Chapter 369: Taking a Step Back
"Tsk...I knew you were too calm..." remarked David, clicking his tongue as the bullet fired from his pistol stopped, still spinning, just before it pierced the center of Vahn’s skull.
"This isn’t a BD, if that’s what you’re thinking..." countered Vahn, reaching up to slow the bullet’s spin, causing thin trails of white smoke to rise from his fingers due to the friction.
"Just tell me what you want already..." droned David, taking a seat atop a backless white sofa, unbothered by the fact his cybernetically augmented body was on full display. He thought of putting his gun to his head, but on the off chance Vahn was telling the truth, he didn’t want to zero himself to prove a point.
Shaking his head, Vahn calmly reiterated, "I want you and those like you to be free. But if it makes things easier for you, here..."
Making a swiping gesture with his right hand, Vahn caused David’s eyes to widen to their limits as he had Sis transfer 20,000,000 Eddies into the standoffish youth’s private account. This was several times what he had made in the past year combined, so as someone who routinely risked his life to earn considerably less, Vahn had David’s full attention.
"For now, I’m going to leave you and give you time to come to terms with the fact that this is reality..." stated Vahn, rising to his feet and presenting David a black business card with his seven-winged symbol embossed on the surface, adding, "When you’re ready to talk or if you find yourself in a particularly precarious situation, hold this to your forehead and call out to me. I may not answer or arrive immediately, but your words will reach me. As for those twenty million Eddies, they’re yours to do with as you please. Purchase a mansion, buy a car—you can even fly to the moon and take a year or two to collect your thoughts and enjoy life. When you’re ready, I’ll be waiting..."
"Just who—" started David, his words trailing off as Vahn dispersed into countless, rapidly dissipating flower petals. This supported the idea that he was trapped in a BD, but he had never experienced one where he had access to his implant’s banking and call functions. And as someone who once regularly tested and pedaled illegal XBDs(Extreme Braindances), he could generally tell when he was in one.
"Could all of that have been real...?" David asked himself, staring down at his fully cybernetic left hand and the arm he had inherited from his short-lived mentor, Maine. Despite his best efforts, he hadn’t been able to stop it from trembling for going on six weeks. Now, it was completely still. And though he still felt as though he had lost something important, his anxiety and distractedness were completely gone.
"Shit! Lucy—!" exclaimed David, activating his Sandevistan and moving at sub-sonic but time-dilated speed to race up to the second floor of his and Lucy’s mansion to check on her in the bath. He was capable of moving at much greater speeds, but if he broke the sound barrier within his home, it would blow out all the windows and completely wreck the place with the overpressure.
"David..." muttered Lucy, a young woman with a slender build, light skin, naturally white hair dyed with a rainbow hue, and distinctively red-purple eyes that glistened like opals. While David was interacting with Vahn, she had been approached by Sis, who, from her point of view as a Netrunner, was the most advanced, most terrifying, and most comprehensive AI she had ever encountered. The amount of data constituting her was so great that Lucy doubted the entire world’s data, combined, would be enough to give form to a hair on her head. It was like meeting a Goddess—alive and breathing—within Cyberspace...
"Tell me. Did that bastard do anything to you...?" asked David, his brows furrowed to their limits as he concernedly grabbed Lucy’s shoulders with his cybernetic hands, causing her to wince and respond, "David...you’re hurting me..."
"Ah—"
Pulling his hands away like a child who had touched a hot stove, David thought to apologize, but there were too many other thoughts competing in his mind. Lucy, on the other hand, was comparably calm, exhaling from her nose as she rose from her ice bath, asking, "Who’s this bastard you’re talking about?"
"The guy who gave me this card..." responded David, presenting Vahn’s business card as he explained, "He called himself Vahn Mason, and said something about freeing me and everyone else in our world. Before he disappeared, he gave me that card and twenty million Eddies to ’collect my thoughts’ or something..."
"That must be the Dragon God the person who contacted me was talking about..." remarked Lucy, grabbing Vahn’s business card from David’s hand and preempting his interrogation by revealing, "A ridiculously advanced AI who called herself the Emissary of the Dragon God approached me with a similar offer. She said that if we were prepared to accept responsibility for our world, we could attain power far beyond the limitations of cybernetics and access to functionally unlimited resources..."
"Doesn’t that sound too good to be true...?" asked David, rubbing the back of his head with a deep frown as he noted, "That Vahn guy...someone who calls himself a God can’t be a good person. And throwing twenty mill at us like it’s nothing...it’s like a slap in the face with a leash—one he expects us to put on ourselves..."
"Twenty million Eddies is twenty million Eddies, David..." asserted Lucy, cupping the right side of David’s face with her hand and smiling as she reminded, "None of the money we earn comes from good places or good people. At least this Vahn and the Dragon’s Pavilion pays well and well in advance..."
"Then...what should we do...?" asked David, placing his right hand over Lucy’s, this time making sure to be as gentle as possible.
"For now, we should go underground..." muttered Lucy, holding David’s gaze and affectionately caressing his cheekbone with her thumb as she pointed out, "Twenty million isn’t enough for us to disappear completely, but it’s more than enough for us to get out of Edgerunning. Let’s spend a year or two just enjoying our lives..."
"But what about the others?" asked David, his voice faint and face full of conflict as he muttered, "I promised Maine that I’d look after everyone...I can’t just ditch them. Kiwi and Falco would be okay, but Rebecca...there’s no way she could make it as a Solo..."
"Then divvy the money five ways and we can all bid farewell to this shitty lifestyle..." proposed Lucy, exhaling faintly from her nose. She, personally, felt that David had more than repaid Maine for his tutelage, but she knew how sentimental he could be. His left arm previously belonged to Maine, and though it was an extremely dated model, leading to an increase in the likelihood of his blood becoming tainted with micro metals, he stubbornly refused to upgrade it.
"Alright...let’s go with that..." affirmed David, cupping Lucy’s head, taking care not to touch or so much as graze her deep dive port as he rested his forehead against hers with his eyes closed. It didn’t feel real that he was about to give away twelve million Eddies, but eight million was more than enough for two people to live comfortably. Even high-ranking Corpos only earned around 250,000 a year before taxes, so if they didn’t make any big purchases, they could stretch eight million for decades...
...
..
.
’Mmn...they deserve to live in peace...’ thought Vahn, closing the display he had been using to observe David’s and Lucy’s intimacy before things really picked up. He was fully prepared to support the duo to become the saviors of their world, but if they would rather go into hiding and live the rest of their lives simply enjoying one another’s company, they more than deserved it—especially Lucy. Arasaka had taken her from her parents and groomed her from a young age. She had staked her life and witnessed her remaining friends being murdered in their efforts to escape them, so while Vahn felt pity for David, he empathized with Lucy.
’But now that I’ve taken an interest in this world, I can’t allow Arasaka and the Megacorps to have their way...’ decided Vahn, prompting Sis to pull up the images and profiles of everyone in the Cyberpunkverse, particularly in Night City, who qualified for Ascendancy. Unsurprisingly, David and Lucy were near the top of the list, but their positions were thirteenth and sixth, respectively. At the top of the list was a man named Vincent Clint Reeves, followed by four women: Rogue Amendiares, Panam Palmer, Judy Alvarez, and, to Vahn’s surprise, the pint-sized Rebecca.
’I can’t imagine her choosing to become an Ascendee without David, but if he and Lucy ghost the rest of his crew, her feisty nature could do some real damage to Arasaka...’ mused Vahn, a faint smile adorning his face. He had gained a favorable impression of Rebecca in the final episodes of the Cyberpunk anime. If he could empower her to the point she could fodder the monstrous Cyborg who had callously put her down—Adam Smasher—he felt he would be correcting a grave injustice.
’But who is this Vincent guy...?’ Vahn wondered, opening the man’s profile to find he was actually the setting’s presiding protagonist. At present, his parameters were nothing to write home about, but he had plus modifiers for Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence alongside a Skill that granted him increased resistance to mental corrosion and Cyberpsychosis. David had the same Skill, but his was only F-Rank compared to Vincent’s D-Rank, an impressive value considering his setting was F-Rank.
Reading through Vincent’s profile, Vahn couldn’t help frowning. While the former was listed as the world’s protagonist, he was evidently fated to die at the age of twenty-three, with his current age listing him as twenty-two. In other words, much like David, he was fated to live an exceedingly short life despite his natural talents and accelerated growth.
’This world is gloomy as hell...’ thought Vahn, exhaling from his nose as he perused the remaining profiles. As he got nearer to the bottom, he began finding people over a hundred years old, but those closest to the top were destined to die young, Lucy included. After the conclusion of Edgerunners and her brief stint on the moon, she makes one final effort to hurt Arasaka before effectively committing suicide by deep-diving into the Old Net. She lives on for a short while as a fragmented AI, but she’s later subsumed by another, fading into the annals of history without anyone to grieve or even remember she existed...
’I won’t allow that to happen...’ Vahn affirmed to himself, his expression hardening as he and Sis began formulating how their chosen champion could take down Arasaka and the other Megacorps. One of the very first things they would need to do was dismantle or, at the very least, back up the Old Net. Presently, the Net existed in isolated pockets, protected from rogue and exceptionally advanced AI by Black and Ice Walls. This made it difficult for ordinary people to know what was occurring outside the cities in which they were born and effectively trapped. By restoring the globality of the Net and returning life to the irradiated barrens that deterred all but a few intrepid nomads from traveling between cities, people would be free to choose paths other than oppressive consumerism.
’I could also just drop a few Towers into the world...’ considered Vahn, his eyes flashing at the thought. He had been searching for a candidate world to test transfusing Mana into to elevate its rank. And since most machines were generally incompatible with non-physical energies, the introduction of Mana and the effective erasure of radioactive isotopes would put those without cybernetics in a position to flip the existing system of oppression on its head...
...
..
.