Chapter 406 - 378 Rescue

The entire battle lasted less than a minute. As soon as David had settled his mother and hadn’t even spoken a few words, he rushed out the door only to hear screams coming from the Floating Car—

Lille witnessed the whole process and couldn’t help but click his tongue: the madman had been eyeing the Floating Car from the start.

This type of cyber psychosis was something he had never seen before: without a doubt, this man was a cyber psychotic, and not just an ordinary one.

Lille had been trying to use an infinite modulator for hacking, but the prosthetics on Kaneke’s body switched between several versions every second.

Cyber psychosis could cause the prosthetic system to run unstably, but such cases were rare, because this could only be man-made.

The chaos caused by the former was more akin to a cyber decoder malfunctioning due to emotional instability, causing the internal environment to become unbalanced, but the prosthetic was actually trying to remain stable.

Clearly, this senior trauma team member had hacked himself to avoid corporate surveillance implanted in his prosthetics.

This helped him avoid external hackers, preventing the company from remotely retrieving his data—clearly the best choice for someone with a slight understanding of prosthetic technology.

But the disadvantages were also clear: an unstable prosthetic system would output chaotic currents. Although these currents were mostly in the safe range, the frequent voltage fluctuations could still cause symptoms like nausea, dizziness, and headaches.

But such symptoms were nothing for a cyber psychotic, or rather, he had overcome them.

Moreover, Kaneke’s logic in executing the ambush was very clear, typically of a high-functioning cyber psychotic.

Since this lead could no longer communicate normally, let’s see what he was up to—

The indicator lights on the Floating Car suddenly turned red: clearly, Kaneke knew how to operate the trauma team’s Floating Car!

Lille knew he couldn’t hack into his prosthetics, but he could hack into the Floating Car!

While Kaneke ambushed the Floating Car, Lille had already installed the weapon head on the third Octopus Arm—

The third Octopus Arm was geared towards being a multipurpose weapon, equipped with an electromagnetic projectile rail, which could turn into a gun if needed.

But the electromagnetic rail could also be used to launch other things: like the armor-piercing tips mounted on the Scorpion Battle Suit.

V’s Mantis Blade had data hacking capabilities, and Lille had prepared similar equipment for himself.

Beep—Beep—Beep—

The Floating Car issued a warning, the engine shifted from hovering gear, and Lille flipped out of the window sill, assisted by the other two Octopus Arms, reaching beneath the vehicle.

The third Octopus Arm’s electromagnetic rail charged up, the tip raised high...

Bang!

The armor-piercing tip blasted out, instantly piercing through the underside of the Floating Car, deeply embedding into the vehicle!

Beneath the tip, there was a thin data line for instantaneous signal transmission, electric arcs sparked, and the next second, the Floating Car suddenly surged upward!

Whoosh—

The thin line was torn by the Floating Car, but the pre-set infinite receiver was firmly fixed in the vehicle’s body, turning it into an infinite hacking terminal through its own mini discharge device.

Now the vehicle’s information was completely under Lille’s control...

And the trauma team would not know where the car was headed.

"Big brother!"

David leaned out from the hallway railing upstairs and waved at Lille.

"Chase him, this cyber maniac knows the person we’re looking for... Got a car?"

"Yes!"

David nodded vigorously.

"Go drive."

After finishing, Lille used his mechanical arm to flip up to the second floor.

Taking advantage of the rest of the trauma team’s absence, he wanted to see what Kaneke had been up to at home lately.

...

Kaneke had acted with extreme caution, even disconnecting most of the power supply to the Floating Car, primarily using emergency power lines.

This limited the engine power of the Floating Car, but it nearly eliminated the risk of being monitored and also reduced engine noise.

This gave Lille time to shake people down and figure out why this maniac had gone mad.

The incident here had spread in less than 30 minutes, and everyone with a bit of connection in Night City knew that a case of cyber psychosis had occurred here, including Lille’s old partner, Regina.

[Sender: Regina]

[Regina: Burger King, a shooting happened at H4 Skyscraper, heard several Trauma Teams were killed. Can you check out what happened?]

[Burger King: This wasn’t just a shooting, it was a robbery and ambush. A former Trauma Team employee who had been hiding at home for a week due to PTSD.

When his colleagues checked on him as part of their duty, he ambushed them. The man was lucid, first used his colleague’s official ID to unlock his gear, then hacked their accounts and used their employee privileges for an emergency guarantee, buying himself a Trauma Team platinum membership.]

[Burger King: Trauma Team’s smart weapons automatically avoid members, so they couldn’t counter this high-level operative. His Si Anweisitan prosthetic is the latest model from Kantao.]

[Regina: But why though?]

[Burger King: It all started with his PTSD. A week ago, when he was rescuing his employer, his employer also suffered from cyber psychosis and killed his colleague and girlfriend.]

[Burger King: But due to Trauma Team regulations, he had to prioritize getting his employer to the Floating Car, and now... he’s all alone.]

[Regina: Are you there?]

[Lille: Yes, I’m here, and I need you to look up a name for me: Woolly Crowley, a mercenary but one with a platinum membership.]

[Regina: Give me a moment—about that Trauma Team employee, if there’s a chance, please try to capture him alive, thank you.]

What Dyes had experienced was exactly what Kaneke had experienced a week ago:

The employer’s cyber psychosis triggered, killing the girlfriend who had come for the rescue, and all he could do was watch as the employer was loaded onto the stretcher...

It was even he who had physically placed the employer on the Floating Car.

The room had been turned into a bullet-riddled mess, with furniture all over the place and parts and debris everywhere.

On the floor were two broken guns—he had smashed the chips inside his own guns and fired off all the bullets he had.

The computer log started from the third day after he got home, he began finding ways to disable monitoring, searching online for any information that could help him, and started planning his revenge:

The Trauma Team and Woolly were his targets for revenge.

Clearly, his first step in the plan had been very successful.

In the messy room, only a small clean table remained, on which lay a smashed digital photo frame displaying Kaneke and his girlfriend.

Physical damage caused a mosaic that covered half of each of their faces right between them, obscuring their expressions, but they were probably smiling.

Because Kaneke was holding his girlfriend, and both had a ring on their ring fingers, with a line of text below the photo—

[You saved my life.]

[Date: October 11, 2076]

This was the day of the incident.

Lille put down the photo frame and quickly stepped over Dyes, who was holding Petro in a pool of blood; the man who had just sneered at Kaneke minutes ago had now lost his voice, only twitching.

Just as Lille had left the room, the second Trauma Team Floating Car arrived, and the familiar professional rescue phrases rang in Dyes’s ears:

"You are now in safe hands, please follow our instructions."

"Your cooperation is crucial to our successful rescue."

"You will receive the treatment you desire promptly."

"Please put down the body."