One-shots and plot bunnies

It felt like waking from a long, disorienting dream—except it wasn't a dream. He couldn't remember how he got here, but he knew one thing with a sickening certainty: this wasn't his world.

The first thing he noticed was the noise. The constant hum of machinery, the whirring of drones, the distant clatter of footsteps echoing down endless metallic corridors. Then the stench—a mixture of oil, burning plastic, and something worse, something metallic.

He blinked, rubbing his eyes. The environment around him was... wrong. It was claustrophobic, walls closing in around him like the inside of a ship, and yet somehow, he could feel the weight of the sky pressing down as though the air had thickened to a point of suffocation.

He was lying on a hard surface, the cool touch of metal against his skin. There was something off, like his limbs didn't quite belong to him. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room, he noticed the faint glow of neon lights from outside a small window. His hand shot up to his face, his fingers tracing the unfamiliar contours of a scarred, rough face that didn't match the reflection he expected.

He blinked again, staring at the stranger in the mirror that wasn't a stranger at all. V was the name on the ID tucked into his jacket—no, not his jacket. His, but not his.

What the hell is happening?

The confusion was overwhelming, but something else gnawed at him—a gnawing, a tugging deep in his chest that told him, somehow, this was not the worst of it.

Suddenly, a voice broke through the haze, cutting through the silence with a tone that was too familiar. Too... real.

"I told you, kid. Arasaka needs to be nuked again."

The voice was sharp, like a blade cutting into the fog of his thoughts. He whipped around, searching for the source, but there was nothing. No one.

Great. Just great.

He had to be hearing things. That had to be it, right? His mind was playing tricks on him. Maybe he'd hit his head—hard—during whatever happened before he woke up here. It wasn't like he had any memory of what came before this, but the voice? It sounded like a command, a statement of fact.

He tried to focus, to center himself. V. He was V. Whoever V was, this body was his now. He didn't know who had been here before—he didn't even know where "here" was—but it didn't matter. He had to keep moving, had to figure things out. He grabbed the jacket—dusted off the weird green vest—his mind scrambling for anything familiar.

But the voice persisted.

"C'mon, V. You really think you're gonna make it out of this one? That corpo chip is still burning a hole in your skull. Arasaka's got its hooks in deep. You don't even know it yet, but they've got you by the throat. Just like I did with all the other failed experiments."

The voice was raspy now, mocking. He could almost hear the sneer. But it was coming from everywhere. His mind raced, his heart thudded harder in his chest. This wasn't just hallucinations. This was something else.

"What the hell are you?" he found himself muttering out loud, as if speaking to the voice would somehow answer the questions buzzing inside his head.

A flicker of light caught his eye. There, in the corner of the room, a faint hologram shimmered to life, barely noticeable against the backdrop of the dim room. It was a man—dark sunglasses, a sharp jaw, and an expression that could've carved through stone. He looked like a fighter, an unstoppable force. His clothing was torn, weathered, like he'd been in a dozen skirmishes, and his eyes held an edge—dangerous.

The man—if he could even call him that—flicked his wrist as if waving away the air itself, and the hologram blinked in and out like static on an old TV.

"Well, aren't you the clever one?" The figure smirked, his voice cutting through the thick silence. "You didn't even flinch when you saw me, did you? Just another day in Night City, huh? Just another body waking up to find the world isn't what it seems."

The voice kept talking, its tone unhinged but oddly persuasive. But everything this... figure said only made things worse.

V. Night City. Arasaka. Corporations. Nukes. Was this some kind of twisted, dystopian future?

V's mind struggled to make sense of it all, but the more he focused, the more questions piled up. He had no idea what this place was, who he was supposed to be in this body, or what kind of world he had woken up in. All he knew was that the voice—the man—had to be something otherworldly. A glitch in the system? A remnant?

"Stop it! Stop!" He shouted at the figure, his voice cracking, frustrated. "I don't understand. Who are you?"

The figure paused, looking almost amused by the outburst. "You're smarter than you look. I'm Johnny. Johnny Silverhand. Guess we're stuck with each other for a while, kid."

"What?" V blinked in confusion, his mind still whirling with too many ideas at once. "What the hell do you mean by 'stuck with me'?"

Johnny's hologram flickered again, and the voice lowered, more serious now. "Let me make it clear, V. I'm inside your head. A little piece of me is living in your mind. I'm what you might call a 'ghost in the machine,' if you're into metaphors. You've got a piece of me in that brain of yours, and you're not getting rid of me. Trust me, it's not the best thing to have around. But we'll see how it goes."

"No..." V shook his head, more and more certain this was some kind of insane hallucination. "You're not real. You can't be real. I'm just—"

Johnny smirked again, his image flickering erratically. "Not real? Kid, I'm more real than anything you've ever seen. And believe me, I know how it feels to wake up in someone else's shoes. Welcome to the real world, V. And, by the way, your life just got a lot more complicated."

The words hit harder than anything V had ever heard. There was no going back now. Whether he liked it or not, he was stuck with Johnny Silverhand, a voice in his head, a reminder of everything that was wrong with this future.

But worse? Johnny was right.

There was no way out. No easy escape. He had to keep moving. He had to survive. His life wasn't his own anymore.

And, somehow, he had to figure out what the hell he'd just stepped into.