JohnnyZ
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[Demons of NC] Chapter 61
🕑 Added 2025-01-02 23:12:36 +0000 UTC"Good thing we took out that bastard. Mink, you okay? We need to get moving," the Voodoo priestess said in a serious tone.
"I... I feel like I got skullfucked between the hemispheres without lube," the second runner groaned, his virtual avatar flickering and trembling. "Give me a minute. My thoughts are all tangled, and it’s so, so fucking scary. Don’t take me, Le Guinea!"
The runner slumped onto the ruins of the virtual constructs, clutching his intangible head in his hands.
"Shh, shh," the priestess knelt beside him, trying to keep her voice soothing. "It’s over. Wilk’s dead, but we’re alive. We’ll go back, and Zoe will fix you up. Remember how she patched up Maurice? He got it bad too."
"I don’t need Zoe; I need you. Don’t leave me here, okay? Don’t leave me."
"I’m not leaving, Mink. I’m right here with you. It’ll all be—"
"Bad," a metallic voice cut her off as my tendrils struck the weakened priestess with a lethal blow.
Her scream had a metallic edge to it.
"V!" hissed the "injured Voodoo Boy," his appearance morphing as he spoke. "Why’d you ruin it? I could’ve had some fun with her."
"You can have fun with your dick once you get a body. Time to go. I’ve stirred up the hornet’s nest. Another team—or even more—could show up any second."
"Then let’s kill them too," Jory suggested, shedding his illusory form entirely.
"Do you want a body or a career as a vengeful ghost? There’s plenty to do in the real world. You can rip wings off flies, microwave rats, prank people by ringing doorbells and running off. Come on, you’ll love it."
"Fine, fine. You’re such a buzzkill, it’s terminal. But for the chance to get back to the real world, I’ll deal. What’s the plan? Lead the way."
We left the virtual ruins of Pacifica, heading for the outskirts of Night City. There, I started explaining the finer points of my method to Jory.
"You’ll need to restructure yourself so a human nervous system can act as a host for your essence. Some memories will need to be encoded. I’ll show you how and give you sample frameworks. You’ll only access those memories in the Net. But… you might have too much data. Some of it will have to stay here."
Jago’s virtual avatar showed a pout, like a kid whose favorite toy was about to be taken away.
“You’re just jealous,” he whined.
“A human brain is designed for one memory set, and you’ve cobbled together bits from countless victims, even a few full personalities. It won’t fit, get it?”
“Fine. I’ll figure something out. Just show me the way to the body and wait for me on the other side.”
Gladly. I watched as Jory began a complex restructuring of his data, seemingly trying to convert part of his memory into an archive. Could he actually pull off my trick and take over a body? Time would tell.
I went back to reality first, slipping seamlessly into my usual body. My hand twitched slightly toward my pistol. Across from me, a netrunner’s lifeless body slumped in a chair, a tacky poster of a borg girl looming over it. The chrome-heavy figure had green highlights and a transparent chest where tiny goldfish swam like in a fish tank. Hideous, if you asked me.
I scanned the Net. Jago was close, sizing up his new vessel. Would he manage it? If he succeeded, he’d become vulnerable and mortal. Fighting him in the Net was risky, but one bullet here would settle our complicated relationship for good. Should I finish him now?
I hesitated.
Then the netrunner’s body twitched. Its eyelids fluttered, eyes opened, and its hands began clumsily groping around. Not just spasms—these were almost intentional movements.
“Don’t try to bring too much data with you,” I sent him a final warning. “You’ll fry your brain.”
Strange, giving a heads-up to someone you’re considering killing. But if Jory died the wrong way, I might lose valuable intel.
The netrunner’s body locked eyes with me. Veins bulged across its face. The implantation wasn’t going smoothly. Did Jory screw up?
“Amazing…” it rasped. “I don’t feel everything yet, but I see you.”
A trickle of blood ran from his cybernetic eye. The vessel was at its limit.
“What the hell are you doing, you idiot? I told you not to haul so much from the Net.”
“No, no, no, buddy…” The body wheezed a chuckle, blood streaming from its nose, eyes, and ears. “I’m doing everything right. I didn’t need this shell from you, just the method to get inside. I’ll find a body on my own. Sorry, hehe! Can’t help but think that the second I settle into this skull, you’ll grab that pistol and… bam!”
“Yeah, trust is a rare resource these days,” I replied dryly.
“Exactly! I sent you the passwords and the list. Those messages aren’t dangerous anymore. I don’t want to draw any extra attention to you—you’d rat me out too if you got caught. Guess it’s time for us to part ways for a bit. Sad, but it’s for the best…”
The netrunner’s body arched unnaturally. Fragile bones snapped with wet cracks—no reaper work had reinforced them. Jory didn’t fully bind to the body; he just used it as a proxy before diving back into the Net. Chasing him would’ve been tricky. He was slower now, but this move gave him a head start.
“Well, that was fun,” I muttered with a bitter smirk.
A few hours later, Lucy messaged me.
“Your friend has a weird sense of humor.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“That encrypted message. He sent the password. I opened the archive.”
“Yeah? And?”
“Forwarding it now. Tell me these are fake.”
I opened Lucy’s message and found a collection of absurd images, like something a deranged AI might dream up. They were styled as a goofy vacation slideshow. The first photo showed me and Jory grinning like idiots in Hawaiian shirts, standing next to an old-school plane with suitcases. The second had us lounging on a beach with makeshift chairs and palm-leaf umbrellas, the wreckage of the plane and crew corpses floating in the ocean behind us.
The slideshow got progressively wilder: us hunting possums in the jungle with spears tipped with broken credchips, then butchering the animals in bloody detail. Next, we were fighting pygmy tribesmen. By the end, the images were outright grotesque. In one, I stood grinning beside a severed pig head on a spike, giving a thumbs-up, while Jory sacrificed a bearded pygmy to it. A clear nod to Lord of the Flies.
“His sense of humor is pure insanity, but the guy can make memes,” I replied.
Good. That meant his assurances about the safe passwords weren’t bullshit. I could only imagine what kind of grotesque surprises he’d left for the corpos or NetWatch when they opened their copies.
Taking out that creep wasn’t in the cards today, but at least one problem was off the table—for now. If Jory decided to reemerge in Night City, though, I had a feeling we’d cross paths again. And I wasn’t sure I’d be thrilled about it.
But there was another meeting I was looking forward to, and it happened the next morning.
“Long time no see, V,” Viktor Vektor greeted me warmly. “Been dodging bullets better lately?”
“Yeah. And I’m about to get even better. Check this out.”
I handed him a chip. He slotted it into his computer, scanned it for a few seconds, then plugged it into his own port.
“Take your time,” I said. “I know it’s a lot of unusual data.”
“Where’d you get this? Don’t tell me you bought it.”
“Nope. I know it’s not for sale. Internal-use only. You can trust it.”
“Alright, let’s say I believe you and the data. There’s still a risk. You realize that reliable tests need a sample size of thousands, not just a couple dozen?”
“Are you gonna install it or not?”
Viktor scowled for a moment before sighing.
“I’d say no, but then you’d just go to some back-alley doc with shaky hands and no license.”
“Exactly,” I grinned. “Better at home with dad than in some shady dive. Pour it, pops.”
"Everything’s just started to settle down for you, and now you want to fuck it all up," Viktor said disapprovingly, but gestured toward the chair. "Sit down. Let’s go ahead and break every rule in the book."
"Dreams do come true," I shot back, sliding into the chair.
Among the intel I snagged from the Voodoo Boys’ fortress was a blueprint for running a Deck and a Sandevistan simultaneously. A setup used, for instance, by Ayo Zarin—the right hand of Slider and the Voodoo Boys’ combat leader in Dogtown. Maybe the netrunning warlocks stole the tech from the Watch, or maybe they’d been running experiments of their own.
Downsides? First, it’s two heavy-duty implants putting your brain and nerves under strain. Vik even suggested temporarily disabling my Kerenzikov as a precaution, and I agreed. Second, it’s spelled out in big, bold letters in their files: no overclocking. At all. Your brain will fry. Not that I was ever into netrunner overclocking, so no big deal there. Third, like Vik said, there’s no comprehensive medical data on this setup yet. Still experimental as hell.
Upsides? Sandevistan and a Deck. At the same damn time.
Unfortunately—or maybe fortunately—they hadn’t tried running Berserk in the mix. But Sandevistan synced beautifully with my abilities. I wasn’t about to become some mega-tank. Sure, I’ve got armor, but it wouldn’t hold up under a full-on bulletstorm. What it would let me do, though, was fire off hacks, shoot, or slice with a katana while time crawled.
The procedure took three and a half hours. I woke up feeling… odd. Like there was a spring coiled tight in my head, ready to snap and launch me into orbit.
"Headache? Dizziness?" Vik asked.
"Don’t think so," I replied.
"Alright, cowboy. One jump a day, tops. Sandevistan isn’t a metal arm or titanium bone. If you screw up with it, the backlash will rip your CNS apart. And as you know, spare brains aren’t on the market yet."
"I get it, and I appreciate your concern," I said as I got up.
Something inside me whispered, Let’s test it. Let’s go. Rip it! I felt light, powerful, like the world itself couldn’t stop me. It was exhilarating, but also a bit unnerving. At the same time, there was this nagging sense of loss—because Kerenzikov was offline. My body didn’t quite understand why it’d been crippled like this.
"Chrome can be a real bastard, V," Vik said seriously as he walked me to the door. "People used to get stronger slowly—training, lifestyle, experience. It was a gradual process. Stimulants gave a quick but unpredictable boost, but they were fleeting. Still, people craved that edge. Heavy chrome, though, it’s like the perfect drug. Instant and permanent strength, as long as you keep it installed. Sounds great, right? But even good changes are stressors for the psyche. You’ve heard of old-timers dropping dead from heart attacks after winning the jackpot? You follow me?"
"Yeah, I follow."
"I really hope you mean that," Vik sighed. "Pay attention to yourself, your feelings. If things go sideways—"
"I’ll come straight to you."
"Good. A lot of people have tried to kill you and failed. Don’t hand them a win by offing yourself."
Now I had a Dynalar Sandevistan, version 3, running in my head: 7 seconds, 50% slowdown, 60-second cooldown. Pretty much the same model, slightly upgraded, that Becca used. And that’s where I was heading. I took the walk on foot, savoring the way each step resonated through my body. It wasn’t unpleasant—more like I could feel raw energy humming through me. Every bit of chrome I had worked flawlessly. Microrotors kept my blood pumping, spiking it now and then with a cocktail of hormones.
The world I came from had its perks. Less street violence, even in the roughest places, and nature wasn’t on its last legs. But here? Some things were absolutely mind-blowing—and terrifying. Back there, no matter how rich or powerful you were, you couldn’t transcend human biology. Rich or poor, you’d still bleed when hit. Still die when shot.
Here, it’s different. With enough eddies and the right gentics, you can leap far beyond human limits. Become a chrome demi-god who shrugs off fists like gnats and makes small-caliber rounds bounce off. I’ve tasted that intoxicating power already. Vik’s right—chrome is the perfect drug.
When I got to Becca’s, I didn’t bother with small talk.
"I got an upgrade," I announced.
She gave me a once-over. "That jacket’s old, pants too… new tat?"
"Better." I tapped my head with a grin. "There’s more in there now. Something fast."
"Hold up—you’re serious? Thought no one did that anymore, choom!" Becca jumped to her feet, circling me like a curious cat. "Have you tried it yet? What’s it like? Bet it hits like a fucking freight train!"
"Not yet."
"Then do it! Come on, let’s see it!"
Huh. Guess I should. Better to test it now while I’ve got Becca around. If something went wrong, she’d drag me back to Vik no problem.
"Got any beer cans?" I asked.
"Yeah."
"Set ’em up."
While she prepped, I got my gear ready—an M-10AF Lexington with a 21-round extended mag in my right hand, and three throwing knives in my cyberarm.
"Ready?" she called a few minutes later, having lined up ten cans on a shelf in front of a solid wall.
This spot already bore plenty of bullet marks. Nobody’d care. I took a deep breath, feeling that spring inside me wind even tighter. Adrenaline coursed through my veins in anticipation. Here we go…
"Ready!" I called and unleashed the Sandevistan.
It was like diving into freezing water that instantly heated to a pleasant sauna warmth. The sensation lasted a fraction of a second, and then the world slowed to a crawl, fragile and malleable. Every movement felt charged, precise, unstoppable. Flesh or chrome—didn’t matter. Everything obeyed.
Holy shit. Absolutely fucking incredible.
I started firing and throwing in tandem—two shots, a knife, two shots, another knife. Time stretched like taffy, slow and pliable.
By the end, I’d fired fourteen rounds and thrown all three blades. Hit every can. Two bullets missed entirely, but the rest found their mark. Without the knives, I might’ve squeezed off seventeen shots, but no more. The Sandevistan’s limit and the gun’s mechanics wouldn’t allow it.
As soon as I came out of slow-mo, a mild headache hit me, but it was drowned out by a wave of euphoria. My heart was still hammering like crazy, pumping blood faster and faster. Heat surged to my face.
"Tell me, isn’t it fucking amazing?"
"Yeah…" I muttered, swaying a little. "Feels like the best guitarist just shredded a solo on my nerves."
"Try flipping it on during sex, or, y’know, when you’re jerking off. It’s a fucking trip! Just wait for the exact moment—trust me."
No way Vic would approve of using heavy chrome like that, but damn, the idea was tempting.
"Go again?" Becca asked, her eyes gleaming with a mix of playful excitement and pure adrenaline. "We could race or try some other crazy shit. C’mon! It’s your first time—you gotta let loose!"
She was looking at me like she was daring me to jump off a cliff into a sea of pure thrill.
I held back. Barely.
"No. That’s enough for now. I need to get used to it first."
"Aw, come on, V," she teased, giving me a light punch on the shoulder. "One more time won’t kill ya."
Her words were ridiculously enticing. But then I felt a cold sweat break out on the back of my neck. My hands had started trembling just a little, and the headache was getting worse. Maybe I should jab myself with my three-drug cocktail and... give it another go?
No. Stop.
I was saved from my own damn impulses by an incoming call from an unknown number. Though, judging by the clenched fist and three stars on the preview avatar, it wasn’t hard to guess who was calling.
"Vincent Price?" a rough male voice growled.
"Logan Garcia?" I shot back.
"Little Sammy whispered you’re lookin’ to meet me," said the ex-boxer.
"And Sammy told me you don’t deal with clients."
"There’s exceptions. Triple Xtreme Gym. Today."
"Tomorrow," I countered, despite the weight in Logan’s tone.
A few seconds of silence. Then, an irritated:
"Fine. Tomorrow. But don’t be late—I keep a strict schedule."
"Sure thing," I said with a smirk. "Sweet dreams, Mr. Garcia. See you tomorrow."
The boxer hung up.
"What the hell was that posturing just now?" Becca asked.
"Got a meeting lined up," I replied. "We’re gonna sort some business with the club."
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