Cyberpunk: Starting in 2071

Chapter 18 Looting and Evacuation

From the perspective that Mercer had cut out, he saw that Lucy and the others had already looted the warehouse and gotten what Mercer wanted.

Each soldier carried a personal survival kit, a mechanical repair kit, and according to the markings given by Mercer in Yi's eyes, each of them carried at least one Arasaka JKE-X2 Kenshin technical pistol.

This pistol uses electromagnetic propulsion to fire tungsten-tipped bullets, which have excellent armor-piercing capabilities. It requires a short charge to fire two shots in quick succession, and the bullets can even cause fatal damage through walls.

Secondly, each person also brought an HJSH-18 Masamune, which is Arasaka's classic kinetic rifle.

Aside from the somewhat annoying three-round burst mode with its grooves, it's an extremely easy-to-use, precision rifle equipped with 7.62 caliber armor-piercing rounds and featuring a built-in holographic sight. Repairing it is also very simple.

Each person was also equipped with various types of grenades, and each person carried three magazines of bullets for each gun, as well as a separate bag of bullets for resupply.

Even this exhausted a group of junior hackers. Xingzi even gritted her teeth and dragged her bag away. Mercer slapped his forehead and then remembered to ask the robot that had been idly idling to lend a hand.

"The airship is arriving. Hand over the items to the robot and bring it to the door. You don't need to participate in the firefight. Also, quickly get me a large storage hard drive. I've collected a lot of stuff, and ordinary chips can't hold it all."

Mercer's sudden appearance didn't faze Lucy this time. Instead, she immediately nodded in agreement: "I'll go get it. Do I need to connect to your server?"

Mercer said, "Just find any networked facility, and the entire base is now under my control."

"Understood." Lucy turned and went to get it for him.

"The rest of you should take a break, eat something and drink some water, and help me remove that agent's prosthetic body. No, I'll do it myself, with the robot. Just give me the cooler."

Mercer decided to let the pale-faced hackers go; if he really attacked them, he was afraid they would vomit.

However, he felt nothing at the moment; in fact, he felt fantastic.

Kyoko nodded quickly. She felt nauseous just looking at all the mosaics in her field of vision and couldn't imagine what it would feel like to actually dissect something.

Tetsuya Daichi and Leon breathed a sigh of relief. To be honest, they didn't really want to see the corpses scattered all over the first floor of the base. They just swallowed hard and found a place to sit down and rest.

Then, a robot was seen dropping its weapon, picking up a cooler from the ground, and taking the scalpel that Kyoko always carried with her.

I took it from him in the infirmary, and then I found the special agent captain who was twisted into a pretzel.

Mercer, controlling the robot, mercilessly sliced ​​him open along his spine. He glanced at the condition of the experimental Sianwistan inside him and sighed with regret.
"The neural connections are badly burned, and some parts are even bent by itself. Even if it's repaired, it'll probably break easily, so I shouldn't use it myself. I'll practice on the way and then find a seller to sell it to."

This thing isn't a prototype, but it's definitely worth something even though it's a lab-level device. We can't just sell it anywhere; we'll keep it and sell it in Dogtown.

He roughly cut open the S.A.S ...

Then he looked at the agent's hands, dissected and examined them again without any mercy, and nodded:

"This is usable, and we can sell it later. It's a real pity. If I didn't have the monomolecular line, I would really like to try out the mantis knife."

"Does anyone want it?"

Mercer's virtual avatar stood next to the robot performing surgery, looking at them. A group of children hurriedly shook their heads, afraid that he would say, "Let's try it on you," at the next moment.

"Alright, let's keep it and sell it. This thing is a rare item. If we sell it all together, even on the black market, it'll definitely fetch over 200,000."

Mercer put it in with satisfaction. He had asked the children to search for money chips before, but they hadn't found much money. They had only managed to find a little over two thousand euros worth of money chips here and there.

Currently, they only have an account with Arasaka Bank, which will definitely be shut down later, so they can't access the brain-computer interfaces of the dead to withdraw money from their virtual wallets. What a pity.

Thinking of this, Mercer casually used the remaining security robots in the room to search Auntie's bedroom again. Sure enough, there was no money chip, but there was a specially customized version of the Kenshin pistol.

The colors still look like the classic black and red color scheme, but compared to the regular version, there is an additional red stripe on the gun body.

There's also a cherry blossom pattern engraved on the handle. If this were in a game, it would definitely be an immortal-level weapon, probably called "Kenshin: Cherry Blossom Withering".

Mercer simply had the robot in the room take it away and send it down to him in the elevator, so that his hard work in searching for it wouldn't be in vain.

I'm just a little embarrassed—I clearly said it was the last time, look at the mess I've made.

Next time, I'll do the search first before saying anything like that.

Mercer waited quietly for Lucy to get the external hard drive and connect to the network, then immediately uploaded all the key data he had collected.

The cameras outside the base finally captured the hovercar, and Mercer immediately controlled the security robots and drones on the first floor to prepare for battle.

First, I ran the friend-or-foe identification system, changed the permissions to enable them to automatically search for enemies, and then began preparing for the final battle.

"Captain, the information we received from the call is still that they will enter through cargo entrance number 2 as originally planned."

"Understood, prepare for landing."

A black hovercar, painted with the white Arasaka Corporation logo, slowly descended. As the massive metal door slowly rose, the hovercar driver routinely drove into the entrance inspection area.

He subconsciously turned his head to look, only to find that the usually heavily guarded sentry post was now being guarded by two robots, which instantly made him a little wary.

The driver asked via voice message: "Where are the security personnel stationed here?" "By order of Director Tianye, all security personnel, agents, and related staff must undergo a second security check today."

Security facilities will be temporarily monitored by security equipment. After the inspection is completed, please proceed to the unloading area and wait for the receiving personnel to appear before completing the handover according to regulations.

When the robot's cold voice ended, the red beam of light from the detector also finally went out.

"Unable to verify identity. Driver, please turn off the engine immediately and get off the vehicle with the passengers for identity verification."

"Damn, is this right? Why don't you, Captain, give the Director a voice call?"

The driver was a little hesitant.

The transport team leader had already sent a message with a frown, but only received one reply.

[Director Tianye: I'm in a meeting. Today we're organizing a second inspection for all staff at the base. Please leave your voicemail address if you need anything.]

It's still somewhat consistent; surely the director's contact information couldn't have been hacked, right?
After thinking it over, the transport team leader simply nodded, ordered the driver to turn off the engine, and then got out of the vehicle fully armed.

However, before he could figure out what was happening, the two robots' weapons were already aimed at his head.

Before he could react, even faster than the robot raising its gun, came the bullets from an automatic machine gun that had already been raised behind him.

He was horrified to discover that all his prosthetic bodies were directly locked by the system's access control—it was Director Tianye who had locked his prosthetic bodies!?
The powerful machine gun bullets tore his head apart in an instant.

The other two agents and the driver were directly shot dead by security robots and drones in the air, without any power to resist.

"Mercer! What's next?"

The prepared hackers rushed out, while several robots and drones hidden in the shadows helped them bear the burden.

Mercer's virtual avatar appears:
"Open the driver's seat and get in, connect your personal data cable. I will hack in using your Relic chip. Then you can go sit in the hovercar, pack your things, and check my prosthetic body."

"understood!"

Upon hearing this, Lucy climbed into the cockpit and connected the data cable.

The others immediately began moving things. Kyoko, who wasn't very strong, ran up first to help him check the prosthetic body that had been transported.

The transport vehicle contained five high-end bulletproof coolers, each the size of a storage box. Before Xingzi could ask any questions, Mercer sent her the combination to the boxes, which he had obtained from an email from the director's aunt.

Xingzi opened the box and looked through it once, then checked the quantity: "They're all here, nothing is missing."

“Great, but why are all these things packaged so big?” Mercer glanced speechlessly at the floating car carriages that were now piled up with cargo.

The airship that came to deliver the cargo was the most common type in Arasaka. Apart from the driver's seat, the entire vehicle had only four seats and a small trunk.

If it were just for two people and five insulated boxes, the size would be more than enough, but now it's for four people plus a bunch of stuff to fit inside.
Fortunately, the trunk was still empty, so everyone threw in their less fragile luggage and piled the other prosthetic coolers in the middle of the seats. Luckily, they were all children, so they squeezed in and got to sit down.

Mercer first quickly used Lucy's insertion of the hovercraft's connecting wires to crack the hovercraft's program, and then commanded:

"You all sit in the back seats. I'll have a robot bring someone over in a bit, and you can throw him in and take him with you."

Remember to keep him unconscious at all times. He absolutely cannot wake up, but he can't die either. Just keep him unconscious. I'm coming right away.

"Received," Lucy and the others replied—they had already noticed Secretary Inoue, who was being held by the robot and was still unconscious.

Mercer then immediately began uploading automated programs to the server to ensure that the server kept everyone's network off at all times, delaying the time it would take to be discovered as much as possible.

Secondly, he immediately began to lock all the employees' doors.

The reason they didn't do that before was because locking the door was quite noisy, and if someone was connected to a subnet or had a special way to call the police, they might not be able to detect it.

After all, there are no cameras directly connected to the employees' bedrooms. Arasaka isn't so perverted as to use cameras to watch every employee while they sleep. Closing the door means Mercer loses his sense of the room.

But it doesn't matter now. Even if someone triggers the alarm, by the time Arasaka's people come to investigate, he'll already be far away.

Finally, a self-destruct program is set up for the server.

He pondered for a moment and finally decided to change it to a trigger-based system.

That is, when any employee room door that he locked is opened, or when other network signals appear, the server will automatically undergo suicidal overload and burn itself out.

Then, Mercer selectively formatted it, deleting all the valuable data and logs.

However, while deleting these documents, his gaze suddenly lingered for a moment on the employee files.

Although Lucy's data was fleeting, he was quite concerned about some of the unique data that was different from that of the other junior hackers.

Mercer then opened Lucy's file to take a look, and the information he obtained made him frown slightly.

(End of this chapter)