Archive of Our Own

The dusk drew in, and Death stalked the streets of Night City.

There was nothing unusual in this, of course. Death was in abundance every evening in Night City, certainly every night, and most mornings and afternoons too. The stalking, perhaps, would be more of an eyebrow-raiser. Death tended not to be a furtive business in a metropolis that produced gangs the way rotting trees produced mushrooms, and with similarly varying levels of color and deadliness. Death here was usually loud and obvious, it tended to strut the streets, to tap-dance in them for public entertainment, rather than stalk them.

But tonight was different.

Between the dark asphalt below and the blaring neon above walked a tall, thin figure shrouded in a loose, black robe, face hidden in the shadows of a hood, carrying a long, wooden staff, the natural material jarringly out of place in the city of lights and chrome. It was a costume that should have invited comment even in this melting-pot, if only by being so plain. But the eyes of every man and woman drifted right past the stranger. Some of them, the stronger willed, stopped, and frowned, as if trying to catch a stray thought at the very edge of their minds. And then they shrugged, and carried on.

If the eyes of the passers-by had not slid off the tall figure, if they had looked into the gloom of that hood, they would have initially wondered what kind of cyberware this person was flaunting to look so, well, skull-ish. Very convincingly so. And then they would have seen his eyes, tiny points of sapphire blue light floating in large, empty sockets, amid a darkness that was much more than the mere absence of light. And they may have spotted that, held at the right angle, suddenly his staff was more than a stick, for at its end was a long, curved blade, so thin as to be almost insubstantial, glittering blue at the edges as it sliced reality with its passing.

Through the city now passed not just the mere cessation of life, but its personification, its representative in, as it were, the flesh - and Death, with a capital D, was committed to stalking.

One might expect the citizens of Night City to see Death as a chromed-up, gun-toting figure. But the grim reaper, death as the harvester of souls, was an idea that still held strong, even among those who had never seen a field of grain in their lives, iterated a thousand thousand times in ads and songs and graffiti and tattoos. The thing about death is that it never goes out of fashion. After all, everyone gets into it sooner or later.

This particular incarnation of the reaper was, for the most part, native to the Discworld, a world which sat upon the backs of four vast elephants, who themselves rode the back of a great turtle swimming through the emptiness of space. It was the kind of world which had plenty of magic sloshing around and a lot of space for witches and wizards, for Gods to play games with the lives of men in their mountaintop home, for skeletons in black robes to walk among the living and the soon-to-not-be-living.

But sometimes, the Death of the Disc, like most public servants, found the arcane and inscrutable rules that guided his duty took him abroad. He was no stranger to passing into other worlds, ones which worked by rules less magical than those of the Disc but no less strange. Perhaps to what a few learned citizens of the Disc called Roundworld. Or perhaps not. There was definitely a large amount of Quantum involved somewhere, which makes it difficult to say for certain.

Death stopped to take in his current location, his bony phalanges clacking on the streets beneath, and looked up at the towering skyscrapers and huge, glowing advertisements. In defiance of all anatomical sense, there was a suggestion of a grimace on his skull. It was not Death’s first time in this world, or this city, though his summons here were not frequent, thankfully. In as far as it was Death’s place to dislike anything, he disliked this place intensely. It was, afterall, a city where life was cheap, and death with it. Nobody likes being taken for granted.

Nonetheless, the duty had to be done. Death passed through the city of cities, and took his harvest. Not every death, not in a warren of humanity of this size. But the same ineffable rhythm which took Death to this place, in this world, deemed that he be personally present for this death and not that one, a representative sample of the ways it was possible for humanity to die in a city whose invention was as limitless as its compassion was nonexistent.

Death passed through the slums of Heywood and Santo Domingo, through the crumbling buildings of Pacifica. Death saw to the destitute laid out in alleys and doorways, succumbing to one final high. After a territorial dispute at the edge of Pacifica went wrong, Death had to collect several souls at once, which was always an awkward business. And a vexing one, when some of the victims were little more than children.

And Death passed, too, through the lavish penthouses of Charter Hill. Every city in the multiverse had these districts, where those with power and status tried to isolate themselves from their fellow humans, attempting to ignore the suffering from which their wealth proceeded.

And despite all that, their ends, by overdose or by violent dispute with rivals, were very much the same as those on the poor and desperate streets. And if the narcotics were purer and the bullets far more elegantly delivered by professional proxies rather than sprayed out by the victims’ rivals in person, well, the dead were just as dead. Not that they seemed to think so. While the remnants of the common people had regarded death as unsurprising or, more depressingly, welcome, the high and mighty of the city treated it as an insult, an obvious mistake to be rectified. Their shades complained and they pleaded, as though their wealth entitled them to a second more life. Death, of course, was implacable, and the rich, too, were moved on to their final fate.

And then Death felt a tug on the edge of his consciousness. He looked towards the heart of the city, where the tallest skyscrapers reached up to loom over the mass of humanity below. This, then, more than anything, was his purpose for being here. Death considered the events he could already feel starting to occur as an itch on his consciousness. A flurry of ended lives, remarkable even for this callous metropolis.

OH BUGGER, said Death.

From the folds of his robe Death produced two small hourglasses and held them up to his face, hearing the faint hiss of the pouring sand. One looked mostly made of normal glass and wood. The other was a strange, misshapen thing, the glass warped with twisted patches and bubbles of shining metal. In both hourglasses, the top bulb was almost empty, a few desperate grains of sand waiting their turn to fall.

With an action as natural as breathing would be to the living, Death stepped outside of time and the world grew faded and still around him. Moving in the moments between the seconds counted on the clock, Death approached the city center.

Death stood before a vast skyscraper, around which carnage had been wrought. He had been miserably busy already in and around that building. As a huge, bulky figure of dark metal landed with unnatural gentleness atop an armored car surrounded by an armed mob of soldiers and police, it seemed as though the drama was reaching its conclusion. Death stared at the human lurking half-hidden amid boxy metal. By his face he was, in essence, still a teenager, and held an exhausted looking woman in his arms. Very romantic, if not the fact that Death had just witnessed David Martinez slaughter his way through dozens.

Still, the mustachioed man and the short woman who had been sheltering behind the car were happy to see him. The crowd of ordinary men and women who had been surrounding the vehicle collectively decided this was beyond their pay grade and scattered as Martinez opened fire with the weapons attached to his bulky form. The girl Martinez had been carrying was helped into the vehicle, and his two companions moved out of cover.

“Urghhh, no rest at all,” grumbled the short woman - Rebecca Ortiz, just Rebecca to those that knew her, Death suddenly knew with absolute clarity.

Death approached Rebecca as she grabbed another weapon from the back of an armored car and paused, looking at the pale girl she had come to save. “Glad you’re back safe… for David’s sake, I mean.” Rebecca stopped, the expression hidden behind the collar of her coat frozen in a conflict between feelings she could not reconcile. Then, as if sensing something, she looked up, and snarled.

“WE’RE HAVING A MOMENT HERE!” The mercenary raised her weapon to the sky and let loose, the report almost drowning out her defiant shout.

Steadily, with the patience of ages, Death raised his scythe.

“FUCK YO -” A nightmare shell of metal, holding a fragment of what used to be a man, fell from above with a shattering crash, and the blade of Death fell with it.

Rebecca sat up, and gasped, clumsily hauling herself to her feet. Shit must have gotten wild; she couldn’t even remember how she’d been knocked down in the first place. Scattered images passed through her brain. The attack on the convoy. David, slotting himself into that horrific chrome. Kiwi backstabbing them. The frantic race to the tower. Heck, they’d gotten to the tower, hadn’t they -

REBECCA ORTIZ, said a voice.

Rebecca whirled around. Right fricking next to her was some bastard who must have chromed themselves to hell and back, because not only were they seven feet tall and freakishly thin, their face looked more like a damn skull than anything on a person.

Rebecca didn’t take in more than a vague impression before her combat instincts kicked in. She caught a glimpse of her fallen gun in the corner of her eye and dove to the ground to grab it. In one smooth motion she bought her iron up and fired at the -

Rebecca stopped. There was no fire. There was no gun in her hand. Slowly, she looked to the ground and reached towards the weapon again.

Now she was looking properly, Rebecca could see her gun was a wreck, little more than a stock attached to a twisted, stunted piece of metal. Normally, one of her precious weapons being damaged would make Rebecca absolutely, murderously enraged. Right now though, she had even bigger worries: her hand was passing right through the destroyed gun. It left a faint tingling feeling.

“What the actual fuck?” murmured Rebecca. She held her hand up to her face. It was, she realized, her hand. Not one of the bulky cyberhands she should have been wearing, or even the synthskin ones she wore at home, but the actual flesh and blood hand that had been lopped off by a ripperdoc months ago. Except that, up-close, it was ever so slightly-see through.

Rebecca blinked in confusion. More memories were starting to come back. After their manic drive to Arasaka tower, after David had actually flown into the place, the crazy frickin’ gonk, Rebecca and Falco had been forced to hole up right by the front door while Arasaka’s security closed in on them. They’d used Falco’s modded Emperor for cover, taking pot-shots and lobbing ‘nades to keep the hired guns off them, but they didn’t really have a plan beyond ‘hope David showed up’ - or, more likely, go down in a big fuck-off blaze of glory. And then the NCPD had joined the party, making them even more screwed.

And then David had actually come. And he’d had Lucy in his arms, a-a-and he’d been David again, her best choom looking down at her with that warm smile, unclouded by madness or hate. Lucy had done it, she’d actually managed to pull his mind out of what was supposed to be a one-way trip to insanity, when no-one else could.

Even as she wished it could have been her in that role, even with the sting of jealousy undercutting her relief and elation, Rebecca had loved Lucy so, so much in that moment.

For a few seconds, Rebecca had genuinely thought that maybe, just maybe, things might turn out sort-of OK.

And then Rebecca had been talking to Lucy, and her optics had picked up something above her, falling fast, and… and…

Rebecca looked down at the spot where she had woken. There, where the ground was most heavily dented, was something small and broken. It was difficult, at first glance, to even recognise the smashed pieces of flesh and chrome as a body. But, even with half of it crushed, there was no mistaking the face that stared sightlessly into the yawning night sky.

“Aw, shit,” said Rebecca.

A FAIR ASSESSMENT, replied the grim reaper. ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.

Rebecca looked up - away from the broken thing on the ground - and looked around the plaza. She could hear distant echoes of gunfire, a shout that might have been Falco’s, but everything seemed so… far away, somehow. And the whole plaza was covered in thick gray fog that reduced anything more than a couple of feet away to a vague blur. The truth of what had happened began to settle on Rebecca. And it was making her pissed off.

“Oh, this is fucking bullshit! All of that, fighting through a small motherfucking army, me and the old man entertaining half the pigs in the city and all their friends, and that’s what fuckin’ flatlines me?! I stand in the wrong spot and some Arasaka borg just drops on me - wait a second, was - was that Adam Smasher? Adam fucking Smasher killed me!? The fuckin’ asshole shitbag chrome-dicked little chickenshit cock-sucking bitch! The motherfucking boogeyman shows up in person and he just - just cheats and lands on me? Couldn’t even fucking let me go down in a shootout? BULL. FUCKING. SHIT!”

Rebecca stood panting, gulping down air she no longer needed out of force of habit. Eventually, she steadied herself and turned to face the grim reaper. God, he was tall, unfairly so, but she looked him in the face - or the skull - anyway.

“You’re not some chrome head, are you? You’re the real deal.”

CORRECT. THERE IS NOTHING MORE REAL THAN ME.

Rebecca took a deep breath and grinned in the face of Death. No point being timid now, not when the worst had already happened. “Guess I shouldn’t be surprised to see you. You’ve been with me the whole time since I became an edgerunner, ain’t cha?”

The skeleton slowly tilted his head. Rebecca could almost swear he was thinking.

NO.

“Eh?”

WE HAVE NEVER MET BEFORE, I ASSURE YOU. PEOPLE DO NOT MEET ME MORE THAN ONCE. SAVE IN HIGHLY UNUSUAL CIRCUMSTANCES.

Rebecca blinked in confusion. “W-what? No, I mean, I’ve seen a lot of death. Like, with people dying. Not you, personally.” Death, both the talking skeleton and the, well, event, was less scary than Rebecca would have thought. Infuriating, sure, but it was almost… peaceful, with the fog and the quiet. And the reaper felt strangely… normal to talk to?Maybe that was just Rebecca. She had never felt really afraid of death the way everyone else seemed to be - not her own, at least.

AH. A METAPHOR. CONFUSING, BUT I SEE IT NOW.

Rebecca huffed. “You are a metaphor, gonk.”

ANTHROPOMORPHIC PERSONIFICATION, IF YOU PLEASE. STILL, MOST OF THOSE I ENCOUNTER ARE IN NO STATE TO QUIBBLE OVER MY NATURE. QUITE COMMENDABLE, APART FROM YOUR INITIAL OUTBURST. THOSE, I DO SEE A LOT MORE OF, BUT YOURS WAS ESPECIALLY… CREATIVE.

“I just died, apparently, I’m allowed to be pissed off. Surprised I’m not freaking out more, considering I’m talking to, well, you. No offense.”

A LOT OF EMOTION IS PART OF THE BODY; HORMONES AND SUCH. THAT GETS LEFT BEHIND. ALL THE SAME, YOU ARE MOSTLY TAKING THIS REMARKABLY WELL.

Rebecca smiled bitterly. “Hey, I can’t complain too much. I was never expecting a long life, reaper man, I just wanted a good one.”

HMMMM. Death’s skull leaned forwards slightly. AND YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF SUCCESSFUL IN THIS?

Rebecca tried not to shiver, which would have screwed up the whole devil-may-care vibe. Death’s voice was deep and resonant, every word grinding into place like the door of a tomb closing. “Sure, I guess. I mean, I partied hard as fuck while I could and made some good chooms. And… and I never let them down. Plenty of poor gonks have done worse before they zeroed out.” Rebecca’s shade grinned viciously. “And, aside from Smasher being a cheating little bitch, I got to go down like a badass. They’ll be talking about this heist for years.”

The reaper just looked at Rebecca. The skeleton shifted in his robe, standing ever so slightly more rigidly. INDEED, he said. YOU AND YOUR COMPANIONS HAVE KILLED MANY THIS EVENING. MOST IMPRESSIVE.

Rebecca blinked. It shouldn’t be possible for a pair of tiny blue lights in a skull to express much, but she couldn’t avoid the feeling that the skeleton was looking down at her haughtily. “A-are you judging me?! What the fuck?” Rebecca stomped over to Death, pointing accusingly. “Yeah, I’ve flatlined a lot of gonks. Y’know why? Because every time I did, it was to keep my crew, my friends, safe, and I’m proud of that.” Rebecca had the faint realization niggling away at the back of her head that throwing shade at the grim reaper wasn’t the smartest move. But what was he gonna do - make her extra dead? “Who cares if a bunch of nameless corpo hired guns got zeroed?”

NAMELESS? THEY ALL HAD NAMES. I COULD RECITE THEM FOR YOU, IF YOU WISH. THEY WERE HUMAN, AND NOW THEY ARE NOTHING.

Rebecca ignored that thought, as best she could. “Nobody carries a gun for Arasaka and stays innocent, gonk-brain. And what right have you got to sling shit at me - you’re Death. You kill everyone in the end, dontcha?”

KILL? replied Death, his deep voice tinged with ice. I KILL NO ONE. I TEND TO THAT WHICH HAS COME TO ITS CONCLUSION. I GATHER THE SCATTERED. I MOVE ON THOSE WHO HAVE LOST THEIR PLACE IN THIS WORLD. I DO MY DUTY, REBECCA ORTIZ, NOTHING MORE. AND WHEN THE LAST LIVING THING DRAWS THEIR FINAL BREATH, I SHALL BE THERE STILL. SOMEBODY MUST.

Rebecca held her hands up in surrender. “Jeez, OK, you don’t do the killing, I get it.” Rebecca huffed. She supposed that made sense. People didn’t die when an invisible time-stopped skeleton waved a stick at them, they died when they, well, fucking died. If the Grim Reaper was not just a story and an image, if he had a purpose, it made more sense that he’d be the clean-up crew rather than the hit-man, moving on the dead rather than doing the business himself. There was a word for it. A psycho-something, which was pretty funny when he seemed a lot less psycho than a lot of assholes Rebecca had run into in her life.

“OK then. Are you here to… move me on?”

NOT JUST YOU. BUT YES. THAT IS MY PURPOSE.

“So this isn’t it right?” Rebecca gestured to the fog around her. “It’s not just… this forever?”

NO. THIS IS WHAT COMES IN BETWEEN.

Rebecca exhaled. “Shit. I never expected this. I always thought - y’know, I never believed in God or any of that, not really, not since I was a little kid. I thought I’d flatline and that would be it for me. I don’t know - I don’t know if I’m ready for this.” Rebecca looked around. The quiet, the sense of seclusion from everything around her, was beginning to press in on Rebecca’s mind like a great weight. “I didn’t think I’d mind dying. But this, it’s…” Rebecca paused, and the way that every sound from beyond the fog seemed so muffled created a sense of isolation deeper than pure silence could have. “After mom and dad went and I joined with the crew, I just wanted to stick with them, man. I wanted to at least have someone with me when I zeroed out. And then my brother died, and then Maine and Dorio too, and I wasn’t even there, and I swore I wouldn’t let anyone else go without me by their side. I just…” Rebecca’s voice sounded tiny and fragile, in this faded place “... I didn’t want to die alone, is all.”

YOU DID NOT. YOUR COMPANIONS WERE WITH YOU AT THE LAST. YOU SAID YOURSELF - MANY ARE NOT SO FORTUNATE. AND HERE - I AM WITH YOU, REBECCA. UNTIL THE MOMENT COMES FOR YOU TO PASS BEYOND, I WILL BE HERE. IF YOU WISH IT, THAT IS. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE ALONE.

Rebecca looked Death in the face. It felt like she shouldn’t be able to read emotion in an actual, honest to God skull, but all the same his frozen expression looked softer somehow. “Thank you,” Rebecca replied in a whisper. “Do... do you come for everyone like this? Like, as a personal appearance?”

NO. I COME FOR THOSE WHOSE DEATHS ARE IMPORTANT, ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. AND SOME OTHERS, AS WELL. THERE ARE RULES. BEYOND HUMAN RECKONING, PERHAPS, BUT THERE ARE RULES.

“So how many?”

…ENOUGH.

Rebecca grimaced. She’d seen some ugly deaths in her time. Hell, being honest, she’d caused some of them. Not everyone got to go down swinging and flipping the world the bird. Usually death was just sudden, and pointless, and sad. And Rebecca imagined what it would be like to deal with that over and over and over, to have to pick up the pieces every time things broke. She looked at Death, the tall, still shape of him stark and isolated. “So, what, you’re just supposed to be there as people die and scoop ‘em up? And you’re doing this job forever? That seems, well, pretty shitty for you. I’m sorry.”

YOU THINK SO?

“It sounds… lonely.”

YOU ARE NOT THE FIRST TO OBSERVE SO. BUT ALL THE SAME - THERE HAVE NOT BEEN MANY. Death looked at Rebecca,and she could swear the small lights in the sockets of his skull narrowed slightly. Rebecca felt like she was being measured, but when the reaper next spoke, his voice was gentler - in so far as a voice like grinding gravestones could sound gentle. I THINK, REBECCA, IT IS MOST UNFORTUNATE THAT YOU WERE BORN IN THIS WORLD, AND NOT A KINDER ONE.

“Uh, thank you? I guess? For what it’s worth, you seem… nice? Wait - this world? You mean there’s others? Like, alternate realities kind of stuff?”

YES. I AM NOT NATIVE TO THIS PLACE. THIS IS MORE OF A… WORK VISIT.

“Hah! Pilar always said that was ‘dumb sci-fi shit.’ Shows what that asshole knew. What’s it like where you come from?”

DIFFERENT. VERY DIFFERENT, IN SOME WAYS. IN OTHERS, NOT SO MUCH. THERE IS MAGIC THERE, AND I AM NOT USING A METAPHOR. ALSO, A TURTLE. A VERY LARGE ONE.

“...what are the people like?”

Death hesitated, and seemed to consider this. MUCH THE SAME. THEY COME WISE AND FOOLISH, CRUEL AND KIND. THEY LIVE A BRIEF WHILE, AND DIE, AND ARE REMEMBERED. SOME THINGS ARE UNIVERSAL. BUT THE WORLD AROUND THEM… Death glanced up at the Arasaka Tower. THIS WORLD CHANGES THE HUMANS HERE. IT WARPS THEM, PUSHES THEM TO BE HARD. AND I DO NOT MEAN THE MACHINES YOU PUT INTO YOUR BODIES.

“You mean the corps.”

YES. MEN WITH MONEY, WHO THINK IT MAKES THEM MORE THAN MEN.

“For someone who ain’t from round here, you’ve got a pretty good grasp of how things go.”

IT IS NOT MY FIRST TIME IN THIS PLACE. TO TELL THE TRUTH, I DO NOT ENJOY IT HERE. DEATH… IT SHOULD MATTER, AND HERE IT DOES NOT. ALSO, THERE IS A TERRIBLE SHORTAGE OF CATS.

Rebecca swallowed a laugh that came out as a snort. “Shortage? Cats are about the only thing bigger than a rat we got left running wild in NC, big man.”

WELL, I LIKE CATS. Rebecca could have sworn he sounded defensive. It was almost cute.

Rebecca grinned. “Y’know, me too. Never had the chance to own one, but would have liked to.” She shook her head in disbelief. Talking like this almost made it possible to forget where she was and why. She wondered if Death was doing it on purpose, to distract her. A subtle mercy, maybe. “You’re a lot different than people expect.”

I AM WHAT I AM. I DO WHAT I HAVE TO DO. WHAT OTHERS EXPECT DOES NOT MATTER. THE SAME IS TRUE OF YOU, IS IT NOT? YOU BECAME WHAT THIS CITY DROVE YOU TO BE. GIVEN THAT, YOU HAVE DONE ADMIRABLY ENOUGH.

Rebecca thought about that. About what the reaper was saying, and what he was leaving unsaid. “I stand by what I did, you know. How I lived. Maybe some of those poor gonks didn’t deserve to die. But if it’s them or one of my people - that was no choice at all. If I had to do it again I would. I’d have gone through a thousand corpo goons for David’s sake - wait, shit.” A thought drifted into Rebecca’s head. She’d just naturally assumed she’d been unconscious for a while; the disorientation of, well, dying had scrambled her brains. But she’d heard Falco’s voice, hadn’t she? “H-how long was I out?”

A FEW SECONDS. NO MORE. WE ARE… IN BETWEEN NORMAL TIME HERE.

Rebecca’s eyes widened. Only a few seconds? “Then David’s still here? And Falco and Lucy? Are they OK?” Rebecca saw the skeleton glance away. He looked awkward and shifty, like Pilar had in between spending Eddies on something bone-headed and coming clean about it. “What? What is it?”

IT IS NEARLY TIME FOR YOU TO MOVE ON. ARE YOU SURE YOU WISH TO KNOW? NO MATTER THE OUTCOME?

“Yeah, ‘course I do,” said Rebecca defiantly, ignoring the dread building inside her. “I’m no coward, skeleton man.”

THAT MUCH IS OBVIOUS. VERY WELL.

The fog seemed to pull back a little. Everything was still strangely tinted gray, but where her vision had been blocked she could now see Smasher, with David behind him. David - David looked exhausted, on the ground, blood dripping down his chin. “Oh God, oh God,” Rebecca heard herself say.

Smasher wasn’t even looking at David, he was facing the other way and slowly lifting one of the many canons attached to his chrome. Looking in the same direction as Smasher was, Rebecca could just make out, on the very edge of the fog, something that might have been Falco’s car. Smasher was saying something, but it was so distorted Rebecca couldn’t make out the words. Everything was in slow motion, the events among the living, according to Rebecca’s perception, crawling by as if every second took ten seconds, or twenty, or a minute, to pass.

As Rebecca watched, Smasher shuddered to a halt, and knelt as if being forced down by a great weight. David’s gravity weapon, she realized. Rebecca’s shade grinned in triumph. It wouldn’t be for nothing. Lucy would get away, David would live.

And then Smasher started moving, demonically fast even in slowed time. “Look out!” Rebecca cried, knowing even as she said it David couldn’t hear her. Surely David couldn’t lose, not when the cyberskeleton was so strong, not when David had sacrificed everything for that terrible, desperate power.

And then Smasher was on top of David with a distorted, stretched-out sound of colliding metal.

Rebecca ran forward, reaching out towards David, but the fog seemed to rapidly thicken around her until it felt like she was straining against something solid. She had to watch as, with agonizing slowness, Smasher tore pieces off the man Rebecca loved. Rebecca strained, and still couldn’t move an inch. She fell to her knees with a scream of frustration.

She looked back and saw Death gazing on at the torturously slow violence, his tall, dark figure as still and remote as the stars in the sky.

“You!” cried Rebecca, seizing on to a new idea with the force of desperation. “You need to stop him, right now!” The grim reaper did not react, and Rebecca ran towards him, the fog yielding easily now that Rebecca was moving towards her remains. “You think I’m bad? That guy there is a fucking monster - he’s killed thousands! And you can stop him right now, just get off your bony ass, swing that scythe and finish him! Do the whole world a favor!” Rebecca was stood right in front of Death now, staring up at him. He said nothing. “P-please,” Rebecca begged, her voice breaking. “David is going to - he’ll…”

YOU ARE RIGHT. THAT IS A MONSTER. Death stared past Rebecca, at the fight that was turning into a slaughter. HE USES THIS WORLD’S TECHNOLOGY TO CHEAT HIS OWN END, AND TREATS THE DEATHS OF OTHERS AS A GAME FOR HIS AMUSEMENT. HE IS AN ABOMINATION AND AN INSULT. IF IT WERE MY CHOICE - And Death looked down at the girl before him. The points of blue light that were his eyes looked very small and distant, and somehow sad. BUT IT IS NOT. IT IS NOT THAT CREATURE’S TIME YET. YOU KNOW I CAN DO NOTHING.

She did. But she lashed out all the same, at the one being who could hear her rage. “What are you even for then?!” Rebecca shouted. “Standing at the sides of fucking everything, watching us struggle and suffer and doing fuck-all! Useless!” Rebecca turned back to David, slumping to the floor as she watched David try and fight in his failing body. Watched him die by degrees. “Fuckin’ useless,” Rebecca sobbed, not knowing who she was referring to. “I just wanted him to be OK. And, David, he just wanted his girl to be safe. Was that too much to ask? What the fuck did we do wrong for all of this to happen to us?! It’s not right, it’s not fair!”

THERE IS NO FAIRNESS, REBECCA, NO JUSTICE. ONLY ME. There was no satisfaction or pride in the reaper’s voice, only cold fact.

Rebecca looked on as Smasher’s fists tore into the detached torso that was all that remained of David, as the pieces of his sandevistan shattered and fell away, taking chunks of flesh with them. Rebecca heard an animal whine of pain and realized it had come from her. She looked down at the ground, feeling impotent and ashamed. Dying was one thing. This was so, so much worse. With a distant clarity, Rebecca noticed the translucent tears falling from her face fade away and vanish before they even touched the ground. “I thought you said I wouldn’t have any feelings, without a body,” Rebecca spat bitterly at the reaper behind her.

SOME EMOTIONS GO DEEPER THAN HORMONES. There was a rustling noise as Death shifted awkwardly behind Rebecca. I DO KNOW HOW IT FEELS. TO SEE THE ONES YOU CARE FOR MOST SUFFER, AND TO HAVE TO STAND BY.

“You?” Rebecca glanced suspiciously at the reaper, but couldn’t muster the energy to doubt him. Besides, he didn’t seem the kind to lie. “Must be a weird story.”

YES. THERE ARE ALWAYS STORIES, WHERE HUMANITY GETS INVOLVED. YOU TAKE EVENTS, WONDERFUL AND TERRIBLE AND RANDOM, AND FORCE SHAPE AND SENSE ONTO THEM. He nodded at the cruel dog-end of a battle before them, at the chaos all around. THERE WILL BE A STORY MADE OF THIS, I THINK. THAT IS WHY I AM HERE, NOW. FOR YOU AND FOR HIM. TO MARK THE POINT WHERE A STORY ENDS AND A MYTH BEGINS.

“I guess. They’ll make a legend of him,” croaked Rebecca, her voice raw. “We’ve got that down to art here. Drink in Afterlife, copycats, knockoff merch, the works. All David’s, all earned in record time.”

YES. HIS NAME WILL BE REMEMBERED. WILL THAT BE… A COMFORT?

“I… no. It won’t. Maybe for him.”

Death made a noise like a gust of storm wind. A sigh, Rebecca realized. IT IS TIME. YOU MAY WISH TO TURN AWAY NOW.

Death stepped forward, towards where Adam Smasher stood over what was left of David. They seemed to be talking, but she still couldn't make out the words.

The reaper was right. Rebecca didn’t want to see this. But, even through tear-filled eyes, she refused to look away.

There was the sound of gunfire, a burst of light, and the scythe of death fell.

For a moment, all was still. And then the remains of what had been David seemed to flicker and double, and then - David sat up with a gasp.

David, or the shade, or the ghost, or whatever the it was that was unmistakably him, looked at Rebecca and blinked. “Becca? Holy shit!”

Bless the gonk, he didn’t even notice the huge fricking skeleton standing right by him, or look up at the borg that had just ended his life. He only saw her. David has always kept an eye on her when no-one else had, right from the start, looked on her with warmth and respect instead of seeing just Pilar’s trigger-happy sister. He may never have looked at Rebecca the way she looked at him, the way she’d wanted him to look at her in the deep of the night. But he’d looked, and he’d seen her, and he saw her now.

David’s shade rose clumsily and ran towards Rebecca. He was smaller, like he’d been before chroming up, and wearing his mother’s jacket. Just like Rebecca remembered him when she’d fallen for the strange, innocent rookie in the first place. And he looked so happy; just from seeing her. Despite everything, Rebecca couldn’t help the grin that split her face, even as the tears fell.

“Rebecca, you’re OK!” David knelt before her and grabbed Rebecca’s shoulders, bringing their faces closer together. He was, like her, ever so slightly transparent. “I thought you were a goner choom, I thought we were all screwed! But we did it Becs! We fuckin’ did it! We made it!”

“Hi Davy.” Rebecca heard how small her voice was, how it cracked as she spoke. Rebecca could barely control her face. To have him here in front of her, her David again - she didn’t want to speak, and break the spell.

David must have noticed something was off with Rebecca’s expression. “Becs, you’re…” David’s brow furrowed. He looked past Rebecca and saw the place where her body lay. Rebecca felt his grip tighten on her arms, as if to reassure himself she was there. But all the same, he slowly turned around. David saw the unmistakable figure standing by where he’d risen.

“Oh.” David staggered backwards, coming to sit on the ground, and blinked, taking it all in. Rebecca thought he might rage, then, as she had. But David? He laughed.

Not a big laugh, just a quiet, bitter thing barely more than a chuckle, looking at the ground, smiling and shaking his head as if he’d just heard the stupidest of jokes. “Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot more sense.” He looked over at Death, still smirking. “Bet you weren’t expecting me so soon.”

I EXPECT EVERYONE, DAVID MARTINEZ.

David turned to face Rebecca, and his smile faded. “But if I’m here, then … oh no. Oh, Becca.

Rebecca shook her head, trying to keep herself together. “Sorry David. I tried to slow him down for ya but…” Rebecca shrugged.

David half-rose and came closer.. “I…” words dying in his throat, he settled for reaching forward and hugging Rebecca, her ghost making an undignified squeak as she felt his arms wrap around him. Slowly, she lifted her arms to reach around his chest as he squeezed. As Rebecca pulled David close, she could feel the warmth of him, feel the beat of his heart against her body. Funny, when neither of them had a heart left to beat. But old habits die hard, it seemed.

“I’m so sorry Becca” David said, voice strangled by guilt. “So, so sorry. I knew we might not make it, but… I never wanted this. I should never have asked you to come with me.”

Rebecca smiled a brittle smile and tried to summon some of her bravado. It was expected of her, after all. “Aw, c’mon David. You were being all ice-cold for a sec and jawing with the big skeleton over there. You gonna turn into a weepy little pussy just cus I flatlined too?” Nevermind that she understood perfectly, that watching David die had been like broken glass grinding into Rebecca’s soul.

David chucked at the gallows humor anyway. “OK, hardass.” When he next spoke after a tense pause, though, his voice was still a forlorn whisper. “You don’t hate me, do you?”

Rebecca choked back a noise of disbelief. She took her arms from around David and pulled back a little so she could see him better, gently lifting her hands to rest against the sides of his face. God, he really was just like she remembered him. He looked so young. Too young to be here, like this. “Oh David, how could I ever hate you? Why would I?”

“If it weren’t for me, then you wouldn’t -”

“If I weren’t for you, I would have taken the long walk with the big guy over there a long time ago, gonk-brain.”

ACCURATE, Death interjected sonorously. YOUR CLOSE CALLS HAVE BEEN NUMEROUS TO THE POINT OF BEING MILDLY INSULTING.

“It’s true, I would have followed you anywhere, David. Anywhere at all. But that doesn’t mean I followed you into this because you asked me. Even if Lucy wasn’t - wasn’t there as much as she should have been, she was still one of us. She proved that. So it didn’t matter if you asked me or not, it didn’t matter what the risk was. You really think I’d turn my back on one of my chooms?”

“I…” David looked Rebecca in the eyes, and she saw the fear in eyes soften and fade “Nah. You wouldn’t, would you?”

“And more than that. If you’d never joined us, if you weren’t there to pick us up after what happened to Maine - I’d probably still be sitting in my apartment, staring at Pilar’s old workbench and drinking myself unconscious. I’d still be breathing, maybe. Not living.”

David flinched at that. “I don’t believe that, Becca.”

“I know you don’t.” Of course he didn’t. “But it’s still true. As it is - these last few months were some of the happiest of my life.” Becca looked up at David, at the amazement in his eyes, at the blush in his cheeks as Rebecca opened up a part of her heart, even as David blurred through the tears in Rebecca’s eyes. “I’m so lucky to have met you, David Martinez.”

“Becca, I…” words failed David and he settled for pulling Rebecca close again, and two edgerunners burying their heads in each others’ shoulders. “Me too, Rebecca. I - I’m glad I got to be in a crew like this. Proud to call you my friend. Even if I didn’t deserve you.”

Rebecca made a sound that was half a laugh and half a sob. “Yeah, ya did. Shut up.”

They stayed like this for a while, holding onto each other in that silent space beyond the living world, Rebecca taking in the closeness of David’s body, or the memory of it, feeling his chest rise and fall from breaths he no longer needed to take. As if by touch she could make him understand, as if closeness could absolve him in a way that words couldn’t.

It might have been an hour, or a second, by the reckoning of the world outside. Then Rebecca felt David stir.

“Rebecca,” David whispered. “Something I gotta know.”

“What?”

“Lucy, did... did she get out?”

Rebecca smiled in spite of herself. “I think her and Falco got away from here.” Rebecca called out over David’s shoulder. “Hey, bony! You know what happened to Lucy?”

Death stood, still and patient, as Rebecca and David embraced. LUCY KUSHINADA? SHE IS… NOT WITHIN MY PURVIEW. SHE IS FAR FROM HERE. AND SOON TO BE MUCH FARTHER.

“Much farther - does that mean the moon?” Death was silent in response to David’s question, which was an answer all of its own. David breathed out in relief and looked up, a smile on his face, to where the moon would be if not for the all encompassing fog. “She made it. We did it, Becca.”

“Yeah. We did it.” So Lucy had got out, and Falco with her. Well, that wasn’t nothing. If it had just been her that took the big zero, it was a price Rebecca would have paid a hundred times over. Gazing up at David’s expression, she guessed the same was true of him.

Rebecca buried her face into David’s jacket - the ghost of it, the memory of it, and yet the feel was indistinguishable from the the real thing, from all those times she he scooted up against David in the depths of a booze-fuelled evening, daring herself to go further, to force him to notice her. But she never had dared it, not quite, telling herself she’d there would be a better moment soon, that she’d do it tomorrow. And now she had run out of tomorrows. “So, was it worth it?” she asked.

Rebecca felt David’s body tense under her hands. “I… yeah. For Lucy, it was worth it. I’m sorry, Rebecca.”

“Don’t be. You love her. Loved her.” It hurt to say, still. But it was true. It was what Rebecca had never been able to get around, what had held her tongue at the cusp of a confession all these long months. David cared for her, she knew, but not in the way that made someone a pivot that your heart and mind revolved around. Not the way he did for Lucy. Not the way she did for him. Rebecca had wondered in the depths of the night, sometimes, what might have been if Lucy had never been there, if she hadn’t been the one to find him, - but she had, and there had been no ignoring it.

“What about you?” David asked quietly and carefully. Rebecca could hear the fear lurking behind those words. “Was it worth it? You didn’t… it wasn’t the same for you.”

Rebecca was silent for a moment, trying to put her thoughts in order. “David, everyone knows edgerunners don’t die in their beds. Made my peace with that a while ago. Thought some punk would get the drop on me someday, or I’d catch a stray bullet in the wrong spot from a scav - and that would be it, and all that would be left of me was the chooms I’d leave behind to piss and moan about the stupid-ass way I flatlined. So compared to that, dying for something is a hell of a step up. Especially if it was for Lucy. Like I said - she was one of ours. It’s not the dying I minded, David. But -” Rebecca’s words caught on the lump in her throat. “But seeing you get hurt, seeing what that chrome d-did to you -” Rebecca choked back another sob, felt the wetness of her own tears against her face. “That’s the part I couldn’t take, David.”

“I’m sorry.” David replied. “I didn’t mean to put you through that - I just wanted to keep you all safe, Becca. I wasn’t strong enough -”

“You tried, you idiot. Even when all of Arasaka wanted us dead - you kept fighting for us. For me. That’s what matters to me David, not how it ended.”

David pulled away slightly from Rebecca, looking down with those gentle eyes, and sagged, as if he’d just been allowed to let go of a huge weight. “Thank you,” he whispered. And then David’s eyes narrowed as he looked at her, and he frowned. “What the -? Becca? You’re - you’re going see-through.”

Rebecca glanced down, looking at her hand again. It was true - while before, the translucency had only been noticeable up close, now Rebecca could clearly make out the broken ground through her hand.

“I don’t know. I don’t…”

Death approached, his bony feet clicking loudly in the unnatural quiet. YOUR TIME HAS COME, REBECCA. He pointed at a spot a few feet to Rebecca’s side.

Rebecca looked to the side, and hanging silently in the gloom was a doorway. Or the suggestion of one anyway - a rectangular space, a gap in the world, with only absolute darkness beyond. It felt less like the door had appeared suddenly, and more that it had always been there and was only now making itself known.

Rebecca turned to the reaper. She’d been more angry than afraid at finding out her own life was over. But that blank, yawning blackness made her throat feel tight. “What’s through the other side?” Rebecca whispered.

THAT I DO NOT KNOW. KNOWLEDGE OF WHAT COMES AFTER LIFE IS FOR THOSE THAT HAVE LIVED.

Rebecca saw David look between her to the door, and frown. “So what,” snapped David at Death, “you could be sending her to - to nothing, or heaven or… the other place? Totally blind?” YES.

“Can’t she stay?” David pleaded. Death did not even dignify that with an answer, but Rebecca only held onto David’s arm tighter. “What about me? Is the same thing going to happen to me in a few minutes?”

I DO NOT KNOW. YOUR DEATH IS YOUR OWN, DAVID MARTINEZ.

“So what, we get custom deaths?” David shot back. “Don’t bullshit me.”

LIFE IS A PROFOUNDLY INDIVIDUAL BUSINESS. WHY SHOULD WHAT FOLLOWS BE ANY DIFFERENT?

“So I might not get a door. Just… stay? Like this?”

HMMMM. POSSIBLY. IT IS NOT UNKNOWN FOR THE DEPARTED TO REMAIN. ESPECIALLY THOSE WITH UNFINISHED BUSINESS.

David blinked in confusion, and Rebecca choked back a laugh.

“Don’t you get it?” she asked. “Lucy’s got to be your unfinished business. You’re going to like, haunt her or something.” It made sense, Rebecca thought with a hint of bitterness. David had given his life for Lucy, why not his afterlife, too? Rebecca couldn’t miss the flash of hunger in David’s eyes at that. “Don’t worry about me, Davy. Go to her. I’ll be fine, whatever is through there. You go watch over her or, whatever it is you’re supposed to do.”

David looked up at Death. “That true?”

The reaper seemed to consider it. IT IS NOT IMPOSSIBLE. BE WARNED, EVEN WHERE I COME FROM, IT IS A RARE AND DIFFICULT THING FOR THE DEAD TO REACH OUT AND CONTACT THE LIVING. AS IT SHOULD BE. HERE? MUCH MORE DIFFICULT STILL.

“So it is possible. But you can’t guarantee what's next. It could be Lucy, it could be another door like that one, it could be anything else. Have I got that right?”

CORRECT.

“And while I was waiting to find out…”

David glanced at Rebecca, and his expression hardened. Rebecca had seen that look on David’s face before, after he’d taken over the crew, when shit was getting real. It was the face he wore when he was resolved to not back down.

Taking a deep breath, David rose to his feet, and approached the reaper until he stood right in front of him. In his chromed-up body he might have been of a height with the skeleton, but in death he had returned to the form of an ordinary teenager, staring up in defiance at the end of everything. It looked stupid, it looked futile. It was beautiful, and made Rebecca’s heart swell. It was so perfectly David. “Alright then. I’ll go with her.”

“What? What does that even mean?” said Rebecca, running to David’s side.

“Wherever that leads, whatever is on the other side, we’ll face it together.”

“ What? David, but -but what about Lucy?”

David turned away from Death, towards Rebecca. “Lucy? What would she need me for, now?” David looked at her, his expression sad and soft as a Summer night, in a way that brought a pang to Rebecca’s heart. “Lucy got the dream she was after, Rebecca. The one she had before she even knew who I was. She made it. And, and she’s going to do great things, with or without me, I can feel it. And, and I wish I could stay with her, I wish I deserved it, but I already had that, and I went and threw it away. So where else should I be, if not with the friend who was with me ‘till the end? I’m not going to - to abandon you, Becca, not for a shot in the dark.” David turned back to the reaper, and swallowed. “So I’m going with her.”

Death looked down impassively. DO YOU THINK THAT IS YOUR CHOICE TO MAKE?

“I don’t see who else’s choice it should fucking be.”

WHATEVER THE PATH THE SOUL MUST WALK IS, EACH MUST WALK THEIR OWN. THAT IS IMMUTABLE.

David bristled. “Like I give a sh -”

BUT, intoned Death, holding up bony finger, SOMETIMES THOSE PATHS DO HAPPEN TO BE VERY CLOSE TOGETHER.

Death gestured toward the doorway, and now, and when Rebecca and David looked, there was not one portal but two, an identical hole in the world, so close to the first that they were slightly overlapping.

David was transfixed, staring into the yawning, unbroken blackness. Rebecca glanced back to Death. As she looked, one of the points of blue light which made up his eyes seemed to flare suddenly like a miniature supernova, blink out, and then return to normal.

It took a moment before Rebecca understood that Death himself had just winked at her.

Rebecca had the sense that a rule had just been bent for them somewhere. Considering what he was, what had to do, what he must have seen, it said something that Death was still capable of kindness. Somehow. Rebecca could respect that.

Rebecca felt a gentle tug on her hand, and let David lead her towards the doors. They stood there, in the silence, before the portals. Even with Rebecca’s body transparent and insubstantial, incapable of touching anything in the world she’d left behind, David’s hand felt solid in hers, his skin warm and vital.

“You sure about this, dimples?” Rebecca stole a glance at David’s neck, to the crucifix he’d always worn. Funny, she’d seen him wear it every day, but had never thought to ask him about God or the soul or what he thought happened after death. It hadn’t seemed important. That was looking like a pretty big oversight now. “We have no idea what’s waiting there, how this works. And if we do end up going together, well…. I haven’t been a good person, David. I just tried to do right by my chooms, but other than that - you know. You know what I’ve done.”

“Nah.” David looked at the Arasaka tower, up at where the higher floors were hidden in the gloom. “Doesn’t matter what’s on the other side of that door, it can’t be worse than what we’re leaving behind. But y’know, I never really hated this city. Never could bring myself to, despite it feeling like a sewer all the world’s shit flowed into.” David looked back at Rebecca, and his eyes were soft and warm. “ I always had my mom, and then right after, I found Lucy, and Maine… and you, Becca. Having people I cared about here, with me, even made Night City bearable. So whatever is waiting for us, I ain’t afraid. So long as we face it together.”

“David…” It would be so easy to let the words slip out, to say she loved him, and always had. “…Even with how things ended, I’m real glad I had a chance to know you.”

“Same, Rebecca. I’m happy you were with me to the end.” He looked at the gaping absences in the world. Rebecca thought, for a moment, that he was finally showing some nerves, but when he spoke, there was no fear in his voice. Only longing. “Do y’think… do you think we’ll see my mom? And Pilar, and Maine?”

Rebecca thought it likelier there was nothing on the other side, that past that door she would cease to be, and know nothing more. But that was fine. She’d expected that all along, so all of this was a bonus. She’d had a chance to talk to David, a chance for them both to know it hadn’t been for nothing. And the thing that Rebecca had always feared most - that she’d be the last to go, that she’d head into the dark all alone - had not come to pass.

And maybe, just maybe, David was right. Maybe they’d earned that much.

So it was with a smile that she replied “Only one way to find out. Ready?”

David smiled back. He squeezed her hand, just once, and nodded.

Together, Rebecca and David stepped forward to be swallowed by the blackness, and were gone.

Death watched as the two doors to whatever lay beyond vanished without a sound. Nodding with the satisfaction of a man who’d just seen an unpleasant job finished, he slipped back into the normal flow of time, and it wasn’t long before workers scrambled from the tower, cowering as they tried to give Adam Smasher a wide berth as the abomination stomped off. Unnoticed by all, Death watched as they swarmed over the battered flesh and metal that had until a few moments ago maintained a tenuous hold on the soul of David Martinez.

It was an unusual thing that David had done. Not without precedent, but still. To have lovers insist on going into what lay beyond together was not uncommon, but for a friend… or maybe the difference between the two was not so great as all that, in the end. Or David, perhaps, had understood that, living or dead, humans needed other people to be human. In that, he was wiser than his years, or the choices he’d been forced to make.

Looking at the boxy pieces of metal, it seemed impossible for Death to square the passionate, impulsive boy he’d briefly met with the warped thing David had become, or with the carnage he had wrought. This city had seen fit to make a hero of David Martinez, with all the body count that usually entailed. And a tragic hero, at that, which simply meant he was included in that count.

Even this world, even a place as cold and perverse as Night City, could not shake the human addiction to narrative, to the urge to make stories out of people. Only here, they liked even their stories cruel, it seemed.

Death glanced up at the towers reaching to the heavens around him and the glowing signs that pushed out their messages of salvation a few dollars at a time, heedless of the suffering that had just transpired. It wasn’t religion, not quite. But it was close, and it was enough to drive men to madness.

Death walked away from the towers, and the working men and women swept away all evidence of what had passed here, and the ordinary citizens tried desperately to ignore the events around them. He walked away from the gilded, damaged plaza, towards the slums and half-slums where his services were in high demand.

SOON, Death said to himself, glancing back at the Arasaka tower. As casually as the lives of Rebecca Ortiz and David Martinez had just been spent against it, as impervious as the tower and all it represented seemed - someday, that tower too would fall. Perhaps, by the standards of a city which turned children into killers and then monsters in the blink of an eye, it would feel like forever before that came to pass. But by Death’s lights, it would not be a long time. Not a long time at all.

Death, of course, took no pleasure, expressed no preference, in how he discharged his duty. How could he be otherwise? He was professional. Impartial. Universal.

And yet, glancing back at the tower and thinking of what was to come as he walked back towards the slums, Death ran a bony finger along the edge of his scythe and, as far as it was possible to tell, he smiled.