[TN: Last chapter see you next week]
"I heard you went in with powered armor."
"Yeah. Picked up an engineering model off the black market. Didn't think it'd break down so easily—left it down there."
"How many people did Brainiac have? And where did they get the full-body cyborg frames?"
"I don't know. But the servers are still down there. You can get a cleanup crew in. Night Corp does this sort of thing—they should be able to handle it, right?"
"Heh."
Centaurs—heavy exoskeleton rigs—were tall machines, standing around 2.2 meters once worn. With their massive shields and heavy weapons, they looked enormous.
But with Leo standing in front of them, no one felt he looked small.
On the contrary—NCPD officers felt the Centaurs looked a bit small…
Because Jackie was eating.
"What's going on? That guy's eating like… like a wasteland war-cook."
Jackie, in the middle of scarfing down protein bricks and nutrient paste, straightened his face—making him look even more serious.
Jefferson Peraleź looked faintly displeased. Leo could see it.
But he looked much healthier than when he was constantly jacked on stimulants and still collapsing mid-sentence.
Healthier—
and more dangerous.
Leo currently had two open contracts: one was investigating the rogue AI Muramasa, and the other was investigating new black-market supply lines in Night City.
Strictly speaking, for the Brainiac case, Jefferson was his employer.
Which meant Leo now felt a bit like he'd just misled his own client—
because he had every intention of hiding the biological mainframe.
Jefferson thought for a moment and asked, "Did you find anything?"
"Yes. Brainiac has been supplying the black market with full-body conversion tech. Slaughterhouse, Mox… maybe other gangs preparing to emerge already have units equipped."
"That's… bad. But why would Brainiac have access to that kind of tech and equipment?"
Leo reached into a case and pulled out several damaged components.
"That's not the critical question. The critical issue is: they dug an extensive tunnel network under the district. I don't know where all the passages lead."
"And every corridor had these micro-modules—extremely efficient info-warfare devices."
Jefferson took one of the devices. His cyber-eyes scanned it.
"Hm… these are definitely high-end. No manufacturer ID, no traceable info, but almost certainly military-grade."
"Radio jamming, directed EMP pulses… Is this what blocked the mission recordings?"
"Useful intel. But where are the Brainiac members?"
"Only three. I scanned their biocodes, but the structure was collapsing—I couldn't haul three corpses out."
"Three?"
"Three."
Jefferson thought for a moment. "This is a problem. As interference nodes, these devices have heavy penetration. If their tunnels extend under a substation, they could trigger another EMP."
"If Brainiac dug them as a failsafe, fine. But the real worry… is if they were digging for someone else."
That worry aligned perfectly with Leo's own conclusion.
"You're right. Brainiac didn't have the capability to manufacture precision components. They definitely had a supplier. And they didn't look like they were paying with money."
Three complete ghosts—no accounts, no records.
Across the entire underground warren, they couldn't scrape together a hundred eddies.
They had skill—
but the hardware they burned through was far more valuable, and strictly seller-controlled.
Any megacorp would tightly regulate parts like these.
"Troubling. This is like violent criminals getting their hands on tactical EMP weapons. We can't even know where they've deployed them…"
Jefferson turned back to Leo.
"Frankly, you didn't do a clean job this time. Clearing those tunnels will be hell."
"And you still haven't answered me: how did Brainiac get this tech? They had only three people."
"Underground trades, massive illegal excavation, full-body conversions… all hidden so well nobody knew. And the evidence was buried."
"Maybe that's what they wanted. Ever think they wanted you to bury this place?"
"It wasn't me who buried anything. They had bombs, monomolecular blades… You're right—they probably did intend to bury it themselves."
"But I have some guesses about their backer."
"Who?"
"A rogue AI."
The biological mainframe's tech had obvious AI signature patterns.
In this era, AI was megacorp-level wizardry—publicly disavowed, privately developed on the edge of legality.
The tech source was suspicious. Leo didn't believe three off-grid nobodies could master it alone.
AIs, if maintained by people with no technical skill, wouldn't function—
and Brainiac's work clearly showed amateur tinkering layered on top of real tech.
Also, the most likely source for the advanced components was a European firm.
And Muramasa seemed connected somehow to the European mercenaries active in the city.
Furthermore, Brainiac's three "nobodies" were anything but normal:
their cortical folds were deep and dense, their neural cell activity extremely high—signs of high-intelligence profiles, natural hackers.
The issue was that before Leo ever reached them, they were already dead, so extracting intel was nearly impossible.
One more clue: in the original Cyberpunk 2077 storyline, none of this existed—
meaning Brainiac, like Muramasa, was an anomaly outside the script.
After Leo said it aloud, Jefferson's expression shifted noticeably.
"A rogue AI?"
"Yeah." Leo nodded. "Remember that merc connected to Holt? His weapon came from someone suspected of being a rogue AI."
Jefferson paused. "That should be NetWatch's job. How do you know this?"
Leo shrugged. "I'm a very busy mercenary."
"Then this is even more complicated. We can't stall anymore. I'll deploy engineering teams."
Jefferson hesitated. "Anything else?"
"Yes. I have an idea—
I've been tracking this rogue AI a long time. Instead of letting it hide with god-knows-how-many communication-bombs…
why not lure it out in one go, force it to detonate its traps early?"
AIs designated "dangerous-threshold entities" would, once their survival needs were satisfied, pursue their "life goals" with extreme, obsessive determination.
AI-hunters—the Dragonslayers—exploited this by crafting moral logic traps, luring them into predictable reactions before capture.
Leo was preparing exactly such a trap.
Muramasa considered itself the greatest weaponsmith.
And weapons existed to be used.
"How do you lure it?"
Leo pulled out a chip and handed it to Jefferson.
"A scale-breaking, unprecedented, no-limits street race."