"Tony and I were excavating data in the same area when a tall, exterior red female AI appeared, matching the extremely dangerous AI mentioned in the company's tutorials... Ultraman, Otter Cunningham."
Mercer began, and the lies flowed smoothly as water afterward: "Tony was only lightly touched by Otter and was directly penetrated through the ICE (personal firewall).
Immediately upon seeing Otter, I began to prepare to go offline according to company procedures. I promptly returned to the other side of the Black Wall and successfully logged off, but Otter had already noticed me and launched an attack across the Black Wall.
Fortunately, the Black Wall served its purpose, preventing Otter from successfully breaching it to attack me directly. However, even so, the overflowing data stream nearly took my life."
"That's a nice explanation. If I were you, I might add one more line—the company's firewall also didn't work. Unfortunately, I'm just a doctor, and your explanation is useless to me."
After the woman finished speaking, she turned back and tapped on the screen: "Very good, your thought process is clear, and there doesn't seem to be a significant problem with your memory... Is there anything else unusual that you need to explain to me?"
"...I haven't discovered anything for now," Mercer replied.
"Then let's leave it at that for now. Your brainwave activity data has shown a significant enhancement. Rest for a day, observe your neural conditions, and then we'll gradually restore your cybernetic body and test whether you can continue to be a hacker."
After the woman finished speaking, she glanced at his body: "We'll first help you reattach the cybernetic parts to your hand, see how you're doing, and if there's any abnormality, call me immediately...
Contact details have been sent over. If there's an anomaly in the brain-machine interface and you cannot call normally, press the red button by the bed."
A profile picture popped up before Mercer's eyes—like an interface for adding a friend in a chat app.
Ota Junko, the doctor's name.
After Mercer saved it to his contact list, he watched as Ota Junko raised her hand; her arms usually looked ordinary, but at this moment, they suddenly began to transform.
One of her fingers on the right hand turned into a syringe, while her left hand picked up a vial and poured it into the syringe.
"Alright, have a sleep. When you wake up, your hand will be attached."
Mercer couldn't refuse and could only watch as she injected the vial into his neck; in just over ten seconds, he lost consciousness.
When he awoke again, his previously numb hands had returned.
[Data linked.]
[Arasaka Biological Monitoring System Evaluation in Progress...]
[Arasaka Single Molecule Line (Enterprise Version V2.03) Connected.]
[Hand data connection line, normal.]
Mercer blinked, looked around; the cold operating room now only had him left.
Finally able to think quietly alone, Mercer let out a long sigh and then reluctantly sat up, feeling a vague phantom pain all over his body.
But surprisingly, the pain in his body didn't seem unbearably harsh, nor did the aching brain impede his high-speed thought processing. In fact, he felt as if he had become smarter.
This was not merely an illusion.
It was as if just a thought triggered a rapid flow of memories originally belonging to 'Mercer' in his mind.
Like watching a movie at ten times, even a hundred times speed!
The memory of writing his first hacker Sorcery Puppet Virus on the internet at the age of six... memories of being scolded by his foster mother...
The joyful face of his foster father when Arasaka Company came to offer him 'elite education' and signed the contract with the predetermined amount...
Memories from attending classes at Arasaka...
The life of 'Mercer' was being absorbed rapidly, not only those memories but even the hacker knowledge, cybernetic knowledge, social common sense, etc., that 'Mercer' spent years learning at Arasaka, all being swiftly absorbed by him.
It's hard to imagine that a few hours ago, he was just an ordinary corporate drone playing games in front of his computer, and now, just lying in bed for over ten minutes, he had completely digested all of a genius hacker's knowledge and memories.
It's no exaggeration to say that now Mercer's hacking skills rival, or even far exceed, those of the original Mercer!
Mercer gently rubbed his temples—the rapidly functioning brain was a violent strain on his currently fragile neural system.
After finishing the excavation of 'Mercer's memory, he decided to think about relatively lighter subjects to relax his brain temporarily.
For example...
The voices he heard before he lost consciousness.
He didn't believe those were his hallucinations.
'Code: FF:06:B5 action succeeded.'
'Operation Code: Ragnarök.'
What are these action codes? Where did the voices in his head come from?
With his now much smarter brain, he had some guesses.
Firstly, concerning the meaning of the first code, FF06B5, Mercer hadn't thought of a reasonable explanation yet. All he could do was analyze with his knowledge that if decoded as a hexadecimal color code, it would represent the special color 'magenta'.
Code: Magenta?
What a strange code.
Unable to think of an answer for now, Mercer started pondering the second code instead.
Ragnarök.
The auto-translate software in his brain had already converted it into readable text.
Twilight of the Gods.
Ha, this code sounds a bit terrifying.
Mercer sighed. The two codes and the voices that had once appeared in his head were most likely related to the rogue AI on the network, and with just these two pieces of information, it was impossible to deduce anything.