Mercer and the three novice netrunners quickly ducked into a dilapidated house before the enemies could approach. The shack was essentially pieced together with some kind of synthetic panels.
Though it seemed the Raffen Shiv had tidied it up a bit, the place was still littered with liquor bottles and cigarette butts. The couch was half-torn, with foam bursting out from the seams.
Mercer leaned against the window, his cybereye glowing as it zoomed in to observe the convoy approaching from down the street.
Leading the pack was a two-door sports car, but it had been modified with bulletproof glass, armored bodywork, and an extra headlight mounted on the front.
According to his cybereye's scan, the original model of this car was called the "Shion".
In the world of 2077, this bulletproof glass, or rather, the material known as crystal, was quite remarkable.
At first glance, it looked like a thin sheet of metal, but when activated by a program, it could transform into a magical one-way glass.
From the outside, only the metallic surface was visible, but from the inside, the outside could be seen with perfect clarity.
This material left Mercer somewhat amazed, though at the moment it was seriously hindering his ability to observe the driver's seat.
In the middle of the convoy was a modified Villefort Columbus V340-F Freight, a two-seater van with a spacious rear compartment, commonly used for cargo transport.
Mercer found it vaguely familiar. After racking his brain, he finally recalled that this seemed to be the same vehicle from the game that had been converted into a mobile netrunning station when delivering Songbird to the airport.
Following the van was a Mackinaw pickup truck with a skull painted on its hood.
Bringing up the rear were two Galena GA40xt cars, also heavily modified but looking rundown.
Five vehicles in total, fewer than Mercer had expected. He pondered for a moment; perhaps it was because most of the gang members were out making money during the day, and this was just a group of Raffen Shiv members heading home after finishing their work.
Beside him, Leon nervously started to raise his gun, but Mercer quickly reached out and pressed down on the barrel, shaking his head slightly while sending him a message.
[Mercer: Not yet. Let them pass for now. Their pickup is armed with a machine gun, and from inside the vehicle, my cybereye can't pick up their signals. Be patient.]
Leon nodded firmly, lowering his Arasaka HJSH-18 Masamune and cautiously peering out the window.
The cars roared past the rundown house where Mercer was hiding, pulling to a stop outside an abandoned restaurant in the town center.
Through their cybereyes, as the Raffen Shiv members got out of their vehicles, their figures were quickly tagged one by one.
Even through the walls, their scanned signals were visible in their cybernetic vision.
This was Kyoko's doing from a distance; only she had such a clear line of sight.
[Kyoko: Hold on! They have a hostage! Doesn't look like one of them. Probably someone they robbed and kidnapped. What a bunch of scum. I've marked the hostage in the cybereye feed. If possible, we might be able to save them.]
Mercer offered no opinion, simply observed the situation quietly before issuing orders.
[Mercer: Wait until they've all gone inside to rest, then we'll move. Daichi, Leon, head to the building opposite the diner and find a way to break in. Once we're ready to open fire, you two need to launch a fierce assault from the front immediately. Lucy, give them your throwables too. Your objective is to inflict as many casualties as possible right away while creating a commotion. We'll sneak around the other side of the diner and try to stealthily take out key targets with Quickhacks, initiating a pincer attack. Don't worry too much about that hostage; our safety comes first. Wait for my signal.]
[Daichi: Roger that!][Leon: Understood.]
Mercer gestured toward the back, and everyone retreated through the window to the rear of the house. Daichi and Leon went left, while Mercer led Lucy to the right.
After putting some distance between them, they quickly crossed the central road of the town and reached the other side. He pulled Lucy along, moving cautiously with light steps, his cybereye patiently scanning the ground to avoid triggering any mines or stepping on anything that might make noise.
—--
As they rounded the side of the diner, Mercer's eyebrows raised slightly. He spotted the antenna on the roof and suddenly halted.
[Mercer: I see a cyberdeck. Hold on, I'll connect and see if I can tap directly into their subnet. These guys' network is probably linked to this cyberdeck's. If that's the case, wait for me to hack into the subnet and hit them with a virus package.]
[Lucy: You're not connected to a server or any cooling right now. Be careful, don't fry your brain again.][Mercer: No problem.]
Saying this, he crept stealthily to the back of the diner.
[Mercer: Give me a hand getting up.]
Lucy immediately understood, moving behind the wall and crouching into a horse stance, placing her hands on one knee, a benefit of Arasaka's elite training. They had all passed rigorous military training and evaluations.
Mercer took a step back, then accelerated, stepping onto her knee with one foot and leaping upward. Lucy pushed with her hands, helping him grab the edge of the over-three-meter-high roof.
Gritting his teeth, Mercer strained his arms. Fortunately, he was fairly light and had decent physical potential; even without specialized training, he managed to pull himself up.
Once on the roof, Mercer walked over to the antenna, opened the maintenance box of the signal antenna, inserted his data cable, and directly connected to the local subnet. Instantly, he clearly sensed a cluster of signals beneath his feet.
[Mercer: Got it. These guys clearly haven't been hit by netrunners before, they're all connected to the same subnet. Prepare to attack. Lucy, stay crouched in the back with your gun. If any stragglers try to come out the rear door, open fire immediately. Kyoko, keep tracking the signals in your cybereye until you confirm the targets are dead.]
[Kyoko: Understood.][Lucy: Okay.]
Then Mercer closed his eyes and poured all his focus into the network. Though he couldn't deep dive into Cyberspace, as his concentration peaked, time seemed to slow down, and streams of data flickered before his eyes. His neural link was slightly warm as the quickhack programs stored in the coprocessor were first extracted, then immediately began integrating into a virus package.
The program was deployed into this subnetwork, automatically starting its upload into the target's personal network.
Normally, netrunners performing such operations would need to prepare a virus capable of area-of-effect damage in advance, allowing the program to consume the chip's computing power to run automatically.
Otherwise, they'd have to manually "infect" targets one by one. But Mercer could simultaneously send multiple virus packages using only his own brain, while maintaining precise control over the program for "targeted infection propagation."
This demonstrated terrifying neural capacity.
Even as massive amounts of data flooded his vision and his mental processing was pushed to its limit, he could still issue clear commands.
[Mercer: Execute!]
The moment his command ended, the distinct triple-tap bursts of an authentic precision rifle echoed from across the restaurant, tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap, like rhythmic music.
Glass shattered as male and female screams erupted almost simultaneously.
"Netrunner! There's a netrunner!""Across the street!""Grenade!""Ah, aaaah!!"
The Raffen Shiv members descended into chaos. Mercer took a deep breath and continued monitoring the situation downstairs through the subnetwork. Within mere seconds, all subnetwork signals from below fell completely silent.
[Mercer: You three, confirm status. Lucy, enter through the back. What about the hostage? Taken out with the rest?]
[Kyoko: My visibility isn't great, I can't see behind the bar inside the restaurant.][Daichi: No signs of enemy movement in my field of view.][Leon: I saw the hostage scramble behind the bar during the chaos. Be careful.]
[Mercer: I'll send him a warning message... Wait, careful! I can't detect his signal!]
But Lucy had already entered through the back door, pistol in hand. She soon aimed her weapon at the figure hiding behind the restaurant bar and reported back.
[Lucy: His hands are still tied. Cooperating so far. Area secure, you can come in.]
Mercer finally disconnected, rubbing his temples while feeling surprisingly alright, lucky that these guys were all on the same subnetwork, saving him the trouble of breaching multiple networks.
With his skills, he could easily hack entire groups at once. Among these thugs, only one even had a cyberdeck with ICE in their head.
That ICE-equipped opponent cost him some extra time, but the rest became his digital playthings the moment he breached their networks, utterly at his mercy.
If not for giving Daichi and the others something to do, he wouldn't even need their gunfire. He could have wiped out this entire group solo within seconds.
—--
Mercer grabbed the roof's edge and dropped down, entering the restaurant through the back door.
Daichi and Leon now approached from across the street, methodically performing coup de grâce shots on the corpses exactly as taught in Arasaka training programs.
"Save your ammo. These poor bastards probably only have gunpowder bullets in their guns. Our armor-piercing rounds and tungsten-tipped ammunition are limited, no Militech or Arasaka weapon stores here for resupply."
Mercer scanned the scene with satisfaction. At least the two Raffen Shiv members smoking by the window were definitively eliminated by gunfire. This meant that from the very first shot, neither Daichi nor Leon had missed their targets.
After that, he took over Lucy's position, aiming his JKE-X2 Kenshin at the unfortunate soul tied up behind the bar.
Casually pulling up a small round stool, he sat down opposite the man, gesturing lightly with the barrel of his gun.
Though his hands were bound, the man wore a gray cowboy hat, a plaid shirt, and a full beard. His jeans were somewhat dirty, and he sported a pair of rugged cowboy boots.
He looked to be in his forties, with graying hair and beard, but his build was still robust. An empty holster hung at his waist.
He appeared to have almost no cyberware, just a basic neural link.
Honestly, even Mercer would find dealing with this type troublesome. Guys like these usually kept their neural links disconnected from the network by default, only turning them on when necessary.
For netrunners without direct combat capabilities, facing off against this kind of person could be quite a challenge.
If you wanted to take them down with a virus, you'd have to plug a connection cable directly into their skull.
No wonder Mercer couldn't detect his signal afterward, the moment this guy sensed a netrunner intrusion, he must have shut off his network connectivity entirely.
He didn't need his neural link to control any cyberware, so cutting the connection was simple.
Unlike those modified with cyberware, who required special plugins to disconnect, otherwise their linked implants would shut down completely.
"Talk. Introduce yourself, and then I'll decide whether you get to live, you poor bastard."
The bound man stared at Mercer and Lucy with utter disbelief.
Was this some kind of joke? A bunch of thirteen- or fourteen-year-old kids had taken down a group of Raffen Shiv thugs in just five or six seconds?
"Don't shoot! I'm just a nomad, that Columbus outside is my ride. The Raffen Shiv targeted me, they thought I was transporting goods! They tried to rob me, but when they found nothing in my truck except junk, they got pissed, tied me up, and decided to ransom me."
The man quickly explained his situation.
Mercer simply tapped the bar lightly with his pistol. "Be more specific. Name, background, where you're from, where you're headed, and why."
"...Name's Cassidy. A nomad from the Aldecaldos."
As soon as Cassidy finished speaking, he saw Mercer's eyebrow twitch.
"Aldecaldos?"