Never Fade Away: I Am Your Demon (ch. 15) (Patreon)

“Damn, they really cut you up, huh?” J remarked, perched on a table that she had moved to the corner. She slept with her back to it, usually seated up with her legs curled into her chest. The chair that was there was used as a footrest as she watched me get out of the shower with a towel wrapped around my waist. Her eyes flickered over my chest and arms, following along the scar tissue that had built up over a decade of constant surgery. “You have more scars than I’ve ever seen on one guy.”

“Dr. K said that the L group tested well with implants,” I responded, heading to the clothes rack to put on some clothes. Hanging up the towel, I tossed on a pair of boxers and pants. It had been three days since J had been freed from Militech and, so far, things were looking… okay. I couldn’t shake the feeling that another shoe was going to drop, but for now, it hadn’t. “L’s didn’t tend to last long because of it,” I added, putting on a pair of pants.

Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that J was still watching me, a slight frown on her face. Shrugging on a shirt, I turned around, “I noticed that you don’t.”

“I wasn’t usually getting cut up,” J admitted with a shrug. “I had a few blemishes, but when I became Subject Zero, they did something to ‘em to make ‘em go away.”

I nodded. Sounded like they wanted to make J look nice before moving forward with the special project. “Then what were you doing most of the time?” I asked her, and nearly instantly, I saw J’s guard go up. It happened pretty often. Especially as she was settling in over the past couple of days. The first day, the day that she was rescued, she went to a corner and didn’t say anything and instead chose to silently watch me as I worked on code or blueprints.

On the second day, the questions resumed and I answered to the best of my ability. However, the moment I asked a question, she immediately shut down and refused to speak for a bit. It was a very different reaction than I had been expecting. J, overall, was defensive. Her guard was constantly up and it was only ever a question of how high up it was. I wasn’t really expecting an answer, but she surprised me this time by offering one.

“Combat, mostly,” J answered, her tone clipped, telling me that further inquiries were unwelcome. I nodded in acceptance, letting the matter drop. I could have guessed as much. Most of the information I had about her came from Dr. K -- that J was a biotic, that she threw around robots like they were nothing, and according to her, what they know about Element Zero mostly stemmed from her.

It seemed more likely that was all Dr. K and the orphanage were allowed to know, and they only knew that much to properly test J and the other biotics that they managed to create. Militech, Arasaka, Biotechnica, and whatever other megacorporations were weaponizing Element Zero likely knew a great deal more about the substance. However, how much the orphanages knew was unknown to me because the locks had changed.

I wasn’t surprised by it. Between Dr. K’s murder and the attack on the convoy? It would be obvious that the orphanages needed some level of spring cleaning and the first thing they did was change the locks on their systems. Effectively undoing all the progress I had made with the Skeleton Key. While it wasn’t surprising, it was, however, very annoying. Especially considering how they majorly upped their security.

“When are we hitting the orphanages?” J questioned, pulling out a pistol that hadn’t left J’s side, even though she was far more dangerous than a pistol.

I understood her eagerness. “Later than we want, sooner than we should,” I admitted to her, heading to my computer. It had undergone… significant upgrades in terms of processing power. In one corner, I had a server farm set up. I had bought one server through Kiwi and the rest I printed off. The CPUs, graphic cards, and RAM saw a similar treatment -- Through a mediocre knowledge of electronic engineering, I jury-rigged a rather powerful computer with some serious processing power. Currently, it was developing the Skeleton Key.

The Matrix had reached what amounted to stage one of its development. The foundation was developed. However, now it was stress testing the foundation by forcing the matrix to adapt to stimuli. That way, it could do it faster and with greater ease because it would already know the shapes it was supposed to take when encountering certain types of data. From there, having the extra processing power would just speed things along.

“Why aren’t we going now?” J questioned with an edge in her tone, and I wondered if David felt like this with me.

“Because we can’t protect them even if we do get them out,” I sighed, looking at J and finding her glowering at me. “You saw what was following us when we got you out -- that? That was a tank. It would have killed us easily if it wasn’t for David. Arasaka? They have thousands of those tanks. Hundreds of thousands. And that’s just the start. Militech? Same thing. What you can do is incredible, J. But you can’t protect everyone alone.”

A muscle in her jaw spasmed at that. I continued, “I’m building up a fund of money to create fake IDs for everyone that we get out. I’m getting close to being able to mass produce the drugs that they’ll need. Being able to change their faces and genetic code? That’s a bit beyond me at the moment, so I’m having to look to ripperdocs to take care of that for me. However, they can’t do everyone at once, so we’ll need a place for them to stay until they get new faces and names.” At that, I gestured around us and J was frowning at me.

“Even when people have new faces and names? Staying in the city would be too dangerous for all of us. So, I’ll need to find a way to smuggle some of us out of the city into the NUSA. Those kids will need a support network of some kind. I’m going to start working on all of that too,” I told J, making her look away from me. “I fucked everything up once by reacting and not thinking about the consequences. I’m not going to do that again. When we get everyone out, we’re going to get them all out, and they’re going to stay out. Even if every last corpo hunts them until their dying day -- they won’t ever find them.”

J slammed the pistol on the table, her expression twisting in a way that told me exactly how unhappy she was. “Fuck. Fine,” she bit the words out. I wasn’t offended. I felt the same exact way, but David was right. I took a really big risk getting J out and I didn’t regret it, but it couldn’t be denied that it was a risk. “They’re going to be dying in there.”

It didn’t feel good having my own words thrown in my face like that, especially if J didn’t know that's what she did. “I know. But they’ll all die out here if we aren’t prepared to protect them,” I stated, echoing David’s words to me. I saw that they had a similar effect on J, whose face twisted for a moment before her head bobbed in a curt nod.

It would be a lie to say that the silence between us was exactly comfortable, because I could tell that J was stewing on what she learned. I, on the other hand, was too busy working. At the moment, my big projects were… done, for lack of a better word. I had the fabricators up, and the GN. Drive was serviceable. I was still working through the radiation issue, but I was making progress on the design.

Now, my biggest issue was securing materials. I had a great source of raw materials from the dump, but holding out for three days without a trip showed me how shallow my reserves really were. Making more trips was a possibility, but it also came with a risk of discovery. For that reason, I was looking to increase how much I was pulling in with each haul. To that end, I had the rough designs for something that could best be described as a singularity grenade.

I was taking the Material Recycler and taking how it disassembled items -- a harsh gravitational force from the singularity would draw in loose items into it. There, they would separate into their base atoms, and when the singularity collapsed, they would be expelled in chunks because the similar atoms would condense. From there, I could take the chunks to the material recycler, file them down into cubes, then I could use them for the recycler. The only big issue would be the inefficiencies in the material recyclers.

Which lead me into designing a Material Recycler MK. III at the same time.

I slipped into the zone while I worked, making blueprints for both the MK. III and Recycler Charge. I was only taken out of it when my phone rang. It was Becca. ‘Whats up?’ I questioned, inspecting a hexagonal recycler charge before scrapping it.

‘You and J need to get out of that cave. I got some biz with the Mox and you two could use some fresh air,’ Becca responded, making my eyes flicker to J, who was taking apart a gun with practiced ease. ‘She needs to get out in the world, L. You flatlined three fools on day one. I get that you want to protect her, but no one can protect anyone from the world, choom.’

Well, when she put it like that… ‘Alright. We’re on our way. What’s the biz?’ I questioned, pushing myself away from the desk to check the weather. The smog cloud over Night City hadn’t diminished, and it was currently pissing down acid rain. Nothing outright fatal, but if you didn’t have a raincoat, you would be dealing with a skin rash by the end of an hour.

‘Old friend reached out about a Gun for Hire. Tyger Claws -- your favorite,’ Becca teased. I actually didn’t have a favorite, but I could see why she thought that. ‘Meet me at Lizzies in ten,’ Becca added before ending the call. I looked around on the rack for a proper rain coat before I realized that I would have to print one off.

“J,” I said, catching her attention. “I’m heading out. You wanna-”

“I’m coming,” J responded before I could finish. After printing us both off some acid-proof clothing -- a thick jacket with a hood, pants, gloves, and boots, we walked outside. Priming all of the security measures, I stepped by a Chevillon Emperor that was in the process of being built -- this one with feedback from Falco. The only car that I had that was still intact was the Zeya, and an Archer Hella that J and I had driven back.

J’s eyes were glued to the window as we made our way to Lizzies, drops of yellowish rain pittering off of the car. I couldn’t say that I was much better. It had been a month and a half, and it was the first time I had seen rain, even if I did know what it was. The novelty of it was absolutely incredible. Water was falling from the sky, like it was a giant shower. A shower that would kill you with enough exposure, true, but that didn’t make it less incredible. If anything, that made it more incredible.

“The world isn't what I thought it would be,” J muttered under her breath, and I’m not sure if I was supposed to hear that or not. She didn’t sound disappointed. It was more of an admission of fact. Acknowledging that she was wrong in her expectations because the world either didn’t live up to them or it over shot them.

I hummed in agreement, “No. It’s not.”

The rest of the trip was made in silence, both of us silently marveling at the sound of rain until the car came to a stop in front of a building. Getting out and sending the car to the nearest parking garage, I looked up at Lizzies. A neon sign of a woman kicking up with her leg and a bright blue sign that was hardly legible, but it did spell out Lizzies. Approaching the door while J gaped at everything she saw, I spotted a woman standing before the door.

Pinkish purple hair, purple lipstick, but the most notable thing about her were her arms. Both were prosthetics and in one of them was a baseball bat that had a deadly amount of spikes. Focusing on her for a moment, I got a name. Rita Wheeler. Wanted for assault, burglary, grand theft auto, and murder. She threw on a smile as we approached, “You two must be L and J. Becca said you’d be comin’,” Rita said, stepping out our way. “Have fun, you two.”

A little weird, but whatever. Stepping through the door and the wall of sequins, I heard the thumping of music. Instantly, J started to get skittish, looking to me while she clenched her hands into tight fists, but she followed along into the main room. The lights were dimmed and there was a general crowd of people -- some dancing, others talking in small groups, and so on.

Becca was pretty easy to spot at the bar as she talked to a girl. Half of her head was shaved, multi-colored hair on the half that wasn’t. A pair of low-riding jeans, a shirt that was tied off at her midriff. Judy Alvarez. Officially employed at Lizzies, but beyond that, there was nothing on her. Becca saw us approach out of the corner of her eye and with an oversized hand, she waved us over. “Yo! L! J! Come on over!”

Judy glanced at us as we did so, J’s head on a swivel the entire time as she tried to look at everything all at once. Her brow furrowed when she glanced between us, “You’re the merc’s running with Becca lately?”

“Among others,” I confirmed with a nod.

“The two of you look pretty young,” Judy remarked, directing that more at J as she watched a woman dance for a moment, cocking her head as she did so. “Ah, well, if Becca trusts you… I’m Judy,” Judy officially introduced herself, sizing me up.

That earned J’s attention, “Why do you people have so many letters in your names?” She asked, and I couldn’t blame her for it. I knew what was done to us. Our names were stolen and we were given a designation and a number. But it still felt weird hearing people’s names that had a bunch of different letters in them.

Judy cocked an eyebrow, “Why don’t you have more than one?” She shot back without missing a beat, making J frown. I couldn’t tell if she was getting pissed off that her question wasn’t being answered or if she was considering the question. Judy offered a smirk, “We can talk downstairs. This conversation isn't the kind you want to have with a bunch of ears around,” she said, pushing off of the bar.

I looked at Becca, who gave me a thumbs up before hopping off the stool. Judy led us through the back of the club and down a set of stairs to her office. There was a lot of tech laying around -- monitors, servers, and so on. All of it was sporting some level of customization. “Before we get started,” Judy remarked, looking at Becca, “I hope that she’s told you that this is a pro bono gig, right?”

“She hasn’t said anything about the gig at all,” I admitted, making Becca shrug indifferently when Judy shot her a look.

“Meh -- you know what you need to know. It’s a Gun for Hire. We just need to flatline some fools,” Becca dismissed the issue entirely and I nodded, knowing that much already. J found a corner near the door that she stood at, watching all of us with a slight frown on her face. I’m not entirely sure why. Was she feeling left out? “And the pay will be whatever you pick up, you loot goblin.”

“Not as easy as it was,” I remarked, a frown tugging at my lips. To that, Becca nodded her head at me in understanding while Judy looked between us.

“Look -- me and Becca go back, so that’s why I asked her,” Judy spoke up, thinking that money was the issue. “She said that you would want in on this when I mentioned Tyger Claws. You have a grudge or something?”

I shook my head, “No, it’s- ah, never mind. It’s not important. So, what's the gig?” I questioned, cutting to the chase, finding myself curious. As well as about that comment about them going back. I knew the broad strokes of Becca’s past but she never went into detail. I just knew she grew up in a feral gang and that she had a brother. I hadn’t seen him, and no one talked about him, so I couldn’t tell if he was out of town or dead.

“Tyger Claws took a liking to a girl, kidnapped her, and held her for ransom for a week. Her sister, one of the Mox, busted her tail to scrounge up what they were askin’ for, but when she delivered the eddies, the Tyger Claws dumped her corpse on her doorstep. She had been dead for a week. Raped to death,” Judy spoke, a harsh anger in her voice as she flicked her gaze to Becca. “We know who did it, but Susan says that since it wasn’t a Mox, there isn't beef between us.”

There was genuine disgust in Judy’s tone. “It ain’t right. But, Susan is probably right that it would cause a gang war between the Tyger Claws and the Mox. So, instead of sending Rita to take some heads, if a couple of mercs happen to take ‘em out… well, that’s about as close to justice as you can get in Night City.”

I could see how the story was affecting J. Her lips peeled back into a snarl, her eyes blazed with anger. She was taking the story personally.

“What was her name?” I questioned, and that seemed to surprise Judy.

“Britanny,” Judy answered. I looked to Becca and nodded -- I was already going on the gig if for no other reason than Becca asked, but now I had extra motivation.

“Flick me the deets and it’ll get done within the hour,” I told her, earning a relieved smile from Judy while Becca just cackled, shooting Judy a look.

“Told ya’,” Becca said, hopping out of the seat she had taken. Judy did exactly that, giving us a list of names and where they were. Luckily enough, they were all in one place -- a club over in Japantown. “L does good work. They’re dead already and they just don’t know it.”

“Thanks, Becca. You too, L. J,” Judy said, nodding her head at J before Becca began to lead us out of the basement. It was when we were out of the club and heading to Becca’s car that I spoke up about the gig. There were fifteen names on it and while I might not have been a merc for a very long time, I did have over a hundred gigs under my belt at this point.

So, I knew enough to know how huge of a favor Becca was doing Judy. Fifteen hits would be expensive. Especially on the Tyger Claws. “You know her long?” I asked Becca, getting in the front seat and bracing myself.

“Oh, yeah. Judy’s good people. After me and my brother got shoved out of the feral gang at fourteen, I ended up joinin’ the Mox for a bit. I only went solo… three years ago? Four?” Becca said as we pulled out and I heard J gasping at the far rougher ride that she was dealing with in the back compared to the ride here. “I broke off cuz I wanted to be a bouncer, but they thought I didn’t have it in me. Tried to prove a point and found that I liked being a merc better. Met Judy because of her BDs. Unlike Susan, she still remembers what the Mox is supposed to be.”

“What are the Mox supposed to be?” J questioned and I was glad for it since I didn’t have to ask.

Becca drove up on the sidewalk for a bit when the already fast-moving traffic wasn’t going fast enough. “A protection gang for sex workers. We always had beef with the Tyger Claws -- it was how the gang was formed. But, ya’ know, eddies got involved, and protecting sex workers fell to the wayside in favor of profits.” There was a bitter edge in her voice and I didn’t miss how she used ‘we.’ “I’m doing it for Judy, but if you need me to tip you for your time, I get it. You still on the outs with Maelstrom?”

I grunted, still unhappy with Maelstrom. “That bridge has been burnt for good,” I decided. They fucked the plan. It all worked out in the end, and I was always planning to take advantage of them, but the fact remained that Maelstrom decided to leave me out to dry by jumping the gun. “I know where they are, and I’m going to be paying them a visit real soon.” I was still in their systems. About half of the Maelstrom had died during the attack, but the half that lived had been Brick’s group.

Brick further capitalized on what he gained because, somehow, he managed to dump the blame on the groups that died in the attack and Militech eradicated what was left over. The only reason why I hadn’t dealt with them already was because I’m sure that Militech and Arasaka were keeping an eye on them. Wiping them out would draw unnecessary attention.

“Let me know when you do! I got some bad blood with ‘em that I wanna spill,” Becca remarked as we headed to our destination. “The Tyger Claws have the whole club rented out. L, I know you like doing the whole Netrunner thing, but if I don’t get to shoot my guns, I’m going to start shootin’ at you, got it?”

I tried not to glance at the back seat at J and failed. I could see it in her eyes -- J wasn’t afraid of taking a loud approach. If anything, she looked excited for it. So, I held up my hands in surrender, “Alright. Have it your way,” I responded. “Are we letting them know we’re coming?”

Becca took a second to think on it for a moment. “Sure, why not?” She decided, her tone practically dripping with anticipation. Becca, I’ve found, was a bloody thirsty girl. I had no right throwing stones because I had racked up a body count that Maelstrom had been impressed with, but Becca seemed to bask in combat in a way that I didn’t. I was asking to clear the club. Becca wanted me to let them know so the Tyger Claws could prepare their defenses.

In response, I slipped into the NCPD net around the area to see if they had a camera I could hop out of. They did -- technically speaking -- but it was busted. Instead, I was forced to play hopscotch by jumping from car cameras into nearby subnets, then finally pinging off of the club’s subnet. The entire process took all of five minutes, longer than I needed to start chewing through the club’s ICE.

Cameras showed that the club was rather full. Thirty-three people were hooked directly into the club’s -- Sekushīna on'nanoko -- subnet. Things like door access gave them away. Of that Thirty-three, four were bartenders and ten were dancers at the club. Leaving nineteen members of the Tyger Claws against the three of us. First thing that I did was trip the alarm, which quicklyfilled the club with a wailing noise.

Naturally, the patrons began filing out while the Tyger Claws were trying to shut the alarm off. However, when I began sealing exits, it clued them in on what was happening.

“It’s a ‘runner!” One of them shouted, the Tyger Claws busting cameras to prevent me from watching them. The building wasn’t particularly well monitored, so by the time we pulled up, I was mostly blind inside the building. Becca took a deep breath as she got out of the car, going to the trunk to grab the Militech Mk. 31 HMG and slamming the trunk down with a thunk.

I covered my ears, making J hesitatingly cover her own, and a second later, Becca let the gun rip in the pouring down of acid rain in fat drops. I had no frame of reference to compare how loud it was because even the tank firing and shells exploding weren’t as loud as the gun. Shells ejected at a rapid pace, bullets tearing through the front of the building in what I could only describe as a pattern, filling the road with only noise. Distantly, however, I think I could hear Becca laughing as she fired the gun.

The walls and doors offered no resistance to the bullets, and when Becca began to angle the gun upward, I couldn’t imagine that the ceiling would be much better. The Militech Mk. 31 HMG had the capacity of three hundred bullets, a sizable amount, but I hadn’t imagined what the carnage would look like spent completely in a building. The front of it was more holes than solid metal or concrete by the time the gun started clicking empty and my ears were filled with a ringing sound.

“Oh, that's the stuff, L,” Becca breathed, pointing a steaming barrel up that was glowing a cherry red. “I can’t believe you were holding out on me like this. What else have you been hoarding from me?” Becca pouted at me, while I tried to pop my ears to get rid of the ringing. “L, sharin’ is carin’, you know. Don’t you care about me?” She pressed, batting her eyelashes at me to guilt trip me into giving her all the heavy weaponry that her heart desired.

I was starting to think that might not be a good idea, looking at the building. I couldn’t see inside of it, but… yeah.

“I want one of those,” J decided, eying the weapon almost hungrily. I was also starting to think that Becca and J were a little… too alike.

“Let's finish off the stragglers before we start handing out gifts,” I pointed out, letting Becca take point. Setting the HMG down, Becca settled on dual wielding her shotguns before she kicked down what was left of the front door.

“If anyone is still alive, then feel free to shoot back!” Becca shouted, entering the club. She stood there for a moment, looking around, waiting for someone to take a shot at her. “Seriously?!” She cried out, stepping into the building. I followed behind her with my pistol drawn, looking around the dancefloor of the club to see that it had radically changed in appearance. The front of the building offered next to no resistance in cover, and the walls or furniture of the building offered less.

The ceiling was shot up as well, I saw. Becca started to check the ground floor for survivors while I headed upstairs. There were eight to ten bodies downstairs, I saw when J and I passed through some cover. It was a little difficult to tell, to be honest. Most of the men were in chunks or in pieces -- legs, arms, bits and pieces of flesh and bone where bullets ripped through them. The air was filled with the stench of blood, shit, and an acidic twinge from the rain.

J didn’t seem to mind it as we headed up the stairs, her right behind me with her own pistol. She was stacked up, checking her corners as we entered the second floor. We both flinched when Becca fired a shot downstairs, and I adjusted the tally -- eight to eleven. The second floor was just as shot up, but the angle of the bullets that also tore through the ceiling was steep. Tilting my head, I listened for a sound.

I heard it as we crossed into a room -- an office. Five dead. Up to sixteen of the nineteen were dead. The sound was harsh breathing. Deep and even like someone was trying to calm themself down. It hitched when I stepped on a piece of glass that crunched underfoot. The source of it was coming from the bathroom, so taking aim with my gun, I squeezed the trigger. The bullet slammed into the weakened wall, making whoever was in it jump out.

Instantly, I realized I should have brought a bigger gun when an Asian man with a dark red mohawk and a body covered in tattoos emerged from the bathroom, holding his gut and a katana in the other. “Die, western dog!” The man screamed at me in Japanese before his body began to blur.

He wasn’t as fast as David, I had time to think as I pulled the trigger of my pistol, the gun bucking against my palm. The bullet leaped from the barrel of the gun, striking the man in the chest, only for the bullet to shatter on impact, leaving a groove mark at most in the man’s subdermal armor. Facial recognition marked him as Shinji Aoi -- subdermal armor hadn’t been listed on his OS.

The hole in his gut saved my life as I stumbled my way out of a swing that would have taken my head off, the blade itself barely more than a blur to my optics. Not sure if he had a Sandy, or maybe a Kerenzikov, or even Neo-Fiber muscles -- all of which were unlisted. I suspect for this exact reason.

Just as I began an upload to his OS with the intent to crash it, out of the corner of my eye, I saw J move. Her body seemed to fade completely out of view for a split second as I moved to block the katana with my gun, Trajectory Analysis letting me predict where the next blow was going to land. Her body was instead replaced with a familiar whitish-blue glow, almost as if she were outlined with it, before she was launched at Shinji.

A fist struck him in the chest with thunderous force, caving his sternum into his spine while his back slammed into the wall across from us. There was a flash of that same whitish blue light as the energy that obscured J flowed into him with devastating results. As I felt the shockwave travel through me, the only thing keeping Shinji’s body together was his subdermal armor. Because of it, when his internals were liquefied, they exploded out of every orifice with enough force that his optics popped out.

Blood splashed down J’s face and she tilted her head back to let it wash over her instead of flinching away from it.

Then she looked at me, a slight cocky smile on her face that told me that she expected praise and a thank you.

I think I was wrong before when I thought J and Becca were too alike. J was by far the more bloodthirsty of the two.