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V stumbles through the door. She lingers there a moment, her hand on the doorknob, staring out into black emptiness of her new apartment. It is so much larger than the one she had in Watson, with the nicest furniture and the sleekest finishes. Abstract art hanging on the wall and a maid that comes every other day. It’s the nicest apartment that she’s ever had. A year or two ago, she was sleeping in her car. Now, she’s got the penthouse suite.
“Honey?” Her voices echoes slightly, “I’m home.”
She toes off her boots and kicks them into a closet. The lights come on as she enters each subsequent room and turn off automatically when she leaves. She pads barefoot through the apartment, lighting up a series of empty rooms when she enters, and darkening them again when she leaves. On her bedside table, she puts down the malorian, shifts it to the left and then the right, trying to find the right angle for it. She takes off the jacket, hangs it up carefully next to the coat rack by her bed. She puts it there on purpose, so she can look at it while trying to sleep, check that it is still there. Lately, she’s been scared that she might lose it. She loses things all the time. Back with the clan, they would tease her relentlessly about it, say she would lose her head if it wasn’t screwed on tight. It’s just something she does. She just loses things. Her keys. Her shards. Her wallet. Her…
She keeps moving. It’s late. The sun set hours ago, and the floor-to-ceiling windows have turned into gigantic black mirrors. She avoids looking at her reflection as she goes to her kitchen. While she waits the coffee to finish brewing, she shoves something from SCSM into her mouth. Doesn’t even check what it is. Just eats. She can’t taste it anyway. Not anymore.
The coffee finishes, and she it sips while leaning against her kitchen counter. She stares into middle space for a little bit, letting her mind drift into a blissfully blank space. Then, shaking her head, she blinks, and summons her holo.
She calls Dino, “You got any more jobs for me?”
“What the fuck are you talking about, V?” He groans, exasperated, “You literally just finished a job for me, like an hour ago.”
“I know. You got any more? I could head back out.”
“Its two a.m. Get some sleep.”
“You don’t have any more jobs?”
“Jezsus! No, V! You’ve literally cleaned out my business. Got no more fucking gigs. You’ve been running non-stop for me for weeks now and I know I ain’t your only fixer, you fickle bitch. So, I’m literally begging you to slow the fuck down, V. Go the fuck to sleep. Night City will still be there when you wake up.”
“You’ll have more jobs in the morning?”
“Christ,” Dino sighs, “No. Not for you. I’m cutting you off, V.”
“What the fuck you mean, cutting me off?”
“I mean I got nothing for you, V, fucking ever, okay? Lose my number. I ain’t giving you no more jobs. Go the fuck to sleep. Just stop and try to fucking relax. Lie next to a pool with your tits out or something. I don’t know what the hell’s going on with you, but it’s not like you need the money. And you ain’t got nothing to prove to no one anymore, not after that stunt you solo’d at Arasaka Tower. So come on, you’re at the top. Take a breath and fucking enjoy it. I don’t know why you’re still taking these small-time gigs. Mercs with half your cred wouldn’t bother with most of the jobs you’ve been doing for me lately. Just… I don’t get it. So, yeah… cutting you off babycakes. I got nothing more for you.”
“Fucking fine, you piece of shit!” V yells, “Like you said, you ain’t my only fixer.”
She hangs up, then calls Padre who tells her she should ask God for guidance. She calls Wakako, who says she’ll look into it but right now she’s got nothing. She calls Mr. Hands, who doesn’t answer. She calls him another three times and eventually gets his secretary who tells her that they do not require any assistance at this time. V calls anyone and everyone she can think of until she finally breaks down and calls Rogue.
“Rogue?” V’s voice is thick, strained, but not because she’s been crying. She’s just been talking for too long.
“V…” Rogue is all sympathetic and V doesn’t give a damn.
“You got any work for me?”
“Not for you.” Rogue’s words are absolute. No room for negotiations.
V wants to scream in frustration, “No, man, come on, Rogue. Not you too. Please. Can you just help me here? I need to fucking work.”
“You’re gonna get yourself killed if you keep going like this.”
“So?” V laughs, shrill and manic. “I’m dyin’ anyway, Rogue.”
“V… I get it, okay? I’ve lost him before too.”
V hangs up. It’s like she’s jerking her hand away after pressing it onto a hot stove. She doesn’t think about that. She doesn’t look at it. She just keeps going. She just keeps moving, like a shark, swimming through blood-infested waters. She’ll be fine, but she needs to keep moving.
Dawn is still a long way off and V is too wired to sleep. She lines up some synthcoke on her marble kitchen counters and takes a hit. Maybe she should hit the club, she thinks. Just go by herself. Get a drink. Dance a little. Find someone who will fuck her. She wants to be fucked from behind in an alleyway by someone rough and mean. She’ll screw her eyes tight and pretend that –
She turns on some music. The apartment is too fucking empty. She’s playing Chippin’ In on full blast. Puts it on repeat. When the music is loud enough, it becomes a physical presence. Like V can feel it move across her skin. Maybe she should invite someone over. Maybe River would like to fuck her again, she thinks. But he’ll probably want to talk first, and V doesn’t want to do that. She doesn’t want to talk about it. She just wants to keep moving, keep going.
She takes another hit. Her blood is buzzing in her veins, boiling like cherry jam. She wanders around her stupid apartment, taking the abstract art off the walls. She’s decided that she doesn’t like them anymore. They’re ugly and useless and she doesn’t like them anymore. She pulls out her computer, climbs onto the sanctioned net, orders a couple new paintings. This one with the bird – she likes it a lot. The faded red of its feathers looks pink and its flying towards a bright, yellow sun. She orders several different versions of it. Waits on her balcony for the drone to deliver it. She paces back and forth, like a caged panther, smoking a cigarette. The smoke, it curls and uncurls inside of her mouth, unfurling in her lungs, spreading through her. She can almost taste the cancer that she not going to live long enough to get. Dawn is still a couple hours off, but its already getting hot. Her skin is feverish, so she climbs out of her pants, starts walking around in just a t-shirt and panties. The site had said the delivery would only take twenty minutes, but she’s been waiting for an hour. She checks her watch. It’s only been five minutes.
“Fuck,” she spits.
She goes back inside, does another line, shoves her head under the tap in the kitchen sink because she’s suddenly so hot. Strips out of her shirt. Walks around in her bra and underwear. What does it matter? No one’s around.
She ups the volume on the music, almost hoping that someone will come to complain and she can answer in her underwear, clearly tweaking out, and they’ll ask if she’s okay. But the apartment is soundproof. She remembers that now. She puts the music louder. The music moves over her, metal hands soothing her. She needs something to cool her down. There’s something dark and empty inside of her chest – a black wound that’s begun to fester. Maybe she should just masturbate, she thinks. Maybe that will make her feel better.
The couch should be on the other side of the room, she realises. It should face the balcony, the view of the neon billboard advertising Kiroshi implants. The image flashes with a thousand different eyes, alternating blue and green and red, and sometimes V will stand there and watch it glitch for hours. But if the couch were here…She pushes it to the other side of the room. It’s hard work. Maybe she should have chipped in those gorilla arms instead of the monowire. She’s huffing and puffing, her bare feet scrambling against the hardwood floor. But she eventually manages. She’s nothing if not relentlessly stubborn. When she looks down, breathing heavily, she notices that she’s scuffed up the floor. Not getting the deposit back, she realises, and the thought makes her laugh. Just a little.
She makes herself coffee that she forgets to drink. Opens the tap and doesn’t close it. Floods the kitchen. She’ll mop it up later. She waits outside for the package. It’s been fifteen minutes.
She calls River.
“River, hey! How are you?” she asks, her voice chipper. Delightful. She’s a delight to be around. People love her, she thinks.
“V?” He croaks, his voice still stuffed full of sleep. “It’s… It’s four a.m.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”
“It’s four a.m.”
He seems really stuck on that. “Do you wanna come over?” V asks him, “See my new place.”
“V, I haven’t heard from you in ages. I’ve been worried.”
“Oh, I’m fine! Wanna come over?”
“V…” River says, his voice soft, gentle. “Do... d’you need some help?”
V rolls her eyes, “No, River, this is a booty call. Not a cry for help”
“It’s a Tuesday.”
“Yeah, I know,” V says, but the truth is she didn’t know. She lost track of the days awhile back. It does her no good to walk around, watching time. She can’t keep pace with it. It is quickly outrunning her. “So what?”
“So… on some random Tuesday, after not answering my calls for weeks, you hit me up at four a.m for a booty call while you’re clearly on something. What you take, V?”
“What? Why?” she laughs, “You gonna arrest me?”
“I’m tryin’ to help you, V.”
“Oh my fuck, you are so boring!” she yells at him, then hangs up.
The drone arrives and drops the package. It sails down on a little parachute and lands on the balcony. V watches it, then decides she’ll unpack it later. Doesn’t feel like doing it right. Doesn’t want to look at that stupid bird. She stomps around her balcony. Looks at the pool. Maybe she should swim. It would cool her down, but she doesn’t like being in water anymore. Doesn’t like feeling that weightlessness, that disembodied feeling. Johnny hated it, and now she hates it too.
“Oh, V…”
She whirls around, looking for him. Is he leaning against the wall? Sitting on the couch? Where is he? Where the hell is he?
“Johnny?” she calls out, going back inside, but his angry voice in the song is her only answer. She walks around the living room, lowers the volume on the music. “Johnny?” Turns it off. But she still can’t hear him. “Is anyone here?” Her voices echoes. Why did she get such a big apartment? Why does she live here? “Johnny…” She walks up the stairs. The lights turn off as she leaves the room. She goes into her bathroom. The light turns on. She stares at the mirror. Red eyes. Pale skin. Her eyes are blown wide open. Pupils obliterating her irises. “Johnny?” He would often appear here, reflected behind her in the mirror. She whips around, “Johnny?!” She starts to run through the apartment, lights turning on and off around her, “JOHNNY!” she screams, “JOHNNY!!”
Then, she’s in her bedroom, tripping over something. The world tilts and she slams against the floor. Groans. “Johnny?” she whimpers. She’s laying on her back now, staring at the ceiling. It hits her all at once. She’s so tired. She shivers, suddenly cold in her bra and underwear. Has she been cold this entire time? Her vision swims, blurred, and she blinks as she sets her eyes on the jacket. Big jacket… she thinks dully, reaching for it with trembling fingers. You won’t be cold when you’re wearing my big jacket. Her fingertips brush against the sleeve. She shifts a little closer. Everything hurts, but she manages to grab the end of the sleeve. She’s so tired. “I’m so tired, Johnny,” she says and pulls at the jacket sleeve. “Please, Johnny.” It gets caught on the hanger. “Johnny, please.” She pulls again. “I’m cold…” The jacket falls off the hanger. She pulls it over her, brushing her hand over the samurai logo on the back, then slides her arms through the sleeves, turns around on her side, curled up inside her big jacket. She buries her face in its high collar.
“Goodnight Johnny,” she mumbles into the collar.
And she’ll swear that she really hears it. Until the day she dies, she’ll swear.
“Goodnight, Valerie.”
Sleep falls on her like weight, like a guillotine. It is so complete, so sudden, that she dreams that she is dead. She dreams that she died in this empty apartment, and no one found her for months. The big jacket wrapped around her decaying body, holding her tight even as her flesh rots and falls off her bones. When they finally find her, the leather and the fabric have melted into her flesh, and they must burn them together. Their ashes, mingling together, scattered together.
“V?”
Maybe this is what death feels like. Naked, shivering, all alone. The weight of someone’s hand on her shoulder. Everyone who loved her trying to wake her up.
“V, come on. Wake up.”
She blinks her eyes open, “Kerry?”
“There she is!” He laughs in relief. “Come on, girl. Let’s get you up. You fell asleep on the floor again.”
“Again?”
“Yeah… picked you up from the Afterlife last week, remember? You’d passed out on the bathroom floor.”
“Don’t remember that…”
“I’m not surprised. You were fucking trashed.”
Kerry seems mad. “Are you mad at me?” she asks.
He sighs, “No, V. I’m not mad.”
V narrows her eyes. She doesn’t believe him. He’s definitely mad at her.
He pulls her up and sets her down on the edge of the bed, pushes her hair out of her face. He swipes the pad of his thumb over her top lip. V thinks he’s probably wiping away some snot and blood that’s congealed there. He is covering it up with an affectionate gesture, but V spots him discretely wiping his hand on his expensive designer pants.
“You know…” Kerry says, “He asked me to take care of you.”
V can’t look at Kerry. She looks up at the ceiling, staring at the place where two walls meet the ceiling, at that collection of vertices.
“That day… on the boat, when he took control. That’s what he wanted to talk to me about. Keep an eye on her, he said. Didn’t want you to be alone.”
V keeps her eyes on the ceiling, rolling them back in her head so any tears will roll back into her hollowed out skull. Kerry waits for her to say something for a long time. Then, he says, “Let’s get you something to eat.”
“I think there’s something wrong with my SCSM,” V mumbles.
“What d’you mean?”
She shrugs, “All the food tastes like ass, like, um, nothing at all really.”
“Then I’ll order in. Beer and sushi, like last time?”
“Last time…” V echoes.
Kerry orders food, but V still can’t taste it. With the raw fish, she just feels like she’s chewing rubber, but she forces herself to swallow anyway. It seems to make Kerry happy, to watch her eating. He ruffles her hair, tells her ‘Atta girl’ and smiles like she’s all better now. They eat in the kitchen, falling in and out of silence, their toes dipping into the water that she hasn’t mopped up yet.
“Do you think…” V starts, then stops, then starts again, “D’you think engrams go to heaven?”
Kerry just stares at her. There is not a single crinkle of a smile on his boyish face. Not a single glint of light in his eyes.
V continues, leaning heavily against the marble counter, idly running her fingertip through the slight dusting of synthcoke that still lingers there, “Cause… Johnny got soulkilled, right? So, what if the version of him that died on that rooftop, with his body… what if it’s that version of him that’s in heaven right now and when I get there, he won’t ever have met me. He won’t… he won’t fucking know me. And my… my Johnny… he’ll just be beyond the Blackwall, and I’ll be in Heaven with a version of him that doesn’t even recognise me.”
“I don’t know, V. I don’t know about heaven or hell or any of that shit,” Kerry laughs, tries valiantly to lighten the mood, and says, “But, fuck, doubt that son of a bitch is getting past the pearly gates anyway.”
She sticks her finger her mouth, rubs her gums. “Oh, okay,” V mutters, feeling all dull and soft inside, “Guess I’m going to Hell, then.”
Kerry takes a deep breath, drowns a maki roll in some soy sauce. He talks without looking at her, “Maybe we could, fuck, V… Maybe we should look into getting you some help. I could call my guru. Fly him over on the jet. He could help you, I think, with some grief counselling.”
V snorts, “Grief counselling? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Come on, V. Don’t be like that.”
But V can’t help it. The anger, it is sitting in her throat, warping every word that she says.
“Fuck you, Kerry! Johnny wasn’t, like, my fucking input who died on me, okay? He wasn’t some guy I knew who’s just not around anymore. He was… he was a part of me, and now he’s gone and I don’t know… I can’t taste food anymore. I look at things and I don’t know what they’re called. It’s not grief, Kerry, it’s fucking lobotomy. The second half of every thought I have is just silence now. Okay? Do you fucking get that? Do you fucking understand? It is not like how it was with you. I can’t go lie on a beach and fuck randos to make myself feel better. Can’t use the pain to write an album and make millions off his fucking image. I can’t –,”
V cuts herself off, the corners of her mouth pointing downwards. They sit in silence and V fidgets. She can’t stand it. All this sitting around, waiting, it’s killing her.
Finally, Kerry says, “That was cruel, V. And you were never cruel.”
“Something else I got from Johnny then, maybe.”
“No, babe. That was all you. You’re lashing out because he hurt you. Hurt you worse than anyone ever could. You think I don’t get that? Fuck, you think he gets uploaded to your thoughts and you can just jump ahead of the queue. You think you get first fuckin’ prize cause he lived inside of you? He’s lived inside of me for fucking decades now. I do know what it’s like, being afraid that if I ripped him out, I would be nothin’ without him, that it would cause some kind of irreparable damage.”
“That’s thing though, Kerry…” V swallows, “I did get him ripped out. And he did cause damage. Irreparable fuckin’ damage. I’m still fucking dyin’ and I didn’t even get to keep him.”
“V…” Kerry sighs, but before he can say anything else, she just leans to the side and throws up all the raw fish she ate.
“Ah, Jesus fucking Christ!” Kerry exclaims. “Okay, okay. In hindsight maybe sushi was a bad idea.”
She collapses on to the kitchen counter, knocking over some soya sauce. She shivers, uncontrollably. “Body doesn’t listen to me anymore…” she mumbles. “It’s not mine anymore.”
Some spilled soy sauce soaks into her hair. She watches as her pink hair soaks in the black. Kerry grabs her under the armpits, hoists he up, starts to drag her to the bathroom. He slides the big jacket off her, hangs it back up, dusts it off, then returns to her all smiles like she never said all those horrible things. He turns on the shower, lets her stand there and watch the steam obscure her reflection in the mirror. He tests the temperature of the water with a flat hand. Then, he gently manoeuvres her beneath the spray. He takes off her bra and underwear then he undresses himself. They are standing nose to nose, completely naked, sharing the stream of water from V’s fancy new shower.
V lets him wash her hair, run his hands over the blank expanses of her face. Her pink hair sticks to the skin of her neck and shoulders. He looks at her, examines her like some kind of doctor, but V can’t meet his eyes. She looks at his golden throat, running her gaze over the lines of his chrome.
“Hey, babydoll. Look at me,” he murmurs.
She blinks at him, water catching on her eyelashes.
“I think you’re gonna be fine,” he says, sincere, “I think it’s gonna get so much better for you, okay?”
She doesn’t believe him, “Okay,” she says, anyway.
He tips her chin up and presses a chaste kiss against her pink lips. It’s shallow, tender and intimate without being sexual. He lingers there for a moment, then another, then he wrenches himself away, breathing heavily, and gasps, as if in pain, “Oh, fuck.”
His hands grip the side of her cheeks as he looks away. He restlessly combs his fingers through her hair, but he does not look at her. He cannot bear to look at her.
“You felt it, didn’t you?” V asks, “That dark hole where he used to be. The way that he’s just… not around anymore.”
V knows it takes everything that Kerry has to look back at her. He’s pulling her into his arms, tucking her head beneath his chin, holding her tight, but it’s just another way to avoid looking into her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
“I’m sorry too… I know… I should have just let him kill me.”
He doesn’t say anything. V isn’t even quite sure that he heard her. Instead, he just pulls her gently from the shower, from that warm water, and dresses her in pyjamas before tucking her into bed. And V just thinks, Kerry is a good man. Good, as in kind. Good, as in obedient. Fulfilling his dead best friend’s final request to the letter. Kissing her feverish forehead and combing back her thinning hair. He’s so gentle with her, so kind.
Six months, V thinks as she drifts to sleep again, is too damn long to wait.
And she hates waiting.
V is not sure if she sleeps, exactly, but she does drift in and out of daydreams. She thinks she feels Kerry slide into bed next to her, but the arm that wraps around her waist is cool chrome. The face nuzzling into the nape of her neck is bearded, ticklish, and V almost breathes out a sigh of soft laughter. She is warm for what feels like the first time in months.
Later, when she wakes or else just slips out of the daydream again, she silently pads towards her balcony. Kerry is in the kitchen, trying and failing to mop up all the water on the floor. At this point, he’s just moving the water around. He’s talking to someone on the phone.
“No, no, I’m glad you called. Yeah. She’s not… I think we should start thinking about – no, I know that, Rogue.”
V is silent, watching. She’s still the best merc in Night City. Kerry will only see her when she wants to be seen.
“You haven’t heard anything? Found anything? Come on, Ro, someone with your kinda connections has got to find something…”
V slips out into the balcony. She can still hear Kerry when he says, “I know she’s the best solo in the city right now, and that last night she took down an entire scav joint, but you didn’t see it, Rogue, I…. I really think we should start looking into palliative care or something. It’s just going to get worse. She’s not keeping food down. She’s lost so much weight. Her fucking hair is falling out. If she keeps going the way she’s going it’s not gonna matter how skilled she is – she’s gonna fucking faint on a job, or have one of those episodes again, show up drunk to a gig or –,”
V finds the box with the paintings, sits down next to it, and stars to unwrap it.
“How are we back here, Rogue? Seriously, I feel like it’s fifty years ago and we’re talking about what to do about Johnny, where’s Johnny, how do we help Johnny? Fuck. I thought I was done with this kind of shit. But this is the second time this week I’ve scooped her up off the fucking floor. She flooded her kitchen, did you know that? Just forgot a tap open. What if she makes a mistake like that when she out on a job? Yeah… yeah, I know that’s why you’re not giving her any more work.”
She takes one of the paintings out of the box and looks at it smiling. She loves it. The bird is flying into a bright yellow sun. She traces her fingertips over it the vibrant, ecstatic lines of the painting. It’s just a print, so the paint is not actually there. It’s been flattened, made two-dimensional, but the brushstrokes are so vivid and expressive that V can see the way that the paint had been carved against the canvas.
“I don’t get it, honestly,” Kerry huffs, frustrated, “The fucking kink he had for doomed netrunner chicks.”
V’s holo rings and she answers it automatically.
“Valerie Vincent?” says a cool-toned voice. “You can call me Mr. Blue Eyes. I hear you’ve been looking for work.”
“You got something for me?” She asks, continuing to run her fingertips over the painting.
“I have a need for your particular set of skills, and your willingness to take on risks that others would not dare.”
“I’m listening.”
“Good. First, I must warn you of the potential dangers. This is the kind of job that comes with a mandatory re-evaluation of your Last Will and Testament.”
V smirks, “Wouldn’t be my first suicide run.”
“Excellent.”
She stands up, hugs the painting to her chest, and looks back at Kerry. He’s standing there in the kitchen, with his head in his hands. He still hasn’t seen her, still thinks that she is upstairs, asleep in bed.
“If you pull this off, not only will you become a legend the likes of which we haven’t seen since Morgan Blackhand,” Mr. Blue Eyes says, “But you’ll have more money than your descendants a hundred years from now will know what to do with.”
V snorts, “Yeah… descendants. Right. I’m not in it for the money, or the glory.”
“What are you in it for?”
“The distraction.”
“Well, then… Let us meet. Afterlife. One hour.”
“I can be there in twenty minutes.”
“Suit yourself.”
He hangs up. A sense of relief and calm washes over her. Her thoughts stop swirling around in her head and become still, smooth, like an undisturbed pond in a dark forest. She feels so much better now that she has some work to do. She just needed a gig, something to focus on that wasn’t that dark yawning abyss of emptiness inside her brain. Rogue and Kerry, the other fixers, they don’t get it. She’s not going to fuck up a job. That’s the only time she feels whole again. She needs to work. She needs to keep moving. And if she goes out on this job, blaze of glory? Fuck it, why not? Cause she sure as hell wasn’t about to book herself into hospice. She sure as hell wasn’t going to spend the next couple of months watching her fhair fall out. That motherfucker, Dexter Deshawn, had asked her – quiet life or blaze of glory and she’d insisted that Night City don’t let you choose.
“Oh, but it does,” she mutters to herself, looking down at the painting. “It does let you choose.”
She stands there, tracing the curve of the sun, thinking that it would be ever so lovely to burn.