GIG V: Hatchet

[Vex Kiranova]

Watson, HeavnMed
@Wilma F. Darcy, Socket Calibration

He'd been more or less baptized in the blood of the Maelstromers, as well as his own, but he still felt squeamish as Wilma grabbed his forearm and left a crimson handprint when she pulled away. He was considering whether or not to snap at her about planning on splitting what they'd found later, but her uncharacteristic silence bid the same from him. Aside from their first meeting, Vex had never felt unsafe around Wilma. Unwanted, despised, and generally loathed, sure, but never under threat. Now, as he looked into her eyes and found something more akin to an animal than a woman staring back, he privately wondered if the girl had snapped. Maybe that punch was just the start of things.

Anxiety, foreign and so often artificially suppressed, crept through him like frostbite. Under normal circumstances he could have just ignored it, or ordered Nyx to "turn off that part of his brain" when things became overstimulating. The adrenaline-dorph comedown had left his mind in tatters and Nyx was still trying to piece her own back together: he was forced to face his emotions without the arms and armor of drugs and technology, a horrifying prospect.

"I'm not for you to save."

"What?"

She wasn't looking at him anymore. Her eyes were glued to the nothing. She'd taken something, her response confirmed it, and whatever had enraptured her ran deeper than the current situation. Nyx would have known the right thing to say, the perfect line, however manipulative, to placate Wilma: but Nyx wasn't here right now. Of the two of them, she'd always understood people in all the ways that confused and confounded Vex.

"Your life's not ju-"

"Shut. UP!" She growled and her posture tensed. Vex cringed at the sudden noise, though his foggy mind managed to surmise that she was not in fact yelling at him, so much as the wall, or whatever was going on in her head. He quietly reached out to Nyx's section of the brain and was met with a locked door and barred windows. Definitely not Nyx in Wilma's head then.

Wilma was staring at him now. Her head twisted toward him like a hawk sighting prey, her eyes deep pools of blue with tiny black islands adrift in the center. If eyes were truly the windows into the soul, then Wilma's essence wanted to devour his. Her stare was hypnotic, purposeful, demanding - that primal need to dominate that lingered in Gunner's eyes every time Vex met them. From Gunner, that look inspired righteous indignation and a furiously wounded pride that was keen to bitterly plot its inevitable revenge. The experience was of an entirely different threat from Wilma.

"You might think you're stronger than me, or smarter, but I could kill you right now." Rampant red id met the purple of bruised ego. He believed her, the rational part of his brain told him to stay silent, and he felt the sudden urge to meet her challenge for no other reason than to prove that he could. Wanton expressions of power were his right alone, the devil reminded him, and to brook it from anyone else was to show your belly to the wolves. Even worse, to do so for wolves that had collared you.

"That make you feel good? Power's your drink of choice?" Arrogance there, like his own will to power was different than everyone else's. Cleaner.

She dragged him so effectively down to her level. A fresh flood of adrenaline poured through his overworked veins as he stared back at her, the sound of his heart's rapid beat thundering in his ears. Seconds stretched into hours as he tried to discern her intent. He was unsure if he could subdue her with whatever she'd put into her system, and killing her would be his own suicide, not that he wanted to do that in the first place.

And then there was the pride, the way her intensity scoured his soul -- the blood and the dirt that clung to them like a second skin, Cain's mark rearing its head in eternal perpetuity, a shared sin. She danced along the edge of sanity and invited him; he only needed to find some dancing shoes of his own to join her.

Her gaze bore into his eyes and there were the distinct traces of Gunner's predation behind it. "You're lucky that fancy price tag on your head has sex appeal."

Desire and fear overloaded what remained of his sense and left him frozen in that hypnotic stare. Her words hung over them like a curtain as Vex decided whether to follow the will of the ape or lizard parts of his brain. Eventually, the sound of his own voice creaked over the thunderclap of his heart. "Are you trying to fight me or fuck me? Because I-"

"I'll be a second," she cut Vex off and left the room with a possessed stride. There was still power left to spend.


---
You're An Angel



Wu was finally going home.

She'd always played a dangerous game, but she'd played it well. Balancing the egos of psychos had never been easy, and even the slightest mistake, be it the wrong tone taken, a glance in the wrong direction at the wrong time, or a secret carelessly overheard could result in a brutal end. The old woman had worked with dozens of other ripperdocs in her two decades since coming to Night City, and only a handful had managed to function for more than a few years in their chosen spheres. Wu had always been the outlier, the old woman in a young woman's trade, a pillar of excellence that survived via her tact, reputation, and raw talent.

She was proud of that, even if most of her educated years had been spent patching up the evil of society. There were nearly twenty grandchildren now, and her sons, as kind and well-meaning as they were, lacked the ambition to rise above their stations. It was only through Wu's work that each and every one of her family's next generation would be attending school at Arasaka Academy. Only she, ever the matriarch, was able to carve out a future for her family. She worked because she had to; she always knew the risks, and she always accounted for them.

She had taken a very calculated risk in working with the LeBlanc thugs. They were both too young to be worth much salt, but their intentions were straightforward enough and anyone with a basic competence could deal with Hatchet as he was now. She would have done so herself, and indeed most of the Maelstromers would have soon died from the mercury poisonings she'd begun to imbibe with their regular treatments, but the arrival of the interlopers put a wrench in that plan.

Wu was adaptable, ever the survivor. If the mercenaries failed, she could easily blame the assault's initial success on one of the dead henchmen. If they succeeded, her contract was over, and it'd be time to visit her little ones back in Shanghai. She halted in her packing for a moment, and she was almost certain she could smell the lilacs outside her son's shop when she heard someone step into the room behind her.

She had just enough time to turn and leer at the drug girl before the first blow hit. White-hot pain exploded across the back of her skull and radiated down her spinal column as she was forced to the floor. She tried to squirm, to struggle, to scream, but the bat was on her again. Death's fortune smiled upon Wu at the very least - her lights went out permanently the moment her skull cracked against the floor. An encrypted recording of Wu's last moments from her perspective fired off over HeavenMed's net into the greater network of Night City the moment her heart stopped.



---
It Is Good That We Never Met



He'd lingered far too long.

His eyes followed her while his feet were glued to the floor. Her footfalls echoed as she disappeared down the hall, and he found himself pleasantly alone and desperately not wanting to be so. There was no Nyx, no Wilma, only the corpses for company. The runner pressed a blood-caked hand to his temple as he tried to gather his thoughts and ignored the steady throb of his broken nose.

They had the shard; whatever was going on with Wilma could be sorted out on the drive home - and whatever that moment was could be forgotten. LeBlanc would pay handsomely, and they could take a week or two off. Maybe this Wu lady would be willing to help him with removing the suicide switch Gunner's goons had welded to his brain. There's be time to think about all that he'd seen and done here later, preferably a few shots deep for proper contemplation.

"You're good man," he mumbled to himself as he clicked off his power-sword and slipped it back into its scabbard. He kept his .50 ready in his synthetic hand in case they'd missed any stragglers not on Wu's network. "Shit's gonna be fine. Get Wilma, get to LeBlanc, and get home." Life's complexities were always so simple when he broke them down into simple objectives. "Get a shower," he added, huffing a quiet laugh to himself as he began to wander down the hall.

A meaty thwack sounded from Wu's room, followed by a loud crash. Vex blinked, then broke into a jog as he heard it again and again, "Wilma?!" He half-shouted as he tried to raise her on the vox. He rounded a corner and perched himself on the door frame, his mouth falling open and head hanging askance as his mind struggled to process what he was seeing.

Wu lay in a twitching mess just beneath her operating table. What remained of her skull sat in several shattered pieces that had been thrown randomly around the room. He could see steam coiling off of bits of exposed brain matter and circuitry that sat in an expanding pool of blood at Wilma's feet. She seemed to pay him no regard, wholly intent on continuing to mangle Wu's broken body until her arms gave out.

Any semblance of a response from Vex was muted by his horror. Disgusts of different kinds coiled little nooses around his heart. Wu was not a threat - she'd proven to be helpful, in fact, and Wilma seemed far keener on brutalizing a corpse than defending herself.

The mind is always quick to make excuses for the things it has grown attached to. Vex's jumped for rationalization: Wu knew too much, she could have been planning a double-cross, maybe she'd pulled a gun on Wilma? If the old woman had planned a betrayal, why not spring it while they were recovering from the fight with Hatchet? Was Wilma the sort to murder someone out of inconvenience? Wu would have just rigged the shard if she'd been planning on killing them, so... why?

A dozen flimsy justifications presented themselves, but Vex's nature could not be denied. Wu had been gored like a war criminal: painfully, infuriatingly, and pointlessly. The abject cruelty of it made Vex flick off the safety of his .50, though he kept it pointed toward the floor. Putting Wilma down was the same as putting the gun to his own head, but he couldn't abide being privy to evil as he saw it. That was how things were going to end anyway, or so he kept telling himself, what right did he have to live if it meant letting an animal roam rabid?

And who was he to judge? No one was innocent. Everyone was a victim. The people they'd murdered for money, albeit horrible individuals themselves, were only products of their abuse. At what point did it become righteous to judge them to death? When the eddies were good enough? After they'd crossed that line and taken the mantle of judge for themselves?

Did it really matter if Wilma murdered some back-alley ripperdoc? Was there really any difference in killing for killing's sake and cloaking it in justification? Human life was the cheapest currency in America, after all.

"You're clearly going through something," the difference was there. He was just doing what people did - blurring his lines for a girl because he liked her. "And I'm not sure what the fuck that is, but you need to put the bat down. Right now." The middle ground he usually tried to meet her on was trampled. "She's already got a closed casket." He couldn't keep the judgement from his tone, the revulsion. "We..." He drew in a sharp breath, squeezed his eyes closed, and pinched the bridge of his nose so hard that it started to bleed once again. Why did she put him in this situation? Why did he put himself here? The horror of it was surreal.


The stress of reconciling his morals with reality threatened to unravel him. A deep waxing anxiety formed in the pit of his stomach as he opened his eyes and stared at Wu's remains, then at the woman he'd dared to claim as a friend. He couldn't hate her as long as their lives were tied to one another, even if every synapse of his brain was blaring with alarm sirens.

I have to make it work. No other choice.

"We need to leave before more of them come knocking. I know they heard the shooting." His was the voice of a man broken on the pillars of his own morals. "I dunno why you did that... dunno if you do either," his expression was that of stone, only the slightest twitch of his nose giving away his agitation. "But that was fucked," He tore his gaze from Wu, and found himself unwilling to look at Wilma. He settled for the hallway instead. "And we need to go." He repeated.

 

[Wilma F. Darcy]

Tag: @Vex Kiranova
Vibe: who am I?


Wilma had stared at the corpse, waiting to see what she'd feel. The natural repulsion was absent and in its place was a new feeling that she couldn't quite name.

"The power of volition." Black Lace explained.

She looked over her shoulder, then turned to face Vex.

"Get off your high horse," she said morbidly as she flicked the fresh coat of red off her hands with a shake. "You should be thanking me. I'm doing what you can't, because you're a pussy."

She stepped over Wu's corpse and walked past him, into the room where the other corpses were. It seemed she couldn't sit in one place for long. This was Wilma's first decapitation and she liked it. She liked that she liked it, too. She was not a coward today and that was her drink of choice.

A whack to one of Hatchet's limp tendrils separated it from his corpse. Wilma dragged it away from his body, moving over to Meat, who was still stuck in the wall. She aimed the axehead at his mechanical elbow joint, scarred with welds and synthflesh, and brought the blade down repeatedly. The 'dorphs from the drug helped extend her endurance until she finally hacked the gorilla arm off of Meat's hulky frame. The massive metal glove hit the ground with a clang. A command to her drones sent all four of them after the cyberware, grabbing hold of it with their spindly legs. In an effort to lift it, their rotors whirred noisily, with Terrance flying somewhat off-course. The glove alone must have weighed almost as much as she did, if not more.

Their lack of judgment put Wilma at ease. Whenever it felt like the world was against her, her robots remained unquestionably in her corner, and in these times, she'd argue they were capable of more compassion than any other human.

She opened the industrial shutters, lent an arm to the drones, and chucked the glove out the window. The cyberware collapsed the roof of a car parked right underneath, landing in its backseat. The drones dove after it. Guess I found me a ride. Terrance was carjacking it already.

Wilma tested the sturdiness of the tendril with a tug—it did not inspire confidence, but it would have to do. She sat on the window, moved her shotgun over, and swung one leg out to the open air, pausing to look back at Vex. The roar of an engine springing to life was heard from below.

"You suck, Vex."

She shrugged, then dropped, pulling the tendril along with her. It whipped around the room until the last axehead dug under the windowsill. The tendril snapped taut, jerking her shoulder. The synthetic muscle of Hatchet's severed limb groaned under the strain. Wilma planted her boots against the wall and descended with jerky motions, then dropped down when there was no more tendril to hold onto.

She propped her foot against the half-wrecked car and yanked the door open, shimmying inside. The drones grabbed onto the glove for balance as well as to keep it from flying off. Wilma dropped into the driver's seat that was littered with debris. The car was still barely running. She jammed her foot on the gas, letting the engine growl and the wheels churn against the locked brakes. Smoke curled up from the frictioning rubber and she released the brake.

The car lurched forward with tires screeching as it peeled away from HeavenMed, fishtailing through shattered glass and rubble before catching traction. Wilma gripped the wheel tightly with her bloodied hands.

She was already on the road when Blace Lace chimed in, "They'll say it wasn't really you." Wilma thought about it—it was what they said last time, too. "He's frightened of what this means. Gunner too, if he hears. But that's only because they remember the version of you they could reason with."

"They'll hate this." At long last, her face displayed an emotion. Wilma was smiling.

"That's their fear, not yours."

"I could have settled with applause."

❉

 

[Vex Kiranova]

Watson, HeavnMed
@Wilma F. Darcy, I Was The Sword

"Get off your high horse," she said morbidly as she flicked the fresh coat of red off her hands with a shake. "You should be thanking me. I'm doing what you can't, because you're a pussy."

Composure was a rare commodity at HeavenMed, and what little Vex had retained was robbed from him with her words. His rancor was of a similar flavor to what he'd felt upon waking up on the operating table back in Gunner's den: it was a red as deep as the dark pools that gathered around Wu's broken body. He could bite his tongue to preserve himself, but not when it came to other people. Wu had not been innocent, but they'd made a deal, and she'd opted to trust them. Cutting off loose ends simply because they were loose ends had never been part of his playbook.

"You sound like Hatchet," he wore his revulsion naked across his face now, "And if it wouldn't kill me too, I'd put you down with him. This was wrong." Disgust intermingled with despair as she murdered any possibility of at the very least allowing him to lie to himself. This was who she was, that was abundantly clear, and he could not help but hate her for it. Hate her, hate the cruelty of the world, hate the arbitrary nature of humanity - hate that no matter where he went, or what he did, he could never escape it.

His instincts never lied, and they were telling him to empty his magazine into her torso. They'd told him to hold his fire back on the train though, so clearly, they were flawed. His eyes stared at her unblinking as he came to terms with the fact that he was powerless, that he'd broken his word by trusting Wilma to have a semblance of a conscience, and that this was most certainly going to happen again.

Not a question of if, only when.

His stare never broke as she walked up and passed him by. He didn't dare to move his head, not trusting his body when she was in arm's reach. Instead, he simply stood there, chest rising and falling violently as he tried in vain to steady his breath. The smell of blood and shit filled his nostrils as his emotions steadied enough for him to register the inputs of his other senses. Wu's corpse lay shattered at his feet, and a terrible guilt crept into his soul as he kneeled over her and forced himself to examine the ruin. "You seemed like a cold woman Wu, still, I'm sorry. It shouldn't have happened at all, but it should've been clean at least. I gave you my word and it wasn't worth a fuckin' thing." He would've closed her eyes if they weren't hanging on tied tendons from the corner of her surgeon's table.

He lingered for a bit longer into the mess of gore and bone was burned deep into his brain. The scattered pieces blurred and became nothing as he retreated into the corridors of his own mind and found no solace there. Snarling at himself and the situation in general, Vex bolted up to his feet and whirled on his heels just in time to see Wilma hanging out the side of the window.

"You suck, Vex."

"Just go and bash some other old lady's brains in, you fucking psycho," he spat on the floor as she descended out of sight. He remained where he was standing for a long time, with only the company of the buzzing flies that were beginning to chew on the many corpses they'd left in their wake to soothe him. Reality pressed in on every side, the shadows growing longer, the four walls closing in and the beating of his heart frantic and out of control. He welcomed the crush, but it never came. The feeling remained.

"Hey, Vex," Nyx's voice sputtered from her drone. It sounded exhausted, and her jets were firing at imperfect intervals, making the drone bob up and down wildly like a canoe tossed into a raging sea. "I know you're... - look, we have to go."

"I can't keep doing this." His legs felt heavy, and he found himself falling to a squat, arms drawn around himself, his .50 held tight in an iron grip. "I don't like hurting people. I hate the lying. Why do we have to be a part of this? What if we just ran away? You think they'd really kill us?"

"We play with the hand we were dealt. We can only control ourselves." Her withering voice whispered into his mind now. "And they would. They'd do the same to us that she did to Wu."

"What the fuck did she take?"

"Something heavy, but you don't do that to someone unless you want to. Something is very wrong with her brain. Give her some grace."

"What the fuck does that mean? I can't just be cool with this."

"Ten minutes ago, you were considering sleeping with her." He felt a weight that was not there as she placed an invisible hand on his shoulder. "Which was also, might I add, incredibly gross. Point being, you can be cool with anything if you have to be."

"No Nyx, I really, really can't." He drew in a deep, shuddering breath and exhaled slowly. "What separates us from the animals? What makes a man?"

"I'm lecturing you right now, not the other way around."

"His values, what he believes in, what he stands for." He continued, headless of her protests. "A man without principles is an animal, and this whole city is a jungle. If she does shit like this, and I have to abide by it, how am I any different?"

"You're making compromises, like every other human being throughout history has had to do. You work with what you can." There was annoyance hanging behind that soothing tone.

"That's not enough. I can't live with that."

"Then go ahead and put that pistol to your head. Why delay the inevitable?" The comfort was gone, replaced with frustration and exhaustion. Nyx understood the issue from a third person perspective, but there was no emotion to her comprehension. She'd adapted to reality long before coming to NC but Vex was always stubborn in getting with the program. "Don't hold back on my account. I'd rather you not live for me."

"Then what the fuck have I been doing this whole year!?" It felt good to yell. His lungs burned warm with the effort. "I left everything for you, you know! Don't gimme that shit of 'oh don't do it for me' 'cause I've been doing it for you this whole fucking time!"

"You're not going to guilt me, and I'm too tired to babysit you right now." Nyx's drone sputtered over and slipped into its housing with his coat. "Just leave before you get us both killed and figure it out yourself."

"You are not shutting me out right now!" He shouted and raved at nothing as she did indeed shut him out. It devolved into incoherent, impotent roaring at the walls and ceiling as Nyx closed the neural pathways that linked the two of them. It only stopped when his throat began to sting, and his voice cracked from the rawness. He placed a hand to his temple and stared at the floor, chancing a glance at the chrono at the corner of his eye and realizing fifteen minutes had passed. Maelstorm's response time was sloppy.

He cast Wu's corpse one last apologetic look before powering down the external turrets and wandering out the back door. He let his legs carry him autonomously toward LeBlanc's bar. It was nearly an hour's walk, and he welcomed it. He would drop off the shard with the Fixer's peons and drink himself into a stupor for however long it took to feel normal again. If that took a few days, all the better.