Chapter Text
Breath comes back. Blood’s in her mouth. So is the distant echo of a god biding its time, gently peeling away we from me. Pain, too, in her thigh, her arm, and everywhere else that’s been strained, grazed, nicked. Her heart, thumping hard, has launched to her throat from Reed’s point-blank pistol shot.
She’d reacted. Dodged to the side like an elastic snap and surged forward to shoulder-ram Reed in the gut. Gripped his midsection in a growling bear-lock bear-hug. Could’ve probably lifted him, slammed him down, if not for the pulsing ache of nerves and muscles and the mist of the hypo wearing off.
Or, maybe not. V’s a stinger in street fights and has got about as much discipline as a dog going full tilt. Reed’s got years on her and a brimming archive of Militech ops under his belt. Her brain sizzles to momentary white and fucking ouch when Reed holds his center of gravity and knees her in the sternum, grabs her by her middle, and throws her off like she’s nothing. She knocks her mouth on the floor with a whine.
Reed’s pistol is by her head. She can only watch, in a daze, when his hand grabs it and lifts it from view.
“Could’ve made a fortune working in a corp. Keepin’ a thing like this under wraps. Real rat-like.” Reed’s boots thud. V’s trying to get up. “How long did you plan this?”
“N—none of your...”
V’s on one knee, wiggling her head. Reed’s gun is on her again, his face a menhir, his anger contained to nothing more than the tight pull of his jaw and the deadly squint of his eyes. Would be a breathtaking thing to see that fury flared outward. V holds his stare without faze. “Songbird put you up to this?” he asks tightly. “Neglected to tell you what all this work is for?”
“Chief—”
“Ain’t your chief.”
V spits out blood and prods a loose tooth with her tongue. Stands all the way up, after, and the aim of Reed’s gun follows like a shadow in motion. “Well. Ain’t the chief of anythin’ now, I’m guessin’.”
A string coming undone. The crumple of Reed’s face becomes severe, and what rage does to his expression pulls a faltered breath out of V, much to her chagrin. “You proud of what you did, nomad? That—there. Out there. Annihilation. You know how many families lost parents just this morning? How many sons and daughters—”
“Wa’n’t supposed to go like that,” V says sternly. Swallows down the bile of guilt, of terror, of something that lingers red and hungry under her tongue like an unhealed sore. No—none of that should have happened. All of it could’ve not happened. “Should’a just left her alone. If you had—”
“What? The WMD? Seen what she can do now. Should just let her walk, V?”
“And who made her a WMD, asshole? Huh?” Watches Reed stew in his pause, V does. And then with a shock of anger and bared teeth, goes further: “who let her become a fuckin’ WMD?”
Reed blinks. They stare at one another, fury to fury, two ends of ropes fluttering in the wind, off a cliff. One’s bound to fall off if not both. In the back of V’s mind something screams they don’t have time, she doesn’t have time for this, but her back’s to the wall and Reed’s the last of Militech’s towers, standing proud and battered and angry in its debris. The totality of its network is in flames now, a smorgasbord in pieces. Executives must be shitting their pants worldwide. Outside and below, bodies are bent, twisted, lifeless.
Reed isn’t letting up like none of that is true. “She made that choice. She agreed.”
“Not to dying.”
“She wasn’t gonna die! Corp wasn’t gonna let that happen. She was gonna save us.”
“From— fuckin’—what?!”
“What’s there beyond the Blackwall! You think Netwatch’s gift wrap’s gonna hold forever?”
“So, what, sendin’ her pokin’ around in there was gonna fix that?”
“We were going to control them.” Reed’s pistol sways with his proclamation. Passionate, and furious, and—mourning. When V takes a step forward, up goes the muzzle again and in the light, it glimmers sharp. “We were supposed to make them work for us. Make them harmless.”
Harmless? The things swimming in red, incomprehensible, and gurgling, and starving? Melted So Mi’s metal like it was plastic, decimated an army, and swallowed an entire megacorpo network like it was nothing? V snorts, watches Reed’s expression twitch.
“‘Course, sure, that’s the only reason. Real noble, that. Forget impossible, but you definitely weren’t goin’ to weaponize ‘em any, huh?”
“We wouldn’t—”
“Came from you,” V says slowly, “that So Mi’s a weapon.”
Speaks her name to put a label on this: a human being, that’s what they’re talking about. Two puny syllables that make Reed’s anger fall apart briefly. A millisec twitch of his mouth and loosened brows is all it is, but he takes a long moment to respond all the same. His next words come out measured, every movement of his mouth forming the shapes of his faith:
“She—chose to become it. She was never meant to be one.”
“Didn’t give her a choice but to. Would maybe see that if you stood where she is, for once,” V says, growing livid, going for another step forward. Reed doesn’t move, but V doesn’t push beyond the one step, yet. She keeps her breathing in check. Keeps a clock ticking in the back of her head while she picks at words, flourishes betting chips for an opening. Anything. “Even gave the weapon a name, didn’t you? Songbird. In a cage. D’you even know there was a cure for her under here? Down there in Cynosure?”
Reed’s jaw slacks. A moment, again, of something beyond anger on his face but fire comes back fierce when V tries for one more step forward. V can see the grip he has on his gun is so tight it shakes, just once. “What’re you talking about?”
V grinds her teeth. Lets her eyes shrink to slits. “Rogue AI. Down there. Could make it do what she needs. Trapped in a goddamn shard.”
“That’s impossible. Cynosure was decommissioned before any success.”
“Then what’d we just klep, huh? What’d she just breach so damn painfully that she almost fuckin’ melted?”
Steadfast: “that’s not true.”
Defiant: “what, did this all for nothing, then?” A scowl. Tremors on V’s wrists. If Reed notices, he doesn’t give it away. “What if it is true, Reed? What if there’re a lot of things they didn’t tell you?”
Then he’d have believed in it all for nothing—V can see it on Reed’s face. He’s blinking too quickly. Stock-still and tall and strong, a wall that wasn’t built to cave but is giving, just so, just slightly at the edges. There should be something here: a shine of sympathy, pity, but V’s nostrils are still cloudy with the rusty smell of blood and she’s too busy searching for a glimmer of Reed’s open door. However small, even if it’s just enough to get them all off this security floor.
Not enough of an opening, still—he’s not moving. Stands his ground, in fact. Shuts that door as V steps closer and he roars, “enough!” Gun up. Teeth bared. Anger in there that V isn’t even sure who’s for, anymore. “You’re gonna tell me who else is helping her, V. And you’re gonna tell me where she’s gonna go. Now.”
“Or what?”
“I kill you.”
“Then who’s gonna help you out? Your fucked-up networks?” Reed frowns. V seethes. “Doesn’t have to get any messier than it already is, Reed. I promise you, it doesn’t. Just let it go.”
A tense stretch of silence. Reed’s gun lowers. V almost allows herself to relax, but—Reed’s on her in a second and punching the air from her belly so damn hard that her vision spreads to ink blots. She keels. Arm around her throat and hand gripping her hair next and she flounders, scrambles, digs her nails into the breadth of his sleeve and thrashes.
“Sonuva—”
“Militech’ll—Militech will get it out of you.”
“Let—me—go—”
Air, thinning out. V can’t breathe. Consciousness grips, fails, slips, puts everything into frightening focus for an excruciating second. She’s aching everywhere. Every light in the security office is sparking and flickering. Every noise she can hear is warping.
Including Jackie’s.
Jackie: a hulk of shoulders and thick neck bursting into the room, howling the battle cry of the Heywood mad as he rips Reed’s arm from around V and shoves. Gun flings somewhere and goes off. Something crashes behind V and she falls to her hands and knees as she coughs and spits, rapid-pumping air into her lungs. Someone’s yelling, grunting, and she shakes the dizziness off to whip around and see Reed with his hands around Jackie’s neck like a vise.
Hard kick up the fucking noggin gets Reed off Jackie. Jackie clambers to his feet next to V, growls, and puts his arms up. V’s fists are flexed. Reed is soundless in his recovery, standing, elbows up, eyes sharp.
“Hey, V,” Jackie pants, “thinkin’ of a li’l Heywood salsa dancin’. What’cha think, huh?”
“Welles,” Reed warns. “Stay out of this, boy.”
V scoffs. “Don’t think he’s much for dancin’, Jack. Wanna show him how it’s done?”
“Stand down—”
The fuck not. Been in enough (a lot) of scuffles now that they’re yin and yang, black and white. Where Jackie’s brute strength, a tank laying it heavy with bleeding knuckles and hard stomps, V’s quick-thinking and working for openings, bound to slip in a sure-fire knockout with one blinding swing.
But Solomon Reed’s experience and wisdom and cold, hard method perfected with training. He blocks Jackie’s slug with one arm breath-easy and lands a kick on V’s chest to send her back. Grips Jackie by the sleeve of his shirt next and sends him sailing face-first over a desk. And he’s fast—arms up and ready as soon as V gets her bearings and throws swing after swing at him, her footwork quick and advancing.
He doesn’t even make a sound. V does, when he pushes back, breaks her flurry, and punches her right in the cheek and then the gut. V takes the hits like a pro. Keeps his fist there on her belly and yanks him close, knocking her forehead smack in the middle of his face.
“Fuh—”
He swears. Tumbles. V follows up with a mean hook but he sidesteps, swings back, and then slugs her in the jaw. Thick arms across his chest pull him back before he could bullrush, though, and Jackie’s howling something real fierce as he hefts Reed up with arched back and grit teeth.
“Think you can take this, you corpo—”
Reed thrashes—slams the back of his skull on Jackie’s face. Jackie stumbles—“oh, my bread and butter!”—and Reed spins around, sends that massive fist down on Jackie’s skull when Jackie’s down.
V’s pulse is alive in her throat. She spits out blood and a whole-ass tooth. Clock’s ticking—Jackie’s down, Jackie’s down—and she twists around, grabs a drawer, and rips the thing right off its cabinet in a screech of steel and an explosion of papers. Files and all, she swings it in a heaving arc with a shout. Slams it on Reed’s back.
It’s borked and bent when it clatters on the tiles. Reed’s yelling, stumbling. Growling when he recovers but V’s weightless, a freefalling feather, and bare knuckles meet the side of his face with a sick crack when she runs forward. Follows it up with a left hook that lands but momentum swivels her, gives Reed room to knee her in the gut with all the strength of his anger. He grabs her arm, next. Bends it with a muted snap.
V screams.
“Had enough, nomad,” Reed growls, breaths wet and bloody, grasping her by the hair and pulling her dangling arm. She cries out again. “Had enough. You’re coming with me now—”
“Hands off, pendejo!”
V falls to the floor on her one good hand while Jackie tanks onward, landing hits punctuated with whomping smacks. V staggers up to her feet, grabs Reed’s arm as hard as she can with one grip while Jackie pulls the other. One look and they sweep Reed’s legs from under him, sending him down with a heavy thud. Reed kicks them when he’s flat on his back. V careens backward. Jackie doesn’t—Jackie’s pulled to the ground and Reed’s on him, Reed throwing punch after punch like he means it. He means every single one.
V struggles to get her voice out. Thinly and breathily, she pleads, “Reed—stop!”
There’s blood on Reed’s face and knuckles, smeared and splashing in slow motion, red and thick. The sounds of cracks of bone on bone fill the air. The smell— dank, and rusty, and sweaty. A clock, in V’s head, ticking as she clambers forward, traps Reed’s throat from behind in the crook of her able elbow, and pulls it against her chest.
Jackie’s coughing on the floor, face a mess of bubbling crimson and spit and the beginnings of lumping bruises on his cheeks. Reed, in V’s grip, is grunting. He draws blood with his nails on V’s arm and V’s jaw. It’s a precise pain, every tear of skin amplified by ache already leeched onto her nerves and muscles. This building’s about to blow. She’s bleeding and sore. Her arm’s a dangling string of shit, and she’s—so goddamn tired. At this moment, she should be out there, looking at
candy-sweet purple hair, brown eyes, the glow of a cure and the world renewed. A little whisper, a lot of warmth, lips puckering in the shape of her name
(closed eyes and burnt skin and her own throat shriveling around a prayer pleading stay alive, have to stay alive, you’re home free)
but she’s here, and she squeezes with all she has left, stealing air from Reed. Clenches her teeth as numbness sets in and the fire under Reed’s nails turns frostbitten before it tapers off completely. “Damn right had enough,” she rumbles quietly, and, trapped in her arm, Reed writhes, kicks so hard that they tumble off Jackie. V’s grip doesn’t let up. Flat on her back, she wraps her legs around Reed to pin them together. She holds.
Reed’s elbowing her side with all force and all pain. He’s gasping. “You’re not getting her,” V grates, straining and holding and wheezing. “Do—doesn’t belong here anymore.”
She heaves. Arches her spine, pulling so hard that Reed’s thrashing wavers and he makes a sharp choking sound.
Reed’s punching oil slick bruises on her arm. Manic and frantic. V will feel all that later. See the marks and all the blood everywhere on her later. “What, Reed?”
A gasp. Something like a gurgling of spit. “Is—is...” V pulls. Reed gurgle-chokes again, his body trembling. “Is—she... oh—kay?” A long gasp. “So—So Mi... is—she...”
Sensation: heat wells in V’s chest and a ball of air forms in the hollow of her throat. They sit there and remind her that she still has this body and it’s made for tearing, for protecting—for carrying. Heavy’s just a word. Heavy’s just something that needs a little leaning on her shoulder when it couldn’t walk, or that’s trying right now to get her to let go of its throat. She finds strength left to summon above the cold and the numbness. Tightens the hold of her arm and opens her mouth: “now that she’s far away from you, she is.”
Reed shivers. Struggles. And then he falls slack, the whole of his weight flat on top of V. V lags for a second—feels for the film of her soul that’s ascended from her skin, for a second, breathing hard and nearly sobbing—before pushing him off with a groan. She shakes her head as she sits up and makes the difficult crawl to Jackie.
“Jack,” she implores, grabbing him by the shirt sleeve to haul him up with her. Her hand is dragged on the floor by the bad arm. Hurt in there’s a dull background noise. Right now, there’s this to focus on: “Jack—no time to... to fuck around now, gotta delta!”
Jackie’s disoriented, and bloody, and staggering as he gets to his feet, clutching his head. “Got... got—uh—a... fuckin’ headache, chica...”
“Be surprised if you didn’t.”
“Shit—fuck , your arm—”
“N—no time, please, no time!”
Jackie’s looking at Reed on the floor as they turn to go. Motionless, not sure if breathing, not sure if still alive and V just gives Jackie a pull on the arm until he picks up speed.
V’s vision erodes to a mosaic of walls-tiles-lights as they run, operating on fumes and muscle memory of legs running down halls and stairs. Jackie holds onto her when she couldn’t keep a grip on him anymore. She’s numb and so fucking tired and her soul’s out there, riding driver’s side down the desert, head thrown back and eyes closed, drinking large gulps of freedom and the smell of road-home.
Here her body’s wet when they make it out, running past the gates, tripping on grass and stumbling further onto sand. It’s raining—Sierra County is crying. There’s no gold sun in V’s eyes. Just gray, and flecks of blue-green, and as the ground shakes under them and noise fills her ears, she knows if she’ll remember nothing else, then she’ll remember the dark, wet brown of the dirt past the compound’s gates. How it feels on her cheek and her wounded arm as she collapses, and the glimpses of the plumes of smoke out in the distance like fingers catching rain. The flashing lights down in the town, too, and the rows of sleek, black vehicles lining its borders, keeping the locals back as they crowd and stare and gawk.
V catches Jackie’s breathless proclamation of holy shit and she forces herself around, lain flat on the dirt, her breaths and the world sloshing, swimming, turning breathtakingly slow.
She’ll remember the divine flame that is Polaris. Its explosion like an uproarious applause. The blinding yellow-orange-white swallowing its base, ripping its foundations—roaring upward in bursts of hellfire like shrieking lightning. Its concrete, cracking like veins, coming alive—disintegrating like a mortal body shed and turned to dust from shell to seams. The pillar of its light, a spirit breaking free and reaching for the sky. The injury it leaves on tearful storm clouds like a slash of golden knife on silver, a road paved with blood and fire and pain. A star, shooting for home.
Petrichor cuts through the rust of blood and singe as she breathes in. The last dregs of her consciousness lap up the corner of her brain like shore wave, like a light on the porch kept on, always: did it, So Mi. We did it. You’re free.
Rain falls on V’s face. In the swim of yellow, and orange, and the dirt’s brown and Sierra County’s grieving storm, her numbness makes way for void. She closes her eyes.
“Hello, Night City, thank you for tuning in. Breaking news today not just in the local news segment as a disturbance this morning in the county of...”
“...known as a small research center for Militech up in rural northern California, the Polaris Facility went up in flames much to the chagrin of the quiet locals. Further reports of Militech forces moving into the town before...”
“...Militech, of course, is trying—trying—to keep the whole thing under wraps for now while they take stock and do their own investigations, but brows are raising over reported decimation of Militech armed...”
“...can’t be sure at this time just how the destruction of this little research center will affect Militech exactly as representatives are keen on keeping mouths, doors, and windows shut, but some unrest among employees...”
“...this has been Arif Iqbal...”
“...Gillean Jordan, N54 News...”
“...Ruth Dzeng...”
“...Night After Night with Ziggy Q, and you can bet that much as any of you curious folks out there, I’m out here asking, what the hell just happened?”
Is So Mi okay?
Raining. In Night City. The roar of cars, the skyline and smoke and vandalized concrete, the neon signs going on left and right and the brittle, splicing drones of looping advertisements cloaked in the incessant humdrum of pedestrians. Puddles in cracked pavements and trash stepped on, kicked, crushed every five steps. Time moving so quickly that V feels the rush of it in the crush of her ribs, like breathing in the city works differently. Like the air’s too heavy and strangers are too many.
She wiggles her fingers. Climbs out of the cab and into the skin of newness, breathing too thinly to be relaxed. Stimuli crowds her like insects scared out of hives. Was like this the first time, too, ending up here. Confused and dazed and—with Jackie at her side. Jackie, one side of his face swollen, the other all wrapped up in gauze, smiles at her and it’s funny-looking enough that V feels herself chuckle.
She immediately regrets it, though. Her chest throbs with bruises and fractured bones. Corpo payroll and all and still the shittiest coverage there is for the likes of them. Really couldn’t trust corpos with anything that’s living and breathing.
“Laughin’ at me.” Jackie scoffs. He waves his hand around his face with passion. “Laughin’ at what Militech did to my bread n’butter. My poor bread n’butter, V.”
V’s wincing, trying not to laugh and failing. “Jack, c’mon, stop.”
Jackie snickers and holds her by the shoulder gingerly. “C’mon, chica. Know ma’s cookin’ us up a mean meal. Been textin’ me nonstop ‘bout it.”
He’s got their bags on either shoulder. V’s got an arm sling and a muted limp that makes him slow down as they walk. A car speeds past and almost bathes them in rain puddle (Jackie’s yelling out curses that V’s translator only picks up in passing) but V’s still too out of her skin to really mind it. She looks up at the sky as they walk. The sun isn’t there.
Night City’s familiar in its unfamiliarity. How did she ever make it here the first time with a body like a shrieking siren? A distress signal. With an ache in her bones and sitting in the chest. Mamá Welles is laying it on them hard and fast and rough when they get home (home, V pulls her tongue from the roof of her mouth and prods the word like a loose tooth) in Spanish so seamless that her translator damn near sputters. How’d she ever make it here? V remembers.
Somewhere in Má’s passionate declaration of trouble just finds you everywhere I cannot believe this garbage you have me put up with, nomad finds a good spot of dirt, pitches up a tent, and inches close to pull the old woman in a shivering hug.
Má Welles quiets down like an engine sputter. Jackie, standing with their bags somewhere to her left, smiles silently.
“Love you, ma,” V murmurs. Má Welles shakes like a leaf in the wind and holds on with a sigh.
“Eat up, mija.” Asado in steaming bowls with glasses of orange juice. V feels Má Welles’s gentle stroke on the plane of her shoulder blade and could almost cry. “You, too, Jaquito. Amorcito, looking so thin it’s making my heart crack.”
V’s soul is out there, finding sun above the rain. She lets it roam free and sits. She starts to eat.
Looked up at basement lights, squinting—caught the minute flicker of one that essentially meant: “see. Think bulb in that one’s ‘bout to give out.”
So Mi just smiled. Looked like she was going to laugh, actually, and V was all nerves and anxiety that scrunched in a pout when she snorted anyway. “You’d know all about lightbulbs goin’ out, wouldn’t you, you big goon? Got one in your head.”
“Hey— that’s so mean!”
“You love it.” V did (does. V does.) So Mi had snaked an arm around V’s, dropped her face on V’s shoulder, and breathed in like she was practicing her first breath out in the world. Something in V’s chest rippled, spread, wept. “You think we’re gonna do okay?”
That basement. Its lousy flickering light. The table with their untouched food and So Mi’s bare toes smushed into the underside of her thigh. V let her vision go out of focus—hadn’t been sleeping much, surprise—and allowed imagination to take her outside.
“Think we’re gonna make it. Panam’s gettin’ set. We’re all set.” She turned to look, and caught So Mi’s eyes peeking at her above the knob of her shoulder, browns shining. “We are, right? All set. You ready to get down and dirty with that network?”
“As I’ll ever be.” There was something there, in So Mi’s voice, something scared. Small but so tangible that V felt like she could pluck it out, roll it between thumb and forefinger. She didn’t think to ponder it a moment longer. It was more important to get this out:
“We’ll be fine.”
“Mm.”
“We got this,” V added in a murmur. Held and squeezed So Mi’s knee until So Mi exhaled. “I got you.”
So Mi blinked. Reached over to pick up their meals, handed V’s over, and smiled. The sky unfolded in her laugh lines. They started to eat.
How’s everybody doing?
Used to be bustling, this office. Used to be filled door to window with goon nitwits and corpo gonks lugging around files and forms with sticks shoved so far up their asses their scrunched faces could feel it. Right now, a goddamn tumbleweed could roll across the floor and V wouldn’t be surprised. Shifting her slung arm with a wince, she turns her head to look up at the TV.
Militech, left and right, on every station. Myers’s stunning face is superimposed next to Gillean Jordan’s and V just lets the words tumble into one ear and slither out of the other. Not getting any older, the news—news anchors and radio stations keep finding something new to spew and right now it’s body counts, structural damage: south end of the town drew the short straw and got AVs crashing atop their houses as a present. It’s not anything she doesn’t already know, though. She watches until she’s approached, and then she’s turning her head again.
Way older than the asshole who interviewed her before. That feels so long ago now. Same vibes, though. Scop under shoe, brows low, nose wrinkled. Maybe for a different reason now. “You Valerie—?”
“Just—” Just V sits on her tongue like capsaicin burn. She remembers herself. Imagines cushion lips and the color of wine lipstick wrapped around the name, the word. She frowns, but starts getting up. “—yeah, whatever, man. That’s me. We goin’?”
Jackie’s in the room next to the one they go into. She sees him through the window on the door: sat back, all chill Heywood slack, but his jaw’s pulled tense and his grin’s inching close to clenched teeth. His face with all those lumps and gauze must look funny because of it. What is he saying in there? Got the order to run in, didn’t hear the order to fall back. Militech dudes are rough, though, man, beat me somethin’ silly when I didn’t wanna leave.
Saw the chief, yeah, saw the chief. Yelled at us to get out. I don’t know what happened to him after—he dead? Well, sorry—but is he?
Basement? No, don’t know about no basement. Wasn’t allowed down there. What’s up with the basement, why you askin’?
Looking down at her slung arm, V twists a tale together in the dip of her throat and swallows a wince around it. SSI personnel’s looking at her something serious, something hard. V waits until he opens his mouth.
“So, the arm,” he begins, leaning forward. V doesn’t pull back an inch. “What happened there?”
“Ow!”
Panam bristled. Spluttered. Didn’t know where to put her damn hands or her damn brain and V held on to the crate, anyway, stomping her foot like a fucking child while howling, “get it off get it off getitoff—”
The stink beetle dug its nibbling stingers into V’s skin something fierce, clung there to her bicep like a goddamn leech. Didn’t pose any harm to gonks, once upon a time, those things, she recalled vaguely from Halton’s old prattling. Something something scaffolding of the California ecosystem something mutation and—it was Scorpion who whacked it off her with a rolled-up magazine. He yelped and jumped back when it flung off and flew.
The crate trembled. Stiffly, Panam declared, “V if you drop this fuckin’ box—”
“‘M’not gonna,” V grit petulantly, but the thing shook again between them and her arm fucking stung. Not bleeding, no, but red and burning where she’d just been snacked off on. She adjusted her hold. “Fuckin’ hell. ”
“Just—let’s just get this in the goddamn trailer already!”
They did, with no small amount of bickering (“V I swear to God if this falls and I clip my goddamn foot” “I won’t just fuckin’ move”) and V hissed as soon as her hands were free. She squeezed the arm with a wince and peered down: there, rosy and swollen, a goliath pimple sore where she’d been chomped.
Cassidy had come over with an unmarked tin—salve, for bug bites. Every nomad has one. V’s was in the little footlocker under her bed in her trailer. Panam took the tin from Cassidy, slapped V’s hand away, and started rubbing the thing onto the stung skin. Slow, and gentle, and loving.
V’d forgotten completely to ask what the things in the crates were—fucking heavy, though, whatever they were—because Panam got to asking, “you two know where you’re heading after this?”
V blinked. Out had been about the ends of this whole opus. It showed on V’s face, maybe, that no, not exactly, because Panam grinned and started chuckling. “Thought her brain was supposed to be big?”
“Shut up, this whole thing alone takes a lotta brainpower to put together.”
“I’ll say.” Panam stroked the skin gently when she was done. V stared at the shine of ointment on the reddened patch of her arm, cooler, stung a little less. She sighed. Panam carried on talking after bracing herself with an inhale. “Y’know, been thinking—”
“Wow, you do that?”
“Asshole. Gonk. Been thinking,” and Panam put her hands on her hips there, looking down as she kicked up a dust puff like she was bashful. Voice got tight, too. “Pair of you could come with us. Even just... for a while, if you don’t have plans. We’re gonna be lookin’ for Saul and the family. Carol’s got netrunnin’ teeth but... eh, maybe ‘runner of So Mi’s caliber could... look people up faster. Peek into—”
“Sure.”
Panam’s head shot upright. Eyes blinked. V tried not to grin too wide and tempered the flutter in her chest like an unfurling wing.
“Damn, choom, just like that?”
V shrugged. “Haven’t gotten sick of hangin’ out with you yet, so. Why not? Nobody could take us farther than you, anyway.”
Panam smirked. Chuckled. A lazy sun uncovered behind her head when she tilted it and flashed a smear of yellow light across V’s face that made V squint. “Alright, so that’s settled.” She tipped her head at V. “How’s she doing, then?”
“Good. Really good. No bad dives for a while.” V turned around to regard the Aldecaldo box trailer and just watched, for a moment, while Mitch and Scorpion got to closing it up. Needed to hook it up to the panzer next, and then test out how well the thing was gonna run with the added load. Panam stood next to her, quiet. V nudged her side. Met her eyes. “And... you lot? You doin’ okay?”
A beat. Panam’s smile was a drawing of exhilaration, of apprehension, wobbled but held, steadfast and waiting for all systems go. “We’re headin’ for a massive windfall, V. Gonna be a hell of a day, that. We’re good.” Shrugged. Winked. “So. Your arm. How is it?”
Where are you all headed?
November.
People like V aren’t supposed to cry. Because they’re too big, too much, taking up whole rooms like housefires. Lifting everybody else up, making sure everybody’s fed, everybody’s unharmed and all set. She’s a sunbeam, Kimmy told her once. Waddling into trailers and joining bonfires and everybody always sees her, everybody brightens and remembers how much they mean to her. She blurts out her love without meaning to (“want me to do that for you?” “could just do it this way, let me show you” “fuck off already, just let me, y’know I could carry this faster than you”) and everybody hears it. She leaks it all over their hands and asks (begs) them not to leave her. She’s fishbone in a throat. Sand stuck in hair.
And Jackie’s watching her shiver on her seat like she’s scorched grass singing in the wind. Jackie’s got a hand on hers, atop her knee, now out of its sling.
“Was just a bad dream, V.”
Was it? Is it?
Tunnel like a mouth. Mechanical intestines. Scorpion’s bleeding side, Mitch’s tired eyes, Cassidy’s busted lip, Carol’s panic, Panam’s full moon elbow. So Mi—the frightening light of her back. The blotch of her melted steel. The black: around her eyes, on her lips, her gums, jaw flexed so tight she might’ve cracked some teeth.
The red, and the black. The Blackwall. The cacophony of voices beyond the void. The ghost of its fingers on her inner thighs and her ribs. Hand closed to a fist and the burn, the blood, the decay. Reed, pain on his face bright as day.
So Mi, trapped in the whirlpool, torn and consumed. V’s hand reaching out and arm flailing, disintegrating. Breaths out of chapped lips barely there. Gunmetal fingers snapped and bent.
Was it? Is it? The memory of voices that aren’t hers coming out of her mouth. The vision of So Mi barely breathing, limp with fatigue and the creeping of dying.
The tear that makes its way down her cheek is smudged with a shaking fist, almost angrily. People like her shouldn’t cry. Don’t cry. Jackie’s holding on, watching her like he understands even though he doesn’t—V knows he doesn’t. But he stays, and he lives here, here: in his own modest hollow in V’s heart and he curls into it. Leans into her and wraps her slowly in a one-armed hug.
“‘S’okay, chica,” he murmurs into her temple. V’s frozen, stock-still, seething against the salt sitting behind her eyeballs. “You can let it out, you know.”
The ball of air in her throat pops. She sniffles. Lets it out.
Skin. To metal. Back on that bed, So Mi’s back was warm in its own way against V’s chest. Thrumming with breathtaking processing power and steam, them as her own version of beats of life and living. A part of her thigh’s different, though: it’s supple, close to the day she was born, warm and soft. V laid her hand there and smoothed her fingers across the span of organic skin. Felt, a little, like someone hungry and taking the feel of the skin in.
So Mi shifted, rubbed up against her front. “Valerie,” she’d said, still rightly rough from exertion but soft in all the ways that mattered. Talons across cotton. A long pull of warm beer followed by the softest whisper. “Tell you something?”
The unspoken anything was verbalized by V’s hand that held So Mi’s. So Mi drew a breath. Let it out in the gentlest murmur. “Sometimes I feel like... I could lift you. Take you with me. Let you live inside me. Carry you around forever.” Turned her head, then, and let V have a look at her eye, her cheek, her lips, as she continued, “is that—does that make sense? Is that... is that too much?”
V swallowed. And swallowed. When So Mi got nothing, she twisted around, took V’s face that rippled and shook in the cradle of her hands. V couldn’t say anything. So Mi had just looked at her. Some understanding inched into her eyes. A modicum of a smile bloomed on the corners of her lips. “Feel like I could take care of you,” she said, and V brought a shuddering breath into the church of her palms. Poured it across the steel like a libation. “Know I could.”
Another shake in V’s next breath. Tears pricked at her eyes and her voice scratched when she said, “that’s. That’s not too much at all.”
So Mi rested the swells of her lips on the bridge of V’s nose. Didn’t look, maybe because she knew, in some way, that V didn’t want her to look. V’s too much. She was supposed to be strong. Was supposed to be tough. Softly: “you can let it out.”
V’s breath hitched with all the feeling in her chest, big, threatening to eclipse this moment, an umbra to swallow up the rest. She let it out.
Is So Mi awake?
V’s tossing and turning. Moaning, even, from the sharp stinging in her chest. Last checkup said the bones there are healing fine. Doctor said it through barely opening lips and with apprehensive eyes, a tension thick under clinic lights. V’s learned not to mind the looks she gets when she goes on her appointments. It’s been weeks. She knows the game now.
Turning and huffing, she watches the shape of Jackie on the bed across from her cot, back facing her and his breathing hushed. Something twinges in her sternum. She hisses. Whimpers. Tries out, “Jack?”
Nothing, at first. And then the lump that is Jackie moves, and in the dark V can imagine the grimace on his face when he says, “all that noise in your sleep... better not have been ‘cause of what I’m thinkin’, V.”
V laughs without meaning to and it hurts there in her chest like a bitch. She struggles to sit up. “Nah, choom, d’worry. Nuh... no dirty dreamin’. Just... hah.”
“Fuckin’ ribs?”
“Fuckin’ A.”
Jackie’s rolling out of bed and turning on a lamplight. His hair’s loose, matted, a mess, and he just runs a hand through it while standing up. “Been wantin’ to breathe a little, anyway. Let’s get you out for some air. Might do you good.”
Painkillers just make her dizzy, Jackie knows as much. Jackie heads out first and V follows, them both walking on tiptoes when they pass by Mamá Welles’s door. The Welles have got a balcony up here, one Má usually uses for hanging up their clothes in or laying out little chili peppers on trays to dry and sun-cook. Jackie gingerly pushes aside a clothes rack when they get there and pulls up two rickety chairs to set by the railing.
Heywood’s quiet in its own Heywood way. Pedestrians walk, huddle, and chat under streetlights, humdrummed by the faraway rumble of engines and someone’s horn about two or three streets down. No stars in Night City, never, at least not any seen here from the Glen, but V’s got the flickering of distant neon signs and she supposes that’s as good as any.
They watch the Heywood reel before them quietly. Night people, night goons, night cars. A streetlight flickers dead in some western corner of the street and they hear the annoyed scatter of a group of just-off-the-bar gonks that promptly wobble away. V almost smiles. Doesn’t, though, because Jackie leans toward her and murmurs, “down there again.”
V leans forward on her knees. Pans her vision down, past the rusty railing, and spots the inconspicuous, black sedan parked across the street. Its windows are tinted midnight. Engine’s off. Plates are different from the last one they noticed, about a week ago now, but V finds it easy to imagine that there’d be the same people in there as last time, watching the Welles home like hawks. Taking notes. Snapping photos.
Yeah, V knows the game now.
A dastardly part of her brain sneaks in a snapshot of blonde hair, dark skin, and a nose hoop catching light. A flash in there, too, of iron snug in a shoulder holster, slender fingers itching to wound around the handle. One finger dying to pull a trigger.
Jackie is the one who says the first thing between them in that long pause of just staring at the car. “Same model as last time, ain’t it?” Spoken from the corner of his mouth like strangers would maybe hear if his voice were any louder. V nods. “Who you think that is?”
SSI? Militech? Could be both, at this point. V and Jackie got lifted away by Trauma like all the other security gonks and locals caught in the cross and hellfire of that whole Polaris nightmare. Neither got the opportunity to deliver on her inevitably pre-terminated contract.
V shrugs. Says, “dunno, Jack.” Doesn’t say aloud, whoever they are, know what they’re here for. Corpos don’t play fair, Mike said it without a bite of doubt. Mike’s number is still disconnected. Maybe forever, now. Corpos don’t play fair. She leans forward further and swallows the wince from a busted rib. Looks down at the car again, plain and seeing and daring.
Know they’re here for me. The car’s headlights flare. Its engine’s so clean and crisp that they couldn’t even hear the hum of it at all. Without further preamble, it veers onto the road and sails away. Slowly.
V could fool herself into believing she does see a face there, yeah, behind the passenger window. Looking right at her, mouthing I’ll be watching you.
“Don’t take it personally, but I don’t agree with it.”
V had looked up from her wrist, personal link snaked out and jacked into Alex’s terminal. Were coming around a lot, she and Reed, when October rolled around. They were like clock hands to V, switching, swapping, counting down to the end—tick-ticks that said gotta hustle, nomad, gotta up and bail. V kept a straight face, though. She looked at Alex and shrugged.
“Don’t agree with what?”
“Reed, making you that offer.” Alex regarded V with something heavy in her eyes, then. Something imposing like a warning. “There’s a reason we got contractors for security. Just easier to... cut people off if they don’t measure up. Less papers and liability.”
Corpos don’t play fair. V doubled down on the chill she felt run up her spine. She swallowed, hummed at Alex, and canned the bounce she felt wanting to run up her knee. “What’s so wrong about the offer? I’m just one chick.”
“Mhm. Just one chick. Won’t be the first time Reed takes in a wet pup under his wing, if you say yes. Would’a thought he’d learned from the last time. His judgement’s not always alright.”
Did she mean So Mi? So Mi: traded lives, bird in a cage. V tried to look confused, though Alex wasn’t even looking at her anymore. “Been disappointed in Reed’s choice of recruits before?”
“Could say yes. Could say they ended up biting off more than they could chew. Set more than one ugly thing to motion.”
V stewed in that. So Mi, then. So Mi: traded bodies, vessel and vassal of the Blackwall. V swallowed, shook her head, and leaned forward a little.
“Right. Say I said yes to it. Went with you to D.C. all dog-like.” That got Alex to look back to her. “What’ll happen then?”
Alex’s smile was wry, eyes still sharp with something like a warning. Something like a threat. “Don’t know why you would, after seeing all this. So I’ll be watching you.”
It’s her birthday.
December.
V wakes with a start. Not so much with pain, this time, no, but she is aching. Forehead sweating and with heat in her cheeks. Something like leftover stars floating before her eyes. Fingers shaking, when she brings them up to wipe her face. Tingling and moist between the legs.
Dreamed, again. Different dream this time. Warm fairy lights. Brown eyes like searchlights. Skins, and metal, and sweat, and fumes. Sounds so clear to V’s dreaming ears that they still echo in her cranium like bird trills and amplified wingbeats. So clear it’s easy to come back to it.
She blinks in the dim: Jackie’s not in bed. Still outside, out in the city, running one gig or another with iron held close to his chest. Saving up for that bike so he could drive all the way out to Misty anytime he feels like it. V thinks about it for all of two seconds before turning around, biting into her pillow, and slipping her hand past the waistband of her sweats. She closes her eyes.
Split fingers, wet tongue, molten back and a molten core—easy to come back to them. Easier to come to them. The force of her orgasm lifts her pelvis and makes cot legs scratch on the linoleum. Her breaths come out hard and scorching.
Alone in the dark again, when the release passes. Alone with Night City’s muted noises. She smears dried spit on her cheek when she rotates her head to look at the window, its blinds drawn and feeble light leaking through the edges. Her soul is still out there. A black car taken point, too, somewhere.
She closes her eyes and speaks into the dark. “Gotta go.”
V was watching So Mi change back into her netrunning suit, lip drawn into her mouth. They’d just finished—just left the bed, actually—and there she was, getting turned on by things all over again. Always been like that, anyway, getting worked up in the littlest bits, like just by watching how people swallow and their sweat that sticks to her skin when they come too close. Always been a hidden shame, that, the way her body responds to things that aren’t even supposed to be heady. Made herself so in touch with the world and its people that they all stick to her like candy. She breathed out.
Getting worked up, then, again: by the curves of So Mi’s love handles, sat bare over the waistline of her suit. The way her toes flexed idly while she worked her mechanical hands into the sleeves. The little flash of frustration when it was getting tedious—the tiny huff of breath out of her lips. Even her metal: the little gaps on there that V could rest fingertips on for some heat.
Ass and thighs hugged by the catsuit like a second skin, beneath the fabric rich with spans of organic cutting into synthetic. V knew (knows) So Mi has a tiny mole on one thigh like a tease and two more that are a bit bigger on the bottom curve of her left butt cheek. Dustings of stretch marks, too, behind her thighs and the inlets of her knees. V’s fingers itched. She ran them through her hair and stood.
Throat had been dry. So Mi noticed V get up and turned over her shoulder, the globe of one breast peeking through the bend of her elbow. The colorless illusion of her nipple shone. V pocketed her hands. Would come to this woman, easy, any time V was needed. Would come for her, even, any time she wanted.
Shift was ending in a couple of minutes. V tipped her head towards the door. So Mi had just been smiling like she knew, somehow, knew that V’s soul was on its knees. Made herself so in touch with So Mi and So Mi’s world that one look could set a forest fire in her belly. V swallowed, jerked her thumb at the door, and said, “gotta go.”
Where do I go?
Night City is wet. Rainwater’s already washed off the radiator grease from V’s hands and she holds it up to Mamá Welles real proud, wet boots by the door, shoulders of her jacket slick and dripping with rain. Rain’s matted down her hair something sad, too, but she’s smiling at Má Welles, bright, wiggling clean fingers by her head.
“Washed up, see?”
Jackie’s chomping down on an empanada at the table. “Ask ‘er if she used soap, ma.”
“With soap?” Má Welles intones promptly. V opens her mouth, tangos with the white lie, trips, and deflates, narrowly avoiding Má Welles swat. “A grubby beast, mija, I promise, that’s what you are.”
“I’m goin’, I’m goin’...”
There’s an air of sadness in the Welles home. Quiet but thick as a fog, filling up the house to the rickety tune of Má Welles washing up at the sink and Jackie insisting, I’ll get that after I’m done eatin’, ma, in all futility. Old woman won’t let anybody do shit for her that she can do perfectly well, thank you. Won’t budge on what she thinks is a bad idea, too.
Jackie’s smiling, though. It doesn’t reach his eyes, but he hasn’t missed that black car coming around their street more and more. Hasn’t missed there’s an SUV now, too, aside from the sedan. Sure as hell has not slipped his mind, his mother being here, often left alone in the afternoons when she’s got nothing to do at the Coyote. Gloom gives his eyes a droopy shape. His chewing slows when V sits across from him. V wordlessly picks up an empanada.
They sit there eating, just watching each other for a while. Gonk to gonk, two and a half heads sharing a brain cell. In a minute, Má Welles finishes up her washing and V can feel her just standing there by the sink, looking at them. Could imagine the little ping-pong of her eyes as she looks between them two.
Like any fierce woman of her poise and stature, she cleaves through the fog of misery: scoffs and tells them, “well? I was expecting a more tearful goodbye than this.”
Jackie snorts, low. V’s surprised out of a stutter of laughter and nearly chokes on a mouthful of empanada. Jackie tosses his mother a mean look, flares his nostrils, and stage-whispers, “was gettin’ to it, ma.”
“Uh-huh.”
Knows her Jaquito, though, Má Welles does—and knows V, too. With a hand on V’s shoulder, Mamá Welles goes after a little mumble of think I forgot to tell Pepe to restock on Brosephs and leaves them to it, letting them have their moment.
Two bags by the door, next to her boots. A tub of Mamá Welles’s chilaquiles ready to go, because she can rave fury at the desert and the roads and the dust all she wants, but she knows freedom. Knows when it means open air and nasts in your mouth, knows what a nomad means when a nomad says gotta go, gotta get out. V’s going back to scop and nutrient paste, besides. Might as well give her something tasty to last a few days until then.
Jackie puts down what’s left of his empanada and leans forward, smile getting crooked. V returns it. Lets it crack wider, when Jackie says, “new year, new start, huh, V? If you don’t call, I’m runnin’ out there to get ya.”
That town, that night, V looking out at the stretch of Sierra County like it was the last time. Sitting at the door to her trailer, imagining what the sunrise of the next day could be like.
A wound on a hill. Polaris burnt to be a star, a breathtaking laceration in the sky. Baptism by sunlight. So Mi’s first sunrise, her smile that means she could cry. A flutter of laughter like the beating wings of a bird. A door open to them both, the door to the world.
Jackie, sat next to her, shaking his head, laughed under his breath in the silence.
“Still not over it, V.” He whistled. Leaned back on his hands and waited for V to turn to him before continuing with a grin, “you’re fuckin’ crazy for this one.”
V still felt a little cowed, then. A bit embarrassed. Even surprised, that Jackie took it all in stride. Graciously caught the span of her confession with open arms and huge hands, the drone of her birthday party little more than a dull buzz behind them as they stayed outside. Just nodded, after, silent. Worry made a ruled page out of his forehead, though. He stood breathing for a spell after it all, and what he said when he’d waded past the torrent of information made V sigh, made her collapse on her haunches with relief. Just like you to go doin’ that kinda shit for a pretty girl, chica. Just like you.
“‘S’gonna be fine,” V ventured smilingly, ignoring the itch of a wobbling at her cheek, “right? Everyone’s ready. Plan’s all gussied up. Even firepower’s locked and loaded.”
“Yeah. And ya got your chooms. Vik’s gonna be out there by the cave. Gon’ tend to the wounded when you get out. Misty’s got a hideout ready. A dead town over—uncle’s old haunt or some shit.” Jackie hunched forward, rested his elbows on his knees, and gave V a peek of his grin that was cheeky. “And I’m gon’ be there to drag your ass to action if you’re too tired.”
V punched Jackie in the arm and Jackie swayed, snorted, sighed. Quietly, she reminded him, “just... careful nobody sees you, Jack, ‘kay? Got that big head—”
“Knock you on your ass.” V chuckled to that. Jackie laughed with her, short and sweet. Held her by the shoulder next and squeezed. “So. Ready for this? Goin’ back out into your world?”
The world? Gave her these bones and arms and the thick head? Tore her open once upon a time and now she’s crawling back to it anyway, still bleeding warm and red? V hummed. Grinned at Jackie sideways. “Gotta ask it if it’s ready for me, choom.”
Jackie guffawed, shook his head again, “fuckin’ nuts,” and slid his hand to her back. Pat her there like he was fluffing up a wing, a dream. Stayed quiet and let V’s soul sing, top of its lungs, shine in its eyes, floating and waxing poetic about lungfuls of open air and the zigzag of cracked highways like veins, like life, like river streams.
“It’s gonna be okay, chica.” One look. A serious one, hard and shining with a promise. “Y’gotta lemme know what’s goin’ on in there, okay? You don’t call, I’m runnin’ in there to get ya.”
[INCOMING CALL FROM UNKNOWN NUMBER]
A click. Clipped breaths. “Who is this?”
A pause. “V.”
Knew that voice. Volume turned low. “Is So Mi okay?”
“Still asleep, choom. In good hands. Your ripper’s workin’ on her.”
“How bad is it?” Another click. A shuffle. A difficult breath, and not just from one person, on the line. “Pan?”
“Chrome still needs some good checkin’ but her hand’s definitely gettin’ replaced.” Another pause given to absorb that. A follow up: “Got some melted metal on her back, too. We’re on the move. To that hideout. Somewhere ripper can look her over better. And Scorpion, too. Gotta go underground. Keep you posted.”
Voice, hardened. “Pan.” A hollow click. Silence. “Panam?”
[CONNECTED TO UNKNOWN NUMBER]
“How’s everybody doing?”
“We’re all alive. Scorpion pulled through.”
Relief, in a long breath and the answer that followed. “That’s good. Good. Keep duckin’ your head low.”
“Don’t gotta tell me. How are you doing? Gotten back to NC?”
“Yeah. And ‘m’okay. Goin’ on interviews with inside folks.” A snicker, from both lines. “Arm’s still borked up. Jackie says hi.”
“Damn, choom, your bread and butter, huh?” Shared, hushed laughter. “Tell Jackie hey back. Gonna update you again soon.”
“Stay safe, Pan.”
[CONNECTED TO UNKNOWN NUMBER]
“Where are you all headed?” A registering thought. A rushed correction: “no, wait, don’t tell me. Been gettin’ tails.”
“Fuck, V, you okay?”
“I’m okay, Pan.”
“How about Jackie?”
“Gonks are here for me. Don’t worry about him.” An overdue question, spoken with a shake. “How’s So Mi?”
A long bout of silence and a breath drawn in between teeth. Expectedly: “So Mi’s still asleep. Got Vik on the phone everyday lookin’ her through. He drops by few times a week to be more thorough.”
Swallowed, tight. “Okay. How about the cure?”
“Got it out of her. Don’t know how to use it, though. Gonna wait for her to come to.”
“Okay. So who you bringin’ with?”
“Mitch. Media gonks finally cleared out of the town. We’re gonna move the loot and the panzer. Misty found a new spot.” An uncertain breath. “Hope it’s as safe as she says it is.”
“I trust Misty. It is.”
“Preem. Then I do too.” A shuffle. Someone’s muffled voice speaking somewhere faraway. Answered it back first, and then spoke on the line again. “Gotta delta, V. Eyes open. Talk again soon.”
[CONNECTED TO UNKNOWN NUMBER]
Silence. Tersely: “Is So Mi awake?” No response but a click on the line. Grip got tight on the phone. “Pan?” Nothing. Voice threatened to break. “Choom.”
Quiet, but for a breath. A smile in the voice. “She’s awake.”
[CONNECTED TO UNKNOWN NUMBER]
“It’s her birthday.”
Laughter. Few other voices, too, in the distance. “Yeah. Lady was made for drinkin’.”
A sigh. A fluttering laugh. “Nova. Really—good. That’s good, she’s having fun.”
“Hold on.”
A shuffle. A swipe across the mic. Brows screwed, tried out, “Pan?” and then settled for waiting when there was only quiet.
One breath. Gift-wrapped in a dainty tremor. Hushed, like a secret: “Val?”
Different voice, brought up an image of birds in flight and a soul floating across hills. Name, stuck in the throat. Belted out with a shiver. Given to the world. “So Mi.”
[CONNECTED TO UNKNOWN NUMBER]
“Where do I go?”
Badlands. January.
The Sunset Motel is nearing empty at this time of the day. In here she’s drinking sodas and shoveling scop into her mouth, while back in NC Jackie’s chauffeuring somebody around, windows shut, tint up, pretending to be V. Whistling a tune, probably, while he’s at it. Ought to burst out laughing when he steps out of that car and notices his tail skitter away like they’re getting a hell of a wakeup call. Or, ought to pull out his iron with the whole Heywood neighborhood if the whole thing teeters instead to the side of a bullet-brawl.
V’s not worried. In here she’s tempted to laugh into her scop, while back in NC Jackie’s got those arms and that chest and that brand-spanking new gun he’s been waiting to try out. And out there—way out there—V’s soul is waiting in sandstorms and preening hills. She’s on her way out, on the way to meet it.
She waits. Noah’s radio is sputtering tired (to V) news on Militech and stocks torn to shreds and executives shooting themselves in the head, Myers hiding behind closed doors in her dread. Blackwall gets mentioned once or twice (“even more developments: it’s becoming increasingly clear that Militech has been, with full intention, dabbling in illegal net-related activities, most notably the breach of the Blackwall. NetWatch has released a statement...”) and V doesn’t mind any of it, at all. Even goes so far as whistling at Noah to get his attention and saying, “hey, choom, mind putting on some tunes instead?”
She waits. Noah obliges. What comes out of the speakers is a guitar riff, a snap, a beat, and V feels herself smile.
She waits. Until the door behind her swings open, and boots thump in, and Noah hollers, “hey, look who’s back!”
V grins. Waits, until someone saunters up to her spot at the bar, taps the bartop with a finger (tock-tock, real heavy on the wood) and the hand of it’s gloved, wrist snug in a rosewood jacket with the sleeves rolled down and all dusted up. Noah gets the message. Down slides a bottle of Broseph across the bartop and it’s caught, readily, by the other.
Other: other hand looks soft, all synth-skin and soft shapes. V can imagine a seam there around its wrist, just under the sleeve of the jacket, and she couldn’t wait to know how it feels, to take in its newness—so she reaches out and wraps her fingers around it.
And it’s this: warm, but with a touch that’s familiar in its gentleness when it turns over, wraps its fingers around V’s hand. So soft that V’s chest twinges in the sweetest ache. Man on the radio’s singing I'll be your man if you got love to get done and V feels her laugh come out breathless, lets herself finally look up. So Mi’s already looking down at her, eyes squinched, teeth bright.
A pause to take it in: smile, wide enough to spread on a bed, bright enough to light up a rickety tent. Jacket—V’s—darkened and dirty scarlet, loose around her shoulders like a surplus of a hug. Hair’s fluttering around her jawlines and the beanie she’s wearing looks good on her, actually: teases a glean of who she was, before the chrome that she’s hiding under it on the back of her head. Gives a peek of who she could be, now.
V’s heart snaps this picture of So Mi to keep in its locket: all she was, is, could be. Skin, steel, a bird, she—heart a quasar, brighter than a star, new to the world.
“That my jacket?” V asks. Left it in Panam’s truck after all that ruckus with the vest, but she still feigns appalment. So Mi laughs, leans her elbow on the bartop (and behold the shape she makes of herself here. This, relaxed and lean, just another glimpse of who she could be,) and quirks a brow at V as she swirls the bottle in her hand. Throws it back easily, too, for a drink. Lady, oh lady was made for drinking.
“Mine now,” So Mi says, airy, and swings their linked hands. She wipes her mouth with the cuff of V’s—her—jacket. “I’ll just get you a new one.”
“Better be a good one. That one’s my favorite.”
“Wanna get up so we can get to finding you a good one?”
V snorts. Shakes her head and stands. At the door, Panam’s standing with her arms wound across her chest, her smile cheeky, eyes almost shut. Got a secret in that there smile in the shape of a tank, treasures bound for home, and the myth of an Aldecaldo tunnel made to cross the border to winding forever-roads. She clicks her tongue at them. Says, with a jerk of her head and already turning to go, “c’mon, nomads. Saddle up. Time to hit the road.”
So Mi looks. V looks. It used to be that with So Mi were dark wallpapers, barred windows, clean floors. V thinks of the basement that was once Songbird’s, the life in it that was entirely So Mi’s. The books in the bookshelf, the one by Kipling: dust now, cradled by the wind. An infinitesimal speck now in the atoms of fresh air swirling in So Mi’s ribs. V can remember that one stretch of passage in it that she read, clear as day and crisp as the page’s dog-ears, wrinkles, and frayed ink. Meaningful adventure, was it?
They look to each other. V's grinning because this, see.
This. A new year. The road, now. The road again. Free and hot and endless. Deserts around ghost towns and dirt coloring their cheeks brown. Evenings under stars and singing along to insect buzz and fireflies as they spot. Sandstorms, for sure, are gonna be a part of that. Cracks and ditches in the road that’ll make Panam cuss real fucking deep while V just gets them through the bump and bounce, laughing. Could maybe afford bottles of something less cheap now, could trade some scrap for some coolers that aren’t complete shit and could hold ice that lives to see tomorrow. She and this rabble, though, they’ll have bonfires and baking evenings so, hell, maybe ice to see tomorrow is asking for too much, actually.
And wind. In her hair. Soupy with heat and the wash of fresh air. Showers taken together, skins and steel and maybe, sometimes, with something wetter, so the inevitable sweating after would be worth it when they turn off the water. Top-grade tech and parts rocking and clanging in the panzer’s box trailer, whole-ass schematics in their heads of just how to make the Aldecaldos that much less prone to danger. Can’t be sure that Saul won’t bite all their asses off for pulling this shit in the first place, but hey, they pulled it off, so let him bite and chew any damn day.
Militech’ll be gunning for them, might even luck out and find them, one of these days. Or maybe it won’t. Maybe they’ve done it in enough. Out there in the world, though, who really knows anything for sure?
So Mi’s still grinning as she pulls V onward, headed out the door. Her soul’s out there—her soul’s waiting for her to step out of the door to the world. Out there, little hard knowing anything for sure, true, but V knows this for certain. This:
Sunlight. Sunrises, sunsets. Moonbeams. Gold dusks and pink dawns. Hand: held by a free bird, a pretty girl. This.
The rest of her life goes like this.
There's no plan, there's no race to be run
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun
There's no plan, there's no kingdom to come
I'll be your man if you got love to get done
Sit in and watch the sunlight fade