Chapter 45: Countermeasure

On the elevated platform to the left of the server racks, the young man was covered in wounds.

His Gorilla Arms hissed as the pneumatic vents spat out exhaust from overheating, yet he remained utterly oblivious, driving heavy punches into the solid wall.

Even a wall reinforced with a steel plate in the core could not withstand such a barrage from the Gorilla Arms. Spiderweb-like cracks began to spread across its surface. His knuckles were caked in grit and torn flesh, leaving a bloody imprint with every single blow.

The remaining Voodoo Boys lingered with lingering fear, glancing at each other in bewilderment as Slider's voice echoed throughout the Voodoo Boys' workshop.

"Upload a few daemon glitches to him, trace who he is, and drag him in here. If he's from New America, beat him half to death and dump him outside—"

"Better yet, plant a netrunner construct in him."

"If he's just a mercenary, kill him outright."

The eyes of the Voodoo Boys lit up in unison. Electric arcs surged across the young mercenary's body, and he collapsed to his knees, convulsing violently.

At that moment, his cyberware optics were fully dilated, trembling incessantly. His head shook slightly, and he muttered indistinct words under his breath.

The Voodoo Boys slowly approached the kneeling Lin Yue. One of them gritted his teeth, raised the butt of his rifle high, and brought it down viciously against the back of Lin Yue's head!

With a dull thud, Lin Yue's eyes stopped trembling, as if he had suddenly regained consciousness.

The next second, his eyelids snapped shut heavily, and he slumped forward onto the ground.

"Li vréman kont (What a lunatic)," the Voodoo Boy who had mustered the courage to knock Lin Yue out cursed in Haitian Creole, his voice trembling. "Lift him up. Let's see if we can dig up anything from his external storage."

As they spoke, two of them hoisted Lin Yue up like a dead dog. The one giving orders pulled a neural interface cable from his wrist and plugged it straight into the port at the back of Lin Yue's neck.

The man's eyes lit up as he began a thorough search.

A few minutes passed, and the man muttered in confusion:

"What the hell... how is there absolutely nothing?"

Suddenly, the Voodoo Boy who had been hacking into Lin Yue began to shake violently. Wisps of pale smoke rose from his scalp, accompanied by the foul stench of burning flesh and scorched hair. The man's eyes rolled back, and he collapsed onto the floor in a seizure.

[Incoming Call: V]

Due to the temporary loss of consciousness, Lin Yue was unable to answer the call.

Meanwhile, back in her office, V sensed that Lin Yue's corporate personal ICE had been breached, and she hastily dialed the line of her Dogtown contact.

[The subscriber you have dialed is out of the service area]

V's heart immediately plummeted to the depths. Several consecutive redials ended in failure.

As if a sudden thought struck her—

"Send a priority report to the Special Operations Group. Get people into Dogtown, now!"

V had never anticipated that Lin Yue would run into trouble at this critical juncture. That ICE was something she had personally installed into Lin Yue's system; it would only trigger a counter-attack if an outsider directly plugged into his skull to extract data... Which meant Lin Yue had already completely lost the ability to resist.

"Shit!"

When frustrated, V had a habit of letting loose a string of profanities, ill-fitting though they might be for her refined appearance.

The Counter-Intelligence subordinates, who carried out V's orders, watched their superior vent in a low, furious growl. They wisely pulled their necks in and busied themselves in front of their monitors.

...

The dark, winding corridor was covered in fluorescent Voodoo Boy graffiti, illuminated only by a few flickering emergency lights.

Beneath their feet ran thick clusters of network cables, appearing to lead straight down into a sunless abyss.

Slider's voice echoed through the tunnel: "I'm almost certain this rat is from the Joint Logistics Agency... Cough, cough. Militech's ICE frying your brains... is only to be expected. Drag him in... let me see what the JLA is up to this time."

Then, his tone shifted to a mix of complaint and helpless reproach, "Heartless animals. They've gone and killed nearly everyone."

In the darkness, Lin Yue slowly opened his eyes, his head lowered.

He had regained consciousness the moment the rifle butt struck his skull. The hurried process of breaking through the [Cyberpsychosis] had plunged him into a horrific nightmare.

In the dream, all the efforts he had made turned to smoke. There were no corporations, no partners—only the pathetic wanderer Lin Yue, drifting endlessly across a desolate wasteland.

Lin Yue swore to himself he would never experience that sensation a second time.

Right now, all he wanted was to reach Slider and lay out his true intentions.

Unaware that Lin Yue had woken up, the Voodoo Boys continued to grumble to each other in Haitian Creole. They mostly complained about how heartless Slider was—knowing people were going to die, yet still ordering that unfortunate bastard to jack into this guy, reducing a man's life to ash in a split second.

Slider's netrunner den was somewhat smaller than Hamster's, but that didn't mean the hacker lacked capability. Strictly speaking, he was an informant for the New America Joint Logistics Agency, forced to hole up in Dogtown to hide after New America caught him with his hand in the cookie jar.

Lin Yue was tossed unceremoniously onto the floor. Before the two Voodoo Boys could utter a word, Lin Yue suddenly pushed himself up with both hands, sprang to his feet, and dropped one of them with a single punch. He followed up by smashing the butt of his pistol into the second man's temple. A dark, pitch-black muzzle now pointed steadily at the hacker sitting in the neural chair, whose eyes were heavily scarred.

Slider's attire was undeniably comical: brightly colored striped trousers, sandals, and dreadlocks styled in the quintessential Haitian Voodoo Boys aesthetic.

He froze for a fraction of a second, silently listening to the movements of the intruder before letting out a cold chuckle. "Hmph. Who the hell are you?"

Lin Yue never moved the muzzle of his gun away from him as he slowly walked up to Slider.

"Where is Samir?"

Slider spread his hands. "Among the ones you just ventilated with your gun, one of them happened to be Samir."

Lin Yue fell silent for a moment before speaking, "I want to make a deal with you."

It was a painfully familiar scene.

Reed and V had fought their way into Slider's hideout seeking a way to contact Songbird, whereas he had fought his way in here seeking the capital to survive.

Slider cocked his head, straining to pinpoint Lin Yue's position. "If I hadn't seen your face on the security cameras, I would've thought an old friend of mine from New America had come knocking. You say you want to make a deal... but you're pointing a gun at me, my friend."

Lin Yue took a deep breath. The excruciating throbbing in his skull and the heavy numbness in his legs forced him to slowly slide down and sit against the wall opposite Slider.

<div>"I only want that behavioral-pattern facial plate. Name your price—as for your men, if they had just listened to me, I would've gladly paid the cost to acquire it cleanly. But unfortunately, they didn't even give me a chance... So they brought this on themselves."</div>

Slider's netrunner chair glided forward until he stopped right in front of Lin Yue. "You still haven't told me whose dog you are. Donk dim sa (What do you want)?"

"I'm just a mercenary working for Arasaka. That piece of cyberware is crucial to me. Name your price." Lin Yue had lost the patience for political maneuvering and bluntly laid out his identity.

Slider laughed.

"In a sense... you're just another dog caught by the corporations, sharing the same fate as my namesake... A dog they call Slider."

"That New American piece of cyberware has already been reserved by Hands here in Dogtown. I can hand it over to you if you want it—since you've killed so many of my people, even Mr. Hands will believe it was stolen by force."

"But... you're an Arasaka man."

"That makes it very hard for me to trust you, my friend..."

Slider's muffled voice echoed dully through the sweltering, airless netrunner den...