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“Source Protocol?”
The first person to jump up was Rebecca.
She drew both pistols with theatrical flair, striking one ridiculous pose after another while staring at Rook with huge, challenging eyes.
“Can it fight?
Is it stronger than me?”
“Rebecca.”
Dorio shut her down at once.
She still remembered Maine coming home the night before, wincing while he rubbed his face.
The man in gold-rimmed glasses looked harmless, but his strength had already exceeded their expectations.
Until they understood him, Dorio had no desire to make an enemy by acting stupid.
Rook caught the thought behind her expression and waved lightly, signaling that it was fine.
Then he looked at Rebecca with a smile.
“Little troublemaker, you know Adam Smasher?
Arasaka’s legendary attack dog, every merc’s nightmare?
A complete Source-series platform could take him head-on.”
The words hit the room like a depth charge.
Every pair of eyes sharpened with desire.
Then Maine voiced the concern that mattered most.
“Mr.
Mercer,” he said, rising slowly, “my body has too much hardware.
Too many behavioral plugins too.
It’s already causing behavioral instability.
He looked at Rook.
“I’ve been suppressing it for now, but I’m worried that joining your plan could make it flare again.”
Aside from Jackie, no one in the room wanted fame more than Maine.
That obsession was why he had kept modifying his body until cyberpsychosis started clawing at the edges of him.
But in Rook’s eyes, that problem was not impossible.
“Maine, during this conversation, I’ve already scanned your chrome.”
In Night City, Argus was almost godlike.
A complete AI could scan any intelligent device, and cyberware was intelligent machinery.
Rook stepped closer and gestured for Maine to sit.
“What people call cyberpsychosis is often the result of hardware, operating systems, and behavioral firmware failing to work together.
The mismatch puts abnormal pressure on the user’s mind until anxiety, dissociation, aggression, and personality drift start to surface.”
“For example, say someone runs a Tetratronic Rippler Mk.4 cyberdeck, then packs their body with a Sandevistan-grade spine, a Kang Tao weapons suite, and black-market knockoff chrome from five different manufacturers.
Do you really think all of that talks to the nervous system cleanly?”
He was not talking nonsense.
In a game, a player could mix parts freely and cover their body in iconic-tier gear.
Reality was not that forgiving.
Every piece of cyberware had its own local network, its own firmware, its own signal language.
Different manufacturers meant different feedback into the brain.
For many people, that was where the breakdown began.
The room fell silent.
Only Lucy, Sasha, and Kiwi fully understood what Rook meant.
The others caught enough to feel the weight of it.
“The Source-series frames are different.
Closed architecture.
Dedicated operating chips. You are reading on novelping.com, the official source.
Unified hardware.
A private network environment.
In practical terms, they remove the instability that causes your symptoms to come back.”
He did not need Maine to understand every technical layer.
He only needed the next sentence to land.
“Use a Source-series frame, and the hardware instability driving your symptoms won’t come back.”
Maine’s head snapped up.
For the first time, the rough solo looked genuinely unable to contain his excitement.
“What do we pay?”
Dorio’s voice cut through the heat and pulled him back to reality.
An armor platform powerful enough to crush Adam Smasher.
A dedicated chip that could keep Maine’s hardware-driven symptoms from coming back.
Rook had invited them into the Source Protocol, but Night City did not give gifts for free.
Every benefit came with a price.
Dorio’s question drew every eye back to Rook.
What did he want from them?
Rook returned to Lucy’s side and sat with unhurried grace.
“Loyalty,” he said.
“Work for me, and I’ll make you famous.
I’ll put you in the upper layers of this city.
I can make you legends people envy instead of corpses people toast.”
His gaze moved across the crew.
“In return, I want loyalty.
Real loyalty.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter.