in the air, she can see the path laid out in front of her and feel its pull drawing her forward.
Within the hour, she’ll climb back into the tent and the bed warmed by Katja. They’ll probably fuck until either the cot or the dawn breaks.
Within the day, she’ll board the mag-line to Moscow. Sleep on the train, wake up to the maze of concrete and decades-old arcologies, and the gilded skyscrapers that have just begun sprouting out of their remains. She’ll spend a couple nights in a glitzy hotel on Katja’s dime, klep a couple bottles of vodka from the minibar.
And within the week, she’ll be in Night City.
After that, it gets hazy. But no hazier than her future’s always been. She’s a nomad, change has been a fact of life since she was in diapers—she’s just gonna experience the change a little more densely, and a lot more often. Trade out long-haul caravan rides across the tundra for a subway ride every so often. It’ll net out with a lot more excitement, and eating a lot fewer IRPs.
She smiles, and the carbon steel in her knuckles clicks softly as she ashes into the wind.
Snow softly crunches under Alyx’s boots as she makes her way across camp for the final time—for a while, at least. A duffel bag weighs heavy on her shoulders and her coat’s only mostly-zipped up. The sun hasn’t peeked out over far away mountaintops, yet, and casts only the faintest glow on the clouds nearest the horizon.
It’s way too early to be awake, but the breakfast Denys and his wife had cooked had almost made it worth it. She’ll miss their cooking. And them.
She hovers outside Konstantin’s tent for a minute, but decides not to say goodbye to him. When she’d told him last week that she was leaving, he’d shouted her down about abandoning the clan. And he took it personally, went off about her ultimatum on his leadership, like she ever gave enough of a shit about the clan’s politics or his negotiations with SovOil to make a statement. He couldn’t believe she was leaving because she wanted to, and that it had nothing to do with him or her mother.
She did say goodbye to her mama, last night. She doesn’t have it in her to do it again.
When she makes her way over to the rental pickup, Katja greets her with a broad smile and a kiss on the cheek.
Night City is almost how she imagined it, but the food’s worse. And it only took a month to realize Katja’s a fucking asshole.
Alyx doesn’t ask for updates on the clan, or how the deal with SovOil shook out, or if Konstantin has cooled off at all—she barely has the focus to finish a job in Night City, no reason to add in another thing to keep tabs on. But despite herself, she still follows the family’s rhythms in the messages set adrift from the other side of the world.
She never bothers to do the math, just knows they’re a shitton of hours ahead, and that when she wakes up to a wall of texts from Denys, that means the clan’s definitely on the move.
The first time she was trusted to drive in the convoy was for a big job in Magadan: almost thirty days straight through, only stopping every few days to set up camp and recover. Her truck was an old model—probably manufactured to be sold to America in one of their corporate wars, and stolen three times over before making it into the clan’s possession. It was run down enough that a sixteen year old couldn’t do any more damage than was already done, so it didn’t have much in the way of working encryption or comms integrations.
She’d dug out some old radios, and found an old channel that it could still pick up (mostly clearly), and spent every night of that first drive chattering over the air with Denys, talking just to keep the time passing steadily.
When she’d finally graduated to vehicles built in the last century, they could’ve figured out its systems and found a line that was more secure and had less static, but they decided to stay tuned into the same channel on their little radios, instead.
For the next few years, long nights peering through the glare on the dashboard at the endless forests and empty spaces were spent in each other’s company, singing off-key and talking loud enough to be heard over the interference.
It was over that line that Alyx rambled to Denys about the first job her mama let her go on (swiping data from an old Petrochem plant), and the first time she’d shot a man, and the last deer she’d ever seen in the wild.
And it was there that Denys stuttered on about his crush on Yana, and eventually the ring he’d propose with.
But his radio won’t broadcast ten thousand miles, so he chatters to his phone through the night to keep himself awake. And Alyx catches up on the stories he shares with her as she sits down for breakfast.
She finds time to text him back on the train ride uptown.
Alyx doesn’t know exactly what it is that’s dripped out of the side of the dumpster, but it covers her hands as she scrabbles across the floor of the alley into cover. The smell of rot overpowers the smell of gunfire, and she tries not to think about the way her rifle sticks to her palm.
She empties a clip into the head of a man then reloads—the magazine is slick, and her stomach turns.
When she returns to the fray, she can’t quite find her next target, and her optics aren’t doing shit to help her out. Finger light on the trigger, she waits.
With a gig in this part of Watson, klepping this kind of information, she can make an educated guess on who she’s shooting at. But that doesn’t make her heart drop any less when she hears come out, cocksucker, shouted in her mother tongue.
The first time she visited Katja’s office was the first time she’d seen a scav haunt. She’d walked her past a bathtub with three bodies, then asked her what she wanted for dinner.
She breathes deep, holds steady, watches and wait for the scavs to make their way out of cover, feeling the liquid drying on her wrist—but eventually the disgust is too much.
She bursts out and opens fire. Clears out the space in just a couple seconds.
When she gets home, it’s her turn to bombard Denys with messages. Fill him in on her gig, and her plans, and the virtu she just heard about that she’s excited to check out.
Katja’s messages have been coming in less frequently. Alyx ignores them.
She's met a few mercs at The Afterlife that seem chill, offered to meet up with her at a shooting range to talk shop. They want to learn about some of the gun mods her clan had jerry-rigged, and she's excited to show them off.
Sitting, cross-legged on the rough concrete of the Wellsprings seawall, Alyx flicks a lighter and inhales until the joint catches.
She listens to the rumble of traffic on the beltline and watches the sun dip towards the freighters cruising offshore. The golden light dances over crests of waves as they break, and the air’s still warm even as the dusk creeps in.
She’s never been sleeveless on New Year’s Eve, and relishes the warmth on her skin. It’s nice to wear tee shirts year round, and to never have to pick the crud from sweaters out of the nooks and crannies of the metal of her arm.
She wonders, idly, what her family is doing back home. Knows they’re probably already sleeping off their hangovers, already well into the new year.
When midnight rolls around, she’ll join them.
And when she’s ready, if she’s ready, she’ll go back home.
But in the meantime, she smiles, and ashes into the waters of the Pacific.