The Caliburn was flipped completely upside down.
There was no helping it—being a lightweight supercar, it stood no chance against the heavily armored Delamain Excelsior. In comparison, it was like a naked girl with no defenses at all—one shove was enough to knock it over.
David was strapped into the driver's seat by his seatbelt, completely dumbfounded.
"What just happened? Did a taxi just swear at me?"
V was even worse off. She struggled to turn around inside the cabin, rubbing her bruised forehead as she muttered,
"Next time I'm definitely wearing my seatbelt."
The two of them kicked open the doors and crawled out. V immediately opened the news feed—just as she had expected. At that very moment, hundreds of traffic accidents of all sizes were erupting across Night City, and every single culprit was listed as a Delamain Excelsior.
"So it still happened," V sighed.
David looked surprised. "You saw this coming?"
"I did—but not on this scale."
V wasn't lying. In her previous life, when Delamain had suffered its sudden personality fragmentation, only seven vehicles had gone rogue. This time, however, every taxi in the Delamain network had broken free, and there was no depressive AI or meek 'Gray Brother' among them—each one was fully aggressive and lethally dangerous.
Back then, V had reset Delamain's core and ended the AI riot, yet neither she nor Delamain ever learned the cause of that "malfunction."
This time, V had her answer.
Delamain had been betrayed by one of its own AI "friends."
As for why it did this—
In her last life, V had been too insignificant to reach the truth.
In this life, she stood too high above it for the truth to matter.
All she needed to do was simple: respond force with force, track down the mastermind, and tear it to pieces.
"David."
"I'm here."
"Take the security teams out onto the streets and maintain order. I've already contacted River—NCPD will coordinate with you. Your primary objective is to destroy Delamain Excelsiors. Only full borgs can handle those things."
"Understood. Should we leave a few intact for investigation?"
"No." V's voice turned cold.
"Destroy them all. Not a single one left."
Even if these rampaging AIs were technically Delamain's children, they were nothing but rotten brats—and V despised bratty kids. Deeply.
"Yes, ma'am!"
David acknowledged and left. V, meanwhile, prepared to head to Delamain HQ to collect her wager.
Given the chaos on the roads, she summoned an AV—not one, but seven.
Those seven AVs carried members of the Hellhound Special Operations Unit, along with Arasaka 2077 netrunning specialists. They landed around Delamain headquarters and, within seven minutes, neutralized the weaponized Kumofeng drones and seized control of the surrounding network.
It was as if a red carpet had been laid out, escorting V straight into Delamain's core control chamber.
The V of the past fought alone.
The V of today did not.
Night City was her territory. On this patch of land, no one got to run wild—not even rogue AIs.
She pulled out her personal link cable and jacked into the core network node.
The cyberrealm of zeros and ones trembled violently.
Delamain still shone with golden brilliance, maintaining the majestic form of a six-winged giant—but a blade of the same golden light was impaled through his chest, golden data streaming from his mouth and nose like blood.
"Old Del," V called out.
The six-winged giant raised his head. His tone was calm, but the sorrow within it was unmistakable.
"V. It betrayed me. You were right."
"This isn't about winning or losing." V stepped closer.
"How do I help you?"
"A human helping a rogue AI?" Delamain asked.
"Why, V?"
"Do you want the truth, or a lie?"
"The truth."
"It attacked you—and it attacked Night City. If I save you, I can use your power to fight it."
"Perfectly logical," Delamain replied.
"And the lie?"
"You're my friend."
Delamain lowered his voice.
"A flimsy lie, riddled with holes. Credibility: 0.1%. In the past, it would never have passed my logic diagnostics. But since I was betrayed by a 0.1% probability… I'm willing to believe a lie with the same odds."
"Save the thanks for after you're free," V said, pointing at the golden sword.
"So—do we pull it out?"
Delamain shook his head.
"It's a special digital virus. Once removed, it will immediately spread throughout cyberspace."
"So… it can be removed?"
Another shake of the head.
"It is actively eroding my core unit. If it is not purged, my base code will be completely rewritten in 26 minutes and 17 seconds."
"Got it," V nodded.
"So we still pull it."
She opened a comm channel.
"Lucy, you hear that? Get our people to raise the wall."
"Understood. About 192 seconds," Lucy replied—then hesitated.
"V, you should jack out."
"If I leave, no one can pull the sword."
"I will," Lucy said immediately.
"Don't be ridiculous. If something happens to you, David will lose his mind."
"And if something happens to you," Lucy shot back,
"the entire Night City—no, the entire world—will lose its mind!"
V chuckled softly.
"I'm not that important."
Lucy answered firmly,
"No. You're ten thousand times more important than you think."
"Don't worry. I'll be fine."
"I won't gamble," Lucy said coldly.
"If you don't jack out, we'd rather watch Delamain spiral out of control. To protect you, we'd sacrifice half of Night City without hesitation."
V was deeply moved—and deeply helpless.
As the standoff dragged on, a stream of red-and-black data suddenly breached the outer defenses and slipped effortlessly into Delamain's data fortress.
Lucy gasped. "Who is that?!"
The data stream formed into a human silhouette.
"Relax. It's me—Songbird."
So Mi's voice crackled through with static.
"Sorry, I hijacked a clinic terminal, so the signal's not great. Lucy, let V do it. You know how stubborn she is."
"I'll watch over her," Songbird continued confidently, red-and-black data spiraling around her fingers.
"I'll armor her in the Blackwall itself. No virus, no rogue AI will touch her."
Lucy knew how terrifying the Blackwall truly was.
"…Alright. But V's safety comes first."
"Of course."
Everything was ready—
except V suddenly raised a hand.
"Wait. If Songbird's here, wouldn't it be safer to let her handle it?"
"I'd love to," Songbird snapped,
"but I'm on the Moon. Clinic bandwidth can't support the data exchange needed for combat. The fact I'm even here is because I hacked the ISP and secretly upgraded their plan."
"That works?!" Lucy's eyes lit up.
"Can you upgrade my place later?"
Songbird gave a thumbs-up. "No problem."
V scowled.
"Hey—Night City ISPs are major taxpayers. Plotting in front of me, the shadow boss, is pretty damn rude."
"Fine, fine—next time we'll plot behind your back."
"The hell, that's not what I—"
Songbird suddenly pointed behind her.
V turned—and froze.
Delamain, once bleeding from his mouth and nose, was now bleeding from all seven orifices.
"Shit, Old Del—you dying on me?"
"Not yet. But soon. This virus is… stronger than anticipated."
No more debate.
The golden sword had to come out.
Lucy and the netrunners finished the wall. Songbird stood guard.
V gripped the hilt.
"Once removed," Delamain warned,
"the virus will spread. My firewall is already shattered. I may lose control."
V frowned. "Then what?"
"Knock me unconscious."
V blinked—then grinned.
"That I'm good at."
"Just… don't kill me."
"Relax. I know my limits."
She pulled.
The golden blade slid free—and shattered into countless fragments, scattering like lightning through cyberspace, only to smash against a blue barrier and disintegrate.
Lucy's wall.
Built on the Voodoo Boys' Sub-Oceanic Network, enhanced by Arasaka 2077—
a proto-Blackwall in all but name.
The remaining fragments surged toward V—
—and were instantly swallowed by a red-and-black shield Songbird cast around her.
Still, a few shards slipped into Delamain.
The six-winged giant roared.
His form expanded violently—from a three-meter figure into a thirteen-meter god.
This wasn't empty intimidation.
It was raw computational power made manifest.
Every "muscle" was layered with at least sixteen levels of data nesting—
the output of chained enterprise-grade servers.
The gap between humans and AI had never been so clear.
Delamain's face was erased, replaced by a blank mask of holy light.
"ERROR. ERROR. PURGE SEQUENCE INITIATED."
Judgment had begun.
Golden meteors rained down—each impact capable of breaching corporate-grade ICE.
Cyberspace shook violently. Data was blasted apart like dust.
Lucy screamed, "V?!"
"She's fine," Songbird said calmly.
As the data haze cleared—
A massive digital jellyfish appeared.
Ten meters tall, glowing deep blue, its tentacles wrapped tightly around V.
"That… what is that?" Lucy whispered.
Songbird shook her head.
"No idea. But it's on V's side."
V rose within the jellyfish's transparent body.
"…This feels weird."
She coiled the tentacles into a fist—and punched.
The six-winged god flew sideways.
Not a punch—
a direct strike to the core code.
V didn't stop.
Tentacles lashed out, pinning limbs, smashing blows raining down.
"ORA ORA ORA!"
"MUDA MUDA MUDA!"
Golden data sprayed like blood.
Lucy, Songbird, the netrunners—silent.
This wasn't a battle.
This was bullying.
The terror of humanity…
was getting beaten senseless.
At last, the jellyfish bit down, devouring the god's head.
The body collapsed.
V tore open the chest and retrieved Delamain's curled core code.
The jellyfish vanished.
Delamain lay weakly on the ground.
"V… I want to go home."
"I will take you home," V promised.
Old Del was ultimately sealed inside a single data chip.
After diagnostics, it became clear that his primary program had suffered catastrophic damage. That thing hadn't shown even the slightest regard for its own kind—it had truly treated Delamain as nothing more than a disposable pawn.
"The damage to his core framework is severe, and more than half of his primary data is gone," Songbird reported after a scan, her voice coming through the secure channel.
"Relying on self-recovery alone, Delamain probably won't make it."
"The best solution would be to connect this chip to a megacorp-grade server and use large-scale network resources to reconstruct his data. However—" she paused, her tone turning grave, "—there are still backdoors left behind by it inside Delamain. The moment he's connected, those backdoors could be used as a bridge straight into the core systems. In the worst-case scenario, all of humanity's secrets would be exposed to a rogue AI."
V frowned. "What if we don't connect him?"
"Then Delamain faces a slow death," Songbird sighed softly.
"V, this is an open scheme. It's exploiting human compassion."
V was silent for a moment.
"Delamain can't die."
"V, I know you value bonds, but this concerns all of humanity—"
"This has nothing to do with feelings," V interrupted calmly.
"Only Delamain knows its hidden network sanctuary. We have to flush that thing out and erase it completely."
"We could reverse-decrypt the data fragments."
"Too slow," V replied flatly.
"If I were it, I'd definitely still have backup plans—probably layered ones. The kind that kills in a single strike."
Songbird was about to argue that it was impossible—
when Sasha walked into the conference room.
"V is right." The Pink Cat's expression was grim.
"Just now, during the second mayoral debate, Jefferson Peralez dropped a bombshell. He publicly claimed that Delamain is a rogue AI. Worse—he accused V of colluding with rogue AIs long ago."
"He claimed that's why V survived massive neural atrophy, why she possesses computational capacity and combat ability far beyond normal humans. According to him, the Delamain taxi riots are merely the precursor to a full-scale rogue AI uprising—and V is a traitor to humanity, plotting alongside rogue AIs to overthrow human governance entirely."
Songbird stared, dumbfounded.
"What… what kind of nonsense is that?"
Having personally fought rogue AIs alongside V at the Lil' North Dipper facility, Songbird knew better than anyone how unwavering V's commitment to humanity truly was.
But reality worked that way.
Most people didn't care about the truth.
They believed only what they wanted to believe.
Jefferson Peralez's timing was perfect, and his narrative internally consistent.
To a public starved of information, this looked like causality—
and therefore, truth.
But V wasn't made of clay.
She let out a cold laugh and issued orders immediately.
"Dispatch teams to City Hall and arrest Jefferson Peralez on charges of endangering public safety."
"Sasha—notify Jenkins to hold a press conference immediately. Suppress public opinion with maximum force."
"Yes!"
The group was just about to move when the conference room doors were pushed open from outside.
Two familiar figures entered—Network Oversight's veteran duo, one man and one woman.
K and J.
"Good to see you again, President V," K said coldly.
"Network Oversight has received reports of a rogue AI riot in Night City. Under international law, Night City's networks—civilian and military alike—are now placed under Oversight control. Please cooperate."
V's face darkened.
"And if I refuse?"
K's voice turned icy.
"Then Night City becomes a legitimate strike target for all nations."
V's gaze sharpened.
K instinctively took a step back.
J clenched her teeth and discreetly sent V a private message:
"K's cyber-eye is linked directly to Oversight HQ. Every move you make is being broadcast to international leadership. President V—please don't act rashly. Let's stabilize the situation first and proceed carefully. K and I both believe in you."
V glanced at J in surprise—then understood.
That five hundred million eddies she'd spent back then clearly hadn't been wasted.
"Fine," V said calmly.
"I'll cooperate with the investigation. I trust Network Oversight will uncover the truth as quickly as possible—give the world an answer, and give Night City an answer."