Chapter Text
My nerves catch fire
And scream too loud
can’t hear what you’re saying
The weight of Night City was a heavy burden to bare; V was sure as shit she and Jackie were heading to the fuckin' top! Then everything got gonked up! Jackie's dead. 'Fuck, fucking FUCK! Jackie is fucking DEAD!' It was all she could think about as V screamed and pushed large chunks of scrap metal and junk off herself. Not only was Jackie dead, V fucking died. Dexter DaShawn and his bodyguard blindsided her in the hotel room after the botched heist. Point blank to the head, Dex shot V-zeroed her. Then, she was tossed out like trash in a landfill. This where Jackie ends up, too? Or did Delamain take him to Mama Welles as she had asked? However'thefuck she survived, she wasn't going to die again-lyin' in the garbage.
Slowly dragging herself through the muck, muffled movements, and voices caught her attention. As her survival instincts kicked in overdrive, V used all her strength to claw her way to the muted sounds. Hoping to find workers or dumpster divers, she persisted through the burning sensations in her lungs, body, muscles, and nerves, with the encompassing migraine that felt like she just got shot in the head. However, V was not lucky as Dexter DaShawn and Saburo's bodyguard rounded the corner and headed for her. V tried scrambling away so they wouldn't notice her, but it was too late. V lost consciousness as they approached her.
V luckily blacked out for the few minutes Dex struggled to move her body, just pulling her along in the muck. V came too when Dex had set her down next to a car. "Ugh... Heavier than she looks." Saburo's lap dog flat-lined Dex with a single shot, a bullet straight to his brain. 'Eerie,' as V thought of her predicament not so long ago. V was sure that mother fucker wasn't coming back from the dead. Immediately V feels terrified as the Corpo dog approaches her while talking on his holo. V panicked. Hating the sound of desperation in her voice as she reached out, beggin', "Help me." All hope was lost as he backhanded her. All V remembered after he lifted her into his car before losing consciousness once more, the man curses in Japanese, "You smell like shit."
V is then suddenly suffering from a wave of pain that jolts her body awake; her body trembles as she is hot and cold, sweating while feeling chill to the bone. A voice pulls her attention. "I need your help!" the corpo scum pleads with V, who's half dead. Instinct takes over after he hands her an airhypo, quickly administering it. V grabs his pistol and shoots at the motorcyclists chasing them. Everything was happening in a slow-motion blur until everything came to an abrupt stop when they crashed. Even on the verge of flat-lining for a third time, V can't help but fuck with the corpo-rat wasting precious time and making them both wait for a much-needed visit to a ripper doc. V called Delamain in the end, not knowing if the AI taxi service would even help.
After that call, V blacks out once more, but this time, she's hallucinating in the body of a man she didn't quite recognize but felt she'd known her entire life. As a passenger in this memory, dream? She was stuck as this individual. It was a lot of information to process, and V wasn't entirely sure what she was experiencing. It was Night City, vastly different but also the same. This Johnny, a rocker boy, turned into a terrorist against the Corps, mainly Araksaka. V watched through his perspective as he set those bombs, Adam Smasher attacking him. Then Rouge. V swore she saw Rouge's hesitation in helping Johnny onto the heli as Johnny's fear resonated within V. As excruciating pain flows through her, V wakes in Vik's clinic and learns about her Soul Killer.