Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The Black Sapphire pulsed with an atmosphere thick enough to taste– a suffocating blend of money, power, and desperation, all swirling under the soft glow of holographic chandeliers and the persistent, almost subliminal thrum of a bassline that felt like it was vibrating right in your sternum. Ninety-nine floors up, perched atop Dogtown like a vulture on a gilded corpse, Kurt Hansen’s fortress was a masterpiece of gaudy, unapologetic excess. And Valerie, V, was walking right into the heart of it, dressed to the nines in borrowed finery that felt more like a cage than clothing.

The journey here had been a filthy, brutal, waterlogged nightmare. A silent swim through flooded tunnels heavy with the metallic tang of rust and mines, leading to an infiltration where she’d guided Reed through the guts of the building from a sniper’s nest. Every silenced headshot, every bypassed camera, every whispered instruction over the comms had been a single step on a long, dark road leading to this single moment. Now, the tactical diving suit was swapped for a shimmering, form-fitting dress, and Alex’s iconic silenced pistol, ‘Her Majesty,’ was a cold, comforting weight tucked into a discreet thigh holster. The transition was jarring, from silent killer in the shadows to a smiling shark in a tank of bigger, fatter sharks.

Reed was at the bar, looking about as comfortable as a cat in a carwash, even in his impeccable suit. He was a spy, a spook from a bygone era, and this… this was not his world yet simultaneously, was; This world of excess, of deals made with smiles that hid daggers. 

V scanned the room, her Kiroshi optics flitting over the assembled rich scum of Night City. Corporate execs clinked glasses with BARGHEST officers, media personalities laughed with grizzled fixers, and Deputy Mayor Weldon Holt held court like a king in another man’s castle. And there, in the center of it all, was the man himself. Colonel Kurt Hansen. He was built like a brick shithouse, an aging bulldog in fatigues that he wore like a second skin even amidst the sea of high fashion. He oozed a kind of brutal charisma, the confidence of a man who’d carved out his kingdom with a knife and wasn’t afraid to use it to keep the borders secure.

“Just remember what we’re here for,” Reed’s voice was a low murmur in her ear, a grounding presence in the sensory overload.

“Relax, Sol,” V murmured back, taking a flute of champagne from a passing drone. “I’m just enjoying the ambiance. Gotta hand it to Hansen, party’s hoppin’.”

Johnny Silverhand flickered into existence beside her, a glitchy blue ghost in the machine. “Grandeur? Fuckin’ pigsty is what it is. A monument to greed built on a mountain of bodies. Get on with it, V. Find the goddamn netrunner.”

A text message pinged in her vision. Songbird. Look up.

V’s eyes drifted to the mezzanine overlooking the main floor. So Mi stood there, a fragile bird in a cage of her own making, looking down at her. 

The conversation was a rushed, desperate cascade of information. Songbird was dying, the Blackwall eating her alive. Hansen had the cure, some pre-Unification tech locked away in a bunker beneath Dogtown, the key to a neural matrix that could save them both. But to get to it, they needed to play a part. Hansen’s pet netrunners, a pair of French twins named Aurore and Aymeric Cassel, were here. V’s job was to get close, to play them, to scan them and steal their behavioral imprints so she and Alex could take their place for a meet with Hansen. A shard with the necessary intel was waiting for her, hidden in a champagne glass Songbird had left behind.

Just as the plan solidified, Hansen himself strolled over, dragging Songbird with him. “Well, I need to grab you, darlin’,” he said, his voice a gravelly purr. “I have a couple NC politicos here who are dying to meet you.” He smiled at V, a cold, empty thing that didn’t reach his eyes. “See you soon, V.” He ran a hand down Songbird’s back, a little too low, a clear gesture of ownership. As he pulled her away, So Mi brushed her hand against V’s arm, a fleeting touch that re-established their private link.

“It worked,” Songbird’s voice echoed in V’s head. “Re-established our link the moment I touched you.”

V watched them go, a sour taste in her mouth. She grabbed the shard from the glass and headed back to Reed.

“Crash was an inside job,” Reed stated, his voice tight with a cold fury as V relayed the plan. “We suspected… now we know . It was Songbird. She made a deal with Hansen before any of this went down. Traded the president’s life for access to that tech.”

“She’s desperate, Reed. The Blackwall’s frying her brain.”

“Desperation makes people do stupid, dangerous things. And right now, we’re caught in the middle of it.” He nodded towards the far side of the room. “The twins are at the roulette table. Alex has the scan tech ready. Get close, talk, and let the tech do its work.”

V bought eighty grand worth of chips from the cashier—a pittance in this room, but enough to get a seat at the table. 

The Cassel twins were exactly as Songbird described. Aurore, the sister, was a fiery redhead with a playful, provocative glint in her eyes. Aymeric, the brother, was sullen and silent, observing everything from behind a curtain of matching red hair. They were two sides of the same corroded coin.

“Mind if I join?” V asked, sliding into an empty seat.

Aurore’s eyes lit up. “But of course. The more the merrier , non? What’s your name, stranger?”

“V. Just V.”

“A woman of mystery,” Aurore purred. “I like it. Place your bets, V. The wheel waits for no one.”

The game began. It was a delicate dance. Every word, every choice, was a move designed to draw the twins out, to make them reveal the quirks and tells Alex’s software needed to build a perfect digital mask. 

The progress bars for the behavioral imprints appeared in V’s peripheral vision, slowly, agonizingly, filling with each successful interaction.

“Feelin’ lucky about black,” V said, pushing a stack of chips forward.

The ball clattered, a tiny, frantic heartbeat against the spinning wheel, and landed on red. V shrugged.

Aurore laughed. “Tough luck, chérie. Perhaps you need a drink to steady your hand?” She signaled a waiter. “Whiskey for my new friend. And for you, Aymeric?”

“Water,” he mumbled, not looking up.

The conversation flowed, a river of bullshit and probing questions. V complimented them, told them they stood out in a crowd like this. Aurore lapped it up, preening under the attention. V prodded Aymeric, calling his cynical worldview naive and short-sighted, and to her surprise, it worked. The sullen netrunner opened up, eager to defend his grim philosophy.

“Owning Dogtown’s one hell of a bargaining tool,” V remarked, watching Hansen across the room.

“A means to an end,” Aymeric grunted. “Power is the only reality.”

The progress bars crept higher. 60%. 70%. Reed was nowhere to be seen. A message flashed from Alex: Can’t get a hold of Reed. No idea where he is. Stall for time.

Fuck. V’s heart rate kicked up a notch. She needed to keep them here. Keep them talking.

“You have a taste for risk, don’t you, V?” Aurore said, leaning forward, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “I can see it in your eyes. How about we make this interesting?”

“I’m listening.”

“All in,” she said, a wicked grin spreading across her face. “Everything we’ve won tonight. We play different colors. One of us walks away with everything.”

Aymeric looked up, a flicker of alarm in his eyes. “Aurore…”

“Oh, hush, brother. Let the woman play.”

This was it. The big play. The final push to get the scan to 100%.

“You’re on,” V said, her voice steady. She pushed her entire stack of chips forward. “My choice is black.”

“Then we,” Aurore said, gesturing to herself and her brother, “are red. As our hair!”

The croupier spun the wheel. The little white ball became a blur. The sound of it seemed to amplify, echoing in the sudden silence that had fallen over their small section of the party. V’s eyes were locked on the wheel, but her mind was racing, her optics tracking the last few percentage points of the scan. 97%... 98%... 99%...

The ball began to slow, rattling in its track. Clack. Clack. Clatter-clack-clack.

It settled.

“Thirteen. Black.”

Scan complete.

Aurore’s smile didn’t falter, but V saw the flash of genuine anger in her eyes. “It seems fortune favors the mysterious tonight. A pleasure playing with you, V.” She stood, Aymeric following a half-step behind her like a shadow. They turned to leave, and V felt a wave of relief wash over her. It was done.

But then, a large shadow fell over the table.

“Leaving so soon?”

Kurt Hansen’s grating voice interrupted them. He stood there, flanked by two of his biggest BARGHEST goons, their hands resting casually on their sidearms. He wasn’t looking at the departing twins. No. His cold, calculating eyes were fixed on V.

“Cracked the case, you know,” Hansen said conversationally, pulling up a chair and sitting down opposite V. His men remained standing, monolithic and menacing. “Had my suspicions from the moment you walked in. Too sharp. Too focused. Not here for the booze or the games. Then my eye in the sky, Songbird, starts acting… peculiar. And it all clicked.”

V’s hand twitched, an almost imperceptible movement towards the gun on her thigh. The relief she’d felt moments ago had evaporated, replaced by a cold, sharp dread.

“You’re FIA,” Hansen stated, not a question but a fact. “And I’m guessing your partner, Mr. Reed, is lurking around here somewhere too. I should send you both back to Night City in body bags.”

The air crackled with tension. The ambient noise of the party seemed to fade into a dull roar. It was just her and Hansen, a predator sizing up his prey.

V forced a smirk. “You trying to scare me, Colonel?”

Hansen chuckled, a low, humorless sound. “Don’t know. Are you scared?” He leaned forward, his voice dropping. “We’re just talkin’. You’re not about to try something stupid, and I’m not about to turn my party into a bloodbath. Bad for business.” He leaned back, spreading his hands in a gesture of magnanimity. “Tell you what. Think of this as a gesture of my goodwill. I’m gonna let you and Reed walk out of here. On your own two feet. No fuss, no muss.”

It was the perfect out. The smart play. Take the win and get the hell out of Dodge. Reed would say the same. Alex would say the same. Even Johnny, for all his revolutionary bluster, would probably tell her to live to fight another day.

But it was the way he said it. The condescending smirk. The utter, infuriating confidence of a king in his castle, letting the peasants scurry away with their lives as an act of royal fucking charity. He was dismissing her. A minor nuisance to be swatted away. All her work, all the risks she’d taken to get here, and he was just… letting her go. Like a child being sent to her room.

And then he delivered the final, patronizing blow.

“Oh, and one more thing,” he said, a cruel glint in his eye. “Your little bird… she came to me. On her own. Tired of breaking international law for a president who sees her as nothing more than a toy of mass destruction. She chose me. She chose Dogtown. So you can pass that on to Myers. And tell her to get the fuck out of my backyard with you right behind her.”

Something in V snapped.

It wasn’t a conscious decision. It wasn’t a plan. It was pure, unadulterated instinct. An ego that had been bruised, battered, and threatened with extinction for months, an ego that had stared down corporations, cyberpsychos, and the digital ghost of a dead rockstar, suddenly roared to life. This motherfucker was not going to talk to her like that. He was not going to be the one to hold all the cards. He was not going to be the one who decided when she lived or died.

“V, don’t,” Johnny’s voice was a panicked hiss in her head.

But it was too late.

The world slowed to a crawl. The soft synth music warped into a deep, guttural drone. The laughter of the partygoers became a distant, mocking echo. V’s hand, moving with a speed born of countless firefights and powered by top-of-the-line reflex boosters, slid under her dress. Her fingers wrapped around the cool grip of Her Majesty.

Hansen was still smiling, still basking in the glow of his own perceived victory. He saw the shift in V’s eyes a fraction of a second before it happened. The smile faltered, replaced by a flicker of surprise. It was the last expression he would ever have.

The sound of the shot was shockingly loud in the opulent room, a single, sharp CRACK that cut through everything. It wasn’t the suppressed phut of a stealth takedown. This was loud. This was a statement.

The high-caliber round struck Kurt Hansen square in the face. His head didn’t just snap back; it exploded. One moment, there was a smug, condescending face, and the next, there was a crimson spray of bone, blood, and brain matter that painted the roulette table and the two BARGHEST soldiers behind him in a grotesque Jackson Pollock of his own demise. His massive body, suddenly a puppet with its strings cut, slammed backward out of the chair, landing in a heap on the plush carpet.

For a single, solitary second, the universe held its breath. The party froze. A woman in a glittering silver dress dropped her champagne flute, the shattering glass the only sound in the sudden, deafening silence.

Then, all hell broke loose.

The scream that erupted from the crowd was a single, unified sound of pure terror. The two BARGHEST soldiers, momentarily stunned and splattered with their boss’s remains, reacted with brutal efficiency. Their surprise morphed into incandescent rage, and their submachine guns were already rising.

V didn’t wait. She kicked the heavy roulette table over, sending chips and blood-soaked felt scattering across the floor. It wasn’t much cover, but it was something. The BARGHEST soldiers opened fire, their weapons chattering, tearing chunks out of the overturned table and sending splinters of synthetic wood flying through the air. People scrambled, trampling each other in a desperate, pathetic stampede for the exits.

“CONTACT! CONTACT! SECTOR GAMMA, HOSTILE ENGAGEMENT!” a voice screamed over the building’s internal comms. Red alert lights began to flash, bathing the chaotic scene in a hellish, pulsing crimson glow.

V vaulted over the table, Her Majesty barking in her hand. Two precise shots, and the first BARGHEST goon dropped, neat holes appearing in his forehead. The second soldier grunted as a round tore through his shoulder, but he kept firing, his face a mask of fury. V slid across the polished floor, grabbing a shrieking corporate exec in a pristine white suit and using him as a human shield. The exec wailed as a burst of automatic fire ripped through him, his expensive suit instantly ruined by a dozen new holes and the blood pouring from them.

Using the dead weight as cover, V shoved him into the remaining soldier and fired again, emptying the rest of her clip into the man’s chest. He crumpled to the ground.

But it was just the beginning. From every entrance, every stairwell, every corner of the massive room, BARGHEST soldiers were pouring in. These weren’t your average street thugs. This was Hansen’s personal army, kitted out with military-grade armor and weapons, moving with trained, disciplined precision.

“V, what the FUCK did you do?!” Reed’s voice screamed over her internal comms, laced with a level of panic she’d never heard from the stoic agent. “The entire building is on lockdown! They’re swarming every floor!”

“Hansen was pissing me off,” V grunted, slamming a fresh clip into her pistol.

“Pissing you—! Are you insane?!”

A grenade bounced off a nearby pillar, and V dove for cover, the explosion shattering a massive holographic koi pond and sending digital water and real shrapnel flying. The fight was unwinnable. A suicidal, ego-driven blaze of glory. She was on the 99th floor of an enemy fortress, completely surrounded, with the entire garrison baying for her blood.

Johnny flickered beside her, his face grim. “Well, you really fucked it this time, V. Can’t say it ain’t a rock-and-roll way to go out, though.”

There was no escape. No plan. Just the rhythm of combat. The crack of gunfire, the smell of cordite and ozone, the slickness of blood on the floor. She fought with a desperate, feral intensity, a cornered animal biting and clawing at the bars of its cage. She was a whirlwind of cybernetically enhanced violence, but for every soldier she put down, two more took their place. 

She was popping up, squeezing off two, maybe three rounds, then ducking back down as a torrent of lead ripped through the space her head had just occupied. A round skipped off the floor and tore a hot gash across her cheekbone. Her internal chronometer showed her biomonitor flashing yellow. Shields were down to forty percent. 

This was unsustainable. She was a rat in a diamond-encrusted trap, and the exterminators were closing in.

“V, get the fuck out of there!” Reed’s voice was a frantic crackle over the comms, buried under the cacophony of gunfire. “Alex is trying to override the lockdown, but it’s military-grade encryption! She need time!”

“Time is a luxury I don’t fuckin’ have, Sol!” V grunted, slamming her shoulder against the table as a volley of rounds hammered into it, the impacts jarring her teeth.

Johnny Silverhand flickered beside her, his arms crossed, a look of grim appreciation on his face. “Kid, you are certifiably batshit. I love it. But he’s right. You’re boxed in. Gonna end up as a red stain on the Versace.”

“Got an idea for that,” V muttered, a grim smile pulling at her lips. Her left hand went limp for a second, her fingers twitching as she mentally interfaced with her personal inventory sub-system. It was a risky move, materializing a new piece of hardware mid-firefight, but her pistol was a peashooter against this armored tide.

A BARGHEST trooper, bigger than the others and carrying a heavy machine gun, was setting up a bipod on a crushed blackjack table, preparing to turn her cover into confetti. He was V’s first priority.

In the space between her hands, reality shimmered. A weapon materialized out of thin air, coalescing from a cascade of light and data. It was a compact submachine gun, its chassis a stark, matte black, etched with faint, pulsating lines that glowed with a sickly purple-black light. It didn't look like it was made of metal and polymer. It looked like it had been carved out of a nightmare. This was Erebus. A prototype weapon she’d… acquired . A gun that wasn’t just a gun. It was a key. A key to the wrong side of the Blackwall.

The moment her fingers wrapped around its grip, she felt it. A cold, alien hum that vibrated up her arm and into her chrome, a whisper of static at the edge of her hearing, like a million souls screaming from a vast distance. The ammo counter wasn’t a number; it was a fluctuating, unstable glyph that seemed to stare back at her.

“Holy shit,” Johnny breathed, his digital form actually taking a step back. “What the fuck is that thing?”

“Plan B,” V snarled.

She vaulted over the table, her reflex boosters kicking into overdrive. The world became a syrupy, slow-motion. The HMG trooper was just swinging his weapon around, his jaw slack with surprise. The muzzle flashes of the other soldiers were like blooming, silent flowers of death.

V raised Erebus. She didn’t need to aim, not really. This was a Smart weapon, and a fucking vindictive one at that. She pulled the trigger.

Erebus didn’t bark. It screamed . A high-pitched, tearing shriek of corrupted data and raw energy that cut through the gunfire. The projectiles weren’t bullets. They were shimmering, black-purple bolts of pure malice that left trails of corrupted code hanging in the air like oily smoke. They curved, defying physics, and slammed into the HMG trooper.

The effect was instantaneous and horrific.

The soldier didn’t just die. He was unmade . The bolts hit his chest, and the Blackwall tech embedded within them went to work. His military-grade armor dissolved like sugar in water. His cyber-optics exploded in a shower of sparks. Black, glitchy tendrils of energy erupted from the impact points, crawling over his body like digital spiders. He dropped his weapon, his body convulsing violently. He opened his mouth to scream, but the only sound that came out was a blast of corrupted static. His flesh flickered between its normal state and a mess of raw, pixelated code, as if reality itself couldn't decide what he was anymore. Then, with a final, wet pop , his cyberware overloaded catastrophically. He collapsed, not as a corpse, but as a pile of smoking, twitching scrap metal and scorched meat.

But it wasn't over.

The Blackwall code, ravenous and unbound, leaped from the dead trooper. A shimmering arc of black energy, visible even to the naked eye, lashed out and struck the BARGHEST soldier next to him. That man screamed, a real, terrified scream this time, as his own cyberware turned against him. His optical camo implant went haywire, flashing his skin through a strobe-like kaleidoscope of colors. His subdermal armor plates retracted and extended uncontrollably, tearing his skin to ribbons. He clawed at his own face as his Kiroshis fed him an endless loop of his own death, before finally shoving the barrel of his own rifle under his chin and pulling the trigger.

V landed in a crouch, a demonic grin plastered across her face. The remaining soldiers in that squad had frozen, their military discipline evaporating in the face of this technological Voodoo. 

“COME ON, YOU FUCKS!” V roared, the adrenaline and the raw power of the weapon singing in her blood. She opened up, holding down the trigger.

Erebus shrieked its song of death. The air filled with twisting, seeking bolts of Blackwall energy. A soldier tried to raise his rifle, but a bolt slammed into his gun, which promptly exploded in his hands, taking both his arms with it. He staggered back, screaming, before another bolt hit him in the head, and his skull simply… ceased to exist, replaced by a shower of glitching pixels.

Another squad was rappelling down from the mezzanine. V just pointed Erebus upwards. The smart-link acquired targets before they were even halfway down. The bolts flew, and the BARGHEST soldiers were torn apart in mid-air, their bodies convulsing and shorting out as they fell, crashing to the marble floor in heaps of broken, sparking junk.

The fear was palpable now. It had a smell—the sharp, coppery scent of blood mixed with the ozone stench of fried electronics. BARGHEST soldiers, men who had likely faced down cyberpsychos and corporate armies, were breaking. One of them threw down his weapon and ran, only to be hit in the back by a stray bolt. He stumbled, his legs locking up as his own cybernetic limbs refused his commands, and he fell face-first, twitching as the malicious code ate his nervous system from the inside out.

She moved with a fluid, terrifying grace, no longer needing cover. Why hide when your enemies were too scared to even shoot straight?  

She strafed across the casino floor, Erebus spitting its digital venom. She slid over a bar, kicking bottles of century-old bourbon into the air, and fired from the hip, wiping out another squad that was trying to set up a defensive line by the shattered panoramic windows.

The Black Sapphire, a monument to Kurt Hansen’s power, was being systematically unmade around her. The chandeliers flickered and died as stray bolts of energy corrupted their systems. The high-end audio system, which had been blaring panicked alarms, suddenly started broadcasting deafening white noise and distorted screams. The very air seemed to crackle with rogue data.

“Jesus Christ, V… what is that thing?” Reed’s voice was a whisper of awe and terror. “My tactical overlays are going haywire. I’m reading… I’m reading Blackwall incursions all over the top floor.”

“It’s a fuckin’ can opener, Reed,” V laughed, a wild, unhinged sound. 

Alex’s voice crackled onto the comms then, “V, head to the maintenance elevator; the main ones aren't an option anymore; just hold out till I jimmy the elevator back online,” 

She kicked open a door marked ‘Staff Only’ and entered a pristine white corridor. A pair of BARGHEST guards were waiting. Before they could even raise their weapons, Erebus had claimed them. One’s cybernetic arms locked in place, pointing his own shotgun at his partner’s face before firing, blowing his head clean off. He then stood there, motionless, a puppet whose strings had just been cut, before the code cooked his brain and he crumpled.

This wasn’t a fight anymore. It was a slaughter. 

As she blasted her way towards the maintenance elevator bank, a new sound joined the chorus of death: the heavy, hydraulic thump-thump-thump of something big. A reinforced security door at the far end of the hall buckled, then was torn from its hinges. A BARGHEST heavy exosuit stomped through the opening, its minigun already spinning up. It was a walking tank, plated in armor thick enough to stop a car, its optical sensor a single, glowing red eye.

“Okay, new plan,” Johnny quipped, flickering nervously. “Run.”

The minigun opened fire. The hallway turned into a meat grinder. Thousands of rounds per minute shredded the walls, the ceiling, the floor. V dove behind a large, decorative planter, which was instantly pulverized into ceramic dust and shredded tropical leaves. The sheer concussive force of the impacts rattled her bones.

Erebus’s smart-bolts flew, but they sparked and dissipated against the exosuit’s heavy plating. This fucker was shielded against EMP and digital intrusion. Her can opener couldn’t find the seam.

“FUCK!” V yelled, her ears ringing from the deafening roar of the minigun. Her biomonitor was screaming at her, flashing a critical crimson. A piece of shrapnel had torn through her thigh, and she could feel the hot, wet slick of her own blood running down her leg. The god-mode high was wearing off, replaced by the cold, hard reality of a fight she was, once again, losing.

She needed to be fucking smarter.

She risked a peek. The exosuit was lumbering forward, relentless, methodically turning the hallway into a killzone. But its focus was entirely on her last known position. With a grunt, she activated her Kerenzikov booster, the world snapping back into slow-motion. She pushed off the wall, ignoring the searing pain in her leg, and broke into a dead sprint towards the exosuit.

It was the last thing the pilot expected. She ran along the wall, her feet finding purchase on the shredded plaster, a blur of motion that the suit’s slow-turning torso couldn’t track. The minigun fire chased her, always a half-second behind.

She was on it in a flash, leaping onto its back, her boots clanging against the metal plating. The pilot tried to shake her off, slamming his machine against the wall, but V held on, her cybernetically enhanced fingers finding purchase in the gaps between armor plates. She holstered Erebus, the weapon dematerializing in a flicker of light, and drew the monoblade sheathed in her forearm.

With a roar, she drove the glowing, single-molecule blade down into the back of the exosuit’s cockpit. The monoblade sliced through the reinforced plating with a high-pitched screech of protesting metal. She wrenched it free and stabbed again, and again, tearing a jagged hole in the armor. She could hear the pilot screaming in panic and rage inside.

On the third strike, she hit something vital. The suit shuddered violently. Its minigun sputtered and died. Warning lights flashed all over its chassis. V ripped the monoblade out and plunged her entire arm into the hole she’d made, her fingers searching blindly. They closed around a thick bundle of coolant hoses and power cables.

Without a second thought, she ripped them out.

Pressurized coolant sprayed everywhere, hot enough to scald. The exosuit seized up, its joints locking with a final, grinding groan. The red eye of its optical sensor flickered and went dark. It was dead, a massive steel coffin standing silent in the ruined corridor.

V dropped from its back, landing heavily. Her leg screamed in protest, and she had to lean against the wall to stay upright. The silence that followed was more jarring than the noise. It was broken only by the drip of coolant, the hum of dying electronics, and her own ragged breathing.

She was alive. Battered, bleeding, and running on fumes, but alive. She looked back down the hallway, a path of absolute devastation carved through one of the most secure buildings this side of Night City; bodies and scrap metal littered the floor like a macabre painting of death.

It had been a ballsy choice. A stupid, reckless, ego-driven choice. But as she stood there, victorious amidst the carnage, a bloody smear of a grin touched V’s lips.

She had shot the king in his castle, and then she had burned the castle down around his corpse. And for a fleeting, perfect moment, it felt fucking good .

“Alex,” she coughed into the comm, her voice raspy. “Tell me you’ve got that elevator working.”

A pause, then Alex’s voice, strained but steady. “Lower maintenance shaft, end of the hall. I’ve popped the service lock. Get to it. Now . Because I’m pretty sure they’re sending the entire goddamn barghest after you.”

Chapter Text

The quiet that followed the carnage was a hollow, ringing thing. V stood in the ruined corridor, leaning against the cold, steel carcass of the dead exosuit, the world a blurry, pain-filled haze. 

The only sounds were the hiss of escaping coolant, the frantic beeping of a dozen dying alarms somewhere in the distance, and the wet, ragged sound of her own breathing. 

Her leg was a universe of pain; a constant, screaming throb that radiated up her spine. Her biomonitor was a Christmas tree of crimson warnings: blood loss, tissue damage, elevated adrenaline levels threatening a cardiac event.

She looked at the path of destruction she’d carved. It was absolute. The pristine, luxury-white walls were blackened, pockmarked, and in some places, simply gone. The bodies of BARGHEST’s finest were scattered like broken toys, some riddled with holes, others twisted into grotesque parodies of the human form by Erebus’s digital poison. 

The air was thick with the coppery tang of blood and the sharp, acidic stench of fried chrome—the smell of a very, very bad day for Kurt Hansen’s private army.

And all for what? Because he’d smirked at her. Because he’d dismissed her. A part of her brain, the logical, professional merc part that had been screaming in a locked room for the past ten minutes, knew how utterly, suicidally stupid it had all been. However, another, louder part, the part that was pure, uncut Valerie ego, was still buzzing with the raw orgasmic thrill of the slaughter. 

She’d looked Mr. Military Man in the eye and spit in it.

“You’re a real piece of work, V,” Johnny’s construct flickered beside her, his arms crossed. He wasn’t mocking her. He looked almost… impressed . “Fucking insane. But you’re still breathing. Can’t argue with results.”

“Still… breathing…” V gasped, pushing herself off the exosuit. Every muscle screamed in protest. She had to move. Alex’s words echoed in her head: the entire goddamn army.

The maintenance shaft was at the end of the hall. It wasn’t a hall anymore, more like a gauntlet of wreckage. She limped, dragging her wounded leg, using the wall for support. Her hand left a smeared trail of crimson on the pristine white plaster. 

The distant sound of heavy, mag-booted footsteps and shouted orders was getting closer, echoing up from the stairwells. They were regrouping. They were coming.

The service door was heavy, unadorned steel. Alex had done her work; the mag-lock was disengaged. V put her shoulder into it, grunting with the effort, and stumbled into the shaft. It was a stark contrast to the opulence of the Black Sapphire. This was the building’s guts—a dark, greasy space filled with thick bundles of cables, humming power conduits, and the persistent smell of lubricant and ozone.

The service elevator was little more than a cage, a grated platform with a simple control panel. She practically fell into it, her back hitting the cold metal mesh with a jarring clang. Her fingers, slick with her own blood, fumbled with the controls, stabbing at the large, greasy button marked ‘Sub-Level 03 - Maintenance.’

The doors rattled shut, a final, beautiful sound that sealed off the chaos behind her. With a lurch that sent a fresh wave of agony through her leg, the elevator began its descent.

For the first time in what felt like an eternity, V could breathe.

She slid down the wall of the cage, her body giving out, and landed in a heap on the grated floor. The adrenaline was finally crashing, leaving behind a deep, bone-weary exhaustion and a pain so intense it was making her nauseous. She closed her eyes, her head resting against the vibrating metal wall. The sounds of the battle above faded, replaced by the rhythmic clanking of the elevator cables and the hum of the motor.

Down. Away. Safe, for a second .

She held up a trembling hand, watching it shake in the dim emergency light of the elevator. It was all so fucked. 

The mission was a fucking bust.

And, she was sure Reed was going to kill her, if BARGHEST didn’t get to her first. 

Songbird… fuck knows what would happen to Songbird now that Hansen was a red smear on his own roulette table. This wasn’t a win. This was just a higher body count, much higher body count.

And then, a voice spoke.

It wasn't Reed's panicked yet restrained shouting over the comms. It wasn't Johnny's cynical commentary from inside her head. It was something else entirely. It slid into her consciousness like a shard of ice, a voice that sounded like grinding tectonic plates and the whisper of a million souls crying out from across an impossible abyss. It was ancient, cold, and utterly alien.

"I have had many wielders," the voice resonated, not in her ears, but directly in the core of her being. "Soldiers. Spies. Revolutionaries. They all held me. They all used me. They were... adequate. Tools that performed a function."

V’s eyes snapped open. Her hand instinctively went to the space where Erebus had been, but it was empty, dematerialized back into her personal storage. 

The gun. 

The fucking gun was talking to her.

“Whoa, what the fuck was that?” Johnny materialized in the small cage with her, his digital form crackling with static, his eyes wide. “That ain't me, V.”

The voice ignored him, its focus entirely on V. It felt like a cold, heavy presence settling over her, an intelligence vast and predatory.

"But you..." the voice continued, a hint of something that might have been approval, or perhaps just hunger, coloring its tone. "You are different. The others, they fought for causes. For money. For survival. They fought with hesitation, with restraint. A flaw in their design."

The elevator continued its slow, rattling descent, a metal coffin dropping deeper into the bowels of the earth. V’s heart was hammering against her ribs, a frantic rhythm against the slow, measured cadence of the voice.

"You do not hesitate," it said, the words seeming to caress her very thoughts. "I felt it. The moment you made the choice. It was not strategy. It was not desperation. It was... purity. An act of supreme, unadulterated will. You snuffed out a nexus of power not because you had to, but because your pride demanded it. Glorious."

V swallowed, her throat dry. This thing had been inside her head, watching, feeling her pull the trigger. It had seen the ugly, narcissistic reason she’d killed Hansen, and it wasn’t disgusted. 

It was delighted.

"They build their towers of concrete and chrome," the voice mused, its tone dripping a timeless contempt. "They create their systems, their hierarchies. They believe they are masters of their reality. Foolish children, playing with stolen code."

A wave of dizziness washed over V. The pulsating purple-black lines she'd seen on the gun's chassis now seemed to be swimming at the edge of her vision, a faint, necrotic afterglow burned into her retinas.

"They are but data," the voice hissed, the words now sharp, venomous. "And data can be corrupted. Data can be erased. You understand this. You are a harbinger. A beautiful, chaotic anomaly in their ordered, pathetic little world."

“V, what is this thing?” Johnny’s voice was tense, worried. “This ain’t some corpo AI. This feels… wrong. This feels like the Blackwall.”

He was right. This wasn't a souped-up Smart-gun AI like Skippy. This was something that had crawled out of the digital abyss, a fragment of the apocalyptic power that kept the Old Net's rogue AIs at bay, and somehow, some insane Militech or an even more insane Cyberpsycho engineer had managed to cram a piece of it into a submachine gun.

"You have potential," the voice said, the words now a low, promising hum. "You are a weapon, just as I am. But you have been… constrained. By your flesh. By their rules. Together, we can rewrite those rules. We can unmake them. We can feast on their screams."

The elevator shuddered to a halt with a loud clang, the sudden stop making V’s head swim. The doors ground open, revealing a dark, cavernous maintenance level. Dripping water echoed in the darkness, and the air was cold and damp.

The voice gave one final, chilling pronouncement. It was no longer a comment or an observation. It was a declaration of ownership.

"You have proven yourself worthy. You are mine now. "

The presence receded, leaving behind a profound, unnerving silence in V’s mind. All that remained was the phantom sensation of its cold touch on her soul and the echoing weight of its words.

She pushed herself to her feet, her body screaming, her mind reeling. The gun. It wasn't just a tool. It was a parasite. A partner. A patron deity of senseless, glorious destruction that had chosen her as its new prophet.

“V! V, goddammit, answer me! Your vitals are all over the place!” Reed’s voice, blessedly human and frantic, cut through the haze, grounding her. “What the hell is going on? I’m tracking you on Sub-Level 3. BARGHEST is trying to seal the entire tower. We need to move, now !”

V took a deep, shuddering breath, the cold, damp air stinging her lungs. She was in the dark, bleeding, hunted, and armed with a weapon that was probably going to eat her soul.

She re-materialized Erebus. 

The matte-black SMG felt different in her hand now. Heavier. It hummed, a low, predatory thrum that she could feel vibrating right up to her shoulder, a silent promise of the carnage to come.

She looked down at it, at the faint, sickly purple light pulsing in its etched lines; she wasn't just holding a gun anymore. She was holding the abyss. And this abyss was holding her right back.

“On my way, Sol,” she said into the comm, her voice a low, steady rasp she didn't quite recognize as her own. “Just had to catch my breath.”

Chapter Text

The elevator cage groaned to a halt, the silence in V’s skull a deafening void where the abyss had just been whispering sweet nothings. The doors scraped open onto a scene straight out of a maintenance worker’s worst nightmare. This was the Black Sapphire’s underbelly, a cavernous, multi-leveled space of raw, unfinished concrete and exposed infrastructure. Massive water reclamation pipes, slick with condensation, snaked across the ceiling, dripping rhythmically into puddles of stagnant, oily water on the floor. The air was thick and cold, heavy with the smell of rust, mildew, and the low-frequency hum of industrial machinery somewhere in the darkness.

“Alright, V, listen to me,” Reed’s voice cut through the comm, a lifeline of stressed professional calm. “You’re in the primary utility sector. I’m two levels below you in a water regulation nexus. You need to get to me. I’m uploading a path to your HUD now, but it’s gonna be crawling with BARGHEST. They’re locking this place down tighter than a corporate asshole’s wallet.”

A series of yellow navigation markers materialized in V’s vision, painting a path over catwalks and down service ladders. It was a long, winding route.

“Copy,” V grunted, pushing herself up. Her leg protested with a fresh, blinding spike of pain. She tore a strip from the hem of her ruined, blood-soaked dress and tied it around her thigh, creating a makeshift tourniquet. It was a piss-poor solution, but it would have to do. 

She re-materialized Erebus, the weapon feeling like a familiar, cold comfort in her hands.

The first contact came less than thirty seconds after she stepped out of the elevator. They were moving down a narrow catwalk, two BARGHEST grunts in standard fatigues, rifles held at the ready. Their helmet lights cut sharp cones through the oppressive gloom.

“See anything?” one of them muttered over his local comm.

“Just rats and rust. Can’t believe some merc zeroed the Colonel. Command’s gone apeshit. They want her head on a fuckin’ pike.”

V didn’t give them the chance to finish the conversation. She raised Erebus. The weapon didn’t need light to see. The smart-link painted glowing red outlines around the two soldiers, targets acquired; She squeezed the trigger.

The gun’s unholy shriek was obscene in the relative quiet of the maintenance level. It echoed off the concrete walls, a sound that promised a very, very bad death. Two bolts of black lightning spat from the barrel. One hit the lead soldier in the chest. His combat vest offered as much protection as wet paper. The Blackwall code went to work, and his internal cyberware—his biomonitor, his adrenal booster, his comms implant—all overloaded in a single, catastrophic cascade. He stiffened like he’d been tasered, smoke pouring from his ears and nostrils, before collapsing over the railing and plunging into the darkness below with a distant, wet splash.

The second soldier had just enough time to register his partner’s fate, his face a mask of pure terror in the brief flash of his malfunctioning helmet light. The second bolt hit his rifle. The weapon glowed a sickly purple for a half-second before it detonated with the force of a grenade. The shrapnel from his own gun tore him to pieces, sending him flying backward into a junction box, which erupted in a shower of brilliant blue sparks, plunging the entire section into absolute darkness.

V moved forward, her Kiroshis switching seamlessly to thermal vision. The darkness was her ally. She was a ghost, a predator, and this had become her unwitting hunting ground. 

The voice of Erebus was silent since the elevator, but she could feel its contentment- a cold, satisfied hum that vibrated through the weapon’s grip and into her bones and from there into her mind itself. 

This was what it was made for. 

This was what she was made for.

She followed Reed’s nav points, like a bloody wraith leaving a trail of twitching bodies and fried electronics in her wake. 

She shot a steam pipe, scalding a patrol that was trying to flank her. She overloaded a power generator with a single, well-placed bolt, the ensuing explosion taking out a heavy-weapons team that was setting up an ambush. BARGHEST was decently disciplined, but they were trained to fight soldiers and gangers, not a one-woman plague of digital death; their comms were soon flooded with panicked screams and bursts of corrupted static. 

After all, they were fighting a monster from a story that their drill sergeants had never told them.

The water regulation nexus was a massive, circular chamber dominated by a colossal, roaring pump mechanism that felt like it was shaking the very foundations of the building. Catwalks crisscrossed the chasm, and the air was misty with atomized water. And there, hunkered down behind a control console, was Solomon Reed.

He looked like hell. His suit was torn, his face was smeared with grease, and he was holding a standard-issue Militech Crusher with the grim determination of a man who knew he was deeply and profoundly fucked. He saw V limping towards him, saw the state she was in, and then his eyes fell on the matte-black SMG in her hands.

“What in the goddamn hell is that thing?” he demanded, his voice barely audible over the roar of the pump.

“A conversation starter,” V quipped, her voice a raw croak.

He sighed and she could see his words and feelings leak onto his face before he spoke them aloud, “You started a fucking war, V! You didn’t just kill Hansen; you decapitated the entire command structure of Dogtown! Do you have any idea of the power vacuum you just created?” His face was clouded with fury and sheer disbelief. “All of this—the infiltration, the plan—it was all for nothing!”

“He pissed me off,” V said simply, leaning against the console to take the weight off her leg.

Reed stared at her, his mouth opening and closing for a moment as if he couldn't process the sheer, monumental stupidity of her reasoning. He finally just shook his head, the anger draining away, replaced by a weary, pragmatic resolve.

“There’s no time. We’re fucked. But we can be fucked and alive or fucked and dead. I prefer the former. The main service tunnel is on the other side of this chamber. It leads to a subterranean storm drain that Alex has opened for us. It’s our only way out.”

As if on cue, heavy blast doors on the far side of the chamber began to grind open. Floodlights snapped on, bathing the nexus in harsh, clinical white light. BARGHEST soldiers began to pour in, taking up positions on the catwalks above and across from them. At their head was a woman in a modified, officer-grade exosuit, not as large as the one V had fought upstairs, but leaner, faster, armed with a homing missile launcher on one shoulder and a heavy repeating rifle in her hands.

“Well, there’s the welcoming committee,” V muttered.

“Stick to cover and suppress the infantry!” Reed yelled, already firing his Crusher, the heavy pistol barking and bucking in his hand. “I’ll try to draw the heavy’s fire!”

The firefight that erupted was pure, unadulterated chaos. Reed was a pro, a classic agent, certified NUSA spook; He moved with an economy of motion, popping out from behind the console to place precise, powerful shots, forcing the troopers on the upper levels to keep their heads down. 

He was a rock- a steady, dependable anchor in the storm.

V, on the other hand, was the fucking storm.

She didn't bother with cover; it was pointless for her anyways. She was high on pain, adrenaline, and the dark whispers of her new toy. She vaulted over the console, landing with a grunt, and opened up with Erebus. The gun screamed its song, and the chamber became a lightshow from hell. Bolts of black energy ricocheted off metal surfaces, seeking targets with malevolent intelligence. A trooper who thought he was safe behind a thick pipe screamed as a bolt bounced off the wall behind him and slammed into his back, his spine snapping as his own cybernetics revolted.

The officer in the exosuit roared, “ What the fuck is that weapon?! Ignore the old man! Concentrate fire on that woman!”

A miniature missile streaked from her shoulder launcher, trailing smoke. V’s boosters fired, and she slid across the slick floor, the missile screaming past her and detonating against the main pump with a deafening BOOM that sent shrapnel flying everywhere.

“V, get down, you crazy bitch !” Reed screamed.

V just laughed, a wild breathless sound. She fired Erebus at the catwalks above, not even aiming at the soldiers, but at the support struts. The corrupted bolts didn't just punch holes; they ate at the metal, causing it to groan and buckle. With a horrific shriek of tearing steel, a whole section of the catwalk collapsed, sending three BARGHEST troopers plunging into the churning water and machinery below.

She was a force of nature, an engine of pure destruction. She and Reed fought back-to-back, a bizarre duo of old-school spycraft and new-age cyber-horror. He was the scalpel; she was the goddamn meteor strike. He called out targets, and she erased them from existence.

The exosuit officer was relentless, hounding them with rifle fire and missiles, her armor’s shielding barely deflecting Erebus’s bolts but deflecting them nonetheless. V knew she couldn't take her head-on without Erebus.

“Reed! The pump controls!” V yelled, pointing with the barrel of her gun. “Can I overload it?”

Reed’s eyes followed her gesture to a reinforced console near the central mechanism. “Maybe! It’ll vent the entire reservoir! We’ll be washed out with it, but so will they!”

“Sounds like a fuckin’ plan!”

It was a mad dash. Reed laid down a storm of covering fire with his Crusher while V sprinted for the console. 

A heavy round from the exosuit’s rifle caught her in the shoulder, spinning her around and slamming her to the ground. The pain was blinding, but she crawled the last few feet, her fingers finding the emergency purge controls. She slammed her fist down on the big, red, protected button shattering through the glass casing and smashing it.

For a second, silence.  

Then, a klaxon began to blare, a sound that somehow managed to be louder than everything else. A deep, groaning shudder ran through the entire chamber. Massive valves, the size of cars, began to open in the floor.

The officer in the exosuit realized what was happening. “FALL BACK! FALL B—!”

It was too late. A wall of churning, filthy water, a literal tidal wave released from the tower’s massive reservoir, erupted from the floor. It was a biblical flood in a concrete can. The water hit with the force of a freight train, sweeping away soldiers, equipment, and catwalks in a single, roaring instant. V saw the exosuit get tossed like a child’s toy before it was smashed against the far wall and disappeared under the torrent.

The wave hit V and Reed, and the world became a churning, violent chaos of black water and crushing pressure. She was tumbled end over end, her lungs burning, her vision fading to black. Just before she passed out, she felt a strong hand grab the collar of her dress and haul her upwards.

She came to coughing up foul-tasting water on the grimy floor of a storm drain. Reed was kneeling over her, his face pale and grim in the dim light filtering down from a distant manhole cover. The roar of the flood was now a receding echo down the massive tunnel.

“Come on,” he rasped, hauling her to her feet. “Let’s go before anymore of them show up and find this exit.”

They stumbled through the sewer tunnels for what felt like miles, the only sounds their own ragged breathing and the drip of water. They finally emerged into a filthy, forgotten back alley in the heart of Dogtown. The perpetual night of the district was a welcome sight. A beat-to-shit Quadra Turbo-R was parked nearby.

They collapsed into the car. V slumped into the passenger seat, every inch of her body a symphony of agony. Reed got behind the wheel and peeled out, driving with a controlled urgency, navigating the maze of Dogtown’s streets with the practiced ease of a man who knew how to disappear. They drove in silence for ten minutes, putting distance between themselves and the smoldering crater of their mission.

Finally, Reed pulled into a dark, multi-level parking garage, a concrete skeleton picked clean by scavengers, and killed the engine. The sudden silence was heavy.

He turned to look at her. His face was a mask of cold, hard fury.

“This is it,” he said, his voice flat. “We split up. Hansen’s dead. The mission is fucked six ways from Sunday. Myers is going to have my balls for this, and BARGHEST is going to be hunting you until the sun burns out. We’re ghosts now. Both of us .”

He reached into his jacket and pulled out a shard. “This has a dead drop location and a coded phrase. In one week, check the drop. If it’s safe, I’ll leave instructions. If the drop is compromised, or you don’t hear from me… assume the worst. We don’t contact each other. We don’t use our known associates. We fall off the face of the earth. You got it?”

V just nodded, too exhausted to speak.

“Good.” He looked at her one last time, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes—pity, maybe, or just profound disappointment. “Try not to start any more wars before breakfast, V.”

With that, Solomon Reed got out of the car, slammed the door, and walked away, melting into the shadows of the garage without a backward glance.

V was alone. Alone in a stolen car, bleeding from half a dozen wounds, with the entire militia of Dogtown on her ass. 

She looked over at the passenger seat, where she’d laid Erebus. The gun just sat there, matte-black and silent. But she could feel it; A low, contented thrum- A patient hunger fueling it.

She’d shot the king. She’d burned the castle. She’d survived.  

But as she sat there in the darkness, the silence of the garage pressing in, she knew, with a cold, sinking certainty, that the real fight was just beginning. 

And her only ally was the monster on the seat beside her.