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Chapter 265 c
🕑 Added 2025-06-03 15:04:01 +0000 UTCChapter 265 c
“Alright, I’ll stop messing with you. So, what’s the difference between this latest test version and the one you were familiar with? Is it just a change in memory engrams? Or does it have self-awareness? Or maybe... aggression?”
Hellman’s tone turned serious. “What makes this chip unique isn’t the Johnny Silverhand engram. The earlier versions could only generate limited biological interaction with a pre-recorded imprint…”
Leo had heard of that before. He’d seen it on TV, and not just once.
As for the relic, there were some people—like Elijah, the leader of the Last Liberators and the PR nightmare of Arasaka’s corporate comms, Father Clover—who openly dismissed Arasaka’s so-called “Secure Your Soul” initiative. In his eyes, it was just another lie created by Arasaka, driven by greed and lust for power.
Father Clover believed the relic was nothing more than a thoughtless, senseless algorithm, merely repeating the voices of the dead. It was never truly “uploading human consciousness into a shard.”
“Mhm, so that’s how the original version worked. What about this test model?”
“The key difference is that it can be installed and activated inside a new body.”
“Hold on—installed and activated? You mean it’s basically a cyberpunk version of body snatching?”
Hellman’s explanation might’ve sounded mysterious or even impressive to most people, but Leo had read enough webnovels not to be fooled. Installing and activating an engram? What a high-tech euphemism.
That was just possession, plain and simple.
Hellman paused for a moment, then suddenly understood. “Body snatching? Ah, yes, I read Xianxia novels in my spare time when I was younger. High-powered cultivators stealing the bodies of weaker practitioners… different novels handle the details differently, but yeah, it’s more or less the same setup.”
That’s what this is. But when I defected from Arasaka, the project was still in early testing.”
Leo sneered. “Funny how what you’re saying doesn’t line up with Arasaka’s PR campaigns. Isn’t the relic just supposed to let people hear the voices of the dead? At most, it should be a complex chatbot.”
“Is this Arasaka Saburo’s personal immortality experiment? If it works, he could just keep swapping bodies and living forever.”
Hellman didn’t bother denying it. “You’re not wrong. This test version was a custom order from Saburo himself. He personally oversaw the entire project.”
“So if it weren’t for Yorinobu, no one would’ve ever known about it?”
Hellman nodded. “During testing, the intended hosts were all non-reactive bodies—”
“You mean corpses.”
“You could say that,” Hellman replied, not really caring about the terminology, but his eyes locked intensely onto Johnny. That look was all too familiar to Leo—a desire to dissect, to uncover secrets.
Nobody liked being looked at like that.
There were always those who justified human experimentation. As far as Leo was concerned, if they liked it so much, they should just volunteer as test subjects themselves—see how long they’d keep defending it then.
“Keep staring at me like that, and I’ll stitch your fucking eyelids shut,” Johnny snarled, waving his mechanical arm threateningly.
Leo snapped his fingers in front of Hellman’s face, pulling his focus back. “Enough with the crap. Back to what I asked—you need to get Johnny Silverhand out of that bot.”
Hellman shrugged. “Get him out… and then what? I’m not fully familiar with all of Johnny Silverhand’s legendary exploits, but I’m pretty sure you don’t need me to explain them to you. He’s dead. Been dead for over fifty years. In this little bot body, at least he’s got some semblance of life. If I take him out—where’s he supposed to go?”
Johnny leapt forward suddenly and tackled Hellman to the ground. “You smug asshole—I’ve been holding back, but as a prisoner, you’ve really got no sense of humility.”
Hellman raised his hands quickly. Johnny didn’t care. He headbutted Hellman with his metal skull—hard. A loud crack echoed out before Johnny climbed off.
Hellman lay on the ground, clutching his face. “My nose! He broke my nose!”
Nobody sympathized with him.
Leo just tossed over a tissue. “Alright, enough. Wipe the blood. You should be glad he didn’t gouge out your eyes. That would’ve hurt a hundred times more.”
While Hellman mopped up the steady flow of blood, Leo continued. “I’ll say it again. Get Johnny out. As for what happens next, don’t worry. This is Night City. If there’s one thing it’s not short on, it’s bodies without neural response. With all those clinics and med-centers, I don’t believe there isn’t at least one greedy enough to help us.”
“…Alright, fine. I’ll help you.”
“See? Would’ve been easier if you said that from the start.” Leo pulled out a pneumatic injector and tossed it to him. “Shoot that first. Then I’ll help straighten your nose.”
Hellman picked it up from the sand, rolled up his sleeve, and jabbed it straight into his arm, pressing the plunger all the way down. The pain in his nose lessened noticeably.
Leo stepped in front of him. “Hands down.”
He examined Hellman’s face, reached out—
Crack.
Hellman let out another scream. Leo clapped him on the shoulder. “What are you screaming for? Can’t handle a little pain? Anyway, it’s back in place now. Time for you to get to work.”
Holding his face, Hellman slowly stood. “O-okay… but I need to take a look at the chip first. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not up to anything. You go to a hospital, right? The doctor always runs tests before treatment, yeah?”
“What we’re dealing with is way more complicated and difficult than a normal illness. I can’t fix anything without knowing what’s going on. Unless you want me to fake it.”
Leo stared at him. As much as he hated to admit it, Hellman wasn’t wrong. His request wasn’t unreasonable either. But this didn’t only concern him—it was someone else’s life.
“Johnny? What do you think?”
Johnny paced around in the sand, leaving scuffed footprints. “You really trust this suit-wearing bastard? He betrayed Arasaka—you think he wouldn’t stab us in the back?”
He wasn’t speaking through a private comm channel; the voice blared right out of his bot’s external speaker. Hellman heard every word, and his expression soured.
“Relax. He won’t try anything,” Leo said. After a pause, he added, “Of course, if you’re not up for it, that’s fine. We can think of another way.”
“No need,” Johnny replied, surprisingly. After a moment of hesitation, he agreed. “Go ahead. Plug in.”
Hellman looked at Leo. Seeing no objection, he didn’t hesitate—he pulled a black personal link cable from his wrist and plugged it into Johnny’s data port.
“…Unbelievable. This looks like…”
“Is it really that scary?”
A minute later, Hellman unplugged the line and sat back, shaking his head over and over. “It’s a damn shame. I don’t have the setup to run a full diagnostic.”
Johnny scowled. “Yeah, real shame. Maybe you should offer yourself as a test subject next time.”
After settling Johnny’s rising temper, Leo got to the point. “So, can you get Johnny Silverhand out of that tin can?”
Hellman chose his words carefully. “No… not really. Like I told you, this version of the relic can install and activate engrams in new bodies. The body we designed for it was supposed to be human. But for some reason, the chip registered the robot as a viable host and embedded itself.”
Leo frowned. His instincts told him that even with Hellman leading the tech side, getting Johnny out wouldn’t be easy.
“So, what are you saying?”
“This robot’s already been accepted by the chip as the new body. If you still don’t get it, let me put it bluntly—this robot is Johnny Silverhand. Johnny Silverhand is the robot. They’ve become one. They can’t be separated.”
“Then by your logic, there’s no way to get Johnny out?”
Hellman thought for a second and gave what he believed was an apt analogy. “Can you extract a person’s soul from their body? I don’t think so. That’s exactly where our rockstar is at right now.”
Leo narrowed his eyes. “But wait. Doesn’t Arasaka have the Soulkiller? That tech rips a person’s consciousness out of their body, doesn’t it?”
Hellman’s expression turned paper-white. “How… how do you know about Soulkiller?”
Johnny growled and waved his mechanical arm menacingly. “Did you forget about me? You guys used that damn thing on me. That’s how I ended up sealed inside the chip!”
“Johnny!”
Leo stopped Johnny just before he was about to break Hellman’s nose a second time. Then he turned to Hellman. “So? Am I wrong?”
“…No. Soulkiller can extract consciousness. But it’s not guaranteed. There’s a success rate—and it’s not high. And…”
Hellman glanced nervously at Johnny. “And using it on humans causes extreme pain. Far worse than decapitation or being torn apart. Anyone who’s experienced it wouldn’t ever… wouldn’t—”
“Shut the fuck up, you idiot!”
Johnny’s mechanical eye spun wildly. Just hearing the words brought back memories of agony—when Soulkiller tore his mind apart.
It felt like being flattened in an industrial press—except the metal was his soul, and the machine didn’t stop until there was nothing left but heat and pain.
Decades had passed, and he still felt phantom pain.
But Leo’s next words burned it away like sunlight hitting morning frost.
“You’re lying.”
Hellman’s face twisted in panic. “I—I’m not—”
“There’s no way Soulkiller only causes pain. Either Arasaka already has a different version with improved functionality, or something else. You’re hiding something.”
“Leo, what are you saying?” Johnny’s voice trembled. He had a hunch, but it was like trying to see through fog.
“Don’t you get it, Johnny?” Leo smiled coldly. “If Soulkiller really worked the way he says it does, how the hell was Saburo Arasaka planning on achieving immortality?”
The realization hit Johnny like a punch to the gut. He turned and stared at Hellman, eyes narrowing.
Right. If Arasaka didn’t already have a method that guaranteed a full, painless consciousness transfer—
How the fuck would Saburo Arasaka plan to live forever?
According to Hellman, Soulkiller was unstable and torturous.
Would Saburo—someone like him—accept that?
