Chapter Text
Valerie unlocked the megabuilding apartment and River followed her in. It was a last stop after visiting her other apartments and stocking up for Takemura to use. River had liked the apartment at Corpo Plaza best, but Valerie preferred the one she’d lived in for years. So instead of breaking in the bed at each apartment, they switched off between his place and her favorite.
River was glad to rest, though. Val always needed new weapons to disassemble or mod, so more often than not, going anywhere meant responding to police scanner calls.
River paused at a hanging photo near her computer. He pointed to it and looked at her, head cocked in confusion. “You put a pin-up of me on your wall?” he asked.
Val laughed. “It’s not a pin-up, it’s just you with your shirt off.”
“Uh-huh.” He let himself grin only a little. He’d teaser her forever for it, but he was pleased as hell that she loved how he looked that much.
She shook her head. “I’m not taking that down. You’re just going to have to deal with your half-naked self on my wall,” she smirked.
River left his boots by the door and draped his jacket over the computer chair, glanced at his pin-up again. “Was that at Joss’s?” he asked, setting his keycards down. “Looks like her kitchen.”
“Yeah, the morning we woke up there. After the water tower.”
The morning he proposed her.
“Oh, baby …” River went to her and wrapped her up tight. Her lips found his, soft and sweet as ever. Of all the things she wanted to immortalize. River picked her up and carried her to the bed. That sort of worship deserved extra love.
River looked over at Val, leaned back, rocking as much as her computer chair allowed. “What if the answer’s been here all along? For the shard,” he clarified.
Val looked at him. “What do you mean?” She sat with a collection of handguns, scopes, and muzzles. There were already half a dozen pistols with new scopes in a box River would need to take downstairs later.
River still rocked in the chair, ticking a pen between his fingers. “What happened when you put the shard in your head? What if something’s been there all along but you couldn’t see it because at the time, you’d just fallen from the Penthouse and your friend died?” River didn’t want to miss any possible leads. He wanted to have her longer than a couple weeks. She was already on borrowed time thanks to Viktor’s Omega Blockers.
Val stared at him. “You think a vital component came off? That's why it's not working right?”
“Function damage caused by the physical damage,” he suggested. “Or, the shard was manipulated before you found it, and maybe the fall compromising its integrity set off a scripted chain event. Sort of like a self-destruct button sequence, only it needed to be able to do what it was designed for so it wasn’t meant to kill you right away. You said your friend was dying when he put the shard in his head, and that was after the fall.” He stared back, ideas swarming his mind. “Would you be up to editing those memories in a braindance? I’ll watch from the computer to help you find points to focus on. Might be good to have Goro here, too, he might know more about security measures for Arasaka tech at that level.”
Val’s eyes moved in thought. “It’s worth a shot. But if it turns out something broke off, I still can’t remove it to get it fixed or I’ll die, just like that. Worse if it was re-coded to act a certain way upon taking damage.”
“A good Netrunner can repair the damage, though,” he told her. River was far from a hacker or coder, but he knew the theory. “Well, so-to-speak. If a vital component broke off in the fall, they can construct a virtual component, and the original functions can operate from that so they don’t strain the physical ones meant for supporting the other exective function. Your Ripper said Silverhand’s engram didn’t recognize you in your own system. That shouldn’t have happened even if something was just loose. Which brings me back to my other suspicion… that Silverhand’s shard was altered in secret to work like it has been. Modified, like a self-destruct sequence if the shard took damage. Most robots have those protocols in place, especially Militech. It could be Yorinobu was planning to force it on his father and blame it on the company, or use it himself for sabotage; we already know what he’s capable of. Either way, there has to be some way to fix it.” River shook his head. “I refuse to believe there’s not. That shard is already unique because it was designed for Silverhand. That means they had some failsafe somewhere to fix any problems they expected from Silverhand’s engram, considering the person he was in life. We can find a Netrunner who can repair stuff like that, even if we have to go overseas.”
Val held her breath.
Huh. Cop’s actually makin’ some sense.
“With Jackie already dying when he put the shard in, Johnny’s engram could have taken that as a trigger to prepare for deployment. Like it expected an empty vessel? …Shit.” Val sank deeper over her knees, eyes wide and darting in thought.
River nodded. “Could have been a couple chain of events that started at once, when they weren’t supposed to. Trigger sensor could have been damaged. Either way, it would have taken a while to boot up after you slotted it in.”
Val shook her head in disbelief. “Enough time for Dex to shoot me and drive out to dump my body.”
River nodded. “Re-routing your entire brain is one thing, and I still hope that’s an option… but at least we can try this.”
Val nodded. “I’ll call Judy. She could turn my memories into a braindance.”
It took a couple days for Judy Alvarez to turn Valerie’s memories of Arasaka Tower into a braindance. It was raw, but Val could edit as needed. River and Val drove to the apartment at The Glen to meet Takemura, and while Val sat with her braindance headset on, the men watched her memories from the computer.
Takemura wasn’t sure what to look for in regards to engram shards, but he could point out security flaws if Yorinobu had left holes open on purpose. River’s theory that Yorinobu modified Silverhand’s engram for use as a weapon intrigued Takemura.
The problem with editing a traumatic event, however, was the post-traumatic stress. While Valerie was safe on the couch, she started to twitch and tremble when her memories played her walking into the No-Tell Motel. River knew what event was next. He sat next to his wife and held her to make sure she didn’t hurt herself trying to escape the memory of being shot in the head. Goro synced the computer to the large television screen, then sat on the other side of River to watch.
It broke River’s heart watching Dex shoot Valerie in the head again, watching her wake up in the dump and crawling through filth to survive. “Jesus, honey,” he muttered, letting Val squeeze him in her anxiety. That never got any easier to watch. River hoped in time, they could forget that ever happened.
A memory full of optic glitches showed Takemura approaching Valerie after he’d shot Dexter Deshawn. River didn’t recall seeing it before, but from the optical damage, a guess was it was something Judy had pieced together from scraps.
In that new memory, Valerie choked out for help, but Takemura’s response had been a cruel smack across her face to knock her out.
River frowned. He’d not heard about that. When he looked over, Goro’s head and shoulders hung low. In Shame?
“I apologize for my actions then, Valerie-chan,” Goro said. “I did not know the truth, then. I had thought you to be Soboro’s murderer.”
Val sat silent for a moment, watching Goro look at her in disgust in a car and tell her she smelled like shit. “I didn’t know that happened till now.” Her voice didn’t have its normal confidence, though. Goro sat guilty, but Val had not remembered a time when he’d been so cruel to her. She considered him a friend, even a good one. In some ways, it must have been as hard a blow as being killed. “So… I guess… no hard feelings, Goro. You know, I got that picture hanging up in my weapons room in Watson,” she said, trying to sound like she wasn’t upset. “Of you killing Dex. Pretty badass move for someone who wanted me dead.”
Goro looked at her. Val could not see anything but her memories. “You took photographs while you were dying?”
Val huffed. “Yeah, when you put it that way, pretty gonk move. I was just glad Dex got what he deserved.”
The next memories held Val’s attention like little else but her guns and River. Val listened and zoomed in on Goro’s interaction with the Delamain cab while he resuscitated her, so long that Goro and River got up from the couch for drinks. River made lunch, and Goro paced around the apartment. Val scanned anything and everything she thought held importance, and again for her memories in Viktor’s clinic.
She zoomed in on Viktor’s scans, then sat up straighter. “Uh…”
River watched her as he swallowed his bite of sandwich, standing at the kitchen bar. “What do you need?” he called over.
“Uh, nothing. I’m looking for a number.” A brief pause, then she said,“Hey, Del, how’s it hangin’?” Pause, and a deep nod. “Figure of speech, Del… Yeah, do you have recordings from when I was being patched up in your car? With that Japanese hombre who was almost as bad off as I was?”
River rolled his eyes. Leave it to Val to refer to blend the cultures.
“Yeah, I’m going through my memories right now, trying to figure out what’s causing what. I just want to cross-reference,” she said.
“I think she is talking to the cab,” Goro told River, his face skewed in confusion. He sat on a stool, leaning on the bar while he ate.
“Wouldn’t be the first time. She does that, makes friends with AIs.” River shoveled another large bite in his mouth.
“Peculiar thing to do with so many people around.”
“Maybe. You met her talking pistol yet? Skippy?” River kind of liked that one. It made darker aspects of combat easier to handle. It also never shut up when held, which meant sneaking was out of the question. It was easier to leave home sometimes.
“Bum bum be dum bum bum be dum bum,” Val sang from the couch; Skippy’s upbeat song. River grinned through another bite. “Awesome, thanks, Del. You’re the best.” Pause. “Yeah, sure thing. I’ll stop by tomorrow.”
River washed down his sandwich with a beer. “So we’re hanging out with the cab tomorrow, huh?” he asked.
“Delamain has a problem he needs help with.” She rewound her memories back to Vik’s scans during surgery, and zoomed in, playing the memories back slower than usual. “River?” she asked, her voice no longer chipper. "Can you come look at this?"
“Yeah, babe.” He was already heading to her. He’d seen it, tiny dark marks on Silverhand’s shard. “What is that? Scorch marks?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” She rewound again and zoomed in closer. “I can’t clear it up in this thing. The scanner just shows that there’s damage. But that’s inside my head.” Turning the scans didn’t help either.
“What about Viktor’s scans?”
“His screens are too small. I don’t know if he saw them. Could be the damage was too great that he didn’t see the point in mentioning it,” she said.
“Honey, go back to the Tower. Arasaka, when you guys fell.” River leaned over the back of the couch, eyes glued to the screen. “Play it back slow.”
And there it was. Tiny splinters of glass had slipped through the busted seal of the protective case, slivers they could only see when Jackie removed the shard to dock it into his head. Naked to the eye, but the editing scans picked them up clear as day.
“Hm.” Goro joined them in the sitting room. “I cannot picture Arasaka policies allowing for those circumstances without mitigation. Consider Smasher, Yorinobu's bodyguard,” he said. “He is no longer human, everything running from software and hardware. He is designed to take considerable damage. He would not be such a successful experiment if his hardware could not run without physical complication.”
Takemura was right, of course. The damage was minimal, nothing that would have made Silverhand’s shard behave the way it did. The physical damage explained why it prepared for upload when dying Jackie inserted it, and why it did not register it had been taken out and put into someone else’s head. The damage from the bullet should have impaired the self-preservation upload function, even registred some of Johnny’s memories as corrupted, unusable save data. It did not explain why the shard was killing Val and using her like an empty vessel.
It narrowed down what they did not need to do.
“That only leaves the shard’s intended function,” River concluded when Val disconnected from the braindance. “It means who ever modified it meant for Johnny to be a parasite.” He shook his head. “Because technology does not work like that, not even AI. It’s a move that suggests revenge.” He paused, staring at Val’s reflection in the window. “It means Johnny Silverhand was meant to be a weapon.”
Johnny inside Val sighed in disbelief, and Val saw him sink into a chair as clear as she saw River and Goro. Johnny removed his aviators, staring straight ahead, stunned from the hard blow of realization. Arasaka hadn’t only killed him.
Just like Adam fucking Smasher. Jesus Christ.
No, Johnny. Worse than Adam Smasher. It means what you remember is fake. They made you think you were Arasaka’s biggest threat.
That’s not what it means! I was their biggest threat! Everything they did, they did it to get back at me! My actions!
It does mean that, Johnny. It means it wasn’t about you at all. Whatever they did to your engram was meant to piss somebody else off. Don’t you get it? They made you think Arasaka killed you. You weren’t the terrorist, Johnny. The program is, the engram, and its target is Arasaka. You were just the face they used.
Johnny sat frozen, staring for a moment, before getting up and fading from sight as he walked away. Johnny was checking out.
Val leaned back, arms crossed, and her leg started bouncing. Johnny’s dark epiphany was making her anxious. She shook her head. “Johnny’s not thrilled with the idea.”
River nodded. “I figured as much. I’ll be here to keep him in check, don’t worry, honey.”
The problem now was finding a netrunner who could fix a sabotaged shard that could not be removed.