JohnnyZ
patreon
[Demons of NC] Chapter 76
🕑 Added 2025-02-14 03:25:41 +0000 UTCOther than the shower, the apartment now had a curved bathtub—no jacuzzi, but big enough for a couple of people. Whatever Evelyn had thrown in there smelled pretty damn nice. The water had turned a pale pink, with flower petals floating on the surface.
"Shower first," Lucy cut off my attempt to step right into the bath. "Gotta wash the Badlands off us."
Fair enough.
I went in first. The dimly lit shower steamed up quickly, hot water stripping away the exhaustion and tension that had been with me since morning. Hard to believe this day was finally winding down. From the top of Arasaka Tower to the middle of the desert. From corporate intrigue to gunfights and high-speed chases. What’s the perfect way to wrap up a day like that? Alone with a beautiful woman, of course. Well… alone might be a stretch.
"Her being here doesn’t bother you?" I asked as Lucy stepped into the shower with me.
Obviously, I was talking about Evelyn, who was busy dimming the apartment’s neon lights and lighting candles.
"Her?" Lucy smirked, looping her arms around my shoulders. "She’s not here. It’s just us. Just you and me."
"Guess that’s one way to look at it. Husbands at dollhouses would agree with you—just a mannequin. A doll with no mind of her own."
"It’s not like that," Lucy countered. "Dolls aren’t empty shells, or they’d all be the same except for their faces. Eve’s more like… a braindance. She’s got emotions, gestures, even traces of thoughts—like an imprint of a personality, but the person herself is asleep. It’s like playing a BD. Why be self-conscious about that?"
"If you say so…"
"Don’t be such a prude," she teased, pulling me out of the shower. "You like it. You just like pretending you’re some respectable guy. Old habit—same as wearing a suit whether it fits the situation or not."
We slid into the warm bath, sitting across from each other. I leaned back against the heated porcelain, letting my muscles relax. The dim lighting, slow music, the mix of spicy and sweet scents—it all blended together with the candlelight flickering on the water’s surface. But what held my attention more was the way it played across Lucy’s wet skin as she leaned forward, reaching for the syringes.
"You ever tried this before?" I asked.
"No," she said, injecting the hormonal complex into a hidden port beneath the skin at the crook of her elbow.
"You’ve got one of those?" I raised an eyebrow.
"For my coolant," she explained. "Once, I got fried by an ICE defense in a fortress. My body temp shot up past forty-nine. This thing saved my ass."
Her voice changed slightly as the drug kicked in. The tiniest shift in her posture—the way she tilted her head, moved her hips—told me her senses were heightening.
"Feels good, huh? Relaxing?"
Under the water, I ran my fingers from her knee, trailing higher and higher.
"Wait… You take yours first," she stopped me. "Then we talk."
"Sure you don’t wanna talk after?" I smirked, tracing the curves of her body.
"No. After, we might not be in a talking mood."
"Good point," I admitted, grabbing the syringe.
The injection wasn’t as smooth as when Vik or the docs did it. My cyberarm didn’t shake, but I wasn’t exactly a pro at giving myself shots. Normally, I only jab people with drugs during fights—long as it hits the moving target, that’s good enough.
The effect was fast, just like last time. I felt it washing over me, my body relaxing in a way I hadn’t even realized I needed. Even in the shower, even here, I’d still been tense. Too used to it. Too wired to notice. But now, my usual death grip on control was loosening, and my focus shifted to everything else—every touch, every sensation.
"Let go," Lucy murmured. "Relax. Let the water hold your arms."
I did as she asked, letting my arms go limp. My right hand floated up, but my left—weighted down by synthetic joints, hidden blades, and a neurotoxin injector—sank. Weird feeling. Like being half a corpse. My cyberhand settled on the bottom of the tub, resting against the metal.
I let it stay there for a moment. Then I figured, fuck it—there were far better places for my cyberhand to be than the bottom of a bathtub. Eyes closed, I slid my fingers up the curve of Lucy’s waist.
"Talk first," she reminded me.
"Then talk," I said. "Or did the shot not work, and you still don’t know where to start?"
"It worked. It’s just… hard," she admitted. "I want to talk, but nothing’s coming together. It’s frustrating. So fucking frustrating."
"Yeah. I get that. Start from further back, work your way up."
"Alright. Let me just tell Eve to grab me a cig—"
"Don’t. Normally, I wouldn’t care, but it smells too nice in here. If you need something to ground yourself, just hold my hand. Squeeze as hard as you need. Just start talking—it’ll come."
Her fingers clenched around mine, tight enough to sting.
"You know where that data center was?" she asked. "The one where I 'worked' for Arasaka."
"Somewhere near Night City?"
"No. Europe. Between a city called Gdańsk and a half-abandoned nuclear plant. Arasaka bought out one of the reactors."
"Damn. That far."
"When I escaped…"
She trailed off, clearly trying to avoid whatever memories hurt the most.
"It’s okay. Say what you want to say."
"They searched for me. For years. A few times, they almost caught me, but I slipped away at the last second. One year. Two. Three. Four. I slept under bridges, in abandoned buildings, basements. I had to hope that the next asshole who came at me had enough implants for me to short out. And every time I tried to settle, tried to stay somewhere, they found me again."
I frowned slightly. "Arasaka doesn’t like losing people—I know that—but a manhunt this long? Takes a lot of time and money. Usually, if you slip past the first wave, you can disappear."
"This was personal," Lucy murmured.
"Someone wanted revenge?"
"Yes. And… no. Let’s not talk about that. Not now. Not tonight. The shot’s helping, but… not that much."
"No problem."
Michiko’s words echoed in my mind. You don’t know anything about her. And yeah, maybe she had a point. I thought I knew Lucy. Relied on memories from a future that never happened. But outside of that narrow circle of light? There was a whole world of her past I’d never even seen.
"I made it to Night City eventually. It got easier. Big, messy city, hard to track people. Arasaka’s presence here is Japanese—not European. I lost my pursuers. I could finally breathe, but then…"
Something in her grip loosened.
"Something happened?" I asked.
"Night City happened," she muttered. "Again. And again. I got screwed over, almost chopped for parts, nearly sold, nearly bought. Every time I tried making connections, it ended the same way."
"And then you met Kiwi."
"Yeah. It seemed random at first. We talked. Met up sometimes. The more I learned about her, the more I felt like… I was looking at my future. A reflection of myself in a few years."
I almost told her they weren’t alike—but I held my tongue.
"But she had it worse," Lucy added. "Her whole life—nothing but darkness. And she survived. Kiwi helped me, too. Took me from a scared, broken girl to who you see now. Then she introduced me to Maine. And for a while, things got better. I felt alive again. But then…"
She looked away. The empathy boost from the drug made her pain feel real, like I could physically sense it.
"It was like a curse. First, some cyberpsycho killed Becca’s brother—for no reason. And he nearly took all of us with him if it weren’t for Maine. Then Maine himself. Then Dorio…"
Weird. The way she said it, the way her words hung in the air—it stirred something inside me. I thought back to who I was then. The man at the top of Arasaka Tower. The man who’d just come back from the dead, driven by secrets and ambition. I could have saved them. But instead, I let them die.
Because at the time, I thought it would make it easier to own the girl whose hand I was holding now.
“When everything went down with Kiwi and Faraday… I don’t even think I was surprised. It was like I told myself: You always knew this city would kill you one day. But then you went and surprised me.”
"Why’d she go along with Faraday so easily? He’s the kind of guy you can’t trust for shit. Today he offers you a deal, tomorrow he screws you over. Kiwi had to know that."
"She did. But sometimes people don’t get to choose. You told me that yourself back at Ho-Oh."
I had to dig through my memory. That was when I offered Lucy a partnership. She told me she had no choice, and I said:
"You always have a choice. It’s just that sometimes there’s only one right answer. That’s still better than having no right answers at all."
"You think Kiwi got stuck with no right answers?"
"Maybe. She always needed more eddies than we could pull together. Health issues. Survival."
"Health issues? Rippers can patch up just about anything these days. Shit that used to be a death sentence, they fix like it’s nothing now."
"Yeah. But for every person technology lifted to the stars, it buried another in the dirt," Lucy said. "Kiwi was one of the ones left in the dirt. Toxic work conditions, black-market meds, janky implants. They did shit to her that would’ve made even your buddy Vik, or those sketchy back-alley rippers, lose their shit. They used her up for as long as they could, then threw her away. You landed on rock bottom with thousands of eddies and built your own crew. I had a rougher time, but at least I had netrunner skills. Kiwi… to afford her first cyberdeck, she sold a kidney."
"Not even chrome?" I raised an eyebrow.
"Nope. Any decent chrome she had got ripped out by her former 'owners.' Then she had to pay the ripper off. Turns out, her kidney was so fucked that the buyer demanded a refund."
Jesus. That’s some true hardcore cyberpunk shit.
"She got into netrunning because, without expensive meds, she wouldn’t have lasted a month on the streets. She went all in. Survived. But the problems didn’t go away. Her body rejected implants. Most rippers refused to work on her after just one look. One asshole even gave her a priest’s number instead."
That explains why she always walked around without a lower jaw. I figured it was just some fucked-up aesthetic choice. Like a Moxie girl with a cracked doll mask, or one of those Maelstrom freaks modding themselves into full chrome nightmares.
"When she left, I was secretly relieved," Lucy admitted. "She just disappeared. No goodbyes. No fights. I tried to forget about her. And then you showed up. Things got better again. Even better than before. Now she’s back. Now she’s in deep shit, and I know about it. I keep telling myself to just walk away. That she made her bed, and there’s no reason to help her. Not a single fucking reason!" Her voice shook, and for a second, I thought she was gonna cry. "And yet, I still don’t want her to die. Stupid, right? How fucking stupid…"
"You know what? I’ve heard enough," I said. "If you wanna pull her out of this and let her live, then we do it. I’ll help. Hard job? Who cares? We’ve handled worse. You said they’re locked down tight, right? Heavy security, solid netrunner defenses?"
"Yeah. They’ve closed up tight."
"Good," I grinned. "We just happen to have some of the hottest prototype hardware fresh off the back of a Militech truck. Let’s give our new bot a test run before Kompeki."
"It’s… really that simple?" Lucy looked almost skeptical.
She probably expected me to be against it. The 'rational' move would be to let the Animals rip the Brazilians apart and not give a shit about some traitor’s fate. And yeah, maybe that is the smarter call, but… there’s plenty of reasons to do this, too. Potential loot, for one. And emotions? Those count, too. If Lucy doesn’t want Kiwi dead, then fine. Some fights, you walk away from. Others, you don’t.
"I’m on your side. Don’t forget that," I told her, pulling her into a hug.
It felt good. But it wasn’t about sex. Not right now.
"Loneliness is a slow poison," she whispered against my ear. "It eats away at your strength. Turns you into the worst version of yourself."
No arguments there.
"A lot of people break," she continued. "And even when they find someone, they can’t let themselves get close. Like getting out of the water, only to drown on the shore."
Yeah. It’s like pneumonia, when your lungs fill up with liquid. There’s nothing physically stopping you from breathing, but you suffocate anyway. And people who are socially dead? They keep walking, keep working, keep making money—hell, they can even be 'successful'—but inside, they’re gone. Hollow. Just another ghost in the machine. Just another Susan Abernathy. Just another me in those first few days after waking up in this world.
Back then, I thought I was alive. But maybe, just maybe, I’m only starting to really live right now.
"I’m so glad we met," I murmured before sealing our long conversation with an even longer kiss.
Her skin in the water felt unbelievably soft. It was hard to believe there was subdermal armor underneath. Not solid plating, of course—woven nanofibers, like a second skin, lightweight and barely noticeable.
As we kissed, three little words kept bubbling up in my head. Just say them, I thought. But something in me held back. Like saying them out loud would be some kind of fatal weakness. A confession of vulnerability I wasn’t ready to make. So instead, I let my actions speak for me. And that was enough. More than enough.
"Let’s get out of the water," Lucy suggested, breaking the kiss.
"Alright. Time to reenact the ancient journey of the first fish that crawled onto land."
We left the warmth of the bath, carrying with us the scent of herbs and oils. It smelled almost surreal against the usual stench of Night City.
Evelyn tossed us some soft towels. They soaked up the water fast, clinging to bare skin.
"You want coffee or an energy drink?" Lucy asked out of nowhere. "Protein bar, maybe?"
"What for?"
"You’re gonna need the stamina. Unless you plan on staying on the bottom tonight?"
"You know I like to mix things up. And I’ve trained for more than just shootouts."
I finished toweling off and tossed the cloth into a pile.
"We’ll see," Lucy smirked, stretching her arms in a way that made her intentions very clear. "Tonight, it’s double the workload."
"Either you want me to fuck you with ankle weights on, or…" I glanced at Evelyn, her synthetic eyes glinting softly in the dim light. "You sure about this?"
"Who are you trying to be right now, V?" Lucy grinned, stepping closer to the doll. "A loyal husband? A choirboy? Besides…" She tugged the silk knot at Evelyn’s waist, letting the robe slide open. "She’s not really here. Just a recording. A brain dance in real life. But if you really don’t want to—"
"I’m not saying no," I admitted. "I just wanna make sure you’re cool with it."
Maybe it was the hormone cocktail still buzzing in my veins, but a little hesitation lingered. It was weaker, sure, but still there. Guess some habits run deep. With Angie, it had been easier. I knew it wasn’t serious. Just business. But Lucy? That was different.
"For me?" Lucy mused, gently guiding Evelyn out of her robe. "Eve, did I have a good time last night?"
"It seems you had a great time," the doll answered smoothly.
"Well, there you go," Lucy said, turning back to me.
"You’re not jealous, are you? Stop standing around," she beckoned me forward with a playful smirk. "Come join us."
I exhaled through my nose, shaking my head. Then, with a half-smirk of my own, I stepped forward.
"Alright then…"
And just before I closed the distance, I muttered a phrase in English. A phrase that carried its own weight.
"I never asked for this."
Lucy chuckled. "Never asked, but got it anyway," she murmured, pulling me in. "Let’s start with a kiss."
Everything really did start as just a kiss.
Evelyn didn’t do much at first—just stood there, still and quiet. Until suddenly, I felt… let’s just say, different oral attention, but from a much lower position. The sensation was… intriguing. It made me want to let go, sink into the moment, let new experiences take over. Lucy guided my hands—one to her waist, the other to the back of Eve’s head.
And that’s when I got a message.
Seriously? Right now? What kind of sick joke is this? You’d think there’d be some universal rule against incoming calls during moments like this. That every comms channel except flesh-to-flesh connection should be locked the fuck down.
But eventually, everyone gets that call. The one you have to answer, no matter what. The one that doesn’t come with a “decline” option.
Thankfully, it was just a text. One of the secured lines Arasaka had set up for me.
"I trust you’re not too busy tomorrow, Mr. Price. I’d like to meet again—this time, to properly integrate you into your new role. M."
