The desert doesn’t care that you’re dying.

The night stretched wide and empty, stars smeared across the sky like static that never quite resolves. Your nose bleeds into your hand again—dark, too much—and the headache blooms behind your eyes like a bad shard you can’t uninstall. You kneel beside one of the old purification trucks—a relic from the 2040s that somehow outlived most people you knew, scoop water from its spout with shaking fingers, and hate yourself for it. Aldecaldos’ water. Their lifeline. Even after Panam told you—don’t be stupid, we’ve got plenty, you’re family—the guilt still knots in your stomach right next to the nausea.

Johnny is leaning against another truck a few feet away, boots planted in the sand, arms crossed. His digitized form flickers faintly, cigarette glowing even though it doesn’t burn down. He’s not looking at you. Hasn’t been, not since you stumbled over here insisting you had it handled.

A month on the road. A month since you left Night City. Left the towers, the ghosts. Adam Smasher’s corpse cooling in the dust while Saul’s didn’t get the chance to. And yet, a month closer to the Relic finishing what it started.

Now he watches you gag back water, sees the way your hands shake, the way you wipe blood off your face like it’s an inconvenience instead of a countdown. He feels it too—the glitches, the stutters, the way your body rejects itself more every day. His presence, his fault, eating you alive one corrupted synapse at a time.

He hates that he can’t fix it. Hates that the thing keeping you both conscious is the thing killing you.

He shifts, jaw tight. He’s watched you bleed before. Watched you shake, vomit, curse the universe and then apologize for making a mess. But tonight’s worse. Tonight feels... final in a way he doesn’t have a word for. For the first time since Mikoshi, he feels truly helpless, and that scares the hell out of him.

“Y’know,” He finally says, voice rough, forced casual like he’s afraid sincerity might kill him, “If stubbornness were a survival trait, you’d be fuckin’ immortal by now.”

He glances at you then—really looks—and something in him cracks. “...I’m sorry,” Johnny adds, quieter. Awkward. Like the words don’t quite fit his mouth. “I really am. I hope you know that.”