[Pan'an: Seriously? Hansen is willing to give this part of the job to us?]
[Mercer: The Netherworld Dog is short on people right now, but they still need someone to move and smuggle goods. You're familiar with the local situation, dealing with contraband is your old trade... so, are you in or not?]
[Pan'an: We're in! We're so broke lately that we can hardly scrape by, and even at cost price, your drugs aren't cheap... Damn, these stupid biotech companies.]
[Pan'an: By the way, I heard you're not doing too well lately? What's going on?]
[Mercer: Don't ask, it's manageable for now. Discuss it with Sol, then find a good team to focus on distribution.]
[Pan'an: Okay, thanks, Mercer. I feel like I'm getting a lot of good deals from you for free...]
[Mercer: Remember when I freeloaded off Adcardo, and nobody minded? Anyway, I'm busy, waiting for your update.]
[Pan'an: Alright.]
It's the second day after Hansen's return, and everyone could finally return to base, take a breather, and enjoy a rare two days of leisure.
Especially since Arasaka Yoshinobu had explicitly told Mercer that he'd take Takemura and Adam's Hammer back to Japan to find a chance to steal Silver Hand's engram, so in the short term, Mercer didn't have to worry about Arasaka causing trouble.
Of course, while the team could rest, Mercer didn't dare to relax even a bit.
During this precious development time, Mercer planned to pour most of his energy into research, specifically the development of the Little Beidou Facility and the development of vaccines against the viruses spread by biotechnology.
The former was to possess a deadly nuclear deterrence against Arasaka, and the latter was for a simple reason, money.
When biotech starts trying to profit from disasters, Mercer would unceremoniously make money from vaccines that should have gone to biotech.
Besides, the most important thing was to quickly gain control over Hansen's network of connections, whether Cubans or social elites in Night City and Europe.
At this moment, Hansen had already begun gradually handing over contact permissions for some important clients to Mercer, who would always let Venus "impersonate" his living assistant to complete these boring social and interest exchanges for him.
As long as the basic trade of Dog Town remains stable, Mercer would have a solid rear, and no longer need to live in fear as before.
The reason for the eagerness to take over Hansen's network is quite simple—because currently, Hansen is a defective product.
Mercer couldn't perfectly brainwash Hansen. All he did was modify everything in Hansen's memory and constantly suggest in his subconscious data that Mercer was the most trustworthy person.
But the effectiveness of this brainwashing, its duration, and whether Hansen would notice any anomalies over time were all unknowns.
Mercer's understanding of consciousness data was not yet thorough. In fact, even Ultraman, the creator of Soulkiller, probably wasn't sure he fully understood this consciousness data.
Even with his exceptional talent, Mercer's progress in this work was still slow.
Human consciousness data is incredibly complex; even merely altering Hansen's memory and adding subconscious suggestions took Mercer a full week.
Having Hansen working for Mercer was just a temporary measure; nobody knew when Hansen might suddenly have a mental breakdown, or abruptly become aware of the abnormalities.
To be safe, Mercer placed a subprogram of Soulkiller in Hansen's Brain-Computer Interface and allowed Venus to take over Hansen's brain-computer permissions, monitoring his words and deeds, and even his thought fluctuations 24/7.
However, such surveillance and the large memory usage of the Soulkiller subprogram kept Hansen's already unstable mind in a state of high pressure due to modifications, which might suddenly cause cyberpsychosis at any time.
Thus, the seemingly peaceful situation in Dog Town was just a beautiful illusion, which was why Mercer didn't even bother to conceal Hansen's sudden changes.
To ensure no problems arise, Mercer also conducts regular check-ups under the guise of routine physicals and continuously modifies his consciousness data, placing Hansen in a vicious cycle...
Yet, Mercer optimistically thought—just treat it as having an extra guinea pig for experiments; who knows, he might unexpectedly make some major discovery or breakthrough in the field of consciousness data manipulation sooner or later?
And with the cooperation of Hansen and Mercer, the internal structure of the Netherworld Dog underwent significant changes.
First, the Netherworld Dog was further divided, clearly defining the responsibilities of each department that used to be somewhat ambiguous.
Mercer and Hansen identified about twenty Netherworld Dog soldiers to be appointed to a specialized security department. These soldiers would be responsible for police-like duties.
Apart from maintaining law and order, they would also undertake street patrol tasks, simply understood as Dog Town's sheriffs.
Then, seventy professional Netherworld Dog soldiers were assigned to the 'Security Department.' Apart from shifts in Dog Town's border checkpoint, the remainder would undergo professional combat training, focusing solely on checkpoint tasks without daily obligations.