JohnnyZ
patreon
[Demons of NC] Chapter 48
🕑 Added 2024-12-03 21:04:49 +0000 UTCThree days after my talk with So Mi, everything was ready for the mission.
The city still hadn’t settled down after our big mess. Business District was crawling with beefed-up police checkpoints, and Arasaka snipers had claimed the rooftops on Union Street. All this fuss because of you, Susan. If I do end up taking out Abernathy, I’ll save Arasaka a fortune on security. Might as well ask for a bonus.
Late in the evening, Becca and I headed to the site for my long dive. I brought her along instead of Lucy—she’d ask too many questions about what was coming. Even so, Rebecca seemed surprised by how dead-set I was.
"Not to sound dumb, choom," Becca said, side-eyeing me from the passenger seat. "But I hate feeling dumb even more. So break it down for me."
"I’ll try," I nodded, turning the wheel of the rented Thorton.
"We spent a whole month gearing up to off that corpo bitch, yeah?"
"Yep."
"Burned through a pile of eddies, blew up an AV downtown, shot shit up, sent drones flying, killed a bunch of folks."
"All true."
"And we still didn’t get shit done. And now you’re telling me you’re just gonna waltz into the Net solo and ice the corpo in her penthouse while she’s chillin’?"
"Yeah. That’s the plan."
"Hm..." She furrowed her brow. "Still don’t get it. Why not just do that from the start⁉"
"I’m diving into the Net to kill Abernathy. Sounds simple, sure, but the process is... complicated. Can’t spill the details, but trust me, this choice comes with plenty of consequences."
"More complicated than blowing up a luxury AV downtown?"
"Way more," I smirked.
Militech’s superweapon would carve me a tunnel straight through cyber-hell so I could pop out in Susan’s apartment like some fucked-up Boogeyman. The thought cracked me up.
"What’s so funny, choom⁉"
"Nothing…" I barely held back laughter.
Becca pouted, crossing her arms. Meanwhile, I was thinking about the six million eddies. That’s what this little jump into Susan’s place would cost NUSA. I pictured nuclear power plants straining to pump enough energy into the computational cores buried under Washington. I thought of the hundreds of FIA intel lab techs scrambling to prep the op. Officially, it was supposed to be an attempt to snatch strategic plans from Kang Tao. At least, that’s the lie Songbird sold her bosses.
For about an hour, the full might of the NUSA’s most secret project would be in my hands. And all I’d need was the glowing-hot needle Rozalind Myers liked to jam into the Blackwall. A Spear of Destiny, capable of piercing the barrier between the human world and the realm of uncontrollable forces.
We arrived at the city’s edge.
"So, I’m just babysitting again?" Becca asked, disappointed.
"Come on, don’t look at me like that. There’ll be shooting. Plenty of it. We’ll burn Night City to the ground! Just… later."
"You always promise that, but then it’s ‘Becca, stay here,’ or ‘Becca, keep watch there,’" she grumbled.
"Relax. This time, you’re not just keeping watch. You’re playing nurse too. It’s important. Remember the IV?"
"Yeah, yeah. I’ll keep an eye on it."
The IV held a diluted mix of meds to help me sync back with my body. Beneath the house we pulled up to, a fresh Tiger Claw grunt was already lying unconscious—my contingency plan. This was going to be heavy work. I needed backup options.
Stepping out of the car, I remembered Cynosure:
"YOU PASSED. HE LET YOU THROUGH. HE SOMETIMES LETS THROUGH, BUT ALWAYS TAKES SOMETHING BACK!" the warped AIs had told me. "YOU ARE DAMAGED. YOU ARE LOST. WHEN THE BARRIERS FALL, YOU WILL BE WHOLE AGAIN."
Right after Abernathy, I’d need to spend a long time in the Net, unraveling memories and figuring out the price I paid to cross the Wall. But for now, it was killing time.
Quickly setting up the gear, I slid into the plastic tub set in the middle of a dusty room. A glance at the clock—twelve minutes to go. Showtime.
"If I’m not back in seven hours..."
"Then what?" Becca asked warily.
"Wait longer," I replied, jacking into the Net.
Cyberspace greeted me with a swirling sea of lights. There was no day or night here. Multilayered dimensions of local networks divided the information abyss, hoarding cheap secrets and million-eddy mysteries alike.
It was easy to lose yourself in the Net, but I already saw the crimson beacons of the search program lighting my path. I followed them toward where Songbird was preparing another breach of the Blackwall.
Far away in the real world, FIA eggheads were probably running final system checks, debating: "Will it fry? — It shouldn’t."
I approached the Wall, where Songbird was waiting. Her avatar burned white against the red ripples. The Wall was already shuddering.
A thin, straight thread of connection reached out to me. Against the Wall, an image of a girl appeared—not full-virt, just a flat screen with audio and visuals.
"You’ll have forty minutes, Vincent," the netrunner warned.
"Yeah, yeah, fairy godmother. After that, my tunnel through the Wall turns into a pumpkin. Got it. And call me V. 'Vincent' makes me think of my office drone days."
"Fine, V. I hope you remember the rest of our plans just as well."
"Of course."
"Our plans"—what a funny way to put it. It was more like "deals," but that word stank of coercion. Songbird liked to sugarcoat things. I remembered that from my knowledge of a future that never happened.
‘Trust me, V. We’ll just run away together and save ourselves,’ she’d said once. Then bam-bam-bam, half of Dogtown leveled, bodies everywhere, survivors duped and played like fools.
You had to keep your wits sharp around So Mi.
In exchange for the tunnel through the Wall, I’d promised to help her in the future. It sounded like a one-way ticket to a shitstorm, but I figured the future collaboration might benefit me too. Sure, it’d be full of problems, but what else was new?
"Three minutes," So Mi said. "We’re starting a bit early. Ready?"
"Always."
"And remember, at the hour of sunset..."
"The shadows won’t vanish as long as a single star shines," I finished.
That nonsense phrase was our fallback code, in case she had to contact me through someone else.
The screen vanished, and a heavy ripple passed through the Wall. I should’ve been worried for my safety, but the destructive pulses hit a white grid Songbird had crafted. The process was underway. The white lines grew brighter and denser by the second, weaving into a vortex.
At the same time, the fabric of the Blackwall began to distort. Songbird sent some kind of complex code into it, triggering a conflict in the structures of black ice. They started devouring each other. I tried to memorize everything I could catch. Unfortunately, these algorithms aren’t something you can replicate on the fly. And breaking through the Blackwall wasn’t enough—you had to walk its depths safely.
That’s where the power of Militech’s secret machines came in. White lines began forming a segmented tunnel, piercing through the Blackwall. This protection would let me travel there relatively safely.
The Blackwall is often described as a wall. In reality, that's just a visualization you encounter when interacting with it. The Blackwall isn’t a physical barrier cutting across continents—it exists everywhere, all at once. Think of it like the Veil from Dragon Age or the layers of the Twilight from Night Watch. The Old and New Nets exist parallel to each other, one layered over the other, using the same devices and cables. The Blackwall is the great filter that keeps them from mixing.
Arasaka’s netrunners had set up dynamic ice to protect Abernathy, of course, in the New Net. They didn’t have access beyond the Blackwall. But with So Mi’s help, I would enter the Old Net, slip through a protected tunnel, and emerge inside Arasaka’s dynamic ice. Like tunneling into a fortress. Though, in this case, our tunnel was through a virtual hell. All I could do was trust Militech’s protective tech.
“Go,” So Mi commanded, and I dove into the tunnel’s vortex.
I shot through it at unimaginable speed. The whole journey took less than a minute. For a brief moment, I glimpsed the roiling chaos of the Old Net beyond the thickest ice segments of the tunnel. Then, I was faced with the painfully familiar sight of Arasaka’s dynamic ice. Only now…
I was inside it.
The other end of Songbird’s tunnel barely stirred the Blackwall. Remarkable. On the other side, I’d leaped into a vortex in the raging Cyberworld, but here, I’d quietly slipped through a tiny crack. Perfect technology for stealing data or carrying out sabotage. Tonight, I intended to do both. But first, I needed to look around.
A quick scan gave me some interesting results.
First, there wasn’t a single camera in the penthouse itself that a netrunner could use as a proxy. Second, there were no dangerous devices—no turrets, no robots, no drones.
That was how Abernathy tried to defend herself against a net attack.
But surveillance cameras were in the adjacent areas where her security team was stationed. Eight guards, including David Martinez. The guy looked much older than his years. He was wearing a gray armored jumpsuit with attachment points for additional armor and gear.
David sat in the break room, a lit cigarette in his hand, though he wasn’t smoking it. It had already burned down almost a third of the way. Depressing, huh?
Welcome to the corporate heights of Night City, David. You’ve climbed above the city’s wretched streets to spend your days stuck in a luxurious penthouse guarding a woman the devil himself is impatiently waiting for. She’s stuck here, too, so she doesn’t end up six feet under. Too many people want her dead.
You both did so much to win this prize. Do you like it? Is it everything you dreamed of? You fought and won, but sometimes winning too much is its own curse.
The scan revealed something else important. Abernathy’s quarters were separated from the security rooms by reinforced hermetic doors hidden behind decorative wooden panels. I figured they were there in case of an attack from the lower floors. In that event, Sue could isolate herself in the penthouse and wait for evac by AV, leaving the guards to fend off attackers. The ice on those doors was thick enough that even a pro would need twenty or thirty minutes to crack it. Perfect.
Susan thought she’d planned for everything. No cameras in the house, dynamic ice protecting the floor. But I was about to use tech Abernathy didn’t even know existed, so it wasn’t in her plans. I’m talking about Songbird’s ability to traverse the Blackwall and one neat trick of my own.
The elevator doors opened, and a young woman stepped into the penthouse. She was petite, with tanned skin, wearing a white dress with gold patterns and slits around her slim waist. Bingo. Just as So Mi and I had hoped.
“Please place your bag here and open your personal port for full monitoring,” said a guard in a sealed helmet standing by the elevator.
“Of course, of course,” the girl replied with a bright smile.
A scan of her implants, software, and every item on her person showed nothing suspicious. The chemical sniffers for poisons and explosives stayed silent. Claudette Dalitso was entirely harmless. A petite brunette with a chirpy demeanor, no combat or athletic implants, barely any ice at all. No threat whatsoever.
At least, not at that moment.
“You may proceed,” the guard said, handing back her bag.
She took a few steps down the short hallway and froze.
“Is something wrong, ma’am?” the guard asked.
“No,” I replied, already fully in control of Claudette’s body. “I just remembered I might have forgotten something in the car. Thank you.”
I’d cracked Claudette’s minimal ice in seconds, hijacking her body while maintaining the connection to the Blackwall tunnel.
The guard nodded and stepped back to the elevator. The penthouse doors opened before me. This was shaping up to be my strangest meeting with Abernathy—and probably the last.
In someone else’s body, I stepped into the brightly lit penthouse. My sensations felt muted, but I could still catch the smell of juniper wood, spices, and dried fruit. Behind me, the doors shut with a soft hiss. Perfect.
White bioplastic sofas gleamed with aggressive cleanliness. Crystal chandeliers attempted to blend high-tech with 19th-century palace aesthetics. The paintings on the walls probably cost hundreds of thousands of eddies. One in particular stood out—a panoramic piece of nude huntresses in a dense forest. Amazons on the hunt, or something Artemis-themed.
No way Abernathy herself had picked all this stuff. Then again, who knows? Soon I’d find out, if I wanted to, while I tore her apart.
Through the bulletproof windows, I could see the city drowning in evening rain. There was no sign of the recent assassination attempt. Even the genetically modified palm trees were back in their pots on the terrace.
Susan descended from the second floor, dressed in a half-black, half-red robe. No makeup except waterproof dark lipstick. Her wet hair hung loose.
It was downright bizarre seeing her like this. For some reason, I always thought she slept, showered, and even fucked in her business suit. And that the suit wasn’t just clothing but some grotesque extension of her body, crafted by an especially deranged biotechnician. But now, Susan almost looked like a regular person. Not that it stirred a shred of sympathy in me. The moment my eyes landed on her familiar features or I heard her voice, emotions clawed at the leash. I wanted her dead so badly. No other thoughts or desires. That whole love-hate dynamic? That’s the invention of bored 35-year-old spinsters. True, profound hatred is pure and untainted. That’s what I think, and more importantly, what I feel.
“Hey, Claude,” Susan said casually, descending the stairs to the first floor. Her tone wasn’t hostile, but it carried a sharp edge of dominance. “Come in. Sit down. Relax a little.”
Those last words carried the unmistakable flavor of her trademark authority.
I stretched someone else’s lips into what I hoped was a sweet smile and slowly sauntered into the center of the large hall. Keeping quiet was key—any slip, and the whole act would crumble. But I didn’t need this charade for long. The priority was locking the penthouse doors. After that, dinner’s served, Mr. Price.
“What’s with you, Claude? Husband giving you shit again?”
“No, just... a bad dream,” I replied, playing the role of a fragile, vulnerable girl. “That explosion… It was awful. I can’t get it out of my head.”
I dropped my puppet onto a white couch near a sleek glass table cluttered with overpriced trinkets and office junk.
“Leave all that to me,” Susan assured, her tone shifting to a commanding, “And don’t worry about anything.”
She stepped closer, her hand landing possessively on my—not quite mine—face.
“I’ve always admired your carefree nature. You’re not made for complex or troubling thoughts. It’s adorable.”
I faintly registered her touch under the delicate jawline of Claudette’s doll-like face. Go ahead, Sue. Chat with your pet bird a little longer. Just give me a few more minutes to lock us away from the guards. Then the fun begins.
Her hand trailed down to Claudette’s stomach. The sensation was dulled, like being under anesthesia—neither pleasant nor uncomfortable. Just… nothing.
Piece by piece, I rewrote the security protocols, reducing databases of passwords and biometrics to garbage. In under a minute, the penthouse doors would be unbreachable. I’d also taken control of the isolation defenses, switching them to full lockdown mode. Not even Trauma Team would get a ping from Susan’s implants now.
“You have no idea how happy I am to see you,” Susan whispered into my ear.
Oh, I’m thrilled to see you. So many obstacles, so much suffering, all for this precious moment!
“Getting tired of the golden cage?” I teased, Claudette’s lips curling into a sly smirk.
“To look at that filth?” Susan scoffed, digging her nails into Claudette’s left nipple with an almost playful malice. “You’re asking for a rough night, Claude. Don’t worry. I’ll find something for your smartass to—”
Her words were cut short by a sudden spasm, her body wracked with violent convulsions as my first netrunner attack hit. Soul rip. Even her formidable ice buckled under the assault.
Susan staggered back, and I stood—or rather, my puppet’s body rose from the couch.
“Hurts, doesn’t it? Scary, huh? Didn’t like it?” I taunted in Claudette’s light, bird-like voice, sharp and furious. “Oh, it’s only going to get worse!”
To my surprise, Susan recovered quickly. Arasaka’s ripperdocs had clearly gone all out to make her resilient. Her advanced biomonitor and a cocktail of stimulants brought her back into the fight.
In one fluid motion, Susan snatched an ornate letter opener from the table—a miniature dagger—and plunged it into Claudette’s throat.
“You treacherous whore!” she growled. “Fucking airhead slut!”
Her hair was disheveled, her robe half-open. Red blotches spread across her face, neck, and half-exposed chest. Blood dripped from the corners of her eyes.
The stab might have been fatal, but I couldn’t care less about the puppet’s integrity. I hit Susan with another soul rip, simultaneously pulling the blade from the wound. She crumpled under the renewed onslaught.
“Thing is,” I croaked through Claudette’s gurgling, bloody throat, “I’m not Claudette. In fact, I’m not anyone. Call me Legion.”
Giving her my real name, Vincent Price, would’ve been idiotic and reckless. No cameras, sure, but this palace of corporate luxury likely hid at least one audio recorder.
“We’ve been waiting for you in Hell for ages, Sue. Arthur sends his regards. He asked me to beat the shit out of you—and I’m happy to oblige!”
Blood was pouring from Claudette’s body, her muscles too feeble for anything more than uncoordinated jerks. The punch I threw was weak, but it landed squarely in Susan’s solar plexus. Coupled with the effects of my network assault, it sent her sprawling onto the couch.
I loomed over her, pulling her robe closed and wagging a finger mockingly.
“No indecency tonight, Sue. No lust. Only wrath!”
With that, I drove the ornate letter opener into her clavicle, pinning the robe to her body as if to secure her modesty during her inevitable thrashing.
I could only imagine how I looked—poor, innocent Claudette, now a blood-drenched, throat-slit vessel with a deranged, alien grin. She must’ve looked downright possessed.
“See? You’re mine now. Smell the sulfur? Hear the roar of the flames?”
I unleashed my virtual claws. Susan struggled to regain herself, but her eyes were still clouded, and blood trickled from her nose like a junkie on the brink of overdose. A final soul extraction ensured she was immobilized. Her ice was leagues above old Jorge’s, but it didn’t matter.
It was time for the main event. To tear every scrap of value from Susan Abernathy, leaving behind a mangled corpse writhing in torment. She deserved it even more than Faraday. Much more.
As my claws sank into the flickering neural web of her essence, her body convulsed violently. Blood sprayed onto the pristine white couch. Time seemed to slow. I dove into the task completely, my focus absolute. There was nothing else. Nothing at all.
The first time I gutted someone remotely. It turned out to be harder and slower. Every move, things I’d normally do without thinking, felt like slogging through wet cement. Still, I managed to start pulling whole layers of classified intel from Susan’s head. And there was a lot in there. Dossiers, plans, operation schematics, blackmail material—so much blackmail. Everything neatly filed, categorized, and indexed.
But with every pull, it got harder. A couple of times, my grapples tore loose, forcing me to dump everything into the cache without filtering. I figured I’d sort out the good stuff later. Then the process didn’t just slow down—it stalled completely. No fucking way...
Everything suddenly shut down. The connection snapped. My grapples, already weakened by the strain, hit something—a self-regenerating ice barrier. Shit!
I was kicked out of devouring mode. My control over the lifeless puppet of Claudette weakened significantly. For a moment, I was in darkness, lost in some kind of limbo. When the void cleared, I saw through Claudette’s eyes as Abernathy opened the balcony door of the penthouse.
Susan was barely conscious, her brain completely scrambled by my attack. She moved like a zombie, her face soaked in blood that seeped even from her pores. Her eyes were empty, but she still managed to shuffle onto the platform—and that’s when Trauma Team caught her signal. Platinum membership perks.
Dragging Claudette’s body back into action took everything I had. I was fried—three soul-ripping attacks, followed by a remote devouring attempt on some experimental-grade ice. Yeah, I was cooked.
Abernathy kept staggering forward, barefoot, stepping onto the rain-slicked balcony. Cold downpour washed the blood and bodily fluids off her twitching body as she tried to cling to whatever scraps of life she had left.
“Not a fucking chance!” I snarled silently.
Claudette’s lips didn’t move anymore, but I could still make her legs work.
Abernathy stopped at the edge of the platform. A second passed. Five. Ten. In the distance, I saw the silhouette of Trauma Team’s AV rushing to her rescue. But just as salvation neared, I pushed Claudette’s body to its limits, rushing forward to grab Susan from behind.
No salvation for you, Susan. Time to meet hell.
One heartbeat later, we were falling. Locked together in a grotesque embrace, plummeting off the roof.
Seventy-fucking-five floors.
Now that’s a fall.
Not even Trauma Team will scrape this off the pavement.
I didn’t get to savor the moment long. Three seconds, maybe. Then—impact. Static. Black screen. The last thing Claudette’s dying optics captured was Abernathy’s shattered skull, split wide open on the wet concrete below. No coming back from that. Job’s done.
