Chapter 46 Erasing the Secret

Swish!

A bullet zipped past Slider's scalp by a hair's breadth, shattering the thick network cable hanging over the back of his chair.

"Blind wrath in cyberspace, Wilkie Laguerre..." Lin Yue coughed up a mouthful of blood, the red-and-white contrast on his teeth making his smile somewhat terrifying.

"Regretting that you can't use a Kiroshi, right? That's the only downside to a brain injury. It means when a mercenary like me is standing right in front of you, you can't process me."

Slider tilted his head, listening to Lin Yue's words. His suspicion regarding the young man's Arasaka affiliation was answered by a bullet.

This apparent Arasaka operative seemed to know him quite well, and was equally familiar with netrunner intrusion techniques.

An obscure Voodoo Boys prophecy flickered inexplicably through his mind—that the followers of the prophet would know all things. The mystical nonsense he had previously scoffed at now seemed to be manifesting right before him in this young man.

Slider offered a helpless, bitter smile and muttered to himself, "I actually thought I was going to die at the hands of those bastards in the FIA. I never expected Arasaka could dig up so much dirt on me..."

"Yet I managed to fool your Arasaka netrunners, so how did you track me down? Heh... A lone wolf like you, it all makes sense if you're Arasaka's dog."

"Arasaka's dogs really are the most vicious!"

Lin Yue didn't see it that way. Leaving aside whether he was a dog or not—V was far more vicious than him. Did that woman need to come negotiate in person?

Seeing that Lin Yue remained silent, Slider slumped back into his decker chair, accepting his fate. "How did you find out about my occipital lobe injury? Humor a dying man and let me know, buddy."

Lin Yue adjusted his sitting posture. "Your quickhack was [Cyberpsychosis], right? You don't pull your punches, either. Nearly killed me."

Lin Yue deliberately avoided explaining how he knew about Slider. He always operated this way; after all, his memories of reincarnation were his greatest asset.

Slider was deeply surprised that Lin Yue had managed to shake it off. "That kind of hack... very few people can walk away from it. Looks like you've got a lot of confidence in your chrome. Ah, or should I say, you're... a beast."

"You don't have empathy or humanity deep down in your bones. This world is going to turn you into an untiring machine. To be honest, the moment you didn't go on a killing spree among my crew after shrugging off the hack, I already knew my hack had failed."

"To carve your way all the way in here with chrome of that magnitude... I can't imagine what you'd be like if you could install genuine corporate-grade hardware..."

Lin Yue felt that this eccentric netrunner's assessment was entirely inaccurate. He was a person with plenty of emotions, thank you very much.

What still lingered was a lingering fear: this netrunner had realized from the start that he had broken free of cyberpsychosis, yet hadn't followed up with another attack, likely mistaking him for an FIA agent. Misfortune and fortune truly leaned on one another.

Lin Yue broke the man's rambling. "Alright, there's something I need to tell you now, Slider."

"The behavioral-imprint faceplate is in the left automated drawer, complete with the full kit. You'll need to find a ripperdoc you trust implicitly who understands the tech to install it." Slider twitched a finger, and a pop-out compartment slid open, revealing a silvery-white chrome casing shrouded in wisps of chilled air.

"And you'll also have to gather behavioral patterns of the target; acquiring that isn't easy... The training manual is inside."

Slider had conceded. He hadn't made a single eddy off this gig and had instead dragged a mountain of trouble onto himself.

That bastard Hands was an absolute piece of trash.

"No, it's not just about this." Seeing the behavioral-imprint faceplate, Lin Yue finally let his heart settle back into his chest.

Slider looked somewhat perplexed. "Your life is in your hands, what else could you possibly want? ...Don't tell me you're trying to cut some bullshit deal."

"Over a month ago, what was the data Hansen had you scrub from the net? I'll pay the full price for the chrome, and I can even add extra if it's not enough. You don't have to answer this right away; hear my terms first before you decide."

Slider froze. "I knew those damn corporate dogs would come biting!"

Lin Yue ignored Slider's complaints. "There are people from the New United States Federal Intelligence Agency in Dogtown right now. As for who they are, I can't tell you, but your sanctuary's location has already been compromised by them. If you plan to keep serving as an FIA insider—"

"Serving as their doormat, then I can just turn around and walk out right now... You can go hide somewhere I can never find you, and wait for Arasaka or the FIA to send cleanup crews later."

"Are you saying the FIA knows my location right now too?" For the first time, Slider's expression turned ugly.

Damn it, those scumbags never let go once they got their teeth into his tail!

"Not only that, the FIA can use you without a second thought, and nobody will care if you die. If you want to make it out alive and shake off the FIA, you tell me what you did on the net that day. Afterward, you can leave this place or find a brand-new hole where nobody knows your name."

Having said his piece, Lin Yue let out a heavy breath.

Slider's decker chair glided forward. Lin Yue thought the guy was about to plug back into the net, but instead, he reached blindly into a stack of boxes, grabbed a data shard, and tossed it behind him.

"Look at it yourself. It has my personal [Digital ID] attached. You can use it to report back to the corp and cover your ass."

Lin Yue caught the shard. "You trust me? Aren't you afraid of being silenced?"

Slider spread his hands. "If I were you, I'd have put a bullet straight through this blind netrunner's head, grabbed the chrome, and walked out. No money spent, zero baggage. Why waste breath yapping here—besides, I can tell your whole reason for wanting this faceplate is precisely so you don't have to work for Arasaka."

Lin Yue flashed an easygoing smile. A normal person with a functioning brain, at last.

Besides, he knew someone like Slider operated strictly on eddies. Forget selling out Hansen; the guy would sell out the entire Voodoo Boys without batting an eye.

In Night City, the only thing that didn't exist was trust.

"That shard contains the emails, transaction records, and data storage Hansen sent me. He told me: Arasaka and Militech agents breached the Dogtown subnet to pull some stunt, and the half-baked netrunners here couldn't handle it, so he needed me to bail them out."

Lin Yue nodded. This matched the intelligence Arasaka had gathered. "Uh-huh, keep going."

"...An Arasaka netrunner broke in, dropped daemons into the subnet, cracked Hansen's operational records database, and pulled the dossier of a Black Ops soldier... Uh, sounds like it was probably you... along with a mercenary crew."

Lin Yue knew V finding him was no coincidence, so he wasn't surprised; he could even guess that the mercenary crew was likely David Martinez's crew.

Slider continued, "And then things went sideways, buddy. They were trying to wipe a database containing a manifest—an arms manifest. As for which corporation that shipment belonged to, I'm sure you can guess..."

Lin Yue: "It's Arasaka. I know that much."

Slider fell silent for a long moment before suddenly asking, "If the emperor's son commits a crime, what happens?"

Knowing that this shrewd netrunner wouldn't just spin a random fable, Lin Yue replied, "The prince is punished by the same law as the commoner, but Arasaka doesn't play by those rules—in an absolute monarch's playground, there is no law."

Slider thought to himself that this mercenary was damn smart!

Lin Yue's heart sank deeper and deeper.

The person Slider was referring to could only be one individual—

[Yorinobu Arasaka]!

"There's someone at Arasaka named [Barretto]. Ring a bell? Doesn't matter if it doesn't... The arms manifest was handled by one of this guy's underlings. What he had me wipe was a turquoise recording. This moron has a peculiar fetish—likes watching his own 'performances' on security cameras and records them as braindances. I was brought online just to delete that eyesore of a video. The guy's name and the backups are all on that data shard."

"So when you brought up the 'emperor's son,' you mean you saw something else as well?" Lin Yue decided to get to the bottom of it. V was investigating this too, and he needed to ensure he stayed well away from the whirlpool of a corporate power struggle.

Slider let out a dry laugh. "Some things are much better off deleted permanently, don't you think? Here's some advice, buddy—just tracking down this guy's underling is enough. You spared my life, and I saved yours. We're square, and frankly, sitting here chatting with a blind man counts as a display of patience on your part."

"If you've verified the shard is clean, please leave." Slider's decker chair glided back to its original position.

After verifying the digital ID and contents, Lin Yue's gaze turned dark. A grand drama of Arasaka factional infighting? That was definitely not something he could afford to meddle in, and neither could V.

"How much for the chrome?"

Lin Yue kept his word. Even though he had shot his way into Slider's lair, that didn't mean he was going to steal the hardware.

Slider might be a scumbag, but Lin Yue only wanted to survive, and the Arasaka business just needed to be handed over to V as an acceptable report.

With his back to Lin Yue, Slider muttered, "Cost me 150,000 eddies to smuggle it in... Ah, forget it, buddy. If you—"

Before he could finish his sentence, a transfer of 200,000 eddies landed in his account, and the footsteps of the mercenary behind him slowly faded away.

Slider's mouth curved into a helpless smile as he shook his head.

In this day and age, even psychos were starting to play fair, while the Voodoo Boys in Pacifica were still digging at the Blackwall. Truly bizarre!

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[Can't use a Kiroshi]: Slider suffered brain damage in his occipital lobe, rendering all Kiroshi optics useless in restoring his sight.

[Cyberpsychosis] (Quickhack): A quickhack used by netrunners in 2077 that induces cyberpsychosis in the target.

[Digital ID]: In 2077, beyond facial features, a digital identity is the definitive means of recognition. (Note: A behavioral-imprint faceplate alters appearance first, but its most powerful trait is altering the user's digital ID so scanning systems cannot recognize them.)

[Yorinobu Arasaka]: The son of Arasaka Corporation's supreme leader, Saburo Arasaka.

[Barretto]: A member of the Board of Directors present at Arasaka's high-level corporate meeting during the Devil ending in 2077.