Chapter 531 - 502: The Information Gap of the "Middleman

[Sergeant: "Acting all high and mighty, discriminating against us country folks, not even letting us through the door..."]

[Father: "I won’t be going to the next life just yet, but if you’re willing, there are a few folks here who’d like to chat with you, consider it a pilgrimage."]

[...]

The inbox was bustling, but Lille wasn’t planning on letting "unrelated personnel" in just yet.

Click...

The Octopus Arm was somewhat stiff due to the high-intensity combat and Lille’s less than proficient direct control.

Little Octopus was busy driving the Octopus Arm to do maintenance on Jack and V’s prosthetics and simultaneously checking Da Mai’s data in Cyberspace. All while watching Lille and sighing.

That expression was like saying, "Ah, big brother."

He stopped short of speaking.

Lille completely ignored the overly dramatic Little Octopus, sitting on a surgical chair with both hands on the armrests and manipulating the surgical instruments through a personal link.

A scalpel made an incision on Lille’s back, an internal surgical knife extended into his body, and removed a tumorous mass the size of a thumb.

This sight was gruesome and eerie, especially considering that Lille was his own lead surgeon at the moment.

The operating table was in a unique control space, imaging through a holographic scanner, projecting the images into two private boxes—

One box was occupied by Blais.

This network monitoring agent couldn’t hide his shock at all; seeing this scene as he entered the room leaves him completely petrified.

For humans, prosthetic implantation is always an uncomfortable process.

It’s even more so for hackers, whose implants are mostly direct additions of hardware on the brain. Every time they get injured, replace prosthetics, or perform surgery for repairs, it leaves them with dreadful memories.

Some people might think hackers are cool, appearing unfazed by anything, as if they’re numb to everything...

But in reality, they are the ones who fear prosthetic technology the most.

Just watching Lille perform his own tumor removal, the smart Blais could only imagine how horrifying it must be:

A patient can be anesthetized, but as a doctor, you can’t anesthetize yourself!

Not only can’t you be anesthetized, but when using a personal link, your neural activity must reach a certain level and the electric currents will also stimulate neural activity.

In layman’s terms, it means becoming more sensitive.

That’s a bit masochistic.

"Dude..." Blais started to speak but cut himself off.

This was still Lille with the Octopus Arm set aside. If Blais had seen the Octopus Arm moving on its own, he most certainly would have had to write a report and send it up to the network surveillance headquarters.

If he actually saw that, network surveillance would probably send Lille a hiring notice overnight—

Although, they wouldn’t be begging him to come to work but forcing him to do so.

Lille raised his eyelids, "Get to the point."

He was also addressing Mrs. Perares in another room, the woman being Jefferson Perares’s wife, named Elizabeth.

She was the spouse, as well as the political partner of the mayoral candidate Jefferson, both coming from humble backgrounds and being politicians.

Her reaction was calmer, or rather, more reserved.

Her surprise was fleeting, her emotions quickly settled down, and she got straight to the point, even faster than Blais.

"I don’t want to say congratulations; this competition has brought too much destruction to Night City.

But the good news is that in the end, it was you guys who won, so—congratulations, you’re now the largest underground force in Night City."

Her words were quite official and formal; to Elizabeth, Lille had only one question.

"Where’s Jefferson? Too busy?"

"He’s busy with other matters; your battle drew too much attention."

Blais shrugged from the other side, "What could be so important? If you’re saying that Munemasa has been taken out by you, perhaps he might have underestimated you—it’s in your hands, right?"

Lille shot back at Blais immediately, "It seems pretty lively outside, any suggestions?"

Blais: "The situation is a bit... complex right now. I’m only telling this to you: Arasaka’s Kujira has appeared off the coast and might dock in a few dozen minutes."

Lille turned to Elizabeth at once, "Looks like Arasaka Saburo has made you guys a bit too anxious to keep seated."

Elizabeth was slightly surprised, "Your sources are indeed widespread, and... very sensitive."

"Let’s talk business. I’ve already handled Jefferson’s assignment—the European’s weapons have all been buried by me, and now I can mediate for you with the five gangs..."

"No, there’s one more thing — there must be someone very familiar with Night City who helped them smuggle in, and we need to take them down, root and branch."

Elizabeth was utterly convinced.

Lille didn’t immediately reply to her but instead addressed Blais, "Munemasa has a client, Dexter DeShawn. Look him up for me."

Blais shrugged and immediately pulled up the data:

"A black fat man, likes to wear big gold chains, learned from the Valentino, very bold, very wild in his ways.

He’s a bit like you... the you from before, didn’t have any stable backer or stable businesses, but he’s good at drumming up jobs.

He..."

Lille started brainstorming as he listened, realizing that some things don’t seem strange if you look at them in isolation, but when you connect the dots, it’s a different story.

The information about Dexter, Blais must have prepared it before coming here, his reply was too decisive.

But that wasn’t a big problem, since cyber surveillance was already targeting roaming AIs. While they had commissioned Lille to do the job directly, they would also continuously investigate signs of Munemasa’s activities in Night City—

What’s more important is that they gave Lille the assignment, meaning they had more preliminary information than Lille, and Blais had been operating in Taiping State for quite a while now. Dexter chose not to return directly to Night City but landed in Taiping State instead.

So, it wasn’t surprising to find Dexter’s name now; preparing the material in advance for Lille to tie up loose ends made sense, and it fit the logic to take Dexter out in the process.

If they could also take care of the Voodoo Gang lurking in Taiping State, threatening the status of the Black Wall on the way, Blais would wake up laughing from his dreams.

But the coincidence lay here—

Elizabeth’s desire to take down Dexter was also very strong: she had proactively pointed out the matter of someone behind Munemasa.

Her desire to take down this "market pioneer," the middleman behind Munemasa, Dexter, seemed logical as well.

But why was she so eager?

Ordinary people might just feel it was too much of a coincidence, but Lille, as someone who had the script, knew a crucial piece of information:

The main benefactor behind the Perares couple, the real decision-maker of the Ye Group...

Was also a roaming AI.

Even more coincidentally, the Ye Group used a hard-to-detect electromagnetic frequency and prosthetics to directly brainwash the Perares couple, altering their thoughts, and manipulating their election progress...

In front of Blais and Elizabeth, Lille took out a mini transmitter designed by Munemasa—

Just now, he had roughly repaired one of the samples.

"Interesting little gadget."

Both Blais and Elizabeth looked puzzled, the former knew this was Munemasa’s design, while the latter thought it was an invention from Europe.

In cyberspace, Lille had Little Octopus wake up Munemasa.

[Lille: Tell me how to use it.]

[Munemasa: As you wish.]

The mini transmitter’s software was reinstalled, a string of code entered its memory, electric currents flowed through the circuit board under control, and surged into the 3-nanometer 3D stacked processor.

The capacitor charged, coils energized, filters removed operational noise, and the micro-antenna array disseminated it around—

[Emotional shocks caused by specialized electromagnetic waves are eliminated.]

The effect on those with prosthetic modifications remained as always, but obviously, it had a stronger impact on Munemasa’s men.

For Jack or V, the electromagnetic waves had an insignificant effect on them, at least no problems could be observed in the short term.

As for Blais, he almost had no reaction, only resignedly adjusted his prosthetics, his expression seemed to say:

How could such a device interfere with me?

But Elizabeth was different—

The second before, she was still poised, showing no abnormalities, but suddenly she furrowed her brow. Remember, she’s a politician, all her prosthetics helped her control her condition—

Lille’s pupils narrowed sharply, and he overclocked the transmitter in his hand—

Elizabeth stood up uncomfortably, then her legs gave way, and she collapsed to the ground, vomiting bile...

This thing was tailor-made for her!

Munemasa’s technology came from the Ye Group!

[Qian Chuan: I won’t go in; lots of brothers died.]

[Qian Chuan: But about the hacker you asked me to look into last time, I’ve found them.]