Cyberpunk: Starting in 2071

Chapter 48 A Pleasant Revenge

“A?!” Qi Wei’s eyes widened.

Then she saw a scene like that in a horror movie.

The lights in the entire black puppet shop began to flicker, as if there was a malfunction. At the same time, the security guards inside the shop started screaming in unison, as if in a chorus.

"Ah!! Ahhh!"

Screams echoed everywhere, sparks flying as they mingled with the screams.

"Hacker! Hacker! Cut off the internet! Don't connect to the server! Aaaaaah!"

Someone shouted in alarm, but Mercer had already completely seized control of the server. At this moment, everyone connected to the server's subnet became the target of his Puppet Virus program.

Besides Qiwei and the other unfortunate sex dolls, even the perhaps 'innocent' guests were among Mercer's targets.

Since all the sex dolls here were bought, Mercer pities Qiwei, and of course he will also pity the other poor girls.

Some of them were sold by human traffickers, while others were bought by their own parents or relatives and friends—they were just lumps of rotten flesh bought by the store and regarded as money-making machines by the local gangs.

"Help me, help me!"

A man in a suit reached out from one side of the corridor, and the next moment, his prosthetic arm twitched and became immobile.

Mercer's cold, murderous voice rang in Qi Wei's ears.

"Does he look familiar? I specifically kept your boss on. Go ahead, this is yours, but you'd better hurry."
Someone called the police before they died. The internet police and NCPD will probably be here soon. Don't worry, it won't involve you.

Enjoy your revenge.

Mercer's voice disappeared.

Only the man in the suit remained, his eyes wide open, unable to control his body no matter what he did.

Qiwei's breathing was incredibly heavy. She trembled as she walked forward, lowered her head, and looked down at the man who used to be high and mighty, who would beat and scold his sex dolls and have the power of life and death over them.

"Help me. Qiwei, help me turn off... turn off the phone."

Indistinct cries for help came from his throat.

Qiwei's breathing grew heavier and heavier, like a female leopard about to roar, but in the end, she simply stretched out her hand with a cold look in her eyes.

She took the man's sidearm from his waist and then aimed it at his head—and smashed it!

Instead of pulling the trigger, Qiwei repeatedly slammed the butt of the gun into his head—once, twice, ten times, fifteen times!

Only after the man's head was smashed into a bloody, mangled mess did she gasp for breath, her eyes already brimming with tears, blurring her vision.

Her hands trembled as she fired several more shots at the man's corpse, then stumbled and ran frantically out of the sex shop.

At this moment, the Black Puppet Shop seemed to have become a living hell—Qiwei could see it; she was a hacker and could see the signals on the network clearly through her prosthetic eye.

At this moment, the data surging through the network is as fierce as a tidal wave, and an invisible giant wave, supported by the computing power of the server, is rushing towards everyone connected to the subnet.

The lights connected to the network exploded due to the overload of electricity, the neon lights flickered a few times and then lost their luster, but Qiwei just kept running without any distraction.

As she ran, she took out the sex doll chip from her neck, then threw the chip, which symbolized restraint and surveillance, in front of her and crushed it as she passed by.

She rushed to the automatic door that was usually locked and not allowed to be passed through occasionally.

The automatic door had already been forcibly opened, but the lights were still on in the dimly lit alley outside the shop.

Qiwei's mind was vaguely blank. She felt like she was thinking a lot, or like she wasn't thinking about anything at all. She was just running, running for the first time in a long time.

The sex doll shop behind them soon caught fire. This was because Mercer had overloaded the server and all the electrical appliances in the shop, causing the server room to catch fire.

The stench from the alley was gradually fading away, and when she came to her senses, she found herself on a somewhat unfamiliar street.

She was panting heavily and looked back blankly.

The shady doll shop had long since disappeared from her sight.

Only a sparse flow of traffic passed by on the street. Some pedestrians looked at the girl, who was dressed in a flamboyant manner but was only wearing one shoe and was clutching a pistol tightly in her hand, with strange and wary eyes.

Qi Wei's hands trembled slightly as she tentatively asked in a weak voice, "A?"

"I'm here."

Mercer's voice remained calm.

Where should I go next?

Qiwei looked around, and the December evening breeze made her subconsciously hug her arms tighter.

"Do you have money?" Mercer asked first.

“I don’t have a bank account, they always give me cash, damn it, I, I forgot to take the money.”

As Qiwei spoke, she suddenly realized what had happened and began to regret it—she had actually forgotten to take money from the store!
Even just taking the manager's personal chip and some money from his virtual wallet would be good.

"If I didn't take it, that's fine. The NCPD is over. I made a big fuss."

Mercer thought for a moment and gave her a suggestion: "I know a friend who is a good person. It shouldn't be a problem for you to stay for a few days."

"Just find a place to wait, I'll have her drive to pick you up. Or do you have any other trustworthy friends?"

Qiwei answered instinctively, "I don't have any friends."

"Now you have her—her name is V, a good girl you can trust, she's about half an hour away by car, so just find a place to stay for now."

After Moser finished speaking, he chuckled and said, "Let's not talk about this anymore. The internet censors are here. I need to focus on dealing with them and see what these internet censors are capable of."

Qiwei didn't know what her mindset was, but she actually replied, "They're not to be trifled with, you need to be careful."

Mercer replied with an emoji and then ended the voice call.

Qiwei sat down against a railing in a daze, and even now, everything that had just happened still felt like a dream.

She looked up at the starry sky. The stars, which she hadn't seen for a long time, did not shine as expected today. The bright moon was hidden behind the dark clouds. But in her eyes, this was the most beautiful night sky she had seen in recent years.

Until a beat-up Canary Gecko car drove up from the side of the street.

A woman with white hair and a beautiful face, but who gave off a carefree vibe, rolled down the car window.

"Hey, are you Qiwei? Get in the car, this is V."

Qiwei didn't hesitate this time. She walked over and opened the passenger door: "It's me. Hello, V."

“I’m actually not doing very well,” V said with a sullen face. “I was woken up at two in the morning to be a driver. I heard about your situation from A. Don’t worry, you can stay at my place for the next few days.”

"Thank you," Qiwei said somewhat awkwardly—she wasn't very good at thanking people.

V glanced at her, chuckled, and looked at Qiwei's now haggard but still beautiful face. Suddenly, she became a little gossipy: "How did you and A meet? He actually gave me 1000 euros in the middle of the night just to have me be your nanny for a few days?"

After a moment of silence, Qiwei told the truth: "I don't know him."

"Huh?" V was taken aback for a moment, then said "Oh," and confidently admitted that he had guessed the truth: "So you're the client?"

"He's a mercenary?" Qiwei had also heard stories about the Edge Walkers, and in her view, they were a group of mercenaries who risked their lives for money.

She couldn't imagine that someone like A, who was always talking about justice, could be one of those people.

"You don't know? Uh, I think it's him. He even tried to recruit me." V said uncertainly. Mercer was still quite mysterious to her.

All she knew was that he was an older brother who could enter the afterlife and chat with Roger, whose entire body was covered in cybernetic implants that even her prosthetic eye couldn't scan to identify the model, and who was a top-notch hacker with impressive fighting skills.

V knew nothing about his background, age, or even appearance, except that his real name was probably Mercer.

"Oh, I don't know him." Qiwei looked at V's handsome profile and suddenly thought—could it be that A simply likes pretty women?
Such a reason is probably more reliable than something like kindness.

"He suddenly hacked into my program and asked me if I wanted freedom. Then, as long as I sincerely begged him, he would help me."

I tried it, and he helped me escape from the sex shop.

The price is that I will pay 50,000 euros in installments later.

After Qiwei finished speaking, V's eyes widened in surprise: "Fifty thousand? Wow, that's a lot?"

"Is it a lot?" Qi Wei just laughed self-deprecatingly: "Indeed, this amount of money is enough to buy a living woman for a lifetime."

Qiwei let out a long sigh and said softly, "Do you mind if I have a cigarette?"

"Smoke as much as you like, but there's no ashtray. You can open the window," V said.

"Thanks, V." Qiwei suddenly felt that saying thank you wasn't so difficult after all.

She looked up, lit a cigarette, the evening breeze ruffled her short hair, and gazed at the neon lights outside the window, still feeling confused and lost.

V, however, simply asked out of curiosity, "Were you sold there? Otherwise, it wouldn't be fair to say I rescued you."

"Hmm." Qiwei didn't want to talk to her about these things that she considered shameful and scarred for the time being.

"So what will you do in the future? I mean, you can't go back to being a sex doll, can you?"

V was just bored while driving and a bit sleepy—it's almost 3 a.m. now that I've driven here.

Qi Wei remained silent for a moment, then suddenly laughed: "I don't know."

Looking back now, she suddenly realizes that her life was already set in stone when her parents sold her to a factory when she was young.

While at the factory, the foreman controlled her to work on time every day, without a break all year round, because if she wanted to resign, she would have to repay the factory's huge 'buyout fee' first.

But after the foreman repeatedly tried to 'date' her unsuccessfully and, in a fit of rage, sold her to a sex shop, her daily life turned into another unimaginable hell of torment.

She has to work 24 hours a day, as long as she's available. Even though she gets some so-called 'compensation,' she has no freedom at all.

Because this buyout fee is an astonishing 100,000 euros—how can a sex doll, whose cost is calculated even for food, clothing, shelter, and even the sex doll chip that is required to be worn, raise 100,000 euros to regain its freedom?

She spent a year teaching herself hacking programs and also saved up money for a year to secretly buy a network access pod. After that, she regarded hacking skills as her lifeline.

Every day she just fantasizes about freedom, fantasizing about one day using her hacking skills to take revenge on the scum who manipulate and enslave her life.

However.
Freedom arrived so suddenly.

What should we do in the future?
For the first time in her life, Qiwei was finally able to think about this question.

(End of this chapter)