GOOD MORNING, NIGHT CITY! @temprnc - Tumblr Blog

nightcitycitizen uploaded pkg to: netdir://heshs_archive.web/soviet-sin-pkg2 ⚠ downloading pkg thru localnet... ✓ .txt file extracted! characters detected as words: 5,675

-> BLUE MOONRISE.txt attached msg: Artemiy Vishnevsky's crusade against Arasaka ended on the night of August 20th, 2023. Johnny Silverhand, an up-and-coming merc hired by Alt Cunningham, is unknowingly about to start it once more. (v belongs to @temprnc) tags: major character death, canon-typical violence, johnny silverhand has a body, johnny silverhand has feelings, engram v, suicide attempt, enemies to friends to lovers, well. one-sided contempt to friends to lovers -> [pkg 1; pkg 2; pkg 3 (coming soon)]

prefer to read it on your own ao3 localnet? no problem!

On November 16th, 2052, in College Station, Texas, Robert Linder was born with a guitar in his hand – a Jimi Hendrix stratocaster – and he hasn’t been without one since.

Robert, often called Johnny (the first song he picked up on was Johnny Guitar), was welcomed into the world by a family of musicians that spent their days scraping the streets for change. It’s not that they weren’t good… it’s just that none of them were great. None of them caught the eye of music corporate execs and none of them particularly minded – those who turned to corps were traitors, and Linders were not traitors.

Instead, Johnny turned to nomads. Texas was poor before it seceded and it was poor after. He loved his home and his life, but surely there was more out there. Johnny fled his home in the night at sixteen with nothing but the clothes on his back and his guitar in a case.

The group he fell in with was the Meltrozos, a family that fled Mexico because of the war between the cartel and the government. They picked up people as they went, eventually accumulating around fifteen in addition to their four-person family. While it wasn’t what they wanted to spend their money on, border officials turned their eyes away from their missing documents ‘cause the amount was nice and hefty. The Meltrozos stayed in South Central Texas for a year or so before packing up and migrating north, where they picked up Johnny and kept chugging along.

Johnny’s fingers grew to learn the notes of ranchera and tejano, mariachi and norteño. Most of the songs were about love and pain and how to make it right with your girl, with a few about the Long Walk sprinkled here and there. The mother of the original Meltrozos, Señora Gabriela, was a descendant of one of many Americans left behind when the NUSA pulled out of Latin America after the Second Central American War, and died in the subsequent Long Walk back north. Though she never sang along when Johnny tuned the radio to rock n’ roll, he came to consider her the toughest rockergirl ever. She was giving corps the middle finger just by being herself and helping others around her, always welcoming a new face and always being the first to chip in. Señora Gabriela was pretty damn tough, alright.

The next year, in 2069, the Unification War started between the NUSA and the Free States of North America. Johnny stuck with the Meltrozos – though Texas was neutral, it was known for having a quick draw when it came to threats, both real and perceived. Instead of returning home, he stayed nomadic, carrying packs and sleeping in the backs of cars. Even though the Meltrozos struggled for electricity and water and safety, Johnny couldn’t have been happier. He was living a life he wanted as a drifter with nothing but a guitar and friends to his name. Some called it fleeing from active war zones – and maybe that was true. But whatever his life was, Johnny thought it was preem.

Reality came crashing down on him and the slowly-building hope the Meltrozos had when they spent a night in Sacramento. It was too dangerous to drive through the night to the coast, as the North California government enacted a curfew due to… y’know, war. There was a boat in San Francisco waiting to take the Meltrozos to Alaska, a Free State that also wasn’t participating in the Unification War. The advantage it had over Texas was distance – it was harder to get troops on enemy ground if they had to march through Canada first. The captain had told them he could only wait one more day, and that last day was tomorrow.

The date was June 6th, 2070, and it was just past 11PM. The bombs that were flown in looked like shooting stars at first. Johnny almost made a wish before he heard the whistling, then he screamed and shouted until everyone was awake. The rush to the cars left almost everything behind, including those who were already dead.

The truck practically rolled when Señora Gabriela pulled out of the parking lot. Johnny almost fell back out of the truckbed, but barely managed to balance himself in time. He tried to count the number of orange streaks he saw in the night sky, but they were growing by the second. Explosions rocked the suspension; asphalt shrapnel hit the windows and pelted Johnny’s skin.

Maybe it was the adrenaline. Maybe it was because he was recently chipped. Maybe it was because he truly thought, for the first time, that he was going to die. But everything seemed to slow as something quickly fell from the sky and touched down in front of the truck. Johnny’s shades lifted from his face, then he left his makeshift wheel tub-seat, and the most amazing thing happened – he flew.

Johnny’s arms stretched out in front of him as the front of the truck dipped into the now liquid ground, reaching up into the sky. The guitar that had weighed him down these past few days felt light. A pleasant wave of heat washed over him, then another. As he glided to the ground, ever-so-slow, the temperature kept rising ‘til he hit concrete, where the pain registered all at once. He just got a tactical strike to his fuckin’ face.

For a while, he could do nothing but lie on his back and shake on the asphalt. His left arm felt hot, but he didn’t want to look, just in case it confirmed his worst fear. After listening to booming impacts for what felt like eternity, he could turn his head. To his left, he saw the truck, the bumper sunk into the fractured road. Señora Gabriela was dead at the wheel, and her adult son was dead in the passenger seat. To his right, he saw something fleshy and broken with a trail of red leading back to him.

Johnny Linder closed his eyes and waited to die. He was afforded no such luxury.

He woke up to a stranger above him and drew his left arm back to hit her before he realized he didn’t have a left arm. The woman introduced herself as Misty Olszewski and told him how she came across the wreck… and how Johnny was the only survivor. She had bandaged him up and taken him to Fairfield, which was a fair few miles away from Sacramento. He stayed there with her for a few weeks while his arm healed. Soon, Misty picked up signals from Night City “through her dreams or some hippie shit like that,” Johnny described it when recounting the story later. Honestly, Misty was most likely drawn there because it was the only city in NorCal that was desperately clinging to neutrality. When the time came to say their goodbyes, Misty offered to pull a tarot card for him, but he declined. Instead, Johnny found it stashed in the pocket of his duffel bag: the Wheel of Fortune, an arrow written on the back pointing upright.

For the first time in a long time, Johnny felt empty. He got pity from some chick that believed in auras and crashed with her in a motel for a few weeks, and now what’s he supposed to do? Go back and face the world like nothing happened? He didn’t have his parents, he didn’t have the Meltrozos, he didn’t have his Jimi Hendrix stratocaster. He was eighteen-years-old; he was supposed to be dead by now.

After pitying himself for a while, his priority turned to getting a new left arm because it was hell living right-handed. In two months’ time, he scrounged up enough eds to return to a more comfortable left-handed life. The cyberarm was secondhand, sold by a Militech veteran who needed the eddies to supplement his meagre pension. Johnny tried his best not to feel twisted up inside when the ripperdoc told him – part of her stupid ‘transparency guarantee.’ He needed it as much as the veteran did. Right?

With his new replacement arm, Johnny could work harder and make more eds. After a while, he set himself up with a shitty car with an even shittier trailer. He filled the tank and a can with CHOOH2 and almost blew the engines going seventy miles per hour. He didn’t really have a destination in mind – he just wanted to leave.

It took him four years putting around North and South California to finally end up following Misty into that city of dreams. See, a few months after Johnny got blown to shit, the NUSA’s acting president Rosalind Myers got her head out of her ass and signed the Treaty of Unification, ending the war. Arasaka had injected itself into the conflict on the side of the Free States a while back, and no one was willing to mount a full-scale assault – the losses on both sides would be even more catastrophic than they already were, hence the rapid signing of a treaty. As a clause of the treaty, Night City became an autonomous city, free of both NorCal and the NUSA. Corporations pounced on the opportunity to find a foothold in the now less-than-lawful area that was in-between governments.

The high-risk high-reward lifestyle Night City afforded was attractive to Johnny. He had nothing to lose, so what exactly was there to risk? He’d been in hot zones all the time through the Unification War, so he’d gambled his life before, always with the expectation that he’d somehow come out alive. Hell, he survived the carpet-bombing of Sacramento… only one of nineteen Meltrozos. That ought to count for something.

Once he was actually in Night City, everything washed over him like a wave. The buildings were packed tight and towered into the sky like the stories his mother told him about the Walled City of Kowloon. Lights were on 24/7, music blared from every storefront, he was pushed and pulled by joytoys and picksockets. Somehow he settled into a life with neon lights for stars and droning advertisements for lullabies after being out in the open for the most part of four whole years.

Johnny, just like his parents, scraped the streets for change, taking fifty-eddy jobs and living the most frugal life possible. Despite the challenges, he liked this new life. When he joined the Meltrozos, he was lost, and didn’t know what to do with his life. Being a drifter sounded fun, so he became a drifter. Now, mercenary work sounds fun, so he’s gonna build himself a name that’ll light up brighter than the lights of North Oak.

His attention, between gigs, drifted back towards guitars. Four years back, Misty said the Jimi Hendrix stratocaster was totaled along with the truck and was completely unsalvageable. Johnny couldn’t exactly check himself, so he had to trust Misty at her word. After shopping around the sprawling metropolis that is Night City’s music scene, he landed on a simple AntiNavy Blue. He had to press pretty hard to get the strings down, and tuning it proved a bit difficult – but it had a good sound, and that was a pretty important factor.

Johnny slowly picked up on how to make a guitar sound half-decent again. The four-year break was detrimental to his skill, but it seems he had to lose the basics to gain a unique style that started perking up other’s ears. He picked up a choom by the name of Kerry Eurodyne, someone who matched Johnny in both energy and passion when it came to music. Kerry was the first to jokingly call Johnny “Silver-Man” after he refused to give his last name when they first met. In all honesty, he hadn’t been using his last name for a while. He wasn’t a Linder, wasn’t a Meltrozo… but he was still Johnny. It morphed over time to “Silverman,” which, when turned over to their small (and drunken) audience, turned to Johnny Silverhand.

Johnny Silverhand liked being Johnny Silverhand. Silverhand didn’t worry or regret – he lived in the now, in the moment. He took on anything anti-corp, whether it be gigs that were slowly ramping up in profit or singing anthems on stage ‘til he was blue in the face. Of course, there wasn’t really much of an audience to sing to, but if there was an opportunity to play at some run-down bar, both Johnny and Kerry were on it like hogs on shit. This led to even more opportunities, even drawing new merc buds that first heard of Johnny through his music, then heard about his mercenary exploits second.

Two of the women Johnny preferred to work with were Rogue Amendiares and Arabella – though she liked to be called Spider Murphy. Rogue was a heaping brute of a woman, all brawn; though she had her fair share of brains, too. Spider Murphy was an excellent netrunner with a track record of frying foes before Johnny and Rogue were even in the building. She, in her own weird way, made it a race – even the most boring jobs were exciting when she was on comms, playing in cyberspace with whatever new toys she had. Kerry cheered them on from the sidelines because, unless biz was personal, he didn’t really get involved. Music was more his scene, and he was glad to join Johnny in the studio – just not if the studio was some scav haunt crawling with second-place-sawbones. The guy’s got expensive taste for being close to broke, y’know? Can’t risk his valuables being literally ripped from his clutches – and out of his skin.

As it was approaching Johnny’s first birthday since landing in Night City, Kerry decided it’d be a good time to splurge as any and bought him a new guitar. It was the semi-latest model in the line of AntiNavy guitars – a sleek, sexy Moonlight X3. When it came to picking out the finest sound a guitar can produce, Kerry was next to none. It was obvious the care he took in installing the stings and tuning them perfectly. Maybe it was for Kerry’s benefit so that the sound they produced together was better overall, but it was still Johnny’s first birthday gift he had gotten in four years. Slowly, as if it didn’t even want to… the melody of Johnny Guitar reached his fingers.

And who else would that melody find but Misty Olszewski? She got notified Johnny was around when she caught sight of a holo-wanted poster of him, which quickly disappeared beacuse the statute of limitations had run out for assault and battery with a deadly weapon. (The statute of limitations was thirty minutes.) Misty got Johnny’s digits, then they met up at a run-down bar close to Misty’s new esoterica shop. She had the opportunity to explain that she didn’t take pity on Johnny when she let him crash with her. She said how she could sense that something incredibly terrible and incredibly wonderful would happen to him, but thought that it was residual energies from the tragedy of June 6th. Now, years later, his aura was the same – blue and green mixing and swirling, specks of red pulsing as they rove across his energy waves. There were little changes here and there, and with Misty’s advice of avoiding purples, especially not wearing purple fabric, Johnny’s aura should go back to normal. This time, Johnny bit his tongue and at least pretended to consider buying into her beliefs.

As Johnny and Kerry’s sound improved (and as he honestly kind of avoided purples for a while), Johnny’s workplace harmony improved with Rogue and Spider Murphy. They worked together like clockwork: the second, minute, and hour hand ticked in tandem. Of course, what would a clock be without its face? Fixers set the scene for the action, and there were fixers a-plenty. As the months passed, there were more coming knockin’ on Johnny’s door, asking after his and the women’s various mercenary services.

It wasn’t very long before someone came and shook up the scenery of Night City’s underground: Dexter DeShawn, once described by an unknown poet as “the fat-assed Black Jesus of the Afterlife.” He had fucked off to god-knows-where before Johnny had arrived in Night City following a job that went monumentally south. Everything flipped upside-down once Dex came back, decked out in gold and girls, ready to re-make himself real in a city polluted by dreamers. His very first target? Johnny Silverhand. Dex had worked with Rogue before, and Murphy was his go-to ‘runner a few years back. He trusted the women to do their jobs quickly and correctly, but wanted to interrogate this new wildcard in their merry band of three. After some messages were exchanged, a slow roll through the streets of Night City was arranged.

The air inside the lowrider was thick with ample cigar smoke. Johnny’s lungs burned a little, but he didn’t dare show it – yes, he picked up smoking in Fairfield, yet hated the taste of cigars. Too rich for his palette, both in eddies and in how the dusty flavor lingered on his tongue. He tried his best to ignore it and focus on carrying a conversation with Dex. The job first sounded simple: klep something called a ‘biochip.’ There were three problems leading up to it, one with Maelstrom, one with Militech, and one with the client Dex had a contract with. The issue that needed to be resolved with Maelstrom was that a prototype called a Flathead needed to be retrieved from their base; Militech officer Meredith Stout was on the look for that Flathead prototype, as Maelstrom had klepped it from her; and the client, a woman named Alt Cunningham, wanted to meet a merc with skin in the game.

Dex left Johnny with a question: “Quiet life, or blaze o’ glory, Señior Silverhand?” Johnny didn’t even hesitate to pull the trigger on becoming a nomad, so why would he hesitate when it was the same shit in a different setting? He assured Mister DeShawn that no decision needed to be made, as he’d already decided. Johnny’d be betraying himself if he fizzled out instead of burning as bright as he can for as long as he can.

The next day, he met up with Rogue and stepped to Maelstrom in their own turf – which would be a pretty fuckin’ stupid move if Dex hadn’t paid for the Flathead first. Johnny wrote off that Stout woman as trouble, ‘cause all corps are. The real trouble is, Dex made a deal with Brick, who was now dethroned, and not with the currently-ruling Royce. Everyone’s hackles were raised, and it turns out for good reason. Maelstromers were always inching toward violence; this time was no different. Rogue and Johnny managed to crush Royce on their way out the door and shot their way to the getaway car. One flatlined borgfreak and one Flathead acquisition later, Johnny was on his way to meet Alt.

Alt Cunningham was a mysterious woman through and through. As soon as Johnny entered Lizzie’s Bar, he felt eyes on him – soon after, she approached and took him to a private back room. A hologram of a beautiful naked woman dancing lit up from the console table in the center of the room, braindance shards scattered around her feet. Brief conversation about Dex was exchanged, then Alt got into the meat of it. The biochip was squirreled away in Konpeki Plaza, hiding in the penthouse suite. When Johnny heard who was checked into the room, his heart soared – he’d be jumping Yorinobu Arasaka him-fuckin’-self. He felt his pulse beat harder against his chest. It heightened the risk factor immesurably, but god if that didn’t tempt Johnny even further.

The one thing that made this plan possible was Yorinobu’s plans with the chip. He swiped it from daddy dearest and was planning on selling it to NetWatch – meaning that it had no active tracker on it, and was therefore practically begging to be stolen. She kept the conversation going as they went through the back halls of Lizzie’s Bar; Johnny would be figuring out where exactly the chip was from a braindance of Konpeki Plaza that Alt had recorded herself. Alt introduced him to Denny Nocturne, an ex-Mox who was an absolute genius when it came to editing BDs. She guided him though the recording, with Spider Murphy popping in over hololink to help as well. After a while of scanning, Johnny found the relic storage unit right on the edge of the signal range – underneath the wooden veneer of the floor, in a hidden cooler. He unplugged from the braindance and followed Alt out through the halls, where she proposed an idea in a quiet corner: no middlemen, no splitting the check – no Dex. If Johnny helped Alt cut Dex out of the deal, he’d be that much richer for it. It was a low-down thing to do that could cost Johnny everything he’s built in Night City… but it could be that spark needed to light the fire of mercenary stardom. Whatever Johnny decided, Alt promised to keep this proposal between them.

As soon as Johnny exited Lizzie’s, he got a call from Dex. He relayed the info from the braindance, but kept quiet on Alt’s ask. Dex was satisfied and summoned him to the Afterlife.

Once Johnny arrived at the Afterlife, Rogue ushered him past the bouncer and into stools at the bar. Though she tried to stifle her excited smile, Johnny still picked up on it, prompting her to gush about so many legends having graced this place. The table near the staff-only door was Jackie Welles’ favorite spot! Valeria Chavez conducted her biz in that booth right over there! When the bartender asked what they’d like, she asked for “two Moscow Mules with muddled cherries and a splash of bitters,” like she’d been rehearsing it in her head. The bartender smiled knowingly and said, “A duo of Artemiy Vishnevskys, comin’ right up.”

Just as they started sipping their drinks, they were called to the back by Dex’s bodyguard. Johnny and Rogue met up with Spider Murphy and Dex in a little soundproof room, where the plan was laid out in its entirety: an automated Delamain cab will drop them off the the front door, and Johnny and Rogue stroll in with fake IDs. Murphy and the Flathead will take care of the hotel’s subnet while Johnny and Rogue tip-toe around Yorinobu’s penthouse, leaving with their pockets exactly one biochip heavier. One wrong footfall would spell disaster. It was exactly the type of job Johnny liked.

Konpeki Plaza welcomed Johnny and Rogue as Jei Sanwell and Rachella Octe – the fake identities Dex set up for them, of course. They left their guns in the Delamain, as the Plaza had a stict no-weapons policy. Murphy, who was jacked into netspace and on holo, gave them a quick background as they walked in; they were there for a meeting with Hajime Taki, Arasaka’s military department representative, to transfer ownership of the Flathead. They checked in after making some excuse about meeting Taki-san later to the receptionist, and headed for their suite.

Rogue unpacked the Flathead and Spider Murphy took control, guiding it through shafts and vents to the Plaza’s dweller – a 24/7 netrunner constantly monitoring the hotel’s subnet for anyone looking for a way inside. The Flathead made the dweller take a… break, just to open a backdoor to let Murphy in. Breaking through the ICE the dweller set up would take more time than she thought: it would eat up a few hours, at least. Any quicker and her brain would turn to flaming hot goo and pour out her ears.

Johnny and Rogue shot the breeze in their suite ‘til it was go-time three hours later. Murphy told them that it was time to get serious – Yorinobu Arasaka just walked in the door of the Plaza. Rogue tried to pick up the mood with a joke as they stepped into the elevator, then pressed the button for the penthouse floor. “C’mon, you guys are actin’ all dark and stormy,” she had said. “Hey – why’d the Soviet’s output kick him out of the apartment? ‘Cause she was gettin’ sick-le of him! Ah…” This earned her a flat “Christ…” from Murphy.

The doors opened and the very concept of luxury spilled into the elevator. They had to be on high alert now, as Yorinobu’s biosignature had gone dark. Johnny scanned the room and found the safe in the same spot it was in the braindance, then flipped the switch by the bed to open it. Cold white mist spilled from the safe as it rose from the floor. When Johnny looked up through the windows, there was an air carrier and multiple military drones buzzing by, up to the helipad. Murphy reported that every member of staff was on their feet, in a panic about something, but not about them. Rogue hunched over the safe and tapped her foot quickly as Johnny jacked in his personal link to let Murphy work her netmagic.

“Shit – Yorinobu’s comin’,” Murphy said. Rogue forced the safe the rest of the way open, hauling it out as soon as the seal broke. The electronic meter on the side of the case read: Biochip Integrity: 99.8%. They found cover in the hollow maintenance shaft of a pillar of Smart Glass in the back of the room, squeezing in just as Yorinobu stepped through the elevator doors with Adam Smasher following behind him like some ‘roided-out ultra-cyborg-duckling. An old man – no, actually, that was Saburo Arasaka. That was Saburo Arasaka walking down those stairs, his bodyguard Goro Takemura in front, and Johnny was on the verge of shitting his pants.

Saburo dismissed his guard, as did Yorinobu. Saburo revealed that he knew the biochip was taken the moment his son stole it. Yorinobu started to throw a tantrum and asked why his father personally came to Night City himself – to humiliate him? To personally see to his son’s ten thousand lashings? Saburo said that he could not forgive his son for selling his greatest achievement to the Westerners; for misbehavior, maybe, but treason, no. “I’m so glad your mother didn’t live to see this,” he said, his Japanese strict and formal like his son was a stranger. “The heart should break but once.”

Yorinobu threw his father against the glass, his hands around his neck, and squeezed. Rogue cursed under her breath, clutching the case as Johnny watched with an ajar mouth and wide eyes. Saburo’s knees started to give, and his son followed, hovering over him as he fell, his hands never once relenting. Eight seconds ticked by like hours, and Yorinobu finally let go. His hands were shaking, just like Johnny’s. Yorinobu announced to the penthouse AI that he wished to put the hotel on lockdown, for Saburo Arasaka had been murdered by an unknown assailant.

Sirens started to wail as Smasher and Takemura ran back inside the room. Yorinobu ordered them back and dismissed Takemura as useless, as he’d failed in doing his only job of protecting the head of the Arasaka family. The three of them retreated to the elevator. As soon as the doors shut, Johnny let out a string of curses, his knees almost buckling as his adrenaline took a dip.

Murphy and Rogue joined him in swearing loudly while Johnny stumbled out of the maintenance shaft, his hands turning to fists to calm the shakes. They needed to get out, and fast. Murphy spotted a door to a balcony and started picking her way through its lock ‘til she felt something was wrong. It was too late – “Fuck, they’ve traced my web,” Murphy cursed, her voxbox starting to stutter and glitch. “Th-they got me–me!” And a deafening silence followed.

Rogue tailed Johnny out to the balcony through the door Murphy unlocked. They held their breath as they inched across the top of a window frame barely big enough to support them, the window itself sloping down to overlook a lower floor. A Trauma Team emergency evacuation carrier drove past them and up to the helipad. Another drone swooped in close to Johnny and Rogue – an Arasaka military drone.

They jumped, riding the slope of the window as the drone shot at them, the bullets catching up quickly. Johnny tumbled off the edge first and broke the skylight of the lower floor, hitting pipes as he fell down into the room. He felt something hard touch the side of his head, and his vision turned black.

Rogue shoved him awake, blood dripping from her mouth as she begged Johnny to wake up. When he opened his eyes, she turned to the case – which was heavily damaged from the fall. The side of the container read Container depressurized. Biochip Integrity: 94.3% and was steadily dropping. At Rogue’s suggestion, Johnny called Alt, who promptly and rightfully freaked out on him. He relayed the situation, but she only had one solution: either Rogue or Johnny slot the relic into their neural port. Rogue grit her teeth and slotted it.

She alerted Delamain to be ready, and he told them that their ride was waiting in the garage. They snuck as best they could past the guards while injured and bleeding. As they always do, things went to shit, and Johnny and Rogue had to pick some guns off guards and start shooting their way out. They took an elevator down to the garage, where Arasaka guards were swarming the Delamain cab. Johnny and Rogue took enough potshots for the guards to disperse and die. He shoved Rogue in the cab and told Delamain to step on it.

They raced through the streets, eventually losing the drones pursuing them. Rogue slumped in the backseat, holding her gut as Johnny barked at Delamain to take them to a ripperdoc. The AI denied the request and stated that the itinerary was prearranged and therefore couldn’t be altered. Johnny just continued to beg as he held Rogue upright, blood bright and red on her face. She leaned her weight on him, telling him she would hold out – just to take the biochip. Rogue’s fingers shook as she slotted it in Johnny’s neural port, then they went limp against his neck. She breathed out slowly, her eyes glazing over as they fluttered half-shut.

Suddenly, the air was stale and soupy. It stayed stuck in Johnny’s throat, keeping him from inhaling or exhaling. He breathed in shallowly, then out, then in – his hands curled shut, his fingernails dug into his palms. Johnny looked at Rogue again and scanned her. Just another criminal from Watson; just another woman with a €$242 bounty. Delamain blurted out, “Miss Amendiares has passed. Where shall I take her remains?”

Johnny blinked and looked away from Rogue. The Delamain cab was parked at the back entrance to the No-Tell Motel, where Dex had told him to take them after the heist. How long was Delamain driving for? And for how long was Johnny stuck staring at Rogue? He, in a daze, told Delamain to stay put, to lock the doors, and to shoot anyone that comes gawking at Rogue… At her corpse, he means. Fuck, saying that doesn’t feel right to him… Rouge shouldn’t be dead.

Johnny felt numb and disconnected as he knocked on Dex’s motel room door. Dex’s bodyguard snatched him inside, then threw the door shut. In the room, Dex was hunched over, staring at a TV, a big, fat cigar in his hand. WNS, N64, even the pirate networks – everyone was talking about the unknown assailant that had not only assassinated Saburo Arasaka, but had stolen a valuable Arasaka prototype in the process. Johnny told Dex that at least he got the biochip. Dex blew his lid and snapped at Johnny that no, the biochip was the problem, as it was currently tracing Johnny, and therefore Dex, back to Konpeki Plaza. Even though it didn’t have an actual tracker on it, with this amount of attention on that penthouse, someone was going to unravel it all and unravel it quickly.

Dex started hatching a plan to get the hell out of this city: first, call Alt and get paid, then book the first private jet to Honduras. But before anything, he told Johnny to go to the bathroom and wash his face, get the blood off and calm down a little. When he stumbled into the bathroom, Johnny was surprised when he looked in the mirror – he found a copious amount of blood smeared on his face… and down his neck. He watched his own face fall as a realization washed over him; Rogue did that, didn’t she?

He turned on the faucet and ran his hands under the water, then splashed it on his face. Johnny rubbed at the blood on his neck, red-tinted water running down his wrists. He shut the water off, then took a hand towel and dried himself off, discarding it on the floor. The bathroom door slid open and Johnny stepped out, only to be met with a right hook to his jaw. Dex’s bodyguard stood over him as he crumpled to the floor.

That brute stomped just under Johnny’s ribcage, leaving him curled up and gasping for breath. Dex dropped the lit cigar on the floor, snuffing out the fat cherry with the heel of his shoe. He asked Johnny to recall their first conversation – quiet life, or blaze of glory? Well, Dex decided. He chooses the quiet life, and the quiet life requires zeroing all ties.

Dex’s bodyguard cocked his gun, then handed it grip-first over to Dex. He took it and readied his sights on Johnny, who was still struggling on the floor. There was a flash of light, and something terribly loud, then everything went totally dark.

The date is May 1st, 2077. Johnny Silverhand is dead.

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