Post by Veronica Strader on Apr 29, 2022 18:56:33 GMT -5
The Afterlife
Night City, California
May 27th, 2077
“Where the hell am I?”
Victoria Strader slowly opens her eyes; the lights of the room are almost blinding, and that’s when she hears the voice of Nix, the number one Edgerunner at The Afterlife mercenary bar, speaking to someone else in the room.
“She’ll be fine. It’s amazing she even found her way back.”
“Good, we can use her. She’s been passed the Black Wall, but she can’t keep that face, people will know what we have, and I want it to be a damn surprise each time we use her. Got it, Nix?”
“Got it, Rogue.”
Rogue nods and Victoria watches her leave the backroom of what she assumed was The Afterlife.
“Rogue? Where’s Veronica? Where’s Valerie?”
“Fancy meeting you here, Nix. What do I owe the pleasure?”
He looks up from his datapad, happy she's awake but the look on his that follows the good feeling his fingers crawling like spiders on the screen. She doesn’t like the look on his face at all.
“Why the look, Nix?”
“Well, we are gonna send you to a Ripperdoc and get you a whole new face. You are a wanted woman for the death of Ozob, that idiot in the fighter circuit with a grenade for a nose.”
“Oh, that Krusty the Klown-looking bastard.”
“Why am I wanted?”
“My guess is your sister killed him shortly after she brought you here if your conscience came back from beyond the Black Wall.”
The memory of recording a message to Veronica comes to the front of her mind. She barely remembers taking Valerie past it.
“Oh god… I hope she stays there.”
“So, Veronica killed a guy probably because of what I did to save us both….”
“Cassius Clay or maybe Viktor down by the Esoterica, but do it sooner than later. Here, Veronica left you stuff. Quadra Type 66 640s, ARCH motorcycle, The Glen apartment, and roughly 20,000 eddies.”
“Thanks, Nix. My Kiroshi Optics should blur my face from the camera long enough to get a new face….”
A few days later…
“Wow, this will be interesting getting used to.”
She stands naked, looking at her new face. It was amazing how much it suited her, or at least she thought it was her.
“Wherever you are, Veronica, I will find my back… somehow. Until then, Rogue will keep me busy. Hopefully, another portal opens so I can go home. I miss everyone….”
Victoria didn’t know it, but Valerie followed her back to her body and was keeping herself quiet for a bit before she would start to poison and pervert her mind.
Veronica’s Condo
Key West, Florida
April 25th, 2022
Veronica looked down at Christian, aka Outcast, as she laid herself on top of him in post-coital bliss, sweat glistening, the familiar haggard breathes of ecstasy and adrenaline running through their veins. Veronica slides off him to his right, and he wraps his arm around bringing her in. It wasn’t exactly as planned because if it was, Victoria would’ve been the one to face off against Supreme Machine, and Christian would still be OCW Champion. Life doesn’t always go one way, which Veronica knew all too well and the distant man beside her did as well. She hooks her right leg into his left, snuggling into his chest. She heard him say he was proud of her before she drifted off to sleep.
When she awoke, Christian was gone. No note, not a thing to indicate where he was going or when he would be back or if he even was coming back at all. She knew him well enough to know he probably went wandering, to be lost in thought. Veronica sat up in her own bed, very grateful for being home, and she felt a ting in the back of her head; it was where her neuralport was while she was in that strange world. For whatever reason, the PORTAL POTTY would remove them when they came out, but to feel it on this side of everything brought concern.
“I wish you were here, Vee. I miss you so much.”
Veronica walks over to her dresser under a window that overlooks the beach property her condo was built on. She opens the top drawer and pulls out the datashard with Victoria’s message to her about sacrificing herself to get rid of Valerie. She throws on a robe and heads out back of the condo; the moon shines on her path to the fire pit.
“I hope Christian isn’t gone long; I like waking up in his arms.”
Veronica wasn’t the type that needed a man’s touch to feel safe, she is more than capable of throwing off a high point, but it was different with him. She had held off sleeping with him until February as she felt like she was violating Victoria, but since Veronica had her own body now, she wanted to be violated. His pheromones drove her wild, as her’s did to him.
“Time to start a fire.”
Veronica thinks back to her days as a prisoner in Victoria’s psyche when Ray, the adoptive father who raised her, taught her how to build a fire. Once she has set it up, she cheats by using citronella oil and pours a small amount around the wood pile, and strikes a match she lights off the side of the old washing machine put halfway in the ground.
POOF! And in a matter of seconds the fire is burning bright and hot the heat of the fire warms her skin in the cool air flowing inland off the Atlantic Ocean. She pulls out the datashard, and looks at it as the chrome glitters off the advanced technology.
“Vee… Victoria… I wish you were here with me, but you had to be brave and incapacitate Valerie… paying with your own life. What am I going to do without you?”
She tosses the datashard from wherever that insane PORTAL POTTY took her, and Victoria had been too into the fire. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, or even next month, but one day Victoria would be back… and she won’t be alone.
