120: Chapter 119 It's Important to Me Without You

A rare, peaceful night passed.

The first ray of morning sunlight squeezed through the gap in the curtains, landing squarely on V's face.

The morning in Dogtown was not quite like Night City—there was no hum of AV engines, no looping broadcasts from advertising blimps, only the gray-gold light formed by the mist and sunlight mixing over the distant sea.

The bright light was like a thin needle, piercing through her eyelids, forcibly booting V from her deep sleep.

She frowned and buried her face into the pillow, trying to avoid the light.

It was useless.

The sun was unreasonable; the light had already crawled over the edge of the pillow, landing precisely on her eyelids.

V finally gave up the struggle and opened her eyes, seeing Lin Yi's profile in her line of sight—he was still asleep, breathing steadily, his eyelashes casting a small shadow in the sunlight.

V looked at his peaceful appearance and decided not to wake him yet, instead finding a comfortable position to roll over and catch a little more sleep.

She tucked her legs into the quilt, adjusted to a more comfortable angle, and closed her eyes.

Then, Lin Yi's leg suddenly went rigid.

"Ah! Ugh! F***, my leg is cramping!"

That initial yell was incredibly dramatic.

V, having just closed her eyes, thought she had caught Lin Yi in some sort of stylish moment or perhaps he was possessed.

V only had time to open her eyes before she saw Lin Yi spring up from the bed like a suddenly straightened spring, one hand prying at the foot of the cramping leg while the other flailed around on the bed, his whole body twisting into a pretzel.

Immediately after, the back of his head jerked upward—Lin Yi clutched the back of his head and fell to the side, while V clutched her nose and leaned back.

The two of them fell to opposite sides of the bed simultaneously, one groaning while holding his foot, the other holding her nose and cursing.

After recovering, V rubbed her still-aching nose bridge, looked at Lin Yi, who was also huddled at the head of the bed rubbing the back of his head, and spoke in a tone of "I'm really speechless": "I'm honestly done. Such a nice morning, such a nice atmosphere, and you suddenly pull this stunt on me."

"How was I supposed to know my leg would cramp while I was sleeping so well?" Lin Yi looked aggrieved.

Don't ask why he felt aggrieved; if you had taken two of V's angry punches, you'd feel aggrieved too.

He was rubbing the back of his head with one hand and his calf with the other, unable to keep up, his expression caught between pain and grievance.

In Baize's background monitoring logs, there had indeed been an abnormal discharge in the electromyographic signal of his left gastrocnemius muscle just a moment ago; it lasted less than a second, but the intensity was enough to jolt someone awake from deep sleep.

V looked at his state, sighed, and gave up on the idea of going back to sleep.

She climbed out of bed and walked naked toward the bathroom. As she passed Lin Yi, she casually rubbed his head—the force was neither too light nor too heavy, halfway between comforting and retaliating. "Alright, stop howling. Get up and wash up. Let's finish breakfast before Jackie gets back."

Lin Yi rubbed the back of his head, got out of bed, and shuffled toward the sink in his slippers.

The two stood side by side in front of the mirror brushing their teeth, mouths full of foam, neither saying a word.

As she brushed, V suddenly remembered something. With her mouth full of foam, she mumbled, "Right, I remember you only told me half of something yesterday, didn't you?"

Lin Yi looked at her in the mirror and raised an eyebrow.

"It was about... who was it again?" V rinsed her mouth, wiped the foam from the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand, turned around, and leaned against the sink, waiting for his answer.

"Songbird." Lin Yi also rinsed his mouth and put his toothbrush back in the cup.

"Right, that's the one. Didn't I ask you yesterday why you said Songbird's betrayal of Militech was such a massive disaster?" V recalled the curiosity that had been extinguished halfway yesterday.

As for why it was extinguished, she claimed she couldn't remember.

"Don't rush. We'll call Jackie in a bit; it's related to our next steps." As Lin Yi spoke, he suddenly thought of something and frowned. "Jackie is not a loyal friend. Yesterday, he watched me getting chased like a dog and didn't even help. Instead, he snuck off to go hang out with Misty."

V couldn't help but laugh when she heard this. "You deserved it. Who told you to be so itchy-handed."

The two finished washing up and called room service.

When the breakfast was placed on the table, the chef at Heavy Hearts clearly put in some effort. In a place as resource-scarce as Dogtown, this breakfast could be considered luxurious.

Lin Yi glanced at the streets of Dogtown outside the window while spreading sauce on his bread.

After the martial law was lifted, the streets returned to their daily hustle and bustle. Some were unloading cargo, some were arguing, and some were fixing a motorcycle that looked like it would never be fixed.

Everything seemed to be slowly returning to normal operation, but that recovery carried a sense of caution—a tension, as if it could be interrupted again at any moment.

There was a knock at the door.

Three knocks, neither too light nor too heavy. Lin Yi scanned with his Kiroshi optics, identified the biological signal behind the door as Jackie, and opened it directly.

Jackie walked in from outside, his face flushed and refreshed, a lingering smile still on his lips—he looked exactly like someone who had been well-nourished by Misty.

There was a long, golden hair stuck to his shoulder, standing out starkly against his black tactical jacket.

"Yo, isn't this Mr. Welles, who stood by and watched me die last night?" Lin Yi leaned against the back of the sofa, looking at him with an "I've got my eye on you" expression.

Jackie pretended not to hear the sarcasm, walked in nonchalantly, picked up the half-pot of coffee left on the table, and poured himself a full cup.

No sugar or milk, he just downed a big gulp and sighed with satisfaction.

"Misty asked me to give you her regards. She says V hasn't been to see her for a tarot reading in a long time."

"After this is all over." V sat on the sofa with her coffee and gestured with her chin toward the golden hair on Jackie's shoulder. "You'd better get rid of that."

Jackie looked down at his shoulder, reached out, brushed the hair off, and let it drift to the floor.

V and Lin Yi exchanged a glance, tacitly agreeing not to continue the teasing.

"Alright, enough, hurry up and finish what you started yesterday." Jackie put down his coffee cup, rested his hands on his knees, leaned forward, and looked at Lin Yi with an "I've waited all night, don't keep me in suspense" expression. "You've been teasing me all night. Misty even asked if I had something on my mind; I said no, and she said I was lying. Do you know what it's like to be stared at by Misty with that 'I can see your soul lying' look?"

"Alright, first of all." Lin Yi sat up straight on the sofa and projected Baize's interface onto the wall in front of the three of them.

When the holographic projection lit up, the first thing that appeared was Song So Mi's personal file.

In the photo, Song So Mi looked much younger than she did now, wearing a standard Militech lab suit, with a spark still in her eyes—not the weary look of someone ground down by life, but the look of someone who believed "I believe I am doing something meaningful," carrying the lingering warmth of idealism.

Next to the photo was her neural load test data; the curve started in the normal range and climbed steadily over time.

In the early stages, it was only a slow increase, but by the middle, the slope became suddenly steep, and in the final months, it was almost a straight vertical line upward.

The labeled number next to the peak made Jackie gasp—that value was already four hundred times the safety threshold for Militech cyberware.

A normal person would have been brain-dead during the first experiment if they had endured that level of neural load.

"Songbird's current condition is essentially a walking EMP nuke." Lin Yi spoke, his tone as calm as a weather report, but every word carried a heavy weight.

He pulled up the experimental records found in the Little Beidou server room—the part that neither Reed nor Myers knew about, or rather, that Myers knew but never intended for Reed to know.

The records detailed the irreversible changes that occurred in the human nervous system during repeated access to the Blackwall Protocol.

Her neural synapses were repeatedly scoured by the energy of the Blackwall, like a riverbed being reshaped over and over by floods; each scouring left new gullies in her nervous system.

Militech's scientific team used the term "adaptive evolution" in their internal report—but Lin Yi flipped to the last page of the report, where there was a line of small, encrypted text: "Test subject no longer requires external equipment to assist in accessing the Blackwall. Theoretically, it has become a part of the Blackwall Gateway itself."

He enlarged this line of text so V and Jackie could see it clearly.

"Blackwall Gateway." V repeated the words, her voice much lower than before.

She had worked in Arasaka Counterintelligence; she knew what the four words "Blackwall Gateway" meant in the lexicon of cybersecurity, and Lin Yi had explained it to her in detail during that diagnosis session earlier.

It wasn't "able to pass through the Blackwall," it wasn't "able to operate near the Blackwall"; it was "being the door to the outside of the Blackwall itself."

Whoever controlled Song So Mi was equivalent to controlling a Blackwall door that could be opened and closed at will.

Any Rogue AI that infiltrated Song So Mi would possess a direct channel to the real world.

And for those Rogue AIs wandering in the ruins of the Old Net for decades, always looking for an entrance into the real world, there was no container more perfect than a living human body modified by the Blackwall Protocol.

This way, they didn't have to cross the Blackwall, yet they could enter the real world.

They didn't need to forcibly break through Netwatch's defenses, didn't need to maintain unstable channels in clunky facilities like Little Beidou—they just needed to occupy her, like putting on a piece of clothing.

"Furthermore, due to long-term exposure to the Blackwall Protocol and crossing the Blackwall Gateway, her body is the best container for those powerful Rogue AIs outside the wall to enter the real world." Lin Yi continued to pull up another set of data.

The records showed that every time Songbird established a connection with the outside of the Blackwall, multiple signal sources outside the wall were activated simultaneously.

The response patterns of these signal sources were not random; they were directional.

They were all tracking her.

It was as if they were following the direction of a lamp in the dark, slowly but firmly closing in on her.

Jackie sat on the sofa, his coffee cup suspended in mid-air.

He looked down at the hair on his arms—it was all standing on end.

It wasn't from the cold; it was a primal alertness that shot up his spine. "So, we still have to go find this person? To keep Militech's stuff from hurting others and herself?"

"Oh, f*** me." V threw herself back into the sofa, looking up at the ceiling, using a tone that was extremely undignified but perfectly matched her current state of mind. "To create something you can't control and keep it by your side, this Myers is really something."

Lin Yi flipped the experimental records to the last page and then switched to another set of data—several encrypted communications intercepted by Baize in the Night City underworld network.

The sender was unknown, and the recipient was Song So Mi's private terminal. The communication content was highly encrypted, and Baize had only decrypted a few fragments.

But one fragment was perfectly preserved— "I can arrange for a hospital on the Crystal Palace; that place can solve your problems." The signature had only one codename: Mr. Blue Eyes.

He also pulled up the clues related to Mr. Blue Eyes—the recent abnormal movements of Night Corp, the drastic changes in the company's management around the time of Mayor Rhyne's death.

Piecing these fragments together, a blurry but recognizable outline emerged.

The senior management of Night Corp had either been replaced by some Rogue AI or had reached some kind of symbiotic relationship with one. And that Rogue AI was very likely the one that had broken through the Blackwall in some previous experiment at Little Beidou.

"In short, whether Songbird lives or dies is not important. Whether she becomes a 'coat' for a Rogue AI is also not important." Lin Yi turned off the holographic projection and looked at V and Jackie. "But this Blackwall Gateway thing—without it, it is important to all of us."

The room was quiet for a few seconds.

Jackie stood up from the sofa, walked to the window, and stood with his back to them, looking out at the streets of Dogtown.

His silhouette looked exceptionally broad and exceptionally heavy in the morning light.

"Alright, next, we'll split the investigation into two fronts." Lin Yi also stood up, walked to the projection, and marked the two targets on the map of Dogtown projected on the wall. "First is Songbird's side; I'll have to rely on you and Jackie. Her hideouts in Dogtown, people she's had contact with, like Hansen—these all need to be scouted in person."

"Then there's Mr. Blue Eyes; I'll handle that. Night Corp's network traces, Mr. Blue Eyes' movement patterns in Cyberspace, and any digital footprints he might have left in Dogtown—those will be left to Baize."

V crossed her arms and leaned against the sofa armrest, looking at the two flashing markers on the map, thinking for a moment. "Alright, leave that side to me and Jackie. Hearing what you just said, that Mr. Blue Eyes and Night Corp are likely connected. Night Corp's situation is very strange—ever since Mayor Rhyne passed away, the company has seemed like a different person, suddenly becoming aggressive in all aspects. I saw their files when I was in Counterintelligence; I didn't think much of it then, but with you saying this, it's probably about the same as your assessment—it definitely has something to do with a Rogue AI."

"We're just trying to gather information. If there's any danger, contact me immediately; do not try to fight it head-on." Lin Yi's expression was a bit more serious than before.

He turned off the holographic map and turned to look at V and Jackie.

Hansen's party was still a few days away. Dogtown was calm on the surface—martial law lifted, streets returning to the hustle and bustle, Wraiths patrols setting up checkpoints at intersections again—but in the shadows, all factions were restless.

It was unclear if Myers had been sent out or not; Reed was also looking for Songbird, Danger Gal was looking for clues about Little Beidou, and Hansen's troops were still cleaning up the mess from the Space Force One crash. The three of them were caught in the middle of these factions, needing to find a walking nuke and a mysterious AI that might not even be human, all without being noticed by anyone.

"If you encounter a situation you can't handle—" He paused, adding in a tone between a joke and seriousness, "We can always just call Yorinobu and have him provide direct fire support. He owes us, anyway."