How To Live as a Cyberpunk Solver

127. puppet

Leonard straightened and fastened the thong of his shoulder holster over his black shirt and put on his bulletproof coat.

After moving my shoulders and elbows a little in case it would be intrusive, I put two revolvers, four speed loaders, and a military knife that were neatly placed on the table into their respective seats. The weight of the shoulders and back was very stable.

“great.”

I retrieved the jack connected to the Sigma socket and restarted the Hexagon system. I organized the programs that filled my sight one by one, leaving only the essentials. With this, you are ready to go out.

“I am ready too!”

Max had a lot more to pack. He wore a 9mm semi-automatic pistol on his thigh, a sawed-off shotgun on his waist, and packed various magazines and shotgun cells into his chest rig worn like a vest.

This is the basic armament, and a sniper rifle, submachine gun, and long sword were added to the duffel bag that looked like a guitar bag. If you add up to the weight of that bullet, it was by no means light.

“But you don’t know where to go?”

Leonard shook his head. It’s not a denial, it’s because I contacted you on time.

-I am a broker! It’s not informational!

The ‘broker’ Jake profile smiled brightly and got angry. It was a new, but not tense picture.

“Did you find it?”

Otherwise, I couldn’t have contacted you first. Indeed, a grinning sound was heard.

-I spent some credit on the bandits. It’s hard to make a living after the last raid, so it’s no joke to whine. There is no suitable place to drill a new hole, and the number of cases is the number of cases, but the calculation…

“If the information is accurate, double it.”

The power of capital was great. The broker sent the data without further ado and hung up. Looking at the time, it was faster than usual, and it took less than 30 seconds. Max made a suspicious expression.

“Are you really going to pay twice as much?”

Including the information fee from the last time, it exceeded 1,000 credits. Doubling that amount was 2,000 credits, so even a huge request was a burden. But Leonard had a corner to believe.

“Is the suburb a bit large? I can’t find it all at once.”

“Oh yeah?”

“If it’s that easy to find, would you rather hire a bandit or a fixer?”

Leonard grabbed the car keys and stabbed Max in the head.

“You will have to suffer for a few days. Be prepared.”

@Luck is luck because it comes when you don’t expect it.

It is a case of darts thrown with eyes closed all stuck right in the middle. It was a miraculous peak, but it was far from a victory according to the rules.

In this wide wilderness, I found the puppet crew at once. Neither the bandit who asked for the information, nor the broker who brokered it were unbelievable.

“Corporate dog! A pest that eats mankind! I will be purified by the flame!”

Leonard and Max quickly lowered themselves. A crazy cyborg, probably a psycho, opened fire with light machine guns in both hands.

The warehouse door, which had been blown away by the rain and wind, could not hold out for a few seconds and lay down on the ground. Beyond that, the fixer duo, who barely escaped, had to avoid blind bullets and become one with the floor.

“Isn’t that hardship not like this hardship?”

Max shouted, covering his ears. The sound of bullets hitting cans didn’t make it through, but it was clearly not a good sound.

“Can you shoot me?”

“I beg your pardon? Did you do something wrong?”

“yes. Will it be difficult here?”

“I agree to withdraw too!”

They couldn’t communicate at all, but they looked satisfied with each other.

This was an old-time bunker 33km north of Head Town. In fact, it was a hideout built by several temporary buildings in the dirty sewer where the bunker bandits seemed to be having a meat party by peeling mutant skins.

In fact, before the raid on A-044 City, there was a group of powerful bandits who made a hideout here, but after being played by Wildkid and swept away by the FDF (Federal Defense Force), it was empty. After that, it was neglected for a long time, and recently a new group took over.

It was possible to avoid the pollutants that occasionally blown up, and there were some bandits secretly coveted because there was something similar to an electrical facility, so rumors spread quickly in the wasteland without the knowledge of the bandit.

“Ah, it stopped.”

There is no infinite magazine in the world, so even if you shoot with a cartridge at all, the floor is eventually exposed. Max gleefully grabbed the sniper rifle and tried to turn around, but Leonard quickly caught it and put it back. Like this, I owed one life today.

Bang bang! thump-!

When the light machine gun ran out of ammunition, he started grinding full-auto shotguns in pairs. It was surprising to see where the weapons that would make even the federal forces laugh out loud came from. So there was no need to doubt that they were the puppet gang.

“aaa… that’s a real psycho!”

It was not a psycho in the modern sense of melted brain chips, but a real psycho in the pure sense. With that evidence, they couldn’t even attempt hacking.

“All external signals have been blocked.”

That’s why the implant doesn’t work properly. It didn’t receive a signal from the brain chip, so it operated randomly and then stopped without warning. Depending on the implant rate, I could never live long. If a liver or pancreas is implanted, you will live for a day, but if a heart or lung is implanted, in the worst case, you can die in 3 minutes.

“He is a suicide bomber. Wait, is it supposed to be a suicide turret?”

“I don’t know what to say! Try something!”

Opponents who cannot hack brain chips have already experienced it several times. Such was the case with Psycho Cyborg and Junk Machine. In other words, hacking the implant itself is the way to go…

‘Both legs have implants, but they have already stopped functioning…’

It was close to a psycho turret that only grinds guns in place. Looking at it, the bullets would run out after about 10 minutes, and after about 30 minutes, the organs would be destroyed and die on their own, but I couldn’t wait until then. Leonard turned his attention to the outside. And the attention of the psycho turned together.

Pajijik-! Pot-!

Being called an implant hacker didn’t just hack implants. Leonard activated all electronic devices in the hideout that could interfere.

The spotlights turned on all at once, the slot machine rolled with a ding-ding-dong sound, and the warning alarm rang loudly before sparking and exploding. The psycho, who was out of his mind and was drooling and gunning, convulsively chased light and sound. As the muzzle turned left and right, the skilled fixer did not miss the opportunity.

“now!”

Leonard pulled out his revolver, and Max held on to the ‘Winterfield’ sniper rifle he hadn’t fired before. The psycho turret knew that it had been deceived too late, or instinctively returned its muzzle, but it was already too late. Scratching the gun cavity, the metal that escaped along with the spark heated the air and pounded the psycho’s head and heart.

“The last… hope is…”

Psycho opened his arms and muttered something, but his breath stopped before he could power up his auditory module, and he fell backwards. Leonard and Max cautiously approached with their guns pointed just in case. Seen with the naked eye or with the eyes of the machine, death was certain.

“Phew. It’s been hard since the beginning.”

Leonard put the revolver in his holster and picked up the shotgun that had fallen to the floor. It was a tactical shotgun + 32-round drum magazine for the Big Ground Company, which is rare on the street. When I pulled out a cell and checked it, it was filled with 10-gauge iron beads that seemed to catch even an elephant mutant in one shot. Even a bulletproof coat was useless if you got a direct hit from a monster gun like this.

“This guy must be the boss.”

“Eh? The boss is Mr. Puppet, right?”

I didn’t explain it because it was a game expression. It was a difficult content for a kid who had never played a classic RPG.

“oh! I think this is the entrance!”

The temporary building outside was a guard post and warehouse. After going in a little bit, a huge drainage pipe reinforced with cement appeared. It seemed to be used as a full-fledged hideout, seeing as the wires were entangled overhead and the floor was paved flat.

“At this size, an 11-ton truck will come and go.”

Leonard gripped the shotgun with both hands and walked away.

“It is your favorite dungeon. let’s go.”

“I like dungeons full of artifacts, but I don’t like dungeons with psycho gangs.”

Still, if it was 20,000 credits, I was forced to like it. The fixer and assistant entered the darkness following the flickering lights.

@ Compared to the riots outside, the inside was quiet and peaceful.

I don’t know how it was in the old days, but it didn’t smell at all because it hadn’t been used for decades. The lighting was well installed, the clock was good, and the floor was flat, so it was nice to walk.

“stop.”

Leonard made a military-style fist signal and looked around. It was not a cozy residence with good facilities. An automatic turret hidden in a pile of crates raised its head with a whimper. However, Leonard’s response, already detected by heat and signals, was quick. The function was quickly stopped.

“I expected this much when the electricity came on.”

For a hacker like Leonard, circuit-powered defenses were no obstacle. Primitive booby traps, such as wire or pressure, are much trickier, but since they couldn’t have put such traps where their transport vehicles came and went, that wasn’t a problem either.

“Leonard, I’ve been thinking about it.”

Maybe it was because it was too safe, Max thought about it.

“Couldn’t these people’s purpose be real terrorism?”

“Isn’t this the story that ended last time?”

Leonard scanned the area and started moving again. Based on experience of sewage exploration, the joint is not far away.

“I said it was to attack the gang and leave no trace. But is it really necessary?”

“Otherwise, there will be a war with Tiger Claw. I was kind of concerned about it.”

“What about that person from before?”

Calling Leonard a ‘corporate dog’, he recalled the real psycho who shot him. The frenzied behavior was not an imitation of terrorism. The suicide terrorists who created the incident in the first place were not normal either.

“I don’t know if they gathered people with a grudge against the company or manipulated the brain chip like that, but is there any reason to use a corporate terrorist even as a security guard protecting the base?”

“It’s a good guard that can’t be hacked and doesn’t surrender.”

“You die in the end though. They are no better than seasoned mercenaries.”

Leonard said, ‘What does a child know!’ I seriously thought about it without thinking about it. Max lowered his voice and spoke in a whisper.

“Maybe. Maybe Puppet is a real anti-corporate terrorist group?”

“You attacked a gang, not a corporation.”

“The gang provides goods to corporate high-level people.”

“To disrupt the delivery of the item.”

“For that reason, it’s more effective to pop in the sorting factory where implants are stored than to pop in on the streets of Junk Town.”

“Maybe there was no information.”

“Are these people rich? Couldn’t get the information that Mr. Jake knew because he didn’t have credits?”

Sometimes intuition takes precedence over logic. Leonard intuited that Max was right and then deduced why.

“If the purpose itself is to deliver dummy to Kabuki…”

“Consciousness transmission, in fact, consciousness is not transmitted, but anyway, synchronizing the brain chip with an external device is very dangerous. It can be overloaded, and viruses can spread from connected devices.”

It’s a line that makes you feel worth starting higher education, but I postponed the praise for later. Leonard carefully laid out a certain assumption floating in his head.

“The purpose is not to sell the dummy, but to infiltrate the dummy into the corporate high-level?”

If so, Puppet is a real terrorist group, and Junk Town’s suicide bombing was a blueprint for real terrorism. Looking at the circumstances so far, there was a possibility.

I didn’t think it was a big deal because it was a dirty entertainment business, but there was an infiltration terrorism several times more terrifying than throwing a bomb outside a building and releasing a few psycho cyborgs. Leonard concluded in an absurd voice.

“It is absurd that this is not a corporate request, but a gang request.”