Chapter 136 - 94: Happy Birthday

John lay on the bed, gazing out at the colorful nightscape. From the Bolago Club’s member lounge, overlooking the city, it seemed to transform into a squirming, living creature.The neon lights turned into overlapping halos, like the eyes of a giant beast. The black, hard lines were its body, and when cut open, only technology and violence would spill out.

"You’ve been through a lot."

The purple-haired girl lay naked beside him, clutching a metal e-cigarette with her slender fingers.

"Not by me, but by this city. John, why do you put yourself in such a mess?"

She embraced John from behind—his shoulders were broad, sturdy, radiating a comforting warmth.

Their breathing became smooth and long.

"From this angle, Eden City looks so unfamiliar. I thought wielding a gun on the street would make life better."

"Didn’t it?"

"It’s more fucked up. Life’s a mess, and I can’t see the way."

John let out a heavy breath, like a high-powered device dissipating heat in the traditional way.

The purple-haired girl turned around and straddled him from the front.

John’s head was held in her lap.

He lifted his arms to embrace, caressing the synthetic leather, the metallic lines, feeling the primal heartbeat hidden beneath this technologically modified body.

The rhythm seemed like a lullaby.

The purple-haired girl rested her chin on his forehead too.

"If you feel life is terrible, stop thinking about what you’ve lost. Turn around and take stock of what you still have."

She adjusted to make John more comfortable.

"If this city screws you over, being despondent will only excite it more. You have to fight back, take stock of your aces, use every chip to its fullest, and give it a few hard hits; only then will you feel satisfied..."

The single-person resting room was unlit.

Cyan-blue light shone through the floor-to-ceiling glass onto the two bodies.

John slowly opened his eyes.

He became proactive, lifting the other, watching as the purple strands scattered again on the white sheet, and gently kissed...

Everyone is a vessel.

Filled with alcohol, desire, or even money.

Ideally, it should be filled with love.

Even if the heart is like a funnel, the strong body heat can block the gaps and provide temporary solace.

Whoosh—

Eisenberg RCH drifted and turned in the parking lot.

The metallic hood raised high, accompanied by the unique sound wave of a top-tier engine roaring away.

The night wind was caught in the collar of the aluminum-glass coat.

The colorful street scenes constantly shifted, with dappled lights reflected on the retina, and wet neon crushed under wheels...

John had to admit Oulos was remarkable.

The indulgence therapy she recommended was indeed effective. After crazily venting the pressure with desire, rationality returned. The current situation still had room to maneuver.

[Eden City III Landfill]

The motorcycle projected a cone of light into the dark wasteland, growling like beasts prowling.

John walked into the towering block maze on foot.

City landfill operations had long been automated. Giant heavy-industrial machines regularly tidied and compressed, causing slight daily changes in the landscape.

[Device: Black Spider]

[Status: Temporarily absent [Please restart the system]]

Through the Atlanta Virtual Network, John located the fully charged hibernating Black Spider at the edge of the garbage mountain. Chapters fırst released on novelhall.com

Black Light’s restricted functions were more than imagined.

He didn’t expect even the Black Spider to be rendered useless; excavating windfall work had to be halted, but most critically, prosthetic limb remnants with biological information were becoming harder to find...

Those were crucial materials for creating the Special Inhibitor.

John had a set of temporary equipment at the landfill.

He accessed Black Spider closely, Black Light flickering, yet seemingly obscured by an invisible barrier.

[Restart failed, deployment command invalid.]

John sighed and continued accessing.

The captain’s last return, crashing during the time net surveillance used Black Ice, still preserved some materials with the two Black Spiders.

[Loading material list...]

[Special Consumables X2]

[Windfall account x1]

[Pending visit item x1]

John first turned the prosthetic limb remnants into inhibitors, then injected them into his neck, continuing to monitor the critical value.

No miracle occurred.

The Special Inhibitor became an unreadable chip, and the windfall account swipe failed too.

Expected.

John wasn’t overly annoyed, shifting attention to the pending visit item.

It was just a broken wrist data slot.

In the Cyberpunk era, basic body modifications were common, with the most typical being neck slots for both communication operating systems and extractable wrist data cables.

John lifted it, scrutinized it for a few seconds...

A familiar dizziness struck, accompanied by tinnitus, then suddenly the scene before his eyes changed.

It felt like viewing a Super Sensing Chip.

In his vision was a ceiling with a yellow light, his limbs restrained on a metal bed frame.

The image flickered continuously.

A burly man in a white tank top appeared, then immediately tightened his grip around John’s throat.

His frail limbs tensed.

The cursing and roaring by his ear continued for a while, then red stains spread on the sheet.

[Detecting remnants, material extraction analysis in progress.]

[Biological Information - Dijie Dans, Resident Database Retrieval...]

John broke free from the hallucination.

[Mission: Happy Birthday]

[Reward: Compensation (Variable)]

This was the third time John had triggered a mission in the landfill.