How To Live as a Cyberpunk Solver

131. rest

Leonard jabbed his ear with his little finger. There is no abnormality in the auditory module, and even if there is an abnormality, it is not a property to be physically corrected, but there is a psychological improvement effect. Broker Jake yelled with a brain chip.

-3,500 credits! 3,500 credits! Do you know that requests over 3,000 are common these days?!

“Hmm… I guess it’s common…”

-that’s! well, you can do that

The broker has been looking for a job for a long time. It’s a common scavenger quest, but the pay was pretty good. The Leonard Walker of the year before would have accepted it without asking or questioning.

“There is still work to be done from the last job, and we have to prepare for the opening of the hotel, so this time it is difficult.”

Leonard Walker this year was a little different. Ants who worked hard in the summer had the right to enjoy a cozy tunnel life in the winter. The seasonally gutted broker immediately rebelled.

-Think of when you decided to become a fixer! Think of a time when you decided to make the world a little better! What can I do for the poor gangster, is there any way to help the poor scavenger! Remind yourself of your original intention that you struggled with every day!

“What bullshit?”

It’s a very obvious thing to say, but it’s a life of a fixer who started to earn credit. It was okay to take a short break as long as I didn’t run out of credits.

-How do people change? Was our friendship only like this? If you’re going to do this, don’t contact me again in the future!

“really? Shall we not contact you?”

-…Don’t you know how to exaggerate? I’m exaggerating the fact that I’m so angry, so listen with a moderate filter.

Fixers like Leonard are rare, but brokers like Jake are rare, so it was a mutual loss to cut ties. Jake, the broker, overruled the one-minute call, mumbling for a long time before reluctantly ending it. Then Max looked up and raised his hand.

“If Mr. Leonard is busy, shall I do it?”

“Are you alone?”

“Isn’t it time to end your internship now?”

Leonard glanced at the cocky intern, Max, and slapped him on the back of the head.

“We are still far away.”

“Oh, why! Now I can easily take down mutants!”

“At least say an implant.”

His brain worked well, he was good at weapons and equipment, he followed Leonard and made friends, and he was good at sniping, so if it wasn’t for hand-to-hand combat, he did enough for one person. However, from the perspective of a veteran who has been rolling for nearly a decade, he was like a child put out on the water.

“I have to work to get implants. Giving pocket money as much as snot…”

Today was a day when many people pouted their lips. But in the end, it was a good decision. The real big thing came when you didn’t expect it.

@Leonard and Max took a few days off while commuting to and from 18th to 8th Street. This huge city of sin did not stop incidents and accidents even if one solver was shut down. A lot happened every day.

“Psycho cyborgs have appeared again.”

Sigma mk1 said while brewing flavored coffee. Leonard casually took a coffee cup and saw mk2 running a silent vacuum cleaner. With two Sigmas, work efficiency doubled and electricity bills doubled.

“At home, I only use the main unit.”

Even though the maintenance cost has gone up, the number of insectivores has increased. Sigma ‘s’ looked at them at the same time.

“Unit 1 is so big that you can’t clean every nook and cranny.”

“Each has its own use, so please use it at your own discretion.”

“If that doesn’t work, I’ll run it in sleep mode.”

“no. I want to save power. Please keep working on the body.”

Tuck the coffee cup! put it down

“Because you’re crazy, just say one thing! No, you two run the same process, right? Why are you talking like a stranger?”

In terms of people, it would be like wearing a hand puppet and conversing with ventriloquism. The self-learning function must have been turned on for too long, and it became something like a monster. Max joined the conversation as he tastelessly gorged on grain porridge.

“Why a psycho cyborg? Doesn’t that always come out?”

“After three cases yesterday, one case has been added this morning.”

“That’s huge.”

Leonard connected to the public channel with a brain chip. Real-time news popped up in the upper left corner of my field of vision. An announcer is reporting psycho cyborg damage against an overturned corporate vehicle and broken asphalt in the background. While the identity of the perpetrator, the number of casualties, and the amount of damage are displayed in subtitles, the armored vehicle with the ‘FAP’ mark hastily left.

“There is an average of 2.7 cases per day.”

“Eh? You thought it would happen once every two or three days, right?”

“Why not?”

‘Snowball’ released to the market has not been completely recovered. The price has plummeted so big players don’t handle it, but if it’s free, it’s full of scavengers who don’t mind viruses, so it will take several years for it to disappear completely.

“And there’s a psycho chip.”

Even though Leonard wiped it out once, the Liberation Front’s psycho chips were still roaming the alleys. Temporarily improving implant performance was a great advantage. It’s not addictive like Snowball, and it was rumored that it was okay once or twice, so I bought it like a self-defense weapon.

“You can’t trust human self-control. Wouldn’t it be okay up to three times, wouldn’t it be okay if I added just one more time, I can’t help it because it’s really dangerous this time.”

“Ah, there must be a lot of people with no concept like that?”

“How many residents of Junk Town?”

Even if there was only one in a thousand, ten thousand came out. I got goose bumps when I thought there were 10,000 psycho cyborgs.

“Now you just have to see it as a daily routine.”

Leonard closed the channel. Because of that, I missed some important information, but the devil of Sodom, who protects the fixer, fed me directly with a spoon.

“Leonard! Leonard Walker!”

The door of the fixer’s office was shaking. I had a bad memory like a heart that was surprised when I grew up, so Leonard, Max, and Sigma mk1 pulled out their guns all at once. There was a bell, but the class that didn’t press it was innocent even if you doubt it.

“Boo, boo, break it!”

“I don’t think that’s polite. Oh, don’t talk, stay still.”

It wasn’t one person. There was one more woman with an impressive voice. Leonard’s gang looked at each other and quietly lowered their guns.

“Are you bald?”

“If you say that, you confuse me with Jake.”

‘Skinhead’ Kruger. Then A-040 City’s solver, Elia Garden, came.

@Junktown’s hospitality is polite if you don’t point a gun to the head.

If you offer a chair, you are hospitable, and if you serve coffee and snacks, you are warmly welcome. It meant that it was a harsh and dangerous world.

“The condition is not very good.”

Leonard handed out the coffee and scanned the situation. The two solvers who decided to pursue the Liberation Front ended up in a mess. Skinhead ate one of his boasted Charge Arms, and Elaia had a large steel frame driven into her abdomen. They were injuries that would have killed a living human like Max from shock and excessive blood loss.

“I have to go see the doctor, why are you here?”

Even cyborgs can be dangerous if their vital organs are damaged, but judging by how casually they drink coffee, it seems like they cleverly avoided fatal injuries. It was a good thing when the implant rate was high.

“Mr. Leonard, don’t you watch the news?”

The skinhead took a shot of coffee and asked in reverse. It was flavored coffee with almost no caffeine, so it was just thirst quenching. Leonard asked Sigma for another drink.

“I can’t take care of it all the time.”

“I am a psycho cyborg.”

“Ah, I saw that a while ago.”

the world was small A-044 Maybe the city is smaller than I thought. Max quickly turned on the TV. The news was just coming out. Actually, it’s not ‘finished’, it’s a scoop, so it keeps coming out, but it became a material to join the topic.

-I emphasize once again, this case is not an ordinary psycho-cyborg crime. It is a planned crime targeting Highlane Inc., and a vicious terrorist act threatening A-044 City.

-In this regard, the Bureau of Investigation is focusing on securing the criminal’s memory and identifying the person behind it…

Their focused gaze went back to their respective seats for a moment.

“Were you there?”

“This is 7-1 Avenue.”

“Who is the culprit?”

“It’s been torn apart by the minigun, so there’s nothing to be found if you investigate.”

Public security authorities’ announcements seemed to be treated as nonsense, as always. Since information is controlled for the reason of preventing civil unrest, the witnesses at the scene were accurate in this case.

“The Liberation Front?”

“In conclusion, yes.”

Leonard looked at Elia Garden, who was twisting uncomfortably. I couldn’t even drink coffee because I had a hole in my stomach.

“It will take some courses, too.”

When Leonard showed interest, the two solvers were obviously delighted. Seeing that, it was clear why he had come to Leonard’s office instead of going to the implant doctor.

“According to Mr. Leonard’s advice, we reverse tracked the psycho chips distributed by the Liberation Front. It wasn’t easy because they were very cautious.”

I was caught selling snowballs through a gang, and I was caught scattering psycho chips through a broker – Dirty Hancock – and if I wasn’t careful here, I wasn’t human.

“result?”

“It took a while, but we were able to find a distributor.”

“Seeing that you’re talking from there, you’re stuck at that point?”

“Yes. He immediately put the psycho chip in and went on a rampage.”

As Leonard has been through many times, it was not easy to subdue an opponent whose eyeballs were flipped. Since the two aren’t implant hackers, they must have built a beehive.

“Does the drug dealer use medicine? A drug that might also make you a psycho?”

Max pointed out. But the experienced Leonard thought otherwise.

“Because he belongs to the Liberation Front, he could have overdone himself to keep the secret. Because if you become a psycho, your brain chip will melt and you can erase the information.”

“That’s right. It is clear that he belongs to a terrorist group under the circumstances. But what he was trying to hide was not his gang member.”

Skinheads saw their partners once and watched TV once.

“I had a technician I know restore the half-melted chip. He’s worth the credit. There is no upper line or hideout information, but some information about the customer who traded chips has been obtained.”

Leonard followed the skinhead’s gaze and watched the TV that was still illuminating the scene.

“Is that it?”

It was rare for a psycho cyborg to run amok in White Town. Unless the culprit is an 18-year-old boy from an entrepreneurial family with citizenship. The Sigma mk2 revealed discomfort without filtering with more flexible facial muscles than the main body.

“Beyond fixers, gangsters, and scavengers, they use even immature kids.”

“Implant performance is better in those kids.”

Since they were born on earth, they had extraordinary ability to adapt to implants. Being the son and daughter of a rich family, the quality was nothing to speak of. However, it was not a reason to use it as a weapon.