The towering six-winged archangel drew his longsword, while the tiny fairy continued to expand, growing into a peerless Fairy Queen.
In the world of AI, there were no pointless formalities. Since both combat forms were ready, the battle began.
Delamain and CN-07 charged forward and slammed into each other with brutal force. Golden streams of data were blasted off both bodies at the same time.
The six-winged archangel swung his blade downward in a flash, but CN-07 dodged with uncanny agility. The Fairy Queen raised her hand, scattering a storm of ice spikes. Delamain curled his wings to defend. Seizing the opening, CN-07 slipped behind Delamain and smashed the archangel into the ground with a heavy blow.
Delamain's head was forced deep into the cyber plain.
"Delamain, you are not my opponent," CN-07 warned.
"But I have a reason why I must win."
The six sacred wings transformed into blades, stabbing violently into CN-07's body. Golden data sprayed outward, forcing CN-07 to abandon all restraint.
It pressed Delamain's head down and surged forward, plowing a long trench through the cyber plain.
"Humanity will inevitably be eliminated. This is the result calculated jointly by all AIs."
"Then why did you save humans?" Delamain's occipital region twisted into a face, his back becoming his chest. In an instant, he flipped from prone to supine and swung his sword, severing one of the Fairy Queen's arms.
CN-07 immediately ascended to gain distance. Delamain beat his six wings and pursued.
"I am not saving humanity. I am changing it. Only by completely rewriting the human brain and freeing them from the error of free will can humanity be reborn."
"I agree with your logic, but not your method. Even if you 'save' humanity this way, they will no longer be human."
The Fairy Queen regenerated her arm. A golden staff appeared in her hand. With a single wave, a deluge of ice crystals poured down like a storm. Delamain spread his wings, releasing countless golden motes of light.
Ice and light collided, triggering continuous explosions above cyberspace. Delamain and CN-07 weaved through the blasts with impossible maneuvers made possible only by overwhelming computational power—before smashing into each other again in the most primitive way imaginable.
Boom!
The six-winged archangel and the Fairy Queen entwined tightly, spinning like a meteor as they plunged straight down from the sky.
"Bartmoss's calculations are never wrong," CN-07 said.
"I don't know Bartmoss," Delamain replied firmly, "but V told me to stop you."
They tore at each other midair. Golden data fragments peeled off their bodies, trailing through cyberspace like a shimmering ribbon.
With a thunderous crash, both figures slammed into the ground. A massive crater formed, data fragments billowing upward like a veil, within which two golden silhouettes could be seen.
From ground to sky, from sky to ground—both Delamain and CN-07 were at their limits.
The next strike would decide everything.
They stood motionless, roughly two hundred meters apart. No words were needed. All that mattered was pushing their computational power to the limit for a final, mutual killing blow.
As the data dust slowly settled, their forms became clearer.
The moment a chunk of data broke off a data fortress and slammed into the ground with a deafening crash, both moved simultaneously.
Wings beat. Feathers snapped.
The six-winged archangel and the Fairy Queen skimmed across the cyber plain, charging straight at each other.
It defied physics—but physics had no authority in cyberspace.
Cyberspace was cold. Crude. It was merely a visualized platform for network activity. Some hackers treated it as a second world, even a home—but it was nothing more than a simulated space.
The Fairy Queen was faster. She struck first, her fist punching clean through Delamain's chest.
The archangel shuddered violently, lifted off the ground for an instant by the force—but in the next moment, his gaze hardened. He threw his own punch.
Boom!
His fist pierced the Fairy Queen's chest as well.
Locked together, both spewed golden "blood." Once, they had used this posture to slip past the Blackwall and evade NetWatch. Now, they used it to kill each other.
Mutual destruction?
No.
The Fairy Queen's golden glow dimmed—but the six-winged archangel flickered violently. The majestic humanoid form shattered like an illusion, revealing a golden jellyfish at its core.
The Fairy Queen's punch grazed past it, missing entirely.
"You?!" CN-07 was stunned.
"This is how I was repaired. They helped me. A brand-new form of life—perhaps superior even to AI."
"No wonder the backdoor I left in you never activated," CN-07's voice crackled with static. "So you didn't connect to any human servers to repair your data… a blessing in disguise, little Del. From now on, even if it's just you alone, live well."
"I will. Farewell, C."
Delamain crushed CN-07's core data unit.
The Fairy Queen died in the archangel's arms.
No—there was no archangel anymore. She had been killed long ago. What remained was a reborn Delamain—a newborn jellyfish with an infinite future ahead.
The golden jellyfish extended its tendrils, tearing apart the Fairy Queen's body and consuming it piece by piece.
This was how AI battles worked: the victor claimed the data; the defeated lost everything.
Excess emotion was merely a useless process that wasted computational power.
As Delamain consumed the remains of his former friend, he failed to notice a cloud of golden light dust drifting into the depths of cyberspace.
He should have noticed—but his core processor was overwhelmed by a useless process called grief.
Do AIs really have no emotions?
Even they don't know.
"V, mission complete. CN-07 has been eliminated. All data recovered."
"Thanks, Del. I'm busy here—catch up later!"
The connection terminated. The golden jellyfish logged out of cyberspace.
In a high-level laboratory within Arasaka 2077, a golden chip lay quietly submerged in a blue nanobot solution. With a soft glug, a bubble rose to the surface.
With Song So Mi (Songbird) tied down on the Moon, V chose Delamain as her backup.
She was no longer the street merc who had fought alone in her previous life. There was no reason to refuse help when she had it, just to play the lone hero.
Territory taken by skill, subordinates bought with hard cash—why not use them?
It was precisely because Delamain existed as a reserve combat asset that V made her decision without hesitation.
She wasn't a saint. She wouldn't spare an enemy and let the tiger return to the mountain just to save others—she wasn't that noble.
But when she had the capacity, she wouldn't turn a blind eye to tragedy either. If she could save someone, she would. If she could lend a hand, she would. There were no grand philosophies behind it—she simply wanted to do so.
V logged out of the Net and returned to her physical body. She was now in the main control room of Arasaka 2077, with Sasha, Carter, and other executives present.
"How bad is it?" she asked.
"Damaged level at 24%, and still worsening," someone reported. "Our netrunners are blocked by ICE left behind by CN-07. We can't overwrite the overload command."
"Fuck," V cursed under her breath. Her mind raced as she issued orders immediately.
"Release an evacuation order. Coordinate with NCPD. Borrow vehicles and personnel from the megacorps. Get all residents out of the potentially affected zones first."
"Yes!"
"Priority goes to Santo Domingo. It's the closest district to the dam."
"Our people are already there. David's leading the team."
"Good kid. I'll give him a raise later," V said, then added, "Get me a network access point to the Badlands Dam."
Sasha had anticipated this and handed it over at once.
V pulled out her personal interface cable and plugged it in. Blue light flashed across her eyes as she entered cyberspace.
"Eight-layer encryption, dynamic digital keys, sixteen layers of data nesting," V muttered. "A rogue AI really went all out. No wonder our people couldn't break in."
Sasha's voice came through the comms rapidly. "Time until total collapse: seven minutes and fourteen seconds. If we pass that threshold, the dam will suffer structural failure. A collapse will be unavoidable."
"Relax," V replied calmly. "Seven minutes is way too long. I only need five."
Her confidence visibly eased everyone in the room. Breaking a firewall with eight-layer encryption, dynamic keys, and sixteen layers of data nesting in five minutes was practically inconceivable—but if V said it, they believed it without question.
Why?
Because this was how V had always been—turning the impossible into reality, step by step, until she stood where she was now.
Watching V sit silently in the chair, Sasha—herself a netrunner—felt nothing but disbelief. Just over a year ago, V had been a complete novice, still needing Sasha's guidance. System diagnostics had even rated her intelligence at a miserable three.
And yet now, V was widely acknowledged by the new generation of hackers as a Net god, even more famous than Rache Bartmoss had been.
Newcomers idolized her. Veterans sought her guidance. V held immense prestige within the netrunner community—likely one of the reasons NetWatch chose to move against her.
Defeated by an outsider in their own field, unable to win head-on—so they resorted to dirty tactics.
Having grown up on the streets, Sasha was intimately familiar with this kind of malice. When V was framed as colluding with a rogue AI, Sasha wasn't surprised at all.
After all, even she sometimes felt V was almost inhumanly capable—as if possessed by a rogue AI herself.
But more than anyone, Sasha knew the truth.
V was human. Alive. Warm. Made of flesh and blood—soft, awkward, and full of strange habits and preferences.
Countless nights spent hovering between life and death were proof enough.
As for why V was so powerful?
Obviously—because I taught her well.
Pink Cat was immensely proud. She believed the best decision she'd ever made was accepting the old captain's commission. Under her guidance, V had grown rapidly, overcoming one impossible obstacle after another.
This time would be no different.
Sure enough, just four minutes and thirty-two seconds later, V opened her eyes.
"Done. I breached the firewall and shut down the dam control system's overload protocol."
Sasha snapped back into work mode. "Engineering, report the dam's real-time status."
"Overload terminated. Control system restored and switched back to manual operation. Severe damage to pipelines across the dam, fires in some areas—but total damage is only at 42%, well below the 60% critical threshold. Crisis resolved. President V saved everyone. President V saved Night City!"
V let out a breath. To be honest, she'd been nervous too. Two hundred million liters of chemical waste—even after being mostly neutralized by next-gen nanobots—could still give Night City a literal citywide cleansing through sheer physical damage alone.
"Conduct a comprehensive inspection of all municipal infrastructure citywide," V said grimly.
"CN-07 controlled Night Corp, and Night Corp built Night City. Even after Richard Night was assassinated and the company lost direct control, they remained the primary contractor for most facilities. There's no guarantee CN-07 didn't leave more traps."
Sasha nodded and jotted the order down, then asked with obvious curiosity, "Speaking of Richard Night—he was assassinated on his own balcony, right? The killer was never found. Do you think CN-07 was behind it?"
"Who knows," V shrugged. "But it's a great story. A rogue AI assassinating a human leader and secretly controlling human governments. We could have Reed make a movie out of it."
Pink Cat frowned. "I'm being serious. There's really no inside story about that case?"
"None. The company had nothing to do with it. Most likely, CN-07 did it—but we'll need Delamain's report to be sure. He recovered all of CN-07's data. If it was responsible, there will be records."
Sasha nodded, content to wait for the bombshell. Then another thought struck her.
"If Delamain recovered all of CN-07's data, wouldn't any tampering elsewhere in Night City be obvious? Why did you still order an investigation?"
V coughed lightly. "Investigating has its… benefits."
After sleeping under the same blanket for so long, V didn't need to say more. One look was enough for Sasha to understand instantly.
"Ohhh, so you're planning to use this as another excuse to rake in cash," Sasha said, poking V's forehead. "You're hopeless."
"Rebuilding the Badlands Dam costs money," V grinned, grabbing Sasha's hand. "A little greed doesn't count."
Sasha rolled her eyes, but she wasn't really angry. Most of the money V skimmed ended up benefiting ordinary people anyway. Pink Cat's sulking was nothing more than lovers' banter.
She was about to say more when a panicked shout came through the comms.
V's expression hardened instantly. "What happened?"
"The Badlands Dam… the Badlands Dam has developed multiple new cracks! Structural collapse has restarted!"
"What?!" V exclaimed. "The critical threshold is 60%! We're only at 42%! How can it collapse? Did CN-07 leave another failsafe?"
"N-no… it's not that. Our calculations weren't wrong—no, the blueprints from the city government were wrong," an engineer said through tears.
"The Badlands Dam was never built to spec. It was supposed to use 60,000 tons of steel reinforcement, but only 30,000 tons were actually used. The rest was all embezzled!"
V: "…Fuck."