V-Week 2077 // Lynn Zero

09/12/2025 // 01 // Hard Reset

"Ticia hurry, your mom's coming!"

Ticia didn't wait for any more info. She dropped her cigarette and bolted towards the stairwell at the center of the complex. Mom would be coming from their apartment, which was upward and outward, so she headed down and in. Her friends ran with her, all of them giggling quietly as they fled their parents.

Only Ticia wasn't giggling. Her heart was racing.

At the bottom of the stairs, her friends headed down the walkway along the empty central shaft of the megabuilding. Ticia slowed down just enough to let them all pass her, then took the opportunity to turn a U-ey and head the other direction. She held onto the concrete barrier between her and a long fall, followed it to another set of stairs, and hurried down them.

She could her her mom up above, calling for her. Ticia knew that tone. Tonight wasn't a good night. She went down a third set of steps, on the seventh floor now. Suddenly it felt like she'd been at the central shaft for too long, it felt exposed, like her mom could look over the railing and see her at any second. On an impulse she veered sharply away from the railing and headed towards the outer edge of the megabuilding.

Bolting through an open gate, past a group of men talking loudly, she to the door of apartment 0720; V's apartment. She didn't know V well, but knew she was a merc, knew she'd protected some of the other kids on the block when they needed it.

Hurriedly, Ticia banged on the door. Nothing happened. She banged on it again, a little louder. "V, are you in there?" Nothing.

Stepping back from the door, she looked around for an aircon system and saw one over to the right. She hurried over to it and stretched her arms up to test the grating: loose, like all the rest. Most of them were loose around the building, loosened by kids and never fixed by building maintenance. Adults never cared about these, never thought about them.

With a sharp tug, Ticia pulled the grating halfway off. It swung down on its only remaining hinge, scraping across the concrete wall til it hung loosly on its only remaining connection. Ticia got a firm grip on the grate's frame and pulled herself up, grunting with effort. Almost as soon as she did, she could hear something from the apartment inside, V's apartment. Sounded like V was shouting.

"Jesus fucking Christ, man!" The voice was muffled through the aircon system, but it was unmistakable.

Ticia stopped, halfway into the aircon system, her legs dangling outside it. If V was having a fight or something, Ticia didn't wanna get in the middle of it. But she also didn't have anywhere else to go.

She pulled herself all the way inside the little crawlspce, too small for an adult, squeezing into the little air duct leading toward V's apartment.

V shouted again. "Fuckin' ghost off!" She sounded really angry.

Pulling herself foward, Ticia's reached an air vent looking into V's apartment. She could see the sink below her, toilet and shower to her left, apartment main to her right. It was cramped, she was bent at a weird, uncomfortable angle, but she could see into most of the apartment. V was standing by her bed, near the unshuttered window on the far end of the apartment, almost out of Ticia's line of sight. She had a weird outfit on, looked like sweatpants and like her torso was wrapped in bandages. It stood out to Ticia because V usually had such cool outfits.

She wasn't doing anything, just standing there, looking around. She looked stressed. Her bright purple hair, cut short, was a complete mess; her face was washed clean of makeup, another oddity. Ticia looked around for whoever V was talking to, but she couldn't see anyone. V's irises weren't lit either, so she wasn't on a holo-call. Ticia strained to see someone—in the bathroom to the side, off to what looked like a closet door on the other side, but there was nobody.

After a few moments V seemed to decide something, turned toward the apartment door and looked about ready to leave. Ticia felt a surge of anxiety, wondering if she should say something, or try to scurry out and meet V in the hallway, but suddenly V fell over backwards.

V hit the apartment floor with a cry of shock. Ticia gasped and wondered, at this point, if maybe V needed help more than she did. But then... V pointed to the ceiling, towards Ticia! Her face shifting from an expression of shock into one of pure rage. Ticia felt cold fear in her stomach, running down the length of her body, and she wondered if V was gonna kill her.

But then V's expression changed again. It shifted, moving from rage back to shocked surprise. The rapid shift of emotions moving across the merc's face was confusing, unsettling. Ticia started to feel like something was really, badly wrong.

"Fuck!" V said, a gasp of emotion that Ticia couldn't even identify. She watched as V held both hands in front of her face, staring at them with an expression that looked like she was somehow horrified. Disgusted. Then she reached slowly toward the back of her head, towards her neuroport. Looked like she was gonna pull a shard from her datasocket.

Suddenly V looked terrified. "No! Wait!" Her words were cut off as she spasmed horribly, her spine arched outward, her fingers curled like claws, her legs stiff and trembling in some nightmarish uncontrolled reaction to something happening inside her. Ticia gasped. She wanted to help, wondered what she could do.

But it passed quickly. V's body relaxed, she rolled over onto her stomach and started clawing her way up, leveraging herself against the wall, leaning against the window.

Without warning, V slammed her own head into the glass. Ticia couldn't see clearly from her angle, but even from halfway across the apartment she heard V's skull slam into the shatterproof surface. She gasped and covered her mouth, her body felt cold, she couldn't make herself move, she didn't know what to do.

V's arms braced against the window, as if she was trying to stop herself, but her skull hit the window again. Ticia could see V's arms straining against the window, but still somehow the woman hurled her own torso forward and slammed her head into the window a third time. Blood splattered across the transparent surface, and V collapsed onto the floor.

Ticia didn't move. Didn't speak. She couldn't comprehend what she was seeing. It looked... wrong, like whatever she was witnessing was something that shouldn't be happening.

For long minutes, she watched the unconscious merc. V was breathing, that much she could tell. One arm twisted underneath her torso in a way that looked very uncomfortable, her legs bent beneath her, blood splattered across her face. That same blood across V's window was slowly trickling down the smooth surface.

Slowly, very slowly, it looked like V was waking up. She stirred, groaned, pulled her arm out from under herself. As her eyes opened, she slid her left leg out from underneath herself, then her right leg. She crawled achingly backwards toward her bed, where she shoved herself upwards to sit on the edge of it with a weary sigh.

From this angle, Ticia couldn't see exactly what was happening; she could only see V's knees, and her hands. One of the hands disappeared, Ticia heard a plastic rattling sound, and saw V's hand holding a blue pill bottle, saw her open it.

"See you never, asshole." V spoke with conviction, focus, anger. Ticia strained again to see who V was talking to, but there was no one, nothing.

But then, as V opened the cap of the little blue bottle, suddenly she hurled it violently across the room. It landed on the floor, pills bounced and scattered across the dirty surface. Ticia didn't even have time to be confused though, as V hurled herself violently toward the floor as well. Ticia heard V's cheek hit the floor, heard V grunt in pain. She had a much better angle of the merc now, trembling and weak, barely picking herself up.

With agonized movements, V started crawling across the floor toward the scattered blue pills. Ticia couldn't breathe. Every movement V made looked like it took every ounce of energy. Each time she reached her arm forward, it looked like that was all she could do. But then she reached forward again, and again, making creeping progress.

Suddenly, V yelled. "Leave me alone!" She sounded desperate, angry, afraid. "Get out! Just get the fuck out!"

Ticia had a horrified feeling that V was talking to her, because there was nobody else there. She wanted to leave, but she felt transfixed. V reached for one of the little blue pills, rolled onto her back, and shoved the pill into her mouth. Ticia now had a perfectly clear view of V's face, the merc staring up at the ceiling... no, some point in the middle of the room. She saw V swallow the pill. Moments passed.

V's eyes unfocused, seemed to stare past the ceiling now. V gave a weary sigh. Her entire body seemed to relax. "Ugh. Fuck me..."

Ticia, in her little hiding place, felt a wave of relief wash over her as well. She had no idea what she'd just witnessed, but it seemed to be over. V lay on the floor for a long while, just breathing, letting herself calm. Ticia stayed still and quiet.

After a while, V rolled onto her side and pushed herself into a sitting position, then stood with a groan of pain. She stumbled over to the sink, just beneath Ticia's vent. Ticia held perfectly still, didn't even breathe, terrified of alerting V to her presence, of letting the merc know she'd witnessed whatever the fuck had just happened. It suddenly felt very wrong, like she'd intruded on something deeply private.

V washed her face, looked like she might head back to bed, then apparently changed her mind as she turned around and headed into the shower. Ticia backed away as slowly as possible, and when she heard the shower water activate she hurried a little bit. Crawling backwards out of the air duct wasn't easy, and she was out of breath by the time she clambered gracelessly out of the air duct and landed on the concrete corridor floor.

She didn't even bother to put the grate back where it was supposed to go. Ticia just hurried away. When her friends found her again, asked her where she'd been, she didn't answer. She asked her friend Dina if she could stay at her place tonight. Other than that, she didn't say much. She couldn't get what she'd seen out of her head. Couldn't shake the feeling that something about it was deeply, fundamentally wrong.