14Act 2
Chapter 3 Cycle of Guilt.
Gloria snarled in frustration as she pushed the peddle to the metal and broke through a police barricade, her cybernetics reaching out and pushed the city's spiked and large hydraulic road blockers back into the ground. All around police officers were left scrambling, reeling from the multitude of optical illusions and audio feedback loops she had sent their way.
Swerving a tight right turn her Galena G240 tore towards West Wind Estate as the city descended into chaos around her.
Cursing under her breath Gloria thought back to that fateful dinner a mere hour ago. The sensation of having returned from a long journey had filled her mind then and a sudden sense of vertigo had gripped her. Nothing unusual whenever a transference occurred. It was when Desten had dragged himself through space and time to hug her with tears in his eyes that she should've acted.
To save the usual explanations for later and get their son now. But she hesitated, focusing on calming her husband, she had only expanded her senses to feel her son awaken in the grip of the Arasaka emperor.
Her recollection was interrupted by gunfire and with an annoyed huff and puff from her augmentations a convoy of Animal gang members was sent flying through the air. Their trucks brakes malfunctioning as their engines overheated.
Dodging the debris and making her own way through the maze of Night City. Knuckles turning white around the wheel she cursed herself again.
Her patience had been their undoing, listening to her husband of the misery of another past life. Lost to the endless waves of primordial space, when he suddenly went as stiff as a board. Eyes turning to pinpricks, his face grew ashen as a single word escaped his lips.
"Pfhor." Not a single word could've been uttered with more volatile heat than this single name. Even the flames of the inferno that had robbed her of her childhood found itself left wanting. Desten's hatred ran deep, all the way down to the buried roots within the earth and igniting the very soil from underneath.
In the next instant he had vanished, leaving her on Earth as she followed his wake in the night's sky.
She cursed as the city threw up another set of barricades and automated city service vehicles making a beeline for her.
With her patience gone, she shoved her way through, a digital roar echoing across cyberspace, pulverising the ICE defences in front and around her into broken data fragments. Service vehicles slammed into each other or spontaneously combusted, around the new path she had cleaved open for herself.
Crossing over and through barricades Gloria pushed her reliable Galena to it's limits as she saw the first Arasaka VTOLs blitz through the sky. Their destination the same as hers.
Even from her current position, bulleting across the 101st New Pacific High Way, everything between the docks and the abandoned stadium was nothing but a burning war zone. Dark smoke billowing out of destroyed high rises, blanketing out the stars in the sky. The raging flames burst from the the rubble, flowing into the streets as tracer rounds filled the air.
Deafening explosions shook the earth as it heaved and rumbled, store windows ruptured into hundreds of pieces from their concussions.
As another detonation went off, that swallowed half a block Gloria twisted her Galena around, the mighty shake of the earth giving her the push she needed to leap across the railings onto the sandy fields surrounding the south-west of Night City.
The air vibrated, shock waves travelling through her as the trusty Galena trembled and groaned from the tribulations it had to endure, her journey leading her into the heart of the battlefield.
She could feel herself getting closer to her son. Her heart ached as she drove through the trail of destruction he had left in his wake.
While she had not the burden of memories from painful lives that had been swallowed in the primordial sea, she knew who she was. It was the same revelation repeated forever, whenever they'd finally meet each other. Again and again.
Memories would awaken of their one shared life, finally completing her. Filling her heart with the pieces it had been missing. And her heart would soar as she beheld her happiness countless times, vowing she'd never let anyone or anything disrupt it.
'Hold on mijo! I'm coming!'
Stray shots harassed her all the way, across broken pavement and streets covered in rubble, wreckage and the dead.
For the first time in an eternity, Gloria lashed out and across three entire city blocks of West Wind Estate Arasaka, Animal and Tiger Claw gang members fell by the dozens. Their cybernetics burning them inside out, their panicked screams, howls and shrieks silencing the raging gunfight as uncomprehending horror took hold of the dying men and women.
While burning husks crashed to the ground, Arasaka VOTLs began to shift their target and the first strafing runs grazed Gloria's Galena.
She spat a curse and saw she was only fifty metres away from her boy. Just then a series of rockets struck the street she was in, the explosions lifting the two ton car through the air like a toy. It spun and tumbled, smashing against concrete buildings and skidded across the street before coming to a screeching halt.
A dull pain tugged at her mind, numbing her as she blinked away tears and blood. Slowly Gloria dragged herself out of the wreckage, fumbling about half blind as her body protested and yearned for rest.
Yet she would pay these wishes no heed. She couldn't. Not when her son was still in danger. Suffering the consequences of her hesitation.
Stumbling through a broken building facade, not minding the corpses in the destroyed room she continued onwards.
Through her hazy vision she could see him and felt her heart break into pieces.
Covered head to toe in blood not his own, David fought like a man possessed. His face a visage of unadulterated rage, his eyes pure white, his howls drowning out the noise of battle.
Gloria gritted her teeth, 'I am the anchor, pulling them to shore.'
Step after step she made her way towards her son. In his bloodied hands he held an Arasaka soldier by the throat, slamming the corpse against the walls over and over again.
The rage, hatred and desperation etched onto his face, tore at Gloria's heart. Stepping over broken shards and bodies she felt something tear into her side. Her legs grew weak and she toppled, just barely making out David spinning towards her sharply.
She saw him stiffen as she fell. Dragging herself across the debris, strength fading quickly she reached out, her hand falling through the mirage of her son's image.
With an apology on her lips, her vision grew dark and she knew no more.
David felt like he was floating. Atop of a watery surface he felt the waves splash against him. Tasting blood he hazily opened his eyes and found himself in the middle of an ocean of blood. Above him a sea of lights twinkled teasingly at him. He snatched at it, trying to grab what he could and a heap of bone and flesh fell from the heavens. Their impacts creating waves that carried him deeper and away to somewhere else.
He fought against the tide and in the struggle more bone and flesh joined him in the ocean. Suddenly his eyes shot wide. A white star, outshone it's compatriots like the northern star in the night sky. His heart cried out, yearning it's warmth. Desiring it more than anything else.
Struggling against the rough ocean David surged forward only to find himself dragged back into the watery embrace as a furious battle ensued.
Waves clashed against each other, a fierce storm was brewing on the horizon as from within the sea of lights hanging above him a horde of rats, gorillas and tigers descended upon him.
All the while his greatest desire grew further and further away.
David roared, finishing off the tigers that had been crippled by the gorillas and left to die by the rats. He humbled the gorillas as they licked their wounds and fended off the rats gnawing at them.
But the rats. Black things with red eyes, an instantaneous and visceral disgust surged within him and this time the ocean moved with him.
He cut through them and the waves became his scythe. He threw his fist and the waves answered, blasting massive holes into the endless horde. He took step forward and the waves hurled him through the sea of flesh and bone, paving a bloody path for him and him alone to take.
Grabbing a lost rat by the neck he brought it closer. It was missing something. There was no skull, no white mask with red eyes to taunt him.
His heart boiled, hair standing on end and with a roar erupting from his throat he smashed the rat against nearest wall he found. Pounding until his hands were bloody and broken, he beheld the rat and found himself wanting.
There was a familiar sound to his right, demanding his attention, he followed that instinct and turned. To face his mother in the flesh. Breathless he stood in the middle of chaos and mayhem, slack jawed as his mother ran towards him.
Her red hair swayed in the wind and her yellow jacket was filled with holes from which red blood oozed out. She toppled to the ground yet still she dragged herself forward, pulling him closer to her, like an anchor saving a ship in the rough seas.
Tears leaking from his eyes he watched his mother look at him with dimming eyes and say, "I'm sorry."
And then the light faded from her eyes and David know, he had failed. Again.
His throat raw and angry, his vocal cords on the verge of melting, a terrible, harrowing scream tore it's way through his mouth. Yet before it could reach it's crescendo, the consciousness that was David Martinez vanished from this universe.
Taken by the primordial, blood soaked waves, leaving behind an empty husk on a mountain of corpses and rubble.
At the same time in another universe, on another Earth, one suffering under the brutal yoke of Pfhor occupation. In the conditioning centres burrowed deep within the bowels of Night City the newly conditioned unit 7 stirred awake within his slave tank.