Aside from a very confused Agent Bryce, no one else knew about Mercer's decision to act.
He didn't plan on looking for any support, nor did he need anyone else to strategize for him. In his eyes, the entire operation to wipe out the Voodoo Boys was nothing more than a field test for his weapons and equipment.
It wasn't that Mercer was arrogant; it was that the Kindling Squad's current combined strength was indeed enough to crush an ordinary gang.
The Voodoo Boys' common thugs, at most, only had two or three toughs equipped with an Operating System. The vast majority of the rest were armed with street junk.
As for the Voodoo Boys' core strength, their group of netrunners, they posed no threat to Mercer either.
As long as the plan wasn't leaked beforehand, preventing the Voodoo Boys from setting up an ambush, Mercer couldn't imagine how they could possibly survive his surprise attack.
He planned to strike directly and then notify Slider in Dogtown to bring his people over afterward. He mainly needed them to secure the scene, and later, he would need them to move all the Voodoo Boys' Rezo Agwe servers to Dogtown.
So, that very night, Mercer selected a plan from the multiple operational plans he had long prepared. After a brief meeting to ensure everyone understood the deets of the mission, they left Dogtown at 3:30 a.m.
Their objective was clear: to use the cover of night and the 4 a.m. timeframe to quietly infiltrate the Voodoo Boys' territory and begin a covert slaughter.
By the time a modified armored Chevillon Emperor and an all-black van drove into the Voodoo Boys' district, it was just 3:50 a.m.
Inside the van parked on the roadside, V and Rebecca, clad in their battle armor, watched Mercer inspect his Octopus Arm, both looking like they wanted to say something but were holding back.
"If you ask me, you don't need to come in person. It's too dangerous. With Lucy, Kiwi, and Sasha, we don't need you on-site at all."
V said with a frown.
Mercer sighed, looked up, and said, "I've been cooped up at home every day for the past six months, and you've been nagging me to get some exercise. Now that I'm out, you're nagging me that it's too dangerous."
"I told you to exercise! Don't you twist my words," V said, annoyed.
Rebecca, however, held up her huge metal palm and confidently thumped her own chest, the impact clanging against the armor plating. "Mercer can just hide behind me then."
"Uh, wouldn't I have to be squatting the whole time then?"
Mercer's words made Rebecca put on her helmet with a dark expression. The shoulder cannon popped out and traced a circle around his lower body. "If I break your shins, you probably won't have to squat, right?"
"Anyway!" V clapped her fist into her palm. "You just stay back and provide tech support. Don't interfere with our operation. We've all developed a good rhythm for working together over this time. You jumping in might just mess things up."
Mercer chuckled and tapped her helmet with his Octopus Arm. "I'm the boss!""That's not happening either." V's firm attitude made Mercer take a step back. "Fine," he said, "then I'll follow behind you guys and just do the netrunner work. That should be okay, right?"
"You can just stay with Sasha then. We're a professional team now, we do things by the book." After speaking, V excitedly slung her katana onto her back, holstered her pistol on her thigh, and then picked up her submachine gun.
She attached magazines and grenades to the straps of her battle armor. V stretched a bit, and the V-shaped visor of her helmet lit up with a red glow.
"Ready to go. Let's move out," she said, unable to wait.
Rebecca activated her helmet as well; she truly loved flashy color schemes. At this moment, her originally pure black battle armor had been painted in a pink and green "Rebecca color scheme," and she had even drawn a chibi-style grimacing face on her shoulder cannon.
Mercer held his L-69 Zhuo shotgun in his hands. After taking off his jacket to expose the heat sinks of his cyberware, he also put on a black helmet.
The helmet's design looked like an alien's head. From the front, one could only see cold, black metal and several small apertures for cameras, while the back of the head slanted upward into a protrusion.
This helmet was the electronic enhancement helmet that Mercer had personally built for himself.
The helmet's built-in signal amplifier allowed him to more accurately capture weak electronic signals and enhanced its signal and data transmission capabilities.
Theoretically, wearing this helmet could greatly increase the range at which Mercer could capture electronic signals, automatically connect to his cyberdeck, strengthen its ICE capabilities, and reduce electronic signal interference.
Furthermore, its multiple cameras could provide him with a 360-degree, blind-spot-free field of vision. It integrated thermal imaging, night vision goggles, and a built-in professional Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics unit, and was also anti-flash and shockproof.
The nanorhenium also provided excellent cushioning and ballistic protection.
One could say that this small helmet alone cost a staggering 270,000 eurodollars, and it was initially developed for Mercer's personal armor.
But because Mercer had very high standards for his armor, and his constant stream of new ideas and brainstorms led to endless rework, the armor part itself had been delayed to this day and was never built. So, he could only build the helmet first to test its various functions.
As for Rebecca and V, they had mixed reviews for Mercer's new look.
"Cool~ But why didn't you add any light strips? It's so dark, it's missing something." This was Rebecca's assessment.
"Uh, honestly, with that helmet on, plus your weird Octopus Arm... isn't it a bit too cyborg-ish? You look like a strange bot." This was V's jab.
Mercer just snorted, put on his ballistic vest, and after confirming that his magazines, grenades, and other items were properly secured, he stood up and said, "You're just jealous. When my complete form is finished, just try not to drool with envy!"
V disdainfully raised her submachine gun, pushed open the van door without another word, and jumped out.
At this moment, Maine, Jackie, and the others were already standing by the van, geared up and having waited for some time. Kiwi's ladies' cigarette glowed in the still-dark night. "Situation checked. The lookouts outside have all been zeroed. Sasha is opening the door now."
"Let's move out then!" V stretched her body excitedly and got out of the car.
Mercer and the others' destination was not the skyscraper occupied by the Voodoo Boys, but a seemingly ordinary church.
The church was situated on a street in Pacifica. Its main doors were shut tight, its walls covered in Voodoo Boys graffiti, and a red neon cross sat atop the building.
There weren't many people on the street at four in the morning, but a few homeless wretches were now staring, dumbfounded, at the actions of this professional crew.
As V and Rebecca got out of the van one after the other, Mercer followed suit.
Inside the van, a dogbot and a spiderbot that looked similar to the "Flathead" from the game followed Mercer out as he exited the vehicle.
In addition, Mercer used an Octopus Arm to casually pick up a large black suitcase; it was filled with his many strange little inventions.
Pilar didn't go in. Instead, he opened a window on the van and gave Mercer's group a thumbs-up. "Make it quick. I found a Chinese restaurant online that serves a limited supply of xiaolongbao before 8:30 every morning."
From the front passenger seat, Lucy simply nodded at Mercer, then put on a pair of goggles and connected to a laptop. She wouldn't be going in; she would stay in the car and remotely control the drones via the laptop.
Mercer gave both her and Pilar a thumbs-up. "No problem. You two be careful, too. If the Voodoo Boys show up, you guys leave first. We'll link up with you when we get out."
For this mission, Mercer didn't plan for everyone to go inside. He wanted to leave at least half the team outside in case of Voodoo Boys reinforcements.
Kiwi nodded, staying outside with Maine, Dorio, Pilar, and Lucy.
Mercer, along with Jackie, V, and Rebecca, walked toward the church's closed doors.
By this time, Sasha was already leaning against the door with a relaxed expression, blowing a bubble with her gum. "The door's open. These guys don't even have an electronic lock on their church door. Good thing the lockpick Pilar developed works well. But I'm not sure if there are any other smart security measures inside, so I'll leave opening the door to you guys."
"Leave it to me." As Mercer's voice fell, the visor of his helmet lit up with a faint red glow, displaying the network signals within through the wall.
The heat sink on his back whirred for a second, then he nodded. "It's safe. Open it."
Without a word, V pushed the main doors open, revealing a somewhat clean interior.
At that moment, the church was silent. Only the red cross on the wall and a few lights were on. The furthest thing in sight was a large cross illuminated by warm yellow light. Other than that, there were only a few rows of pews for prayer.
"This is the Voodoo Boys' secret base?" V looked left and right, a disdainful expression on her face. "Doesn't look like much. Not even a single guard."
"That's because the real defense systems are deeper inside. This place is usually just a real place of worship, a church for the Haitians.""We're going in," Mercer said, then led the team straight into the building, closing the door to block the view from outside.
He wasn't sure if the few vagrants outside were Voodoo Boys lookouts, but he wasn't one to kill the innocent indiscriminately. So, to avoid trouble, he had to make this quick.
Jackie looked around, clicking his tongue in amazement. "Compared to the churches in Heywood, this place is pretty clean and spacious."
Rebecca, meanwhile, just hugged her new "Peacemaker" shotgun, glancing around. "If we end up burning this place down, those Haitians won't come after us with a vengeance, will they?"
"Don't worry, we're still a ways off from the Voodoo Boys' main hideout," Mercer said as he walked to a side door beside the church pulpit.
Once he reached the side, he held up a hand, signaling for everyone to be quiet.
The eyepiece on Mercer's helmet flashed, and he made a tactical hand sign.
[Mercer: Switching to silent mode now. There are people inside, but it looks like they're sleeping. They didn't hear us at all.]
[Rebecca: I'll do it!]
Rebecca raised her shotgun, ready for a dramatic breach.
[Mercer: Let V go. She's fast and quiet. Don't make a scene. The Rezo Agwe server is in here. What if they decide to take us down with them and burn it? And you, don't go spraying everywhere later, especially not at my server.]
Rebecca could only pout; was it his server?
[V: Leave it to me!]
V walked to the door and gave Rebecca a look. Rebecca reached out, grabbing the handles of the double doors.
The team heard a whirring sound from Rebecca's mech arms, and with immense strength, she tore the wooden doors straight off their hinges.
Then, blue flames jetted from V's back. The team barely saw a flash of blue light before a few crisp cracks echoed from inside.
Mercer peeked in and clicked his tongue twice. The two Voodoo Boys who had been sleeping soundly in chairs behind the door were now headless, leaving only splattered flesh and bone fragments.
V shook her fists, then wiped them distastefully on a relatively clean patch of wall.
The team turned to see a downward passage.
The deep staircase was surprisingly lit by candles on both sides, while the Voodoo Boys' logo, glowing with a blue fluorescence on the wall, also provided some light.
The dim corridor looked like it led to some medieval dungeon.
[V: Suddenly, our underground base seems quite cozy in comparison.]
[Mercer: Lucy, use my little spider to take a look.]
[Lucy: Roger that. You can release it.]
Mercer's Octopus Arm set down a briefcase and took out a palm-sized spiderbot.
After he placed the pure black drone on the ground and switched it on, a row of red indicator lights on its back lit up. When the lights turned green, it went dark again.
Then, it began to move nimbly, quickly scurrying up the wall to the ceiling before crawling down the stairs and into the passage.
V couldn't help but marvel.
[V: What kind of new tech is this?][Mercer: This is a recon spider bot I developed. Don't let its size fool you; it can scan enemies with thermal imaging and also detect electronic signals. It can also share its vision, highlighting targets in your cyberoptics. I've routed the feed to the software, so you can access the footage it captures directly through your cyberoptics.]
The group waited patiently with great interest in the corridor just inside the side door, watching the real-time drone feed Lucy was sharing.
On the screen, the spider bot made its way down the corridor and soon discovered several cameras.
After marking them, the spider bot crawled past them through their blind spots.
Just a few seconds later, a message came from Lucy.
[Lucy: You or me?]
[Mercer: You do it.]
After their exchange, the large spider bot at Mercer's feet, which looked a lot like a Flathead, immediately scuttled forward and crawled inside.
[V: What's this one? The last one was for recon, what about this one?]
[Mercer: This thing has more functions. You can think of it as a recon bot with hacking capabilities. It's stronger and can move obstacles on its own. Plus, its eight mechanical legs have various built-in tools, so it can even pry open locks and ventilation ducts by itself. Most importantly, it can directly capture network signals and establish a connection, helping a netrunner remotely hack some LAN targets. It can also plug cables into servers or network devices on its own, bypassing the ICE to upload a virus directly.]
[V: Sounds pretty impressive.]
[Mercer: It is. In Dogtown, a similar bot from Militech retails for 500,000 eddies, and that's without the scanning and hacking functions. Plus, you can't even control it in real-time.]
[V: Uh... so how much is it?]
[Mercer: Don't even think about it. Until I file for the algorithm patent, anyone who sells this thing is a moron.]
[V: So why not file for the patent?]
[Mercer: You think patent law protects your profits with laws? No, it relies on your legal team and your firepower. You can't be missing either one.]
As Mercer gave V a lesson, the two spider bots, one large and one small, continued to crawl deeper inside.
The small bot scanned for all sorts of traps and electronic devices as it went, while the larger one established signal connections with those devices as it got closer.
From her laptop, Lucy quickly breached the ICE on those devices. Only after seizing control did she send Mercer a message.
[Lucy: You guys can go in, but don't move faster than the bots.]
By now, the small spider bot had already passed through a retractable, electronically locked iron gate. On the wall behind the gate, a hole that had been dug through it abruptly appeared.
Discarded rubble was piled carelessly on either side. Beyond the breached wall was another corridor extending in the opposite direction.
[Lucy: Laser tripwires, smart mines, cameras... all the old tricks. But I'd recommend you let the dogbot lead the way, just in case. After all, who knows if your little spider's scanning function is reliable?]
[Mercer: It's definitely reliable.]
He waved to the others, and Rebecca took the lead; her armor was the thickest, so she wouldn't even be scared if a mine blew up in her face. Mercer followed behind her, the eyepiece on his helmet constantly scanning the surroundings.
The spider bots he developed were indeed reliable; they hadn't missed a thing.
With the spider bots clearing the way, the group didn't need to be on edge. They just had to stay quiet, maintain formation, and advance with ease.
It wasn't until the spider bots moved from the tunnel into a wide-open area that Lucy sent a message.
[Lucy: Is this the abandoned Transcontinental Maglev System? There are a lot of people, and the environment is complex. You guys be careful.
These Voodoo Boys turned the subway station into their own base. Pretty creative of them.]
[Mercer: You're in charge of highlighting targets. Prioritize confirming the server's location and the number of personnel.]
[Lucy: Roger that. Release a few more spiders. I'll have Kiwi watch with me.]
[Mercer: Understood.]
Mercer opened his briefcase and released the remaining small recon spiders inside.
The spider bots' built-in algorithm could actually mark targets automatically, but since this was their first field test, Lucy cautiously had Kiwi join her to assist with visual observation.
Soon, V saw a long string of red dots and one very bright yellow dot appear on the real-time minimap displayed inside her helmet.
[Lucy: The red targets are regular Voodoo Boys members. The yellow one is the Voodoo Boys' lead netrunner, Brigitte. Their second-in-command netrunner, Ti Neptune, is also there; I've marked him in blue.
I've also highlighted the server in light yellow. You can consider making your move. All their equipment is connected to the Rezo Agwe, so you can't hack their electronics directly with your spider bots without being detected.]
[Mercer: Roger. You two can clock out. Stay alert and tell Slider to get ready to move the goods and clean up the mess.]
[Lucy: Understood.]
Afterward, Mercer spread his hands. "You all heard that?"
Seeing him speak, V knew it was her time to shine. She grinned. "Aren't you going to test your other toys?"
"I just need to test the dogbot's combat capabilities, but it makes a lot of noise. We need to prioritize the server's safety."
After speaking, Mercer consciously moved behind the group with Sasha. "Go on in. Sasha and I will hack the surrounding electronics for you. You just focus on taking care of the people."
"What do we do with that Brigitte woman?" V asked.
Mercer thought for a moment, then smiled. "We can leave her alive. See if we can squeeze some money out of her. Just knock her out for now."
"Alright." After replying, V patted Rebecca's shoulder and drew her katana with a grin. "Let's use these, so we don't smash his precious Rezo Agwe."
"Damn it, you better leave some for me to get my hands dirty," Rebecca grumbled, holstering the shotgun on her back. She took the metal rod from her shoulder, then removed the axe blade that served as a shield on her left arm, and with a series of clicks and clacks, screwed them together.
A giant axe appeared in her hands.
The two exchanged a glance and immediately picked up their pace, jogging toward the end of the tunnel.
Jackie sighed, clutching his gun as he followed behind them. "I guess I won't have much to do this time either." Sasha grinned and blew a pink bubble. "This is pretty good, too. With Mercer helping with the hack this time, I can also slack off a bit."
Mercer shrugged. "To be honest, I'm starting to miss the old days. Doing jobs now isn't exciting at all."
The three of them ran behind V and Rebecca, talking and laughing, while Rebecca and V, up ahead, had already begun their own private killing competition.
The first to fall were three Voodoo Boys standing guard by an abandoned maglev train at the exit of the corridor.
The three of them only heard the sudden, heavy thud-thud-thud of footsteps in the distance before a flash of white light, spewing blue flames, shot past in the next instant.
They had no time to react at all; they could only see a terrifying mech, less than 1.7 meters tall and carrying a giant axe, still rushing toward them from the far end of the corridor as their heads were already sent flying.
Only as their heads spun through the air and hit the ground did their lingering post-mortem vision catch a blurry, flickering afterimage of a white mech on their retinas.
V was at the absolute peak of her high.
She had already pushed the Sandevistan in her body to its limit, but the mech she wore provided her with even greater speed and strength on top of that.
At this moment, she could no longer hear what Rebecca was saying. Everything in the world had slowed to a crawl. Her full-coverage helmet even had to activate its ventilation function to supply her with enough oxygen and expel the carbon dioxide she exhaled.
In the slightly chilly underground, the air she breathed out left trails of white vapor behind her helmet.
This was because her breathing and heart rate were already several times faster than a normal person's, and her body temperature was rising at an incredible rate.
Her muscles, enhanced by the built-in nanofiber suit, bulged with clearly defined lines. All of this pushed her speed to the highest peak she had ever reached in her life.
Too fast, so fast that Mercer didn't even have time to hack the electronic devices around her.
She stepped over a smart mine, and by the time it detonated, her figure had already passed through its blast radius!
Not wanting to lose too badly, Rebecca grew so anxious that she activated the compression thruster on her back, charging through the ground like a rhinoceros and smashing straight through the maglev train that was in her way.
When she burst out from behind the maglev train and into the workshop where the Voodoo Boys netrunners were, she saw V in the middle of a massacre. The group of frail netrunners hadn't even realized what was happening.
Rebecca then abruptly raised her axe and charged forward with huge strides, bringing it down on a Voodoo Boy whose face was frozen in astonishment.
The axe became a blur in the air, cleaving the Voodoo Boy in two.
"Enem-!" A netrunner who had just reacted didn't even have time to finish the word "enemy" before Rebecca, sweeping past like the wind, simply smashed him to pieces.
Yes, smashed to pieces; Rebecca had only brushed past him, slamming him with her shoulder, and half his body was instantly pulverized. As if hit by a speeding locomotive, he flew into the air before landing like a broken doll.
"Woohoo!!" Rebecca let out an excited shout.
But when she came back to her senses, she saw V already sitting in a vacant netrunner station, humming a little tune as she wiped her katana.
At this moment, the only things that could barely be called opponents were the folding turrets that had just been triggered by the smart warning and were belatedly poking their heads out from the ceiling. But the folding turret had only just emerged and hadn't even had time to lock on before it froze mid-air as if it had gotten stuck. A second later, it obediently folded back up.
Mercer, arriving late, looked speechlessly at the Voodoo Boys' server room, now a bloody and chaotic mess. Panting, he couldn't help but say, "Slow down!"
V, however, just chuckled and gave her blade a flourish. "Wasn't that slow enough?"
Rebecca, meanwhile, angrily slammed her axe on the ground. "I told you to leave a couple for me!"
"Didn't I leave two for you? And you still let one of them cry out; Mercer said it was best not to give them a chance to send a distress signal. If we get cornered later, it's all your fault."
V's self-righteous words made Rebecca grind her teeth in frustration. He said he'd leave two, and he really meant only two?
She turned to Mercer and said with emphasis, "No way! I want a Sandevistan too! The Berserk OS is only half as fast as the Sandevistan. The difference is just too big!"
"I'll upgrade it for you later." As soon as Mercer finished speaking, Rebecca shook her head and whined, "No! I want a Sandevistan! I want a Sandevistan!"
Mercer simply extended an Octopus Arm and tapped her on the forehead, making her helmet clang. "No whining. It won't work."
Rebecca hugged her axe, aggrieved, and compromised, "Fine, upgrade it then. But you have to promise that after the upgrade, I won't be this much slower than her!"
"I can only promise to maximize your body's potential according to your neural capacity and tolerance. When the time comes, you'll all be using the same Operating System. Who's stronger and who's weaker will depend on your own abilities."
After Mercer spoke, Rebecca's mood finally improved. "That works too! If we're all using the same system, there's no way I'll be that much worse than her!"
V shook her head smugly. "Only when you switch to the same Operating System will you know your big sister V's true strength."
"Alright, stop being so smug. Where's Brigitte?" Mercer looked around and finally found Brigitte on the floor, knocked out cold by V's punch and now sleeping soundly. He plugged a chip directly into her head.
Then, Mercer ignored her for the moment, turning to walk over to a cluster of computer screens against the wall and looking up.
These guys had actually built a huge server room just for the Rezo Agwe.
Mercer excitedly pulled open the server room's main door. He walked in, took one look, and couldn't help but laugh out loud.
"We've hit the jackpot! These guys used top-of-the-line stuff. A server room of this scale would cost at least five million eurodollars if you were to buy it!"
He walked excitedly between the servers and plugged a hacking chip directly into one, saving him the effort of even having to breach their ICE.
His virus was not something their built-in protection programs could handle.
Returning to the main hall, Mercer shoved a netrunner dead in a netrunner station aside and sat down.
"You guys keep an eye out for me. I'm going to grab all the important stuff from the server first and transfer it to our base, just in case something happens during transport."
V waved her hand confidently. "You just do your thing."Sasha pushed a dead Voodoo Boys netrunner from the computer desk onto the floor, sat down in the chair herself, and plugged an interface cable into the computer's port. "I'll keep an eye out for you," she said.
"Alright." Mercer's Octopus Arm grabbed the cable from the netrunner station. He wiped the jack with a hint of disgust before plugging it directly into the port at the back of his own head.
His vision flickered once, and then he plunged directly into Cyberspace.
Mercer first secured access to the server, then enabled its network connection. After connecting the LAN to the public network, he immediately called Morning Star over.
In the Net, the current Morning Star no longer looked like an ordinary cat.
She had changed her appearance to that of an elegant and beautiful ragdoll cat, her stunning blue eyes almost identical in color to Mercer's when he was in Cyberspace.
Mercer held out his hand, and she transformed into a stream of data, appearing in his arms.
"Ugh, the data code here is so messy," was Morning Star's first reaction, her tone laced with disdain for the server's code.
Then, she shook her head and added with disgust, "There's a low-level AI in here too. Can I eat it? It's a bit of an eyesore."
"Go ahead. While you're at it, help me transfer all the important data and see what NetWatch was trying to get from the Voodoo Boys' Rezo Agwe server."
As Mercer spoke, his and Morning Star's eyes glowed with blue light in near unison as they began to search through the data.
The human and AI worked together in perfect sync. They had no need for written or spoken language; their communication was so efficient that a simple string of data code was all it took for them to understand each other and divide the labor.
At that moment, Sasha, who was keeping watch for Mercer outside, couldn't help but frown. A helpless expression crossed her face as she muttered, "What a monster..."
She had offered to keep an eye out and help Mercer, but the data was now running at a speed that far exceeded her own reaction time. How was she supposed to help now?
Ten minutes passed. Just as Rebecca was starting to worry that Mercer might have run into trouble, he finally opened his eyes.
"All done."
Sasha asked curiously, "What took you so long?"
"These guys dug up a lot of interesting data from the Old Net, much of it highly encrypted. There's even some data the Voodoo Boys themselves didn't know what to do with."
Mercer smiled. "I followed their pathways and took a look around the Old Net myself."
"You went to the Old Net?!" Sasha's eyes widened slightly. "What were you doing in the Old Net?"
"I wanted to see what these guys usually do behind the Old Net... They're pretty crazy, searching everywhere for AIs, leaving signposts for rogue AIs. Other than that, there wasn't much else."
Mercer scoffed. "No rogue AIs even bothered with them, which you could say was lucky for them. Besides, these guys don't dare to dig for the Old Net's critical data; they only mess around with low-risk stuff. They've piled up a heap of miscellaneous data. It took me several minutes just to look through it all."But then, he changed the subject. "However, this Voodoo Boys crew isn't entirely useless. At the very least, they know quite a lot about the Blackwall and its vulnerabilities. To be able to punch a hole into the Old Net from Night City... that level of technical skill really isn't half bad.
They even have records of hunting rogue AIs. They once took one down and got their hands on some interesting data."
"Wait, isn't their goal to find a rogue AI to surrender to? Why would they hunt one?" V couldn't help but ask.
"Because not every rogue AI is intelligent enough to communicate with. After Bartmoss corrupted the Old Net, some rogue AIs became like madmen, nothing more than simple killing machines. This is especially true for certain AIs originally designed by corporations to protect their systems."
"Those AIs are like rabid Watch Dogs. They just sit in corporate data on the Old Net, and if you accidentally touch that data, the rogue AI will jump out and bite you, and it won't stop until one of you is dead."
After he finished, Mercer shot a disdainful glance at the still-unconscious Brigitte. "The ones these people are looking for are powerful, sapient AIs like Alt Cunningham, who can influence the real world, to whom they can bow down and submit."
"However, it's not like they haven't encountered powerful rogue AIs. I found some interesting data in their database, and it's precisely this data that delayed me."
Mercer's expression grew somewhat serious. "I suspect a highly intelligent rogue AI has already used the Voodoo Boys for something."
"What do you mean?" Sasha's expression also turned serious. "Are you saying a rogue AI has already entered Night City through the Voodoo Boys' connection?"
"No. My assessment is that a certain rogue AI used them as a springboard to briefly enter Night City's network and then left, but it still maintained the springboard within the Voodoo Boys' server."
"This data code forms a program. After Morning Star and I breached it, we can basically confirm that this program's function is to act as a springboard for a certain rogue AI, as well as a window for it to observe the real world."
As Mercer's voice fell, Sasha frowned deeply. "But you can't be sure it really left. Or rather, you can't be sure whether that rogue AI left anything nasty behind in Night City, can you?"
Mercer nodded. "That's right."
He sensed something unusual was afoot.
He didn't know if this was the handiwork of an old acquaintance, but regardless, the traces a rogue AI left in Night City were worth his investigation and vigilance.
Sasha sighed, chewing her bubblegum and muttering, "These gonks spend all day dreaming of meeting a rogue AI, yet they didn't even know one used their server as a springboard to enter Night City's network?"
Mercer's gaze shifted to Brigitte, who was lying on the floor. "We'll have to ask them ourselves. Wake her up."
V picked Brigitte up and shook her. Seeing that she didn't wake, V looked around, found a cup of cold coffee, and poured it directly onto her face.
Only then did Brigitte's eyes flutter open in a daze, but the splitting headache made her gag instinctively; she had a concussion."Fuck," was her first reaction. When she came to her senses and noticed the people beside her, she clutched her head and asked in a panic, "Who are you!?"
"Kindling Squad. I'm guessing you know exactly who we are."
As Mercer finished speaking, Brigitte's expression turned fierce. She stared at him coldly. "You're A? You son of a bitch, whatever you want for sparing my life, you can keep dreaming!"
"Watch your mouth!" Rebecca didn't hold back, punching her in the stomach. Brigitte let out a dry heave and doubled over from the blow.
Mercer, however, just asked faintly, "I found traces left by a rogue AI in your server. Have you met with that AI?"
"What?" Brigitte was taken aback, then she sneered. "I don't know."
"Wrong answer." Mercer shook his head, then said slowly, "The chip in your head has a sensitivity adjustment function. In other words, I can increase your perception of pain."
"Kill me! You bastard!" Before Brigitte could finish, Rebecca mercilessly broke one of her fingers.
Even someone as tough as her couldn't help but let out a blood-curdling scream.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!!" In an instant, Brigitte's head was covered in sweat from the pain.
"That's 130% pain perception right now. The maximum is 200%," Mercer said in a relaxed tone. "Why make this difficult? If you answer me honestly, I might even let you live."
"Let me live?" Brigitte sneered through gritted teeth. "Do you take me for a child? You gonk, kill me or torture me, do whatever you want!"
"But for a person, the most painful thing isn't death, but being unable to die when you want to, and unable to truly live."
Brigitte scoffed at Mercer's cold words. "Then bring it on!"
She looked at the field of corpses around her, the pain in her heart far greater than in her body. "You bastard... you can try to torture me now!"
Rebecca shot Mercer a questioning look.
Mercer just stared into her eyes. After a long moment, he let out a cold laugh. "Fine, I won't torture you. I'll give you a quick end."
He stood up and gestured for Rebecca to bring Brigitte over.
Mercer held up the data link cable from the netrunner station and said in a flat tone, "You and I are both netrunners, so I probably don't need to explain what I'm about to do. "Soulkiller." I wonder, have you heard of it?"
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6000words.