New chapter!
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“Mr.
Mercer, it’s an honor to meet you.
I’m T-Bug.
I’m very curious about you, especially how you used cyberware armor for high-speed flight.”
T-Bug offered her hand and asked the question without dancing around it.
Rook frowned.
“How do you know about that?”
Only Maine’s crew, Lucy, and Jackie knew about his flying armor.
Jackie had just said he only mentioned Rook’s name, not the rescue at Biotechnica.
Yet T-Bug knew.
At first, she had not known who Rook was.
What she knew was the morning news: an unidentified flying device had passed Arasaka Tower and extracted a terrorist.
The footage had not shown his face, but Lucy and Sasha were both visible.
Early that morning, T-Bug had breached Night City’s traffic monitoring system.
As a professional netrunner, she quickly traced the man who had walked home with Lucy after parting from Sasha.
She simply had not known his name.
When Jackie came to her and said “Rook Mercer,” she searched the local networks, matched the face, and realized he was the man from the footage.
Curiosity did the rest.
As T-Bug explained, Rook understood his mistake.
He had still been treating Cyberpunk like a game.
It was not.
He was living inside a real cyberpunk world.
Every person in Night City was not an NPC.
His sudden rise would inevitably draw the attention of Arasaka, Militech, Kang Tao, Zetatech, and the other elites that controlled the city’s order.
If one T-Bug could uncover his identity the moment she had a name, corporate netrunners could do far worse.
Some of them had probably already found traces of him.
The real question was whether those pieces had reached anyone important.
Movement records, video images, files, all of it.”
The music cut out.
Argus’s voice came through the speakers.
“I’m sorry, Mr.
Mercer.
Modern cyberspace is a fragmented structure built from countless isolated local networks.
There are only two viable methods.”
“Break through the Old Net, or run a live deep dive.
Repairing the Old Net will require years.
For a live deep dive, I will need assistance.”
The mature AI stunned T-Bug.
Disbelief flickered across her face.
Sasha and Kiwi looked no less shaken.
Rook had no time to explain.
His mind was already moving, searching for a way to contain the damage.
One day had passed.
Any corporation interested in him had probably pulled most of what could be pulled.
The question was whether it had been escalated.
“That was a bad miss.”
He sighed.
No wonder people in Night City loved cyberware, especially optics.
Kiroshi’s rise made perfect sense.
Artificial eyes could blur a user’s face under surveillance, which mattered when every camera was a potential snitch.
He had been careless around the corps.
T-Bug had just taught him a very real lesson.
“Mr.
Mercer,” Kiwi said at last, stepping forward, “do you need help?”
For her, this was the perfect chance to show her value.
Invading corporate systems and erasing data was dangerous, but with an AI supporting them, she believed it could be done. The source of this chapter is g.com.
Compared to the cyberware armor Rook had offered, the risk was worth it.
Her words made Sasha and Lucy look at him too.
Kiwi had her own calculations.
Sasha owed him her life.
Lucy simply cared.
“Argus, what do we need to do?”
Rook did not answer Kiwi directly.
He asked the AI first.
“It’s simple, Mr.
Mercer.
At the instant a conscious deep dive breaches the target local network, carry my program in with you.”
That eased him.
If the method required blind risk, he would abandon it immediately.
Exposure was better than gambling with the lives of the people around him.
But this sounded manageable.
Rook turned and picked up a can of beer.
“Looks like the party is on pause.”
He cracked it open and looked at everyone.
“I need Lucy, Sasha, Kiwi, and T-Bug to help me for a while.
While they’re working, the rest of you can handle a few errands.”
“Just say the word, Mr.
Mercer.”
“Food can wait.
What’s important is being able to sit down and eat in peace.”
“I was hoping for a chance to show off anyway.”
No one looked reluctant.
If anything, their eyes were relaxed, almost eager.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter.