Chapter Text
I parked the bike near the Afterlife. The area around the entrance was relatively clean, a small oasis of order in a city of entropy. Somebody powerful wanted it that way, and in Night City, what the powerful wanted, they usually got.
I spotted V near the entrance, surrounded by a group of mercs who looked like they'd stepped straight off the cover of a 1990s cyberpunk RPG sourcebook. It was a "look," to be sure. There was a massive, green-haired man in a tank top sporting a heavy automatic rifle, a gun and a katana, because why choose one?, and a woman in a full red netrunner suit with a matching armored helmet.
But V's attention was currently monopolized by a middle-aged man in a long black trench coat who was leaning in a little too close. He had broad shoulders and was projecting a roguish charm that was bouncing harmlessly off V's armored exterior.
I considered waiting, but then I caught V's eye. She spotted me, and her face lit up with a relief so genuine it was almost comical. I don't think I have ever seen her so happy to see me.
I walked over, keeping my stride casual but purposeful.
"Alice!" V called out, stepping away from the trench coat man before he could finish his sentence. "Finally. We've got business inside."
The man blinked, his charm offensive stalled. "Business? V, I was just getting to the part about, "
"Can't keep a client waiting," V lied smoothly, grabbing my arm and steering me toward the bouncer. "Catch you later, Razor."
As we moved toward the stairs leading down to the club, V let out a breath. "He wouldn’t accept my first or fifth no. Guy's been pitching me a 'guaranteed payout' gig involving a stolen AV and a pack of cyber-raccoons for ten minutes."
"Cyber-raccoons?"
"Don't ask. Just... thanks."
"Consider it part of the service," I said. "Though, honestly, I'm using you too. I needed a way past Emmerick. I'm not exactly legendary enough to walk into the Afterlife on my own."
V smirked. "Playing tourist?"
"Something like that. And I have a meeting."
"With who?"
"Sandra Dorsett."
V raised an eyebrow as we reached the bottom of the stairs. Emmerick, the gargoyle of a bouncer, gave me a scanning look that made my skin crawl, but he nodded at V and let us pass. "Dorsett? She's been quiet since the clinic. Is she okay?"
"She's worried," I admitted. I looked around curiously when we entered Afterlife. "She's got questions about Night Corp. Apparently, things are shifting internally. And NetWatch is hiring. Aggressively."
V frowned. "NetWatch is always hiring."
"Not like this. They're staffing up like they're expecting a war. Sandra thinks it's internal corporate politics. I think..." I hesitated, lowering my voice as we pushed through the heavy blast doors. "I think they're preparing for an invasion."
"Invasion? Militech?"
"No. The other side of the Blackwall. AI."
V stopped for a second, the cool lights of the club washing over her. "You think that's happening soon?"
"No," I said, thinking of the timeline I knew. "A couple of years, minimum. But the tremors start early. And if Night Corp is involved... well, Sandra has reason to be paranoid."
We stepped fully into the club. The Afterlife. The layout was larger than I remembered from the game, yet more visceral. The air was cold, smelling of recirculated oxygen, expensive booze, and the metallic tang of blood that never quite washed out of merc gear.
I looked around, being the tourist I was. This was the heart of the beast. The "not-so-noble savages", mercs, fixers, solos, were posturing in booths, making deals that would end lives, and drinking to ghosts. It was glamorous, kitsch and grimy all at once.
"I need a drink," V said. "You good to find your way?"
"Yeah. I'll do a lap."
I followed V to the bar, mostly because I wanted to see her. Claire Russell. She was wiping down the counter, smiling at a regular. She looked exactly like she did in the game, warm, welcoming, a mother hen in a den of vipers.
It was hard not to find her charming. She radiated a kind of genuine hospitality that was rare in Night City. But as I watched her laugh at a customer's joke, a darker thought curdled in my mind.
I knew her story. I knew about her husband, Dean. I knew about her quest for revenge against Sampson. And standing there, watching her, I couldn't help but think how incredibly stupid it was.
They were competing in death races. Illegal, unsanctioned, live-fire street races through the heart of a populated city. The rules were simple: there were no rules. You signed up to shoot and be shot at. Dean died in the game he chose to play. Yet here was Claire, stewing in vengeance, wanting to execute Sampson for doing exactly what everyone else in those races was trying to do.
It was a special kind of hypocrisy. I wondered how many innocent bystanders, pedestrians on the sidewalk, families in other cars, had been killed by stray bullets or high-speed crashes caused by Claire and Dean's "sport." Collateral damage. NPCs in their drama. But because it was her husband, suddenly it was a murder that demanded blood?
"What'll it be, hun?" Claire asked, catching me staring.
I blinked, shaking off the judgment. It wasn't my place. "Just a water. Sparkling, if you have it."
"Coming right up."
I took the drink and turned back to the room. V was heading toward a private booth in the back, and I saw who was waiting for her.
Rogue Amendiares.
The Queen of the Afterlife. She sat with the stillness of a predator, datashard in hand, scanning the room without moving her head.
"Come on," V signaled me over. "Might as well introduce you. She keeps asking who the 'new face' around me is."
We approached the booth. Rogue looked up, her eyes cold and calculating. She didn't look at V; she looked through V. Or rather, she looked at the ghost riding inside her.
"V," Rogue said, her voice like gravel and silk. "And the new stray."
"Alice," I corrected politely, sliding into the booth next to V.
Rogue studied me. My combat enhancement highlighted the tension in her shoulders, the micro-movements of her hand near her concealed weapon.
"Alice," Rogue repeated, tasting the name and finding it bland. "V says you're useful. I'll be the judge of that."
I shrugged. I did not have the usual high respect amongst mercs for Rogue. And if she thought I didn't have what it took to be an elite merc, she was probably right.
Then, V shifted. It was subtle, a change in posture, a slight tilt of the head, a different light in the eyes. Johnny was surfacing.
"She's useful enough, Rogue," V said, but the cadence was all Silverhand. "Helped clean up our heads. That's more than most can say."
Rogue froze. Just for a millisecond. The mask of the ruthless fixer slipped, and beneath it, I saw something raw and painful. Her eyes softened, pupils dilating as she looked at V, no, at Johnny.
It was love. Decades old, covered in scar tissue and bitterness, but still there. She was still in love with the old rocker who had died fifty years ago.
I felt a sudden, sharp pang of pity for her. Rogue Amendiares, who commanded respect from the deadliest people in the city, was just another person haunted by a memory she couldn't exorcise. It was tragic and pathetic in a very human way.
"Good to know," Rogue said, her voice tight as she composed herself, pushing the emotion back down. She turned her eyes to me, the ice returning. "If you're meeting Dorsett, she's in the back. Booth four."
She seemed to dislike me. I think right now it was because she'd been caught in a moment of emotional weakness.
"Understood," I said, sliding out of the booth. "Nice to meet you, Rogue."
I walked away, leaving V and Johnny to their complicated dance with the Queen.
I found Sandra Dorsett in a secluded booth near the back. She looked better than she had at the clinic, dressed in sharp corporate casual, but the well-founded paranoia was still there.
"Alice," she said, nodding at the seat opposite her. "You're late. And why meet here of all places?"
"Had to get past the gatekeeper," I said, sitting down. "Not a corpo or famous merc. And mostly because I was curious." I gestured around at the Afterlife. "Wanted to see the legend in person."
Sandra's expression was unreadable. "Tourist impulses. How refreshingly human of you."
I couldn't tell if that was a compliment or a dig. "You said you had questions," I prompted.
Sandra leaned in, her voice low despite the jammer sitting on the table between us. "Night Corp. I've been tracking their data flows since... since I got my head back on straight. They're moving assets. Huge amounts of eddies into shell companies that don't produce anything. And NetWatch is recruiting like crazy. Not just runners, but heavy security. ICE specialists. Wetwork teams."
"You think they're connected?"
"I think Night Corp is poking at something they shouldn't," Sandra said. "And NetWatch knows it. I found references to 'Project Oracle' and 'CN-07.' Does that mean anything to you? With your... outside context?"
I took a breath, organizing my thoughts. "Okay, full disclosure: most of what I'm about to tell you is speculation. Some of it's from the game's lore, the official stuff. Some of it's from forums where people theorized about the deeper story. And some is just me connecting dots."
Sandra's eyes narrowed slightly, but she nodded. "Understood. Continue."
"Project Oracle is Night Corp's attempt to develop AI-driven behavioral modification. Precise neural conditioning to control decision-making at a population level. CN-07... that designation is likely connected to the 'Blackwall Breach Protocol.'"
"Which would be?"
"A contingency plan for when, not if, when, rogue AIs break through the Blackwall. NetWatch knows the wall isn't permanent. It's a dam holding back an ocean, and dams crack."
Sandra's jaw tightened. "So NetWatch is preparing for an invasion."
"Yes and no." I leaned back. "Here's the thing about AI from beyond the Blackwall, they're not going to come crashing through like some action BD. They're too smart for that. They'll infiltrate. Through people."
"Through chrome," Sandra realized, her hand moving unconsciously toward her temple.
"Exactly. But honestly? The current generation of chrome isn't advanced enough for them to hijack easily. We're protected by our own technological stagnation."
"That's darkly poetic," she muttered.
"For now," I emphasized. "But that protection is temporary. Eventually, chrome will get better. Or an AI will crack the problem. Or..." I hesitated. "Or something like what happened to me will happen to other people."
Sandra leaned forward, her full attention locked on me. "Explain."
"The body I'm in? Zaria Hughes. She was Maelstrom. They're all about merging with machines, right? Well, there's a theory that Zaria was part of a ritual to commune with 'the Abyss', an AI called Lilith. Maelstrom might have been trying to create a bridge. A human body, heavily chromed, made into a vessel."
Sandra's face had gone pale. "And you think that's what happened to Zaria."
"I think she was the empty cup. Whatever brought me here just filled it first." I touched my chest. “Even if I was not dropped into Zaria, it would probably not have worked. In the game Zaria was just a cyberpsycho after the ritual”
Sandra was quiet for a long moment, her fingers drumming on the table. "That's a terrifying theory," she said finally. Then, a strange look crossed her face. "You know what this reminds me of? Those old sci-fi stories where someone travels through time to fix the future."
"Not time travel," I corrected, a bitter taste in my mouth. "Isekai."
"Ise-what?"
"It’s an old genre from my world. 'Isekai' literally means 'another world.' Someone gets hit by a truck or falls down a hole and wakes up in a fantasy land." I looked at my reflection in the dark table surface. "Usually, they get a System. Or a goddess guide. Or a semi cheat code that makes them a hero. I got...something I do not understand."
Sandra watched me, her gaze sharpening, shifting from fear to clinical fascination. "What if that's the point? What if you're not a traveler, Alice? What if you're a product?"
I froze. "What?"
"Think about it," Sandra said, her voice dropping into the detached, analytical tone she used when decoding complex encryption. "You have perfect compatibility with advanced tech. You have encyclopedic knowledge of this specific reality's history. You have combat subroutines you didn't learn. What if you're not a soul in a machine? What if you're a simulation designed to interface with this reality? A bio-program created to bridge the gap?"
"Would you?" I asked, my voice slightly tired and angry. "If you were a program, would you feel this sick? Would you feel the terror of knowing your childhood might just be a file on a drive? Pain proves I'm real, doesn't it?"
Sandra didn't hesitate. She didn't offer comfort. She looked at me with the cold certainty of a master CS architect.
"Pain proves nothing, Alice. If I were designing an interface for this reality, fear would be a necessary error-correction protocol. It keeps the asset cautious. And if the memory files are high-resolution enough, the emotional output, your dread, is mathematically indistinguishable from the real thing. To a sufficiently advanced observer, the simulation is the reality."
"So I can't prove it," I whispered. "I can't prove I'm real."
"No," Sandra said. "You can't. But neither can I. We're all just electrical signals in meat or metal."
I thought to myself “it sounds too simple, our minds are not isolated, they are part of our body, our form.”
She leaned back, seemingly satisfied with the test. "Speaking of signals, why are you a courier, Alice?"
The whiplash of the topic change almost gave me vertigo. "What?"
"You're a high-spec combatant. You rewrote an Arasaka relic. And yet, you're delivering packages for pocket change. It's inefficient."
"It's sort of honest work, and again I did not rewrite the relic, I bought a program that did that " I said defensively.
"It's safe work," she corrected. "You're playing small. With your advantages, you could be so much. You could be preventing the disasters you're so afraid of. Instead, you're running errands."
"I'm not playing small," I said, frustration rising. "I'm playing at my level. You look at me and see 'advantages.' I look at myself and see a math coprocessor and some fast legs."
I leaned forward, trying to make her understand. "I'm not V. I don't have that... chaotic spark that uncompromising drive. I'm not a great solo, and I'm definitely not a corporate mastermind. I'm good at logistics. I'm good at calculating trajectories. That makes me a good courier."
"You don't think you could do more?"
"Maybe. But do I want to? I see what happens to the people who try to become big players in this city. They burn out or they sell out." I gestured around the club. "I need parameters I can understand, Sandra. Pick up package A, deliver to point B, survive the trip. That's a problem I can solve. Trying to fix Night Corp? Trying to stop an AI invasion? That's not a puzzle; it's a meat grinder. I'm not hiding my 'great power.' I'm just realistic about my competence."
Sandra looked at me, assessing the truth of it. "So it's not humility. It's pragmatism."
"Exactly. I know what I am. I'm a very average person, in a very strange situation, not a fucking protagonist."
Sandra was silent for a moment. Then she nodded. "Fair enough. A person who knows their limits lives longer than a hero who doesn't. Just be careful, Alice. In my experience, if you're not competent enough, the 'meat grinder' comes for you whether you volunteer or not."
She finished her drink and stood up. "Eventually, the ground is going to fall out from under you anyway. Just make sure you know how to fly when it does."
"I'll work on it," I managed a weak smile.
"Do that. And keep an eye on Night Corp.”
Sandra finished her drink and stood. "I need to go. Got a meeting with a buyer for some of my research. Unrelated to the Night Corp stuff, I'm not that stupid."
She walked away, vanishing into the labyrinthic corridors of the club.
I sat alone in the booth, staring at the empty glass on the table. My combat mathematics subroutine highlighted the condensation dripping down the side, calculating the friction and gravity. Useless knowledge.
Pain proves nothing, she had said.
I looked at my reflection in the dark glass. I was not so sure about that.
I checked the time, I had over an hour before I was going to check in, as my side job as a substitute bouncer at Lizzie's Bar. I looked around Afterlife. Its glamour felt hollow to me, the people were interesting for sure, but they had a hunger that burnt with quiet desperation. There was nothing for me here, I decided to myself.
I stood, and headed for the exit. V was still deep in conversation with Rogue, Johnny probably taking the lead. I caught her eye and waved. She nodded back, understanding that I was leaving.
I walked out of Afterlife into the wonder land of Night City.