Chapter Text
The basement of the Moth smelled like yesterday’s sins left to rot. Sour beer soaked into warped floorboards, cigarette smoke clung to the ceiling beams like cobwebs, and the neon bleed from upstairs cut through the slats in jagged ribbons: green, then red, then violet, never still, always restless. Alex leaned on a scarred pool table, the glow carving her face into fragments, half smirk, half exhaustion. Reed kept to the far wall, arms crossed, eyes unreadable, a silhouette sculpted from Dogtown’s iron resolve. Above them the bar pulsed with muffled bass, drunken shouts, a burst of laughter, the careless joy of people who didn’t know (or didn’t care) that the city balanced on a knife’s edge.
V stepped inside with the gait of someone who’d walked through too many shadows already that day. The Black Sapphire clung to him still: the stink of chlorine from the flooded tunnels, the sterile hum of the maintenance corridors, and later, the glittering cruelty of champagne glasses raised under chandeliers. He could still feel the weight of the Rasetsu in his hands, the recoil echoing in his shoulder, and beneath all that, the brush of her fingers. Songbird’s laugh, brief and almost human, had etched itself deeper than the smell of cordite that still lingered in his lungs.
Reed’s gaze caught him instantly. That sharp, assessing look, always cutting, never blinking.
“We can’t afford a single misstep,” he said, voice clipped, like a verdict already passed. “The twins’ll be sitting across from Hansen soon. We need their seats, their voices, their echoes in the system. We steal that, we grab Songbird, secure the matrix, and put Hansen down before he tries another shot at Myers.”
Alex exhaled a ribbon of smoke into the stale air, the ember of her cigarette glowing like a single angry eye. “Clean when you spit it out, Sol. But Dogtown doesn’t do clean. It does back alleys and blood in the drains.” Her eyes slid to V, sharp but playful. “Step one’s hijack duty: Charon Exotics. We slip a key into their trackers, snag the sibs’ ride. Easy enough, if you don’t mind crawling elbows-deep through corporate rot.”
“Wouldn’t be my first time,” V muttered.
But even as he said it, his head wasn’t on Charon. The Relic gave the faintest throb, a reminder that someone else was wired straight into his nerves. He felt her before he heard her, the way the air tastes before a storm breaks.
When he left the Moth, their words trailed him like smoke. Outside, Dogtown spread itself in neon arteries—wet asphalt gleaming, chrome signs buzzing like insects, the whole sprawl pulsing with hunger.
Then her voice cracked across the silence.
“V.” Not the cool commander, not the netrunner with strings wrapped around Night City’s throat. Softer. “Meet me. Alone. There’s a spot I need you to see.”
He stopped under a holo-sign that flickered between three languages, each one more garbled than the last. Cigarette smoke coiled from his lips. The smart move would be to turn her down, follow Reed’s plan to the letter, keep the board clean. But he knew himself too well. He’d go. He already had.
The place was hidden away, overlooking Dogtown’s broken skyline. She stood at the railing, back to him, the sprawl glittering below as if someone had shattered a mirror and scattered its shards across the earth.
Seeing her there knocked the air from his chest. No masks, no handlers, no Hansen hovering like a guillotine. Just So Mi. Shoulders slumped from sleepless nights, hair loose and untamed, the faint tremor of someone stretched too thin for too long.
“You came,” she said without turning.
“Guess I’m bad at saying no.”
That earned a sound from her, a tiny exhale caught between disbelief and relief. When she faced him, the city lights caught in her eyes, and for a second they didn’t look like weapons. They looked like stars.
Silence stretched, taut but not hostile. He didn’t fill it. Neither did she. It felt like standing at the edge of a drop, both of them unwilling to step forward, unwilling to step back.
Then she spoke, voice carrying a fracture.
“I told Hansen. About Space Force One. Time. Coordinates. All of it.”
The words hit harder than any round from the Rasetsu. V’s jaw locked, muscles tight enough to ache.
“Why?”
Her throat worked around the word. “Because I thought I could bend it. Give him crumbs, keep myself breathing. But he twisted it, like he twists everything. Now I’m not a partner, not an ally. Just his captive. His trophy. And you-” Her gaze steadied on him, too sharp, too raw. “You’re the only one who can pull me out.”
He felt the anger simmer, but it wasn’t for her. It was for the whole game: Reed’s orders, Myers’ schemes, Hansen’s chokehold. She was tangled in it worse than he was, wires cutting into skin.
“So what’s your angle?” His voice came out rough, stripped of veneer.
“We take the matrix. We run. Just us.” The words trembled but didn’t break. “I know a ripper, someone off the grid. She can cut it out of me, free me. And maybe... maybe she can help you too.”
The Relic. His silent executioner. The thought of ripping it free, of breathing without that weight, made something tighten in his chest. Hope was a drug, and she’d just offered him his first taste in years.
“Sounds pretty,” he said, softer now. “But pretty doesn’t last here.”
Her mouth pulled tight, but she stepped closer anyway. When her sleeve brushed his, it wasn’t accident.
“Not asking for forever. Just… a chance.”
The air between them shrank until he could see the flutter at her pulse, the shine of fatigue in her eyes. His crush coiled tighter, shifting from a spark to something heavier, like gravity itself had turned personal. He wanted to reach out, just to prove she was real, not another ghost.
Bootsteps clanged on metal below. A patrol, breaking the spell. She stepped back, distance wrapping around her like armor.
“I’ll call you,” she whispered. Then she slipped into the dark, leaving only the echo of her presence.
Charon Exotics looked like every corporate husk V had ever cracked—towering fences, rusting antennas, flickering logos that no longer inspired trust, only suspicion He slipped through shadows, Alex’s voice buzzing in his ear like a sardonic ghost, feeding him coordinates and technical jargon with a smirk threaded through every word.
“Shouldn’t be too hard,” she said. “Just don’t fry yourself plugging that key in. Would be a shame to lose the only guy stubborn enough to keep following Reed around.”
“Touching,” V muttered, but his focus was sharp, every step deliberate. The station was alive with the hum of neglected machines, screens flickering static like a thousand blind eyes watching him work.
The first key slotted in easy. Too easy. He’d learned long ago that nothing in Dogtown ever stayed easy for long. The second tower proved it, half the guts fried, the access panel a graveyard of melted wires and dead circuitry.
That’s when Luka found him. Barely fifteen, face smudged with grease, eyes too bright for a place this rotten. The kid bounced on his heels, grinning like this was all a game.
“Wanna play hot and cold?” he chirped. “One thousand eddies says I can wake her up faster than you can swear.”
V stared at him, patience fraying. But in the end, he shoved the creds into Luka’s hand. A thousand eddies was nothing compared to time lost.
The boy darted through the wreckage like a rat in a maze, calling out over his shoulder.
“Cold! … colder! … warmer! Yeah, right there, choom, you’re cookin’ now!”
It was absurd, but it worked. The console sputtered, coughed, then came alive with a stuttering hum. Signal bars blinked green, mocking in their simplicity.
“See?” Luka flashed a toothy grin. “Easy-peasy. Next time you need something fried or unfried, you know where to find me.”
V left without a word, but the kid’s laughter trailed after him, bright against the ruin.
The night air outside hit like a wall: heavy, damp, neon bleeding into puddles at his feet. He lit a cigarette, hands trembling just enough to betray the churn in his chest. Job done, Charon primed. Reed would be pleased. But his head wasn’t on the op anymore. It kept circling back to her. To the way So Mi’s voice had cracked when she confessed, that thread of desperation too fragile to ignore.
A flicker in the corner of his vision pulled him out of it. Johnny, leaning against the fence like he’d been there all along. His smirk was knife-sharp, a comfort and a curse both.
“You’re getting played, choom. Girl like that? She’s a live grenade with a bow on it. You cradle her too close, you’re the one who loses a hand.”
V exhaled smoke, watching it twist into the rain before the night swallowed it.
“And Reed? You think he’s not playing me?”
Johnny’s laugh was hollow, bitter. “Reed’s the other side of the same coin. Only difference is his lies come stamped with stars and stripes. He’ll gut you clean if that’s what it takes to keep his shiny principles intact. So, congratulations. You get to pick which blade you wanna fall on.”
“Doesn’t matter,” V muttered. “Still gotta choose.”
Johnny jabbed a finger into his chest. “Just don’t mistake loaded dice for fate. And don’t call it love when it’s a slow-motion car crash.”
The words clung long after Johnny blinked out, leaving V alone with the echo.
By the time Alex’s ping came through, the night had thickened into a bruise. The Moth welcomed him like a furnace, heat, noise, and oblivion pressed into every corner. Bass rattled his ribs, bodies moved in sweating waves, the air was thick with perfume that stung the throat. Upstairs, people forgot who they were; down here, Alex leaned against the bar like she’d been waiting all her life.
She slid him a drink. “If you weren’t you, who would you be?”
He barked a laugh, short and humorless. “Never had the luxury to think about it.”
“Bullshit,” she countered, sipping hers. “Everyone’s got a shadow-self. Someone they could’ve been if the world hadn’t cut their strings so early.” Her eyes softened, though her voice stayed sharp. “Me? I would’ve been a dancer. Just music and motion. No spies, no dead drops, no burnt corpses on the evening feeds.”
For a moment, he almost saw it. Alex spinning under stage lights, her edges smoothed into grace. Almost. Then it was gone, too strange a picture to hold onto.
“And Reed?” he asked.
She laughed, low and sharp. “Reed would still be Reed. Man doesn’t know how to be anything else.”
When she tugged him onto the floor, he let her. Not because he wanted escape (though maybe he did) but because saying no felt too much like admitting he couldn’t. They didn’t dance close, didn’t pretend it was something it wasn’t. Just bodies moving with the crowd, giving in to the music for as long as it let them. A breath. A pause in the endless tightening of the noose.
But even with Alex spinning him, his thoughts strayed back to that overlook, to So Mi’s sleeve brushing his, her voice trembling with a truth that weighed heavier than the city pressing down around him.
Reed’s call snapped the moment in half.
The ripperdoc’s clinic reeked of disinfectant, copper, and recycled air. The fluorescents buzzed overhead, too bright, too clinical, cutting every shadow into sterile slices. Reed stood by the chair, module glinting in his hand like a verdict.
“This’ll give you their biometrics,” he said, voice stripped of warmth. “Let you slip into the meeting unnoticed.”
“And the other?” V asked, though his stomach already knew.
Reed didn’t flinch. “Failsafe. Songbird’s unstable. If she turns, you ICE her before she takes half the city with her.”
The words dropped like chains across his shoulders. Still, he lowered himself into the chair. Metal met skin, the module clicking in, a jolt of fire threading through his nerves and burrowing deep. His teeth clenched against the sting.
Johnny lounged in the corner, arms folded, grin acid-sharp.
“Congratulations, V. You’re officially everyone’s weapon of choice. Reed’s loaded you up with patriot poison, and Songbird’s whispering fairy tales in your ear. Both of ‘em think they’ve got you by the balls. And you? You’re still standing here pretending you can split the difference.”
V closed his eyes against the glare of the fluorescents, against Johnny’s sneer, against the war pulling him in two directions.
Trust no one. Ears perked. Eyes peeled. Mind sharp.
Still, beneath it all, he could feel the phantom warmth of her sleeve brushing his, the quiet plea in her voice when she asked him to run.
And no chip, no module, no flag could erase that.