Cyberpunk: 2075.

Chapter 704, Question 118: Is it for chaos?
Arasaka's counterintelligence department, as the first line of defense in the group's external intelligence system, holds almost complete control over the life and death of all external information.

Aside from top-secret intelligence hidden deep within the dark web and transmitted through special channels, every little thing involving the Arasaka Group—whether it's trade secrets, personnel movements, or potential threats—is inextricably linked to them.

This department is like a finely woven spider web; any information that touches on Arasaka's interests will be transmitted to their nerve endings immediately.

In other words, they are always the first to receive any news and must be the first to react.

This was tough on Carl, who had been on the job for less than 24 hours.

I hate going to work.

With bitter complaints in his heart, Karl stared at the endless stream of intelligence and documents pouring into his computer, waiting for him to process them; his eyes were already half dead.

He knew working in Arasaka wouldn't be easy, but he didn't expect it to be this deadly.

Once you start working, you can't stop – you have to work when there's nothing to do, and you have to work even more when there's something to do.

Do it, do it, do it! What the hell!

If it weren't for the remaining rationality reminding Karl that he absolutely must not go berserk and must honestly extract the key information, and then rack his brains to write a briefing that both preserves the value of the intelligence and does not offend those above him, he would have wanted to give up right now.

Carl can afford to slack off, but he can't be 'wise'.

As an elite member of the Tokyo headquarters, this identity has long been associated with 'contribution' and 'overtime'.

If Carl wanted to play the role of a wise man without revealing any flaws, he had to replicate the diligence that was ingrained in his DNA and cater to the expectations of the higher-ups in the most perfect way.

That damn presidential plane had to crash at this crucial moment, of all times, to give me more work.

While inwardly complaining and busy with his hands, Carl was also simultaneously analyzing the messages V and the others had shared with him, and at the same time, he began to speculate about the person who called him the Nightingale and was a hacker close to the president.

Not long ago, while on a classified mission involving the "White Noisy Eagle," Carl encountered a hacker who talked a lot of nonsense.

The guy kept bragging about his authority, trying to persuade Carl to cooperate with him.

Most intriguingly, the other party revealed their identity at the end: one of the president's core advisors.

Now suddenly a "nightingale" has appeared, a hacker who also claims to be the president and also possesses top-level privileges.

Is it a coincidence? Or is it actually the same person?

If they are the same person, things become extremely contradictory—the previous hacker was clearly working for the traitors, while the current Lark is commissioning the V team to rescue the president.

But if it's two people, how could there possibly be two top-notch hackers around the president who could control the core systems at the same time? Trusting one person is difficult enough, two is far too extravagant.

However, the simultaneous presence of loyalists and traitors now seems to explain the current chaotic situation where the president was both assassinated and rescued.

Carl suddenly stopped typing.

Recalling the video shared by T-BUG, Carl compared the wording and tone of the two hackers and found that they were almost identical.

'If the lark is the same guy who approached me back then.'

Karl pondered this in his mind.

This means that the other party both leaked the president's whereabouts to Hansen, leading to the plane crash, and then hired V to rescue people. He was neither a pure traitor nor a true loyalist, but rather, as his initial intuition suggested, a third party.

If that's the case, then what is his purpose this time?

This contradictory pattern of behavior is like a meticulously crafted drama—first, he leaks the president's itinerary to Hansen to ensure the special plane is attacked; then, he hires top mercenaries to rescue him.

Could this not be a contradictory act at all, but a perfectly closed-loop plan?

The lark doesn't need the president to die, nor does it need the president to live—what it really needs is to put the president on the brink of life and death, hanging by a thread.

The missile attack was merely a ploy to create a convincing assassination attempt, convincing everyone that the president was indeed on the verge of death. The subsequent rescue operation, and the ensuing chaos, were the real opportunity he wanted to exploit.

Hansen's assassination attempt on the president, V's group's rescue of the president, and the meeting with Arasaka tomorrow—at this critical moment, so many events have erupted one after another, with various forces mixed together, and the entire city has long been engulfed in chaos.

All of this is enough to shatter the originally planned security negotiations between the new America and Arasaka within the framework of the established order.

Is the lark's goal to both sabotage the talks and prevent the president from dying?

No, Rosalind Miles is a thorough pragmatist; a mere assassination attempt could not possibly deter her, much less force her to postpone or cancel the meeting.

Since negotiations will continue, and the lark is neither a traitor nor a loyalist, but a third party straddling both sides, then the only thing he can gain from it is one thing—

confusion.

If what he wanted was to plunge the entire Night City into utter chaos, then everything makes sense.

With everyone's attention focused on the president, Hansen, and Arasaka who is scheduled to appear tomorrow, if he had quietly disappeared at the moment of the crash—as a close confidant of the president—his whereabouts would not have attracted much attention.

But what can he possibly accomplish in this unnoticed shadow?
While Carl was still busy working and analyzing whether the two hackers were indeed Lark and what he was planning to do, in Dogtown, accompanied by a sharp screech of brakes, V and his team had arrived at the site of the president's plane crash.

At this moment, the lark reconnected to the channel.

"Phew, I just got disconnected, but I reconnected and successfully made a safe emergency landing."

"You seem to be quite lucky."

Oliver brought the car to a stop: "I thought you were going to die after I yelled that in a hurry."

“Next time we might not be so lucky. My current situation isn’t important. What’s important is the president. I got the president into the safety pod before I ejected. You need to hurry over to the wreckage to rescue her, or Hansen’s soldiers will surround us immediately.”

"As expected."

V had already gotten out of the car and was looking at the burning wreckage in the distance: "Hansen actually used a missile directly, he's really got some nerve, but are you sure the president isn't dead yet?"

"The president's safety capsule is a specialized compartment, so even if he fell directly from a great height, he would have a chance of survival. Moreover, we activated emergency procedures at the last moment to reduce the impact. The president's vital signs are still present, but if we had been any slower, something terrible might have happened!"

Hearing the lark's anxious voice, everyone understood that the matter couldn't be delayed, however...
"It's coming faster than I expected, Ghost Hound."

As the Ghost Hound soldiers sped towards them and began setting up an encirclement, Jack gripped his gun tighter.

(End of this chapter)