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Kirk wouldn’t leave him the fuck alone since he came back to Night City. First, the business with the Rayfield, then there was the botched data retrieval gig, and he still hadn’t paid V for the last thievery gig he completed. He’d figured somebody having trouble getting him eddies for a job would avoid him, but nope. Kirk was blowing up his holo day and night, trying to get his attention.
It was just past seven in the morning on the third day when V finally snapped and answered his holo with a pointed, “What the fuck do you want?”
“V, shit. You are an impossible man to get ahold of,” Kirk lamented immediately, and V rolled his eyes.
“Asked what you want. Do you know how early it is?”
“Seemed busy at all the other times I called– afternoon, evening, midnight. Ass crack of dawn was my next bet. And, hey, it worked. Finally got a hold of ya.”
“It’s fuckin’ seven in the goddamn–”
“Yeah, I’m aware. Up this early too, ain’t I?” Before V could complain further, Kirk kept running his mouth. “Look, got a favor for you–”
“You still owe me fourteen hundred for the last ‘favor’ I did you!”
“Got a favor for you, not that I need one from you. I didn’t forget ’bout that fourteen hundred. I’m good for it, just let me talk,” Kirk insisted, and V groaned in aggravation, turning onto his back on his mattress.
“Fine. Talk.”
“Thank you,” Kirk falsely thanked V before explaining the call in the most roundabout, Kirk Sawyer way he could. “So that 1400 I owe you?” V scoffed but let Kirk continue. “I pulled through and found a way to pay you back double.”
“Bullshit.”
“V, I’m serious! It’s a preem fuckin’ deal too–”
“Mean to say you’re not the one paying me?” V did cut Kirk off this time.
“Not exactly. Think of it like you’re getting referred by me.”
“I’m getting ‘referred’ by you to someone else to pay me 2800 eddies?”
“Uh-huh. Got you into a beta test program with Cytech to test out some new experimental sensory enhancers. Payin’ 3000 eddies upfront.”
“Yeah, just what I thought. Sounds like a load of bullshit.”
“Choom, they are paying 3000 eddies to try an experimental cybernetic. How bad could it be?” Kirk explained as if V should see this as some huge favor. “That’s more than twice what I owe ya, plus free chrome, not even on the market yet.”
“Free chrome? Sounds like a fuckin’ scam.”
“How d’you think they test the latest and greatest cyberware? They do beta tests like this. It’s one hundred percent legit. Look, I’ll flick over the deets.”
“Beta testing means I gotta give the shit back,” V huffed.
“Even if you do, you’re still gettin’ three grand out of it, right?”
On the holo screen, V saw a net link for some application form on a medical-looking website associated with Cytech. “How’s this you payin’ me back ‘xactly? Eddies aren’t comin’ out of your pocket–”
V barely got the question out of his mouth before Kirk was talking again. “Eddies are eddies are eddies, V. Doesn’t matter where they come from as long as they end up in your pocket, choom. Plus, I referred you. Did you even look at that link? Says referral only–”
“You gave some shady corp my info?”
“–so’s like I’m payin’ you with their checkbook. It’s legit, alright? Fill out that form and get your eddies.”
Before V could protest further, the call ended; Kirk blipped out of his vision. “Fuckin’ Christ,” V sighed at himself and almost had a chance to let his eyes slip closed before a glitch of blue to his left caught his attention.
“You’re not actually gonna do this, right?” Johnny asked, immediately doubling the headache V felt forming behind his eyes.
“No shit, I’m not gonna do it. Not fuckin’ gonk,” V gave Johnny a single dirty look before turning onto his side, his back to the dead rockerboy. For good measure, he pulled his pillow over his head, sandwiching his head between the pillow and mattress.
“I could argue against that point. Seen the dumb shit you get yourself into.”
“Just shut up,” V whined, wanting nothing more than to go back to sleep.
Later that same day, V found himself standing outside the clinic listed in the info link that Kirk had sent him, much to the ire of Johnny Silverhand.
“Kirk sent ’em my fuckin’ deets. I gotta go and get them to erase the file,” V explained silently to the rockerboy as he puffed on a pacifying cigarette.
“Still can’t believe you’re fuckin’ here. So what if a corp has your name and age? You’re not so delusional to think that information ain’t anywhere else, are you?” Johnny snapped. “Privacy’s a fuckin’ illusion, choom.”
“Yeah, yeah, save your speech for someone who cares,” V rolled his eyes, knowing it’d look like he was rolling them at nothing to any passers-by.
“Whatever, V. Never fuckin’ listen. Not to me, not to anybody,” Johnny complained as V took his last drag from the cigarette. Without responding to Johnny, he flicked the cigarette to the concrete and smothered it with his boot.
V walked into the clinic fully prepared to have his information deleted by any means necessary, even if he had to break into the main office and hack their system to do it himself.
V walked out of the clinic with a shiny new piece of tech on his parietal lobe and a cred chip with three thousand eddies.
Like any responsible adult who just came into a good chunk of eddies, V decided to first spend it on some good food. His favorite noodle stand was in Kabuki, and he wasted little time driving there directly from the clinic he had just left. The entire time, Johnny huffed and grumbled in the passenger seat, making it glaringly apparent that he disapproved of V’s wishy-washy decision-making. V, in retaliation, blasted The Dirge as loud as his Hella’s speakers would go to pretend it drowned out Johnny’s bitching.
When V parked, he actually paid the meter with his new credchip instead of chancing it as he usually did. Johnny’s engram stayed behind. V was almost glad the rockerboy hadn’t made it a point to huff and haw all the way into the market to the noodle stand, despite being stuck in the merc’s head.
Instead, he chose right before V took his first bite of food, having just sat down with a pair of chopsticks in his right hand, to show up and verbally complain.
“I can’t fuckin’ believe you.”
“What now? Suddenly decide you hate Oriental food?”
“No. You’re just acting like you didn’t let some corp dig around in your skull,” Johnny stated and leaned over the table to point at his own head. V, instead of responding, stared Johnny in his eyes and began eating. “Said yourself you didn’t want them keeping your info. Now for all you know, they’re trackin’ you like some microchipped animal.”
“And you told me privacy is an illusion, didn’t you?” V silently responded as he chewed his food.
“Fuckin’ brat,” Johnny groaned, and V figured that was that, at least for the next few minutes while he ate. He looked down from Johnny to his carton of noodles and paused, blinking several times at the suddenly empty box.
“What?” Johnny questioned V’s odd response.
Looking up at the rockerboy, V asked, “Did I eat all my food already?”
“You fuckin’ gonk all the sudden? You spent the last ten minutes eatin’ it.”
“I just sat down,” V stated, looking back at the box in his left hand. He thought for a long moment and realized he no longer felt like he was starving. He must have eaten the food without realizing it.
“You feelin’ alright?” Johnny asked in V’s silence and looked up at the hologram again.
“Suddenly concerned for my well-being now?”
“Dunno if you forgot, but I’m stuck in your head. Your well-being’s mine too.”
V huffed before standing up from his seat and tossing his empty noodle carton on top of an overflowing trash bin. “Should get a headstart on NCPD gigs,” he stated. The sun had barely set half an hour ago, but V could already hear the sounds of sirens echoing in the city, the sound of eddies and loot begging him to come and collect.
“Yeah, whatever. Can’t believe you help these pigs out– What the fuck is your problem!” Johnny was suddenly screaming at V. It took him several disoriented seconds to realize he was upside down, his Kiroshi’s blinking in and out for a brief second.
“What–what the fuck?” V groaned, realizing he was stuck in the position by his hella’s seatbelt.
“You gone completely fuckin’ insane?” Johnny barked, and V found his visage on all fours, peering in at him from the shattered front windshield.
“What’s happenin’?” V asked in confusion and tried struggling out of the driver’s seat. He swore two seconds ago he was still in the market at Kabuki.
“Fuckin’ roadrage’s what happened! Get the fuck out of the car! Come on!” Johnny kept yelling at V as if this was somehow his fault. The longer he thought about the strange situation, the more he realized his car was upside down in the middle of a fireball wreckage on the 101 freeway.
“How’d we–ugh!” V finally managed to unbuckle his seatbelt and landed hard on his shoulders. “How’d we get here?”
“Ask myself that question every goddamn day, V.”
“I’m serious–urgh,” he felt glass shards digging into his back as he pushed himself forward, out the broken windshield to escape his totaled vehicle. “What the fuck just happened?”
“You’re fuckin’ kiddin’ me, right?” Johnny asked sarcastically, refusing to be of any help to V. “Went total psycho on some bitch that cut you off– shot her car up and rammed into a construction zone. You hit your head hard enough to forget that?”
Oddly enough, his head felt fine. V felt around his short hair, and his hands didn’t come back bloody. “I–I just… I don’t remember,” V admitted, feeling panic start to bubble up in his gut.
“The fuck ever. Just get us home without killin’ us, alright?” Johnny insisted, but before V could agree, his engram had started chanting, “V, go home! V, go home!”
“I’m goin–!” V tried to explain but realized he was breathing too heavily to properly speak. He could hear the wind rushing by his ears, feel it cooling the sweat on his bare skin–
V was sprinting full speed down the freeway, cars honking and citizens yelling or catcalling him as they whizzed past.
“V, go home! V, go home!” Johnny kept chanting as if the merc had a one-second attention span.
“The fuck is going on?” V asked, slowing down to a brisk jog as he realized his bare feet were slapping over the sunbleached pavement, sending shocks up his legs with every step.
“You’ve lost your fuckin’ mind! Go home!” Johnny insisted.
V looked around the busy freeway but couldn’t see his hella anywhere. Another vehicle passed, the driver slowing down considerably to wolf-whistle at V. Only then did he realize that he was bare-ass naked in the middle of the 101.
“Oh–fuck!” V quickly grabbed himself with both hands, doing his best to retain his modesty. He picked up the pace again, running across several lanes of traffic when it was safe and making his way down the first off-ramp he could.
“Johnny– what the hell are you doing?” V asked in a panic, trying to find something to cover up with or a decent hiding place.
“What the hell am I doin’? You’re the one deciding to fuckin’ streak down the 101!”
“You’re doing this! I don’t– One second I’m eating dinner, the next I’m in a car wreck, now I’m fucking naked!” V shouted, not caring if he was speaking aloud to Johnny. His heartbeat was pounding in his ears, and he had adrenaline flooding his bloodstream.
“Ask yourself that goddamn question!” Johnny yelled right back at V, finally appearing as the merc hopped over a guard rail and took shelter to try and catch his breath and calm down.
“Did you slip a pill without me realizing?” V accused the dead rockerboy as he paced back and forth, puffing on a hologram cigarette.
“Listen, if I could slip those magic pills without you realizing, you wouldn’t fuckin’ be here,” Johnny snapped. “This is somethin’ else. But go ahead, blame me for all your shitty decisions.”
“Somethin’ else?” V asked before feeling the small bandage behind his left ear, the remnants of the new cyberware he had installed earlier that day. “Fuck,” he sighed.
“Startin’ to catch up?” Johnny asked, and V did his best to ignore his engram’s aggravating tone.
“Fuck, we need to get to Vik. What happened to my clothes?”
“Tossed ’em while sprinting.”
“Why would you let me do that?!” V asked in anger as if Johnny had any control over the situation.
“I was too busy yellin’ at you to go the fuck home!” Johnny snapped right back.
In frustration, V rubbed at his face before looking around and seeing several piles of trash lying in the dirt nearby. “Shit,” he sighed and stood up to grab the one that looked the least dirty before tearing it open, shaking out the contents, and tying the plastic around his waist.
“You could say that again,” Johnny quipped before disappearing in a blue haze.
V thought that if he focused hard enough and kept picturing himself arriving home, calling Vik for help, and taking a nice warm shower, it would become ingrained in his subconscious and become a reality– regardless of his new condition.
Instead, as V approached H10, he suddenly found himself in a loud environment with flashing, disorienting lights. V flinched from the sudden onslaught of sound and lights before he realized he was standing in the middle of a nightclub’s dancefloor. There was a woman in front of him that he had his hands on as she danced and immediately retracted them.
“What the fuck?” V asked, but his voice was drowned out by the fast-paced tempo of the electronic music blasting over the club’s speakers. The woman in front of him turned around to smile. V realized she had a black triangle painted on her nose and several lines on her cheeks before she threw her arms around his shoulders.
“V, hey, calm down,” Johnny’s voice sounded clearly over the music while the woman asked what was wrong. “Everything is chill. Stay calm,” Johnny insisted as if he were soothing some startled animal.
“Why’s there some chick clinging to me?” V asked his engram silently as he felt the woman kiss his neck.
“Stay calm. Chick gave us a handjob fifteen minutes ago–”
“She fucking what?!” V cringed internally as he tried mechanically dancing with the stranger.
“Stay calm. Everything’s fine! Just don’t freak out,” Johnny insisted.
“How am I not supposed to freak out?” V looked around at the other people, realizing everyone was in some low-attempt version of a Halloween costume. “We’re supposed to go home– I need to call Vik!”
“Everything is fine! We got here okay. People in costumes got in for free. You had a few cocktails, met this chick, and everything is good. Just stay calm,” Johnny insisted smoothly, despite V realizing he was still wearing the stupid trashbag around his waist, and a wave of embarrassment washed over him.
“I don’t remember any of that, Johnny! What the fuck?” V silently asked both himself and Johnny. What in the hell was happening to him? He tried disentangling himself from the woman who seemed dead set on giving him a hickey.
“Do you wanna go somewhere more private?” she stood on her tiptoes to loudly ask in his ear, the environment not allowing her to sound as sultry as she had aimed.
Panic flooded V, and he managed to back away from her. “I–I’m, uh, beer,” he motioned behind himself, without knowing if that was where the bar was or not before he turned around and squeezed through the pulsing bodies.
“Get me one too!” the woman shouted after V, but he had no intention of doing such a thing.
“The fuck’s your problem?” Johnny sighed at him as he pushed his way off the dancefloor.
“The fuck is yours?!” V asked back with a silent scowl on his face. “Chicks not even that hot.”
“What? Compared to that Nomad chick you’re crushin’ on? She’s way outta your league, choom. Gotta work with what you got.”
“Fuck off.”
“Hey, it was goin’ just fine ’til you woke back up.”
“I’m wearing a goddamn trash bag as a skirt, Johnny. I need to go home–”
V suddenly stopped walking as he was met with a suddenly enormous fire. V blinked a few times, the light blinding compared to the previously dark nightclub, and he realized he was outside.
“Congratu-fuckin’-lations. You’re a certified psycho,” Johnny appeared to V’s left, slowly clapping to drive his point home.
“Huh?” V asked, eyes wide and confused.
“Oh, now you choose to wake back up? Fuckin’ fantastic.”
“What’s…” V started to ask, wondering what shit he had gotten himself into now before he realized he was holding a lit molotov cocktail in his right hand. “What’d I do?”
“Set the fuckin’ place ablaze ’cause booze was a hundred thirty eddies a pop,” Johnny stated and crossed his arms over his chest. “Way to fuckin’ lose your cool.”
“Bu-But I didn’t! I blacked out!”
“Still fuckin’ torched the place!”
Full-blown panic flooded V’s gut as he looked back at the building on fire in front of him. Before he could try defending his actions or ask Johnny if he’d had enough fun so they could go home, the sound of wailing sirens caught his attention. Both he and Johnny turned left to see an entire squadron of police cars racing down the road, and V’s panic took on a new sense of urgency.
“Oh, shit!” he tossed the Molotov without thinking before sprinting in the opposite direction.
“Oh shit is right, goddamnit,” Johnny huffed as V ran straight through the holographic rockerboy. V had literally nothing on him except the stupid trash bag tied around his waist; he had no means of defending himself or blending in with the crowd. His first thought was having to somehow car-jack some poor gonk.
“Call Rogue,” Johnny suggested, and V almost laughed.
“Call your ex? And tell her what ‘xactly?”
“Just call fuckin’ Rogue before the NCPD turns you into their next target practice!”
V wasn’t even sure where his holo was. He still found his cellular implant working without the physical device and immediately dialed Rogue’s number.
“V?” she answered inquisitively.
“Uh, hey, Rogue. How’re things?”
“Cut the fuckin’ small talk,” Johnny snapped, “Get her help!”
“Look, sorry for the call,” V checked over his shoulder to see the police cars quickly closing the space between them and V, and he veered off course into a nearby alley. “Johnny, uh–”
“Don’t fuckin’ blame me for your shit!” Johnny stopped V again.
“We– uh, we’re in a sort of predicament–”
“Are you jogging?” Rogue asked, and V saw her press her eyebrows together on the hologram in his vision.
“More like sprintin’, actually. Funny story–”
“You have something to do with torching Riot, don’t you?” she asked plainly as V checked over his shoulder again. Thankfully, the police cruisers were struggling to follow him into the alley.
“Yeah. Yeah, but I have no memory of it. I got this implant earlier this evening, and it’s fuckin’ with my head– I just really need some help gettin’ to my ripper–”
“Where are you?” she asked in her signature “disappointed mother” tone.
“I’ll flick you the coords–” V stated as the sirens grew louder– and then changed completely. The typical police wail was still following him– but there was also the terrifying sound of a MaxTac AV somewhere nearby.
V frantically started looking around before he realized he was no longer running. He was instead driving; full speed down the wrong side of the road, no less, and had to quickly dodge an oncoming vehicle.
“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my fuckin’ god–!” V instantly began panicking as he fought to keep control of the vehicle he was driving as he came out of the knee-jerk swerve.
“Well, this is how I die a second time. Stuck in the brain of some cyberpsycho merc who decided to steal a fuckin’ police car. Great job, V. Really, fantastic–”
“Can you fuckin’ not right now?!” V screamed out loud at his engram as he looked in the rearview mirror to see several squad cars and a MaxTac AV chasing him. “Oh, fuck– fuckin’ shit fuck!” V groaned and locked his gaze back on the road. Johnny was right. They were about to die unless he could devise a brilliant plan before he blacked out again.
“You really want those to be your last words?” Johnny asked caustically, and V glanced over at the passenger seat, ready to give Johnny some much better last words in the form of several insults. Before he could, his attention was quickly pulled back to the road as a Thorton truck came out from a sideroad, drifting to cut him off. The front end of the police car crashed into the tailgate, throwing V and Johnny briefly forward as the car’s engine revved from the sudden obstruction.
As the Thorton sped up, it ripped the front bumper off the police car, and V didn’t recognize the truck until it was a good five or six feet ahead; it was Panam’s Warhorse.
Suddenly relieved, V found himself laughing at his luck. Before he could wonder if Rogue had anything to do with Panam’s sudden appearance, the fixer herself appeared in the rearview mirror. V watched her signature dark green Quadra fishtail one of the pursuing police cars before the rest of them fell back.
V thought that was a good sign until high-caliber machine gun fire erupted around him and Panam’s truck. Several bullets penetrated the roof of the police cruiser V had stolen. As he flinched and ducked, the dashboard lit up with several warnings about the suddenly poor condition of the cruiser. His focus was pulled from the dash to a bright flash of light in front of him. V looked up to see Squama poking out of the Warhorse’s ceiling hatch with a rocket launcher on his shoulders.
A resounding overhead boom told V that he’d hit his target. Still, another eruption of machine gun fire stalled any celebratory feelings he may have had.
“Jesus, we are never gonna afford to pay her back for this,” Johnny stated, his body fully turned to look out the shattered back window of the cruiser. V used the mirror to check instead, realizing he wasn’t only sandwiched between Panam and Rogue’s vehicles. He was also being tailed by several more that he vaguely recognized as regulars in the parking lot at the Afterlife.
After the second round of gunfire from the MaxTac AV, with bullets sprayed all over the road and convoy V found himself in, Squama fired a second rocket. The sonic boom told V he had hit his target again. This time, he threw a fist in the air in celebration, and before V could wonder if that was a good thing, he followed Panam’s truck in a quick swerve to avoid the AV crashing into them.
A scream erupted from V’s throat, morphing into some strangled form of celebratory laughing and whooping as the thought crossed his mind that Rogue was way out of Johnny’s league, just like Panam was out of his. If he voiced the opinion, or if Johnny had subconsciously heard it, V wouldn’t know. The next thing he remembered was the bright lights of a ripperdoc chair looming overhead. His eyes instantly watered as he put his hands up to try and block the light. His movements were uncoordinated, and he realized he was high, probably off some anesthetic.
It took him longer than usual to come to his senses and realize exactly where he was. When V did, hysteria suddenly overtook him.
“Vik!” he shouted and tried sitting up too quickly, making his head spin, “Vik! Vik, tie me down! Please– I’m not–I’m blacking out–Strap me into the chair, don’t let me leave!” V started explaining too quickly for whole sentences to form in his mouth.
The old ripper had been in front of the TV in his usual spot and stood from his seat when V started frantically yelling. Instead of saying anything or doing what V asked, he strode over to a nearby tray. Vik picked up a spindly-looking neuro implant, showing it to V with a borderline pissed look on his face.
The expression on Vik’s face alone had V recoiling back into the chair. “What’s that?” he asked before feeling the left side of his skull, finding his scalp tender from having been operated on twice in one day. “Is– is that–?”
“The experimental implant that took you on a rampage last night? Yeah,” Vik answered sharply, and V braced himself for a scolding.
“Who is Kirk?” another voice spoke up before Vik could say anything else. V’s attention was redirected to another spot, finding Rogue standing with her arms crossed a few feet in front of him. She wasn’t alone; Squama was lounging in the back, looking disinterested in the conversation about to take place. To V’s immediate right, he also found Panam sitting backward in a chair, leaning on the back with her chin resting on her arms.
V quickly tried to sit up and fix his composure before realizing he still had a trashbag tied around his waist. A sudden flood of insecurity overtook him.
“I asked you a question, V. Who is Kirk?” Rogue asked a second time, snapping V’s attention back to her.
“I–I–Uh, he’s, uh– Kirk’s just some guy–”
“Some guy?” Rogue raised her eyebrow impatiently at V.
“I mean, he’s some low-level fixer in Heywood. Kirk Sawyer, just some guy I grew up with on the streets. He owed me eddies for a job–”
“And he got you some experimental military-grade combat implants?”
“No–what? No, it’s just some Cytech sensory thingy,” V poorly explained. Behind where Rogue was standing, he saw Johnny appear. The rockerboy shook his head in disapproval as he leaned against the far wall.
“This ‘sensory thingy,’” Vik began, “Had you attacking anything you perceived as a threat across Night City. It’s a miracle Ms. Amendiares got to you before MaxTac could,” Vik dropped the implant into the tray he’d picked it up from.
“Oh, they got to him first,” Panam spoke up, “He’s lucky to still be breathing.”
“That he is!” Squama piped up from the back, showing he was listening to the conversation despite looking disinterested.
V looked back up at Vik to see the ripper run a hand down his face and sigh. “You’ve got some knack for shoving sketchy corpo tech into your head, kid. Never thought Johnny’d be the more rational of you two, but maybe listen to him once in a while when he says something’s a bad idea, huh?” Vik shook his head before retreating back to his television.
V turned his attention back to his engram, seeing Rogue on her holo, pacing back and forth in front of Johnny. “What happened?” he silently asked his engram.
“Told ’em ’bout the cyberware, Kirk, and the blackouts,” Johnny barely gave an explanation before Panam had rolled closer to V in the ripper chair.
“So, how’s your face?” she asked.
“Huh?”
Panam leaned forward, reaching across V to pull the extendable mirror down for V. He saw a sizable welt over his right eye that he couldn’t feel due to the meds in his system.
“Holy shit,” V gasped and pulled the mirror closer for a better look.
“Doc said I broke your zygomatic bone,” Panam stated and showed V her right fist, which was bandaged up. “Bruised a couple of my knuckles, too.”
“What’d I do?” V asked, looking away from his reflection to search Panam’s face for any hint of disgust or malice.
“Total Jekyll and Hyde moment. You’re lucky your personal rockerboy came out to explain everything before I did any worse damage,” Panam smirked and looked down at the bandages over her knuckles. “Your doc’s sweet. Said I should join his old boxing club.”
“Maybe you should. Give you a reason to visit the city more often,” V encouraged her, and Panam looked up with a smile on her lips.
“Between you and Saul gettin’ on my nerves every other day, I think I might need some healthy outlet.”
“Ouch,” Johnny laughed.
“Shut up,” V snapped at him in his mind.
“Out of your league, V. Out of your league.”