Chapter Text
"Been lookin’ for you."
V leans against the doorframe of the office. It’s quiet, save for the faint hum of the city outside. The door slides closed behind her with a hiss and a click, but she doesn’t reach around to lock it. More fun this way. Thrilling, she thinks with a grin.
The office is exactly what one would expect from one of these rich corpo rats—extravagant, pretentious, smelling faintly of cigars that are kept hidden to keep up appearances and reeking, expensive cologne.
Her object of interest for tonight sits at the desk, his back turned towards Night City. Another high-ranking Arasaka executive whose name she doesn’t remember because she truly can’t give less of a shit about people like them. Doesn’t matter, though, he’ll be buried and forever forgotten soon enough. Always the same with ’em—huge ego that compensates for how little anyone cares about them.
It’s kinda funny, the deer in the headlights look he gets when V saunters into his office, taking the gun from the holster on her thigh and flicking the security off with an amused little hum.
"Late night, huh," she grins, vaguely gesturing towards the holo-screen on his desk with her pistol. "Time for a break?"
"You have no right—"
"Wouldn’t be fun if I had any," she replies before he can finish the rest of his sentence. Still thinks himself untouchable.
Her hand flexes against the grip of the silenced pistol, its weight familiar, comforting in her hand.
The man’s gaze flickers back and forth between V’s eyes and the barrel of her gun, his mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. Hilarious, really. Seeing someone whose biggest threat so far had been a papercut on uncalloused hands being caged by a feeling so primal such as fear.
V feels a slight shift in the air, a ripple that makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.
She could swear she still hears that damn voice in her head every time before she pulls the trigger.
"Execute."
It rings through her, sends a shiver down her spine, makes killing seem like an instinct as deeply ingrained into her as breathing.
She closes her eyes, and when she next opens them, the man’s body jerks lightly, eyes going comically large in confusion or fear or maybe—she hopes—both, but there’s no more time for him to process any of it.
He collapses forward, slamming into the desk with a heavy thud. His hand sprawls out to catch the surface before he crumples and blood spreads out across the smooth surface, staining everything it touches.
V doesn’t flinch. She watches, emotionless, as life drains from him. It’s quick. Efficient. Not exactly clean but hey, she wasn’t paid extra for that this time.
She stands there for a moment, watching the blood pool at his feet, almost captivated by the way it reflects the city lights outside, neon blues mixed with red. Her chest heaves as she breathes out an "eliminated" to the empty room.
V strides over and crouches beside him, then reaches inside of her pocket until she feels something soft.
Her fingers curl around the purple feather carefully. It’s delicate, almost absurdly beautiful for a crime scene, its violet iridescence a stark contrast to the gore around it. She turns it over in her hand, admiring the way it catches the light.
A perfect gift for the new agent that’s now been assigned to her case. V’s been watching her, of course, so it’s only polite to bid her welcome.
"Not every day you get a little songbird watching over you," she murmurs, placing it in the man's hand. "Gettin’ a bit too nosy for my taste, girl."
Before she leaves, she looks up at a camera in the corner—the only one she hasn’t cut off from the net earlier. She smiles up at it, hoping Songbird will catch it despite the mask on her face and imagines looking into brown eyes instead of the lens of a camera.
With a final glance at the bleeding corpse, V turns and walks out of the room, making her way back down long before anyone realizes.
No witnesses, only a sign that she wants to play, because the men she’s killed so far? They’re just the beginning.
Songbird
"Well, fuck me, this is a mess."
Alex’s voice makes So Mi look up from the cooling corpse she’s crouched over. The woman’s holding out a styrofoam cup of coffee, and So Mi takes it with a grateful half-smile.
"G’morning to you too," So Mi murmurs, taking a sip of the lukewarm drink. It tastes better than what she’s used to back at their underground office—probably from one of those fancy shops around here. "Gonna need at least ten of these."
"Try twenty," Alex replies, eyes scanning the scene. Her combat boots make a wet sound against the blood-slick floor. "You see the way it splattered? Killer didn’t hesitate, just waltzed in through the door ’n flatlined him."
Another high-ranking Arasaka agent, another kill without a trace left. The third one this month alone, none of them showing any signs of struggle.
It’s almost beautiful, almost art, in a way. The blood fanning over otherwise spotless glass windows, dripping down and obscuring the scenery of Night City. She almost shudders, catching herself associating a horrific murder like this one with beauty. Lack of sleep must be really getting to her, it seems.
"Yeah," she replies, letting her gaze wander over the room, eyes lingering on the streaked glass. "’S definitely strange. Whole tower of offices and not a single damn witness?"
The trauma team mills around, most of them starting to look bored. There’s really nothing for them to do but collect the remains and fill out another death report. Reed’s speaking with a medtech near the wall, but he keeps glancing toward them, like he’s looking for a way out of the conversation.
Corpo suits mingle among them, most of them looking pale and as if they’re about to pass out. So Mi can’t really blame them. A murder on their own turf, a disruption in one of Arasaka’s secure towers. It’s more than a murder, it’s a message. And it’s beginning to be a pretty fucking loud one.
And it really is a fucking mess, this whole kill. They’ve probably never seen anything like it in their sheltered little cubicles.
She turns back towards their newest victim. A small flash of something purple clasped in the dead man’s palm catches So Mi’s eye, and she reaches out, uncurling stiff fingers to get a better view of it.
A purple feather.
In the midst of all the blood splatter, it’s absolutely pristine. Someone’s placed it with great care, definitely after the kill. There’s only a tiny smudge of blood on the back of it when So Mi turns it carefully.
"Huh," she mutters, momentarily captivated by the iridescence of it. It looks beautiful, real—not like the usual synth-stuff she sometimes sees stitched into costume-looking fashion.
"A feather?" Alex asks, crouching down next to her. "Fuckers gettin’ creative now."
So Mi doesn’t reply. Her mind is spinning, running back through every unsolved profile she’s been keeping in a shadow file on a drive she doesn’t admit exists. It’s not that strange for a killer to leave some sort of calling card, something that ties them to the kill. But this—this is something else, at least that’s what her instincts are trying to tell her. She just can’t piece it together yet.
"Hey, Reed!" Alex calls out over her shoulder. "You wanna see this?"
Reed’s by their side in seconds, clearly relieved to be away from the trauma member giving him a rundown he doesn’t need. He plucks the feather from So Mi’s fingers and studies it with narrowed eyes.
"Hm," he muses, looking at it as if it held some kind of secret. "Gotta be from a small bird."
Alex snorts lightly, her gaze turning toward him with a half-amused look. "Oh, we got an expert over here."
Reed’s eyes flash blue for a second as his optics scan the object. Then he nods, expression tightening. "Songbird," he says after a pause.
So Mi furrows her brow, feels a knot forming in her stomach. "What?"
"Feather’s from a songbird, definitely real." Reed says, handing it back to Song. "Violet rosefinch, apparently. Can scan it yourself."
"Where the fuck did that come from?" Alex mutters, glancing around as if expecting to see the bird itself perched in the corner of the room. "Ain’t any birds in NC."
So Mi carefully runs a finger over the edges of the feather, shuddering as she feels the softness of it. Songbird, violet rosefinch. Delicate, a beautiful little thing in the midst of a gory crime scene.
"Killer intentionally placed it, could have gotten it from a supplier outside the city," Song replies, then pauses. "Wanted us to find it."
"Hate to say it, but I’m pretty sure the songbird aspect of it isn’t just a coincidence," Reed mutters, his expression dark.
So Mi chuckles weakly. "Coulda guessed that."
Alex arches an eyebrow. "Great. That’s not unsettling at all."
So Mi hums in agreement, looking at the victim again, head spinning from all the thoughts fogging her mind. Is this because of me? For me?
Reed looks at her carefully. "They already know about you. Know you."
"And they’re getting bolder," Alex says, tilting her head. "Nothin’ like this at other crime scenes."
So Mi nods absently, eyes still fixed on the body. "But whoever did this… they’re smart about it. No signatures, no trail. Whoever they are, they don’t just avoid the Net—they stay under it."
"You’d know," Alex mutters.
She’s right—it’s why So Mi’s been recruited into the FIA at all. They needed a damn good ’runner, and she’s not only that, but an expert at tracing phantoms too. Was one herself, once.
So Mi doesn’t respond. She’s still scanning. Still thinking. Still trying to fight the burn behind her eyes and the nagging feeling clawing at the back of her skull that she’s missing something.
Reed is quiet for a long moment, then clears his throat. "What do we know about previous locations?"
"First was in Japantown—private suite," Alex says, pulling up a map of the scenes. "Second in Heywood. Penthouse. This one’s the most secure by far."
So Mi turns, looking out over the city through the blood-streaked window. "Arasaka, all of ’em. And all rumored to have ties to the Black Lotus."
Alex stiffens at the mention of the name. Arasaka’s black-ops experiment—shut down after an operative went rogue, using its tools against it. "Thought that was shut down."
"Officially," Reed confirms. "But we all know nothing Arasaka buries ever stays dead."
So Mi tucks the feather into a sample bag and seals it tight. It’s a lead, might very well be the best one they have so far.
"Cameras?" So Mi asks.
"Got a port over there, all yours," Reed replies, pointing to a corner of the room. "If anyone can get something out of it, it’s you."
Without answering, So Mi moves toward the back of the room, plugging into the private system. The screen lights up, and her deck sparks to life, holographic data floating in the air. The room comes alive with access points, heat signatures, digital fingerprints, but there’s almost nothing.
Except for a moment, a frame she almost misses.
A flicker of a female figure in one corner of a security feed, a bandana over her mouth and nose and a hood pulled tight over her head. Tight black pants, tall boots, nothing out of the ordinary that could identify her.
In the next frame, she turns, then looks up at the camera. Eyes rimmed with black makeup, dark and narrow, almost as if she’s smiling beneath her mask.
So Mi’s breath catches. There’s no facial match in the system and no registration, all she’s got is that damn feeling like something’s crawling beneath her skin. Her pulse spikes and she shakes her head, dismissing it.
"Our killer’s a woman," she says, voice strained. "Can’t find anything on her though, not a single fuckin’ trace. She’s good."
Givin’ me a challenge, huh.
Reed steps closer, arms folded tightly across his chest. "Then the next question is—what does she want?"
So Mi exhales slowly, shutting down her deck. The lights fade, the data along with them.
"She’s not just killing," So Mi murmurs. "She’s performing. Wants this, the attention, all of it. We’re giving her exactly what she wants, and fuck, I hate it."
Alex breaks the silence. "So what now?"
"Now," So Mi says, already turning for the door, "we find her. ’S only gonna escalate further the more we wait."
"Find her before she finds you," Reed adds, and So Mi nods.
V
Through the scope of her rifle, V watches. Tracks every movement of Songbird, grinning as the woman finds her little gift.
Got you.
The image of Songbird crouched over the body, brow furrowed, fingertips brushing the feather, lodges itself somewhere deep inside V, and an ugly feeling rears its head when she gives it to her colleagues to investigate. An ache, something she can’t quite place.
V knows Songbird will trace it eventually, and V wants her to. After all, the prospect of getting caught makes the chase that much sweeter.
She watches as Songbird jacks into the camera port, sees the woman brush back purple hair and tuck it behind her ear. Wishes she were closer so she could see her jaw tighten, the little twitch of her lips.
You were made for this, she thinks, tracking Songbird through the scope until she leaves the room. Weren’t you?