[Name: Takeda Lucina]
[Age: 14]
[Place of Origin: Warsaw, Poland]
[Family Background Investigation: Father Takeda Kenji (flagged in red) is the head of security at Arasaka's Warsaw office, mother Shim (flagged in red) was a core member of the former Polish hacker group 'Squadron 404'.
This employee was voluntarily sent by her father to the juvenile hacker training center for special training because her father informed the company of her 'instability', 'rebellion', and 'inconsistent with Arasaka spirit', requiring focused observation.]
[Capability Assessment:
Juvenile hacker training center score: 92 points (excellent).
Arasaka spirit score: 51 (recommend loyalty re-education within the facility).
Psychological stress tolerance: 72 (mediocre)
Overall assessment: Gifted, but due to personality flaws and instability, lacks potential for important responsibilities.]
[Post-graduation destination assessment from training center: Meets hacker requirements for some high-risk projects.]
[Assigned to Vancouver Experimental Base in July 2070 to execute Star Plan.]
Mercer checked the flagged data.
[Takeda Kenji: Outstanding employee during the Fourth Corporate War, successfully completed cleanup tasks in local Polish operations and has long suppressed opposition forces, showing high loyalty to the company and is trustworthy.
Specific action records are part of secondary encrypted archives, access prohibited.]
[Shim: This individual has not entered Arasaka employment, according to investigations fits the image of a housewife loyal to her family, considered special record personnel, involves keyword 'Squadron 404', no information on this server.]
Mercer closed the archives, deleted them, and then looked at his own file.
It was similar to how he remembered, receiving a mediocre rating; cold personality, orphan background, sold to Arasaka by foster parents for 50,000 Euros.
After half a second of thought, and two more seconds spent reviewing all minor hacker and key personnel files, Mercer noted the important information and deleted all data that needed deleting.
After confirming the server's programmed setup one last time, he quickly scanned the situation via the camera, only to find a scene that made him furrow his brows tightly.
Sakata Yu, who once chose to inform, was now desperately pounding the door in the underground level where another minor hacker resided.
Mercer quietly stared at him through the camera for a moment, then unlocked the room of the minor hacker on the lower level and decisively disconnected from the server, exiting the deep dive.
Upon returning to reality, the moment he opened his eyes, a sudden wave of nausea hit him.
Shit...
Feeling dizzy, a sharp pain in his head, as uncomfortable as when he just crossed back.
Not only a physical discomfort, but also a very stifling sense of emptiness on a mental level.
That feeling of omnipotence when connected to the server quickly faded, and he went from seemingly godlike, losing all divine power, back to being a mere mortal.
The immense contrast between perception and physical sensation made his entire body feel weak.
Like a drunkard, he staggered upright, gasping, and walked out with faltering steps.
A robot was waiting at the door for him, holding the custom-made Kenshin pistol, commissioned by the director aunt.
Mercer took the pistol, cocked it, and had the robot help him into the elevator. Leaning against the edge of the elevator, he paused for a moment of reflection and pressed the lower level button while taking deep breaths, trying to recover.
Diving really is dangerous... Normal hackers are fine, even when they connect to servers in Cyberspace, they can only achieve what their brain can handle at most.
But Mercer, he could certainly say he was performing beyond the ordinary.
The display absolutely surpassed the current capacity limit of his brain—damn it, he thought surely a bit of his brain was fried.
He could even smell a bit of burning odor emanating from the brain-computer interface.
Biological monitoring's self-check program sent him the scanned data, proving that after entering the server, he quickly entered a state akin to Brain-Machine Overclocking.
Luckily, the superior server-level cooling saved him; otherwise, he might not have endured. How rare it is for a hacker to nearly fry oneself like that.
Most hackers end up like this from passively receiving too much data, whereas he was purely handling too much, too aggressively himself, using his brain too heavily.
And in that cold yet inexplicably exhilarated state in Cyberspace, he wouldn't feel this slight injury was worth attention; in fact, it wasn't. He still could walk, think—just that...
Uncomfortable.
The elevator swiftly reached the lower level. When the doors opened, what appeared before him was Sakata Yu's tense figure, pulling out the Single Molecule Line and staring at him intently.
"What... what did you do! Why are all the rooms locked? Where's Lucy? You're trying to escape... aren't you! You plan to escape!"
Sakata Yu's hand trembled, finally shouting sharply with a crying tone: "Why didn't you take me... if you were already sure you'd succeed... why didn't you tell me earlier!"
"And wait for you to betray me? Please, child, just get out of the way, I'm not here for you.
Now security is empty; if you want to run, just go for it.