Cyberpunk - V Reborn - Chapter 1 - Dead.

[Chapter Size: 2000 Words.]
Third Person POV

EUA.

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The world had gone through various upheavals up to this point, unleashing a large part of the lands with only a few places where people congregated called great metropolises.

Wars were catastrophic when they occurred, for they involved every kind of thing, technological weapons, biological weapons, and even chemical ones, destroying the entire region where they were waged.

This was the end of the year 2077, of the few cities that existed in the world, there was one in the west of the United States, located in the former California, which today has become a large arid area due to the wars, but still concentrating one of the largest cities in the world, Nightcity.

Nightcity was not a technological city, a cradle of the world's great corporations. But also known with the motto, no matter what you will do in this place, your path will always be death, but it's your choice whether to become a legend or not in this place.

With high rates of violence while gangs take over the streets and corporations command the entire city, the place is chaotic, with high drug use, murders, neurodances with neurochips, advanced technology, and alarming social inequality, systemic corruption, whether it's politicians, companies to the police on the streets with environmental and technological pollution, and a vast black market throughout the city, that's how you can define Nightcity.

Many may say it's just a city, just bigger, but the great legends were born here, Johny Silverhand, Morgan Blackhand, Andrew Weyland, Adam Smasher, and the last one born there, V.

This last one caused chaos a few months ago in the city and disappeared. He had interacted with all the gangs in the city, killing many of them, becoming the most hated mercenary on the street, but unstoppable, no matter how insistent they were in trying to kill him they never could. He did not limit himself to the street gangs, he got involved with police officers, those from the streets and the high echelons, he messed with the corps.

Among all these contacts, there were shootings, explosions, theft, infiltrations, assassination, massacres, all the city's channels knew if you wanted a job with 100% execution from him, you had to call V. The best mercenary of Nightcity.

But what no one knows, is that the biggest name in the city was racing against time trying to save his own life, after all, in one of the thefts, stealing a biochip from a major corporation like Arasaka, he ended up gaining an engram of a ghost from the past after a mix-up with a channel that had done the job.

However, he gained a second chance to live with it, but his life was close to being destroyed with that biochip, which he couldn't even take out of his head. This made him return to the streets looking for a solution, he grew and became what he was when he disappeared, a legend, so unbeatable, that he first stole from Yorinobu Arasaka, kidnapped Hanako Arasaka, and invaded Arasaka itself killing Adam Smasher along the way.

But after that, V disappeared leaving only all his conquests in this city, having his own drink in the channel bar, Afterlife in the Watson district.

But what was not known, far away from a city, was V, at this moment, who in the last six months, spent traveling with his girlfriend, Panam. They were trying to spend the last days away from the chaos that V had lived in Night City.

He chose to part from his old companion, even hating him many times, who was Johnny Silverhand through the engram in his head.

V and Panam continued traveling through the United States, or what was left of it, since most of the cities were just abandoned scraps. Nomads lived here and there, while the largest cities still concentrated all kinds of technology and companies that dominated the world.

V was on a strange day this day, he felt it would be his last day in this life, so he spent the whole day on it, feeling death getting closer and closer, he hid this from Panam, until they arrived at a hotel in a small town in the middle of the United States, he got out of the car they were using putting Johnny's pistol on his waist while they choose a room.

"Panam, why don't you grab a beer for us?" He asked as they entered the room.

"Alright... you're acting weird..." She commented, noticing his more reserved behavior today, while she spoke with her accent from before.

"I'm fine, just need a beer..." He lied, after all, he realized he was dying at this moment, and wanted to do it without her having to watch him die.

As soon as she left, V felt something bad. Seeing his heartbeat dropping rapidly, he thought, looking at the hotel ceiling, "So this is how I'm going to die. Is this what death is like, Johnny?" He murmured, feeling his body have some convulsions while he kept his gaze on the ceiling.

But he couldn't help but remember the acquaintances, those he had bonded with during his journey, especially when he was racing against time.

At this moment he not only thought of Johnny Silverhand and Panam Palmer but there were others like Judy Alvarez, Jackie Welles, Rogue Amendiares, Takemura Goro, Alt Cunningham, Dexter DeShawn, Evelyn Parker, River Ward, Kerry Eurodyne, Viktor Vector, and many others, all companions who were part of his story whether good or bad, after all, he disagreed with many of them and wanted to put a bullet in their heads many times.

In the end, he had the same fate as all those who seek to be a legend in Nightcity: they all die, even if it's thousands of kilometers away.

"Is this how you felt, Johnny?" V asked, feeling himself losing consciousness as darkness took over him while his heartbeat dropped to zero with a continuous line. He even heard a bottle breaking on the floor as Panam ran towards him on the bed. However, it was already too late; the darkness had consumed him.

That's how he thought he had died...

The next moment, he opened his eyes, startled, struggling to breathe, while trying to understand what was happening, after all, he was sure he had died with his cardiac indicators ending at zero.

"What's happening?! Is this the afterlife? I believed it didn't exist..." he wondered.

But then he noticed his voice sounded different than it used to be; 'younger', he thought.

Suddenly, to the side, a robotic sound of a hologram appeared, and a man with glasses and a metallic arm began to walk around disoriented. The man began to shake his head while pressing it with both hands, frustrated. "What's happening? What a hellish headache!" Johnny murmured, while V was stunned and frozen looking at him.

Unable to take the shock any longer, he exclaimed. "Johnny?" he raised his voice, while the man, still with his hand on his head, suddenly looked up and narrowed his eyes behind the glasses. "And who are you?" he spoke, with a hostile tone.

"What do you mean, Johnny?! It's me, V," he spoke, while Johnny looked at him stunned, took off his glasses, and looked closer while stretching his neck.

"Hell, V, is that really you? Look at you, you're totally different... Turned into a kid. What happened to you?!" He said, looking at him still with his eyes, seeming to study V from top to bottom.

"What do you mean by that!?" V spoke and looked down as he saw his hands, but very different and he knew that was not his hand. "This...is not mine!," he said, surprised to see such a young hand and his skin color was different from before.

He looked to the side and there was a wallet with a 19-year-old boy, with a pompadour, wearing a yellow jacket with his name, David Martinez, this wallet said he studied at Arasaka corporations.

"What the hell is happening?" Johnny said, looking at the wallet too.

"I don't understand... I'm not understanding anything, Johnny. What's happening?" V asked, confused with the old company.

"And how would I know? I don't remember anything," he spoke, staring at V and his new appearance.

"What do you mean you don't remember anything?" V asked, puzzled, since they had parted ways; while Johnny went to the Blackwall with Alt, V chose to live another 6 months.

"I'm telling you, man, I don't remember anything. I just know I was going with Alt and, suddenly, everything went dark. It's like I vanished. Crazy stuff," he didn't fail to mention.

"This is bad, Johnny..." V couldn't help but murmur, almost going crazy on the spot. But he tried to keep his reasoning. "Calm down, V!" He told himself, "First, let's see where we are." He said, looking around, seeing a simple apartment with food scattered and dirty clothes around.

"Well, we are where we're supposed to be," Johnny said, pointing to the window where there was a huge neon billboard outside, showing that they were in Nightcity.

"Why am I here..." V murmured. "Am I going to die again?" He couldn't help but comment, as he started to get up but felt a strong pain in his back. "What is this?" he murmured, feeling his whole skeleton ache.

"Wait, this is a..." he touched his back and saw the blood. "Is this a sandevistan implant!?" he said, feeling the equipment stuck in his spine, already knowing how to use one of these very well, after all, he had this implemented in the last body.

"Yikes... this thing looks bad..." Johnny said, putting on his glasses and whistling.

"It's not funny, Johnny!" V complained, trying to get up.

"Looks like you, or the boy who was here before you, implemented this. But it's inflamed. So it means that this boy died like this, on this couch?" Johnny said thoughtfully. "Judging by the amount of blood, he died of hemorrhage." Johnny concluded.

V couldn't disagree with Johnny, after all, it seemed that the piece this boy put, V was already accepting the idea that he had assumed the body of a young man after he died, was poorly placed, causing inflammation, which ended up killing the boy.

"This is crazy... I can only say that you entered a corpse. And you took his place. This reminds me of someone," he said as a joke while V clenched his teeth.

"Fuck off, Johnny." V growled, not wanting his jokes at this moment.

"Well, anyway, I came along. Full package, don't you agree?" Johnny ignored V's curse and kept laughing at him, after all, it wasn't him who was in pain with a poorly fitted piece of metal in his back.

"..." V didn't respond, just gave him a dirty look. "Anyway, I have to look for a doctor. After all, this body is inflamed and there's still bleeding, and I don't want to die again. Not without understanding what's happening," V explained, trying to get off the blood-soaked sofa in pain.

Johnny ignored him and went to a counter with a holographic sheet in the middle of it, he first was surprised and then decided to speak. "Well, then we have time. After all, it's 2076," Johnny said, as V's eyes widened in astonishment.

He limped over and approached the holographic sheet that Johnny was looking at, and saw. Seeing that the tin arm wasn't lying. At that moment, he was a year before all the events that marked his life, at least his past life, or future life? now he didn't know.