I gingerly opened my eye to see– wait… Wait… Who’s that…
No… It wasn’t a dream…
Johnny…
“Gotta get outta here, understand?” he scowled at me, banging his head against my wall… Johnny fucking Silverhand. The man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives… Stood before me. Like it isn’t a big deal at all.
“And I’ll kill anyone who gets in my way!… you included.” Five seconds and I can already tell we’re gonna be fast friends… I shook my head and roused myself awake, glancing over to the table and seeing my sword… Shinden… And a note… I could barely make it out from here… “Death…” Uhm… “Death… is… not the only… virtue you bestow…” Thank you… Misty…
I leaned back and rested for just a few more minutes…
Alright… get up… Come on… Where is this asshole…
I opened my eye… same place again… Some trick he had. “Need a smoke, where’d you stash yours?” Johnny groaned as I got up out of bed.
“I don’t… smoke…” I muttered back to him as he glitched out of my vision before reappearing by the table, then jumping back again to his original position… Fuck, that’s jarring…
“Well’n go out n’ get some, fuck!” he shouted at me.
“Or you can go fuck yourself,” I sneered back before sitting back down, trying desperately to nurse this horrific headache that overcame me… I wonder why…
“The fuck kinda joytoy you supposed to be?” he retorted, “Get the fuck up, bitch.”
“God dammit, I said go FUCK YOURSELF!” I stood up and got right into his face, his body turning transparent as I approached him… Fuck, I wanted to punch him so bad…
“Yeah? Well tough shit, you ain’t got the balls to try punchin’ me,” he scolded me… Wait… did he hear my thoughts?! Fuck this. I’m leaving.
Johnny shoved me to the floor with a hideous grin on his face, like he enjoyed that. “Who you work for, start talkin’!” he demanded, pointing his left hand at me… Pointed… I pointed his… I pointed my left hand at him…
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No… No…
I moved my hands… I moved… his hands… We moved our hands… in unison…
“Fuck…” I muttered to myself…
“Fuck…” Johnny muttered to himself… He… raised his hand… I raised my hand… to the chip… “Fucking chip…!” he stammered, feeling the chip slot… feeling… my chip slot… “Rip the damn thing out myself!”
“NO, JOHNNY– AGGH!” I fell down… my whole face… hurting… Climbed up to the window…
“I’ll take control…!” Johnny screamed before slamming my head into the tempered safety glass, “I’ll find a way!” Again… Blood… My eye… Please, Johnny… Stop this… “YOU HEAR ME?!” He ran me face-first into it, sending me tumbling to the floor… My head… my… head… Everything… was agony again… My eye… my face…
I glanced down at the meds in my hand… “Get… the fuck… out of my LIFE!”
“Not like that!” he slammed the meds straight across the room, “Stick some iron in your mouth and PULL THE TRIGGER.” He clutched at the back of my head, nearly ripping my hair out as he looked straight into my eyes behind his darkened sunglasses, his face bathed in the warm red of my low-frequency light that illuminated during the nighttime hours.
One single slap was enough to send me tumbling to the floor. I shook it off as best as I could, crawling slowly but steadily towards the medication spilled all over the room… Fuck… Johnny… Johnny… Fucking… hell…
“I can feel it… our minds… touching…” he glared at me, pacing around the room as I desperately willed my body towards the medication, “I’m like mold on fruit… creepin’ into you… and there’s nothin’ I can do about it…” Johnny kept jumping around the room… teleporting… as if he was searching for a way out… “You hear me?!” Come on… move… “Stuck in some uptight Japanese bitch with her fuckin’ sword, I’d puke if I fuckin’ could…” I need… to move… Come on… “It’s just a copy of the engram… I’m out there somewhere… gotta be… Can’t be stuck in this fuckin’ gonk-ass bitch’s head… Fuckin’ sword… Fuckin’ screams… Drivin’ me insane…”
I didn’t say anything… What could I say… to a man… who can read my thoughts… a man who knew everything about me, for all I knew… “Lead to the head, only thing that’ll fix this,” he sneered, “You hear me, bitch?! A bullet to the FUCKING brain!…” He… started… fading. The medication… it worked… Fuck…
Fuck me… What now…
Jackie…
I… I can’t hear you… Too much… too many screams… Johnny… What do you want from me…
Please… help me, Jackie… Please… Please hear me…
I can’t… keep awake… any longer… help me…
His engram… flickered one last time… as an act of defiance. I could feel him… his hate… boiling like a great, terrible bile… It made me sick. No… I refuse to believe this is my fate… In a couple days, my eyesight should return. Then it’s back on my feet… You can do this…
Don’t… stop… screaming… It’s what fuels you… What drives you… Your purpose is still out there… Remember what Mom said. You cannot die… not until you have fulfilled your purpose. I may not know how Johnny Silverhand of all people factored into that… Nor am I eager to find out. But I cannot shame myself now… I’ve come too far…
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Developed by ITS under the direction of an extremely adept netrunner, Soulkiller is a program that underwent various stages of development throughout its continuing evolution. It was originally designed as a storage medium to contain AI personalities; however, the program itself doesn't differentiate between organic and synthetic. Therefore, it found its primary use as a form of digitization for a person's mind.
