How To Live as a Cyberpunk Solver

79. house

It’s like a snake biting its tail. Leonard raids the gang, and the gang’s hired fixer attacks Leonard.

When Leonard caught the ninth gangster, a young fixer armed with a light machine gun opened fire at the pickup truck. There was no major damage due to the modified bulletproof gloves and quick hacking, but to be honest, I was stunned.

“They’re not even Ryan Bourne, are they all machine guns?”

The people who were as surprised as Leonard were the residents of 11th-9th Streets. 11th Street, which is famous for being safe in Junk Town, is as messed up as downtown. The streets were quiet because everyone fled from the gunfire.

“What should I do in this case?”

Max, the nerd fixer, asked. said Leonard, kicking the light machine gun assailant who was wriggling with a brain-chip electrocution.

“There is not much difference from the request so far.”

“Do you kill them all?”

“…Don’t say things that will mislead anyone.”

I guessed from the time he fired the 7.7kg light machine gun with both hands, but the implant rate was huge. The rate of brain chip dependence was so high that it was not easy to wake up. A permanent disability may remain. However, there was no loyalty to take care of that.

“We can borrow this.”

Leonard picked up the young fixer’s 5.56mm light machine gun and gave one to Max for ammunition. It was natural to take it because it was a loot, but the nuance was strange.

“You want to borrow it?”

“Because I have to write now.”

It was a unique mindset that if you take it and sell it, you steal it, and if you use it yourself, you borrow it. There’s nothing to give back either way, but that’s how it felt.

“How can I use it?”

“We can resolve the request first.”

The sound of the bolt back and forth was exceptionally chilling.

@

Leonard and Max switched tactics. By analyzing the captured gangster’s memory chip, he found out the ‘head’ of the 11th-9th Street Bond Organization.

It’s not a big snake, but it couldn’t drag its tail for long enough to bite it. This is because the side that drags out the time gets eaten more.

“So go and hide on the 7th floor.”

-…Is it really necessary?

The client, Jack Turner, was dissatisfied. Reason understood, but pride did not. Leonard growled at the helpless gangster brat.

“If there’s a safer place, I’ll tell you to go there, but is there a place that will accept you as a dog?”

– I can protect at least one part of my body. Because there are still loads left.

“Those scarecrows are good at protecting people.”

Leonard said after comparing a fixer armed with the latest implants to a bodyguard in a striped suit looking after a gangster.

“If they make up their minds and attack, they will be annihilated in two minutes. Shut up and go up to the 7th floor.”

-What makes your house different?

“I have my original android Sigma-01.”

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Jack Turner muttered, ‘Only with an Android…’, but he agreed because he was sorry for one hand holding the gun.

Leonard cut off the brain chip communication and murmured.

“If those guys had common sense, they wouldn’t even raid the office.”

Attacking the fixer’s office was a dead end incomparable to shooting in the street. If you compare it to a gang, it’s like raiding the base, and it was crossing the last line that a middleman could intervene.

“You don’t seem to have much common sense, do you?”

“Isn’t that true?”

In the first place, if they had common sense, they would not have attacked even on the road. The more I think about it, the more I feel disgusted. The blue-eyed young guys are peeling their feet…

“But since Sigma is there, it should be fine.”

“Does Sigma know how to fight?”

Max asked suspiciously. The Sigmas Max had seen so far were Sigmas that cooked, Sigmas that cleaned, and Sigmas that nagged them, so it was natural for them to be suspicious.

“Why did you give him four arms?”

“Do the laundry quickly?”

“…that is, but there are other reasons as well.”

@

Leonard’s concerns became a reality, and Sigma’s performance was beyond imagination.

A group of rookie fixers lacking in common sense, concepts, and courtesy raided Leonard Walker’s office on the 7th floor of 11-1 Street. He proved his rudeness by blowing a doorknob with a 10-gauge steel shotgun bullet.

Sigma, who went into first-class alert at Leonard’s order, paid for his rudeness in 0.15 seconds. At the same time as the doorknob was smashed, the middle of the door was punctured, and the rookie fixer’s head disappeared.

The two gunshots occurred almost simultaneously, and it seemed as if the iron orb that pierced the doorknob passed through the quantum tunnel and returned in the opposite direction. Of course, it would take another 100 years for quantum tunnel technology to be commercialized, so a combat android with a state-of-the-art reactive sensor was realistic.

“Confirmation of trespassing by armed men. Instant kill with user approval.”

Sigma’s four arms had a clear purpose. Both the upper and lower arms were loaded and fired at the same time. The built-in gun also covered it at all times, so there was no need to shout reload even after firing hundreds of rounds.

“A lump of scrap metal!”

It wasn’t all about just spraying a lot of bullets. The outgoing fixer trying to enter through the wall from the next door proved it. Sigma, like an android, didn’t even get surprised for 0.1 second and turned the reloaded shotgun. bang-! Another bloody corpse of the fixer appeared.

“I remodeled and installed Maxium’s unmanned attack aircraft identification module. It can shoot up to 18 targets at the same time, and it can even try corner sniping by calculating the ricochet angle.”

Except for his heavy body, he was more than a 7-year-old fixer and a promising assistant. The field experiencer acknowledged it with a scream.

“There is a monster in the house!”

Even if a rookie solver who lacked practical experience was united in double digits, it was not enough to overcome Leonard’s stronghold.

@

Turning the time back to normal, it was 22 minutes before Sigma was active. It was also the time Leonard and Max arrived at the edge of the 11th-9th Street housing estate.

“Wouldn’t those gangsters have noticed?”

Max grunted as he slung the light machine gun over his shoulder. Even the weight of sniper rifles, shotguns, pistols, katanas, and various bullets alone weighed well over 10kg, and an additional 7.7kg light machine gun and 5.56mm ammunition box were added to weigh down the weight of the weapon. Looking at the gun bags on the left and right shoulders, there was no separate bundle merchant.

Leonard didn’t help even with his strong body. It’s not like a mother raising a lion cub, I was a little busy.

“How many gangs and solvers we killed, of course they were reported.”

If that wasn’t reported, they wouldn’t have been able to take over the streets.

“Still, this is worth a head-to-head fight.”

Leonard’s hexagonal pupils returned to normal. Completed scans of gang-owned houses and garages.

The bond office seems to have been destroyed by Jack Turner and used as a makeshift office, but it was all about alarm level security. There weren’t too many gangs.

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Jack said that there were 30 members of this organization, but why would they fight to the death because of great loyalty? In addition to the 9 people who were killed by Leonard, there were 12 people left in the new hideout because there were people who had escaped or dived.

“Since they are the ones who hold out until the end, they must be more competent than the ones in front of them. Your nerves will be on edge.”

Imaging equipment in the house was not enough, so I used a few implant eyes. Weapons included a convincingly semi-automatic shotgun and submachine gun, but implant security was lousy. He wouldn’t have known that Jack Turner would hire a hacker, and even if he did, updating a brain chip wouldn’t be a day job.

“Then do you just go in?”

Leonard loaded a borrowed light machine gun.

“Find a sniping point across the street.”

“Am I alone?”

“I have to do that alone. The entrance door is to the south, and there are windows to the east and one to the north, so look carefully.”

Max pursed his lips and walked away with the gun bag.

I acknowledged Max’s stellar skills, but didn’t fully expect them. It was safe to think I would handle it alone.

“The fact that you haven’t run away yet means you’re prepared to be shot, right? Please do not resent me.”

Leonard strode towards the duplex, which was quite luxurious for the gang to live in.

@

It looks like a retro house built at the end of the 20th century, but of course it couldn’t be. Materials and equipment were all state-of-the-art. It was rather good for Leonard, a hacker. Smartly dismantled the lock without having to break the doorknob like anyone else.

However, Leonard’s official job was not a hacker, but a fixer. There are cities that do not recognize the title of solver, so I wrote ‘private detective’, but the work I did was similar anyway. I wasn’t smart at all.

“who-!”

It was the gang that Leonard had previously hacked with a remote camera. I made a brain chip without wasting time. Loading save files all at once simply overloaded them.

“Deud deuk-!”

As the brain chip went down, the implant body controlled by the brain chip also went down. What the broadcast guest said was right. The brain chip also had a lot of problems.

“Are you the one from Jack?”

Since they are the core members of the gang, the reaction was good. Before he could answer, he started shooting. Tattang-! Tata Tang-! Leonard covered his face with his left arm and turned the light machine gun with his right arm. Again, the fixer wasn’t a smart job. Du-du-tu-tu-tattang-!

It is a standard 5.56mm bullet that is evaluated as rather poor for use against cyborgs, but the story was different when it was fired at 18 rounds per second. The gang, who had been shooting with small pistols, quickly became a beehive and disappeared across the kitchen.

“It’s one guy!”

There was one more gang rushing out with shotguns on their sides. Leonard only moved the muzzle while holding the trigger. It was a small difference, but Leonard was fast. The shotgun bullets fired by the gang disappeared into the ceiling, and the second shot never came.

Dodddduttak-! tick-!

The 100-round extended magazine was empty in an instant. I did my part enough to defeat the three gangsters and overpowered the steamer. Leonard undid his shoulder strap, dumped the metal on the floor, and drew out his revolver. An urgent voice came from the second floor.

“for a moment! Wait for a moment! I don’t know how much Jack agreed to give…”

I’ll give you twice as much, I’ll give you three times as much, these were lines I heard often. As Leonard calmly climbed the stairs, a voice grew more urgent.

“I’ll give you tenfold! If you catch Jack, I can give you 20 times as much!”

“…is that a little lumpy?”

Twenty times Jack’s was 200,000 credits. It was an amount that would allow me to become a hotel owner tomorrow. But I shook off my lingering feelings. It’s ridiculous to believe the gang’s promise, and it’s unlikely that there will be 200,000 credits.

bang-!

Indeed, before Leonard could answer, the bullets flew. The handrail beside the stairs was smashed and several iron balls hit the temple. The head was bent to the side at close to 90 degrees.

“You should thank Jake.”

It would have been dangerous if he hadn’t put on a bulletproof hood. In fact, if I didn’t have a bulletproof vest, I wouldn’t have come up defenseless, but it worked anyway. Leonard stretched out his revolver and fired back. The gang, who was careless thinking that he had taken care of it, was hit by a 45-caliber armor-piercing bullet and fell over.

“Shit! Stop that bastard!”

Leonard threw himself into a room close to the second floor, using a thermo-optical camouflage device. While the bullets that missed the target hit the wrong place, I started uploading the hacking program. Except for the three people downstairs, everyone was gathered in a large room on the second floor. Breaking through the front seems a bit difficult, but if you take the time…

-Mr. Leonard? I got my seat. can i shoot?

Leonard agreed, pulling out an additional revolver ‘Air Force’.

“Do whatever you feel like.”

It seemed like it would be easier to kill one or two with a sniper. But there was one thing I overlooked. These days, the fixers are fearless and just go out, but Max was also a fixer these days. Instead of a sniper rifle, he started grinding with a light machine gun. Too-ta-ta-ta-ta-!