Chapter Text
The signs of tiredness on V's face had long since stopped being unwanted visitors and turned into almost comforting permanent features, like a long-suffering servant without whom the lady of the house is never seen. Regardless there could be no doubt that these signs had grown in intensity; such as the size and darkness of those spots under her eyes, now gaining an uncanny life of their own, as if that lady of the house were taken sick and, in a reversal of roles, found herself under the scrupulous care of the servant. Meaning in other words that this tiredness, provoked by the ceaseless sense of paranoia V had been thrown into by that threatening email, by the countless measures she had been taking to avoid being on cameras or, as much as possible, in the office, was beginning to seem an overwhelming sickness. Jenkins was granting her endless leeway, had made this investigation her entire assignment for the time being – meaning that her own usual work was in fact being done by him, though it was difficult to tell whether to celebrate the unusual occasion of regular work being done by Jenkins, or to abhor the inevitable recriminations when the shoddy work was tied back to her, still being in her name.
Because of this gesture from Jenkins she was almost a spirit, split midway between the real world and that realm of hungry ghosts at Arasaka Tower. She kept to various downtown bars and other venues known to her from meets with Jackie, where the cameras where either broken or permanently shut off. It was pure paranoia, but she could not resist the thought that 'S', whoever they were, was always watching, and could, at moment, break into her Arasaka cyberware. However, after her upcoming meet with Jackie, she'd have to return to the Tower to seek some kind of information; being trapped between Abernathy and Jenkins did at least give her the ability to play them against each other to her own benefit, and she'd need this leeway to make any progress on determining just who she was up against.
'You look like total shit, chica. Damn, I know you were frightened, but…' Jackie seemed concerned about her present state, but a certain weariness was mixed in; as if Jackie could not halt the impression that this entire bit of biz was merely the surface tip of iceberg, impaling V, melting slowly and lowering her to the ice-cold murky depths that awaited all corpo rats. V, shaking her head slowly and attempting to regain some kind of authority in her bearing, though she knew perfectly well that Jackie was the one person to whom such bluffing was meaningless, couldn't help but recall what she'd often thought about him – that the passionate longing he directed towards his pet dream, becoming a 'legend' of Night City, was a similar kind of ocean that would swallow him whole the second he found the chance to dive into it, head first and brain last as was often the case with him.
Jackie always seemed full of love for life, but in occasional moments, not so rare recently, V saw that vivid repulsion for his life as it was that drove him; a drive to get away from the muck, the filth, in short from 'all this'; in the infinitesimal moment of a blink, shutting his eyes for just a second, Jackie could regain all his vitality – and the moment he saw the world around him, the timer began for him to need yet another recovery… Like all people with grand dreams, Jackie was prone to forget that the promise of fulfilment is entirely different from the fulfilment of promise, and V, having actually been to the grand hotels that Jackie dreamed of, knew perfectly well that once he got there, he would find he had not moved a step from where he'd started.
'This is me,' V said, bending to pay a vending machine for the venerable killing machine known as the Budget Arms Slaught-O-Matic, known for being able to fall apart in your hands in twice the number of ways its low calibre could successfully kill. She shot a single time at the wall before suddenly smashing the gun against it, pieces of the pink coloured feeble plastic casing falling to her feet like so many cherry blossoms. 'A one-time weapon. Shoot once, toss it in the trash.'
'Pretty sure that actually holds thirty-six rounds, chica,' Jackie said, trying to lighten V's dark mood as a few civilians walked away carefully from the gunshot, though in Night City it did not quite amount to a reason to run. 'Jackie, both Abernathy and Jenkins want to use me as precisely that. I'll be a loose end no matter which one of them ends up on top. Loose ends don’t last long in Arasaka. If Jenkins wins out, he gets his promotion, but everyone will know he got it thanks to me.'
'Rather the reversal from your usual relationship, yes? You always say you're like his attack dog, or that new Japanese thing he calls you,' Jackie continued. 'Yeah... If it looks like I'm the one carrying him, his prestige is at stake. Egotist like that, you can tell how it'll end. As for Abernathy, she's wanted a clean purge of Jenkins loyalists for a while now, if you believe the rumours. No way one little favour gets me off that list.'
'So what's your plan? Gotta get them to kill each other off? Aye yai yai, what have you gotten yourself into…' Jackie's point was well taken. The only way V could conceivably get out between Charybdis and Scylla here was precisely that kind of ploy. But for now, she still had a job to do, and one that increasingly was the subject of a sort of monomania for her.
'I'll figure it out after I catch this 'S'. Gotta get me some prestige, maybe even a chance to speak to the executives on my own, show them how this rivalry has gotten out of hand. And… the only lead, well, is me.'
'You? What's going on V?' Jackie knew perfectly well how powerful this person was – V had spared no expense on detailing how talented they must be to break Arasaka ICE, not just in the archives, but even in the short span they'd been in the Night Corp guard's apartment. V was assuming that S must have broken the ICE and seen the two of them there, or at least, it was safer to assume as such. Jackie had joked that V seemed more impressed than intimidated when she'd described the email she'd gotten telling her to stop, but the fact that she'd felt compelled to hide it from her superiors, to make sure she remained the one in charge of this, the one to catch S, proved that a certain measure of professional pride had been invested as well.
'Think about it, Jackie – we were at a dead end, really. Chances of tracking down someone as high up in Night Corp as the one he gave the papers to didn't exactly look good. But now we know that S is keeping an eye on me. Ever told you about Jake? Subordinate of mine. Came up with a real smart idea, he thought. Arasaka higher-up named Kaoru has an Aerondight – you know, the fancy car where the windows are opaque from the outside?'
'Ah, the Aerondight! Got a gig to snatch exactly that car earlier. Uh, didn't quite clear it though… this kid got in the way.'
'Well, Jake convinced Jenkins to get Kaoru to loan to him. Said that the lack of visible windows would make stake outs easier. Turns out that trying to watch someone from one of the most conspicuous cars in the world isn't actually very smart at all. In fact, you could hear Jenkins shouting 'gonk' from two floors down after Kaoru noticed the bullet holes.'
'And here I thought Arasaka agents were all as smart and resourceful as you! No wonder you're getting close to the top, V.'
'Well, the point is, sometimes hiding in plain sight is the best policy. Gonna have to use myself as bait – convince S I'm organizing something. And so far, all we know about them is that they have a keen interest in Cynosure. Gonna organize it with Abernathy – lure 'em in, have the netrunners trap 'em. And then…'
'Soulkiller fries them, huh? Vicious plan from V. Hope it works out for you. And V? Try to get some sleep before trying this out, yeah?'
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Organizing such an elaborate scheme – mostly on account of the sheer numbers of netrunners V estimated would be necessary to trap someone of such prodigious skill – meant going over Jenkins' head; only Abernathy had the authority to get a large contingent of Arasaka's best net trawlers together, especially for something still being kept under wraps. Luckily Abernathy didn't push too hard when V said she simply believed that S would be keeping an eye on her.
'And we both know that any netrunner of their skills would be an extraordinarily useful construct for us,' V finished her pitch, composed as usual, even though such an execution, impersonal as it may be through Soulkiller, was hardly part of even her usual plans. She had not been involved personally in any assassinations yet, after all.
'I see. And you think that this S figure will buy that we're going to infiltrate Dogtown just to look at this Cynosure?' Abernathy hit on perhaps the weaker part of the plan. Getting S's attention was crucial, and even though V believed – in a way that she assured herself was not in any sense a matter of ego – that she herself was bait enough, it was still important that the premise of the affair be believable.
'Why not? It was a project long forgotten about, even by Militech. Thinkin' that they'll buy it – we're reminded of it, start panicking that the old Soulkiller rival is back in action, start looking at their old facility… we don't know the details of where it is, but from what I saw of our files, it's reasonably certain it's here in Night City. Gotta bet on that.'
'Very well. It's your case, V. I'll organize the netrunners, make sure your little rival sees that we have a training session about getting into Dogtown and finding Cynosure. They'll break in, curiosity kills the cat, and we have a little construct to play with – and ask some serious questions. All in all, could be a decent plan after all. Of course, once they break in, the only in there will be you, so they'll know something is wrong. Need a lot of firepower for when they panic.'
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Abernathy had organized a 'training ground' inside the Tower's local Net – a perfectly accurate recreation of the Dogtown entrance, suitable to trick S, with a complex web of ICE shrouding it. Of course, they knew that S could break it easily enough, but convincing them that they were still underestimating their capacities was useful in itself, and should help their netrunners to recognize the break in attempt.
V wasn't used to netrunning herself, but she had received the basic training that any counter-intel operative did, and besides wanted (this was an aspect she had tried to elide when organizing everything with Abernathy) to be there when this S was caught, to be witness to the climax of her efforts. She lowered herself into the ice-filled tub, a tech at the side ready to pull her out if S tried anything. Breaking the ICE was one thing – managing to beat all of the best netrunners in Arasaka Tower was another thing.
She connected and within an instant was at Dogtown's gate; not actually a part of the city she'd ever the pleasure of seeing up close, but she could believe that the brutish Barghest soldiers and unkempt roads were indeed accurate. She strode to the start of a side path next to the road and sat on a concrete block, waiting. It was at this moment, with all the false impressions of a warlord's fiefdom being projected around her, that V admitted to herself that there was a certain personal aspect to this rivalry, one-sided though it probably was. What had at first seemed an excellent opportunity for advancement was quickly becoming the probable cause of her permanent discharge from the corporation and, at this point, the executor of such a discharge was likely to double as an executioner. What a sad world it was! At the precise moment of this mental proclamation, V had yet to decide whether it was the corporate world or the world in general that was the subject of her sudden opprobrium, or perhaps the two had melded too much, like piano notes sounded an octave apart and fading into one another, that she could no longer judge them separately. The symbol of a world without corporations – perhaps it could be the finch sat by her on the concrete block, brightly coloured with a reddish magenta, gazing up at her… But that was an illusion, she realized more with sadness than excitement. Birds had long since been declared illegal and exterminated in Night City.
'That's them!' V exclaimed, pointing at the bird, which flew away for a split second before jagged chains from all directions materialized, holding it fast, the wings dropping feathers with a rhythm that matched its futile struggling – the Arasaka netrunners had missed S's intrusion entirely, had not noticed that the netrunner's icon was sat right next to their bait. It was indescribable luck that they had seemingly decided to enjoy themselves before frying V's head.
'Come on! Soulkiller will be ready for deployment momentarily—' she heard Abernathy's real voice, the one of authority, dipped into a cold pool of desperation. 'Get more of them on it, then! We need this.'
It seemed that even now, trapped, the little bird was giving Arasaka trouble. V could only watch as it struggled with a foolhardy grandeur; nobody could escape an army of Arasaka's finest—
A sudden pain flooded her body, like being dipped into some indescribable liquid that at once froze the limbs and burnt away the flesh, that crept into the soul and stole away the heart, that flooded the brain like an ocean of filth, that into this feeble mind and body snuck with dagger in hand, ready to strike the weak, pathetic mortal flesh—
She could hardly recognize the scream as her own as the she awoke in the icy tub, the tech having pulled her out just as that bizarre sensation seemed ready to kill her own soul. Abernathy had said that curiosity would kill the cat; it looked as if S had a few more lives to spare, but V's own had been perilously close to reaching its one and only end. Abernathy arrived a while after, V still recovering with heavy breaths on the side of the tub.
'Congratulations, looks like your little trap got half the netrunners in the tower killed,' she said sharply. V was already beginning to feel as if dying in the Net would have been preferable to Abernathy, when she continued, 'Don't look so scared. They are replaceable. But more importantly… the way they died? Well, it tells us all we need to know about our little friend. Unmistakable, I'm assured – It's the Blackwall. Picked up the file here – hard copy only, given their capabilities. Not much there, but you should find it interesting.'
V took the file with trembling hands. It was finally time to find out who this was. The title page read: Report on Subject Songbird.