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Vince here. So… uh.. where to start. Don’t usually get this personal with anyone, really, but I needed to get this off my chest.
By the way, I've gotta let you chooms know that my life wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. We've got self-harm, a suicide attempt, drug overdoses, and mental illness. Much as I need to get this off my chest, this ain't the kind of thing that you'd want your kids or grandmas reading.
I was born in Brooklyn. I know— tell me ‘bout a longer distance between there and NC and I’ll sneak you some pre-Datakrash net videos I found while deep diving the other day. Mom, dad, my sis Phoebe, my big brother Gael, and me. Parents were meth dealers my whole life— they tried to love us, but… well… drugs are a bitch. Bet you don’t hear a rockerboy say that every day.
They got busted for dealing when I was 11— 20 years of prison. Gael shoved all of our things into his rickety old hand-me-down car– you know, the kind that any middle-class 17-year-old gets from his parents when he gets his license– and we ran. Gael didn’t want us to get separated by the state and sent to foster care. Skirted the law for a while till we finally landed in NC— great place to erase an identity; people’ve got much bigger chrome to fry than a few kids with drug-addicted parents. My main job was to take care of little six-year-old Phoebe, scrounge up whatever scop we needed to survive. That’s when I met the guy who became one of my best friends— Jackie— who persuaded me to join the Valentinos.
Meanwhile, I started getting interested in netrunning. One day I finally decided to klep a box of cyberdecks from the Voodoo boys and grab one for myself when I ran into another kid— name was also Vince. Vincent Graves. Had a single dad, a penchant for violence, and the biggest sailor mouth of any kid in NC. Remember him, ‘cause he’s gonna come up a lot for the next 30 years of my life. To this day, my best friend in the fuckin’ world.
He was a Sixth Streeter, and lucky us, the Six Streeters happened to be in the middle of a conflict with the Valentinos over some guy who got shot outside of gang territory. Vince eventually found out, though. ‘Stead of getting mad, he said he was more worried about the fact that his mom's ex-shithead-boyfriend, Rubio, was in the gang-- the guy who killed her. I left the Valentinos ‘cause he went insane with worry; tried to persuade Jack to leave the Valentinos too but he didn’t listen. I did some tracking on Rubio, tried to hunt him down since Vince was dead-set on getting revenge on him, and that led me into a whole new can of worms-- the Blackwall.
I saw a string of info leading from the dirt I gathered on Rubio to a small data cluster beyond the Blackwall. Followed it. Forgot what I even found— just that it was new, dangerous, and exciting. If I could say one thing to my past self, I’d just keep my mouth shut and opt for giving little 15-year-old Vince Fox a massive kick in the nuts instead.
Old net was fun at first, but it spiraled into one giant tornado of shit. Between petty thievery and the high school that my basically-a-dad Sebastian Graves made me go to, I deep dove every single day. Didn't always go beyond the Blackwall-- think the reason I didn't go completely cyberpsycho quicker was because my netrunning method was this: dip your toes in and run. What my gonk brain forgot back then was that those sharks don’t care how long you’re in the water for— just that you were in the water, period.
Finished high school despite it all, and meanwhile, joined a netrunning cell called FIT with four other members. We used to hack big-name corpo BD studios and edit the most vulgar shit imaginable into their footage. Still some of the most hilarious moments of my life—and we never even got caught. Netrunning kinda became my thing once I gave myself a pseudonym– F1r3f0x. Named it after an old net browser I found one time during a deep dive.
All throughout, though, those damn Blackwall AI wouldn't leave me alone. They infected my cyberdeck, gave me panic attacks, holocalled me in the middle of the night. I had to proof my room with neo-Faraday shields; even developed my own software called Dry ICE specifically for the recurring viruses I was getting.
Anyhow, shit hit the fan when Vince went off to fight in the Unification War... left me all alone. I had Jackie, but things just weren’t the same without Vince. Ended up spending all my waking hours deep diving, snatching old data out from behind the Blackwall, editing BDs with FIT, and doing small-time merc jobs to kickstart some semblance of a career. Can’t lie and say I wasn’t involved in a bit of wartime espionage too— got tangled up with some people who felt the need to stick their nose into the gov’s business.
Eventually Vince came back from the war all shell-shocked, and at around the same time, I got diagnosed with paraphrenic cyberpsychosis. Docs said it was the fact that I’d had so many run-ins with Blackwall AI; made me feel like I was constantly being watched. Tracked. Hunted.
Could hardly sleep, started having hallucinations. I was medicated, but it barely helped. To try and distract myself, I started a band called Caliburn with a few friends I'd met in some mosh pits in NC’s underground clubs-- Kenji Byrnes, Eliza Heathcliff, and Syd Price. But my stupid fuckin’ insomnia, paranoia, anxiety ruined it. Stage lights gave me dizzy spells and I could hardly belt without getting winded. Eventually Vince stepped in as the lead singer instead.
He became my boyfriend around that time, too. I loved him more than anything, but still couldn’t help but get jealous a few times. I loved singing and knew, just knew, that I’d’ve been able to hit the notes that he hit if I just… weren’t the way I was. The very few songs that I released on my own, that our fans heard me sing alone, they said they were ass. Thought Kenji would've been a better harmony vocalist-- less "wheezy," as one journalist put it.
The Blackwall shit got worse and worse. Caliburn distracted me, sure, but I was living like a zombie. The mid to late-2070s was a shitstorm for our band— Record company and managerial conflicts, Eliza and Kenji and Syd squabbling like a murder of crows, Vince’s worsening addiction to cigs and meth... and I started cutting myself. Fans joked that neither of us would live past 27-- the 'doomed' year for rockerboys, as it were.
All came to a screeching, crashing halt when Vince had a meth overdose. Landed himself in the hospital. and I myself just wanted to end it all after I learned what had happened-- didn't for the sake of him, though.
I dragged his ass to rehab after that– and he got better, but I got worse. One day was cutting myself and just... kept going. Was frenzied, felt like that damn AI was watching me. Worried that my Faraday shields didn't work, that my ICE would be breached, that my algorithms would be disabled, that I'd finally get eaten by the darkness once and for all.
That day I finally recorded the suicide note for Vince I’d been dreaming about for so long— cried throughout the whole thing– and sliced my carotid artery.
Woke up in the hospital. Vince was there, and so was Sebastian and Jackie and Phoebe and Gael. Seeing how fuckin' devastated, angry, hollow they were-- made me realize that I’d just made the worst decision of my life. At the same time, Vince and I also decided to break up. It wasn't
'cause we hated each other or one of us cheated or whatever. We loved each other so damn much, but between all the shit going on, there wasn't anything left in a romance for us. It'd been stripped down to its bare bones-- fucking in bathroom stalls just wasn’t an option when we spent our days trying to soothe each other to sleep, prying alcohol bottles and knives out of each others’ hands. He’s still my best friend, always has been. We just… we couldn’t date anymore. Didn't mean we loved each other any less— just that we loved each other in a different way.
Caliburn broke up at the same time-- just couldn't handle its two guitarists and singers crashing and burning the way they did. Still loved music, so I joined a band with my friend Axel for a bit (backup bassist, nothing as intense as Caliburn) and took up full-time merc biz.
Start of 2077, Vince, Jackie, and I were called to do a heist together to steal a prototype version of the Relic. Dumbass Idea, but we were, indeed, dumbasses. Jack died, Vince and I got shot in the head. We both survived, miraculously, and I found out I had the engram of Johnny Silverhand in my brain. Johnny... Johnny fuckin' Silverhand. I don't even know where to begin. As of 2077? Asshole. Out of touch. As of now? Just you wait and see what I’m gonna tell you.
Over the course of our year a lot of shit happened. Me, Johnny, Vince, and some new friends we made all raced against time together to try and beat my sickness, and somehow, Johnnyboy actually took a liking to me. I went to Dogtown for the first time ever. Saved President Myers with the help of another runner, So-Mi-- can't lie, thought Myers was kinda hot till I learned that she'd been using So-Mi as a vessel to access the Blackwall. Funny enough, I also kind of liked So-Mi too. She’s real sweet; at the time I would’ve asked her out if circumstances were different. Eventually we found a one-time cure for my sickness. A surgery to save my life.
Delayed as long as possible; just couldn't bear the prospect of Johnny's engram getting shredded. Vince and I went on a solo raid through Arasaka tower in an attempt to get rid of Johnny in a way that wouldn't completely shred his engram, and against all odds, we survived. However, Alt, an AI based off of Johnny's ex-girlfriend, told me that if I were to give him up, I'd only have six months to live. Tried to get him to take my body instead, but he fuckin' refused, even tackled me to the ground when I tried to cross the bridge into the Blackwall.
So, I jacked out of Mikoshi. Went back home, laid down, stared at the wall.
Friends threw me my thirtieth birthday party in December– that was around the time that I had to quit merc work and could barely drag myself out of bed, but despite it all, my friends still threw me a party. Bawled like a baby over how much they cared about me, Vince and Johnny hugged me for hours after the party ended. Couldn't lie, I was falling hard for Johnny. He saved my life, he kissed my forehead during my breakdowns, stayed with me 24/7. He’s good at hiding his emotions, but I could tell that the fact that he was killing me was tearing him to shreds.
Johnny pleaded with me so hard– one point I swear he started crying-- to just go do the surgery. So, finally, I did. Made the docs at Langley swear left, right, up, down, frontways, sideways, and backways to take care of So-Mi and to keep Johnny's engram safe. I was a fuckin' fool for thinking they'd follow through. Woke up two years later in 2079 after falling into a coma and they told me two things– one, that they'd fuckin' shredded johnny's engram, and two, that I could never use my cyberware again. I went fuckin' ballistic. I just... acted on pure animalistic instinct. Attacked a surgeon and had to stay in the psych ward for two weeks for my own "safety."
I moved in with Vince back in NC; relapsed into cutting. Eventually, though, I got a data leak from Mr. Hands– those FIA pigs had lied– they were in partnership with Biotechnica and running tests on Johnny’s engram. "scientific breakthrough," "the first man to live inside another person's brain in history," etc. They'd already started the tests-- filtering his engram through hollow-eyed Biotechnica clones with various versions of the relic in them; seeing which ones worked and didn't. I was fuckin' furious.
The Aldecaldos and Vince and I orchestrated a break-in to Biotechnica so that I could use some of their prototype nerve reparation technology that the Aldecaldos found out about– the Hydra. Somehow it worked. Got my cyberware back, but I started having seizures again. The good news was that I wasn’t dying anymore, but my pain threshold and ICE strength when it came to netrunning was much weaker than it used to be. Got into contact with Spider Murphy at that point, one of the best ‘runners in history. She, Vince, and I all broke into Alcatraz-- an orbital FIA net access point. We gathered Johnny's engram fragments while the Aldecaldos intercepted the transport of Johnny's body from Arizona to NC, as we learned that the corps' final experiment with Johnny would be to put him back into his own body and do God knows what to him.
Well, it somehow, again, worked. When Johnny woke... holy shit, felt like a fairytale. I laid in bed with him and held him as tightly as I could. He was emaciated, whole life for the next few weeks was just him eating, sleeping, and getting frustrated that his fingers were too weak to shred the guitar that I brought him. I think that was when I finally let myself admit that I was in love. With all of that fake bravado stripped away, he was just a sweet guy who liked to sleep on top of me and play guitar and laugh at the fuckin’ dumbest things in the world. I loved him. I really, really loved him.
We struck out on the road soon after the FIA finally managed to track our location– lived as nomads with the Aldecaldos and Vince. Johnny officially asked me to be his mainline too. It was a big decision for him, too. He told me later that he'd never been so afraid to ask anyone out. His dad, when he was a kid, got real pissed at him for being queer-- then the boy he had a crush on died for him during the war. So, he'd promised himself he wouldn't love another guy again. Sure, he had flings with Kerry and Henry from time to time, but he said he couldn't bear to let himself feel something for another guy... well, that was, until he met me. Told him I was fuckin' honored, kissed him as hard as I could.
And... well... that was when we started Lands and Grooves. We were the kind of band that hid lore and cryptic symbolism within our albums - you know, Pink Floyd, My Chemical Romance, all those guys. Of course, we were still all about crushing Arasaka and “fuck corpos” and all that, as per Johnny’s request… just hidden under a layer of weirdass storytelling.
We all went back to NC eventually after the whole sitch blew over; managed to pull a few strings there, which made us safe for the time being.
We've got a lot of albums under our belt, so I’m just gonna go over the most important ones. Our Event Horizon EP was just some experimental stuff in 2081. We also wrote “Hail to the Chief” and “Drag me Under”, which eventually got added to our first concept album in 2083– Going to the Dogs. Johnny got sappier in the next few years, and admittedly, I did too. I wrote him something of a love song– “Undivided” – and he had the same sort of idea when he wrote “Tear Down the Wall”, which both made it onto one of our more lighthearted albums-- Forks and Hope in 2087.
Meanwhile, Johnny proposed to me. Johnny Linder-Silverhand-Fox-Whateveryouwannacallhim proposed. We got married in June of 2086– our rings were made from shards of the Relic, our cat was the flower girl, and Vince and Kerry Eurodyne were our best men. It was one of the most perfect days of my life.
First album together as husbands was AM. in 2090– one of my favorite albums we’ve done to date. It’s 2091 now. I’m 43 and I… well... couldn't be happier. I’m still sick in the head and the FIA and rogue AI still get on our asses sometimes, but in the end, I’m with the people I love. Folks say there ain't any happy endings in NC, and that's true, but... I really think that happiness is relative. I'll never be able to netrun like I used to, still relapse back into my old issues sometimes, my voice still cracks when I sing, and Lands and Grooves is regarded less as the vicious guard dog tearing out the jugular of Arasaka that we wanted it to be and more as a feral senior chihuahua nipping at their feet so hard that they can’t possibly ignore us. Johnny still gets nightmares and Vince still smokes to cope with his own shit. But it's fine. It'll all be fine. Change is just a thing of life, and so far… these changes ain't been half bad.
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