Chapter Text
The Badlands; June 14, 2070 – Abandoned House, morning
The house does not respond to him. That is the first thing V understands when consciousness comes back online.
Not warmth. Not familiarity. Just inertia.
The Badlands light comes in hard through the slatted windows, dust-thick and colorless, flattening everything it touches. The ceiling is a grid of exposed beams and old repairs. The air smells faintly of metal, dry earth, and a generator that hasn’t been run in days.
He lies still on the thin mattress where he dropped two nights ago and lets the room exist without him for a moment.
Two days.
Two days since the war ended.
Two days since Myers took So Mi.
Two days since the world decided it was finished with the version of him that believed in extraction windows.
His body feels intact but uninhabited, like a shell the tide forgot to reclaim. When he finally swings his legs over the side of the bed, the concrete is cold enough to register through the soles of his feet. He welcomes it. Physical sensation is easier than thought.
V stands there longer than necessary, hands loose at his sides, optics passively tracking light and shadow without him asking them to. There’s no echo of conversation in the space, no residual hum of shared presence. The house is not haunted.
It is indifferent.
V sits with the quiet long enough for it to turn on him. This is usually the part where she would say something. Not inspirational. Not comforting. Just precise. A sentence that cuts through the noise and reminds him where the floor is.
He waits for it anyway.
Nothing comes.
The realization is small, but it lands hard. He has put himself back together before, but never alone.
Not after learning what the FIA built him out of. Not after finding the edges of the black programs that shaped his childhood. Not after watching the story of his own origin rot out from under him.
This year had almost broken him.
The knowledge that he wasn’t an exception. That he was designed. That the parts of him he’d trusted most had been engineered, tested, refined in rooms he’d never see.
It took So Mi to pull him out of that spiral. Took Alex’s blunt loyalty. Kenns’ quiet steadiness. Hodge’s refusal to let him disappear into abstraction. They didn’t erase what he was. They gave him something to build on top of it.
And now…
Now they’re gone. Or unreachable. Or taken.
The old version of him, the one the program wanted, would compartmentalize. Shut down affect. Strip the loss into variables and keep moving until there was nothing left inside to feel.
He recognizes the urge immediately. It’s familiar. Efficient. Lethal.
You can do this, that voice says. You’ve done worse. And that’s the problem.
He has.
He’s been torn apart and rebuilt enough times now to know the difference between endurance and erosion. Between survival that leaves something intact and survival that hollows you out until there’s nothing left but function.
He presses his palms together and exhales slowly.
You don’t get to disappear this time, he tells himself. Not into efficiency. Not into silence.
So Mi had rebuilt him by insisting he remain present. By forcing him to stay human when it would have been easier to become a weapon again.
She’s not here to do that now. Which means it’s his responsibility.
The thought doesn’t feel heroic. It feels heavy. But there’s something else under it too, something steadier than despair.
Practice.
He knows how to do this part now. Knows how to gather the pieces without lying to himself about what he’s lost. Knows how to let the hurt exist without letting it decide the outcome.
This is not the moment he falls apart. This is the moment he leans in. Not because he’s unbreakable. Because breaking and rebuilding no longer scares him the way it used to.
He sits with that truth until it settles. Then he opens his eyes.
His holophone blinks awake when he subvocalizes the command. The screen populates cleanly.
No missed calls. No messages.
The absence is too precise.
“They’re filtering,” he says quietly, more statement than complaint.
If the FIA wanted him unreachable, he would know. If they wanted him erased, he would already be dead. This is something else. A throttling. A containment by neglect.
He scrolls anyway. Habit. Muscle memory. Proof that there was once a network around him that didn’t dissolve overnight.
Names blur past. Threads go cold.
He doesn’t linger on any one thread long enough to hurt himself with it.
Alex would not be quiet by choice. Hodge would not be quiet at all. Kenns would have found a way to reach him if she could.
Which leaves only one conclusion.
They are either being contained more tightly than he is or they are being allowed just enough freedom to stay away from him. Neither option is comforting.
V exhales slowly and braces his hands on the counter. The shock has worn off now. The part of him that ran on momentum and urgency has burned itself out, leaving room for questions that do not come with answers.
Did everyone make it? The thought is quiet, but it repeats.
Did they scatter? Were they pulled into separate holding patterns? Did anyone get hurt badly enough that silence is mercy?
And So Mi…
He stops himself there. Thinking about her in full sentences is dangerous. It gives the grief edges. He sticks to fragments instead. Impressions.
The last time he saw her clearly. The space she left behind when she was gone. The certainty in Myers’ posture.
Not heartbreak.
Heartbreak assumes something broke cleanly. This is structural failure.
He sinks into the chair by the window, elbows on his knees, hands hanging uselessly between them. The Badlands stretch out beyond the glass, sun bleached and endless, a place that once meant distance from systems and now just means distance from help.
For the first time since leaving Vienna nearly five years ago, he doesn’t know who he’s supposed to report to.
The realization lands heavier than the loss itself. V drags a hand down his face and closes his eyes. When he does, he doesn’t see specific moments. No neat flashbacks. Just pressure. The accumulated weight of months of restraint finally pressing down now that there’s nothing left to push against.
He thinks of how Alex would handle this – forward motion, defiance first, grief later.
He thinks of Hodge – humor as scaffolding, talking until silence breaks.
He thinks of Kenns – stillness, observation, waiting for the moment action actually matters.
He borrows what he can from each of them and finds that none of it quite fits.
There is one constant left. One person who predates the war, the cover identities, the asset designation.
V stares at the name longer than necessary, Val.
Twin. Primary asset. Contingency.
He initiates the call. It connects immediately.
She’s standing, not seated. The holo stabilizes as she shifts position, clinic lights washing over stainless steel and scarred surfaces that look repurposed more than designed. A nomad ripperdoc’s space. Clean where it matters, adaptable everywhere else. Someone laughs off-screen. Someone swears. Life moving around her, not paused for her convenience.
“Hey, Vinnie,” she says. Not clipped, not soft. Just present. “You safe?”
Her eyes track him immediately. Posture, breath rate, the way he’s holding his shoulders like gravity is heavier than usual.
“Yes.”
“Bleeding?”
“No.”
“Concussed?”
“No.”
A nod. She accepts the data and moves on.
“So,” Valerie says, shifting the holo slightly as she steps aside from a patient bay, “you calling to tell me you’re an hour out, or did the universe get cute?”
V exhales slowly. “The latter.”
That stops her. Not dramatically, she’s past that kind of reaction, but her attention sharpens. The nomad noise fades as she angles herself somewhere quieter.
“Okay,” she says. “Where are you?”
“Badlands. Outside Night City.”
“Vincent, where’s So Mi?”
The question is asked like a fact check. The silence that follows is not.
“She didn’t make it out,” V says.
Valerie closes her eyes for half a second. When she opens them, there’s no panic, just recalibration.
“Is she injured?”
“No... or I don’t think so.”
“Was she detained?”
“Yes.”
She steels. “By whom.”
He doesn’t hedge. “Myers.”
That lands hard enough to shift her weight.
Valerie turns slightly, resting a hand on the edge of a worktable. Her voice stays even, but something older and sharper moves underneath it. “Okay,” she says. “That explains the quiet.”
She thinks for a beat, long enough to run through variables, short enough not to waste time.
“The Bakkers are still clear,” she continues. “No heat. No chatter. We assumed you were moving dark with her.” A pause. Then, honest, “I assumed you were calling to tell me when to clear space.”
“I was supposed to.”
“Yeah,” Valerie says. “You were.”
There’s no accusation in it. Just fact.
She studies him again, more slowly now. This time it’s not asset assessment. It’s familial. Checking the load-bearing parts.
“You holding yourself together?” she asks.
“For now.”
She snorts softly. “That’s my answer too.”
Then she leans closer to the camera. “Listen to me, Vince. You didn’t lose her. The state took her. There’s a difference.”
His jaw tightens.
“You don’t carry that like it’s a personal failure,” she continues. “That’s institution rot. Don’t let it live in your spine.”
A beat.
She lets that land. Then the switch flips, not away from care, but alongside it.
“This changes the route,” she says. “Not the destination.”
“I don’t know what the next move is,” V admits.
Valerie’s mouth curves faintly. Not amused, fond.
“You do,” she says. “You just don’t like it.”
She gestures vaguely to the world behind her, the clinic, the voices, the moving parts. “This is the thing they never teach you in controlled environments,” she says. “Survival isn’t optimization. It’s adaptability. It’s knowing when to disappear and when to stay seen.”
“That sounds like going dark.”
“No,” she corrects immediately. “Going dark is dying quietly. This is staying alive loudly enough that you still matter.”
Her voice softens then, not weak, not indulgent. “And Vincent,” she adds, “you don’t do this alone. You just don’t do it inside their walls anymore.”
He nods.
“Check in tomorrow,” Valerie says. “Same window. If anything shifts, anything, you call.”
“…Okay.”
She holds his gaze for a moment longer, something unspoken passing between them. Three minutes older. Always will be. “Don’t go dark on me,” she says.
“I won’t.”
Valerie nods once. Satisfied. Certain.
“Good,” she replies. “Vince, I love you.”
The call ends.
V remains seated long after the screen goes blank, staring at his reflection in the dark glass of the window. He looks older than he remembers. Not worn, just stripped of illusion.
Outside, the sun climbs higher over the Badlands, indifferent and bright. Inside, something steadies.
Not hope. Orientation.
And for now, that is enough.
V doesn’t remember the exact moment Reed pressed it into his hand, only the weight of it. The timing. Right before the command team boarded out. Right before the war finished swallowing itself whole.
Reed had leaned in close, voice low enough to be mistaken for background noise.
If things go sideways…
No follow-up. No instruction. Just the shard.
V stands near the window now, Badlands light cutting across the floor in long, dust-heavy bands, and turns the thing over between his fingers. It’s inert. Unmarked. Reed doesn’t brand contingencies. He plants them and walks away.
V slots it.
The data blooms quietly in his optics, no headers, no agency identifiers. One contact profile resolves, bare and deliberate.
A name. A routing string that predates half the city.
Rogue Amendiares
V exhales through his nose. “Figures.”
Reed doesn’t believe in miracles. He believes in leverage. And if you’re going to be cut loose in Night City, you don’t look for protection. You look for gravity.
V doesn’t pace. He doesn’t rehearse. He initiates the call. The holocall connects on video.
Rogue appears already seated, already waiting, already in control of the space. The Afterlife glows behind her in low neon and shadow – movement without chaos, sound without disorder. Her posture is relaxed in the way predators relax when they’re deciding whether something is worth killing.
She doesn’t speak right away. She studies him.
Her gaze tracks his stance, his stillness, the way he doesn’t fidget or try to fill the silence. The way he looks like someone who’s been trained to wait. Finally, she speaks.
“That’s an old number,” Rogue says, voice low, amused but not friendly. “Most people who have it don’t use it anymore.”
V keeps his tone even. “Didn’t figure you for sentimental.”
One brow lifts.
“Depends who’s calling,” she replies. Then, sharper, “So, I’ll ask the obvious. How did you get this number?”
V doesn’t blink. “Mutual acquaintance.”
Rogue leans back slightly, eyes never leaving his face. “Huh.”
The word isn’t dismissal. It’s recalibration.
Her gaze shifts, just for a second, like she’s overlaying something else on top of what she’s seeing now. A headline. A still image burned into public memory. Not him, exactly.
But the face… Brady Monier.
The screamsheets never got the details right, but Rogue doesn’t need details. She needs patterns.
She lets the silence stretch again. V doesn’t rush to fill it.
“You know,” she says slowly, “most people who lose their leash don’t come knocking on my door.”
“I’m not most people.”
A corner of her mouth curves. “No. You’re either very confident… or very desperate.”
“Could be both.”
That earns him a quiet, genuine laugh. “All right,” Rogue says. “I’ll bite.”
She leans forward now, elbows resting on her knees, attention fully engaged. “You call me. Alone. No introduction. No pitch. Takes balls.”
V meets her gaze. “Didn’t think flattery would help.”
“It won’t,” she agrees. “But nerve counts.”
She tilts her head slightly. “So tell me, mystery man, what exactly do you want?”
V chooses his words carefully. “A meeting.”
Rogue’s eyes glitter. “That’s it?”
“For now.”
Another pause. Longer this time. Rogue studies him like she’s weighing risk against entertainment. “You realize what this looks like,” she says. “An FIA ghost crawling out of the desert with his pockets turned inside out.”
V shrugs faintly. “I’ve had worse introductions.”
“Not to me.” Her smile sharpens, but there’s something else under it now. Interest. Calculation.
“You don’t look scared,” Rogue says.
“I am,” V replies. “Just not of you.”
That does it. Rogue laughs outright this time. The sound is warm, dangerous.
“Cute,” she says. “Reckless. Probably expensive.” She straightens, decision settling into place. “Tomorrow night,” Rogue says. “Afterlife. Twenty-one hundred. You’re buying the first round.”
“Fair.”
“One more thing.”
V waits.
“You show up alone,” Rogue continues. “Whatever you used to be, leave it outside.”
A beat.
“You walk in as yourself.”
V nods once. “Wouldn’t know how to be anyone else right now.”
Rogue watches him for a moment longer, then smirks. “Good,” she says. “Night City eats masks. And what do I call you, mystery man?”
"V."
"Just V?"
"It's enough."
A beat.
Her eyes narrow. "All right, just V, tomorrow."
The call ends. The house goes quiet again.
V doesn’t sit this time. He slips the shard back into his pocket and reaches for his jacket, movements deliberate, precise. Not hurried.
---
V packs with care. Not urgency.
The Badlands house was never meant to be permanent, but it was meant to be theirs. A jumping off point. A place with enough quiet to let the world lose their trail before they stepped into something better.
Freedom had been plotted here. Routes traced. Timelines debated and redrawn. The future had lived in this space – not loudly, but deliberately.
Now it’s just a structure again.
He moves through rooms methodically gathering the contents of what was supposed to be their next phase. He doesn’t linger over anything long enough to fracture. The duffel zips closed with a final, definitive sound.
V stands in the center of the room once more. Not searching for ghosts, not indulging in memory. Just marking the space for what it was.
A possibility.
Then he turns away.
The Badlands stretch out under the rising sun. Vast, indifferent, already forgetting him. The engine turns over cleanly. V settles behind the wheel and pulls onto the track without looking back.
The desert gives him distance to think. He keeps the radio off. Lets the engine’s low hum and the tires crunch over sand set the rhythm. This isn’t escape anymore.
It’s return.
The city’s silhouette cuts the horizon long before the details resolve. Jagged steel, stacked light, a living thing that eats people and calls it commerce. Night City waits the way it aways has – patient, predatory, unconcerned with intention.
He doesn’t flinch. He doesn't romanticize it either.
Night City took everything from him once already. Identity. Illusion. Safety. It would try again the second he crosses back into its gravity.
That’s fine.
He adjusts his grip on the wheel, posture steady, breathing controlled. Whatever he was before is gone. Whatever comes next does not get to be soft. No matter what this city demands, no matter how much it costs, he will survive it long enough to get her back.
He doesn’t frame it as hope. He frames it as inevitability.
The road narrows as infrastructure creeps back in. Scrap fences. Dead turbines. The first flickers of neon bleeding into daylight. Systems waking up.
V merges into traffic like he belongs there. Like he always has.
The city doesn’t know his name yet. But it will. And when it does, it won’t matter what he has to become in the meantime.