Cyberpunk: From Dogville to Legend

Chapter 49 Countermeasures [Please continue reading]

On the high platform to the left of the server, the young man was covered in scars.

The gorilla's arm hissed and emitted exhaust sounds due to overheating, yet he still swung a heavy punch at the hard wall without realizing it.

Even the wall with steel plates sandwiched in the middle could not withstand the bombardment of the gorilla's arm. Spiderweb-like cracks began to spread, and his fists were covered with dirt and torn flesh, each punch leaving a bloody mark.

The remaining members of the Voodoo Gang, still shaken, were exchanging bewildered glances when the sound of the slider echoed throughout the puppet workshop.

"Upload a few prosthetic malfunction reports to him, find out who it is, and while you're at it, bring him in. If it's someone from New America, beat him half to death and throw him out—"

"It would be best to plant a magic puppet."

"If they're mercenaries, just kill them."

The eyes of several Voodoo Gang members lit up at the same time, and the young mercenary burst out with arcs of electricity as he convulsed and knelt on the ground.

At this moment, his prosthetic eye pupils dilated and trembled incessantly, his head swayed slightly, and he mumbled words that were difficult to understand.

The voodoo gang slowly approached Lin Yue, who was kneeling on the ground. One of them gritted his teeth, raised the butt of his gun high, and then smashed it hard on Lin Yue's head!
With a muffled thud, Lin Yue's eyeballs stopped twitching, as if he had regained consciousness.

The next second, he closed his eyelids tightly and collapsed to the ground.

“Li vrèman kont (What a madman).” The voodoo gang member who had mustered the courage to knock Lin Yue unconscious cursed in Haitian dialect, his voice trembling. “Lift him up and see if you can find anything in external storage.”

As they spoke, the two men lifted Lin Yue, who was lying there like a dead dog. The man who gave the order pulled out a human-computer interaction cable from his wrist and inserted it into a slot behind Lin Yue's neck.

The man's eyes lit up, and he began to search carefully.

A few minutes passed, and the man muttered to himself in confusion:
"What's going on... there's nothing there?"

Suddenly, the man the Voodoo Gang was checking on Lin Yue with began to tremble. Wisps of blue smoke rose from his scalp, accompanied by the stench of burning flesh and the smell of burnt hair. The man's eyes rolled back, and he convulsed as he lay on the ground.

[Incoming caller ID: V]

Lin Yue was unable to answer the phone due to a temporary loss of consciousness.

Meanwhile, V, in the office, noticed that Lin Yue's personal ICE account had been attacked—and quickly dialed the number of the Dogtown downline.

The user you are trying to reach is not within the service area.

V's heart sank immediately, and several attempts to call her were unsuccessful.

It seemed like he had thought of something—

"Send a report to the special operations team and get someone into Dogtown, quick!"

V never expected Lin Yue to encounter such a change at this critical juncture. She had personally implanted ICE into Lin Yue's system, and it would only retaliate when an outsider directly inserted into his brain to obtain information... This meant that Lin Yue had completely lost his ability to resist.

"屮!"

When V is irritable, she might utter a few swear words, even though it doesn't match her beautiful appearance.

The counterintelligence department employees, following V's orders, watched their superior mutter angry curses and obediently shrank back, getting busy in front of their computers.

……

The long, dark corridor was covered with various fluorescent voodoo graffiti and some emergency lighting.

Beneath my feet were thick network cables, seemingly leading to a dark and hopeless hell.

The sound of the slider echoed in the corridor: "I'm almost certain this dog is from the Joint Logistics Command... cough cough, it's only natural that the military technology firewall would burn you to death... drag it in... let me see what the Joint Logistics Command is up to this time." Then, he added, as if complaining, or perhaps blaming helplessly, "Inhuman beasts, they've almost killed everyone."

Lin Yue, who had been looking down in the darkness, slowly opened his eyes.

He regained consciousness the moment the rifle butt struck his head, and the rapid decryption of [Cyber ​​Psychosis] gave him a terrible nightmare.

In his dream, all his efforts turned to smoke. There was no company, no partners, only the pitiful Lin Yue wandering in the endless wilderness.

Lin Yue vowed he never wanted to experience that feeling again.

All he wanted to do now was get closer to the slider and tell it his purpose.

Unaware that Lin Yue had regained consciousness, the Voodoo Gang members were still grumbling to each other in Haitian dialect, roughly saying that some people were inhumane, knowing someone was going to die but still letting that unlucky guy connect to this person's line, and that logging off would happen in an instant.

Slide's hacker room is smaller than Hamster's, but that doesn't mean the hacker is incompetent. Strictly speaking, he is an informant for the New United States Joint Logistics Agency, but he was forced to hide in Dogtown to avoid them after the New United States caught him doing something wrong.

Lin Yue was thrown to the ground. Before the two Voodoo Gang members could even speak, he suddenly braced himself with his hands on the ground, sprang up, and knocked one of them down with a punch. Then he knocked down another with the butt of his pistol. The dark muzzle of the gun was silently pointed at the two hackers in the hacker chair whose eyes were covered with scars.

Slipper's outfit was indeed somewhat comical: brightly striped pants, slippers, and dreadlocks in the style of the Haitian voodoo gang.

He paused for a moment, listened quietly to the newcomer's movements, and sneered, "Hmph, who are you?"

Lin Yue's gun barrel never left him as he slowly walked towards the slider.

Where is Semill?

The slider spread its hands, "Among those you shot dead, one was Semir."

Lin Yue paused for a moment before saying, "I want to discuss a deal with you."

It was a scene that felt strangely familiar.

Li De and V stormed into the lark's lair, seeking a way to contact the lark, while he stormed in seeking the means to survive.

Sliding bar tilted its ear to pinpoint Lin Yue's location. "If I hadn't seen your face through the security camera, I would have thought my good friend from New America had come to visit. You said you wanted to make a deal... but you're pointing a gun at me, friend."

Lin Yue took a deep breath. The sharp pain in his head and the weakness in his legs forced him to slowly sit down against the wall opposite the sliding bar.

“I only want that behavioral characteristic, the face, and you can name your price. As for your people, if they can listen to me properly, I'm willing to pay the price to get this thing, but unfortunately, they didn't even give me a chance... so they have only themselves to blame.”

The hacker chair with the slider moved all the way to Lin Yue's front. "But you still haven't said whose people you are, Donk dim sa (what do you want)."

"I'm just a mercenary, working for Arasaka. This prosthetic body is very important to me. Name your price." Lin Yue had no intention of continuing the scheming and instead frankly revealed his identity.

The slider laughed.

"In a sense... you're also a dog that the company has caught by the tail, just like my name... that kind of dog is called a slipper."

"This new American prosthetic body has been taken by Hans from Dogtown. I can give it to you if you want it. You've killed so many people, how can Hans believe that someone stole it?"

"But... you're from Arakawa."

"That's really worrying me, my friend..."

The muffled sound of the slider echoed in the stuffy hacker network room...

(End of this chapter)