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Funny how true colors shine in darkness and in secrecy
If there were scarlet flags, they washed out in the mind of me
Where a blinding light shone on you every night
And either side of my sleep
If So Mi squeezes her fists hard enough, she feels like she could unravel. Pop at the seams, joints first and then outward, wires seeping out of the cracks of her. It’s the thought of it that makes her grip around her baggage tremble—makes her inadvertently drop it with a loud crack like the snap of a proverbial heart punching to her throat. She feels her body seize. A staff comes forward to help her with the bag.
“Ma’am.”
“Thanks. Thank you.”
“Of course.” He bows his head, takes a step back. If he knows who So Mi is, it certainly doesn’t show—if he even knows the role she had in this same place mere months ago, blood and bullets and Blackwall-burn, and all. “Will you need help navigating to the taxi bay?”
“No. No, I believe that’ll be all.”
“Very good. Thank you for flying with Orbital Air. Safe forays in Night City.”
So Mi gives a clipped smile. She turns away.
She couldn’t do it as fast anymore, no, nor as independently. Before, she could jump the net with no more than a blink while sipping champagne, sifting through walls of codes manifesting into hallways fit to burst with information wriggling between her fingers, easy as breathing. Now she’s in this rental suite getting ready to get onto a netrunner chair, wringing her hands like she’s 13 and jumping in for the first time.
It’s stupid, of course, she knows, to feel any kind of trepidation. Tycho’s surgeons may have managed a lot with synthetic skin and replacement parts, but more than half of her back still shines with exposed chrome, all silvery and wiry with imposing netrunning power and overpowered circuitry. Even now, she could look through the 10-something eyes of the cameras of this place if she really wanted to. Vision fractured into 10 windows like a spider, scanning 15, 20 things at once. She’s trying not to want to.
(If she closes her eyes, she can imagine still being able to hear the whirring of long-gone Militech-brand shoulders, the tiny buzzing of those wires, those circuits. Not loud enough to break through thoughts, no, but enough to remind her that her body isn’t her own anymore.
She keeps her eyes open.)
May as well get it over with now. She breathes, eases onto the chair, and feels around for the cable while she’s staring up at the ceiling. Doctors’ orders are to take it easy on the net, to steer clear of the threadbare edges that once upon a time, damn near swallowed her whole. She’s keen on following instructions. Need only a good couple minutes, besides. Just one thing to look up.
One letter. V.
V—broke the most powerful corporation known to man in half with her bare hands and walked away scorched and bloody and with six months and change in her pocket like some kind of joke. Might as well have given her a shirt to go with it that said I did the impossible and this is the ending I got.
And this is what all this shit is about, honestly. Some sorry attempt at sorry, some pitiful pilgrimage towards any semblance of closure. She’d played V like a chess piece, pushed and pulled and toppled the woman with the tongue-bitten promise of a cure, all bleeding-lipped determination on their suicidal field trip at the spaceport.
That’s what V’d been, then, gun out and teeth bared—a film of raw power over desperation, the defiance of dying curled and hiding under the strength of her eyes. So Mi’d clung to V the whole way. Had stuck herself to V’s pillar until she didn’t need to.
And when she finally felt that she didn’t need to anymore—So Mi couldn’t forget it even if she tried. The look in V’s eyes when So Mi crumbled under the weight of who she is, a lying, sneering shadow of Myers, her vision failing and breaths strangled, titanium fingers begging to reach out but unable. Even through the lousy glitching of her optics, So Mi saw it: the anger, the fear—the pain. V’d sat there, staring at her.
(And yet, the kicker of all kickers, punch to the gut and knife to the heart:
“Could’ve told me the truth. Would’a helped, anyway.”)
Only V could be softened by time out in the streets of Night City. Torn out of skyscrapers and slam-dunked into reality, saw firsthand what the streets have done to its people and all that they’ve had to do, in turn. Felt herself what it’s like for Night City to dig its fangs into your palms, holding its jaws open so as not to let it chew you up, crush you sinew through bone. Charter Hill and Arasaka’d been her bubble for so many years and maybe seeing people out here up-close tore a little. Being one of them maybe tore her a whole lot more.
She touched So Mi’s cheek, then. Looked real long, and real hard, and without hesitation, chose to save So Mi’s life. Said it so simply, too, pulling So Mi into her arms: “time to go, So Mi.”
Only V.
(Didn’t even ask why—probably because V already knew, in a way. Who wouldn’t jump at the bit of the chance to save themselves. Who wouldn’t rip the hope out of some sorry, dying gonk for a glimmer of survival, claws and teeth and all. Who wouldn’t?
Only V.)
So Mi steels herself, sets her jaw, and dives. It takes her a second’s lag but information piles at her as soon as she gets her bearings. It’s like skirting along a pool, shallow before the deep. Shallow—mercenary. Ex-counter-intel at Arasaka. Handy with a cyberdeck. Gotten handier with a gun. Give her a suppressor and she’s the handiest of them all.
Jobs flit here and there, from rescues to assassinations like target practice. Communications with faces that warrant redactions, celebrities or politicians or something darker. A cyberware repository that reads like a treatise on creating the perfect cyberpsycho, armed to the teeth and built like a weapon. A legal document, too, transferring ownership of the Afterlife nightclub executed by one Rogue Amendiares. The purchase of Rogue’s penthouse suite preceded by news of Arasaka’s castration like it’s a celebration.
So Mi remembers the screamsheets from that time. A terrorist attack or internal failure—neither really made sense. With the context of Soulkiller, though—
(She’d thought it but was never able to say it out loud, because V never asked. Strong, V really is. So much stronger than her. No fear of the reaper. No moment but here and now, no time to think about if here and now is what erases her from tomorrow.)
Soulkiller. So Mi stares at the thread of rich information that leads to Arasaka, zig-zagging to its far-off corner of the net, its fortress. She feels her physical fingers twitch, itching to touch it, to follow its path, dive deeper.
She downloads what she needs with a flourish and starts pulling out of the shallows, pretending she doesn’t know that far deeper, far under, there sits the Blackwall’s manifestation in the translucent horizon.
So Mi liked the rockerboy flavor, once upon a time. Up in Brooklyn, surrounded by fraying bricks and the smell of her own burnt cooking, cigarettes, and the odd circuitry burn from one net-diving misstep or another. She’d been 19, all wrapped up in Lucas’s arms and dreams of eddies, notoriety, and power. Would take the world by storm, she said once. Stand next to Bartmoss up there in the netrunner claim to fame.
Now she’s in a formal dress with a collar and sleeves that conceal the chrome going from her skulljack down to the rest of her, sitting amidst the Afterlife crowd as just another face, nameless in her grace. They pass her table by, holler over her head, blow smoke her way, and she doesn’t mind. That’s a far-off dream now, anyway. Roadkill in the dirt.
V had dreamed the same, hadn’t she? Had seen herself climbing, beaten and bloody and glorious to the top where she’d sit next to Morgan Blackhand, Susan Forest, Weyland, Johnny Silverhand. Would go out with a bang, as all stone-skulled, twenty-somethings think soon as they first get chipped. Probably had that in mind when she stormed Arasaka with nothing but iron, the Relic, and its sickness sizzling in the undercurrent of her circuits.
(Sometimes winning isn’t all it’s cut out to be, is it? So Mi’s a beast of a netrunner in hiding, seen the Blackwall with her own eyes, felt it course through her spine, and lives in fear of it. V’s a living legend who could very well die of organ failure, unseen and unknown in a goddamn alley.)
So Mi knocks her fill of bourbon back. Relishes it in her mouth, sweeping her tongue across the burn like licking the seal to a love letter to both her and V, the people they could have been, people who could’ve made it.
She goes back to her hotel room late in the night with nothing. It’s fine. She’ll come back the next night, dressed the same way, drinking the same drinks, and even the night after if so’s the need. She’ll wait. Doesn’t mind it.
Couldn’t mind.
It’s been four nights of coming here when V finally walks into the Afterlife, and So Mi is only able to witness her entrance because the crowd of patrons cheers, hollers, raises drinks to her life, of all things.
V herself is smiling, though—too wide to be sober, too giddy to be sane, pumping a fist and keeling when a gonk slaps her too hard on the arm. But they don’t swarm her, no, because who would, to a living Afterlife legend, who’d dare? She slumps at the bar alone, exchanges words with the bartender, and stays there, hand flat on the bartop like a lifeline.
So Mi approaches the bar then, pointedly avoiding the looks thrown her way (who’d dare, see, who’d dare?) V’s served a cocktail with a sprinkling of what looks like chili flakes. So Mi gestures toward a bourbon bottle on the shelf, rolls her shoulder, and turns her head.
And V’s already looking at her from beneath her lashes, face slack, breathing out of her mouth. A second and her expression molds to a drunken look of abject delight, raising her head to show So Mi an eyeful of a smile with teeth.
So Mi’s swallowing. “V—”
“Song. So Mi, how ya been, choom? Moon been good to you?”
V’s voice is too loud. She’s hammered. She sways when she pushes off the bartop to hold So Mi by the wrist. “V, a second—”
“Guh–gotta tell me all ‘bout it, ya gotta—”
“Careful,” So Mi hisses because V almost falls backwards. She grabs V by the elbow and the sensors of her palm registers V’s skin as warm, as full, and concrete, and alive. “V, look, I—”
“—alright? I, ah—gotta delta, but we’ll catch up.”
“V, dammit, please.”
V’s off, though. Ambling and swaying into some solo goon’s grouchy, waiting arm. She’s eased into a back room, stumbling as she goes. So Mi has a mind to wait out here until she comes back out, but—“brave one, aren’t ya?” That’s the bartender, looking directly at her. Her skulljack—that’s all that should be visible at this angle. Doesn’t wanna risk it, though. She turns to face the woman behind the bar, burly and smile curious. “You anyone our living legend knows? And here I thought I’ve met all her friends.”
Better to say nothing in places like this. So Mi learned that from Alex at one point. She just shrugs, tries out a chuckle, and pays for her drink before turning away. Next night she comes back, people take to looking a little more closely at her, even in the face of her stalking, silent entry.
Third night after, even Rogue takes a peek from behind her closed curtains to get a look at So Mi, expression a monolith and eyes studious. V doesn’t look to be coming back, at all. So Mi tries not to think of how maybe it’s because of her that it’s become the case.
She leaves early that third night. Packs up her luggage, arranges transport for her netrunning setup, and books a suite at a different hotel. Keeps this one under the same name, though, surveillance cameras live and motion sensors set to trigger, just in case.
So Mi spends the fourth night after the encounter sat on her couch, staring at her netrunner chair. The net, then, again.
She keeps close to the surface.
A corpo datafort. Militech’s. That’s what started all this. Out of a sound decision from a gonk 19-year-old, borne out of dumb 19-year-old dreams and 19-year-old arrogance. Hindsight is never a good friend to anyone. Lucas had it right, back then, telling her it’s not worth it. She wonders what Lucas would say now, if he found out about all that’s happened after that Militech job. If So Mi showed up one day to show him she’s not dead, to tell him how badly she fucked up and kept fucking up.
(She looked him up one time, toying idly with the idea of going back home to Brooklyn just because. He moved on, left both the grief for So Mi and cutthroat teenage dreaming behind. Got himself a degree in Business, went into Sales, tried for Biotechnica and succeeded, then jumped ship for Arasaka after a particularly ludicrous offer.
Married now, Lucas. One kid in school and another on the way. So Mi figures she could be happy for him. Wasn’t what they both wanted, where they ended up, but—here they are.)
She’s thinking about that botched Militech dive now. Physical body jacked into a netrunning chair, looking up at the manifestation of Arasaka’s corrupted network, stretched long and far and teeming with information ripe for a dive. It’s a borderline childish notion playing around in So Mi’s brain, that of anyone on the planet, it’d be Arasaka who’d know where V is, what she’s up to, where she’s bound to go. Certainly after Konpeki—that much more after Mikoshi.
(A thought she doesn’t like: could be the FIA, too, who’s keeping tabs. She ignores it like a pro. Not getting within that radar with a hundred-foot-long pole.)
Konpeki, the sinkhole. Mikoshi, the inevitable end. So Mi taps into the Arasaka network now, gently, fingertips before fingers. Data sings under her palms like a lone instrument and tells her Arasaka’s wounds, about the murder of Saburo Arasaka, hemmed by half-truths, cold, corporate jargon, and something like a secret torn out of the datastream, sizzling, siphoned, consumed. Lays out the civil war of factions within its family and its walls, the desire in Yorinobu and the loyalty of Hanako—one hunger for chaos and the other for order.
The hunt for the murderers, them both smeared out of Arasaka’s repositories themselves, once upon a time once-trusted servants. One is of a disgraced bodyguard, the other a profile scorched beyond recognition like it’d been cycled over and over again with volatile Black ICE, chewed up, spat out, bitten into again. The nexus, this one—the legend. The beginning of the end. The harbinger dying of sickness.
With a breath to brace herself, So Mi plunges lower, in slow, slow whispers, wading through torn crisps of unusable data and burnt circuitry. She lets what’s intact of Arasaka’s walls tell her how many died and how hard they were cut down, how far they fell. Hanako Arasaka lies among the casualties as an unfortunate number and when So Mi dives, perhaps too deep, she distantly registers the hums of her internal cooling pick up to compensate. She swims past lines of fractured ICE and broken code. Sees, near the bottom, the vast emptiness in Arasaka’s underbelly. Shadowed, deathly silent, an abyss staring back at her like the yawning mouth of a beast.
The net, see, is no more than a trillion lines of code strung together to mimic something that functions like cogs, circuitry, a waking, working machine. It serves as it should: one function to one command, two responses to two inquiries.
But the Blackwall, what’s beyond it, feels more like tracing a nervous system to find a brain. Swimming in it is like wading through bloodstreams toward a heartbeat. A question is given a question, in turn. A request is given teeth, snapping and grinding.
And even in its emptiness, that’s exactly how it feels under Arasaka, within the phantom of Mikoshi: alive. Like something is undulating behind its walls and breathing, heady with a burning like the sensation of eyes boring into So Mi’s head. So Mi knows this feeling like she knows how the synth-skin at the back of her hand feels. Like she knows what it’s like to be beaten, dragged, ripped and reassembled plenty of times. A part missing each time, less herself with every dive.
The Blackwall. Seething, stinking traces of it pulse around her. She can feel her physical body twitch. She turns tail, swims up to the shallows and jumps back out into realspace without downloading anything. Decommissions her netrunning station with trembling hands and wide eyes, pulling out wires and disconnecting power.
She crawls in her nightmare that night, surrounded by flashes of red and the disembodied voices of the starving. Talons wind around her arms and teeth clamp her throat. Cables are jacked and crackling behind her head, into her palms, and lining her spine and the underside of her thighs. It is burning everywhere. Tearing, pulling, collapsing everywhere. She wakes up screaming.
She doesn’t let herself fall back asleep.
The first time President Myers asked her to breach the Blackwall, So Mi had blinked. Would’ve balked, if she were any younger, less blood on her hands and chips in her head. It had been something of a kind request, then—issued even as a challenge. Kid from Brooklyn turned FIA, turned netrunner supreme, to turn Blackwall countess, catching rogue AIs in her datastream?
“What for?” she’d asked Myers then, already trying to figure out how to best dive, thinking of new ways to slink past NetWatch and give them the finger right against their nose. Maybe even fracture some of their ICE, if she’s feeling particularly lucky. Could be good cause for a party around here, finally.
Myers had smiled in that way that doesn’t reach her eyes. “Nothing in particular. For now. Just see if you can do it. See what you can see back there.”
And to see a film-thin burn of something a scant inch behind the Blackwall sends her cortex into overdrive in half a second flat. Sizzles and spews smoke around the ears, too, once she’s jacked out, carrying with her a red-black blurring in her optics as she’s lugged up, thrown face-first into an ice bath.
Needed an upgrade, then. No organic ears lessens the likelihood of ear bleed straight from the cortex. Amplified netrunning power means a chunkier netrunner port and enough chrome and wires to support the bulk of it at her neck and throat. Next jump’s a little easier—even enjoyable. She slid past the red curtain behind the Blackwall and was able to make it a little further, a little deeper, getting glimpses of the rumbling where light doesn’t quite manifest right, where her fingers could only swipe shadow.
Even further from there. Even deeper. Even more cybernetic enhancements, bigger replacements. Where was it, in this timeframe, was the first time So Mi looked at a mirror and found machine more than human, 32,000 lines of code transposing her mourning into a replica of tears. Where was it in the length of these years? Or is it even there? Did it even happen?
There she’d been, a netrunning chamber fit into one woman. Myers’s right hand. Her weapon, her dog. Modified to all hell, all chassis with a breath of muscle, serial numbers instead of fingerprints, digital signature instead of DNA. Blackwall imprinted, burnt onto the backs of her optics like a realspace dream, a tunneling disease. A machine with a virus, though, is probably more apt. Can still feel the phantom buzzing of infected circuitry sometimes if she sits still enough.
Whenever Myers asked, after, wasn’t even really asking. A dole of a command. Not even trying to smile when she was looking So Mi in the eye and telling her to do it. And yet, funnily enough, to feel the most human was to dive, as Myers would tell her to. To feel the crackle of the Blackwall. To take in its pain.
(The ache, the tearing of being eaten alive. The strain of looking up at the thrashing red sun behind the Blackwall. Kneeling before it like worship, weeping like it’s holy, presenting herself like fresh harvest, a ripe devotee. It had all only been pain. Fire. A prison.)
Is the feeling the same for everyone, she wonders, getting chipped more than you need to? Or, maybe, exactly like you need to. Getting farther and farther from the meat as you go, more and more like you don’t really belong, anymore.
V. V has the whirring of mechanism behind her eyes. Has seams and threading cut into the synth-skin of her forearms, coprocessors built into her palms, bones sawn out and replaced with metal and hydraulics where her kneecaps turn to fibulae. Ribcage in that chest isn’t a joke too, given how much impact it could stand. Armoring weaved into her dermis wards off enough damage for a second wind. Reinforced bones. Recoil dampeners in her wrists and elbows. Hormone jumpstarts that could make her move five, ten seconds faster than the gonk pointing a gun at her, defying spacetime with just a click in her insides somewhere.
Only had the cyberdeck in her head as counter-intel a lifetime ago, So Mi knows. And then she’d been ripped out of that life, thrown somewhere sharper, and struggled to build herself up until she was strong enough to live as she was made to live, high and mighty and powerful.
Did it feel that way for her? Was there ever a moment of seeing the seams, the sleek, the imitation skin and thinking, well now, when did it start to get like this?
(The punchline, too: the Relic that kept her alive, that tried to kill her, that’s killed her anyway. Boosted by old-age, lost-science Militech software like maybe a little something more could make her forget the killing her part more often.)
Myers. The FIA. The Blackwall. So long ago now, those. Got new parts now, a body that So Mi dislikes a little less when she passes mirrors. She’s looking at her hands, flexing fingers that still don’t feel right to her, somehow. Like moving into a new house, walking past walls and windows and stepping through doors that don’t feel like they’re the right size. She wonders if it’s an apt comparison—if she’ll ever get to feeling at home here in this body at all.
(Dress looks good on you, V had said to her the first time they met eyes, living and breathing in the same space, a darling crinkle at her eye to match. So Mi’d been surprised enough to smile.
Almost even laughed. Felt like she belonged at that moment, stupidly enough. Got to feel some fleeting semblance of normal.)
So Mi squeezes her fists—still not too hard—and could easily imagine fragments of the Blackwall come out of her knuckles if she angles her hand just right.
Curled up on the couch, So Mi turns her head to stare at the netrunner chair set up near the balcony, still dim from lack of power and cold with disuse. The chair’s the closest she has to a lifetime long passed. Brooklyn, humanity, 19.
Night City’s a black, howling midnight outside the window, dotted with glowing billboards and neon signs. She stands up. Used to do some of her best dives this late in the night, anyway.
“Tell me you’re not going that far again.”
So Mi twists her lips at that. Shepard, her good doctor, all wrinkles and gray hair and quiet, gentle wisdom, just stares at her on the holo. He understands her enough at this stage to know when she’s being stubborn. Doesn’t stop him from going on, anyway.
“Two weeks you’ve been there, So Mi. Someone who doesn’t want to be found won’t be found, deep in the net or out in the waking world. You should know.”
“It’s like you don’t know who I am and what I can do. It’s a little hurtful.”
“Sure I do. It’s why I’m telling you all this.” Shepard sighs, rubs a finger up and down the bridge of his nose. “And, have to occur to you, eventually. Saying a lot that she’s famous and she can still hide from you. Maybe she just wants to live out the—”
“Don’t go there. You don’t know V.”
“Two weeks of nothing tells me enough, though. Blew you off at the bar and then radio silence? C’mon, So Mi.”
“Alright then, you don’t know me.” Scratch that he does. But So Mi’s made fantastic business of putting on a good face, bullshitting that she has a good plan when she has little, or none. “Night City’s a speck. I’ve found more elusive needles in bigger haystacks before.”
“Right. In a past life. You seem to always forget that. I hope none of this means you’ll be diving even more than you should be.”
“M’not an idiot, y’know. You don’t have to worry about that.”
“So Mi,” and here it is, Shepard bracing himself with a great inhale of air: “you’re in recovery. Not just your body, not just. You are. The whole of you. I don’t have to tell you what could happen if you went back to the same door you came out of.”
(The NUS, the FIA. Burning her retinas by staring straight into the beyond of the Blackwall. Reaching in, pulling something out, cradling it to her diaphragm like a knife in the gut. Traded muscle for steel. Bloodstreams for circuitry.
Shepard doesn’t need to tell her, no.)
“I’ll be careful,” So Mi says without looking at the holo. Seriously enough that Shepard quiets, even dispenses with his trademark clicking tongue of disbelief. “Just have to find her, Shep, and that’s it. Hitting pause on any more diving.”
“Why is it so important to find her?”
“I’m here ‘cause of her. She gave me this. Didn’t have to, state I was in. But she did anyway. And now she’s dying and… haven’t I fucked people over enough?”
“Guilt, then?”
Is it? Could’ve told me the truth, V said. Beaten and broken and still carried So Mi to the shuttle, tore up the ticket that they both then knew had always, always been meant for just one. Took her a day to leave an imprint on So Mi’s mind, before she even knew So Mi. Weeks more to stick herself in So Mi’s circuits like a web, spun somewhere too deep for any scratching to reach. Left her here, anyway. Left her to find her own way out.
(Does So Mi feel guilt for anything else, if at all? Reed—yes. Both his deaths had been in large part due to her doing. Both his deaths walk her dreams some nights. He’d been a pillar too, to So Mi, some years and years ago. The closest she had to a friend in the snake pit that Myers dared call her agency, her government.
He’d lied to her, certainly, but they were lies he believed. Sometimes So Mi wishes he was able to teach her that part, too—believing in the lies you say. They had just enough time together for her to only get the lying part right.)
“Maybe.” She shrugs. Thinks she’s gonna end it there, but Shepard waits quietly on the holo long enough that she’s able to think up of more things to say. She looks straight at Shepard then. “Just... have to—see her.”
Shepard sighs. “Alright—fine. You’re an adult. I’m not gonna worry about you more than I should.” So Mi smirks to that, impish, feigning arrogance, and watches Shepard roll his eyes behind his spectacles. He shakes his head, too. His expression is still calm, though. Even when he asks this: “but… you know to tell me when you feel it, right?”
So Mi feels her fingers twitch. Will she still feel it? Them? The Blackwall, the beyond of it, that starving rumbling of rogue AIs like the belly of a long-forgotten, spiteful god, itching to swim up, swim out, devour everything in its path—
“Yes,” she says steadily. “‘Course, I do.”
Shepard clicks his tongue. He still smiles, though, says, “good. Happy trails, then. Be seeing you.”
“Yeah. Soon. Just gotta… do what I have to do.”
“I know. Need you back here for a checkup. Be careful.”
So Mi lays it all out on the forefront of her mind, the next she goes plunging into the net—never farther from the shallows, though, no. V’s profiles: remnants of the corporate and mercenary. The jobs she’s taken up and finished. The many addresses she has on file and the spoofed identities to go with them. Cars, spending activities, boutiques she loves to shop in and restaurants she goes to eat.
Contacts. Her favorite ripper. The friend she has in the same street. Fixers who call her up for the meatiest of all the meaty jobs, throwing her to the dogs because they know she’ll make it out. The nomad clan that has her on speed dial: about two-thirds of them, actually.
So Mi downloads, catalogs, and tags it all before she jacks out. Night City’s but another junk of haystack.
Days. Feet to the ground. Old-school. It’s like going on a field trip, So Mi thinks—a field trip of V’s sights and sounds, a drive down her streets and her people. So Mi’s already seen Afterlife, already seen Rogue Amendiares throwing her a bit of the look. Now she’s seeing more: changing neon, switches in radio tunes, and even more out there in the Badlands because it makes sense for V to make it all the way there. She’s too big for just the concrete of the city. She’s too great to just stay in.
So Mi hovers, mostly, like the bird she was, is, could still be. She jackrabbits across cameras to watch Dino Dinovic speak curse after curse, yelling at one patron or another to chill out and not bother any other gonks. Does the same to the turrets and cams in Regina Jones’s tower, watching her slave over holocalls and terminals, cataloguing names and sorting which got through therapy, which didn’t, which ought to get some of it.
Idles by the basketball court out in Heywood, sat with some of the locals and betting on one side or the other while Sebastian Ibarra watches match after match with them all, his age masking the apparent danger So Mi knows him to have. Walks away, soon as he turns to her, too, just to be safe. Does the same with Wakako Okada, playing no more than three rounds on a pachinko machine before she’s off, coolly walking past a Tyger Claw throwing eyes at her in the corner.
Muamar Reyes—she drives past him just chilling there at the overlook by the dam. At Dakota Smith’s garage, she sits on an overturned hunk of fridge masquerading as a bench while Dakota’s boys look her car over with a whistle. It’s a rental Herrera and when they tell her everything’s in order, that maybe it’s the Badlands’ open heat beating down on the sunroof that’s making the interior so warm, she thanks them and cranks the AC to max, driving away.
She’d listened in on semblances of conversations as much as she could, exchanges amplified by the focus of her scans. Regina has V on speed dial but V didn’t pick up. Muamar left a voicemail about that text he sent her about a car that she hasn’t replied to yet. Dakota is the last and latest to have sent her any congratulations for a gig well done, just disabling a control tower of all things up in Raffen Shiv territory.
Vik Vektor, her ripper, has a fairly suspicious clinic in a basement, of all places. So Mi couldn’t very well march in there with the excuse of a checkup—couldn’t lay out all her chrome for him for anything, wouldn’t be able to hide any of it from him either. So she just stands there by the stairs, cigarette in hand, looking up at the sky and thinking how horrible it is, how the sunset looks in Night City. Backdropped by smoke, and concrete, and the humdrum of violence, of neon, of howling ads and roaring engines.
Forget that at one point, So Mi loved this same kind of skyline through the window of her Brooklyn apartment. Lived in it: the noise, the wakefulness, siphoning energy from the lights and life of New York city for another long night cruising the net—an even longer day cracking open a datafort like it’s a walnut between her fingers. She’d yell at neighbors for fighting too loudly and get yelled at back for blasting thrashing rock music. She’d laugh about all of it later with Lucas, smoking up a chimney and their kisses dark and smokey.
Don’t think about that right now.
She looks at her feet to shake the thoughts off. Dirty, her shoes. Mud-caked at the soles, dust-smeared everywhere else. Made worn by days, long drives and longer walks here in Night City, shuffling and idling and turning, returning to and from around wrong corners.
“Could go in, you know,” someone says behind her. She bristles only slightly, turns her head and sees a shaggy head of blonde hair, dark eyeshadow and darker lipstick to go with it. “Vik’s free, far as I know. Next appointment is in the morning.”
So Mi only lags in responding because she does a quick scan and an even quicker lookup. Just a twitch at her brow to show that she does it, too. She finds her in the catalogue: Misty Olszewski. Proprietor of some new-age, new-scop store she calls her Esoterica. There’s a guarded kind of warmth to her that seeps out from under the grave makeup, slight smile and raised brows and all.
So Mi can see it, V being good friends with Misty. They look at people the same, without cruel intentions, with an open hand to those in need. Just, with Misty, a lot less scanning behind her eyes.
“No, I.” So Mi clears her throat some. “Don’t need to. Least, not right now. Just… heard there was a ripper ‘round here and wanted a look-see. For reference.”
Misty hums and gives her a once over. So Mi’s threading shows on her throat anyway, she knows. She allows the scrutiny. Tries out a smile, too.
“Figured. Look like you’re looking for someone,” Misty observes. So Mi feels her brow quirk.
“Do I?”
“Anybody I maybe know?” So Mi says nothing. Just tips ash by her foot, exhaling smoke into the air. Misty hums again. “Nobody ever thinks to come looking for anybody here. Think this place s’too small for the likes of anyone worth looking for, maybe. They don’t even consider it.”
So Mi feels herself pause. Feels her body shift just very, very briefly. “That so?”
Misty turns to her to give her a flash of an easy smile, eyes crinkled to match. Could see it. Could really see it, V chewing the fat with Misty, talking about everything and nothing and what does it matter what they talk about, really, as long as it’s them two.
“Mm. Almost nice of you to come looking for somebody here. Thought of us, and all,” Misty says. She gestures to So Mi in general next, twiddling her fingers. “Kinda remind me of someone, on that note.”
“Yeah? Who?”
“Friend of mine. Don’t know you yet to know for sure if you’d get along.”
“Mm. Remind you of them, how?”
“You… stand a certain way. Both of you. Woman on a mission, kinda.” She blinks at So Mi. Tilts her head like a curious animal. “But, also—that you don’t mind finding yourself in all sorts of places. Don’t mind bumping into dead-ends too much.”
“Read all of that just from looking at me, huh?” So Mi asks, voice low, head down. Misty hums again. So Mi watches her cross her arms on her chest and look up at the same sky So Mi had been, moments ago.
“Just familiar. Talkin’ outta my ass, you could call it.” Misty chuckles and So Mi does too, albeit quietly. “But, whoever you’re looking for, might have a better chance seeing them with some other friend in some other place. Won’t catch anybody but customers here at this time of day.”
The strip club down the street, Misty must mean. So Mi shrugs, stomps out her cigarette, and regards Misty with a small smile. Tips her head at Misty too, as Misty turns to go. “Thanks. Keep it in mind.”
“G’luck.”
Misty goes, ambling back into her shop with nary a look back. So Mi looks at the sky again. How many more friends, places, and moments are there that make up the whole of V?
She lets her eyes go blue for a second while she browses her catalogue again, thought flicking through cards, tracing names, and profiles, and whens and wheres, never mind if she’s seen them already or no. Again, if so’s the need.
Panam Palmer, bosslady of the nomad clan squatting out in the Badlands. Kerry Eurodyne, kicked back in luxury supreme. River Ward’s in the hospital, watching over his nephew. Having trouble paying for therapy, them, but otherwise adequately isolated.
Judy Alvarez—and this one, this part, makes So Mi ache a little on behalf of V—found her way out east, left V a gentle goodbye, the softest breakup, that V hasn’t replied to but watched at least 9 times the day it went into her inbox, nearly 2 months ago.
Jackie Welles. Long dead. So Mi pauses because—Konpeki Plaza.
Interred at North Oak. Misty’s beau at the time of his death: got text messages and call histories to back it up, long and winding and sweet. Good friend to V: have a couple of records of firearm purchases to both their names, eddies chipped in by one if the other’s wallet fell short, and a list of jobs both botched and won. One-time Valentino with some arrests to match. Survived by his mother, Guadalupe Welles, proprietor of a bar down at the Glen.
So Mi blinks back to realspace and starts the walk to her car.
El Coyote Cojo. It’s frayed, chipped, graffiti’d like all of Heywood is, but the noise spilling out from inside tells So Mi it’s strong in all its worn glory. Held up and held together by street-calloused, loveworn hands, a beacon of a dive here to the locals if the foot traffic is anything to go by. Flickers of shapes against light flit across the windows on the second floor, pulsing like heartbeats, moving around like life.
She imagines V inside, laughing it up with the bartender. Could imagine V bobbing to the tempo of the music, too, with Welles or some other friend. Doesn’t want to interrupt any of it if V’s in there and all those are happening. So she kicks back, sits herself down on the steps, off to the farthest side, and tries searching for stars on Night City’s sky.
People come and go, pass her by with heavy stomps and drunken shuffling, once even needing to tell a drunk gonk off for bumping his knee against her shoulder. They let her be, is what’s important. Don’t stop to talk or don’t pause to stare. Their steps don’t break pace, whether in or out, and to So Mi that’s fine. She has enough words for just one person only. Has just enough energy to deal with just that, if she’ll ever come to dealing with.
The door opens behind her again, just a couple minutes after the last time. The clicking of steps, then a pause. One that maybe means their vision is swaying, or they’re lighting a cigarette for the road. The footfalls pick up again in a moment, click-clack down the steps, and then stop. Shuffle. Someone plops down to sit next to her and she turns and, well, at least the lighting a cigarette part, she got right.
“Didn’t quit after all, huh?” V says, a chuckle strung around the cadence of her voice, spilling out with cigarette smoke. The corners of her mouth are quirked. So Mi feels like she’s relearning to take breaths, gaping at V. Feels like the moment is one slow, caving exhalation.
V looks So Mi in the eye, conscious and fearless, and So Mi remembers to open her mouth. To say something back.
“After you blew me off? No. Just a hitch.”
“Been three weeks.”
“A little over three. Been counting, I see. Meant to hide from me, did you?”
V’s smirking. She’s turned away, though, ripped from So Mi the luxury of seeing what she has there in her eyes. Keeps So Mi from finding out if there’s any hate in there or murder or any kind of hurting. So Mi doesn’t know if she likes this better, not being able to see. “Why are you back here?” V asks.
“I… don’t think this is the place to—”
“Tell me.” She turns back to So Mi as she says it, and her eyes have hardened just a touch. Just enough to give So Mi some pause and close her mouth. “If… you need something, So Mi—”
“Found out what you did,” So Mi says quietly. Something flickers in V’s eyes. Something twitches on her cheek, like she’s trying not to change expressions, to not let So Mi see. “Found out you’re—still dying.”
Silence. With the faint thumping of music behind them, the distant rumbling of a car and its dragged out horn, V takes a second to breathe out cigarette smoke, eyes down. “Come to see me off, then?”
“It’s not that. Wanted to see you. Wanted to…”
And So Mi trails off, sorry as that is. Dumb as that is, having wanted nothing but to see, to talk to the woman for the past three weeks. Dove and plunged again and again into the net for her, even. Went so far as to have thought once or twice how easy it all would be if she just reached past the Blackwall, sic one or two rogue AIs out into realspace to find V’s signature in the waking world, ping it at So Mi like a she’s a pink fucking elephant target gallivanting down the street.
Where are the words now? Strung up in her throat. Curled under the earth and buried alive. Wheezing under her tongue.
V doesn’t seem to mind that So Mi drops it, then and there. “Aren’t you cold?” she just asks. So Mi makes a confused sound but otherwise gives a reply.
“No. Don’t think so.”
“Asking ‘cause we could go for some coffee.” V taps So Mi’s knee with her knuckles until So Mi looks up to follow the trail of her finger pointing to a mid-rise across the street. “Got a flat up there. Preem coffee machine, sorta-scopy beans. Can’t be a chooser ‘round here in NC, though.”
So Mi shifts, looking V in the eye. “Inviting me up?”
“Mm. If you want. Never really had any… proper time together, I guess, you and me. There was always something intense going on.”
Intense is one word for it. V must see it, So Mi’s clipped little smile, because she smirks and bumps So Mi’s shoulder with her own. Looks at So Mi sidelong. “Unless you wanna keep going for bourbon?”
“Huh. How’d you know about that?”
“Claire. Afterlife—the bartender. Got lots of…” V’s face screws briefly in a wince as she gets up, rubbing dust off her pants. “Inquiries the night after you came up to me.”
“What’d you tell ‘em?”
“Choom. From an old life. You comin’?”
V’s got her hand out at So Mi. V’s still this, speaking in the tactile language of people reaching for people, feeding them warmth off an open hand. So Mi lags but reaches for V’s hand in the end, letting V pull her up, weights and wires and all.
(She’d been a body of metal then, too. Wires and electricity and raw, hulking power. V still held her like she was something easily cracked under pressure, like stained glass that needed to be held close, gently, with both hands. Maybe So Mi was, back then. Made too brittle by the Blackwall, cracked in places from running, getting shot at, falling. Could’ve done more for V if she wasn’t, for certain. Might’ve been able to stop more wounds from ripping open, seen the bullets before they could make impact.
Pain—too much of it in all memories.)
They walk in silence, cross the street with V’s hands in her pants pockets, eyes studiously averted. So Mi follows her all the way. Down the sidewalk, past the nighttime people, through V’s apartment building’s scanner after a quick swipe at her hand to give her authorization for entry.
And they’re still—quiet, down the hallway, eyeing faded walls and scrawled Heywood scripture, skulls and snakes and roses around names and quotations. Up the elevator, listening to its mechanism hum and ding open at the right floor.
Inside, V doesn’t even bother to turn on any lights. So Mi figures it’s alright. V’s got floor-to-ceiling windows that wash the space in rich neon and moonlight, gives it this underexposed, over-contrasted halation, a half-dim secret sequestered in a quiet corner unit. V weaves into what looks like a kitchen and gets the coffee machine started, just like she said. Takes the time to put on a record on the way there, too.
So Mi hovers until she can pick apart the right words, the right moment. The coffee machine hums. The record in the corner goes on. There aren’t any good picks of words, honestly, for what she’s going to ask, so she just thinks, fuck it. “V,” first, and V tilts her head higher to signify she’s listening. “How long do you have?”
A beat. “Should be two more months,” said quietly. Softly, like she’s putting something to sleep. “Play my cards right, could be three.”
So Mi takes that in. Blinks when V turns to smile at her. Thinks, do people ever wonder what it feels like, trying to outrun a clock?
Trying to outrun a time bomb, a sickness, death. So Mi has an answer under her tongue for whenever someone, anyone, thinks to ask her. It feels like this—like being aware, hyperaware, beware of what’s coming. Like suddenly noticing insignificant details about this life, about what’s around it: the smell of rust in a dank room, the taste of it when blood gets on your tongue from a loose tooth, the way people are going about the streets far too slowly, without regard, nary a worry in the world. Feels like being angry all the time, because why me and not you?
And yet, no answer for, what’s it like, knowing you did everything and knowing you’re still going to die?
The answer to that shouldn’t be any different from the first, should it? But V—in this apartment, surrounded by the light smell of brewing coffee, backdropped by Night City lights and the vague crooning of some old, homey rock song—doesn’t look the least bit angry. In the half-light she looks to So Mi like a soldier without a war, like a deity without a congregation, lonely and wandering and tired. And she does look it—tired. In this arm-span distance, So Mi can see that her hair is longer, that there’s some gray in the darkness of the roots. That there’s more nicks on her chin and cheeks than before, that the upward curl of her lips doesn’t quite reach her eyes, threadbare like shorn curtains in the night.
V isn’t any older than 24, no, and yet, she looks like she’s lived two lifetimes and had watched the first one end with wide, crying eyes. Like she’s watching her second collapse, one leg after the other and breaths dying out, leaned back, resigned, her eyes dry.
“I make it a habit to visit. Mamá Welles, I mean. When I can,” V says suddenly, moving again, producing two cups from a cupboard to fill with coffee. Her back is turned to So Mi this way and the planes of her shoulders are wide, strong, but she shrugs and one of them lowers more slowly than the other. Looks like an injury. So Mi wants to touch it for herself and assess it. Wants to reach out, feel the jag and wear of V’s lifetimes under her hand and squeeze.
“Jackie Welles’s mother. Jackie—from Konpeki.”
“Mhm. Good friend. The best of ‘em.”
“I’m sorry. For… your loss.”
When V turns around, it’s with two cups of coffee and a fleeting smile. She shakes her head, says, “he deserved more,” and gestures for So Mi to take a seat at the counter. Places their coffees there, too. “Hit a… lot of people hard, when he went. S’maybe why I’m making an effort to see everyone much as I can. Might… hurt less for ‘em, then.”
So Mi doesn’t sit. She feels herself frown. “Sounds a lot like you’re giving up.”
“S’that what you’ve come back here to say? Could’a just sent me another text for that.”
There’s no bite to it but So Mi recoils just the same. V’s expression isn’t betraying any sort of fury, though. Not one touch of contempt. If anything, she’s smirking at So Mi, impish but with meaning, and makes a gesture again for So Mi to sit with her. So Mi does, after a second. She can’t look at V suddenly.
“It’s—not. Really not.”
“Then have at it.”
“You should be living your best life now. Cured and everything.”
A sip of coffee. V’s just looking at her, eyes searching So Mi’s face for something So Mi couldn’t bring herself to ask aloud. The why of it—why did she? Why did you, V, give that life to me? Why send me to the Moon, why give me the cure, why bring me to life, to long, happy years that could’ve been for you?
V speaks with her bottom lip flush to the rim of her cup. So Mi’s eyes inadvertently dart down to look. “But I’m not, am I?”
“Really gonna make me ask you out loud?”
“Sound like you want to. Or gotta.” V looks away, looks at her coffee. “Said have at it, didn’t I?”
“Why’d you do it?”
“‘Cause you needed me to.”
So Mi consciously keeps her lip from wobbling. “Load of bull, V. You needed the neural matrix much as I did. And I was dying anyway.”
“You’re not now, though. I’n’t that something?” V takes a sip again, even nudges So Mi’s mug, tipping her chin to say go on, drink. “That cure always belonged to you, So Mi. You found it. Damn sure fought your way to it. Wasn’t gonna… wasn’t gonna take that from you.” A pause. A clipped smile. “Even with the… lies and all that scop. It was yours.”
So Mi frowns. V must see it, even with her eyes down at her swirling coffee, or at least feels it, because she asks, “not what you were hoping to hear?”
“Dunno what… dunno what I was hoping to hear, honestly.”
“Would it help if I was mad at you?”
So Mi blinks. V turns to her, staring again, and then cracks a smile like she’d been joking. Like this is heaps of a fucking joke and she isn’t on a clock even worse than the one she had before. So Mi wants to hit her with a good one, collapse her system just once to get some of the tension out. Or maybe she wants V to do it to her instead. Or. Anything like that. Anything to make her feel like she belongs in this body. Like she hadn’t ripped it out of someone’s hands and left them beaten and bloody.
Anything.
“Would help if you shot me too, or something. I don’t know.”
“Jesus, Song.”
“‘M’not kidding, V.”
V blinks. Really looks at So Mi. And how she regards So Mi here, eyes soft and mouth slack, takes So Mi back to the spaceport, to the train, V just watching and listening to her life unravel, to understanding what it means for her that the neural matrix can only be used once. The wring of her hands. The daze in her expression. The little twitch at the corner of her mouth like she’d have bared her teeth if not for—
“I understood you,” V says quietly. “It’s what you needed. For someone to understand. What it’s like to… feel trapped and. With no hope. And with no one, really no one else, that can help.” A look to So Mi, then. Something torn open and tender, peeking out of an open wound. “Saw how... much you hurt, So Mi. Wanted to set you free.”
Only V.
Again, So Mi’s lip trembles. She couldn’t stop it this time. If V notices, she doesn’t let on. Turns away, in fact. “So… I don’t need to be mad at you. It just. I dunno— hurt, maybe. Bein’ lied to like that. But, again, I get it.”
Hurt—that’s even worse. So Mi’s next inhale is tremulous and she finally picks up her coffee to take a sip.
V’s carrying on. “And… y’know, I had what you didn’t. Options, I mean. Had Mikoshi back then, so it was a little easier.” A pause to give So Mi an eyeful of a wry grin, a shrug of one shoulder. “Although… didn’t quite work out the way I was hoping it to. Not your fault at all, that.”
For So Mi, what else is there to say? It falls out of her mouth lousy. Quiet, shivering, crawling with all its might: “I’m... so fucking sorry, V.”
“Don’t be.”
V has reached out to touch her, shoulder first and then her cheek. V’s eyes are curious here, eyeing her chrome, and she obliges by pushing aside her hair, lets V have a look at the cybernetics shining where synth-skin couldn’t cover.
Cyberaudio cribs for ears. Titanium for a neck, curving to her jaw, a long line of it down the entirety of her spine, flanked by synth-skin covering her scapula and most of her waist and hips. She could adequately pass now as heavily chromed more than a full on ‘borg, maybe. Just gotta pick the right clothes.
V finds So Mi’s neural port and touches there gingerly, soft like a lover, hesitant like a new one. “‘Member jacking into you here,” she murmurs like she’s skating across a memory. So Mi can, too. She lets her eyelashes flutter. Goes back to when V insisted to check diagnostics, eyes hard and jaw set, keen like she could do fuck all to make So Mi feel better. Like she was hell-bent on trying, anyway. “‘Member… seeing all the damage. Was scared as all hell, So Mi. Thought you were gonna flatline any time.”
“Half-did, to be fair.”
“Guess so. Scared me shitless, anyway.”
She leans back, looks So Mi over and some concern has inched into the curious searchlights of her eyes. Something in So Mi’s chest feels like it squeezes at the sight of it. So Mi breathes, sheds her jacket and shows V the synth-skin hiding under, the load of it that couldn’t be covered by her halter. Her arms, smooth until you find the titanium at the back of them, sleek and shining. The thick seams of metal around the knobs of her shoulders, the exposed braids of circuitry at her elbows. The back of her neck bunched with wires, the cybernetic threading running criss-cross across her shoulder blades, her joints, her throat.
(A second lifetime. She wonders what V makes of it. If V thinks this second chance looks good on her, if it had been worth it at all.)
Her fingers—replaced now with something more human, soft lines and synth-skin and all. V holds them like they’re delicate, a smile on her face. She looks at So Mi and the happiness in there couldn’t be faked. Not by Alex behind a behavioral imprint. Not even by Reed on his best undercover day. “Did a fine job on you up there on the moon,” she murmurs.
“Yeah. They did.”
“What was it like?”
So Mi blinks. She’d been asleep, understandably, for most of it. She can remember being pulled out of the shuttle, though. Can recall the flurry of faces-light-walls as she was strapped to a gurney, flanked by the stomp of feet and the echoes of shouting voices. Too much internal damage to the body, they’d said. Could lose her any second. Pumped her with shot after shot of adrenaline enough to kill a man. It takes a second for medication to dilute in artificial arteries, see. She needs a swift, hulking kick of anything to feel it.
“A relief,” she says, and V smiles small. She flexes the fingers on V’s palms, twiddling them like the first time they were installed, testing motion, response, sensation. Just warmth there on V’s hand—it’s the sensation her fingers are picking up. “Took a few days before I could get up long enough to jack into anything, though. Worked on the neural matrix soon as I was able.
“And…” A rough laugh here. She averts her eyes but keeps her fingers where they are. V’s taken to running a thumb along the thin seams lining her knuckles, anyway. Soothing—another sensation her hand picks up. “It was… laughably simple. The work on the neural matrix. Had to just crack its ICE, disrupt its cycle long enough to issue a command, and…”
Her first breath, when she woke up after the induced coma. The smell of antiseptic. The taste of being alive at the back of her tongue like a sting. She looks at V again, and V’s just listening, watching her.
Feeling self-conscious now. So Mi shifts on her seat. V picks up for her: “did the deed for you, just like that?”
“Might be diluting the process a little, but… yeah.”
“After that?”
“Therapy.” So Mi pauses. “Physical and then some. Had to… had to make sure the new parts were compatible. Got some joint replacements after some locking issues, but…”
V smiles a little wider. “Here you are.”
So Mi breathes a chuckle out of her nostrils. “Yeah,” another breath, “here I am.”
“But... Do you still… you still feel ‘em?”
She swallows, asks, “them past the Blackwall?” and when V nods, “no. Dream about ‘em, maybe, but… can’t hurt me anymore.”
“’M’happy for you.” V nods again, squeezes So Mi’s hand in hers like she means it. She does mean it, though, So Mi just knows. And So Mi stares at their linked hands, feeling her lips twist.
To her horror, to her infinite shame, she realizes her hand is shaking. She is. Unable to sweat, 29,000 lines of code transpose her nerves, the lump in her throat, the feeling ripe in her chest, to shivering instead. She grits her teeth, professes, quietly, “V. Wanna—wanna help you.”
“Don’t think you can, So Mi.”
And here, as V says it, V looks her most human. Moonlight cuts her jaw fierce, makes her outlines sharp. Inching death has given her shadows under her eyes and yet, has deepened her laugh lines, given her some crow’s feet that looks good with the way she smiles, crooked and melancholic but—real. She’s a beating heart bleeding gold in the thorned chalice of this city, draped in neon lights and muzzle flash like sunlight through church windows. She’s softness under strength, a warm fire under power, and So Mi flew from the moon, crawled here to find her, to beg at her feet.
“You don’t know that.”
V shrugs. Again, one shoulder falling first before the other. So Mi allows herself the touch—to grip the bad shoulder in her hand, squeezing it like it’ll do anything for V. How many of these are there, she wonders. “You ever think about how many wounds you’ve gotten out there?”
“Do’n’t matter, does it? All healed now.”
So Mi tilts her head, looks V in the eye. Asks, again, “what do you think, though? How many?”
V blinks. She exhales and the air of it trembles between them. Quietly: “too many.”
(So Mi doesn’t find it hard at all to remember. V and the Blackwall burns on her knuckles, the corners of her eyes, and around her ears. The rip of metal and sinew when a bullet punched through—the lump, the sick color of a bruise when it wasn’t able to. Fractured bones. Sliced muscle. A bleeding lip, torn, bitten in defiance.
Really far too much of it: pain. In the snapshots of their lives.)
So Mi allows herself another—further. She reaches out to touch V’s jaw, cups V’s cheek, and watches V breathe. V’s whole frame shudders like a tower coming undone. Like it truly takes a whole fucking lot to pull herself upright every damn day, putting on a show for the people, the streets, the city.
Tired. They meet eyes, connection swamping So Mi’s insides like sharing the Blackwall for the first time. So Mi’s body reminds her to breathe, so she does. And then she inches forward before it can remind her to control herself and takes V’s lips in a kiss.
V takes it. Takes her in. So Mi slides off her stool and crushes the two of them together further, grips tight, breaths rushed, rumbling, gone.
(Crawled to find her, So Mi did. Begging for forgiveness. Begging for salvation. Begging for her.)
So Mi’s trying to slide V’s coat off and V breathes out a whisper of restraint, touching So Mi’s wrist, huffing hot air against So Mi’s mouth. “So Mi—are you su—”
“Yes.”
Didn’t even let V finish. Something in V’s posture shifts. So Mi’s wrist still in hand, she stands up and So Mi’s almost forgotten it, how tall she is. All broad shoulders and long legs, strong arms, lethal power in her cyberdeck and the shapes of her hands, taking life as well as they can give it.
(Larger than life, bigger than any time bomb that dares to sit in the shell of her soul and tell her that her time’s up—)
Coat goes on the floor. Buttons undone by quick fingers, kisses with tongue, some teeth, some sounds. The rushing sounds of their tangling footsteps, the struggle to get up the goddamn stairs. So Mi hits her elbow on the railing and relishes V’s laugh against her lips when she groans, pained and annoyed. V’s gasp when she keels over backward on the last step, So Mi falling above her and clutching the back of her head protectively. The little laughter. The shuffle of their hands and feet, pulling each other up, close, together.
And on the bed, V looks at So Mi, unguarded, running her hand over the shine of exposed chrome on So Mi’s belly, fingering into the seams of threading going up to her nipples, her clavicles, her throat. So Mi’s chest shivers—10,000 lines of code to register the sensation of V’s touch, 22,000 more to translate it to a shudder, an itch, a wanting. V’s still watching her. So Mi swallows. “It’s… it’s not pretty, but—”
“You’re beautiful,” V says softly in that voice of hers that’s tried and true, that’s rough in all the right places, a flutter of fingers across gravel: her voice that means it, whatever she says. So Mi wonders if she’ll ever get to hear V say something to her that she doesn’t mean. Wonders if that day will make her weep.
V digs her nails into the waistband of So Mi’s pants and pulls—watches the sleek fabric of it peel away to expose the marriage of synth-skin and polished chrome that are her legs, brushing her thumbs along the threading at So Mi’s knees and the knobs of her feet. She looks up at So Mi, then, rubs calloused palms all the way from So Mi’s ankles to her thighs, her pelvis, her hips. A question from V: “can you feel me?”
A fair inquiry. So Mi smirks, says, “yes,” and V’s smile gets crooked. “Not—like any… anything ‘ganic, but.”
“Could help.” So Mi quirks a brow. Between So Mi’s legs, V pulls her hips flush, her hand caressing the path it makes up to So Mi’s diaphragm, throat, and then her neural link. She strokes there with meaning. “Do you think I could…?”
V’s been in there a few times already. One or two times to check diagnostics. Another to draw the brunt of the Blackwall’s strength once upon a time, siphoning it straight from So Mi’s cortex to her own, expelling it out to realspace to burn and fry FIA agents to pitch black nothing. So Mi just turns her head and hums, closing her eyes to the sounds of V’s personal link whirring out, to the familiar click of her jacking in.
So Mi can feel her as she delves inside, cold but soothing like a salve, threading herself into So Mi’s circuitry like she knows this place already, she does, yes, she knows it here. V presses lovingly against the walls of So Mi’s security, cooing into layers of firewall and thousands of ciphers and humming Black ICE nestled in the unseen seams. So Mi lets V in without further preamble: pulls open the doors and hits the switch on the gates like she’s welcoming someone home.
And V plunges. She whispers into So Mi’s circuits until they tell her their names in the language of a technical marvel, until V knows who made this body for So Mi and how it was forged, polished, made born with a fragment of So Mi’s soul and the million lines of code that simulate feeling, breathing, beating. V strips So Mi bare, unearths receptors to lay them out naked, twists every inch of comprehensible sensor in So Mi’s body awake, aware, awash with sensation. Plays So Mi like an instrument yielding between her fingers until So Mi’s body—sings.
Sings—like the full-body shiver that comes when V caresses her thigh up to her hip. Like the burning awareness of V pressed close, flush between her legs. So Mi can feel herself quivering in earnest. Becomes aware of her suddenly chasing breaths.
“Feel that?”
“Yes,” rasped out from the darkest depths of her throat. She looks at V, holds tight onto V’s bicep. “Yes.”
And when V reaches down, weaving her fingers past the elastic of So Mi’s underwear and strokes, tests, tips coming away wet—another rasping, “yes.”
V’s grin is a wink in the semi-darkness. So Mi rolls her hips and—V gets it. V pushes her fingers in, eased inside helpfully by slick, by warm, pulsing walls. So Mi actually throws her head back and gasps, spine curling.
Militech never accounted for this, for humanity, when they designed So Mi’s netrunning body. No avenue for pleasure outside utility, no mind for want and only need. She had little internal organs intact back then, and any nourishment she needed could be overridden by a quick command, no more than a quiet injection to jumpstart any function. Any nerves and peripherals between her legs were forewent, and quickly, too. Turned her into a machine that needn’t do anything other than Myers’s bidding.
Shepard—Tycho—did their best, at least. Restored as much as they could, ejecting Militech from her system and out into the horrid ever-cold of space. Watched it freeze in real-time, she did. Breathed against the glass as it imploded into chips of ice, stardust, gone forever.
And V. V has reached inside and dug up every last possible speck of human atom left in her, pulled them coughing and spitting onto the surface. So Mi’s fingers shake. She digs them into the elastic of her panties, regarding V with eyes half-opened, breathing erratic, hips jumping in pace with V’s fingers. “V,” she whimpers. She pushes down on the elastic. “V, gotta—can you—”
The absence leaves her mewling and hollow. V slides out to pull So Mi’s panties off, all the way, and then pushes So Mi’s thighs apart again. Looks down between So Mi’s legs, at the partition of chrome to synth-skin, the most delicate part of So Mi on the lifeline of her palm. It’s almost like any organic woman’s organ, save for the elegant suturing along the pubis and the sheen of synth-skin: pink, and layered, and right now, weeping with slick and folded open.
(So Mi hadn’t asked for one, honestly. The farthest from her mind, that, up there in Tycho and surrounded almost around the clock by soldering irons, clamps and mechanisms, loose wires and plugs. If she cried at all when she saw it one day is something kept locked in a deep alcove of her memory bank.
Could give V the key, though. A secret between them—only V.)
“Gonna just look?” So Mi teases breathlessly, quashing the urge to cross her legs and hide. V would just open her up anyway, easy. V’s laugh is a cat stretching in the sun—languid, low—and she slides inside So Mi again. Hooks her fingers in a harsh curl, pushes down on So Mi’s clit with a strong thumb and So Mi’s hips jerk, mouth falling open.
“Christ—”
“Easy,” V is cooing against the corner of her mouth. Kisses there, too, before going low. The cable of her personal link extends, brushes against So Mi’s elbow and the underside of her thigh, coiled where it shouldn’t cause too much distraction. So Mi cards her fingers through V’s hair when V gets there between her legs. Grips it hard when she feels lips and tongue and teeth and cries out, arching her back.
Tongue replaces thumb, rubbing in circles and pushing down, some teeth lightly grazing folds and the center of where V’s fingers curl and scissor, sliding in and out. She must feel it, jacked into So Mi as she is. The sizzling of So Mi’s circuitry. The pleasure lighting up her cortex like a runway, lights going on and off, haloed by the sun-hot burn of want, and here, and now. So Mi grips V’s head with both hands, waffling between pulling her close, pushing her away, thighs vibrating and toes curled so tightly they should hurt.
A break in pace: V pulls out both fingers to smear across, to push apart So Mi’s folds—So Mi feels something seep out, feels it run in a hot line down her ass—and pushes her tongue in there, sliding her fingers in a firm circle on So Mi’s clit. So Mi whimpers. Trembles, when V’s hands move to cup the swells of her ass, lifts her hips high, and looks at her from above with a glint in her eye, smile hiding just so between So Mi’s legs.
So Mi can only curl her toes. And then her eyes roll back, squeeze shut, when V closes the full warmth of her mouth around So Mi.
Militech never accounted for this—has been a while, is what she’s saying. In a second, So Mi’s body jackknifes and her optics turn sunspot, wash out, fizzling, spine arched, thighs squeezing V’s head, hips jumping and rolling to the pace of slick squelching out from between her legs. Wetness glides down the curve of her ass, coats the inside of her thighs, and she sobs.
V’s soft. Like this: easing the remains of tremors out of So Mi with tongue and lips before twisting her around to her knees, pawing at the curve of her waist, coasting up to follow the shining, titanium trail of her spine. V traces its bumps, blunt edges, feels the way it’s carved some scant millimeters higher than the synth-skin planes of So Mi’s sides and shoulder blades. V doesn’t seem to mind—So Mi doesn’t either.
Hand goes from spine to thigh, to in-between again, and So Mi feels herself sizzle, no other word for it, back arching, lifting her hips higher for V’s entry. So Mi twists her neck, buries her face into a pillow and opens her mouth in there for a long-suffering moan that turns breathless when V adds a third finger.
The cable of V’s personal link is snaked across her back, the only cold thing in the room that her body can read. V squeezes, thumb down on the erect nub of So Mi’s clit and So Mi bites into the pillow, feels spit coat her chin, gasps, “Fuh—fuh, fuck—”
“I know.” V’s face is on the curve of her neck and shoulder. Breathes there long, and hot, and grunting. “I know.”
And V does, doesn’t she, being inside So Mi in all possible ways, dug herself in deep. So Mi feels her own body start to writhe, hips start to move in that paceless, graceless rolling and reaches behind her to press the flat of her forearm on V’s diaphragm against all waning, fading control. Her body feels like it sobs, chasing release. She pushes. It pops between her legs when V gets her fingers free and So Mi sits up, facing her, the absence of V’s body heat registering idly like a phantom limb.
So Mi’s reaches for the waistband of V’s pants, has yanked her close, lips and breaths flat on her collarbones. “Right now?” V asks, a cross between a laugh and a hoarse whisper. So Mi pries V’s zipper open and pulls down in answer. “Oh-kay. Right now.”
Lies flat on her back now, So Mi, lets V scooch a little to get her pants and panties off in one sweep. She’s—glistening, the folds of her fluttered open, framed by a smattering of hair. She straddles So Mi and her body blocks the window, casts the outlines of her curving waist in silver light pooling into shadow at her belly. So Mi doesn’t need any more light than this right now at all. She can feel V just fine, stuck like honeysuckle in her circuits, her own brand of Relic tunneling through her with heat.
V’s hand is a star on the headboard, near where her personal link is still jacked into So Mi’s neural port. So Mi touches her wrist. Decides, then and there, V should feel her more than that, too.
Her body’s no Songbird but it is still So Mi, still is powerful on its own and capable. With one hand she reaches for the core of V’s heat, smears two fingers flat on the pink slit of it before pushing in. With the rest of her she coasts past V’s ghost in her cortex and jackrabbits the lasso of her personal link smack into V’s body.
V keels forward, shaking, filled with So Mi’s fingers where she’s molten and with So Mi’s whisper in her circuits. So Mi flutters to where V’s stream cuts out, bordered by the wall of her security. She murmurs achingly there like a breeze.
(Begging, begging at her feet.)
So Mi feels V’s scourges of ICE withdraw, piecemeal, and—she’s here, now, touching the hums of where V’s flesh turns to metal, where nerves and arteries cut to machine. Could rip her apart like this, piece by piece. Could set her free.
And So Mi does. Twists way down the dials to V’s receptor tuning until V nearly screams. V traps the sound behind her teeth, eyes squeezed shut and hips jumping, knees buckling against So Mi’s ribs. “Shi—it, ch—” V fails when So Mi twists her fingers inside, spreading fore and middle finger wide. Tries again: “y—you’re ch—che–atin’, So Mi.” And the way So Mi’s name seethes out from between her teeth, heady and heavy, honeysuckle-sticky, makes So Mi flash a grin before lifting her head to sink her teeth into V’s wrist.
V cries out. Trembles like a leaf. Whines, high-pitched and long, hips rocking fierce and rough. So Mi curls her fingers against the ridges inside V and revels in the feel of drools of fluids coat her palm and knuckles.
“Seem to like it just fine,” So Mi breathes, and V drops her head to crush their mouths together, biting down on So Mi’s lip. So Mi gives her own—grabs V by the fine length of her throat with free hand and pinches again, presses hard on V’s clit with the blunt tip of her thumb, pushing in a harder arc when V’s body whips and whittles to hard vibrations. Her knees bite into So Mi’s sides and So Mi strains her wrist, works V all the way back up when she hasn’t even come down yet.
V’s face is flushed, eyes thin strips of white. Slick keeps dripping onto So Mi’s palm. The sounds she’s making are clipped, hoarse, belted out from under the grip of So Mi’s hand on her throat. So Mi’s wheezing, moaning under her breath as she watches V ride it out.
Thin strings of liquid follow the tips of So Mi’s fingers when she pulls them out. She streaks her thumb across the pads of them, toying with the viscosity. Breathes hard, legs shaking a little as she squeezes her thighs together against where she’s feeling soppy.
V remembers, though. She fixes her footing, digs her fingers into So Mi’s hair to grip, tight, and reaches down to push So Mi’s thighs just enough apart to squeeze back inside. With a squelch and with so much ease it’s almost embarrassing, even. So Mi’s sobbing later, reaching for and curling against V like glove in hand, like candy melted and left to dry in a pocket.
They stay that way for a while. Feels like hours bunched into minutes, just quiet, hobbling seconds of their breathing, their skins, their chrome, their limbs all tangled up like the wires singing with relief in So Mi’s body. Another second and V shifts. So Mi makes a light sound at the movement.
So Mi feels the full wetness of herself seep onto the insides of her thighs when V pulls out. She relishes the moist of sweat that isn’t hers when V pushes herself up, raising the hand with her personal link. So Mi meets V’s eyes as V does it and nods, faintly, already running ciphers to wake sleeping ICE, reboot firewalls, put everything back in order with a flourish.
V’s eyes blink blue in the half-dark while she does the same. Heavy breaths, heaving chest and she sits up with a weary sound to touch her face. Her nose is bleeding. So Mi sees her mop the little red of it up with the bone of her wrist, twisting her neck to look out the window.
Light hang glides off the line of her nose and the swell of her cheek. So Mi touches her hand and she turns, face sweat-speckled, worn and sweet, smile slight. So Mi wants a picture of this. Of V being the brightest thing to grace this damn city. The one good thing to have come to So Mi after Brooklyn.
“Cheater,” first, and So Mi smiles with her. Next: “what’re you gonna do now?” V asks her. Her voice is just the right touch of hoarse, easing into So Mi’s hearing like the softened fray of sheets. So Mi blinks.
She flits her eyes toward the window. Luna peeks at them, a white wink on oil slick black. V hums in understanding. “When?”
“Tomorrow. Have to.” So Mi spares a smile as she looks back to V. “Been here three weeks already, haven’t I?”
V smirks. She turns her hand over and lets So Mi slip her fingers onto the flat of its palm. So Mi’s smile has receded, whittled to a thoughtful line. “V… how do you feel, really?”
V blinks. A shine comes to her eyes, brief like a matchstick spark. She turns her face away from So Mi. “I’m. Scared, So Mi. Strange to hear that now, isn’t it?”
15,000 lines of code to make a quiver out of the weight in her chest. So Mi closes her mouth and goes back to looking at the moon.
So Mi’s staring at the globe of blue-gray on vantablack space outside the window. So small, that planet is, from up here. So dim and quiet. She hums, still looking at it. Across from her, a man sits cross-legged, swaying a champagne flute by the stem. Patient. Listening. Waiting.
“What’s your price?” So Mi asks him. She turns back to him to blink, looking into bright, glowing blue eyes. His dark hair’s combed back, his plain, unassuming face unshaven, but neat. He blinks right back. “Name it.”
“Not cash.”
“Rarely is, with your type.” So Mi shifts on her seat to cross, recross her legs. The silver seams at her thighs show through the slit of her dress. She breathes, repeats, with gravity, “what’s your price?”
“One job. Not one for you.” He adds the last part with leisure, leaning back with nary a change in expression. He hasn’t smiled since coming into this private room. Didn’t much smile either when So Mi finally got to meet him after her first surgery here in Tycho. Or even frowned at any time at all, for that matter. So Mi, though, she lets herself frown.
“What, then? For who?”
“For her. Arasaka’s darling killer.”
So Mi, now, lets herself scowl. “Gonna make me repeat what I’m asking for? Who I’m asking it for?”
“No need to. You asked for my price. I gave it to you. We can conclude business right here if it’s not to your liking.”
So Mi processes that. He lets her, seems like, just leans back still holding his full flute of champagne. It’s a game of faces, this—a test on who’s putting on the best one—and she’s good at this. Chin raised in defiance, she asks, “what’s the job?”
“Why? Worried she won’t be able to take it?”
“V can take anything.” Knows that in her very last, truest human atom. Knows it like she knows the taste of the Blackwall at the back of her tongue, like she knows the feel of V on the flat of her palm. With gravity again: “what’s the job.”
“The Crystal Palace. That’s all you need to know.” A quiet moment to let So Mi absorb that. Not too long, though. This is business. Time is worth everything.
(Everything. A month and change left and counting. So Mi shifts.)
He leisures. Asks, “shall I make the call?”
In that sorry, floating speck out there, V’s phone is probably pinging with jobs from fixers and favors for friends. None of those are worth even a millimeter close to this. So Mi turns toward the window again and just stares out into space.
“Do it.”
The shuffle of feet, the ripple of fabric and synthetic leather. “Been a pleasure.”
The slide and lock of a door opening, closing. So Mi watches Earth. She squeezes her fists, tight, and breathes. She can feel the stricture on her palm as she does it and nothing pops. Nothing goes to stardust, to powder.
(The specter of a welcome intruder lingers behind her jaw, haunts the threads of her circuitry like the hum of a song. It knows the name of her body—tells her it’s her own. Says it’s beautiful, silvers and imitation skin, and all.)
She leans back, blinking at space, into the dark.
(No need for code to close her fingers around the full warmth of V’s hand. Tight. A desperate squeeze. So Mi’s body didn’t rupture. Nothing had snapped.
V’s quivering inhale betrayed the shine in her eyes that she tried to hide. The moon watched them in the distance, bright on V’s window. So Mi stroked the curve of V’s thumb with the pad of her own. Said, “no fear, V. Right here with you.”)
Do you know, I could break beneath the weight
Of the goodness, love, I still carry for you
That I'd walk so far just to take
The injury of finally knowing you