Note: Italalicized text is mental conversation between Vex, Nyx, and Wilma. Non-audible
Music POV: Hatchet,
Maelstrom Splinter-Gang Occupied HeavenMed 1/22/2081, 2:07 AM
Batteries tasted so good.
Hatchet dragged the slab of metal spikes and synthetic muscle that served as his tongue over the positive terminal of his newest car battery. It was an ancient relic that had died long before his mother had seen fit to cast him out into meatspace: a piece of the past, trash to most, and most holy to him. This one smelled like mercury and sent his synapses spinning when he touched it - even the meat was happy, a rare happenstance on the best of days.
The arthritic dust that remained of his 'ganic bones ground painfully across his neck and shoulders as his body convulsed in time to the music that smothered his hearing. The room, what little he could make out of it, was a writhing mass of technicolor and neon, winking in and out of life so rapidly as to be nearly imperceptible. In that blinding rainbow of color, he saw bodies twisting and contorting in fits of rapture and profound suffering. The highest of highs and the lowest of lows played out before him, all for his entertainment. He smelled blood and pleasure burning just over the chems roiling through the air. A man's scream registered somewhere amidst the cacophony, and he found himself grinning in surprise as warm vitae sprayed from an opened artery across the canvas of metal and scar tissue that was his bare chest.
The excitement stole his attentions from his battery, and he caught the vague silhouette of a naked woman beaming at him through the visual assault, a disemboweled man hanging meekly from the series of hooks that served as her arm. Hysteria hit him just as the man's intestines rolled out across the battery: he stared up at the woman through a dozen rainbow eyes and barked his joy at her, retching painful laughs that were utterly drowned in the sea of noise.
"HATCHET!" The sputter of binary pierced through the noise and into bits of meat that still remained in his brain. His head bobbing stopped, and for a moment, he stopped licking his battery.
"YOU THINK YOU JUST GIVE ME INSTESTINES AND I WANT TO FUCK YOU?" His jaw locked open wide as he roared through the mind link, the dozens of cables that hung from his head waving like metal dreadlocks as he sized the woman (what was her name again?) up.
"You're fucking gonked dude I-"
"I AM NOT SOME TWO DOLLAR WHORE." He was on his feet now. The battery, so holy, so revered, tumbled down into the pile of organs. "I have a wife." He said, verbally, mentally, and calmly as he switched his optics to thermal vision.
Claw woman. Yeah, always her.
"And if you think I'm gonna throw away EVERYTHING WE'VE BUILT-" he was screaming at her now, spittle flying with every syllable. "YOU'VE GOT ANOTHER THING COMING, YOU FLOOSY! HARLOT! WENCH!" He pointed one of his twelve fingers, all golden little digits, into her right eye.
She was screaming too now, for some reason, and she'd dropped the organ donor too. He felt something sharp jam into his ribcage, a momentary flood of adrenaline, and then a tidal wave of pleasure as his overclocked pain inhibitors made it hurt really good.
"I AM YOUR WIFE YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!" The bitch thought she could lie. "Eddy talk time Hatchet!" She glanced down through the kaleidescope of color that was the room to the syringe she'd imbedded into his chest.
Immunoblockers hit harder than intestines on a car battery. He tried to twitch his nose, made a snarling noise as he remembered it wasn't there, and turned his gaze on the woman. She had a look now - her head was a mismatch of ports and steel with a poor synthetic plaster job painted over where the face should be. The face was pretty, but it never made any expressions, and it tasted like rubber. He hated rubber. The only thing real on Missy were her tits, and only because he'd threatened to murder her if she got them ripped off.
"Oh, Missy baby," He ran his twenty-four digits down the smooth plastic of her cheeks and stared into those big empty brown eyes he cherished so dearly. "I'm picking up what you're putting down. You've got the jewels, let me shine 'em." He leaned in for a kiss, tripped over the twitching body of Organ Donor, and crashed down into the sea of quivering bodies, both living and otherwise. She reached out a claw and he clung to it as she lifted him up from the orgiastic mass. He was happy to hang there, his broken mind clawing for reason amidst the stimulae overload.
There was a hiss of noise and sobering silence as the door clunked behind them. They were cast in the thin blue light of terminal monitors as she set him down gently on the hospital bed. His ears were ringing, his eyes failing as they tried to adjust to normalcy after hours, perhaps even days, of constant abuse.
Missy was so pretty, even covered in all the blood, sweat, and filth that had ruined her since coming to HeavenMed. She had been with him every step of the way: from the moment he'd announced his coup, to the second he'd come to terms with his imminent death. They'd lost the war, and it was only a matter of time before the rest of the gang came to clean house. He'd decided to wait them out here, kill as many of them as he could, and party until his heart gave out if they didn't come. A solution would present itself. Always did.
"Some meatfuck from that knockoff Afterlife joint came calling," she leaned in close, all whispers and smiles. "Wants to buy that shard you klepped."
"How much?" The question was automatic.
"A lot. Not enough for everybody, but-," the hook digits of her claw felt oh so soft against the metal casing that served as his jaw. "We could go, just you and me. All this is kinda fucking crazy Hatch. You know I'll stay with you 'till hell freezes over but why get killed if we don't have to?" The plastic crinkles of her brow shifted oh-so-slightly as she pretended to be a person. "And you're kinda..."
"Kinda what?"
"You ignored me for three days. I had to cut that guy open to get your attention; I mean, it was fun, but I shouldn't have to do all that." She glanced away.
"You think I can't handle it?" Rage came to him easily these days. Natural as breathing. "What? I'm losing my shit? Think I gotta get a grip?" He clamped his iron fingers around her wrist to emphasize the point. "I know exactly what the fuck is going on here. You think it's over. You've lost faith in me. Think I'm some BITCH!"
He'd been little when he was a kid. Always looking up at the girls, always underestimated. Now, standing upon the six metal tentacles that had replaced the mediocre stumps his parents had given him, no one ever looked down on Hatchet.
"You're putting words in my mouth." Missy snarled as she jerked her arm back. She freed herself from Hatchet's grasp and received long bloody claw marks running down her hand and forearm in return. "We got shit to live for Hatch!"
"SURE DO! KLEP THE SHIT I KLEP, TRY TO SELL MY SHIT BEHIND MY BACK! LIVIN' FOR YOURSELF PARASITE! Y'KNOW, I EXPECTED THIS SHIT FROM BOOKER BUT NEVER FROM YOU!"
She started to scream back at him, but his fingers were already around her throat. She struggled, for a while, dragging her hooks down his back, serrating through the metal and cutting bloody rivers into the flesh beneath. The pain inhibitors came alive as the blood flowed free, and he squeezed down harder.
He stopped when she went limp. She fell into a heap at his feet, and he wordlessly sent a demand for the ripperdoc's presence. Missy's brain just needed fixing, and all would be well again.
The request from @Remy LeBlanc's contact for parlay was simply ignored. Hatchet bid the Ripperdoc to do his holy work, threatened the man with a disembowling when he protested the ethics of the operation, and returned to his party.
The traitors would come for him soon. He'd be ready.
Music POV: Vex Kiranova/Nyx
Watson Docks, Near HeavenMed
1/24/2081, 6:26 AM
Vex had time traveled again.
He'd been at LeBlanc's bar, opting to taste the fruit of the Fixer's work before attaching himself contractually to it. The drinks had begun to flow, and the Mox girls gave him something of a berth. He'd made friends, had some laughs, and indulged himself perhaps a tad too much. His brow furrowed as he tried to recall the name of the Valentino girl he'd ended up playing pool with. He recalled vaguely that the conversation was interesting, and her figure even more so.
Was Wilma there at that point? Who knew?
Nyx had told him he was being obnoxious, and he'd told Nyx she was being a stuck-up bitch. She was still giving him the silent treatment now.
The girl had been lovely, her husband less so. He was pretty sure the guy and his buddies had beaten the shit out of him after leaving the bar, given the numerous new bruises he'd woken up with. He recalled coming back to sentience in his hammock in the early hours of the night. His whole body hurt, his head was pounding, and when he looked at his chrono, two days had come and gone. His last memory was the Valentino girl leaning in real close on the road outside the bar, several men shouting, and then nothing.
He'd not been sure whether Wilma was sleeping or out and about, and he'd not bothered to look as he crept out into the night. He'd wandered from shop to shop until the sun came up, nursing his growing migraine with a myriad of painkillers and coffee, and made a point to avoid any contact with Wilma until his mind was functioning again. He needed to remember if he'd done anything to piss her off, and more importantly, needed to get a hold on that feeling of shame that always accompanied the pain when he overdid it.
The sun was just beginning to peak over the sludge-choked bay when Vex sent her a message.
"Let's get breakfast. Sending you cords."
They'd been living together for about two weeks now, and he still had no idea how to approach her. Their exchanges ranged from hatred to snark, and he'd firmly separated himself from the rest of her clan. Most of the time, they were silent fixtures in one another's lives, each tiptoeing around one another as they tried to live as if nothing had changed. They could only fight the truth for so long though, and he wanted to go home.
He rolled a cigarette between his teeth as he mused over the sludge-churn of breaking waves. The greenish-blue muck was almost beautiful when the sun painted it gold. His thoughts went to the basement the duo occupied, was that home now? With Wilma?
Eww.
"I do not miss her." He grumbled to himself. "I do not miss her," he repeated, "-she is nothing more than a chain around my neck. Fucking burden's all she is." He snarled out that last bit as he lit the tip of the cig and took a long drag. It coiled in his lungs, warm and a little painful, the good kind. "I'm hungover and I feel like shit and I just want to feel good for a little bit." He continued to mutter to himself as he leaned over the railing of the dock.
"Sounds like you miss her." Nyx's voice was an intermingling of bitterness and amusement. "Did you always talk to yourself this much, or is this a new habit courtesy of yours truly?"
"Probably a bit of both." He took another drag and exhaled through his nostrils.
"I wouldn't develop any sentiments or get used to our current predicament. I've been talking to some friends on the Net - I think we can deal with this suicide code Gunner infected us with. Just a matter of time." Nyx's avatar, a vague silhouette of a feminine form in shimmering blue, coalesced alongside him. She seated herself on the railing and looked down at him through unseen eyes from a featureless cerulean face.
"That's good news," he let the cig hand between his fingers as he looked up at her. "How long you think that'll take?"
Nyx's not-body shrugged. "Probably a couple months. The same amount of time it'll take us to get enough eddies to retire to Tahiti, I think."
"Why Tahiti?"
"Just heard it was real nice."
Vex huffed some air through his nose and looked away. "I'm sorry I called you a bitch."
"Stuck-up bitch."
"What?" He glanced back.
"You called me a stuck-up bitch." She asserted.
"I'm sorry I called you a bitch." He repeated. "You're still stuck up." She had no lips to smile with, but he heard her laugh echo his.
"How bad was I?" He winced in anticipation, his gaze drifting off toward the blue-gold horizon.
"When I checked out? Pretty bad. You got really drunk and almost OD'd on the glimmer. You remember the Valentino?" Nyx sounded like she was holding back a laugh.
"Barely." He was beginning to regret asking.
"You told her you wanted to make caramel babies. That's when I checked out. Had a monitor on your vitals while I caught up on my shows."
"Did it work?"
Nyx hesitated, and with evidently great pain, groaned, "Idiot confidence has a charm of its own, apparently. Don't do that again."
Vex blinked through his HUD to check for any response from Wilma as he shrugged. "I make no promises."
"What if she doesn't come?" Nyx asked.
"She will. She needs the eddies as much as we do." He reached into his jacket and unwrapped the foil from the still-warm burrito he'd brought from Heywood. "And I've got Mexican food. She won't be able to resist."
"Did ya tell her that?"
Vex blinked, then scrolled another message @Wilma F. Darcy's way. "I have burritos for you and if you don't come, I will eat both of them, and then how will you feel? Like a fool."
"Smooth."
----------------
OOC: Vex and Wilma are going to try and steal a datashard from Hatchet. Vex currently has a very large bounty on his head courtesy of Militech, and if your character has any ties to them, they will have reason to search for him. This bounty is kept within the company and is not common knowledge to anyone outside the organization (or in the know from previous threads.) Join as you like for whatever reason suits your fancy - HeavenMed is known to be Maelstrom territory by most. 48 hour posting speed recommended, no posting order.
Old Man Deckard. When she browsed through the dusty shelves of her childhood, she hardly came by pleasant memories. But for the few that remained she had Old Man Deckard to thank. He showed her the world of wires and circuits, and saw her through her first ever robot. W.F.D. or Warbot From Downtown. Back then her biggest worry was losing robot fights at the Apex Automata. If only Deckard could see her now. Would he be… proud?
Wilma shoved the thought away. It didn't matter now. She looked at her four proud soldiers, lined up and armed with their respective gadgetry. Armstrong was heavier than usual and Winston's tracking was slightly off, but these quirks aside, the S.W.A.T. drones were good to go. She swung her bat slowly and tested the shock clasp, as tiny lightnings sparked around the barrel and emitted a soft bzzt. She sheathed it like a sword hanging from her belt and picked up her shotgun. She dipped a handful in the box of ammo and dropped the shells in her pocket.
A notification in her agent chirped.
--- 1 New Message from: Vex
Vex:Let's get breakfast. Sending you cords. [Sent today; 6:31] ---
She didn't respond. She dreaded spending time with him, especially after the bar fiasco he pulled. As if it wasn't enough that they shared a room. Her room. It had been two weeks and she still refused to come to terms with the new arrangement that Gunner forced on them. And the crew was still giving her a hard time for it. Mainly the twins. Remembering the string of events made her blood boil. She had been irritable for a while now. Happy thoughts, happy thoughts…
Her eyes lingered on B.R.I.C.K. After this gig, she'd finally have the necessary eddies to replace his arm with a new gorilla fist. She could see it all coming together. Then the new batteries, then she'd finally work in the fabled gyro-stabiliser, and from there on, it would be fine-tuning. Unless something went wrong in the process, which it usually did. Thus, the cycle would continue. But Wilma really ached to show B.R.I.C.K. the real world. He's too smart to be locked inside. Smarter than me.
"WHY ARE YOU STARING AT ME?"
"Why does anyone do anything?" She snarked.
His lines of code assumed humans always had a purpose.
❉
Her drones clanked softly in her duffel bag in rhythm with the metro. Inside was the proper kit that came with operating them—it allowed precision and a live video relay of their views, but the bag's main purpose was to transport them without drawing unnecessary attention. They were offline, too, to avoid any pesky netrunner's scrupulous radar. The shotgun barely fit in there, stretching the plastic fabric around the zipper. It was heavy.
She slung the bag over her shoulder and hopped off the next station. She was rolling over the plan. The ventilation system—Vex had brought it up when she was half-paying attention to him. She pulled the schematics into view. A few points allowed for the drones' strategic deployment. The upper floor accommodated the administration quarters while the lower floor had separate operating rooms. Industrial shutters provided access to the upper level and the neighbouring building's fire exit would allow Wilma to climb to HeavenMed's roof. Additional surveillance by Skipper would confirm if the layout was up to date.
Half an hour after Vex's message, Wilma met him at the docks. She was slurping on a box of juice (supposedly pineapple flavoured, but at least it wasn't apple) and munching on a greasy slice of banitsa—some Slavic dish she had not tried before, that probably didn't taste like the original recipe either. That summarised Vex's offer to a No, I don't want your stupid Mexican burrito. Partially because her stomach didn't agree with Mexican food, but also because accepting anything from Vex would mean she was coming to terms with their forced alliance. No.
She slumped on the bench next to him, oozing with angst. The muddy waters of the bay stared back. One of the few constants amidst the chaos of the city. While Vex chose to escape the newly imposed conditions on his existence through the pursuit of his vices, Wilma had to play by a different set of rules. And she was upset with him for it, even though it wasn't his fault. That night when he indulged himself and let loose, she ditched him to blow shit up in the scrapyards. That was the third-best thing after drugs, preceded only by any kind of adrenaline rush. But after being two weeks sober, that barely scratched the itch.
"LeBlanc told us not to cause a scene—" she tapped the duffel bag, leading with excitement, "—so I brought fireworks." Sarcasm was her happy place. She sighed with all the might of her spite and slurped loudly through the straw. Manners were inapplicable. I'll get my fix. Somehow.
"Maybe you should've offered biscuits and tea instead." Nyx chirped in a mock English accent, breaking the steady crash of waves against sand that had smothered the harbor. Vex fought the groan that was building at the back of his throat as he finished his first cigarette. "Could just call her dad."
"That kinda defeats the purpose of this whole thing." Nyx held out a hand to catch the cig as Vex flicked it off into the polluted churn. It passed right through her ethereal fingertips. "You wanted to talk to her right?"
"No." The runner grumbled as he thumbed through the pack for the last of the cigs. "I want to get to work. More we do that; less time we're stuck." He flicked the lighter and let the smoke curl slowly from the bout of orange as he watched the sun crawl its way toward the horizon. "Not sure what I'd say anyway."
"What exactly are you wanting from her?" A translucent cigarette coalesced in Nyx's fingers, and she brought it curiously up to her lipless face. It disappeared somewhere in the illumination, half of it poking out where the mouth should be like an unsightly growth. "She doesn't like you, and I've always imagined you with a blonde."
Vex scoffed mid-drag and was forced to press his fist to his chest as he fought the urge to cough his lungs out. The sensation passed as the seconds did, "You're in my head. You tell me."
Nyx canted her faceless head to the side, an imitation cloud of smoke sputtering like a broken strobe from the not-cig in her not-mouth. "You're just lonely, and you're used to her. " She jerked her head out toward the ocean and stared with invisible eyes.
Vex's nose scrunched up in displeasure as he took three deep, rapid puffs off the cig and let the nicotine burn down whatever this was that he was feeling. "Love ya Nyx, but jealousy has never suited you." He fought the urge to scowl, instead allowing only the corner of his lip to twitch unpleasantly. "What I want is a basic level of cordiality - to not feel like I'm constantly walking on eggshells around her, and unfortunately, we can't just run away. She dies; we die. Doesn't have to be anymore complicated than that."
"You're a really bad liar Carter." His synapses imitated the sensation of touch as she placed a glowing translucent hand on his shoulder.
"We're done talking about this." He snarled bitterly. Nyx's grip on his shoulder relented, though her avatar remained.
"You know," her tone warmed, "I don't say it as much as I should, but I'm really grateful to you. For everything. You didn't have to-"
"Don't even start. I had to, and I would do it again." Vex waved a hand dismissively as the pit in his stomach widened. He stared hard out at the horizon, as if he could freeze the sun in its perfect position at the edge of the skyline by looking at it hard enough.
"I know you would," Nyx's binary bloomed red with affection. "And I love you too. Just give it a day, you'll feel better."
"You keep saying that."
"My math is always right." Nyx's avatar shimmered as she laughed. "When have I ever been wrong, honestly?"
"You want me to get out the list or just start from the top of my head?" Vex was turning to leave when he caught a figure approaching from the far end of the dock.
"Spare me. Eyes up, I think I see a mermaid." Nyx winked out of existence, and for a moment, Vex was left alone on the dock.
A foreign anxiety invaded him as Wilma slowly conquered his peripheral vision. Calling her here was easy, confronting her in the flesh was another matter entirely. Nyx had always been quick to forgive when he made a fool of himself, but he tended to find others lacking such grace, Wilma chief among them. He shouldn't have felt any shame, really. Sure, he might've made some stupid decisions, and yes, he had the right to feel bad about that, but Wilma didn't get a say. He'd not given her that right and he bore no intention of allowing it to be forced upon him.
Or at least, that was what he told himself when she planted herself on the bench. Vex didn't look at her at first, the sun was just too beautiful to ignore. He lingered there as he nursed his cig, then produced his burrito and took a bite. A curtain of guilt draped itself over him as words continued to elude him, and he swiftly ran out of stupidities to occupy himself with. He was deciding whether to apologize or insult her when she bridged the proverbial gap.
"Good, fuck that guy." It really was easier to just not talk about things. "Not sure what that poor choom did to get his throat cut, but I know LeBlanc was just trying to make a point." Despite his rancor, he could not deny that the point had most certainly been made. He took a smooth drag off the cig as he finally looked at her, his 'ganic eye still a bit red with exhaustion. She looked the same as she did before his time traveling - much less worse for wear than he.
Vex fished in his coat for the second burrito, though his gaze lingered on the banitsa. "I'm just gonna assume you don't want your burrito." The burrito went unretrieved. "Which is fine, but like I said, makes you a fool."
"Obnoxious, deflecting. Talk."
Vex folded his arms over his chest and huffed on his cigarette as his eyes looked for anything that wasn't Wilma. "Guess you can survive without me for a couple days, given my nervous system didn't fry itself while I was gone. Good job."
Wham, wham, wham! sang his skull as I smashed it against the curb.
Not for the first time Wilma saw herself wrapping fingers around Vex's throat until his eyes popped. She saw her baseball bat rearranging his facial features. Flashes of how he hits the ground with the sound of a squishy thud only a body falling from the top floor can make. Her fingers twitched arhythmically.
"Yeah, and I kinda hoped you were already dead," she said through a mouthful of food, but the contempt was still there. "Shame I won't be getting paid double-time now." She forced a laugh, but it wasn't funny.
In an ideal world, Vex being gone was good news to Wilma. But aside from the freedom of space at home and the relative peace of mind restored, it would have also meant she failed. A last chance to prove her worth thrown out the window. She was stuck with him, all because she acted out of kindness that fateful night at the clinic. And the punishing weight of taunts and further broken trust from her crew would know no bounds if she failed. Jackal's cackle echoed in her mind and she shook her head to drive him away. Persistent bugger. She'd be the lowest link of the chain. That screw-up kid who ended up on the hood of Gunner's car. Back to square one—if they would still want to keep her, that is.
She stretched her legs out, then pulled one knee up onto the bench and turned to face him more directly, swallowing the last bite of banitsa, "Seems you hardly need help frying your circuits anyway," she smiled thinly, but it didn't reach her eyes, "—you manage that just fine on your own."
"And while you were having the time of your life, I was out here detoxing like some pathetic braindance actress trying to go method for a 'Recovering Psycho' role." Wilma tapped her temple. "You got the luxury of falling apart. But we're tethered, dumbass. If you spiral, I'm the one stuck spinning with you. Living with that stupid AI in your head should've taught you this much!" She held the juicebox as a prop to wave around with all the exaggerated drama of her words. "So do me a favour and try rerouting whatever neurons you haven't fried yet and fake functional for a few hours."
She softened barely enough to say, "You wanna act like I'm the ball and chain here, like I'm the one dragging you down. But newsflash, domehead— I didn't ask to be connected to you either."
Wilma threw the juicebox at the water, not waiting for a reply.
"Let's get this over with before I say something that makes this forced buddy-cop glitchfest even more insufferable."
Before standing up, she adjusted the strap on her duffel bag and looked out toward the horizon.
For all her immaturity, Nyx had been around long enough now to know when to leave the room, metaphorically speaking. She listened to Wilma's initial response, stifled the desire to laugh, and coiled herself deep into the depths of Vex's neuroport. She envisioned herself sitting down on big leather sofa, the ocular and auditory data streaming into the runner's brain splaying out before her on a massive theater screen. She dipped the fingers she imagined into existence into a tub of popcorn that tasted like nothing, leaned back, and took in the show.
"Yeah, and I kinda hoped you were already dead," Wilma said through a mouthful of food, but the contempt was still there. "Shame I won't be getting paid double-time now." She forced a laugh, but it wasn't funny.
"Ты такі гарачы, як труп, разумееш? // You're about as warm as a corpse, y'know? LeBlanc would only cut you half anyway." He let that sit there for a moment, unsure of what else to say. This wasn't what he'd wanted but it was what he'd expected. This, or her simply not showing up at all, and then a pointlessly painful death at some random time in the future. He dragged on the cigarette hard, the orange cherry melting through half the stick by the time he was holding the breath in. The smoke poured out from his nostrils and curled off his tongue with a taste almost as bitter as Wilma's words.
He chanced a glance back at her and found himself unable to tear himself from her gaze. For the very first time, she revealed the slightest bit of her inner world to him, and for all that he disliked Wilma, he couldn't bring himself to reject it. It's what he'd been wanting in the first place, he realized.
Connection, however brief, however resentful, he'd been missing that.
He held his tongue as she let loose at him, the furrow in his brow softening, his arms falling down to his sides as he followed her gaze out into the horizon. He wasn't going to find any answers in the gold.
"I don't like it," his voice sounded small, foreign. "The falling apart, whatever you call it. I don't want it," he burned the cig to a stump, and he kept inhaling. Pain sprouted across his fingers as the heat met skin, but he paid it no mind. "I started working for Militech when I was nine. Folks got me into one of their schools. My whole life was that company. When I was sixteen, they put me on a thirty-year contract. My folks got a new home, we finally had enough eddies to treat my old man's cancer, things were good. The recruiters called it a grand opportunity - once in a lifetime sort of thing, and it did help a lot. Just didn't realize we were selling my entire life to them in exchange."
His eyes remained glued to the sky; he was sure if he looked at her now, if she saw into his eyes, she'd see the all the ugly tumors that had sprouted along his soul. "I did it a lot. Escape mentally if you can't physically. I only had the courage to really run when they said they were taking Nyx away. I wouldn't be able to live with the guilt if I let them have her." The cig was ash in the wind now, leaving only sore red spots along his fingertips to mark its passing. "We got here, and you know the rest. Only time I ever feel okay is when I'm fucked up, and then I go and make things worse when I am. I keep getting close to the end of the tunnel, then I look back for a moment: the tunnels a million miles long, my check engine light's on, my tires are flat, and my tank's almost empty. No way out other than the artificial, and it's always temporary."
He suddenly felt quite stupid, and exceedingly vulnerable. Quiet anxiety tugged at his heart, though he did his best to ignore it. For her part, Nyx kept herself from releasing a dose of mood stabilizers into his veins - healthier to let it play out, she surmised.
"Sorry," he grunted awkwardly. "Oversharing's a bad habit of mine." He finally willed himself to turn toward her, his expression placid, though his eyes were filled with a quiet determination, and perhaps a bit of desperation. "I don't hate you. I hate the situation." He drew in a slow breath and let his eyes drift shut for a moment as he slowly shook his head. "If we have to be a team, then let's be a team. I'll try not to fuck up your routine or impose myself on you, but you have to stop treating me like a burden. This constant passive dislike thing - I can't deal with that shit. It's exhausting and we're going to get each other killed if we're not in sync."
The anxiety coiled out of him with every spoken syllable, like a serpent was slowly unwrapping itself from around his heart. "What'd you mean you were detoxxing?" He cocked a brow. He'd harbored his suspicions, and he'd chosen to keep them to himself until now. "I figured you might be on something, but I wasn't sure. You okay?"
When he began explaining himself, the familiar burn of anger welled at the pit of her stomach. As if pity would win him any favours with her. But the sun coated him in gold and for the briefest moment, Wilma saw him in a different light; as someone pure, genuine, and unsullied.
"Only time I ever feel okay is when I'm fucked up, and then I go and make things worse when I am."
And I fuck things up even when I'm sober. It wounded her so deeply to admit it, even if only to herself. Those words were enough to pierce through her armour and disarm her. The vulnerability of it frightened Wilma. It felt like a bucket of tar had been thrown at her. It was spilling down her face and shoulders, hardening against her skull and trapping her in the prison of her mind.
…
The room was soaked in the sickly yellow light that came from the tank. Wilma stood too close to the edge, hand hovering with a strip of synth-meat in her fingers. Her arm trembled, not from fear of the sharks, but from the weight of the steak. Another hand steadied it.
Gunner guided her wrist like he was showing a child how to hold a pen. "You don't toss it in yet," he murmured. "Not until they behave."
One of the sharks rammed the glass. The tank throbbed with a violent ripple of sound that vibrated through the water and her sternum. Wilma flinched. The other snapped its jaws and bubbles trailed upwards. Heavy with muscle. These sharks were the kind of beasts that didn't need to be fast when they could just wait.
Gunner was unmoving. "See that?" He kept his grip firm and eyes half-lidded. "They think hunger gives them power. That wanting something bad enough means they deserve it."
Wilma didn't like the sharks, but she held still, trusting the lesson even as her instincts tugged her toward impatience. He reached forward and gently guided her wrist higher.
"The art of keeping a dog on a leash is in leaving his chain long enough to almost taste a lick of freedom." His thumb felt her pulse. Her skin was warm under his touch. Thump—thump. "But the collar is spiked. And the more feverishly the dog pulls, the deeper those spikes sink in. It learns that freedom hurts more than obedience." Then, one of the sharks started to hover and the other two followed. Their circling slowed and their movement grew deferential. Wilma watched the predators fall into line. Their restraint was unnatural, conditioned… and useful.
"Obedience is praised."
That was when he let her feed them. Wilma dropped the heavy slab of meat, her nose twitching in disgust at how eager they were. All three fought to take a bite from it, tearing it to bits, and soon there was no trace left of it.
Gunner gently released her wrist and stepped back. "Everyone else betrays us, Wilma. They always do," he said, meaning Vex without having to. He turned toward the desk, "He said so himself."
Wilma watched the savage beasts a little longer, her face frozen in the moment of calm that came after realisation.
…
"No way out other than the artificial, and it's always temporary."
His voice was an intrusion. Shut up, shut up, shut up! She wanted to scream for the umpteenth time, but something bound her still and quiet as Vex spoke. His story felt like spears, pointed at her and closing in with every sentence. Inside, a battle of need ran through her hair, pulling, clawing at her skin. The soldiers behind the spears taunted, each sharing a face that was the perfect mix of everyone who held Wilma a slave to their expectations. Jackal. Ronan. Siren. Emmet. Deckard. Her mother. Her father… All laughing. The discordant choir once more.
Wilma grabbed the closest spearhead and impaled her heart on it. Agony flared. Then she laughed, breathless and hysterical, as pain turned into sweet pleasure. An imitation of a drug.
"You okay?" He had asked.
All this time, she had stood motionless and listened. Then the bag slumped off her shoulder, the drones clattering in an anguished whimper. She pointed a trembling finger at Vex, about to say something, but the emotion was so intense, barely anything came out. She looked him in the eye, eyebrows weaving between hate and hurt. Her face had contorted in a pained expression, the one she'd make just before exploding. She was shaking with fury.
"'Okay'…?" She had prowled inches away from his face. Her voice cracked and tears threatened to well up, but she willed them back to their ducts. Her eyes ransacked his for the merest implication of a challenge. She was more upset that she didn't find any.
"I'm perfectly fucking fine!" she growled and pushed him away with both arms, as roughly as she could, then turned her back to him. Her reaction was totally in line with a person who's 'fine.'
"Sounds like you even had your afterlife secured," she grumbled after a while. "Now look at you, crawling out of the emotional sewer with a shiny olive branch." She crouched beside the duffel and opened the zipper as if her outburst had never happened. Loving arms pulled out her drones as she booted them up, one by one.
"You had a whole redemption arc in your head, didn't you? Probably figured I'd burst into tears and hug you or some flatline sappy crap." She tapped the side of a sluggish Winston to jolt him awake. "I treat you like a burden because you act like one. For starters, try not punching me in the face this time. Going full-psycho left a real strong first impression."
The drones hovered into the air, flickering to life like a small flock. She sighed, eyeing them for any faults and defects, then cast a sidelong glance his way. "But fine. Whatever. I'll play nice. You don't trip my wires, I'll stop fantasizing about feeding you to the trash compactor. Deal?"
She offered her pinky without looking at him, deadpan, but unmistakably serious.
Watson, Docks @Wilma F. Darcy, Music Metal clattered against concrete as the bag slowly crawled down Wilma's shoulder.
He found himself stepping into a foreign world as the light weaved in and out of her eyes. His muscles tensed reflexively as she stole every atom of his attention and froze him with her gaze, an accusatory finger shivering at him in the space between them. A cold sweat sprouted across his flesh, and he found himself utterly unable to tear himself from her trance, no matter how much he wished to.
Confusion and concern warred for control in those scant seconds before the tidal wave hit. Her whole body was trembling in a war of its own; the intensity of the emotion frightened him in a way mortality never could. Every fiber of his being told him to escape - he'd wanted connection, and it had found him in all its fury.
"Okay…?" she parroted the question like a broken toy, and his previous perceptions of her shattered just as her voice did. Seconds stretched to hours as she invaded his personal space. Her breath was hot on his face, claustrophobic and cloying. She smelled like engine oil, joint lubricant, and faux juice flavoring. Bright pools of cerulean, usually so focused, shimmered with unshed tears. His subconscious sent him conflicting demands - he simultaneously wanted nothing more than to comfort her, and to get as far away from her as physics would allow.
His 'ganic hand rose half a foot as his instincts told him to embrace her, then froze as conscious terror stilled it. She would find no challenge in his gaze; there was only a determined empathy, a desire to understand that which he likely never could.
Utterly frozen with indecision and at a loss as to how to proceed, he almost breathed a sigh of relief when she slammed her hands into his chest. Unprepared, Vex stumbled back a pace or so, catching a hand on the guard rail before he could succumb to an awkward fall.
She turned away from him, shutting the door on whatever semblance of a moment this was with the motion. He just stared absently at her back as he tried to still the steady thunderclap of his heartbeat. An adrenaline of a different kind had flooded his veins - there was no joy in it, only a profound feeling that he'd done something terribly wrong, like he'd glimpsed something he'd never been meant to see and had committed a great violation in doing so.
He reached for a cigarette that wasn't there. The runner clicked his tongue with annoyance and let himself stew in the moment. She'd given him what he'd been wanting, and it was too much. Too intense. Too alive.
And yet, he wanted more.
He'd turned from her too, not wishing to look at her any longer. There was a solace in the wave-churn that she shattered when she dared to speak.
"Even a shit-covered branch'll shine if you polish it." His wit was stunted by his robotic tone. "I'll refrain from any punching. Think that was more the uppers than me." Still, he inclined his head apologetically.
"I dunno what I was expecting Wilma." He admitted as the flock of drones assorted itself above them. His gaze flickered toward the outstretched pinky offered his way. He wanted to say he was sorry for asking, to tell her that he would be there for her, that she could tell him what was eating her and he'd help her if he could, but he didn't. That too felt like a violation.
"But this is a start." He finally relented, reached out, and tied his pinky to hers.
The sun had reached its apex now, the gold whitening as Night City was swallowed up by a bright spring day.
For her part, Nyx lay deflated in her not-chair, a translucent hand pressed to her brow. "Poor Wilma…"
The systems of all four S.W.A.T. drones came online in Wilma's HUD. Skipper, good ol' surveillance. Winston, a worker if she'd ever known one. Armstrong, the strongest of the four, and Terrance, whose distractions were often the determining factor whether Wilma would make it out alive or resort to flatlining.
Her boots made no noise against the heat-scorched surface of the roof as she crouched beside the fuse box labeled 'DO NOT TAMPER.'
She tampered.
A gentle tug creaked the door open with little resistance, and the panel inside was a mess of rewired lines and jury-rigged fuses. The main power supply was off, which meant their cameras were offline, along with the air-con. The Maelstromers were saving on power, likely prioritising surgical utilities. And if someone were to turn this switch back on, no doubt they'd be the first to know. Smart. A sad little ethernet port blinked a yellow pulse like it had given up hoping anyone would plug in again.
"Looks like we're all a little neglected," Wilma muttered.
She called Skipper down and the drone's small frame unfolded. A cable slinked from its topside like a tongue tasting the air and she plugged it to the partial grid, which was still running. "Alright, Skips. Be gentle. We're only asking the building to overshare." She didn't want to alert any systems. Skipper wasn't known for his speed, nor was he equipped to hack. Datamining, visual assessment, and thermal imaging was as advanced as he'd get. He chirped unpalatably, then clicked into the port and started his digital crawl.
While the drone was busy, Wilma examined the ventilation unit. The system's structural integrity didn't inspire confidence, so she opted for the utility shaft instead. The entrance was a large, rectangular metal panel mounted flush to the roof surface, stained with rust and tagged with graffiti. One small problem, the hatch looked like it hadn't been used in years, and Wilma was built like a twig.
Good thing she had Vex to rely on. Eyeroll.
"I'd do it myself, but I just got these nails done and I'd hate to crack one in the middle of a gig," she said with artificial sweetness, then leaned back and let him pry the hatch open. It was a muscle moment and she was morally opposed to those. "Just do it discreetly, yeah?"
Minutes passed before the data began to trickle in through Skipper. Access from the partial grid told Wilma that the smart sanitation unit had logged nine uses in the past twenty-four hours. The coffee dispenser had brewed fifteen cycles, and the vending machine had dispensed seventeen snacks since dawn. Another node showed five independent power draws, probably to charge low-end cyberware, but it didn't tell her what kind.
"God bless consumer surveillance."
Wilma flicked the feed to Vex. "That's nine, maybe ten inside. Coffee machine says they've recently woken up, and the toilet log agrees. AC's offline too. Place prolly smells like a morgue." She gave the side of the panel a light slap, satisfied.
This is it. I'm either gonna come out the other end a winner or I'm gonna become an involuntary organ donor. Wilma had never dreamt beyond B.R.I.C.K. A childhood on the streets of Kabuki had barred her from such luxuries. The dark, narrow shaft looked back at her. She swallowed the lump of fear that had been stuck in her throat since she woke up.
First, she safely deployed Skipper, then Winston, and once she received clearance on Skipper's end, she slid down the metal ladder herself, followed by Terrance and Armstrong. From vertical, the crawl space became horizontal. What little she had seen from pop culture had given her a much roomier impression. It was oppressive and claustrophobic, and the stealth factor didn't help.
A clump of cables led her to a junction box at a dead end. According to the fixer's schematics, they'd find themselves on the other side of the server room. Wilma propped herself on her elbows and put an ear to the false panel. It was quiet on the other side. A screwdriver protruded from her cyber forearm. After removing the screws, she gently nudged the panel open and rolled a server rack out of the way.
The pungent, unmistakable stench of viscera intruded as she emerged from the crawl space. Wilma covered her mouth and suppressed a gag as her eyes watered involuntarily. She wanted to look away. In the middle of the room lay a motionless corpse, recently robbed of its entrails. Its equipment and lack of distinguishing insignias told the duo this was once a ripperdoc.
The body lay twisted in a cruel sprawl, chest cavity yawning open like some obscene grin. "You're one bad gig away from sharing my view of the ceiling," it spoke. It didn't move and its eyes didn't blink. But something behind the ruin of its face smiled haughtily at her.
Don't listen to it. She secured the space and pumped her shotgun. A glass door at the end would lead to another room.
"You look down on me now," it jeered after her, "but I say, give it a week!"
Now, more than ever, Wilma really wanted Vex to say something.
It'd started shortly after the pinky promise - a mounting anxiety that sent excited shivers down his limbs with each step they took toward HeavenMed. He always felt like this before a job: all jitters and nowhere to put it. Nyx regulated his mood pretty well with a steady release of uppers and downers into his bloodstream. It coalesced into a feeling of bipolarity as his brain leaped from private terror to excited mania, the early beginnings of a depression, and then back again. His psyche rolled mindlessly through his cyclone of mental states, breeding a controlled psychosis that Nyx asserted time and again brought out his peak performance.
Numb the higher consciousness and let the lizard brain take the wheel. It'd always been the better driver, after all.
He wasn't wholly gone. Sentience danced drunkenly along the ridges of his brain, more an observer than a participant. He understood in a distant sense that Nyx had managed to ghost the external cams on the backend of the hospital. She'd led a rather revolting exchange with one of the gangoons over a hook-up app, managed to get his private contact, spoofed a vid-call with that gangoon just long enough to establish a link with part of the hospital's private net, and fought very hard to scrub all memory of it from her synthetic neurons.
She was fairly inexperienced with the diversity of the human form, but she was pretty certain dicks were not supposed to look like that.
The sun, once a beacon of gold, was white-hot and keen on melting his bare flesh like wax. Ugly red splotches were already sprouting across his naked scalp and beads of sweat bound his clothes to his skin. Normally he would have hated a day like this, but he was in work mode, and he was alive. Doubt and wondering were less than an afterthought, more foreign concepts beyond his comprehension now. He was a predator on the hunt, and he was fairly certain he could smell blood beneath the shit and detritus that clogged NC's oxygen supply.
"How you feeling?" Nyx whispered excitedly into the uncaged id.
"Like the best merc in America, 'cause I am." The id replied verbally, certainly.
"In the world." She cooed, all pride and flattery, feeding the ravenous delusion.
Concrete mated with decayed metal beneath his fingertips as he lifted himself up over a crumbling section of the hospital wall that the Maelstromers had sloppily repaired. His stamina had nearly doubled since the replacement of his 'ganic heart, a small gift in exchange for the permanent sin imposed on his bodily temple with the synth-heart's installation. He felt positively superhuman as he dragged himself up the building's side with speed and surprising ease, aided further by the inhuman strength of his chrome arm.
Just climbing up the first section of the wall would have exerted him a year ago: scaling the whole thing barely broke a sweat now. He swung himself up over the lip of the roof and rolled along it, his face split into an ecstatic grin as he reveled in the newfound strength of his body.
"How's Wilma?" He asked through steadying breaths.
"Ask her yourself." Nyx's chuckled as she opened the internal-link from their vox to Wilma's agent. "The ape has arrived." She buzzed into Wilma's ear.
Vex blinked away his stupor as the tidal wave of dopamine slowed to a river's crawl. He rolled up onto his hands and crawled to his feet, taking care to move slowly so as not to alert anyone on the floor beneath the rooftop. The quiet hum of Wilma's drones greeted him as his eyes drifted over the fuse box, strangely comforting now. He meandered toward her with a panther's grace and a troubadour's acclaim.
He considered saying something stupid but opted to hold his tongue. He'd learned from watching her tinker back home that he would be interrupting her at his own peril. Instead, the runner opted to fold his arms over his chest and peruse their surroundings, quietly familiarizing himself with the landscape and marking off viable routes of escape. The compound was only secure in the most amateur sense: measly barricades, out of date security cams, and rudimentary sentry turrets that could be evaded easily enough by simply not walking into the slim zones of fire their limited servos could turn toward - Hatchet and his boys had gotten sloppy, even by Maelstrom standards. They were either a markedly lazy sort or so fucked out of their minds to not care about their own safety.
Nyx hoped for the former. There were few things more dangerous in the world than chromed-up psychos with death wishes and nothing to lose. Vex leaned more toward the latter: he wanted a fight with all moral implications thrown out the window. The cocktail of drugs choking his blood were not in the mood to consider the ethics of murder right now.
He was preoccupied with the steady drumming of his fingers along his forearm when Wilma asked for his help. "Anything for your poor nails." His voice dripped with pleasant sarcasm as he moved to oblige. "Not sure how discretely anyone could do this, but I do appreciate your delusional confidence in me." Chrome and meat fingers wrenched at the corner of the hatch. It groaned momentarily in protest, urging Vex to halt, and he shifted and adjusted, his face reddening with exertion as he lifted the hatch painfully slowly from its housing. About a minute had passed by the time he negotiated the hatch's mostly silent removal, and he'd gently set it aside.
Wilma passed the proverbial ball to Vex as her data-feed tracked down his Kiroshi eye. "I always hated the hospital smell," he groaned as he imagined the stink they were about to wade into. He would've preferred the antiseptic. "Nine or ten regular chooms might not be a problem for us. Buncha chrome junkies though? We'll have to play it right." For a moment he worried for Wilma's safety, and a moment later that worry was consumed by his desire to get to work. She'd be fine; she had a shotgun, what else could a girl need?
The drones went first: Vex was simultaneously jealous and grateful. Wilma went after, and he followed. The tunnel squeezed in all around him, his shoulders and the back of his skull scraping against the rust painfully every few meters where the metal had been allowed to warp from apathy. Panic would have gripped him as they delved deeper without the chem cocktail - right now he just found the feeling of being trapped annoying.
The few minutes that passed dragged into hours in Vex's mind as they switched to a horizontal crawl. He kept his eyes low as he followed Wilma, his attentions on the external camera feeds Nyx had hijacked and opted to project into the top right corner of his vision. Traffic churned lazily as pedestrians flowed down the street-arteries of Watson, utterly mundane, just as he'd hoped.
The quiet tinking of Wilma's screwdriver brought him back to reality. Sweet, bitter gore greeted him. It was a scent he'd quickly grown accustomed to after arriving in California: something between rotting eggs, garlic, and shit. A corpse, fresh and only just starting to rot - its yawning ribcage grinned at him as Wilma pushed aside a server rack.
"Someone had a very bad day," Vex muttered as they twisted out of the crawlspace. His .50 clicked near-silently as he flicked the safety and drew back the hammer with his thumb. The shortened rifle-turned-handgun was nearly as long as his forearm, and he absentmindedly set it in the hand of his cybernetic arm, lest he break his mortal bones. His 'ganic hand drew the power sword from its sheathe within his coat, a finger resting over the activation switch.
For her part, Nyx actualized herself above Vex as she projected a map of the room all around them. The parts of it that Vex couldn't see, she supplanted with map data, registered neuroports, and predictive calculations based on sound and where it was coming from. If only she could convince Vex to install a cam into the back of his head, then they'd have true 360 vision. A girl could dream.
"Guess Maelstrom doesn't respect the hippocratic oath." He added over the mental link as he approached the body of the Ripperdoc. He leaned down, glancing over the pale-yellow flesh along the back of the corpse's head. "Neuroport's got a bunch of blood in it. Nyx?"
"That's really fucking gross. No."
"Doesn't have to be a long dive."
"Three seconds for you is twenty minutes for me."
"Do it for me?"
"Nope." Two Nyx-hours passed before she spoke again. "Did the math if I don't. I'll do it, but for Wilma, not for you."
Vex offered the most careless of shrugs as he inserted his personal link from the base of his synthwrist into the port. He felt a brief echo of disgust, Nyx's sentiments bleeding into his own, before the connection was cut as quickly as it was made.
"EEUGH!" Nyx wretched into their brains. "Fucking. Disgusting. Oh my God."
"What'd ya find?"
"There's another doc and she's still alive. This guy's link still has her biomon's status under active monitoring. Corpse-man was aware of the shard and that Hatchet hid it, didn't know where."
"Preem. Where's the doc?"
Nyx audibly groaned. "Probably in the operating rooms."
Vex gave Wilma a pleased look before turning toward the door. He crept toward it in silence, "Anyone on the other side?"
"Can't tell. Main artery hallway - head down, take a left at the turn, and the operating rooms are on your right."
Vex grunted his reply as he clicked open the door and peeked through the gap. The hall was a monument to sin. Graffiti, blood, and various other unidentifiable substances coated the floor and walls. All but one of the lights had been shattered, and the glass and bulb fragments now decorated the floor. Two corpses that looked to have been decaying for several weeks glared absently at the ceiling halfway down, their faces frozen in agony. Both were missing their limbs, and Nyx privately surmised that they'd been removed before their deaths.
In the center stood something that had once been a woman. She was a mass of bruised flesh and cables. Her legs had been replaced with treads, long fiber bundles running from the treads up to her skull. She bore a single silver stump and a golden arm that terminated in two digits resembling a crab's claw. Her face had been replaced with a black screen that ran with weeping lines of green binary. Only her torso, naked, tattooed, and torn with infected wounds, remained human.
In her golden claw, she clutched the blackened rotten stump of a forearm, most likely belonging to one of the poor wretches on the floor. She would raise the arm high as if in triumph, press it to the silver stump of her own, and scream in a language Vex could not understand when she let go and it inevitably fell to the floor. A few seconds of silence would follow as she froze in place, seemingly regained consciousness, and repeated the process ad nauseum.
Nyx recoiled in horror. Vex barely acknowledged the abomination.
"Any other routes?" He asked mentally.
"We've walked into a horror show..." Terror gripped her code.
"Other routes?" Vex repeated.
"Fuck Vex! Not that I can tell!" She grasped for a thousand solutions and filtered out a handful that seemed realistic. "That thing is a tank. All black market shitshow implants - dunno how she didn't lose her mind just getting them installed."
"Blind her?"
"I'd lose my mind if I touched hers."
"Okay," he frowned, stowed his handgun, then reached for a broken piece of glass. Not allowing himself a moment to hesitate, Vex took a confident step forward, and hurled it as hard as he could down the hall. It shattered into a cloud of shards a few paces in front of the gangoon monster - she paid it no mind as she tried to force a rotten leg into her stump-arm.
"Think it might be time for your drones to shine." Vex muttered audibly as he glanced back at Wilma. "Nyx can piggyback on one of them. Just connect with that lady's neuroport and she can shut flood her brain with some scrap-code."
Whatever the hell that thing was, it was allegedly once human. And Wilma didn't like it.
She was stuck like that for about a minute and the conversation between Vex and Nyx was a muffled blur. Oh, how nice a whiff of glitter would be about now. Wilma's foot started tapping on its own accord and she had to apply conscious effort to still it. She was positioned opposite Vex, with her drones humming softly by her side.
She didn't want to come across as a wimp or a scaredy-cat in front of Vex, tank the whole gig. It was too late to quit, there was no other way out but through. And LeBlanc conveniently forgot to mention the atrocities that this place was crawling with. For a moment, she allowed herself to imagine going back to Gunner, nose pinned to the ground, but she resented the thought of proving him right, and with him, everyone else in the crew. Failure is not an option.
One of the rotting corpses in the hallway winked at her.
"Pussies," she spat at Vex and Nyx.
Her drones weren't geniuses, yet. They couldn't link into a port on their own, not without a hand guiding the cable. It was Terrance's turn to play. Wilma placed her hands on either side of him as he hovered mid-air and planted a motherly kiss on his supposed forehead. Two fingers pulled out the cable from his underside and she prayed it was long enough for what she was about to do.
She slung the shotgun over her shoulder and placed her free hand around the handle of the baseball bat. She quietly crept in as she pulled Terrance along, leaving her fears in the room with Vex and the rest of her drones. The creature had its back turned to her, still preoccupied with trying to fit a leg in her stump-arm.
Wilma raised the bat, knuckles pale against the grip, and the drone cable coiled around her wrist like a lifeline and a leash all at once. The bat cut the air in an arc. In that moment, it felt like a thousand volts were coursing through her body, head to toe. She squeezed the clasp at the base of the bat and sparks spiraled around its barrel. A hollow clang rang out as it cracked against the steel of the creature's skull. The Maelstromer staggered forward from the impact, head jerking to the side. Wilma's breath hitched. The would-be woman began to turn. Not allowing herself to look at the horror longer than she had to, Wilma sent the nonverbal command to Terrance.
A pulse of strobing white tore through the room. Wilma snapped her eyes shut and turned her face away with gritted teeth. She heard the Maelstrom grunt—a sound like fury colliding with confusion.
Now.
She vaulted up, arms locking around the woman's neck in a desperate hold. Her legs coiled around the psycho's waist like a human clamp. The cable trailing from her wrist whipped around like a snake, guided by instinct and adrenaline. Struggling not to make a sound, Wilma stabbed the connector into the open port at the back of the Maelstromer's head.
She pressed the bat under the psycho's chin and pulled with both hands. Sparks popped in her face. And for a brief, breathless second, Wilma swore she felt the woman seize, not just physically, but digitally, as if her own ghost was reaching out to throttle the other. Her heart thumped against her chest like it was a prisoner threatening to break out. Her wild eyes met Vex's, compelling him and Nyx to act.
The runner's eyes went wide as Wilma crept past him. His lips parted to tell her to hold up, but he wasn't about to raise his voice with that thing down the hall. Certain that he would ruin whatever it was she had planned if he interfered, Vex followed slowly after her, an intermingling of determination and stress pressing his brow into a deep furrow and his lips into an ugly thin line. Nyx, always the quick one, lacked her host's hesitation.
She'd dabbled in the internal systems of Wilma's drones once or twice, all unsaid and safely obscured from Gunner's protege. They were efficient little machines but had little hope of keeping an intelligence such as herself out if she really wanted to take a peek. She issued the same commands she'd practiced on Terrance in those anonymous moments. They were accepted as readily now as they were then - she delved further, slicing off a piece of her consciousness, a sliver of herself slipping unnoticed into the drone's code. Her vision doubled as the visual data relayed from Terrance's internal cam flooded her perception.
"Oh, you're insane too." Nyx grumbled to Wilma over the link in the same tone one would have if they received a birthday gift and opened it to find a pile of human shit. For his part, Vex was frozen in stunned silence. He could only watch as Wilma cracked the abomination over the side of the head with her bat. The metal-human-thing squealed a noise his brain had trouble categorizing as Wilma snaked her arms around its neck and jammed Terrance's personal link into its neuroport.
Terrance's mindscape, or rather the code-simulation of it, was an archaic and stuffy place, and it might as well have been a resort in comparison to the psycho's mind. Nyx was greeted with strings of error messages from long-forgotten pieces of cyberware and disjointed wordless thought. They were all base impulses: break, scream, crush, stab - violence and the desire to terminate its source. Nyx felt Wilma's arms around the abomination's throat - her own throat too, for the moment - and stabbed a finger into the little bits of soft meat that remained in its synthetic brain.
A surge of datapackets filled with shut-down commands tailor made in the three seconds it had taken Nyx to climb into the psycho's mind were unleashed into its neuroport. The psycho's screams grew silently as her body spasmed from the dual-combo of code-indused seizures and Wilma's bat crushing her windpipe. System errors melted all around Nyx as the chrome components of the psycho's brain overclocked, overheated, and melted the meat-matter that remained.
Vex had finally started to move then. He met Wilma's eyes, offered her a half-nod, and devoured the distance between them. There was a snap-hiss and a sound not unlike a crackling fire as his power sword sputtered to life, a thin sheen of crimson energy gleaming along its edge. He remained silent as he cleaved his sword through the claw arm once - then again and again. The black market material was exceedingly durable, but he managed to shear through the servos all the same. The arm hung meekly at the psycho's side as she slumped over on her treads, her body shaking at random intervals as it simultaneously killed itself and fought to survive.
"I need a bath after this," Nyx was remarkably nonchalant as she withdrew into Vex's mind. "She's dead, effectively. Brain activity is at a zero but the chrome's still keen on moving: meaning her biomon's still kicking but she isn't." She sounded quite pleased with herself.
"That was great Wilma," He meant it. Vex offered her a short smile, the slightest gleam of admiration glinting in his eye as he stepped past the twitching mass of metal and flesh.
"I'm sorry about breaking into your brain Terrance." Nyx's drone sputtered out on cerulean jets and bounced around Terrance, assessing his chassis for any damage. "I will only ever do so to preserve our meatbags."
Vex was already on the move. He stepped over the small pile of limbs and tried his best to plug his nose as he took the left Nyx had indicated earlier. This hall was in a similar state of disrepair, though it was mercifully free of rotting corpses. The entire hall vibrated to the sound of music that sounded akin to a knife dragging across a dinner plate. It was loud enough to obscure just about anything else; Vex was sure it was all that had saved them from getting jumped by a pack of chrome addicts.
His gaze fell toward the right over a series of doors. "Which?"
"Doc's office is second down."
Vex went for it. The auto-sensors of the door were still functioning, and it slid open as he drew near. The smell of antiseptic and joint lubricant that flowed through the opening almost overpowered the scent of rot. Almost.
The room was remarkably put together considering the state of the rest of the hospital. A few monitors hung over an operating table and beeped along quietly as they monitored the vitals of a modern frankenstein. There was a woman strapped to the table - her chest was opened via a surgical saw, and several of her organs lay carelessly on a metal side table. She was pale as a corpse, her limbs amalgamations of steel and gunpowder that terminated in long claw-talons riddled with firing barrels from several different in-built firearms. She still had a face, unlike the last creature they'd come across, but the rest of her was a similar horror show of meat-metal symbiosis.
To her right sat a small, ancient looking woman. She was of Asian descent, her long gray-white hair matted with blood and grease that fell in a matted mess to her shoulders. Her eyes had been replaced with large binoculars that glowed a pale blue and whirred as they zoomed in at the duo. She wore medical scrubs that were more stains than fabric at this point, and aside from the eyes, looked utterly unaugmented.
"我向 Hatchet 明确表示，我不能被打扰。Missy 的情况很危急, 即使是最轻微的污染也会杀死她. // I made it very clear to Hatchet that I was not to be disturbed. Missy is in critical condition and even the slightest contamination will kill her. Her immune system barely functions." She canted her head to the side at the duo, her wrinkled face scrunched up with annoyance.
"Sucks to be her," Vex offered a careless shrug as he leveled his .50 at her. "We're not great friends with Hatchet. For your sake, I hope you're not either."
She held her hands up in surrender, though her expression remained unchanged, and her tone implied anything if not total control as she switched to English. "I am only preserving my own life. I knew working with Maelstrom would come with certain... difficulties, but this has gone well beyond my expectations. If you are with the gang, taking your vengeance, know that Wu-Xiao only wishes to serve."
"Lot smarter than the other ones," Vex mused as he lowered his sidearm. "You want out of here?"
"This is a trick question?"
"No. Just look at us - you think Maelstrom would let us into one of their parties, let alone their gang? Missing about a hundred pieces of chrome for that." He waved his sword toward himself and Wilma. "Just here on a job. Saw what they did to your buddy."
Wu-Xiao's controlled expression flickered with a moment's sadness. "Joseph was a good man. I told him many times to find a new clinic to operate out of, but they paid exceedingly well, and he had his vices..." She shook her head. "This is Missy," she pointed a gnarled finger at the unconcious woman. "Hatchet's most recent output. She angered him, I know not how, and he killed her, or he would have if we had not preserved her life. Hatchet ordered Joe to lobotomize her, make her listen, Hatchet said," she waved a hand dismissively at the arrogance of it. "Joe drew his line there, and Hatchet drew his line across Joe's stomach. I was not bold enough to be so scrupulous."
"Smart lady," Nyx's drone cooed.
"One does not get to be as old as I am in Night City by being stupid." Wu replied smugly.
Vex glanced over the broken woman on the operating table. Something between pity and disgust bubbled within him, "You do this often?"
Wu grinned. "Only when it is asked of me, and only when I am compensated handsomely. In this case, the currency of payment was my life. An easy deal to take, no?"
The runner looked to Wilma for a moment to gauge her reaction before he replied. "We're looking for a shard that Hatchet klepped from his old boss. Know anything about it?"
"Ah," Wu turned to examine one of the monitors as she spoke. "You would not happen to be in the employ of one Mister LeBlanc, would you? His associates have tried ad nauseum to purchase a particular shard from Hatchet. I was told to ignore them all." Displeasure marred her composure as she adjusted the settings on one of the monitors. "I assumed it would be a matter of time before a more... provocative offer was sent our way. I could help you with that."
"How you figure?" Vex cocked his head in unspoken challenge.
Wu clicked her tongue, "Hatchet is somewhat aware of his unraveling sanity. Shortly after entrusting me with Missy, he also entrusted me with the security code to his private safe, as he was afraid of forgetting it himself. It is there you will find the shard." Wu was returning to her work now; wholly sure she was no longer in any danger.
"Why exactly should we trust you?" Part of him already did.
"The safe is in Hatchet's room. Hatchet is also in that room. He has not left it in two days. If you want your shard, you will have to go through him, and if you go through him, then I can leave without having to look over my shoulder for the rest of my life." She offered a shrug of her own. "对于所有相关方来说，这是一笔划算的交易. // A good deal, for all parties involved."
Once Vex drew his sword, Wilma released her grip from the thing. Her back met the ground and forced the air out of her chest. She winced and rolled over to hide her pained expression. A sharp gasp filled her lungs, and she realised she was lying on the grimy, blood-coated floor, inches away from one of the rotting corpses.
"If I had legs, I'd scoot a little closer." Wilma almost felt its rancid breath on her face.
"Shut up," she muttered aloud, still catching her breath. It sounded like a retort to Nyx's quip.
Small glass shards sank into her arm as she propped an elbow under her. With her other hand still clutching the baseball bat, she pushed herself off the ground and hurried to unplug Terrance from the convulsing Maelstromer's neuroport. The other three drones swooped in and inspected him like hummingbirds fretting over a flower.
"I'm fine too, if any of you are concerned," she rolled her eyes at them.
The ceiling was the safest place for her eyes to rest, where nothing could taunt or repulse her. She followed Vex into the doctor's room and closed the door after her and the drones.
She appreciated the change in sanitation and tried not to be bothered by the muck on her clothes. Evidently, the environment had taken its toll on the place. Traces of ordinance could be seen in the arrangement of medical tools and medicine lined up in the cupboards, now all disturbed, be it due to the ripperdoc's hasty work or the ransacking of a Maelstromer.
Wilma allowed herself a moment of respite while Vex bargained for their safety rather deftly. She listened idly as her two fingers walked like a little human over the surface of a counter. A myriad of medicine bottles, each labelled with a name more incoherent than the last.
"Psst."
Huh?
She halted the tiny human mid-step.
Something really just said 'Psst'.
"Psst."
There it was, again.
"Wilma, I'm lonely," it spoke in a hushed tone.
Among the stims and 'dorph injectors littering the two fingers' way, Wilma's eyes stopped at one bottle that stood out. A sleek, gunmetal inhaler tube with a pressurised vial in the centre that bore a warning text etched in most languages, scratched off and worn away. 'Kerezidrine'. Or, as most people knew it, Black Lace.
Holyfuckingshit.
Like a ghost from a past life, half-lit by the overheads and nestled in a cracked med-case. Black Lace, albeit half-used. The real thing—not some street-cooked knockoff with the name painted on the side. She could smell it. Or maybe that was just her imagination filling in the blanks, dredging up memories better left buried.
Her legs stayed rooted to the floor, somewhere in her mind, echoes of Gunner's warning overlapped with the ever-buzzing voices. Her mouth suddenly felt dry. A bead of sweat rolled down the side of her face. She had been clean for thirteen days and some change. Not like she was counting or anything. The smart thing would be to turn around and pretend it didn't whisper her name like that Magic 8 Ball promising the world wrapped in static and euphoria. She just stood there and stared. That familiar itch sparked under her skin like her blood knew the ritual. She could feel the rush already, paired with the high, and then the ecstatic silence. No doubt, no fear, no Gunner, no Vex, no her, just go.
It felt like a ventriloquist guided her fingers to the inhaler, which fit snugly in her hand. She slipped it secretly into her pocket like a sin and bargained with her conscience that it was for insurance, or when things really went to shit. For the first time in what felt like infinity, a genuine sanguinity calmed her nerves like a tide. A smile.
The streets of Kabuki had taught Wilma a few words in Japanese, but Chinese was another beast. Nevertheless, there were some similarities, among which was the phrase for a business deal. And she understood that one clearly.
"Alright, Mulan, start with telling us what to expect," she turned to face the ripperdoc, glancing at the scalpel in her hand. "Then you're going to reroute her biomon's signal to yours and flatline her." Wilma nodded at Missy.
"And don't you dare forget—we're your only way out of this." She leaned in on the bed where Missy's open body lay, inches away from Wu's binoculars, with her eyebrows knotted in a menacing threat. "So if you so much as think to haze us, I will personally make sure you're alive and well for everything that would happen to you afterwards."
Wu regarded Wilma with a contempt normally reserved for her unruly grandchildren. She popped a perfectly manicured brow at the junkie and steeped her fingers, staring at Wilma through the gaps, "As you wish, Madam Gutter-Rat." She offered a thin smile that didn't reach her eyes. "Truth be told, I have no idea what has been going on outside of this office. Hatchet comes to me with orders, I fulfill then, and then I enjoy the solitude of my imprisonment. Occasionally they bring food - snacks and refuse, mostly. I have not defecated in three days." She cocked her head at Wima then, a hint of curiosity breaking her perfect poise. "If I wished to haze you, as you say, I would have called for Hatchet the moment you opened the door. I have been nothing if not respectful, Gutter-Rat. I ask the same of you."
Vex's nose twitched. "I'm the only one allowed to insult her Wu."
"I only return what I receive. Life's balance must be preserved, after all." Wu held her hands up in mock-surrender and offered Vex a pleasant smile. "A merciful end is the best course of action for Missy, on that we agree. She is little more than a meat puppet now," a pause, "...However, she may yet prove useful to you. I recommend postponing Missy's mercy killing for the time being. We should awaken her - it would be fairly rudimentary to slave what little remains of her ego to your desires. Send her ahead of you to meet with Hatchet. He will let down his guard for her, if only momentarily, then you, how do you say," another pause as she chewed on her lower lip and glanced up to catch the straying thought, "Clean house?"
Nyx's drone bounced on its jets as excitement infused her tinny voice. "Very creative thinking, madam. A bit macabre, but undeniably effective. I say we do it." The drone jolted on two of the jets to observe Missy, gliding quietly over the inert woman as she scanned for anything bolted to her body that they might be able to weaponize.
Vex's face had twisted into disgusted apprehension. "Look, I know sometimes people have to die in this line of work, but that's a little... much, isn't it? Same sorta shit Militech woulda' done to us if it benefitted them. Not comfortable using people as tools - even chrome huffers." He tilted his head dismissively toward Missy. "Hasn't she suffered enough?"
Wu held up a gnarled digit that terminated in pink nail polish. "Oh, she is no longer aware of much of anything, trapped within her own mind as she is. Hatchet requested that she be... durable. Lacking the proper materials to bring this to reality, I elected to handicap her nervous system. She can no longer process pain."
"But she's still in there, she's aware?" Vex's finger twitched closer toward the trigger of his .50.
"In the same way a tree or a blade of grass is aware." Wu offered another shrug.
Vex's eye darted to Wilma to gauge her reaction, but the girl was already talking. "Pass. You're not in a position to make suggestions. And I'm not taking chances."
"You heard the lady," Vex mirrored Wu with an exaggerated shrug of his shoulders and gave Wilma a brief appreciative glance. "Just go ahead and put her out of her misery. I'd rather not have this bitch on my conscience."
"I do not know if you are overly sentimental, bold, or stupid. Either way, I shall acquiesce," Wu sighed as she wheeled her chair on darting little feet over to Missy. Her bino-eyes whirred as they retracted into her head, giving her a caved-in look that sat comfortably in the uncanny valley. She clicked her tongue, keyed a few commands into one of the monitors, and pressed a digit into a skin-colored panel embedded in her right forearm.
Several of the monitors let out a high-pitched beeping noise as Missy's life support was cut. The steady rise and fall of her ruined chest slowed, stuttered, then ceased all together. Wu turned back toward the duo. "Missy has passed from this world, and I have spoofed her biomon with a false signature. Hatchet shall remain none-the-wiser." She fingered the panel again, and this time it popped open on tiny hingers. She yanked a small shard from its housing and offered it to Vex, seeing as he'd not opted to insult her just yet. "The access code is on this shard, as well as an active readout of the various biological monitors of Hatchet's gang, or the ones I had time to account for, anyway. You will know how they are doing and where they are. Quite useful."
Vex canted his head to the side as he examined the shard. Nyx's drone turned about in time with him and mirrored the gesture as she performed a scan. "It's as clean as one could hope for in a place like this. Pop it in." She intoned. Vex nodded along and slotted the shard; six signatures popped up, all in various states of physical stress, none healthy. He marked off the one that popped across his vision from the way they'd come and noted that they were all spread in duos around the facility - save for one, flickering red for critical status, in the direction of Hatchet's room.
"You've been pretty helpful Wu."
"I help you; I help myself. There is no alternative."
"Either way," another shrug from Vex, "Thanks."
Wu waved a hand as she wheeled her chair toward the back corner of the room and began gathering her things, never daring to stand. "Momentai, my proletarians. My chains await their breaking."
"Uh-huh," Vex just nodded like he knew what the fuck she meant by that and turned toward the door.
Stepping back into the unrestrained rot was quite the shock in comparison to the relatively sterile operating room. He'd thought himself prepared for it, but then the smell hit, and his lunch decided his stomach was not the place to be. He braced his 'ganic hand to the wall as he wretched, pinpricks of tears still dotting his eyes when he righted himself. He'd managed to keep the bile down, if only just barely.
"I think we should set the place on fire once we're done," he grumbled as Nyx's drone sputtered along after him.
The hall broke into two paths at the far-end: to the right, he could pick up three biomons; to the left, the other two. Hatchet's was at the far end of the three. "Our guy's in the last room on the right." Discordant noise that might have been music vibrated the walls from that direction. "Two friends near him, and two other ones on the other end of the hall. We get loud and they're all gonna come running." He turned toward Wilma as they reached the hall's apex, "How you want to play this? Try and grab Hatchet quiet and hope he doesn't sound an alarm, go after his gangoons one by one, or just go loud?"
"I'll leave Skipper to keep you company." She cast a mean look at Wu. Skipper took what imitated an offended double-take at Wilma, who shut the door behind her.
"I don't trust her," she said, averting her gaze from a retching Vex. "She gave up her only bargaining chip a little too easily."
She considered Vex's question. "Let's pay the duo farther from the noise a visit. If things get heated, we can rely on Hatchet's poor taste in music to muffle your girly screaming."
Wilma peeked past the next glass door. Inside, one Maelstromer was recharging his cyberware—two massive gorilla arms that were two sizes too big for him, but were haphazardly grafted onto his large frame anyway. The other one was lounging on a couch, wearing a BD wreath, with a hand down his pants. Ew.
"Nyx and I are going to deal with gorilla arms," she turned to the golden skull, "You disarm them, while I beat his skull in."
Then she glanced at Vex. "You're being assigned the wrist warrior." Her eyes betrayed more discomfort than challenge. "He's already halfway to heaven—try not to ruin his climax."
Wilma gave Nyx the necessary time to set up. She bid her drones to wait as she slipped through the doorway, crouched low and slinking behind a counter cluttered with cracked stim dispensers and someone's forgotten protein sludge. She steered away from the Maelstroker on the couch, barely suppressing her repulsion.
Gorilla Arms had his back to her. The beast of a man was plugged into a wall socket like some malformed appliance with oversized chrome limbs twitching. There were weld lines at the shoulder and sloppy tech-flesh stapled over flesh. Whoever had grafted those things onto him had done it with a grudge. He swayed, clearly doped out of his mind on 'dorphs. His muscles were like overinflated tires and he was much taller than Wilma or Vex.
She stood a few feet behind him now. Her fingers flexed around the handle of her bat. "Nyx?" she asked, voiceless through her agent. There was no answer. Wilma swallowed, weighing her odds against a mountain as big as this one.
Gorilla Arms jolted. A static crackle shot from his forearms to the socket. His body twitched once, then stiffened. His arms drooped uselessly at his sides, servos dead, joints locked mid-flex. I guess we never agreed on a signal.
Wima surged forward, squeezing the handle's clasp. The bat's barrel crackled to life, glowing with coiled arcs of blue lightning. She swung for the back of his knee and sent him staggering sideways with a shout. His arms dragged behind him like dead weights. He turned, face twisted in wild confusion, drool streaking down his chin. He had the trademark Maelstrom cybereyes distort his facial proportions. A tattoo across his forehead read 'MEAT'.
"You forget to upgrade your warranty?" Wilma sneered, bringing the bat to shoulder.
Meat staggered, his body jerking with the leftover static from Nyx's hack. The monstrous chrome limbs hung limp, dragging behind him, but the rest of him was still very much alive and pissed.
Wilma danced backward as he roared, lurching forward. One of the heavy arms swung wide on its dead servo, and even if it was dead weight, it had force. It slammed into the exam table beside Wilma, sending it screeching across the floor.
"Okay," her voice fluctuated nervously as she circled, "I'm sensing some unresolved anger issues."
He rushed her. She juked sideways, but not fast enough. His shoulder caught her ribs, knocking the breath from her lungs as she tumbled to the ground. She rolled, the bat slipping from her grip and skidding out of reach.
"Shit—"
He was on her in seconds, dragging the twin wrecking balls of his arms behind him. She ducked just as one whipped overhead, shattering a wall console in a shower of sparks. She lunged for the bat—his boot slammed down beside her hand, denting the floor where her fingers had been an instant before. She grabbed the bat anyway, rolled beneath his legs, and popped up behind him.
"Ever try yoga?" she snarked, swinging the bat into the back of his calf. It buckled with a crack, sending him staggering to his knees.
Meat twisted fast and one of his useless arms whipped around like a flail. It clipped her shoulder and sent her flying into a wall, with the stock of her shotgun digging right between her shoulder blades. Stars blinked across the room. If no one else had heard the clamour until now, that would do it. Wilma's eyes watered and she couldn't catch her breath. Breathing hurt, but so did not breathing, and her chest was burning with every effort. Don't panic.
When her vision cleared, she saw Meat bring himself up again and charge forward with his head lowered like a bull. The brief image of her body turning into a smear on the wall flashed before her eyes, but she had no strength to move out of the way. Instead, she slumped down the wall and braced for impact, yet it never came.
A trickle of blood fell on her cheek. She looked up, where Meat's head was stuck halfway into the wall, red cybereyes staring her down with murderous intent. She shuffled out from under him, just as he drove his foot into the plaster to pull himself out.
The stinging pain was still swelling in her chest, shoulders too, but staying on her toes seemed to dissipate it.
A guttural growl welled up in Meat's throat as his cybereyes met Wilma's. "I will rip your cunt in half!"
Visceral. Her face scrunched up in disgust.
Then she glanced at Vex, checking if fate had dealt him a better hand than hers.
"Send him straight to hell, maybe," Vex grumbled as he fought the rising disgust that came with interacting with such a creature, even if that interaction was solely a violent matter. He let Wilma creep in first - she was smaller, harder to pick up on, and he lingered near the door. Nyx was humming a song into his neurons as she bounced from one drone to the next, a ghost whistling from one machine to the other with little care for their consent. There was no need to ask for permission; his mind was as much hers as his own, she already knew what he'd say and didn't care to hear it.
Meat's ICE was lukewarm. Nyx hopped across the drones, danced along the edges of Wilma's OS, and felt the slick grime of Meat's internal systems squelch beneath her invisible fingers as she made contact. She manifested her usual favored tool - cordons of scrap-code flowing across the connection to confuse Meat's firewalls and encourage it to allocate resources to pieces of cyberware Nyx had no interest in. The primitive AI-thing that served as Meat's internal security was as stupid as they tended to come, lacking any mind for strategy beyond the most instinctive desire to protect. It could not plan, and it could only respond to the basest impulses: an animal lashing out at its pain, unaware that it was being corralled further into a cage each time it lunged out at her.
In her mind's eye, she was holding it by the top of its head and keeping it at arm's length with one arm, the other surgically snipping the synthetic nerves of Meat's arms with a surgeon's scalpel. The ghost in Vex's head gave a triumphant chuckle as the blade cut through code-sinew, and Meat's arms dragged uselessly at his sides. That triumph was stolen from her as quickly as she'd found it when she realized the threat Meat still posed to Wilma.
For her part, Nyx did not like the girl. She still remembered patching Wilma up after the train ride vividly, and Wilma's betrayal shortly thereafter with an even more perfect clarity. Vex had always been the more emotional and sentimental of the two of them - she saw the big picture and all the little details: he only ever understood what was right in front of him. That being said, Nyx was more than capable of hate and was endlessly protective of her creator. Vex might have come to terms with their situation, but she remained bitter. Hers was a cold calculating hatred: if she had a face, she would be smiling at you right before she emptied a magazine into your gut.
And so, for a moment, she considered letting Wilma get crushed beneath Meat's mass. Not enough to kill the girl - that would result in their deaths too, anathema - but enough to cripple her. Make her hurt for a while, give her a physical taste of the mental anguish her actions had wrought in the man Nyx considered to be her father.
Then she recalled the docks, and the unshed tears that had drowned Wilma's eyes. A pang of guilt rung throughout her cerebrum as her ethereal fingers clenched around the steady pulse of Meat's titanium hearts. For a moment, she was staring down at Wilma through the brute's many eyes: she looked so small down there. Pitiable. The fingers squeezed and the hearts seized. Meat's hulking frame shivered as his mouth hung open dumbly, a sputtering choking noise gurgling from the back of his throat as Nyx overclocked his twin hearts and his veins burst from the pressure.
His body hung slack then, skull still embedded into the wall, utterly dead.
"Another tally for the girls," Nyx cooed sweetly into Wilma's right ear. "Let's see how the idiot is doing - you okay?" Her drone sputtered into the room from where it'd been lingering and turned to regard Vex.
The edgerunner had not been idle. While Wilma contented herself with slaying goliath, he'd wandered in rather nonchalantly and aimed his .50 squarely at the head of the meat master. The gangoon, utterly enraptured by in his hedonism, just kept beating it. Vex had hesitated, not wanting to make too much noise, and that was when the neural assault began. Distracted as she was with keeping Wilma breathing, Nyx never picked up on the alerts.
The world ran into weeping colors as a neurovirus drilled into the side of Vex's brain. It felt at first like a foreign pressure in the right side of his skull - where Nyx's neuroport had been bolted onto his brain - that quickly grew into a pounding headache. His perception of sound became long and distorted, like he was standing at the mouth of a cave a thousand miles up from the room they were in and just barely heard the echoes. The face of the beat master, which he was certain had split into a knowing grin, distorted and melted into the flickering light of terminals and grime-soaked metal of the walls. He saw everything, and in that everything he could perceive nothing. Bold outlines intermingled and the limits of the corporeal realm bled into one another: he was standing in a formless mass of shifting color and light beyond his understanding, as if he'd been ripped from the world and thrown into heaven with only mortal, uncomprehending eyes as his companion.
He felt the cold steel of his .50, the reassuring polymer of its shaped grip, and knew his eyes and ears were betraying him. He was still physically in the room; Hatchet's slaves had only managed to drop a proverbial curtain over his senses. He felt his teeth grit as the heat in his skull built further and he heard the air in his sinuses start to pop from the pressure. A scattered command snaked from his wounded brain, down his spine, and terminated in his index finger. The digit responded and Vex felt it squeeze. His arm went high from the recoil, and reality crashed down into him with all its structure a second later.
What remained of meat-master's head was slumped back against his chair, bits of bone and brain matter having sprayed all across the wall behind him. The lower half of the Maelstrom's skull remained: his ruined mouth was frozen into an ugly, smug grin. The pounding in Vex's head dulled slowly as he stared at the steam that rose the mangled mess of the gangoon's exploded skull.
That'd been a first.
"Yyoushalriooogiht?" He slurred, startling himself. The runner blinked a few times and ran an internal diagnostic - there was no lasting damage, but the gangoon had almost managed to overheat the components of his neuroport and boil his brain liker an egg. "You alright?" He repeated, far more coherent now as his gaze drifted over toward Wilma.
The music down the hall had grown louder, and now there was a steady drumbeat accompanying it. It was so cacophonous as to make Vex's bones vibrate with every pulse, his lips pulling back into a snarl as he whirled toward the door. The drumbeat grew even louder, then deafening as a mass of wriggling limbs came barreling around the corner of the hallway.
It stood as tall as two men. Six metal tentacles quivered beneath it, stretching out with long metal hooks and impaling on the walls to propel the mass further. It wound up into a torso that glittered bright silver, the only bits of humanity visible in it being the transparent plexiglass installed just over the chest. The squid-thing's organs, a mix of blackened organic tissue and synthetic perfection, throbbed purposefully beneath its titanium ribcage. Two uncharacteristic human arms waved furiously at either end of the torso, and a pale, youthful face stared down at them through unblinking iris-less eyes. The face looked to have been forged from porcelain, and resembled the old busts of ancient Europa that Vex had come across time and again in his studies of history.
It bore the devil's beauty: an unholy union of artistic perfection and mechanistic savagery.
Two heavily intoxicated Maelstromers followed in its wake, each hoisting assault rifles and moving with the gait of a drunkard. The music thundered from vox speakers that had been drilled into their necks and Vex thought he could hear something resembling human speech just on the edge of the noise exploding from their loudspeakers. He realized that the drumbeat had been the steady crash of the monster's tentacles across the walls as it drew itself forward, and he found his eyes lingering on the long, serrated axe-heads that ran in organized sets of three from the base of each tentacle to its termination.
"MISSY!" The sound came from the unmoving lips of the porcelain face. "YOU HAVE TO SLEEP!" It was barreling toward them now, rapidly closing the distance between the room and the hallway. Momentary panic froze Vex's limbs as his eyes darted every-which-way for an escape and found nothing. they were in the center of the building; the only way out was forward.
"THE BABY WILL GET SICK IF YOU KEEP DRINKING!" The porcelain snarled as it halted just a few paces from the door. It rose on its tentacles to stare past Vex at the ruined bodies of its comrades. "ARE YOU THIRSTY?" A tentacle whipped out toward one of the gangoons. The man did not so much as scream as Porcelain brought one of the axe heads down hard on his neck, severing veins and tendon like it'd been made of paper. The music continued to blare from the vox as the severed, still-functioning head was brought screaming silently over to hang next to Porcelain's head. He let it linger there for a moment, then flicked it at Vex's feet, the agony frozen across its face sending a chill down his spine as it met his eyes.
"ALL ORGANIC FOR MY DARLING!"
"Hello Hatchet." Nyx's voice managed to carry over the noise with the aid of her drone's speakers. "We'd prefer milk if you have any."
"ONLY ALMOND MILK. IT IS GOOD FOR YOUR CHOLESTOROL!"
"What in the fuc-"
"WHOLE MILK IS FULL OF FAT. IT CLOGS YOUR VEINS. THE BABY WILL CHOKE!" The second gangoon was jabbing a needle into his arm and staring up at the ceiling now.
"Christ, save my soul," Vex made the cross with the tip of his sidearm, then pointed it right at Hatchet's chest, and pulled the trigger until it clicked empty. Smoke curled from the barrel as he lowered the pistol - gouts of black fluid wept from the six fresh holes in Hatchet's torso. The transparent glass over his organs remained unharmed.
"YOU KNOW I FUCKING LOVE IT WHEN YOU'RE SAUCY BABE!" Hatchet chortled, seemingly unaware or uncaring of the almost fist-sized holes in his chest. He moved faster than he had any right to, three tentacles darting into the room and nailing themselves to either side of the frame as he dragged himself through. A fourth sprang forward and Vex just barely managed to parry the axe-head with the edge of his power sword, its energy sheathe firing off sparks at the point of impact.
"Nyx!" He snapped as two more tentacles came for him. He was forced to stow his pistol, two-handing the sword as he blocked one axe-head with its wrist guard, then ducked beneath another. He swung hard at the fourth that came for him - Hatchet just laughed as the blade sheared through metal and synthetic tendons. The tip of the tentacle fell into a writhing mass at Vex's feet, just as the sixth sliced a bloody canyon across the outside of his left thigh. White-hot pain made him grit his teeth as jumped back. Three of the axe-heads sliced through the open air where he'd just been.
"Gonna take me a bit, play smart!" Nyx shouted, both from the drone and into their minds.
"Think about the baby?!" Vex yell-asked as the last gangoon started shooting into the walls outside the room and probably put a few rounds into Hatchet's back. He just wanted everyone to know he was helping.
"I DON'T LOVE YOU ANYMORE!" Hatchet's formidable girth was through the door now, blocking it. The five functioning tentacles lashed out toward both of them, the last crippled one hanging on hard to the edge of the door. "CHEATING WHORES GET THE WHOLE MILK!"
'Human' felt less and less like a tangible concept when regarding Maelstrom. Something deeply disturbing that felt no hesitation in hacking off a limb to replace it with whatever was available. They looked like aliens, but not the fun kind. Hatchet, however, surpassed even Wilma's wildest dreams. Whatever discombobulated being was operating those limbs, 'human' would be the last word she'd use to describe it.
A haphazard command sent the three 'S.W.A.T.' drones flying under Hatchet's tendrils and barging after the lesser goon. While Armstrong provided suppressive fire, Terrance blinded the man with a charged strobe, and Winston latched four tiny legs around the gangoon's head, boring a hole through his brain with his laser drill. The gonk tried his best to resist, but being drugged out beyond comprehension didn't work in his favour. He emptied a magazine and, by accident, landed a bullet on Terrance's propeller blades that knocked him off his course. That was just before Winston's laser reached his core, and the gonk slumped lifelessly to the ground.
Wilma had no intentions of giving Hatchet any handshakes. She put away her baseball bat, and her trembling fingers formed a shaky grip around the Satara shotgun that was slung across her chest. She held it at her hip, squeezing the trigger as precious moments went into charging the shot, then she released. Tech bullets ripped through the air in a fat spray that penetrated Hatchet's meat, and those that missed his hard-to-miss frame blew through the wall behind. He barely staggered, pressing on.
"OH, YOU WANNA LEAVE ME NOW?!" he shouted as Wilma backed away from him, stabbing his axeheads on every surface to pull himself forward, "I'LL CARVE YOU OPEN AND SCRAPE THE LOVE BACK OUT!"
She pumped the forend of her gun, expelling two spent shells and holding down the trigger as the wall pressed against her bruised back. Fear breathed down her neck. Nyx's coos only agitated her. She lined the shotgun upward, and upon release, the buckshot pellets chipped away at Hatchet's porcelain face, the rest went wide. His tentacles launched at her just when a dissonant voice called after her like a by-the-way.
"Screw-up!"
What!?
She barely forgot to duck as the axehead dug into the wall just past her shoulder. Terror seared her heart. Hatchet had pinned her and his tentacles seemed infinite as opposed to the very finite chances of escape. Just as she moved under the next blade, another whipping tendril came swiping at her. She could only make out the slim sliver of the edge before drawing back. But next thing she knew, gravity was calling her name.
Her head cracked against the clinic's tile floor. The blurred image of Hatchet threatened to land the fatal blow, but Vex interfered just in time. The Maelstromer turned away, limbs slicing air in syncopated rhythm as he engaged Vex now. Wilma's eyes lazily swivelled across the sideways room. The deafening noise from that gonk's vox mixed with the terrible cacophony of the fight. She rolled on her side and felt the familiar sting of a cut across her head. Warmth pooled from her temple, and a sheet of red slid down into her eyes, painting the world crimson.
The discordant choir dug its fingers in her brain. All those malevolent voices with whispers louder than any sound. They invaded her lungs until she had no place left to retreat. None of her muscles listened to her. She couldn't push herself up, nor sob the pain away. Blood throbbed in her ears, in her tongue, behind her eyes. Her vision pulsed. Her hand twitched against something in her pocket. Between dying by Hatchet's hand and relapsing, the choice was easy, if not tempting. Mechanical fingers locked around the inhaler and sluggishly brought it to Wilma's lips.
Her eyes rolled back into her mind. An euphoric rush slammed through her system like liquid lightning. Her heartbeat drummed in halftime. The pain vanished, like someone flicked a switch and turned her nerve endings off.
Fear gave way to fury.
She rose from the floor like something born again in a pool of her own blood, eyes blown wide open, and an uncanny grin ripping her face in half. At this moment, humanity had left her body, too. Only pure violence remained.
Hatchet was still locked on Vex when Wilma wildly slung her bat at his tentacles, swiping two from under him. Left on a single appendage to balance himself, Hatchet's silver torso clanged against the ground. She pounced, bringing her bat down on him.
"Hey honey," her voice rasped, sounding foreign, "Guess what's for breakfast?"
Like a rabid wasp with a ten-pound sting, Wilma was everywhere. She was slamming into legs, twisting between strikes with her bat pulsing blue with every blow. Sparks and synthetic blood arced through the air. She ducked under a blade and jammed her elbow into Hatchet's now broken tendril, pushing off it to swing again. Metal tore and wires sprayed fluid like ink. Her red mixed with his black.
And somehow, Hatchet remained intact. His hand found its way to Wilma's neck and squeezed with all its might, lifting her off his chest as he righted himself up. Her grimace imitated his cracked porcelain face, but the pain didn't register. She still. Smashed. Away. The thought that would usually tell her to stop was gone. The instinct of self-preservation had been overridden. Brutality equals pleasure.
He flicked her across the room. With another broken tentacle and a battered chest, Hatchet was still standing, but running on fumes. He reeled and let out a bloodcurdling scream as speaking simply didn't do it.
Wilma hit the ground and rolled, using the momentum to spring back on her feet. It wasn't the first time drugs saved her life. Her bat was dripping with black ooze as lightning bolts crackled perpetually—her grip had petrified around the clasp.
Status reports scraped down the side of his eye and served no other purpose than to dull his vision. Nyx pinged the flatline of the gangoon's biomon just beyond the door as Wilma's automatons did their work and Vex really did not give a shit. He was far too busy parrying axe blades to care about the death of a peon.
Sweat dripped cold down his 'ganic flesh as he fell into a trance. Adrenaline intermingled with clarity as his body moved of its own accord, muscles and synapses responding instinctively as the tentacles taunted him with feinting blows. In his earlier days, when his mother had first given him a practice blade and taught him the basics of swordplay, he would have fallen prey to such paltry tricks. In the split-second it took him to step out of Hatchet's guard, he imagined himself taking one of the feints, stepping in to parry, and then being ripped in half by another arm coming from his blind spot.
Fortunately for the three of them, Vex had long left his amateur status behind.
He stood frozen as the limbs sprung forward and halted - Hatchet's face was unreadable, but he liked to imagine the Maelstromer was growing frustrated. An easy smile broke the expression of stone that had been painted across his face as he bounced on the balls of his feet and sidestepped another vertical slash. He heard the air whip when the metal cleaved through the spot he'd just been and found purchase in the floor. He was raising his sword two-handed to cleave straight through the tentacle when he heard a crack of metal striking bone and saw Wilma go sailing through the air.
His composure broke when he heard the wet thud of Wilma's body hitting the wall. A cocktail of emotions surged over the artificial wall of clarity Nyx had built for him, and he made a mistake: he looked away. That split-second was all it took for one of the axe-blades to come down hard at his shoulder, which he barely managed to redirect with a panicked shift of his sword to his 'ganic hand. His mortal muscle protested and failed, white-hot pain shooting up to his shoulder as tendons were stretched far beyond their limits. Another axe-blade fell toward his left side before he could recover, and it was all he could do to reach out with his chrome arm to catch the tentacle just beneath the blade.
Servos and synthetic joints whirred angrily as the progress of the blade was halted. Vex was spitting a string of curses under his breath when he jumped back on his heels, the blade-limb-thing he'd been holding just a moment before flicking out and slicing the open air just in front of him when it found freedom. If Hatchet had pressed the assault, he would have gutted Vex there and then. Fortunately, or rather otherwise for Wilma, the head monster was more intent on killing her right now.
Hatchet surged past Vex like a tidal wave. He felt the air part for the beast as if a jet had just flown overhead, and his panicked mind reached out for Nyx. The AI did not respond - she was waste deep in the muck of Hatchet's mind and struggling to make sense of it. The choking tar of his psychopathy melted around her limbs and bound her in place, and for the first time in her very short life, she found herself trapped. It was all she could do to scream into Hatchet's mind, more out of her own terror than any desire to halt the abomination, and it only served to piss him off.
Wilma was going to die, and so was he. Their fates were tied, he realized now more than ever before, and he was unsure if the pure certainty that filled him stemmed from a desire to protect her or to preserve his own life. Later, he would suppose it was a mix of both.
The simple desire to survive gave way to righteous purpose. He felt like he was flying as he closed the distance between Wilma and Hatchet. One moment he was an observer; the next he was her stalwart defender, a sensation that felt so instinctive, so right, that the vibration running up his limbs as he caught the axe-blade meant to bisect her was more euphoric than painful. To give his life in service of another, there was no higher calling.
His body moved of its own accord in a blur of metal and twisting limbs. The edgerunner snarled like a wounded animal as he dodged, parried, and swept the tip of his blade across the tentacles whenever the opportunity presented itself. Hatchet roared back in turn as black blood wept from the deep gashes in his heathen limbs, the thundering of his twin hearts almost audible as they struggled to deliver vital vitae to his many elongated extremities. Despite his experience, Vex's form was not perfect. He parried, but the blades still drew bloody lines across his forearms and shoulders. He dodged, and he landed hard on his heel, rolling an ankle and allowing Hatchet to nearly cleave off his cybernetic arm as it bit halfway into his metal forearm. Redundant titanium tendons kicked in as the primaries were severed - not as strong, but fully functional. Those too threatened to give out as three tentacles lashed out, crashing into the body of the sword as Vex was lifted from his feet.
He hit the ground hard, bits of starstuff and disheveled proteins dancing across his vision as Hatchet moved for the execution. Vex had a moment to draw in a sharp breath and mutter the beginning of a prayer when something bright snapped across Hatchet's other tentacles. His death postponed itself as Wilma came to life again, murder glinting in her eyes and cruelty singing from her smile as she brought her bat down unto Hatchet again and again.
A moment's confusion stilled Vex as he rolled and struggled up to his feet. He regarded Wilma with concerned curiosity - just a moment ago she'd been laying like a broken toy on the wall. Now, she had Hatchet on the floor, and she was beating the ever living shit out of him. The only gentlemanly thing left to do was to assist in the shit-beating.
Vex was approaching with a bit of caution, not wanting to interrupt Wilma or catch a haywire swing, when Hatchet curled his fingers around her throat. His pleased surprise withered, even as she continued crushing the metal of his torso in and gave way to another creeping anxiety as Wilma was once again hurled away.
"Stay down," he begged her, both for her own sake and his. Hatchet was crawling back to his feet, but all the vigor seemed to have left him. His tentacles were twitching at awkward angles and moving of their own accord, his chest rising and falling violently as he dragged in what oxygen he could manage. Damaged as he was, Hatchet still wasted little time in homing in on Wilma, holy intent on gutting the girl.
Once again, Vex placed himself between the two. Hatchet hurled his axe-limbs at him, much slower and mindlessly now, and Vex jumped to the right and avoided the lot of them. They came for him again as he closed the distance, but he was well within Hatchet's guard now. The blades slowed and froze as thye readjusted to avoid butchering their master: Vex raised his sword to do the work for him.
Hatchet stared at him with cold, empty eyes when Vex brought the power sword down hard on his neck. The first blow only made it halfway, gouts of blood and oil pouring from the gash as Hatchet sputtered wordless gibberish and tried to keep his head from falling off with his hands. Vex gave no quarter, raised the blade again, and brought it down hard - the scent of burning meat greeted him as the blade's energy-field severed bone, muscle and tendon.
Hatchet's body fell into a twitching heap as his head rolled lazily across the floor. The music was still playing.
"Nyx?" He asked through quivering breaths. " Nyx!?" He repeated.
"Sleeping, no talk." She whispered into the duo's minds, her drone spinning thoughtlessly in place at the entrance of the room.
There was a snap-hiss as Vex flicked off his power-sword, though he did not sheathe his weapon. He instead rushed over toward Wilma, and not even Nyx's methodically crafted chem cocktails could keep the worry from his voice. "Wilma," he halted just in front of her, his 'ganic eye going wide as he assessed all the blood she was covered in. His tone softened, "I dunno how the fuck you're still standing. Crazy woman," he reached out to try and grab her forearm and direct her to a chair in the corner of the room. "Let me patch you up."
Nothing in Wilma's body and mind indicated it was over, apart from the now limp corpse of Hatchet, lying a few paces away.
The surroundings were distorted by Wilma's perception. Metal scraping against metal, a high-pitched ringing, and all the sounds she had never heard before seemed to play on a loop. That wretched gonk's vox was still blaring its music, and it was impossible to tell if it warped intentionally or it was glitching out. Vex's mouth moved, but the noise that came out was hardly discernible. She had been standing still and upright, her shoulders rising up and down with every breath. She dug a knuckle in her eye, trying to wipe away the layer of blood, but her hand was also coated in red. Her biomon was protesting and pinging off alerts all over her HUD.
When Vex's fingers wrapped around Wilma's forearm, the tiny glass shards sank deeper, cutting both ways, but she was still under the pain-free effect of the drug. She yanked her hand free, twisted her shoulder back, put her weight into the momentum, and punched him.
"Don't tell me what to do." Her tone was off-puttingly cold.
She didn't wait to see if she had hurt him. Perhaps a 'thanks for looking out for me,' or a compassionate hand placed upon his shoulder would have been better appreciated. Instead— "Tit for tat," —was the elicited response, delivered with none of the usual humour behind it.
Wilma's vision was obscured by rows of white lines, like those on old TVs, and static numbed her limbs. Her focus, however, remained undeterred. She brushed past Vex, shoulder bumping into him, and stormed out of the room.
The door to Wu's room exploded inward under her boot. As Skipper reunited with the rest of her drones, she scanned the room without speaking and fixed the doctor with a glare sharp enough to flay skin. The walls, the machines, even the goddamn dust motes understood now that Wilma was not in the mood for jokes. She rifled through the cabinets until she found what she needed. The zipstitch gun was loaded with a capsule of surgical adhesive. She grabbed it, pointed it at the scalp between the tufts of sticky hair, and pressed the nozzle against the bleeding gash. To someone who was unfamiliar with the tool, it would look like she was willingly putting a bullet in her skull, but Wilma had the displeasure of being stitched up by one such gun before. And Ronan had been much less gentle that time. The hot adhesive seared into her cranium while the needle zipped through the skin, tugging tissue together. It would have felt like molten lava pouring over her head, had she been able to feel any pain. Soon.
"You won't be needing this," she muttered, pocketing the device without sparing Wu another glance.
The heavy air parted out of her way like a school of terrified fish as she headed towards the safe. She yelled from down the hallway, "If you are done crying, we have a job to do."
Somewhere, buried beneath the rushing static and the blood-warm euphoria, Wilma knew she should be feeling something. Pride, fear, disgust… anything. Instead, she floated just behind her own eyes, watching the world move through. A passenger in her own skin, detached and invincible.
