Chapter Text
Johnny Silverhand is shocked back into life by a Frankensteinian bolt of electricity. Surging through every fibre of his being, his body rigid and feeling so much. It’s not pain, not exactly, but the effect is the same. There is cold metal beneath him, ominous instruments hovering above. Furtive muttering voices close by.
The last thing Johnny remembers is entering Cyberspace with V. This isn’t Cyberspace. There is too much texture in the ceiling he can see beyond the light, and movement somewhere around him. Shadows shifting. A deep machine hum that seems to come from somewhere very close.
He blinks. The motion makes a strange clicking sound. He is, he thinks, in a body. A body that seems to respond to his intentions, which is new. He flexes his left hand, which initiates a series of beeping noises. Above him is a bright light, so bright it should hurt his eyes, but it doesn’t.
“It’s awake!”
“It’s not supposed to be awake!”
The language is not English. He tries to frown. He doesn’t speak any languages other than English. A bit of Tagalog, picked up from Kerry. Mostly just enough to pick up chicks, order booze and swear. A little Spanish, because it’s around and you hear it. This though, it’s… Japanese? He knows a few words, like anyone, but he doesn’t speak it, shouldn’t understand.
“Adjust the settings.”
“Whuh-” he begins eloquently, but then the darkness takes him again.
-
When next he wakes, the room is dark. Is it the same room? He can’t tell. The optical implants this body has installed compensate for the lack of light, but there is no dulled lamp above him, no hovering instruments. The machine hum is even louder. Is it night? As soon as he thinks it little red numbers pop into his vision. 01:47. Okay, fine. 23.04.2079. Less fine. A year and a half? It’s not another fifty-four, at least, but fuck.
Johnny lifts his left hand, and it emerges into his field of vision. His metal arm. Familiar. His real metal arm, dug up from some scrap heap, or a very very good copy, worn down just right. The scratch in the metal from blocking a knife attack after a gig back in ‘07. Some gonk had been going for Ker, insulted, somehow, by being hit on by the second hottest guy in Samurai. If there’s one thing the metal arm was good for it was defence.
Lifting his right arm is less familiar. It glints, catching the light, which it really shouldn’t. It’s a perfect mirror copy of his left, only without the patina of use. The machine hum grows louder. It feels like it’s coming from inside him. Which, fuck.
He sits up. In the dim light he looks down at a naked body, of sorts. A robot, rather. A construct. All gleaming metal, shaped roughly like his own body. The proportions are accurate, right down to his now metal dick. His fingers tough his face with a click of metal against metal. Even the rush of terror and panic feels wrong, inorganic as it surges through what must be wires rather than veins.
Various tubes and wiring tug unpleasantly when he twists, sitting up. He pulls them out, one after another, reminded of old science fiction films from the 90s. Like he’s woken up in a tube in the Real World, only to discover it’s a high tech nightmare. An alarm begins to sound, a red light blinking. Not loud, not bright, but enough. People are coming for him.
The door is locked, because of fucking course it is. Little keypad thing, but he can’t hack like V can, got no netrunning skills. What does he have? Fists of literal steel.
He stands still, holding his breath. Has he taken a single breath since he woke up? Footsteps are approaching.
“Is it awake?”
“It shouldn’t be. Not even finished.”
More Japanese. Where the fuck is he? He almost hopes he’s in one of the chrome shops in Chiba, because if he’s still in NC? Well, there’s only so many people who have this kind of tech and a Japanese background. He really doesn’t think he’s in the lab of some ambitious Tyger Claw ripper.
The door slides open, and he is pressed against the wall, willing this new metal body not to make too much noise. The two gonks walk past, expecting him to still be on the slab, maybe, behind the thin screen. The wet thunk when his fists impact their unprotected skulls is satisfying, and they go down. Not dead, he thinks, but not getting up again without some reparative neurosurgery to their occipital lobes.
Rifling through their pockets, he grabs an access card. Arasaka. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Course it fucking would be. It’s always fucking Arasaka! Even with Saburo dead they can’t let him go. How many times do they have to kill and resurrect him?
The stolen guns feel weird in his hands, and the clothes he peels off them fit wrong, but even though he’s made of metal now, going around with his dick hanging out just feels wrong. No shoes that fit, but that doesn’t matter with metal feet. There’s some sort of dampening silicone under the soles, anyway, to compensate for the rigidity of the metal. Which doesn’t matter as much as dampening the sound of his footsteps. More people will be coming when these two don’t report in.
The corridor outside is dimly lit, the deep red Arasaka favours. A movement in the corner of his eye reveals a camera. Fuck. He doesn’t think it’s caught him yet. What was it V did to turn them off? He doesn’t remember. Shoots it instead. They already know he’s here, but they don’t need to know exactly what he’s doing.
He creeps along corridor after corridor, hearing activity but managing to avoid it. Taking out cameras, staying low. Eventually he comes to an elevator, and whoever is on duty hasn’t gotten around to deactivating the downed guys’ cards yet. Fucking idiot. The door slides open with a faint hiss, and he is met with the horrifying sight of his own reflection.
These days most elevators don’t have mirrors. He doesn’t know what changed, because they used to have them back in his day. Then again, in his day they were reflective pieces of glass, not screens. Whatever the case, Arasaka’s gone retro for this.
His own eyes look back at him. Or his own Kiroshis, whatever. Dark brown in the still dim light, but he recognises them. They peer out from under grey metallic lids, shaped almost right. That’s what this face is, an almost accurate sculpt of his real one. Nose is right, placement of the eyes, too. The shape of his hair, probably synthetic. His teeth, when he bares them, look human enough. Even got the slight crookedness of the bottom ones right. His tongue is a lump of inexplicably damp silicone, and he wonders what the fuck that’s for. Along the sides of his face are thin slits like LED veins, glowing faintly red. A few exposed wires on his right cheekbone. Some of the angles are too sharp. Not finished, that’s what those fuckers said. Was he meant to come out covered in Realskinn™? What the fuck are they remaking him for? Parading him round like a mascot?
From outside the elevator there is noise, and he is startled into action. Jabs the ground floor button, and thank fuck, it works. Serene music plays. He reloads both guns. Pistols, lightweight, but they’re what he’s got.
The elevator dings.
Doors slide open.
Shots ring out.
Johnny lunges out, rolling, taking cover behind a corner. Takes one hit to his side, another to his shoulder, but he can’t really feel them. Not as pain, just pressure and a slight heat. No holes in him, no damage to anything but the suit jacket. He’s already messed up the arms by accidentally unflexing, unsheathing the spikes at his elbows, so it’s a lost cause either way.
There’s yelling, threats and promises probably, but he doesn’t pay attention. Nothing those fuckers say to him could ever matter. A bullet hisses past his face when he takes a shot. He’s not sure exactly how bulletproof he currently is, but he doesn’t want to take any more chances than he has to. He counted seven people. Well, six now. He tries to take a breath and finds that he can, but it feels weird. His chest doesn’t expand.
Violence.
He gets out, leaving bloodied bodies in his wake. Methodical ducking and shooting. More are after him, they have to be, but he climbs a fence, barbed wire doing nothing to his metal palms, and drops down onto a road behind the building. More people here, but they’re startled. Takes them precious seconds to get their guns out, by which time they’ve got bullets in them.
Running is nothing. He doesn’t need to breathe, doesn’t have human musculature to tire. It’s all easy movement, faster than any regular person. Than a human. Which he no longer is. Hasn’t been, of course, for a long time, but when he was inside V it felt like it, however much chrome the kid had under his skin. Now he’s a goddamned android.
He runs for what feels like hours, until he can’t hear anything, no pursuers or sirens or shots. Jogging around a building he spots a fire escape, and with the help of a dumpster climbs up, and settles on a roof. It’s not a tall building, but enough that it feels a bit safer, like he won’t be immediately spotted. Enough he can get a bit more of an overview.
Industrial part of Santo Domingo. Maybe two kilometres back he sees a tall building, smaller version of a megatower, Arasaka scrawled across it like Saburo’s ghost pissing on as many parts of
NC as his decrepit corpse can manage. He hasn’t run all that far, but hey, it’s been 56 years since he’s had his own legs.
He takes stock of his situation. He is alive. Again. Sort of? He puts that under pros. Also in that column: a far smaller time skip than last time, with any luck everyone he gives a shit about (all three of them) are still alive and well and inclined to be missing him. He has guns. He is not a hallucination in V’s brain. He has, as far as he can tell, his own personality and memories.
“Fuck Arasaka,” he says out loud, just to check that he hasn’t been programmed into not being able to say that kind of thing. “I’m going to fuck Saburo’s severed head with my shiny metal dick.”
Nothing. So that’s fine.
Okay. Cons. Well, he’s some kind of android freak made in an underground Arasaka lab. That’s a pretty damn big one. He doesn’t know what they have done to his brain or whatever he has that passes for one. CPU? It’s been a year and seven months or so since he went into Cyberspace with V, and given the kid’s track record with life and death, and his lack of expert guidance from his favourite brain tenant, it’s entirely possible he’s dead. But Johnny isn’t gonna let himself consider that possibility. For one, there’s more cons: Arasaka’s still after him; he has no money or cred chip; he has no car. And, he sees, looking up, it’s starting to rain.
Santo Domingo, right. Arroyo, he thinks, though it’s just on the verge of Rancho Coronado. He’s a whole lot closer to North Oak than Watson. Probably. And anyway, less people. Kerry’s it is.
He gets off the roof, torn clothing clinging wetly to metal skin. On the top floor, a window is open. All quiet inside. He nudges it up, crawls in, lands in an undignified heap on the floor.
Half empty take out containers on the coffee table. Room bare, but a real expensive gaming set up. Yeah, he can work with this.
The bedroom has a single massive mattress laid on the floor and a stack of cardboard boxes containing shoes. A slightly bigger cardboard box, apparently serving as a nightstand, presents three rolls of eddies. Johnny grabs them, shoves them in the pockets of his too tight slacks. Rifles through the closet. Cartesian Duelists t-shirt, a dark zip up hoodie, some jeans. A couple sizes too big, but it feels better than a torn ‘Saka suit. He transfers the eddies, gets dressed. Leaves the suit draped on the bed, and, after some consideration, one of the pistols as well. It’s out of ammo, anyway.
The rain is getting worse. New clothes soaked already, and he’s doing his best to keep the rolls of eddies dry. There’s enough touch sensors in this body that he feels the rain, the wet cloth against his metal. Better than the tech was when he got his arm in ‘03. Enough that it feels… uncomfortable? That’s not quite it, but he can’t find the words. His body doesn’t feel like it’s supposed to. Doesn’t feel right.
By the time he reaches the edges of Westbrook he’s beginning to wonder if he’s even waterproof. Not like he’s glitching, he is painfully familiar with how that feels, but wet and miserable and heavy. In the corner of his vision there is information, but it’s in Japanese, and though he can apparently understand it spoken, he can’t read kanji. Which also means he can’t go into the settings and change it to English. Fuck.
He lingers at a stop light until it’s red, walks up to the first car waiting. His hood is pulled up, metal face mostly hidden in shade. Except the LED veins. Glowing, giving his eyes a red cast. Knocks on her window.
“No,” she says, opening it a sliver. “I’m not interested, and I don’t have any money.”
He considers her. Forties, maybe. Corpo look, but her chrome is sparse and low quality. Car’s old, scratches in the paint not fixed.
“Give you three hundred if you drive me up to North Oak,” he says, pulling out sodden notes held together with rubber bands.
She shakes her head, glances at the light. Still red.
“C’mon, only five minutes in a car. Soaking fuckin’ wet out here.”
“No,” she says, shakily, and then repeats herself with more confidence. “No.” Standing up for herself. Johnny sighs, and pulls his iron. Her eyes go wide.
“Don’t wanna shoot you, just want a fuckin’ ride,” he growls.
Light is still red. He sees her look. Sees her see the cars passing, not safe to drive off. Finally, she nods. Clicks the lock open.
The interior smells of cigarette smoke and cheap perfume. Real low on the ladder. He keeps the pistol pointed at her side, out of view from the windows. Not that anyone would give a shit. This is Night City.
“North Oak?” she says, voice all trembly.
“North Oak. Up just past the Columbarium, past the checkpoint.”
Light goes green. She drives.
“Which corp you work for?” he asks, just as they’re approaching the concrete monuments to grief.
“Biotechnica. Why?”
He grunts, nods. “If it was Arasaka I’d shoot you. Still, evil shit. Get out. Not paying you enough to sell your soul.”
She glances at him, response evident on her face, but too aware of the gun pointed at her. He shrugs.
“Or don’t. Whatever. But folks aren’t gonna be scared and oppressed into being good little corpo slaves forever. Sooner or later someone’s gonna fight back.”
Her hands clutch the steering wheel hard, and he glances out at the road.
“Here, pull over.”
She looks out, frowns. “Kerry Eurodyne’s house?”
“Uh-huh. Here.” Leaves the rolls of eddies on the seat and gets out. Watches her drive off, glancing back.
The ostentatious gate hangs slightly open. Kerry’s not improved his approach to security in the last year and a half. Maybe without Johnny, things have been calm. He nudges it open, heads inside. Only gets a few meters in before a shot rings out, bullet pinging off his arm. Shit. Red laser dot on him.
“Who’s there?”