Only after jacking into Brainiac's massive database did Leo realize how tricky this was going to be—
Even in a cyberpunk world, neural issues were still cutting-edge, unsolved problems.
If you were rich, it wasn't so bad. Your nervous system was monitored from birth, all your cyberware and software were top-tier, your mentality tended to be more stable, and you weren't like some street kid whose blood vessels popped every other week.
Once the nervous system took damage, though, the cost of treatment rose exponentially.
Joestar's mom's case was even worse: under the effect of certain drugs, her white matter had radically proliferated and mutated. The three Brainiac members had been forced to perform a craniotomy just to keep her intracranial pressure from turning her brain into slurry.
They then wired no fewer than 160 processing units directly into her brain. The external skill-chips they'd collected covered every category—motor skills, knowledge boosters, combat routines, basic medical, art, communication, and social skills. In just a few months, they'd gathered over ten thousand different chips.
Those chips could no longer be read in detail thanks to the EMP and overall system failure, but Little Octopus could still roughly estimate the quantity.
Leaning on Little Octopus's data-processing capabilities, the overlapping memories between Joestar and his mother would show anomalies whenever "emotion" spiked. Those segments would then be stripped out as a whole and re-stored into the appropriate sectors of the brain.
In short: Joestar's job was to endure the hallucinations. The emotions they stirred up would be recognized by the two humans, Leo and Dum-Dum, and ultimately processed by Little Octopus.
Joestar's mother's brain, however, was blisteringly fast. Leo was the only one who could keep up with that kind of chaotic, high-speed data stream—and he even had to run a little ahead of it.
Right now, priority one was to get the person disconnected from the machine. But as their progress accelerated, the rescue team hit a new problem.
[Little Octopus: Boss, we've got a bit of trouble. We can't shut the mainframe down.]
Little Octopus pushed a huge chunk of data into Leo's view. The simple version was: Joestar's mom had started a special protocol when she operated on him.
This protocol wasn't documented in any database. It was a surgical routine cobbled together in a state of cyberpsychosis—using the best hardware, the largest number of skill-chips, and the most chaotic system.
Joestar's original body had already been completely stripped down. Over ninety percent of the parts in use now were security-class components and materials Leo had never seen before.
If he had proper documentation and his team from the other world, he might be able to draft a continuation plan for the prosthetic surgery in under a week. But there was no way this operation could be stretched out that long.
They had no choice but to let the surgery finish.
In cyberspace, it felt like ages passed. In the real world, less than an hour.
Hiss—
Leo disconnected from cyberspace. The cooling fins on his back vented steam.
Two sets of swapped-out fins lay on the floor, both glowing red-hot.
Leo opened his eyes to find V's big eyes staring right at him.
"There's this nasty burned-brain smell…"
"Normal," Leo said, shaking his head. "You don't fry some gray matter, you're not really hacking."
And this wasn't just any hacking. While chewing through data, Leo had also been orchestrating the octo-arms and his own hands to physically handle Joestar's mom's cyberware and connections.
By now, the lady had been severed from most of the cabling linking her to the storage servers. In other words—
She could leave this place.
Joestar's wide eyes were fixed on the ceiling. His new eyes clearly had very complex functions; under the lights, strange layered patterns shimmered across the irises.
V glanced at the kid. "His eyes…"
"High-end tech, but very complicated."
"Choomba…" Joestar lay on the bed, his world pitch-black. His overall vision felt like countless misaligned images forcibly stitched together.
The abnormality pushed his imagination toward the worst possibilities.
"There's a bit of a problem," Leo said. "Your mom wanted to install the nastiest, top-shelf stuff on you. If we pull her out right now, you might die."
"I—"
Leo cut him off briskly. "Even if you survive, you might turn into a full-blown cyberpsycho. If you're your mom's only family, you have to stay clearheaded—otherwise there's no saving her either."
"The best option for now is to let her finish the operation, while I keep peeling off the data in parallel."
"But we definitely can't keep doing this here."
Leo swept his gaze over the scene.
Both the "Eclipse" full-body conversion and Joestar's mom as a "mainframe" were extremely advanced tech.
The Eclipse chassis was especially unique.
To handle the appearance of full-body cyborgs in the city, one of the clients—NetWatch—had already provided Leo with a lot of relevant info.
Just as he'd suspected: this chassis was at least half a tier above standard military-grade prosthetics!
This thing was a black-ops frame developed in the early 21st century as military tech—specifically designed to counter and crush Arasaka's monopoly on covert-ops cyber-ninjas! (Note 1)
The standard Eclipse line should've died in the cradle as prototype units when the old Net collapsed, never making it to mass production.
All this came from NetWatch's exclusive intel, likely dug up from the Old Net.
So on that level, Brainiac's legacy was absolutely something the corps would want to buy.
They couldn't let NCPD write this up in a report.
Otherwise everyone here would get hauled off to some corporate facility "for evaluation."
[Contact: River]
[Leo: How are you planning to process the scene?]
[River: Thank God you finally replied. With all this shaking I thought you'd set off a bomb inside and I almost stormed the place.]
[River: Same as always. Victims with insurance go to the hospital, those without get humanitarian aid. Brainiac… how many of them?]
[Leo: All dead. Situation's just… a bit special.]
[River: Just spit it out. With the way we work, you still don't trust me?]
[Leo: I want to take everything here. All of it.]
Silence on the other end.
What the hell was that supposed to mean?
NCPD rolled out in force to arrest suspects, and the suspects got bagged by a contractor instead?
Who was the real contractor here?
Had NCPD become some burger joint's temp staff?
Leo knew this wasn't going to be an easy sell.
[Leo: River, let's drop the riddles. You and I both know NCPD and Night City's municipal suits don't care about these victims.]
[Leo: A lot of them are already half a step into full cyberpsychosis. In the end, Night City will just send them to some "partner clinic" and hope for the best. Wouldn't surprise me if you see their organs on the black market in a few weeks.]
[River: You mean the victims?]
[Leo: I mean everyone. Perps, victims, equipment—everything.]
[Leo: Plenty of these people volunteered or were forced to be Brainiac's test subjects. Brainiac likely had tech the corps would drool over.]
[Leo: I want to know, if the corps are interested in this tech, can they just buy the "evidence" straight from NCPD?]
[River: But like you said—they're people.]
[Leo: They're also part of the technology. If Scavs can traffic human bodies, corps can traffic test subjects.]
On the other side, River slumped onto a hood and glanced at an excited Han in the passenger seat—
This job was probably going to come with a serious raise.
River tilted his head back and stared up at the sky, exhaling helplessly.
Just from that pause, Leo could sense his attitude shifting in subtle ways, so he pushed on:
[Leo: When you came down here you told me, "You take down one of these operations and another just pops up."]
[Leo: Yesterday it was Jotaro Shobo's nightclub. Today it's Brainiac. Who knows who it'll be tomorrow.]
[Leo: A lot of people here just wanted a job. They didn't have a choice.]
[Leo: As long as no one actually takes responsibility for them, as long as Night City keeps cheering on "free employment"… some other gang or something else will always show up to throw them into the furnace.]
[Leo: Instead of hoping the next one to show up is some "good guy," I can give them a place to go right now. I just need you to cooperate.]
River covered his eyes and muttered to himself, "Easy for you to say. You're asking me to risk my job here…"
[Leo: If you get fired, I'll hire you.]
[River: Thanks, but no.]
But wasn't this exactly why he'd gotten into this line of work?
Everyone thought their own problems were more important than anyone else's.
River was… a little different.
He patched back into the channel:
[River: Prep to pull back. We'll let specialists handle the rest.]
The officers still scanning the area froze, all looking over at River.
He had just turned his back when Han's shriek came from behind him. "What the hell is wrong with you now?!"
Bang!
The car door slammed. Han grabbed River by the shoulder and yanked him back, forcing him to face that furious expression.
But once he turned, River's attention wasn't on Han anymore.
A luxury AV was approaching in the sky.
[River: I take that back.]
He might really need to start thinking about changing jobs.
River straightened his cap.
The one arriving was Jefferson Peraleź.