At the same time, in an abandoned facility near the RCS Logistics compound…
The floor, once overrun with weeds and rust, was now stacked with crates of electronic equipment.
T-Bug and two other netrunners lay back in foldable mobile access terminals—devices that looked like simple recliners but could handle up to 100 trillion operations per second. While nowhere near the performance of a fixed desktop rig—barely 10%—they were still deadly tools in skilled hands.
The constant stream of data pulsed through indicator lights, giving the illusion that they were drifting in a sea of cyberspace.
And in a way, they were. T-Bug and her team had entered the Net in full immersion. If Roqi were to forcibly disconnect them now, without emergency cutoff protocols, their minds would be trapped in cyberspace forever.
That was how countless netrunners perished during the collapse of the Old Net—lost to the digital abyss, their bodies deteriorating once the mind was gone.
To ensure their safety, seven or eight mercs guarded the perimeter.
A top-tier netrunner was worth more than an entire elite squad of mercenaries.
These weren't freelancers picked off the Afterlife message board—these were Rogue's handpicked personnel. Loyal, disciplined, and all too aware that if Rogue fell, their own bloodstained hands meant no safe haven anywhere.
Tonight, they understood another unspoken truth:
Fail to protect these fragile-looking netrunners, and Rogue herself would have their heads.
A lone figure stood on the stairs between the first and second floors, staring silently through a cracked pane of reinforced glass. Roqi didn't move for so long that even Armadillo thought he might've turned to stone. Then, at last, he turned around.
"How much longer, Bug?"
Roqi's brow furrowed.
"Just a bit more time," T-Bug muttered, annoyed. "This gear's trash. I know we're not here to nitpick, but seriously—this thing's a fucking toy."
She was clearly frustrated.
As one of Night City's most skilled freelance netrunners, T-Bug's capabilities were undeniable.
She wasn't known for brute-force ICE-breaking, but at her level, even that wasn't a real weakness. Her forte was system infiltration and manipulation.
Breaking through RCS's ICE wasn't difficult—especially since they relied entirely on outsourced tech from vendors. No in-house defense, no unique architecture. Pure corporate laziness.
But the equipment she had on hand was laughably underpowered. If time weren't an issue, she would've insisted on bringing her personal rig: Fortress Cannon, a custom-built behemoth of a deck with insane offensive capabilities.
She'd spent two years and her life's savings on it—outfitted with specialized command sets, hyper-parallel processing clusters, and her own proprietary architecture. The floating-point core alone could slice through most ICE like paper.
Problem was, it was also the size of a desk and about as stealthy as a marching band.
Thankfully, Rogue's two netrunners weren't completely useless. T-Bug offloaded the grunt work to them, letting her focus on slicing through RCS's clunky ICE.
The RCS cybersecurity lead had made two catastrophic mistakes: they hadn't updated their ICE in over a year, and they'd bought everything from a single vendor—Zetatech.
If it weren't for the use of Zetatech hardware, T-Bug would've already converted the entire system into her playground.
Zetatech had started small, back in Cupertino, California. Today, it was one of the world's biggest suppliers of neural processors, chips, and drones—used by everyone from NCPD to Arasaka and Trauma Team.
Their most recognizable products were drones—combat, recon, logistics, even childcare.
From the gunship drone Octant, to the creepy smiling babysitter drone Bee, to the classic cheap-but-durable propeller drone Vargas—Zetatech had practically flooded the market.
RCS relied heavily on these drones. Most of their bots were Arasaka-made, but their drones? All Zetatech.
Especially the Canopy—a four-thruster "flying spider" drone used for industrial logistics.
Roqi remembered lying in a cheap motel, watching the Canopies buzz across the Night City skyline like oversized mechanical mosquitoes, CHOOH2 thrusters painting the sky blue.
By 2077, drone logistics weren't sci-fi—they were standard.
The Canopy was a prime example: engineered for the American market, it had vastly improved sensor arrays and cargo retrieval systems, outperforming its Soviet competitor, the Arlas, by a thousand soda bottles. Figuratively, of course.
The takeaway? Kids used to get told they'd end up sweeping streets if they didn't study. Now, with drones like Canopy, even that job was out of reach.
"Count yourself lucky RCS doesn't use Netwatch ICE," T-Bug sighed. "I'd be crying otherwise."
"You got it?" Roqi blinked. He'd been ready to camp here all night.
"Just about."
She slowed her process, tweaking settings with methodical precision.
She'd already hijacked their internal permissions and systems. Not just external defense—she controlled the company intranet.
It was just one warehouse. But it proved just how deadly she was.
"So we're good to go?"
"Completely. You could waltz in the front door if you wanted. I've flagged you all as 'Honorary Department Heads.' Just don't get recognized."
"Perfect." Armadillo—aka Little Weyland—cracked his joints and stood. "Team One, move. Team Two, standby."
Rogue had "casually" let slip that Armadillo was Bruce Weyland's son—a legend who once stormed Arasaka Tower with the Atlantis crew.
A legend's heir.
If Jack were awake, he'd be bouncing off the walls like a fanboy on stims.
Luckily, Vik had just texted: Jack was stable. Not out of the woods, but not dying either.
RCS was still going down.
Roqi exhaled, rolling his shoulders and cracking his neck. Time to move.
"You've got an hour—half, ideally. The quicker, the better," T-Bug warned.
"Why? Didn't you finish already?"
"You really don't know shit about hacking," she groaned.
Explaining to a normie was torture. Like making a mathematician teach multiplication tables.
"Zetatech ICE reboots every hour. That's when it's weakest, but also when its alarms are on hair-trigger."
"I changed most of the access permissions, but I didn't have time to rewrite the reboot protocols—they're linked to external authentication."
"I can shut down the cameras and turrets. I can intercept alerts. But Zetatech builds in backup protocols. Like panic buttons."
Roqi's face went blank.
T-Bug sighed.
"Just… get in and out. Fast. Quiet."
She'd basically slipped them into a minefield and handed them a jammer to walk through safely.
But if they started dancing?
They were fucked.
"Goddamn, you're a pro."
Roqi nodded, enlightened.
"Maybe I should learn some netrunning. Seems like it's life or death out here."
"Don't even joke," T-Bug muttered, yanking out her cable and hopping off the chair.
"I'll pay you not to ask me for lessons."
"What the fuck, am I that bad?!"
"You don't get it."
She gave him a bitter smile. "Teaching the basics would kill me."
Like asking Schumacher to teach someone how to use blinkers. Watching Roqi guess which pedal was the gas might cause a brain aneurysm.
"Go learn some fundamentals first. I know a few decent tutors... haven't talked to them in a while, though."
Then she paused.
"…Wait—you don't even have a neural jack. How the hell would you learn netrunning?"
Roqi touched the back of his neck.
Smooth. No port.
In 2077, that made him a freak.
"Yeah, figures."
He shrugged, conceding defeat. His netrunner dream died before it began.
"Maybe V'll want in, though."
"Now that's an idea." T-Bug nodded.
"But for now… let's work."
Roqi glanced at his PDA.
[23:54:06]
It was time.
Outside, the smog had thickened to choking levels—not mystic, just plain toxic.
"A moonless night for murder. A windy night for fire."
He patted his katana and leaned toward the window, grinning at the unremarkable RCS wall.
He knew their entire system was already dead inside.
"Let's move."
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