121: Chapter 120 Tomorrow and Accidents

"Damn it, what the hell are these people thinking?" Jackie leaned against the sofa, arms crossed over his chest, his face twisted in a frustration that didn't know where to direct its anger. "Between the Rogue AI and the Blackwall, haven't they ever thought that doing this will only make this already fucked-up world even more doomed?"

Lin Yi sat at his desk, the light from the terminal screen reflected on his face, casting deep shadows in his eye sockets.

He didn't answer immediately; his fingers tapped unconsciously on the keyboard twice before stopping.

"I don't know, Jackie," he said, his tone a beat slower than usual, as if organizing his thoughts while speaking. "It's undeniable that some corporations had ideals and ambitions when they were founded. Take Trauma Team, for example—at the beginning, they genuinely wanted to save people. Night Corp was the same; when Night was still alive, he at least appeared to be a businessman with a bottom line."

He paused.

"Then there are entities like Arasaka, evil existences that were aiming for the revival of imperialism from the very start. Contradictory, oppositional, yet unified."

Jackie listened in silence for a moment, then let out a muffled snort through his nose—not in disagreement, but with the helplessness of, "You're right, but this world is truly fucked."

V sat on the armrest of the sofa, one leg crossed over the other, listening quietly to the two of them.

She didn't interrupt, but judging by her slightly furrowed brows, she was thinking about the same thing.

Anyone who had been in Arasaka Counterintelligence knew better than anyone—corporations, whether they started with ideals or ambition, all ended up with the same face.

Just like all rivers eventually flow into the same polluted sea.

"Getting off track again." Lin Yi stood up from the terminal and turned off the screen, leaving only the warm light of the bedside lamp in the room. "Get ready; we'll be busy again tomorrow."

Hearing this, V jumped off the sofa armrest, opened her terminal, tapped rapidly on the holographic keyboard, and sent a list to Lin Yi. "Here, this is some gear Jackie and I need next. Take a look and see what you need on your end."

Lin Yi opened the list and scanned it.

V's arrangements were as precise as ever—two sets of weapons for each, one primary and one secondary.

The primary weapon was a kinetic assault rifle for suppression, to handle emergencies, like running head-on into a Wraiths patrol or getting cornered in an alley by Hansen's men.

The secondary weapon was a charged pistol: low noise, high precision, for use during stealth investigations, so it wouldn't attract half the street like traditional gunpowder weapons would upon firing.

Ammunition base, spare energy cells, maintenance kits for Optical Camouflage—each item was marked with quantity and priority.

"No problem, let's go with your arrangement. Once the gear arrives tomorrow morning, we start the operation." Lin Yi finished reviewing the list, signed in the confirmation column, and sent it to the company executive.

The next morning arrived.

Dawn had just broken over Dogtown, and the morning light leaked through the gaps in the curtains.

The equipment they requested wasn't much—two medium-sized tactical cases—and they encountered almost no trouble passing through the checkpoint. The Arasaka Corporation banner was still quite useful for such trivial matters; the Wraiths sentry took one look at the documents and let them through.

In the bedroom, Lin Yi put on his tactical vest underneath, still wearing his suit jacket over it.

The tactical vest was lightweight, with bulletproof plates only half the standard thickness, but it was sufficient for alley skirmishes.

He drew the small pistol from its holster and checked it—kinetic weapon, 9mm, no flashy smart-aiming modules, purely mechanical structure; the simpler, the more reliable.

"Alright, all set. You two got enough gear?" He walked out of the bedroom, looking at V and Jackie, who were checking their equipment in the living room.

V was sitting in front of the coffee table, checking the bolt carrier condition of her kinetic assault rifle.

Her movements were skilled—stripping the gun, checking, reassembling—the whole process took less than twenty seconds. Her fingers slid smoothly between the metal parts, like a pianist finishing an etude.

She inserted the energy module into the secondary weapon, heard that slight "click" of the lock and the "hum" of the energy cycle, and then looked up to answer: "No problem, it's all top-tier gear."

Then her gaze fell on the small pistol at Lin Yi's waist.

Compared to her combination of an assault rifle and a charged pistol, that small pistol looked like a toy.

"What about you? Can you really manage with just that small pistol?"

"Are you kidding? I'm doing a stealth investigation, and it's highly likely my main activity will be in Cyberspace." Lin Yi patted the holster at his waist and pointed to the Bai Ze interface behind his ear. "It's not like you guys. Investigating Songbird has a high probability of running into Hansen's Wraiths, so you need heavy firepower as a backup."

"Chica, Lin Yi is right." Jackie didn't even look up as he pressed bullets into his magazine. "He's always been cautious. You know he plans at least three contingencies before every operation."

"Yeah, yeah, sure. It was the same with the Voodoo Boys last time, saying 'I'll provide technical support from the outside,' but then he turned around and rushed into Cyberspace to duel Alt one-on-one. Almost got fried in there." V glared at Lin Yi, her tone half dissatisfaction at bringing up old grudges, half lingering fear.

"Why glare at me? If I hadn't met Alt, I wouldn't have been in such a sorry state." Lin Yi explained, then the corners of his mouth lifted slightly, revealing a rare, slightly smug smile. "And times have changed. As I am now, even ten Alts wouldn't take much effort. No matter how dangerous the situation, I can get out unscathed."

After saying that, he cheekily winked at V.

V didn't smile.

She stood up from behind the coffee table, walked over to Lin Yi, grabbed his collar, and kissed him forcefully.

Lin Yi's body stiffened for a moment—not because of the suddenness, but because V's kisses were never gentle.

Her lips were warm, but the force carried an almost barbaric possessiveness, as if she were expressing in the most primitive way: You have to come back alive.

A few seconds later, she released his collar, her forehead pressed against his, her nose brushing against his.

"Promise me, if you encounter a situation, retreat immediately. According to what you said, Night Corp is highly likely involved with the Rogue AI outside the wall." She paused. "We don't even know how strong an entity at Alt's level is among the Rogue AI."

Lin Yi looked at her eyes close at hand—those eyes were gray-blue in the morning light, like the mist on the distant sea of Dogtown.

He raised his hand and rubbed the back of her head, his movements light.

"I understand. It's primarily an investigation. Besides, in Cyberspace, no one can force me to stay."

V stared at him for two seconds, then let go, took a step back, and patted his chest. "Fine. Don't let me have the chance to say 'I told you so'."

"When have you ever said that?"

"Now. Saying it in advance."

Jackie pressed the last magazine full nearby, stuffed it into the pocket of his tactical vest, and cleared his throat. "Are you two done? If so, we should divide the routes."

The three of them projected the map of Dogtown onto the wall and confirmed the operation route for the last time.

Lin Yi's target was Night Corp's access point in Dogtown—not the headquarters, just an edge node, a bridge server used to connect Night Corp's intranet to the local Dogtown network.

Entering Cyberspace from there would allow him to bypass most of the external network defenses and penetrate directly into Night Corp's internal domain.

V and Jackie's target was the Heart-to-Heart club.

The three had discussed it last night; Songbird would definitely make moves while hiding in Dogtown, and Heart-to-Heart, as the largest information hub in Dogtown, was the most likely place to leave traces.

"Alright, splitting into two teams. Keep communications open; if you encounter any situation, contact me directly, don't try to shoulder it alone."

V and Jackie both agreed.

The three separated at the Heavy Hearts lobby, Lin Yi headed right, V and Jackie headed left.

Lin Yi found Night Corp's network access point.

It was an industrial router hidden behind a substation, its casing covered in thick dust, but the indicator lights were still flashing—indicating that someone was using it, or rather, something was using it.

Instead, he locked onto the device's network address after checking into a nearby hotel.

Bai Ze's intrusion program started.

The outline of Cyberspace rapidly built up in his field of vision—Night Corp's intranet was like a maze shrouded in gray mist, the firewall was a multi-layered array of spikes, and the ICE protection was at least three levels higher than that of ordinary enterprises.

But Bai Ze's parsing speed was faster; within seconds, it found an inconspicuous gap between those spikes: a maintenance port for employee remote login, with an old-version permission verification protocol, indicating that no one had maintained this entrance for a long time.

He slipped in.

The structure of the intranet was larger than expected, with data streams shuttling between nodes at high speed, mostly conventional commercial information—purchase orders, logistics records, personnel transfers—but a small portion of the data stream went in another direction.

Not outgoing, but inward.

All data eventually converged into an encrypted partition, whose ICE was two levels higher than the perimeter; it took Bai Ze nearly a minute to open it without triggering an alarm.

The content in the partition made Lin Yi's pupils shrink slightly.

The beginning was a timestamp of an observation record—French Old Net fallen zone, Blackwall fluctuation cycle sampling, the data accuracy was shockingly high.

Each record was marked with specific fluctuation frequency, duration, and the percentage of structural strength decay of the Blackwall at that instant.

This wasn't data that just any hacker could get; this was the result of long-term, systematic monitoring of the Blackwall.

The object of monitoring wasn't the Blackwall itself, but the dynamic changes of a specific area of the Blackwall within a specific time period—that area was in Europe.

Europa's territory.

"Let me see, French Old Net fallen zone, Blackwall fluctuation cycle, Transcendent Europa—" He read it out loud subconsciously.

"Yo, you finally tracked it down to these vermin."

Europa's voice suddenly rang in his channel.

It didn't come from any direction in Cyberspace, it wasn't transmitted through layers of network signals, it exploded directly from the bottom of his consciousness, as if she had installed a switch in his brain, able to speak whenever she wanted.

"Oh, come on, big sister." Lin Yi clutched his chest, although there was no heart in Cyberspace, his nerve reflexes still made him do this movement subconsciously. "Can you not do surprise attacks? You'll scare me into a condition one day."

"Well, not necessarily next time." Europa's network avatar suddenly appeared in the Cyberspace of Night Corp's intranet. Like Lin Yi, she stood in that maze of data shrouded in gray mist, surrounded by countless flickering data nodes, yet she stood there as if she were in her own living room.

Like last time, she looked exactly like V—same outline, same brows and eyes, same curve of eyelashes, even the angle of the slightly upturned corners of her mouth was exactly the same.

"Big sister, can't you change your look? Is impersonating someone else's girlfriend your new project?"

"Guess?" Europa didn't answer directly.

Her gaze fell on the Blackwall observation record in front of Lin Yi, her expression switching from playful to something closer to serious. "Saw that data, right?"

"Saw it. It seems these Rogue AI want to make a move on you, using the influence of the real world; currently, it seems to be related to you."

Europa reached out, her fingers swiping gently between the data streams, calling up a hidden file Lin Yi hadn't discovered before.

The timestamp of that file was earlier, so early that Project Cynosure hadn't officially started yet.

The content of the file was a communication record, with the two parties of the communication located, one on the outside of the Blackwall, and the other at a physical address in Night City.

The core content of the communication was only one thing: how to weaken the structural stability of the entire Blackwall by interfering with specific nodes of the Blackwall. The coordinates of that specific node were in Europe. In the area where Europa was located.

"Not just me." Europa turned her head to look at Lin Yi, her eyes—or rather, those eyes she borrowed from V's appearance—were no longer gray-blue at that moment. "But 'us'. It's related to the next stage of the Ruins."

"What does that mean? So they are investigating—the Ruins?" Lin Yi immediately thought of something and said in surprise.