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Chapter 57 - Chapter 57: Tyrant

Rebecca finally climbed off Rocky. She was reluctant, but too many eyes were on them. Seeing Rocky safe and Rebecca awake, everyone was ready to let the scare end there.

Rocky stopped Vik. "Vik, I need a favor. Help me install a piece of cyberware."

He set a spinal operating-system implant on the tray that sits along the vertebrae like a Sandevistan mount. White segmented bonework wrapped a dense, high-precision core. Anyone could tell at a glance it was not standard issue. This was the Source Project: Annihilation unit he had prepared long ago.

{ Source Project: Annihilation — "Tyrant" Operating System }

{ Central-nervous-system cyberware. Primary effects: strengthens neural reflexes and controlled power output. }

{Performance: grants significant increases to reflex speed and raw strength. }

{ Included neural processors: Pain Editor, Micro-Perception, Weak-Point Analysis, Ballistics Analysis. }

{ Net defense: maximum-grade ICE with reverse-trace capability. }

{ Ability — Ultimate Domination: on activation, enter Tyrant state. Gain rapid regeneration. Double all OS-granted boosts. All other installed cyberware enters berserk-performance mode; their effects also double. }

{ Price correction: 0% }

{ Module price: 300,000 eddies }

As the OS from Source Project: Annihilation, the "Croc" line, its purpose was simple: amplify nerves and power. Like its namesake, it did not need flair. It crushed with force.

With Arasaka negotiations coming up, Rocky wanted insurance in case talks broke down and they came for him. He chose the Croc-line OS not only for its raw Performance, but for its net defense. Hackers are the gun you do not see. Rocky had never had a reliable counter. Ordinary ICE could not stop a top netrunner. You were stuck on the back foot if a fight started and the other side brought a netrunner while you had zero defense. With the Tyrant OS installed, his system would become a sealed steel wall. The chance of a breach would drop to near zero.

Vik turned the implant in his hands. "What model is this? I have never seen it in any catalog."

Rocky met his eyes. Vik understood and stopped asking. The kid had pulled stranger things from nowhere already; one more rare OS was not surprising.

Vik had not installed this exact model before, but after adjustments, the Source Project hardware fully matched Night City's cyberware standards. The procedure would run like any other OS swap.

Rocky lay prone on the operating chair. Vik prepped, dosed anesthesia, and got to work. The install itself was not complicated. It finished fast.

Rocky woke on the chair and opened his eyes. The world clicked into slow motion. Edges sharpened; motion stretched.

The Tyrant OS had pushed his neural reflexes to a new ceiling. Under that load, the world always felt like it was in Sandevistan. Unlike Sandevistan's short, triggered spikes, Tyrant behaved more like a Kerenzikov-class neural implant: always on, continuously elevating reflexes.

Only this time, the baseline boost was far beyond a Kerenzikov. It hovered near a Sandevistan's active state. It felt like running Sandevistan permanently.

Vik saw the shift. "L, how do you feel?"

Rocky's silhouette vanished from the chair.

"L?" Lucy and the others blurted at once.

"I feel great. Couldn't be better."

The voice came from behind them. Rocky stood there, rolling his shoulders.

The Tyrant's amplification ran continuously, but it could be tuned. He had already trimmed his reflex factor to about fifty percent over baseline. He worked on syncing his speech to a world that now moved more slowly to his eyes. He would need time to adapt. Holding maximum throughput nonstop would also tax the body.

No wonder this is the OS of the most potent weapon in the Source Project. The speed jump is ridiculous, he thought. The Croc model was not famous for speed, but that was relative. The most potent weapon did not have glaring weak points. Even its "weaker" areas outclassed most people outright.

Beyond reflexes, Tyrant had also raised his strength by fifty percent. If he ran the OS at full load and triggered Ultimate Domination, he would become something close to a humanoid monster.

He even felt an urge to trade a few blows with Adam Smasher, just to measure the legend's weight.

With the installation done, they could finally go home and rest. The night's chaos was over, for now.

Leaving Vik's clinic, Rocky slid into the Deluxo. He was still on driving detail to get Jackie and the others home.

"Hey, Color Freak, what are you doing"

At the passenger door, Lucy and Rebecca put their hands on the handle at the same time.

While Rocky was under the tools, Lucy had already spoken with Rebecca. Now Rebecca knew about her and Rocky. Learning that Rocky liked her back had made Rebecca genuinely happy, but Lucy's involvement still rubbed her the wrong way. Even with a "fair competition" truce on the table, Rebecca's fuse burned short.

It was obvious. The first skirmish between the two had begun.

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