Cyberpunk: From Dogville to Legend

Chapter 64 What I Request (Part 1) [Please continue reading]

Old Wei gently pushed open the dilapidated iron gate leading to the main street, and high heels made a crisp clattering sound on the ground.

"Damn it, those company dogs... fuck!"

The homeless men, who were already dazed from the drug, were lying on the ground when they saw the woman walk in. They quickly got up, hunched their shoulders, and walked outside.

V glanced at those idiots but didn't bother with them.

Lin Yue had just finished smoking when he saw V enter the room as if the place had been cleared out. He could only smile wryly. V, who was highly intelligent, was really hard to get along with. Her coldness kept people at a distance, and she would always subconsciously gloss over the important information in her words.

Compared to V, Lin Yue preferred dealing with the criminals in Dogtown.

"Shall we go down together?" V raised his chin and crossed his arms.

This is actually a hand gesture that represents self-isolation and constant vigilance towards one's surroundings.

Lin Yue glanced discreetly at the Arasaka logo on her suit, the holographic name tag flashing with her employee number.

"Ah."

V seemed more relaxed once he stepped into Lao Wei's shop.

"Super...super...super highly recommended—" The man's first words in the TV commercial sounded like he couldn't poop.

"All the pleasure comes from whole foods, which contain 3.3 times the recommended daily intake of vitamins."

V frowned, clearly losing patience with the ridiculous advertisement, and then slightly raised her hand to turn off the TV.

Old Wei looked up, "I just heard a sound, V..."

The tone was quite helpless.

"Old V, how did it go?" V smiled, clearly feeling no remorse for her presumptuous actions; after all, Old V spoiled her.

Old Wei rubbed the purplish-red bloodstains off his gloves and sighed, "Although this girl's arm prosthetic was modified, the workmanship was too rough. She must have used heavy weapons for a long time—plus, the strength assessment was insufficient, so the structure is already very poor. The nerves in the entire arm are all messed up. Now we can only install some prosthetics that meet the strength requirements."

Lin Yue asked, somewhat puzzled, "Could you be more specific, Lao Wei?"

"For example, if you don't have much feeling in your arms, you won't have a rough estimate of how much you can lift. When you lift heavy objects with your arms, the pain of tearing muscles and the swelling of stretched bones are all reminders to you... this thing can't be lifted by you alone, do you understand what I mean?"

Lin Yue frowned.

“What about the other arm?” V asked.

"What? You only replaced one arm, and you want to become a rock star?" Old Wei shrugged.

Lin Yue swore he didn't really want to laugh, but he felt that it was really a bit hellish for Lao Wei to make such a joke during a serious surgery.

Lin Yue said, "This is my subordinate... uh, no, a mercenary I work with. What do you think we should do? Replace his body with a prosthetic? Is the risk too high?"

Old Wei adjusted his glasses. "Arm prosthetics are actually the least risky of all prosthetics. Forgive me for speaking frankly, but if you can't even withstand this kind of prosthetic, then you should basically say goodbye to the mercenary industry."

Lin Yue shook his head inwardly. He knew that Mann had gone mad because of the [projectile launching system].

"Let's switch." Lin Yue knew that Old Wei was waiting for him to make a decision. Mann and the others were all lying with other prosthetic doctors. He was the only one who was still in good condition. After all, his specialties in recovery were no small feat and were of great help in post-war recovery.

Old Wei nodded. "There's a colleague not far from here who has a gorilla arm that barely fits her body proportions. One last question, is she still a child?"

Lin Yue scratched his head, "No, it's just that I look rather..."

"Kawaii." V's indifferent expression paired with this Japanese phrase made Lin Yue almost lose his composure.

Although I knew that Arasaka was a Japanese company and that V knew some Japanese, I didn't expect this sentence to be... hard to comment on.

Old Wei smiled and said, "I'll make the contact, and the surgery should be ready tonight."

V pointed outside, "Let's walk to the river, I need to talk to you about something." Lin Yue stood up and followed her like a schoolchild—

Wait a minute, aren't we on the same level now? Why is this guy talking like his boss?
Lin Yue straightened up and walked quickly without making it obvious that the two were walking side by side.

Emerging from Old Wei's prosthetic clinic, one is greeted by a dense array of brightly colored, interconnected buildings, with urban rail trains weaving through them.

After crossing the sidewalk, V and Lin Yue arrived at the concrete railing by the river.

In the distance, cylindrical skyscrapers stood at the end of the winding river, with holographic advertisements flashing above them and a dense array of circular billboards lining the floors—the hum of the hovercars, the three-mouthed woman on the side billboards of the rail transit system—all of this made Lin Yue, who was exhausted from dealing with all sorts of troubles in Dogtown, truly experience the charm of Night City.

Dogtown is like a dilapidated walled city. Night City may seem prosperous on the surface, but it's actually a place where people eat each other... It's just a matter of whether you want to die in a flower garden or in a garbage dump.

Gunshots rang out behind him. Lin Yue turned around and leaned against the fence to watch the commotion. Across from him, the NCPD knelt on the homeless man who had provoked them and shot him, breaking his limbs.

The people on the sidewalk were in chaos. Some screamed, while others pretended to ignore it, as if it were nothing unusual. Some even continued to lie on the ground watching Mewtwo while sobbing...

It's definitely the City of Night.

"Did you come all the way from the company today?"

Lin Yue watched all of this unfold silently, then casually asked a question.

V replied, "It's on the way... I heard you're here with Lao Wei. I just happened to do some things for the boss today, dealing with some issues and people... The company will send a car to pick me up later."

Lin Yue nodded.

V noticed Lin Yue staring at the mess the NCPD was making and said, "The NCPD is supposedly going to change early next year. The city will stop investing and will have to be self-sufficient—and things will be even worse after it becomes a private company. They will have more power to eliminate any targets they deem threatening, eventually abandoning that mess in Taiping Island and the permanent headquarters of gangs like the Vortex Gang, and then creating a ridiculous illusion of safety for the city and the public."

This was the most Lin Yue had ever talked about things outside of work since she met V.

"What about the company?" Lin Yue asked, smoking a cigarette and standing downwind of V, since this cyberpunk beauty didn't like the smell of smoke.

V shrugged. "What else can a company do? Control weapons, control the military, control everything... We all have to see this clearly; this is how the world works."

Lin Yue didn't reply.

Having come from Dogtown, he knew that the dilapidated city was full of drug addicts, criminals, gangs, and armies... But the sense of oppression from the company was not as great as that from Hansen's henchmen. In Night City, the situation was different. The company held the lifeline of the people. You could either live an ordinary life with no security and wait to be killed by a stray bullet one day, or climb up the corporate ladder—or build your own career.

"Are you aware of your squad's connection to this shipment from Arasaka?"

V's voice drifted over softly.

Lin Yue remained expressionless. "Hmm. I know. The Netherhounds themselves had a traitor. They bombed the transport convoy; they were hired to sabotage the cargo."

"Then why don't you check who commissioned them?" V asked curiously.

Lin Yue replied, "Do you know why I'm acting as a middleman?"

V shook his head.

“You know better than I how middlemen operate. A middleman is just a middleman; he doesn't need to know who the client is, and the mercenaries don't need to dig into each other's backgrounds. They only follow the middleman's orders. The broker is responsible for building information barriers—money talks. Clients and mercenaries don't know each other, reducing risk and allowing them to act without restraint…”

V nodded secretly after hearing Lin Yue's explanation.

Lin Yue continued, "Aren't there plenty of middlemen who act as front men for the company?"

"They have almost no way of knowing the background of the middleman."

“If you find the middleman, he'll most likely be backed by another company... It's pointless.”

He stubbed out his cigarette. "The reason I chose this identity is so that I can clear myself of any wrongdoing and finally gain a foothold in Dogtown... That's also why I'm cooperating with you."
-
Whole Foods: A food production company in the 2077 universe.

[Thank you for the 3000 points!] Thank you so much!
[Thank you Nanhua Youmeng for the 500 points!] Thank you so much!
[Thank you Spteer for the 500 points!] Thank you so much!
(The scene where V and the protagonist are chatting is shown below~)

(End of this chapter)