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5, Group home in Night City
The young girl woke up to murmurs and shuffling feet. When her eyes opened she saw 3 grown ups in white coats at the bedside of her bunkbed. Not being able to make out much of what they were saying in this early morning haze, she shot up like a spooked cat.
The three deterministically nodded, and grabbed her by the arms. She squirmed, trying to bite at them. Before long she was knocked out.
When the young girl came to, she was in a new place. Her head was throbbing, and she felt scared only for a moment. Something stirred in her and she became quiet relaxed. It was nicer than the group home or the streets.
Everything around her was white, clean as if dirt didn't exist here.
Someone in a white coat was sitting in the corner.
"Welcome to your new home, Valerie. All of us at Arasaka hope you will like it here."
The young girl pointed at her chest in surprise, "Valerie's me?" She swung her legs on the bedside with a childlike giddiness even a shard couldn't take from her.
14 - Underground Facility - Glen Hills area
"415 through 420 have been assigned their first reconnaissance mission. Pick up the information shards on your way out."
"V," hissed 417.
V turned her head to see her roommate, Penelope walking up behind her. "You ready? We're competin'. They said the kid-op who performs the best gets real fish. None of the synth stuff."
"Wow, that's a big deal, P."
They slotted in their respective shards, both of them were to work around some known Maelstrom hotbeds to pick up on anything regarding Millitech involvement with the group. Other key words to pick up on was anything involving plans for a broader conflict with NUSA.
Three days on the streets, V picked up a few worthwhile conversations here and there. Managed to swipe some smaller shards that had already been scanned into the computers in a Maelstrom operated restaurant's back room. It all seemed to be going alright. P was always trying to one up V. V felt little need to compete. Just needed to go a little over 'Saka's expectations, and try to guess what they want next.
They got a call from P, "V come to my location. Look's like there's some big Milltech drop going. Maelstrom are all putting the new chrome in."
V sauntered down the street, like any lanky street kid would. A relaxed inconspicuous pace was all they needed. That was until they got eyes into the Maelstrom base. P was having the life wrung out of her by some cyberpsycho.
There was no logic in what came next, in later years, V struggled to know if it was her own emotions that came to the surface for the first time since she was taken in by Arasaka or the chip that made her move. When she came to, the head of the cyberpsycho had been lobbed off, her katana broken in half and there was blood everywhere.
"Hey V, I think this is it for me."
"Don't say that P, recon ops is coming. We're gonna eat fish, right?"
Penelope was bleeding fast, V was trying to suppress the blood flow all she could with her basic emergency skills. She knew it wasn't enough.
"Valerie, I hope that one day, you'll be free." With the last of her strength, Penelope ripped the shard out of her skull that Arasaka put in them on their arrival to the facility. V tightly gripped Penelope's hands until she and Penelope had been evacuated. P died on the way back to the facility.
In the aftermath of it all, V was designated the top performer. Every sign of P was cleansed out of their shared room - now just a single for V. All that remained of her was the blood on the chip V hid inside her pillow.
When V had fish for the first time, it took everything to not throw it up. She hoped that the farfetched notion of freedom would taste better.
16, Jig-Jig St. / Heywood
Their most recent mission had the young merc undercover and taking out a couple of Kang Tao execs. After paying off a doll on Jig-Jig street to drug the weakest link of the bunch. She snuck into the room wearing a stealth suit and slipped a shard emblazoned with the Millitech logo into his head, set to deploy a state of cyberpsychosis a few minutes after he joined the rest of them.
V shocked him awake, and like a zombie the man set out toward the coordinates of the AV.
Slowly creeping behind the man for 300M, V overheard his rowdy bunch of execs yowling. "Peng, hope you lasted longer than you did in the last quarter's fiscal call!" They piled into the AV, unbeknownst to them that this would be among the last moments of their life. V pitied them a bit.
In a back alley, she deactivated the stealth gear and began her walk to her Kusanagi. This little CT-3X was the first material gift Arasaka gave her that granted her as sense of freedom. After surviving and performing the highest of the compound children, she got this as a reward for her birthday.
Right when she turned the corner, she saw a bulky dude trying to boost her bike. With a firm hit to his chin, the man went down.
He turned up with his fist in the air to see how the rest of the world, outside Saka saw V. A lanky, yet sinewy teen ready to brawl. Much like how cats had been described to him. He laughed, put his fist down and got up.
As he got up, he saw the girl's hand grab for an iron in on her thigh. With his hands moving to a surrender, "Hey chica, bike's all yours... but I was hoping to turn some eddies on this thing. Instead, there's a boxing match in Heywood. No one would think you would win with that build. Having that right hook to my chin, I know we could make it out fat. Whaddya say?"
V raised her index finger to her lip and made a call. "NC770416 reporting in. KTOE3 has been neutralized." The girl's head bobbed side and side to whatever was being transceiver back to her. "Can I stay out a few more hours, I want to scope out some intel on any experimental chrome being utilized in local brawls. There should be a mix of gangs and unofficial corpo sponsorships.... Thanks, sending in recordings now and I will report in no later than 0100 hours."
The girl turned back to the man and brusquely said, "Sure."
He stuck his hand out as a gesture of welcome and introduction, "The name's Jackie."
They later split a 20k eddie pot and Mama Welles's chilaquilles.
19, Lizzie's
After getting snippets of info here and there throughout the city, V finally found a person who could be her opportunity to start the Arasaka deprogramming from her head. Not a lot of techies who were regarded as both smart and having no afilliation with corps whatsoever.
There was a feeling of hope that, they could just slightly loosen the grasp Arasaka had over their life. At least the respect to be offed face to face.
V descended the stairs into the basement.
"Hi, I was the one who sent a message about a shard needing to be changed without being traced."
A girl with a fauxhawk around her age turned around.
V was taken aback, a moment she was young and pretty. A slight blush went across her cheeks and ears when their eyes met.
The techie looked her up and down. V reeked of a corpo with money, the outfit she had on was thousands of eddies. It made her stomach churn thinking of the last fight she had with Maiko. Designer, spotless clothing and with demure accents of cyberware only the rich could afford.
She scoffed, "Don't fuck with CorpoRats."
"But, but..," V stammered. She felt her pulse rising. She had to calm down, elevated stress outside of work hours could alert Arasaka to tap into head. This is the last thing she wanted them to have a live feed of her trying to slowly mod her chip.
When her eyes met Judy's once more, her face had changed.
To Judy it was exactly how people looked when they were about to be hit... a certainty that this moment they knew to be long coming was finally here.
"That bad?"
"14 years of bad."
Judy let out a sigh and looked up at the ceiling. "Jack in."
In a hush voice, saturated with shame, "I can't."
"How'd you think this was going to work, then? Huh?"
V slid a bloodied shard across Judy's desk. "This is the same one in me right now. I pulled it out of a kid that grew up with me, but didn't get to see life beyond ... " V hesitated to reveal it, but it was going to be known soon enough, "...'Saka."
"Shit."
23, Overlooking the Arasaka factory with Takemura
"Hahahaha, damn. Goro, we're the same. Maybe that's why we don't get along."
"What is so funny that you are laughing, saying we are the same? Your lack of honor, principle.."
For the first time since their fateful encounter in the scrapyard, V decided to speak in Japanese, "I'll cut you off there. Arasaka took me off the street and made me into a child soldier just like you. It was a bit different in Night City 's all."
A pregnant pause in the conversation came as Takemura's face changed from a look of surprise to the pallid expression one gets when they begin to escape into themselves.
She continued, "I was just 5, I have this vague memory of digging through the garbage like any other street kid. City took me and put me in a group home. Arasaka agents came through and picked a handful of us out in exchange for some eddies. We were to serve the enterprise, you know how it is. Our body for their profit. I didn't care all too much between the shard in my head dulling me out for the first few months to be more complacent and a hot meal three times a day. It wasn't too bad of a deal when my other options were just as bleak.
I exceled physically and in their classrooms -- I got moved into a specialized intelligence unit. It's a nice way to put child merc. Had me going in, killing Millitech funded gangs, planting enemy corp shit all around NC. One time they even sent me to the Eurotheater, they were all pissed off at some anti-corpo group in Coimbra. Anyway... I was just turning 17 they moved me into corpo offices. Guess all the training paid off to put me in the 'real' counterintelligence office."
V takes a long drag of her cigarette.
"I probably killed more people working in a suit than I did in my baby merc years. Of course, none of the pantsuits with heels kept me from executing dissidents, traitors and activists with my own hands. My last day in the office Jenkins killed a whole round table of Europeans because he was a myopic, little man. "
V laughed emphatically thinking of Jenkins's fate "After 18 years under Saka's thumb, Abernathy finally freed NC770416 of her duties. Then my corpo days were over... Well yeah right, Susan just wanted me to continue running the merc path since I was still useful the only thing that matters is the end result. At least I don't have that shard in my head anymore that could just end me once I outlived my usefulness. Instead I got a new spiffy one giving me a split personality and frying my brain in a different way." Switching back to English, "Perhaps, I am simply a shitty merc because that's what 'Saka made me into."
24, Aldecado camp outside of Hopi land
On top of some questionably assembled scaffolding, lay V and Judy. One of each of their hands interlaced, while the other points up at stars, drawing made up constellations.
"You know what finally hit me, Jude?"
"What's up, mi calabacita?" "It's really sunk in that I'm free now. They got me some more time to get to be on this planet with you and I'm not trapped in some sub-terranean kid zoo nor in the walls of a corpo tower. It's just me and you, there's no walls. No ceiling preventing us from going any higher. And there's no chip in my head telling me I'm happy, I can feel it, you know?"
Judy took V's hand and gave it a kiss.
"Free and happy, Valerie."