How To Live as a Cyberpunk Solver

98. annihilation

Leonard had an unusually good memory these days.

He immediately recognized Fletcher, the middle executive of the Twins Gang, without memory help. Even the old people who hate implants usually use assistive devices such as brain chips, so it is clear that they have natural abilities rather than birth.

“The errand boy?”

“errand?”

He was a thug who always looked after the twins. I thought he was a low-end gangster because of his ordinary appearance, but he seems to be an executive in his own way.

“How did it get that shape?”

Leonard asked, looking at his broken leg under the wheelchair. One’s knee was cut and the other’s pelvis was shattered. There was a reason Twins, whose main business is illegal implant sales, have not been able to repair it yet. This type of damage was not easy to treat.

“I don’t think you were shot?”

“I saw it properly.”

Fletcher let out a deep sigh. Both legs survived because of implants. If it was a living body, it would have died from blood loss or shock.

“One guy is a lightweight body that should be 170 cm tall, but he wore a long sword. I cut off this leg.”

“knife?”

“It’s a knife that looks like the kind of cat-claw bastards play with.”

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Japanese Blade. Maniacs like Logan Mace used to call it a katana in native pronunciation.

“Wasn’t it just one person?”

“Two guys. There was another lump of iron about 2m tall. He’s a complete madman. He crushed this leg with his fist and chewed it up.”

“…eat?”

“Yes. Chew it.”

Even listening to this, it wasn’t a sane combination.

I remember the silhouette like the physique, but the specific montage didn’t come out because I didn’t have memory. Leonard thought about hacking Fletcher’s brain chip to fill in the missing information, but gave up. There was no accurate information such as a video, and aftereffects could be left on the main board.

“A sword holder and a lump of iron.”

“Can you find it?”

Besides, it wasn’t that there was no other way. Junk Town had more cameras and drones than people.

“Where was the raid?”

The twins and twin subordinates looked at each other. It didn’t seem like a nice place to proudly introduce to strangers.

@

Instead of calling the address and drawing a map, the twins attached a guide. It was a wise decision. 21st Street, the busiest street in Junk Town, was in the middle of a slum surrounded by all kinds of temporary buildings and extension facilities. It was a place filled with numerous illegal buildings that did not appear in the city hall address, and narrow alleys that did not appear on the map.

“A handsome man? Who are you coming to see?”

“This is the cheapest and best! Stop by and go!”

“Hey bro, if you’re looking for something nice…”

Of course, it was not a sound and constructive place. Even a trash can has its filthiest parts, and that was the case here in the slums.

A young girl the age of Max grabbed a customer with one arm and one leg without an implant. It would be better to beg, but even that had an owner and a seat, so even the remaining limbs could disappear.

When I turned my head a little, I saw a prostitute engrossed in service in a cramped alley between buildings, and when I turned the other way, I saw a scavenger diligently putting a knife on someone’s stomach. Vagrants without credit for e-drugs inhaled heavy metals from the treatment plant and fell asleep.

“It’s an annoying place.”

It was annoying in many ways. However, the woman with a chain and the man with an anchovy dancer intuitively accepted it.

“Does it smell bad? It’s also noisy.”

“Be patient. Because we are almost there.”

Leonard took one look at the two couples and fell silent. The guides the twins gave were these two, of course. At first, they seemed to think they were friendly, but it was a big mistake.

“Here it is. This is where Mr. Fletcher almost died.”

Still, the geography of the slums was quick. If Leonard was alone, he found a place he would have lost for half a day by taking the shortest distance.

Leonard touched the floor once and looked at the surrounding rooftops once for traces. Just by looking at it, I couldn’t tell that a big fight had taken place. Not because it was clean, but because it was messy.

‘Is there a camera?’

One out of three passers-by was a criminal in the neighborhood, so even installing surveillance cameras was useless. Looking at the camera, what kind of rice cake is this? There were more people who would steal it. But it wasn’t just the fixed camera that saved the video. There were tens of thousands of unspecified moving cameras in this narrow, densely populated area. Leonard found several nearby residents spying on the fixer and the gangster.

If you stick to the traditional investigative method, you will knock on the door, ask for understanding, and then ask a question. Leonard’s eyes turned into hexagons.

“A fixer? what are you doing?”

The tall woman called out to Leonard, who was standing still. Leonard couldn’t answer because he was hacking all the memory devices in the 100m range. It was possible because there were not many scavengers with memory chips and personal security was almost non-existent.

‘Is this it?’

The gang leader, Fletcher, found some memories of the time of the attack. There is a memory of stealing a glance on the roof of a building, a memory of witnessing it with open eyes while sleeping at the entrance of an alley, and a memory of meeting eyes while waking up in a commotion and looking out the window. Leonard greatly enlarged his last memory.

According to Fletcher’s testimony, it was a female cyborg with a height of about 170 cm. Because of the high implantation rate, it is unknown whether she was a real woman or a transgender who changed into a female body, but that was the case.

The face is ordinary because it is a mass-produced type that is released as a basic model from the factory, but the long sword in the hand has a unique shape that cannot be seen even in similar gangs – Tiger Claw Gang. First of all, it was 180 cm long. If it was erected vertically, it would exceed the owner’s height and had to be slanted behind his back. The color was also bright red, which is not seen in ordinary metal. Experts would have called it Daetaedo, but those outside the swordsmanship did not know that.

‘If you drag something like that and walk the streets, rumors can’t spread…’

The female samurai raised her finger at the eyewitness. I was a little nervous, thinking it might be a finger with a built-in gun, but I brought it to my lips. It was a very easy-to-understand gesture of placing your index finger vertically on your lips.

‘Quiet.’

The owner of the memory was terrified and quickly closed the window. Leonard moved the video forward a bit to capture the best part of the female samurai’s face.

At that time, the female samurai’s colleague, the Iron Man, was assaulting Fletcher.

As I changed my memory to a tramp at the entrance of an alley, I saw a large body of metal pounding people close by. It was torture, not violence. I punched my instep, my knee, and my thigh, and they broke it metallurgically. Every time I asked something, I kept repeating it as if the answer I wanted wasn’t coming out.

‘Is this evil?’

Leonard also saved the face and characteristics of the Iron Man, and released all the villagers who unknowingly cooperated.

In this kind of request, as important as the montage was to figure out the route. The assailant combination took a step in the direction they had left.

“Hey, hey! Where are you going?”

Leonard couldn’t be sent alone, so a couple of guides rushed after him. Leonard gradually expanded the scope and target of hacking. More info was needed.

“Are you bleeding?”

But it seems a bit overkill. The module was overloaded because it could not keep up with Leonard’s calculation request. Blood was dripping from his nose.

“I’ve been fine lately… but it’s not a big deal.”

Leonard covered his nose with his coat sleeve and continued hacking. If Sigma had seen it, he would have strongly dissuaded him with the highest level of vocabulary. However, in the back alleys of Junk Town, there were no good people who cared about the health of others. The tall woman and the dancer man looked at each other and passed on. It was interesting that it was an era where humanity was less than machines.

“This way.”

Unreasonable results appeared little by little. The attacker duo circled the maze and escaped onto the main road of 22nd Street. From here, there are cameras and drones flying around a lot. Didn’t even move far.

“Other than that building.”

Leonard pointed to the third-floor mall across the street. The first floor was a clothing store and laundry, the second floor was an oriental restaurant, and the third floor was a suspicious office with colored paper pasted on the windows.

“You mean those bastards are over there?”

“I don’t know if it’s still there, but I went in there.”

Leonard took out the candy and peeled off the wrapper. Even cheap products made with artificial sweeteners were desperate for sugar. In the meantime, the guides reported to the gang leader with a brain chip. It seems that there is a lot going on here and there.

“Solver, good job. As rumored, he is competent.”

“It was nothing.”

Leonard kept his seat as he munched on the candy. If I were to do things more meticulously, I would go directly into the building and find the target, but judging from the gangster atmosphere, it seemed unlikely. Still, they held their ground in case the assailant escaped. Complaints were not good for 99% of the work.

Although it is the center of Junk Town, there were not many cars passing through the road. A potato truck bearing the Azdec logo passed by, followed by a truck carrying personal cargo, followed by an SUV with two-headed, six-armed twin symbols.

The guide couple cheered and ran. As you might have guessed, it was the Twins gang. As expected of Junk Town’s largest organization, it was armed with automatic weapons handed over from Big Ground.

“It is a war. It’s war.”

Surprise, infiltration, assassination, it was far from anything like that. Reloading the rifles with a clatter and dividing the squads loudly was, to anyone’s eyes, preparation for war.

Leonard watched quietly as he rolled the candy. Perhaps it was because he fought against the Wild Kid gang for a long time, but he showed his skill. Even professional contractors with knives and irons would have a hard time defeating armed forces like that. To be honest, Leonard wasn’t confident either. If it’s to escape by mobilizing all of the thermo-optical camouflage and cognitive impairment hacking, it seems like something will happen…

“Throw!”

It wasn’t just guns. He skillfully threw a flash grenade at a gangster. Five or six entered at the same time through the front and back doors on the first floor and through the windows broken by the butt boards. It is called a flash, but the explosion was more intense. bang-! thump-! The building shook with the sound.

“enter!”

Without giving them a chance to come to their senses, two squads rushed in. Muzzle flashes flashed through the broken windows, and gunfire flowed in all directions. It was as nimble as corporate public security.

“Is it the right way?”

For Leonard, it was a crippled view across the river, no, a fight across the road. Seeing that they were shooting, it seemed that they had found the target, and looking at the situation, it seemed that things would be sorted out soon. However, the gunfire lasted longer than expected. Flashes of light also erupted on the second and third floors. Are there more enemies, or are those troops struggling?

The answer was revealed shortly after. The glass windows on the third floor were shattered, and the Twins Gang, who entered first, crashed. It was not a fallout. His arms were neatly cut off and his head was crushed, and he was already dead. Leonard crushed the candy, swallowed it, and spat out the stick.

“After all, there are no easy requests.”

It wasn’t long before the gunfire disappeared. But no more twins gang came out. The two elite squads of the Twins were annihilated in three minutes.