Never Fade Away: Cloudy Day (ch. 53) (Patreon)

“Yellow-bellied two-faced motherfuckin’... Sorry darlin’s, but I just realized that we may be facing something that's about as welcome as a rattlesnake to a square dance pretty soon.

But let's give context - I've been looking into exactly how Japan’s been doing so well. Something about it just didn't seem right to me, not cuz I think they'd have gotten rolled over, but because actually getting details on how the fight against the birds went down is like drawing blood from stone. So I got curious and looked into it a bit further. And near as I can tell?

It's cuz the birds ain't so much as laid a feather on ‘em!

That's right - Japan is weathering the invasion by not getting invaded! Now how d’you think they swung that!?

I'll tell you how - by having their boss sell out! And I'm not talking about Prime Minister Who-The-Fuck-Cares, I'm talking about the perpetual snake in all our boots.

Saburo motherfuckin' Arasaka.

Now, I'm mad enough to swallow a horn-toad backwards, and maybe I'm wrong. But I doubt it, and if we start seeing Arasaka tech in avian hands we gonna know I was right. My advice - be prepared for it.

And don't start bawling about our odds or how outnumbered and outgunned we probably are from this either. We still sittin’ pretty as far as I'm concerned.

Remember - one choom beat the biggest baddest Megacorp out there, and unlike all the badasses before him who tried he lived to brag about it. Hell he beat them so badly it made ‘em run out to space to beg their alien bird daddy for help, and when they invaded he went and made them squawk uncle too - and you better believe he ain't done. This is an age where the impossible becomes possible darlin’s, and with the impossible behind us… all that remains is what’s necessary.

So take this next song to heart.

Here's If You're Going Through Hell (Before The Devil Even Knows) by Rodney Atkins.

~

Too fast. Far too fast. How long has it been? A couple of months? Half a year? That was no time at all when it came to these kinds of things. I was the abnormality with my ability to create functioning prototypes of advanced technology off the cuff. Figured Arasaka would need a year at the very least, but more like two or three to even find the starting line.

V continued while my breath was caught in my lungs. “The prototypes aren't like you. It's a ham-fisted method. They have a lot of your DNA, L. They have everything that was ever done to you. They flash clone your brain, expose it to everything that you endured in the Orphanage, then they transplant that thing in your head into someone else.” My body felt numb while Johnny began cursing up a storm. A pit formed in my stomach. Arasaka had a prototype of me.

“Like I said, it's ham-fisted. The surgery itself is highly invasive. Success rate is ten percent, and that's with nanites keeping the brain alive during the surgery. The longest anyone's lived after the surgery is about three days,” V continued, her voice cold as she lounged in her seat, looking up at the ceiling as if she weren't talking to anyone in particular. “They don't have any control over what data the ‘Nexus’ generates, and what it does is generally incomplete and fractured. To make matters worse, upon using the ‘Nexus’ every test subject had died. Total brain death. The kind that you don't come back from. So, naturally, Arasaka is using Soulkiller on them to collect data.”

I knew that this would happen. I threw it in everyone's faces. I knew I was right and this was just proof of it. The megacorporations would stop at nothing to get their hands on my ability, and they were willing to kill however many people needed to die in order to make even a single step of progress. My gaze fell to my hands -- one flesh, the other chrome and steel. They were clenched into fists so tightly that they trembled. “How many?”

“Successes?” V wondered, and I could see her turning her gaze to me, even as she watched Reed out of the corner of her eye. “Eight so far.”

That was unwelcome news, but not what I meant. “How many died for those eight successes?” I asked, my voice flat to my own ears.

“... a lot,” V hedged for a moment before I looked up at her. She held my gaze before looking away, her expression almost regretful. “Six thousand before they found a way to recreate your ability. Another two thousand to do it consistently. For the past few times… there a few hundred failures for the past three successes, but the number is going down. Little by little.”

So… “Ten thousand kids, huh?” I muttered, feeling hollow. Like my emotions had just been scooped out of me. Ten thousand kids to make a shitty fatal version of my power. To generate data that Arasaka might not even be able to use. “How old are they?”

“L, some shit you don't want to know-” Johnny advised, only to be cut off.

“It works better on young children. Neural plasticity lets them adapt better,” V answered after a moment. “Between five and ten have seen the most success.”

So, around T's age. Ten thousand dead. I wonder how many thousands more would die to improve the prototype? My ability was already killing me. It was just doing it slower. Maybe they wouldn't stop until they reached my level? Maybe they wouldn't stop until they perfected it further? How long would that take? I suppose it depended on what medical data they managed to pull from the kids before they Soulkilled them. It could be decades. It could be centuries. Or it could be in a few weeks.

I forced myself to unclench my hands, “And how exactly do you know all of this?” I asked her, taking a breath and I felt… I felt calm. I felt the same kind of calm when I was wheeling A so he could see the moon before he died. What I felt was such an intensity of emotion that I couldn't handle it. I didn't know how to process it.

“Because I'm one of Arasaka's top agents nowadays,” V admitted. “I'm one of the leaders of intelligence -- not just counterintelligence, but offensive intelligence. There aren't that many secrets left that I don't know about. And the few that I don't, I could probably figure out with a little hit of finesse.”

“Unless my father suspects that you are a double agent,” I heard Yorinobu state, but couldn't look at him. I knew he was different than his father, but I…

V inclined her head to him, “Or that. But, if that was the case, then I wouldn't have been trusted to be included in the downsizing.” That was a fair point.

“Where?” I heard myself ask and the numbness was starting to die off. In its place was a searing anger. A fury that flowed through my blood and filled me up to the point that steam could have come out of my ears. I shouldn't really care, I knew. My heart only had so many seats in it to be filled, and they were all filled by the kids I grew up with. The ones I went through hell so they could get a shot at a decent future. In the end, the kids taken to recreate me… that wasn't really my problem.

It wasn't my problem the same way that the world being invaded wasn't my problem. The Turians that killed my kids were dead. I killed them. The rest of Earth didn't matter to me. I had no connection to it and no reason to care. But I didn't have any reason to care about the kids that Arasaka was butchering either -- I didn't know them. And yet…

I'm a hypocrite. Probably the biggest one of them all. Because I cared. The thought of some kids growing up in a white room, watching each other be picked off one by one, completely ignorant of the world they tried to make sense of with the pieces that the doctors let slip… because of me… my stomach churned at the very thought. I felt physically ill.

“I don't know-” every muscle that I had tensed at that and my gaze twisted into a glare. “The information compartmentalization is specifically meant to prevent you from finding them. My ship had the navigation data blacked out, and I was on it for about two weeks. Not sure what that means in terms of distance, but I don't think we went through a mass relay.” That… that didn't really narrow things down. I mean, it narrowed things down from any one of a dozen star systems, but space was big. Space was really big.

Earth's atmosphere was covered in millions of satellites at this point, most of them equipped with some kind of viewing technology. Every square inch of Earth should be covered by them, and people still managed to hide. Hell, Arasaka knew that I was in Night City, and they still couldn't find me. Space was hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of times bigger than Earth and it wasn't even a fraction as well documented. They could be on Mars. They could be on Venus, Jupiter, or even Pluto. They could be on one of the billions of asteroids that made up the asteroid belt. They could be hiding in the empty space between planets.

It wouldn't be easy to find them. And that's why V was here.

However, Reed spoke up. “I understand that you have a personal vendetta, but there are more important matters at hand. Arasaka has joined forces with the Turians?” Reed asked, looking to V. His voice was laced by doubt, and as much as that changed things, I found it difficult to care about it in comparison to the revelation of what they did. What they had.

V hesitated to mod, but did so all the same. “I'm not fully aware of the scope of the alliance, but part of my orders are to verify and mark holes in Night City's defense for later reacquisition.” She answered and I heard Yorinobu sigh while Rogue simply scoffed. “I expect that you will be seeing offensive measures shortly. At least, Earth will. Saburo Arasaka is making the best of a bad hand, but no one can deny that it's a bad hand.”

“Don't trust her,” Johnny suddenly spoke up, breaking me from my thoughts. “She's a spook, which makes her untrustworthy, and she's a ‘saka ninja, which makes her especially untrustworthy. She's giving way too much up for free and she's not asking for anything in return.’

“She wants my tech,” I pointed out, giving V a measuring look. It would be difficult for me to say that I trusted her, but I didn't exactly distrust her either. As far as I had seen, she was self-serving, perfectly happy to use me to climb her way up the corporate ladder. But, she had gone out of her way to help me. She protected me after I lost my arm, she covered my tracks on several occasions, and she helped hide the kids. If it wasn't for the fact that she worked for Arasaka, I would be inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt.

“No. All of that fed into her bottom line. The bigger pain in the ass you were, the more her bosses seemed useless, and the better she looked when she had a crumb of intel,” Johnny pointed out and… I hadn’t directed a thought at him. He seemed to be replying to my thoughts. “Except what does she gain now? She made the short list for Arasaka downsizing and pulling up roots. Working against Arasaka gets her… what, exactly? If it goes down, then so does she.”

Johnny made a compelling point. Compelling enough that I couldn't ignore it.

“You're being unusually helpful for an Arasaka agent,” Rogue ventured, her thoughts must have mirrored Johnny's. “Even a double agent. Most would have waited until they got a deal before mentioning half of as much.”

To answer that, V pointed at me. My brow furrowed. Then furrowed deeper when I saw expressions of understanding flash across Rogue and Yorinobu's faces. Johnny chuckled at my expense, “You can't negotiate with a rampaging bull,” he pointed out. That was vaguely insulting. I mean, I don't think it was wrong, but it was still kind of insulting.

“I'm hedging my bets, plain and simple. If Arasaka wins, then I win. If Arasaka loses, then you can be sure that I'll remind you how helpful I was setting up their downfall,” V admitted bluntly, all but admitting that we couldn't trust her. She would go with whichever way the wind was blowing, and at the moment, it was blowing our way. My way, I suppose. V was doing what I had asked Kiwi to do -- to bet on me, despite the odds. “And, simply put, the more trusted I am by Saburo, the better position I'll be in if it ever comes to a time to fuck Saburo over.”

I saw a flash of something flicker over Reed's face. Disgust. He was keeping silent, watching the interaction, but it was clear that he didn't hold V in high esteem to start with, and he only thought less of her now.  Yorinobu, however, was the one that spoke. “My father does not trust easily. The only one who he does would be my sister,” he stated in no uncertain terms.

V tilted her head ever so slightly, regarding Yorinobu coolly. “Fair. I have Hanako's trust, however.”

Yorinobu's eyes narrowed behind his tinted glasses. “My sister is also not someone that trusts easily.”

“They're fucking,” Johnny ventured and, at first, I thought he mean V and Yorinobu. Then I realized that he meant V and Hanako. I didn't care about her one way or another -- but I did figure I would end up killing her eventually. “Could be a play by Hanako, but the reason why V's convinced she's sitting sweet is because they're fucking behind Saburo's back.”

I didn't see the correlation. Why would they need to hide their relationship in the first place? Johnny snorted, “No one gives a shit about gay shit now, but Saburo is a fossil. People used to really give a fuck about how other people fucked, and Saburo is from that time.” I suppose I would just take his word for it, and if that was the case, it would explain why she felt so comfortable with her position.

I looked at Yorinobu to see that his gaze narrowed ever so slightly, telling me he suspected the same even as V spoke. “All the same, I have it,” V stated and his lips thinned.

Arasaka wanted my GN Drive. And I was less than inclined to give it to them. Even the worst possible version was still far too big of a leap. In all honesty, I was regretting giving Night City the GN Drives at all now that I knew that Arasaka was going to come sniffing around for them. Maybe I could use that to my advantage? I had trackers on them. And a self-destruct sequence that I could input. The technology was blackboxed, so even if they could use it, they wouldn't have any data to reverse engineer it. Could I deliver a bomb right to Arasaka's doorstep?

My stomach clenched. The kids. The cold rational part of my brain that let me thrive on the streets was at odds with my heart. The kids would die. Kids were dying all the time all across the world right now. But, the difference was that I would be killing them. I wanted Arasaka dead, but not so badly that I was willing to kill them to get to Saburo.

“This doesn't change anything for me,” I decided, bringing the attention back to me. “V… I don't trust you that much to just hand over my tech,” I told her outright. Rather than be offended, she just offered a shrug, telling me that she wasn't surprised. “Good luck stealing something, but you won't get anything from me,” I said before I stood.

Rogue leaned forward, “You're leaving?” I had the feeling that she didn't just mean the room.

My gaze flickered to Reed. Then to V. Then to Rogue, “I'm staying in Night City for the foreseeable future. I have some things I need to deal with first,” I answered, being vague simply because I wasn't entirely sure what those things were myself. I killed the killers of my kids. Arasaka… they had to be put down. Completely and for good. But… what was the point in killing them? Militech would just take their place. If I killed Militech, then Biotechnica would be up next. Then Zetatech. And so on and so on.

Kiwi's words echoed in my ears as I headed for the door, and I shook my head to get rid of them. Yorinobu spoke up as the door opened, “A shield, L-san. What we wanted to request of you was a shield. One big enough to prevent the Turians from bombing our city,” he requested.

I waved him off, “Sure. I'll take care of it,” I dismissed. It was already in line with something that I was thinking about doing -- the Turians were too liberal with dropping rocks. A big bubble shield should protect Night City from going the way of the dinosaurs, and by virtue of that, my kids would be protected.

I left the meeting behind, knowing my departure was abrupt, and knowing that they were going to discuss what to do around me. The most likely scenario was that they agreed for V to klep one of the GN Drives. And, in theory, that could be my trail to at least narrow down where Arasaka was hiding in the solar system. Additionally, if Arasaka was in contact with the Turians, then that meant that the Turians could have an inkling as well.

Almost in a daze, I made my way out of the club, away from prying eyes. Though, that didn’t stop one pair from following through the lens of the cameras that were sprinkled around the area. With the power coming back on, so too did the cameras, even if most of them were worse for wear if they weren’t outright broken. My head was a mess and I really wished that girl troubles were my biggest issue at the moment.

My fingers itched, aching to make music, and even Johnny was silent, letting me gather my thoughts. To determine my next course of action. And, as luck would have it, there was a man strumming along on a busted up electric guitar that was all too happy to part with it for a couple thousand eddies. It was straight garbage in comparison to one that I could print off back in my base, but I decided that it had heart as I looked for somewhere quiet to play and get my thoughts in order.

It took me a while. And in my trip, I saw more of the city. Holding on despite the beating that it took and, more importantly, I saw familiar faces sprinkled intermittently. I saw Jackie, Misty, and Rivers celebrating when I ended up venturing near Viks, with Vik tossing out beers. Continuing on, I stumbled across Kaiden, Jack, Falco, and Judy when I slowly made my way towards Lizzies.

Continuing on, I passed by a food stall that had David and Lucy eating at it. They were joined by some of the kids, all of whom were enjoying the party. Even if they probably should be in bed. My gaze drifted across their faces, seeing unbridled joy. The older kids were looking after the younger, spread thin as they were, and it would seem that more than a few had disobeyed me based on how some of them were bragging about how many times they got shot -- in the armor, at least.

It was a strange feeling. Melancholic, I figured it was called as I slowly made my way to the ocean. The water damage knocked out the power grid for that area, so I figured it would be quieter. And more private. Maybe it was something that finally managed to get driven home through my thick skull, or maybe it was insight from Johnny that finally kicked in. But…

I was probably the only one who could leave the city without any reservations. Just as T had all but demanded that I save the people on the moon, the kids… they had lives here. People that they knew. People that they cared about. Even Kaiden and Jack had seemingly found connections beyond the children of the Orphanage.

“I’ve been a fool, huh?” I muttered as I found a concrete bench that had cracked underneath the tidal wave of water. When I looked out at the sea, I could even still see a bit of the ship that I shot down poking out of the ocean, the waves gently lapping at it. Taking a seat, I took a moment to tune the guitar before I started strumming.After a few weeks of practice, I was getting better even without the help of my power.

I had failed to consider how the kids would feel. I just assumed that they would be content to follow me off into space. That they would be okay with leaving behind humanity. And, maybe, most of them would be. But not all. I was too blinded by what I wanted to do. My vengeance. My anger. My fears.

The sound of the guitar filled the empty silence, only faint echoes of the music in the powered parts of the city reaching me. Did that tunnel vision come from my blind focus? Or Johnny’s narcissism? I was thinking the former since I had been operating under that assumption for some time now, before he took up residence in my head.

It felt like I was at a fork in the road. I could keep on going the way that I was going, or I could-

The sound of footsteps alerted me to someone's presence, and that they weren’t trying to sneak up on me. I knew who they belonged, greeting them with a look to see Becca approaching with an expression of uncertainty. It looked odd on her face, I decided, giving her a reassuring small smile. “The others said that they saw you with a mopy expression,” Becca informed, and I guess that I didn’t blend in as much as I thought I did. “That’s… not because of me, is it?”

“No,” I said, looking down at my guitar. I just tuned the thing, and it was already losing it. “Got some bad news, but that can wait. Becca, you… were the best thing that happened to me tonight,” I told her and I was faintly amused to see her recoil, a surprised expression flickering across her face before her cheeks warmed. Strong on the offense, but weak on defense, huh?

“That so?” Becca said, taking a seat next to me and pointedly leaning her head against my shoulder. “The night’s not over yet, you know.” She pointed out and I took in a deep breath, looking up at the sky… and maybe the power outage wasn’t the worst thing in the world, because there sure were a lot of stars out.

“I suppose it’s not.”