"We're not looking for Johnny..." The light from the device cast across her face, as if something had hooked her very soul.
In some ways, these people cared more about the chip than V herself. Earlier, they had even tried to rope her in with excuses to "help them out." Cunning—these Voodoo rats always were.
"Alright..." With a heavy tap of a key, Maman Brigitte turned to V and beckoned. "Come over. You need to get into the immersion tank... or you'll overheat and fry your brain."
"Wait..." V pressed her palms against the console, frowning. "You still haven't told me—who exactly are you looking for?"
"Alt Cunningham. Now you know... get in." She pointed toward the water's surface, ice floating on it, her urgency barely contained.
"Alt!" The moment the name dropped, Johnny Silverhand flickered into view before V. "Ask them what the hell they're really planning!"
Ignoring Johnny's agitation, V fixed her gaze on Maman Brigitte, voice sharp. "Tell me! What's going on here? And more importantly—what does this have to do with me?"
"Alt is beyond the Blackwall. No one can find her unless she chooses to appear... Johnny Silverhand is the key. Their past connection runs deep. We'll copy a fragment of his memory—that's the torch that leads the way.
As for your illness... how many years did Alt spend inside Arasaka's Mikoshi? The friend in your head should know. With Alt, nothing inside Arasaka stays a secret."
The explanation was brief, but it left V silent, staring at the vat of ice water before her.
"Fine... fine... but if you try anything, everyone here will regret it."
She swallowed hard, heat rising in her chest, then stepped into the water. "Hhh—" A shiver jolted through her body.
Around them, all the netrunners were already jacked in. Only Arthur and the others remained, watching curiously. If not for the mess of tangled cables strewn across the floor, the scene might have looked more like some kind of dark ritual.
"Looks like they're summoning a demon," Jackie muttered, watching V's shoulders shake under the icy water. "Hey... if NetWatch found out a crew was punching through the Blackwall down here, they'd lose their shit. Those guys warn about it on the news every morning."
"Hopefully this brings results..." Arthur crossed his arms, watching the incomprehensible ritual unfold. "Though let's hope our friend doesn't freeze to death first."
...
V's vision warped in a burst of glaring light, flickering rapidly before fading away...
Noise and cheering thundered in her ears, sharp enough to hurt. Though she was only an observer now, it all felt real—like she had lived it herself.
She saw the woman—Alt Cunningham. She saw the chaos, the attack, even the bizarre yet effective rescue attempt.
The riot sparked by the concert...
And finally, she watched Alt collapse into a cold corpse.
When the memory extraction ended, V and Johnny stood in a vast, blue-tinted space—a world built of static and noise.
Cyberspace. The ruins of a shattered digital world, vast—maybe even vaster than reality itself.
Johnny stood at a railing made of glitching static, its shape unmistakable. This was Arasaka Tower—the place where Alt had once been imprisoned.
"You saw it?" Johnny asked calmly, staring down at the chaotic sprawl below. His anger, once fierce, seemed long ago burned out by time.
"Those old corps... they played even dirtier than the ones now." V's tone carried a touch of sympathy as she studied him.
"It was Kei Arasaka, Saburo's eldest son... he was even crazier than the old bastard." Johnny's flickering body of light and shadow wavered. "But I blew him to hell with a single bomb."
"And you took plenty of innocents with him..." V's voice cut with sarcasm.
"Hmph. Innocents... maybe." Johnny didn't deny it, or rather, he didn't directly answer. "But if Kei Arasaka had lived, how many innocents would have died in the fifty years since? Twice as many? Ten times?
Believe me... every year under him would have been a nuclear bomb's worth of bodies."
V didn't argue. She couldn't—it was true.
"And as for what you said... that the corps have reined themselves in now?" Johnny let out a cold laugh, his face more serious than ever. "No one knows them better than I do. And the world today? It's even more desperate than back then.
When the corps showed no restraint, people still carried rage in their chests. But now? Everyone's just... exhausted. Back then, if you shouted in the street, 'Come fight Arasaka with me!' a mob would've followed without hesitation.
Now? They'd just laugh at you like you're a clown."
"Alright, alright, Rockerboy." V spread her hands, not disputing him. "Your ideals are grand... but me? I just want to live. That's reality."
Between reality and ideals lay a gulf—an unbridgeable gap. Everything Johnny Silverhand had done was just struggle against chains too heavy to break.
And that was worthy of respect. Because too many never had the courage to struggle at all.
"Then let's... go find Alt. Hopefully she still remembers." With a faint smile, Johnny closed his eyes, and the scene dissolved.
The world stretched, and in an instant, V found herself somewhere else.
Before her loomed an endless wall—a wall of red.
Formed from pulsing red static, it rippled like waves, each surge crashing through the void. It looked like some colossal monster was battering the other side... or a vast crimson ocean endlessly rising and falling.
V stared at it. The Voodoo Boys' netrunners stood in the void before the wall, watching her approach.
"Time to go?" V's voice carried an electronic echo as she addressed Maman Brigitte.
"It's you... not us..." Though her figure stood before V, Brigitte's voice drifted, fading in and out. "Your brain carries Silverhand. That's the insurance."
"Knew it..." V cursed under her breath.
The Voodoo Boys—nothing but liars. Always scheming. Always deceiving. And it never ended.