Problem? It's more than a problem—it's a huge problem!
Neural port, Arasaka Type-1…
Lin Mo didn't claim to know as much as a pro netrunner, but he at least knew neural ports had tiers—just like Sandevistans and Berserks: the higher the model, the better the performance.
Arasaka Type-1… A few years back it might've been cutting-edge. Now? Only rookies short on cash would be running something that old.
But judging from Lucy's skills and how she carried herself, she didn't seem like a newbie…
Was it a money thing? Or just guts and pride—too good to bother with better gear?
"Hah, scavenge trash? You've had me working your jobs—digging through the dump every day looking for that specific busted freezer. Funny how I never 'happened' to find a neural port while I was at it."
Seeing Lin Mo gape, Lucy shot back, annoyed—though there wasn't much conviction behind it.
Lin Mo paused, then collected himself and asked, "How much RAM does your port have?"
"Four…" Lucy turned her head, avoiding his eyes.
Lin Mo: …
He vaguely remembered: when V first shows up in the game, they're running a basic neural port too—RAM around four, if he recalled.
Well… room to grow!
He didn't want to press her. With a sigh, he said, a bit helpless, "Is it money? Something else? If you've got a constraint, tell me. As your boss, I should be upgrading your gear… Don't tell me what I pay you can't cover a decent port?"
Lucy's face stayed calm, but something complicated flickered in her eyes. Her lashes dipped as she murmured, "I have my reasons. And… up to now, this port has been enough."
"That's because you haven't run into the right enemy yet. Netrunning changes with the times. If you don't upgrade with it, it'll bite you—hard. When we get the chance, swap to something better. I'll cover the cost." Lin Mo said it like it was nothing. "Also—you haven't collected your full-time onboarding perks yet, have you? After tonight, I'll figure out what to give you."
Lucy arched a brow. "Onboarding perks? What's that?"
"You'll see. Not now, though. We've already burned a minute or two out here. Let's move. Oh—give me your satchel first."
He didn't want to linger. He stepped in close, unzipped her bag, pulled out a grapple gun, roughly sighted the top of the wall, and fired.
The wall was far too high to free-climb. Even with implants, Lin Mo wouldn't bet on it. With tools, though, he was up in seconds.
From the top, he scanned the inside. No guards in sight. He flashed Lucy an OK sign and tossed the grapple gun down.
She followed his lead and vaulted up.
They dropped inside without a hitch.
Once they landed, Lin Mo pulled two cloaks from the satchel—kept one and handed the other to Lucy.
"What's this?" she asked.
The cloak was roomy, hood and all—pulled up, it could cover the entire face.
"Adaptive optical camo cloak. Kang-Tao make. Hit the button at the collar to mask your outline. It won't beat thermal, and certain tuned optic augments can still pick you up—but it's solid kit."
"Also, there's an IFF strip on it—if you're wearing a visor, you'll see friendly tags. If things get loud, don't shoot me."
He spoke while slipping the cloak on, then demonstrated. He pressed the button and vanished.
Lucy stared for a moment. He was "invisible," but the light shimmer gave away a slight distortion in space. If you looked carefully, it wasn't perfect.
It's just clothing, not skin—it can't fully hug the form, much less make you actually disappear.
She shrugged into her own cloak. Before she'd finished, a hand appeared out of thin air, lifting the satchel off the ground and offering it to her. Lin Mo's exasperated voice came from nowhere:
"The bag goes under the cloak. You don't want a floating backpack cruising down a hallway at midnight, do you?"
"I don't need you to tell me," Lucy snapped, slipping the bag beneath the cloak.
—
The Arasaka Waterfront was mostly roads and a handful of super-massive buildings.
From above, you'd only see rectangular blocks—just a few structures covering nine-tenths of the site. On the ground, craning your neck, you couldn't even see the sky—only the steel trusses and arching roofs extending out from the factories.
An average person stumbling in might feel like they'd wandered into a giant's hall.
The "research institute" was only a corner within one of those massive plants.
Which meant most of their op would be indoors.
Without netrunner support, getting through this would be hell.
Using the route map burned into his head, Lin Mo led Lucy into the titanic building housing the lab.
With the raiders soaking up all the heat, they barely saw any guards—just scattered workers and staff being evacuated.
Chaotic crowds are perfect for sneaking. With the cloaks, they moved like ghosts.
Still, Lin Mo kept grumbling at one thing: Lucy's hack speed was… not great.
The sim had said she excelled at bypassing Arasaka ICE, but hands-on, on-site hardwiring wasn't her forte.
"You really should replace that port. At this rate, you're exhausted and I'm exhausted…"
They'd just slipped inside another corridor. Lin Mo scanned for threats—just ahead, a camera rode the wall.
Arasaka's own turf—their cameras would almost certainly have thermal. Cloaks wouldn't cut it. Safer to black it out first.
He couldn't see Lucy's face under the cloak, but he could feel her bristling.
A single camera taking her over ten seconds to crack—any dog would shake its head at that.
Remote support from the netrunner team was still chewing on the local grid; no quick help coming. So these little chores fell to Lucy and her physical jack-ins.
Granted, Arasaka's hardware is quality—hard to crack. Didn't stop Lin Mo from teasing her.
"Hurry, hurry—always rushing," Lucy muttered through her teeth. "If you've got this much to say, maybe you should've brought your little kitty along."
"Her name's Sasha. Not 'kitty.' Say that on comms and it'll screw with team dynamics," Lin Mo chided. "And why you? Because I believe in your talent. Running something this old and still popping an Arasaka cam? With a better port you'd blink and it'd be done."
He really just… says it straight, huh…
Lucy could only sigh.
A boy younger than her, talking like a seasoned adult… fine, he didn't feel like a normal teen. But wearing that handsome kid face while lecturing like this—infuriating.
Because of the bickering, the camera took a few seconds longer than it should have. It finally died.
They pushed deeper—right as a five-man Arasaka patrol rounded the bend ahead.
"Trouble," Lin Mo whispered. "Lead's wearing a tactical visor—almost certainly thermal. We can't dodge."
"What do we do?" Lucy's brow knit.
"No problem. Just five. We drop them all before they can react—then no one knows we were ever here."
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