"How much are you worth, brother?"
The gangs in the city are more paranoid about cyber security than the Night Wanderer. The local networks between different hideouts aren’t even connected.
Scavengers, these public enemy-type gangs, are even more cautious.
To connect to their intranet, you must capture a Scavenger alive or find a computer that is already connected to the intranet to borrow their IP address. Otherwise, the firewall will immediately detect you.
Upon hearing this, Jianxue blinked and then lay back down to sleep.
This guy is a fucking lunatic, isn’t he?
A few minutes later, Jianxue rolled up from the ground and dusted off the dirt on his clothes.
"Alright, our mentor is awesome and has already hacked in. Brother Ni and the others are searching for the location of the cellar. Once they find it, they can rescue us."
The one-armed man wanted to laugh; he thought the person in front of him must be insane.
"Mentor Lucy says there are multiple cellars with skylights throughout the hideout. Surveillance can only see one hole, and they all look the same. Do you even know where we are?"
The one-armed man couldn’t laugh anymore.
Bro... are you serious?
Although he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, the man knew there really were several cellars here hiding people. He’d heard about it when Scavengers came in to grab people and leave. These cellars were transformed from underground drainage pipes.
He propped himself up with the little strength he had left, stood up from the wall, and walked over to Jianxue.
"Why would I lie to you? Are you very rich?"
The man swallowed hard, pointed at the skylight and said,
"There’s surveillance up there, but it’s in a somewhat hidden spot. You need to stick something out of the skylight to be seen on camera."
Jianxue looked at the skylight; there was even an iron grate on top. Even if he stripped to his underwear, he couldn’t throw anything out.
"How about you lift me up?"
"I haven’t eaten in three days. You better be the one to lift me."
Jianxue glanced at the other’s severed arm.
"Well, forget it. I’ll figure something out myself."
Lucy and Pandora lined up a dozen surveillance feeds in a vertical row, marking the locations of the Scavengers for Brother Ni and the others, planning the safest route forward. Meanwhile, they were also trying to pinpoint Jianxue’s cell.
If not, the infiltration team would have to split up and check each cellar, and the risk of being discovered would undoubtedly skyrocket.
In front of them lay two Scavengers, sleeping peacefully like babies.
Yet, just as progress was slow, a sudden disturbance arose. A cyber lunatic was on a rampage inside the hideout, and something strange was occurring in one of the cellars.
A middle finger kept rhythmically going in and out of the iron grate of the skylight, about every five or six seconds. Sometimes it missed due to hitting the grate.
Lucy frowned, puzzled. "Is this... his signal?"
In the dungeon, Jianxue, before everyone’s eyes, bit and tore his left arm off his shoulder with his hands and teeth, leaving his mouth full of blood, with his flesh hanging from his teeth. He even lost a front tooth while gnawing at the joint, then used his left arm as an extender, held in his right hand, to poke at the ceiling.
If he hadn’t lost a leg and couldn’t jump, and couldn’t reach with his mouth, he definitely would have chosen to dismantle his longer right leg.
The wound kept bleeding.
Everyone else was dumbfounded, huddled together shivering, watching Jianxue’s madness, fearing he might suddenly go cyber-psycho and slaughter them all.
This guy is definitely a fucking lunatic.
"Uh... Brother Ni, one of the cellars seems to have some activity. Do you guys want to check it out? Maybe you’ll find something."
Having just peeked his head out of the underground drainage, Brother Ni glanced at the signal sent over, dismantled a compound crossbow from his waist, and gestured to the others.
Everyone present was Stealth Level Four or above and had been chip trained, so naturally, they understood what this meant.
"Sneak into the village quietly, don’t fire a shot."
Gunfire erupted in the middle of the hideout, drawing a lot of Scavengers’ attention towards the cyber psycho doctor, who created an excellent opportunity for their infiltration.
At the end of August, it was the hottest time of the year, even in Night City by the sea.
The heat caused the underground pipes to emit foul smells, annoying some Scavengers.
"It’s so stuffy and hot. Why did we choose this damn place as a hideout? Couldn’t we pick somewhere more open?"
The two Scavengers assigned to patrol the lowest level were full of grievances.
"Afraid of dirt and doing this job? Dream on."
"Lunatic. I’m here to make money in the gang, not to play sewer rat."
"This job is no different from being a rat. Just bear with it. In the winter, when it freezes, it won’t stink."
"Oh sure, when winter comes, we’ll be freezing our butts off. We might as well eat popsicles here, right?"
"Picky, picky, who do you think you are? You want an AC and heating too?"
"Damn it, if you’re tough, why don’t you go up and see that cyber lunatic? I said long ago that guy’s mind is messed up and nobody believed me. Well, there you go."
Even on the lowest level, gunfire could be heard above, fiercely raging and still not subsiding.
After a few seconds without a response, the Scavenger walking ahead became puzzled.
"Hey, why aren’t you saying anything?"
He turned back to find his companion’s throat pierced by an arrow, his mouth covered.