Cyberpunk: From Dogville to Legend

Chapter 96 Intelligence (Second Update)
Sasha led Lin Yue through the side door of the Lizhi Bar, completely unaware of Lin Yue's astonished expression along the way.

"How could it be her?" Lin Yue never expected to meet the hacker who was the first to die in Mann's team in this way.

A panel popped out from Lin Yue's prosthetic eye.

[Person: Sasha Yakovleva]

[Affiliation: Night City]

【Favourability: 20】

[Potential for Development: High; shows great potential to become an excellent hacker]

[Stage Reward: Upon the first scan of this character by the prosthetic eye, all accumulated rewards will be issued, unlocking the Intelligence feat and granting +4 points.]

"Thank God you're in Watson District—if you were in Dogtown, you definitely wouldn't have made it in time."

Sasha's voice was soft, she was blowing pink bubblegum, and she spoke with a slight Russian accent.

Lin Yue suppressed his other emotions and silently followed Sasha all the way to the basement of the Liz Bar.

“Hey! Don’t go there.” Sasha pulled Lin Yue back from walking away with his head down and whispered, “That’s Judy’s Mewtwo Studio. She doesn’t like men going in.”

Judy?!
Lin Yue glanced at the sliding door and followed Sasha into the adjacent network room.

"Nice to meet you. My name is Sasha. I was also a member of Mann's team before. I apologize for the alias! Mann doesn't like me getting involved in these kinds of troublesome things, so I had no choice but to do this." Sasha smiled sweetly and reached out her hand playfully as the automatic door behind her closed.

Lin Yue also reached out and shook hands symbolically, then immediately let go and said, "It's not the first time I've heard of you; Rebecca mentioned you to me."

Sasha nodded, covered her mouth and laughed, "Thanks to Rebecca, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to find you."

Lin Yue was taken aback.

The original message in the panel: "[Rewritten: This character's storyline has changed, and this character's influence over 'Sasha' has increased to 50%]"... does that mean?

“Rebecca is a very outspoken person. I know that when you guys were working for that boss in Dogtown, you hired Nix. He's one of the few network experts in Night City who takes on jobs in Dogtown.”

"I begged Nix for ages before he finally agreed to let me do that chip rewriting commission."

ha?
Rebecca has a loose tongue; given Sasha's intelligence, she could probably get all of Rebecca's secrets out of her.

Lin Yue was speechless. "You know Mann doesn't want you working in Dogtown—"

"Shhh."

Sasha held up a finger, gesturing to Lin Yue in a low voice, "What do you think of my hacking skills?"

Lin Yue nodded, "She's an experienced player, her skills are definitely up to par..."

“I know, I know. Mann always thinks I’m not cyberpunk material, but you can pretend you don’t know.” Sasha blinked and pulled a laptop over from the coffee table.

"Let's take care of business first, we can talk about this later."

Sasha completely shut down the conversation.

Lin Yue looked down at the screen; it was some online information that the hacker had intercepted.

Having studied hacking techniques for a few days, Lin Yue pointed to the screen and asked, "Is this the attack and defense log?"

Sasha nodded. "It wasn't a waste of time. To gather more information, I implanted a surveillance program into our target subnet. Generally, it wouldn't be detected. Every day, it's the company's hackers online, along with a few Arasaka-style hackers keeping watch."

"But today I suddenly discovered that Arasaka's hackers are offline, their programs have been wiped out, the subnet ICE has been reinforced, and three groups of people who appeared out of nowhere are now attacking each other at a very high frequency—all of them want to dig out the data."

Lin Yue: "I don't quite understand. Who has managed to dig up the data in the subnet?"

Sasha shook her head. "No, no, no, there's no data. I discovered a few days ago that it was an offline database. So, even though those people were fighting fiercely, they couldn't get anything. They were all trying to confirm the facility's location and then send people offline to search for it. But while they were fighting so fiercely, I managed to exploit a loophole—"

Lin Yue looked at the data Sasha had prepared: cameras, blind spots, network-connected security facilities, and so on were all recorded in great detail.

Lin Yue looked at it for a while, then asked with some surprise, "So you've confirmed the location of the facility?" Sasha smiled with narrowed eyes, "I'm not just taking money for nothing."

"Awesome."

Lin Yue nodded. Having hackers meant less trouble; at least there were no problems with information.

The address of the military science company is in the North City Industrial Zone.

Sasha immediately became serious and said, "We need to hurry. I'm not sure how long it will take the other two groups to dig up the data. If the location is confirmed, our operations will conflict with each other."

Lin Yue didn't waste any time. After discussing some details and confirming the approximate location of the target, he prepared to take action.

The two acted quickly and in sync, having already worked together on several Dogtown assignments, and were relatively familiar with each other's styles.

"Oh, right!"

Just as Lin Yue was about to leave, Sasha handed him something—an encrypted chip.

"Plug this thing into the subnet, and I can do the fast cracking for you... Of course, if you have the chance to access the offline database, you can copy it. Mine can resist firewalls and malicious programs that tamper with and copy it, and can copy down the approximate data."

Sasha explained with her hands behind her back, "I'm sure the boss will find it useful."

Lin Yue glanced at Sasha, inwardly sighing that few hackers were not bright, then waved the chip in his hand and said, "Thanks."

"OK~"

……

Night falls.

Apart from the occasional gunshots from the streets, the industrial zone in the north of the city was shrouded in darkness, like a tomb.

As one of the most prosperous areas in Watson District, this area once created many job opportunities.

However, the earthquake and various ill-fated investments destroyed the place, leaving only some non-functional factories that harbor filth and corruption.

Here, you only need to worry about one thing: whether a bullet from the Vortex Gang will fly toward your head.

A car entered a small road outside the wall of a park, its headlights off, and slowly rolled down the slope.

Lin Yue took out a sniper rifle from the trunk, checked the ammunition, and lit a "pre-emptive cigarette".

Tonight's mission is destined to be a tough one. It's fortunate that Sasha was smart enough to ask me for help. If the chaotic situation involving multiple forces tonight were left to Mann's team to handle, it would be very troublesome.

Just as Lin Yue was quietly smoking and waiting for Sasha to come online, Mann and the others sent him a message.

[Mann]: We've got him on our heels. Should we deal with him, boss?

[Lin]: No need, we'll deal with him after Lin Yue finishes this trip.

Lin Yue felt that Hanz was acting very strangely. After thinking it over, he decided to start by targeting Hanz's confidants. He needed to dig out at least some information so that he could make timely adjustments if things went wrong.

Lin Yue sighed as he closed his email address. Many things were piling up, but the matter involving Arasaka's interests was the most important right now. To show his loyalty, he had no choice but to risk his life to deliver a satisfactory answer to Arasaka.

However, there was an unexpected bonus today: I ran into Sasha, the former hacker of the team, and unlocked her intelligence perk as well.

But there's an extremely frustrating problem: the specialization is unusable—

The reason is that the famous Mr. Rin didn't install the [Network Access Container]...

"Damn it," Lin Yue cursed, arms crossed.

"Hey, I'm online."

Lin Yueyi saw Sasha's call box appear in the upper left corner of his eye. He nodded to confirm that the call signal was correct, composed himself, and crouched down as he rushed across the open space piled with building materials and containers.

　[Network Access Container]: Originally named (Cyber ​​Deck) in the rulebook. From the ported, paperback-sized box in Cyber ​​2020 to the size of a red cigarette box in Cyberpunk, all the way to 2077, the Network Access Container has become the most basic cyber implant for hackers (Netwalkers), connecting to the brain's neural network. It enables rapid cracking, protocol violations, and the use of hacker privileges on the initial network.
　　
　
(End of this chapter)