Cyberpunk: From Dogville to Legend

Chapter 540 Soulmate [5.4K]

"Tell me, Ultraman... is this really going to work?"

After sinking into the cyber network, Lin Yue unusually did not directly enter the body hanging in Warsaw, but waited silently in the network, eventually waiting for Ultra to check the integrity of the channel.

Although there was no data fluctuation as Otto approached, Lin Yue still noticed it and quietly asked Otto a question.

"Where there is fire in the heart, nothing will die."

Ultraman slowly opened his hand, revealing a digitized flame in his palm. "The will to survive originates from the body itself. Everyone has their own unique destiny, and everyone is a unique branch under a vast probability—you are too obsessed with controlling everything."

Apparently…

What did Lin Yue talk to Otto about before he brought Rebecca back?

“I know Johnny. He has an extremely low level of trust in anything. He is sensitive, fragile, selfish, and so on. It’s rare to see all of these traits in one person.”

This is a sharp comment...

"Let him come to me."

"Our operation in the new America has undoubtedly provoked the Black Wall once again. I've been luring those lurking in the shadows, creating the illusion that the Black Wall has an opportunity to exploit..."

"But they still haven't made any move, and I haven't been able to analyze the basis for their judgment on their actions."

The matter of the Ye family was a thorn in Lin Yue's side. Whenever he conducted any large-scale online activities, he had to leave behind anti-intrusion programs and even monitor the black wall data 24 hours a day. This kind of AI program, which could drill holes in the black wall at any time and was full of self-destructive tendencies, was far too dark and troublesome.

“There’s an old saying in my family: ‘When soldiers come, we’ll block them; when water comes, we’ll dam it.’ These variables are beyond our control; we can only do our best to prevent them.”

Lin Yue also took the time to comfort Otto.

However, Ultraman suddenly asked, "So, have you decided to let them go and let them find their own destiny?"

After a long silence, Lin Yue smiled helplessly. "Ultraman, let's do as you say... All I can do is try my best to protect the people I care about."

Tell me what you plan to do, and I can offer some suggestions.

Ott nodded.

Various concrete data have emerged in the vast and empty cyberspace.

“Initially, when I learned that Arasaka was using Soul Killers to develop the Relic project, my desire for Kamikori reached an unprecedented level—you know, I created countless AIs but none of them could enter it, so Johnny, a near-digital soul, is the key to entering Kamikori.”

"AI's interference with reality is actually negligible. The Black Wall is an obstacle that no AI can overcome. Even after I enter the Black Wall, I still have to abide by some of its rules."

Lin Yue seemed to be deep in thought.

Ultraman spread his hands, and the digitized Johnny figure paced back and forth on the ground with his hands on his hips, Ultraman among them... except that at that time Ultraman was still the genius hacker of Night City, and the two seemed to be arguing about something.

“I know Johnny. He knows that I am not completely dead. It all started because of the Soul Killer, so it is only natural that he came after me... Therefore, this should also exist in the enemy's judgment.”

Speaking of this, Lin Yue has a few unrelated questions he'd like to ask Ultraman.

"So if Johnny appears, you'll still choose to meet him in your current data-driven state... So you still retain some so-called humanity, don't you?"

At least in the years that Lin Yue and Ultra have worked together, Ultra is not cold-hearted.

But at this moment, Otto frankly said, "Whether he is Johnny or another person who died by Saburo Arasaka's sword... it has nothing to do with my humanity. As long as he is the soul residing in that Relic, he is a key to unlocking the Kamikoshi for me."

“I was detained in Arasaka’s server for a long time until Murphy released me… I know the structure of the shrine very well. If it weren’t for the special firewall, there should be nothing in this network that could stop me.”

The attraction of the sacred vehicle to Ultraman is like the temptation of food to a hungry person... Only at this moment can Lin Yue see in her the desire for disordered expansion originating from the basic code of AI.

"Furthermore, it's hard to guarantee that there aren't any means of healing them within the divine palanquin."

Otto explained in detail, "If I could access the massive amount of data within the divine vessel, I think I could separate the consciousness of the two of them, allowing Rebecca to live a life no different from that of a normal person."

however--

"Impossible Ultraman".

Lin Yue's resolute answer left Ultraman completely astonished.

"After entering the Divine Carriage, you will indeed become an insurmountable existence in this network... You will have the ability to protect any Shangri-La, but you cannot separate the consciousness of those two people."

"They must choose to physically perish from one of them... to become part of you, or to let that body have a new owner."

Ultraman remained silent for a long time, and some of the data around him dissipated.

Is this the future you envision?

Lin Yue was certain that the Divine Carriage was not Relic's only salvation. Even without topological prediction, he still knew the fate of some people.

However, Ultraman's reaction and quick thinking still amazed Lin Yue.

"Alright, let's do it your way. I'm actually more curious why you think the Terrorist Mobile Squad and Hanako Arasaka's faction are both after Relic?"

"Because of a guess..."

If anyone present had heard these words, they would have been so shocked they would have lost their teeth.

Lin Yue paused for a moment. Based on the current situation, he couldn't deduce that Relic was also something the Terrorist Mobile Team needed.

"What you call intuition, we call...probability."

Ultraman is watertight.

Lin Yue smiled helplessly and shook his head, "Ultraman, I believe you no matter what."

"Since you think it's a good thing for them, I won't stop you. I wish them peace."

Ott seemed quite satisfied with Lin Yue's attitude.

"If I still had humanity, I would be happy and satisfied with your trust—but what I can guarantee now is that we are of one mind and think alike."

To say such things with such indifference...

Lin Yue's expression froze slightly.

“My dear comrade-in-arms, although we are bound together by interests, I am happy to let you do your bidding in this matter—I’m entrusting everything to you.”

Ultraman waves.

"The channel will remain stable for at least half a month. Without my maintenance, please do not initiate any company-level cyber operations in Warsaw."

As Ultraman dissipated, he was still looking down at Lin Yue with his eyes lowered. "A temporary disconnection is a good thing for you. I wish you success in your operation in Warsaw. I will try to infiltrate MAXTAC's system to investigate the situation."

"Goodbye."

"goodbye…"

……
-
It's raining.

The neon lights of Night City blurred in the air pollution and damp, chilly air, while grime and bloodstains still clung to the signboard outside the Next Life Bar…

In the box.

Johnny wiped the wounds inflicted by the other drunkards with his silver hand, like a raging beast trapped inside Rebecca's body.

He reached out and took the cigarette Roger offered him. It was completely different from the expired, cheap cigarettes he had taken out of his private safe. The pleasant spiciness temporarily suppressed the stinging pain that was about to destabilize Relic's consciousness and the buzzing in his ears.

"Damn...you mean Ultraman is connected to that boss, Rebecca?"

Roger doesn't understand the internet, but she has people working for her who are skilled in hacking.

NIX, a hacker from the subnet of the next life, explained that the data was exactly the data that Lin Yue had read during an operation.

Roger didn't understand why Rin didn't care at all about Johnny's troubles, but she had a bad feeling... because Rin told her that it would be best for these two guys who wanted to join the network to find Ultraman to stay away from Reiji.

Will Johnny die?
His former confidant, with whom he once shared a deeply unforgettable relationship, coupled with the fact that Roger has always implicitly considered himself the "traitor" for so many years...

So she softened.

Johnny stubbed out his cigarette on the expensive sofa in Roger's private room. The burn mark made Roger's eyelids twitch. This guy's manners were still so low.

But he's just a charming bastard.

Johnny rubbed his temples (Rebecca's) in frustration. "Shut up, girl! Roger will take care of the meeting with Ultraman for us. Your boss might not be able to get any real benefits from Ultraman. I know her. That damn chip—I bet she has an 80% chance of getting rid of it for us."

"But I'm not sure if she still recognizes me... I hope our old feelings can still have some effect."

Rebecca's masculine sitting posture was one thing, NIX simply took it as a sign of Night City's extremely free culture, but her self-talk was rather frightening.

Roger was silent for a few seconds, his fingertips tapping unconsciously on the table.

"Give it a try, at least... I'll help you out."

That's all I have to say.

Johnny waved his hand, picked up the wine glass on the table, and drank it all in one gulp.

"So let's set off now and take a look at the Black Wall that's been touted as some kind of magic in the online world!"

These words naturally made Roger roll his eyes.

"Rin said she's already thought of every possible solution Ultraman could come up with, but will this really work?!"

Rebecca sounded lost and helpless in her mind.

Will this have any negative impact on Rin? Rebecca was torn between life and death, unsure of what to do.

Johnny ignored Rebecca's protests, simply waving his hand irritably in front of him, his fingers tracing the charred marks left by the cigarette butt on the sofa.

"A black wall?! Are you fucking kidding me?"

NIX had been trying to confirm from the boss's face whether what the petite girl was talking about was the internet product she was familiar with. When she heard the words "black wall" and saw Roger's silent expression, NIX instantly exploded—

"You'll die without even knowing why you got touched that stuff once... Damn it! Roger, I can't agree to this."

"You know what Night City Network has been through. To put it bluntly, now the entire network is full of the company's dogs..."

Rebecca stared at the panicked NIX like a ferocious beast.

"Hey, hey, hey... we just used the things in our necks to lure Ultra out from this side of the wall."

NIX retorted without hesitation, "I admit that meeting the super-genius hacker Otto from the internet would be exciting, but you guys are courting disaster—corporate dogs without internet monitoring are the real threat!"

"If something happens, you'll be ruined for your entire next life."

Silver Hand pulled a card from Rebecca's jacket pocket—

"my money!"

Rebecca screamed.

"Ten, are you in?"

NIX immediately stood at attention. "I got a nerve damage to my prosthetic body while fixing the hacker chair yesterday, and my head is still spinning—when do we leave?"

Roger lowered his head and rubbed his forehead.

“NIX…”

Silver Hands are obviously more likely to tailor their approach to people in places like this.

"Let me make this clear from the start: I've taken the money, I'll set up the data channels, and I'll choose the location... If there had been a ready-made location before, those voodoo gangs who like to cause trouble near the Black Wall wouldn't have needed to go through all this trouble if they had just found a middleman to get involved with them."

"Hmm... let me think."

NIX racked his brains for a solution.

In Night City, hackers are among the professions with the highest rate of backstabbing. Besides completing their employers' tasks, they basically all have one other skill: disrupting the situation.

In short, we need to drag some people down with us, otherwise this matter can't be explained clearly.

Roger was actually having some doubts himself.

Although she knew that Arasaka and Rin had a good working relationship, she couldn't guarantee that Johnny's actions wouldn't provoke Arasaka's targeting and purge...

To make sure this was really going to happen, Roger got up under some pretext and sent Rin another text message, which she replied to almost instantly.

The other party frankly suggested that Johnny and Rebecca could give it a try…

It seems that Johnny's so-called ex-girlfriend, who works with Rebecca's boss, doesn't have a particularly close working relationship.

And that's how it was settled.

NIX did deliver on his promise after receiving the money. After all, reputation is paramount in Night City, and very few people would abscond with funds.

The location wasn't far, right at Rogge's old friend's place, the Whirlpool Gang—

In truth, Rogue and the Vortex Gang were able to sever ties cleanly thanks to Rin. Who knows what those metal modification fanatics might do? Rogue had to be on guard against them every day.

The objective is now clear:

Enter the whole food factory, locate the high-powered servers and network access nodes, and before the NCPD network administrator, the company dog, and other busybodies notice, shove Johnny and Rebecca in front of the black wall—

As for what to do when they get to the Black Wall, NIX doesn't care.

After all, Johnny made it very clear that it was just a ticket. NIX was only responsible for setting up a line to see if the legendary genius hacker would appear in the cyber network. After all, people in this line of work have a kind of fanatical worship for awesome people.

Things went very smoothly.

Rogue barely needed to negotiate; he simply used a batch of cybernetic implants and some street intelligence that the Vortex gang was interested in. These fearless lunatics opened the door wide and let the NIX team in directly to use their subnet…

I don't know if it's because of money, but the hackers from the Vortex Gang who usually lie on the chairs have all given up their seats.

I went out at noon, and by evening I had left the internet and returned to my next life.

To be honest, Johnny was still hungover when the two of them took a trip through the cyber world.

What about lingering old flames, what about meeting old acquaintances, what about a soulmate—

None of these exist.

Rebecca only remembered that in the empty space made up of data, a woman like a goddess looked down at them, these insignificant cyber souls, and said some extremely cold and transactional words, which made Johnny unable to help but complain, "That's just a gold digger," "What a hypocritical statement," and so on...

NIX also got the result he wanted: the data connection he thought was so sophisticated was actually cut off after Ultraman sensed it, and he learned nothing about the conversation between Johnny, the network genius Ultraman, and Rebecca.

Johnny calmed down a lot after leaving the network, but Rebecca's little head seemed to still be under the effects of the drug. When Roger sent the mercenaries to pick her up, she was fast asleep on the cooling equipment.

Arakasaka only conducted a simple investigation during this process, and NIX's technology was still reliable.

However, Roger felt that this might have been intentional.

Johnny was fine even after a day and a night without seeing sunlight. As he got up from the sofa, rubbing his head, he was still cursing.

"Fuck you, that felt like my brain was being plowed open by a bunch of razor blades!"

Through Rebecca's voice, Johnny's tone carried a hint of hoarseness, as if he had survived a close call.

He couldn't help but wiggle Rebecca's slender fingers, trying to regain a semblance of control over his body.

The vast, cold, and inhumanly complex torrent of consciousness data he had just witnessed seemed to still be washing over his already precarious situation…

Roger leaned back on the sofa, the pale green neon light dancing on her cold face, a hint of worry in her eyes. She didn't know what was happening online, but she knew that those people had been offline for a few seconds.

How was the 'greeting' from my ex-girlfriend?

"Poor thing, she only gave you less than half a minute. Looks like you two had a... pretty 'deep' conversation?"

As she spoke, she gestured to the security guards at the door to keep a close eye on the guests coming tonight, especially the surrounding area, which was already full of Roger's undercover agents.

"Deeper?"

Johnny exuded an eerie aura, the very same ferocious and menacing look Rebecca had. "AI almost washed Johnny and me clean. I feel like we're just some random dish she could eat!"

"What lousy code! It's like a fucking wasteland—"

"It's even scarier than that black wall thing!"

Johnny's tone returned to normal.

This time, however, there was a hint of helplessness in his words, as if he was preparing and organizing his thoughts.

"Give me a few minutes, Rebecca."

When her mind was unstable, Rebecca was clearly unhappy with Johnny's drinking and smoking.

“Hey Roger, that crazy woman did say something… she said she could take care of this time bomb in our heads, this damn cage that holds my soul.”

Johnny paused, his eyes sharpening.

Everything comes at a price.

Ultraman has long lost human emotions and only cares about exchanging benefits.

“Even if she didn’t mention the price, I could tell it wasn’t a good thing. She just said, ‘Even if we can’t afford it, we have to pay it.’” Johnny’s lips curled into a smile, with a few streaks of blood seeping out. “Otto just likes to play riddles, just like he was fifty years ago.”

Now, here comes the main topic.

"What Ultraman needs is chaos, and then he will tear his target apart without restraint, like a starving monster—Arasaka's, military technology's, or even European companies!"

"Our interesting containers are like springboards and keys; we're purely for fishing. Every company that's messing around in their head wants to dissect us alive..."

Johnny puffed on his cigarette.

But after hearing Johnny's full account, Roger began to regret trying to persuade the two of them to give up on Rin.

“We’ll talk about the cost later. She gave me a ‘gift’—about that bitch Hua’s spy society and their ‘punch card’ toys.” He lowered his voice. “Those cards aren’t just codebooks, they’re some kind of… mental frequency calibrators, used to ‘tune’ some deep system of the MaxTac. I have absolutely no idea what that means. We have to work with those two former company dogs, lone wolves, who may or may not be cowards.”

Terrorist SWAT team?!

Roger immediately stood up.

Pointing to himself with both fingers, Robert seemed speechless, a troublemaker, as if questioning the other party.

Johnny?!

……

……

(End of this chapter)