Lucy's lips twitched. If Lin Mo could see through the cloak, he'd see her whole face frozen in speechless disbelief.
"What do you mean, 'wipe them all out and no one will ever notice'…?"
Simple. Brutally simple.
And she couldn't quite find a counter-argument either.
If everyone's dead, sure—that's a perfect infiltration.
But an entire patrol team isn't that easy to erase… she groused inwardly.
Then she froze.
In her view, the friendly IFF tag that marked Lin Mo flickered—one blink—and it was already beside the patrol.
All five dropped like they'd been drugged, collapsing without so much as a twitch of resistance.
Before Lucy could say anything, Lin Mo kicked the Sandevistan again and dragged the five bodies into a shadowed corner, out of the obvious lines of sight.
"We need to speed up. An entire patrol vanishing without a peep will set off alarms sooner or later. If the guards aren't idiots, they'll assume someone's already inside."
He clapped his hands, as if brushing away dust that wasn't there.
He hadn't drawn his blade. Use a knife and the next second would be a fountain of blood. A normal adult has four to five liters of it—fatal cuts spill a lot. Five men's worth would make a pond. Snapping necks is cleaner, just as lethal, and it keeps the stink of blood from spreading.
And you do not want splatter on your cloak.
Lucy had watched it all. Her pupils narrowed; the shock rolled through her like surf. Not even a second, and five Arasaka guards were corpses.
If he'd quick-drawn like a gunslinger and head-tapped all five in a second, she wouldn't have been this rattled.
But this… "like dew soaking in" kind of killing—no spray, no flash—bit deeper into the mind.
It was her first time seeing him work. She'd known he was exceptional. She hadn't known he was this terrifying.
And to think she used to sass him…
She trotted over, flicked her hood back to show her face, stared at the five open-eyed bodies. The shock hadn't fully faded, but she forced her voice to stay steady:
"You take out five at once, and you're not worried the rest will catch on and swarm us?"
"That's why I said we move faster. And even if someone comes, it's fine. Most of security is tied up with those raiders, and they still have to evacuate the office drones. Odds are there aren't many left inside the lab."
As he spoke he glanced around, clearly searching for something. Finding nothing, he clicked his tongue.
He'd wanted boxes to stuff the bodies into—nothing handy. No easy "dispose and forget."
"Besides, we already agreed—you just handle your job. I handle your safety. Worst case, I stay and hold them off; you run. Alone." He paused, gave her a strange look. "And if it comes to that, don't get sentimental and refuse to leave."
Lucy couldn't help a laugh; the tightness in her chest eased.
A man who kills like he's swatting flies is scary. A man who promises to be your shield—and actually has the record to back it up—turns scary into safety.
"I promise. If it comes to that, I'll run faster than anyone," she said, voice flat as ever.
"Then let's move."
He tucked the bodies deeper into the corner, as tidy as he could manage, and they continued on.
—
Arasaka Waterfront's defenses were iron outside, looser within.
The exterior layers were tight enough to make anyone pay in blood for either a frontal assault or a stealth approach.
But once you were inside those factory shells, the security felt much lighter. Which made sense—these mega-plants covered a ridiculous footprint. It was the shoreline; strategically vital, yes, but you can't stick guards on every square meter.
It's a company campus, not a prison camp. The people here are employees, not convicts; you don't pack the interior with guards.
The research institute followed the same logic.
The target lab occupied about a tenth of one mega-plant, stark in Arasaka's signature black-and-crimson.
Aside from the patrol they'd just dropped, Lin Mo and Lucy didn't see another soul.
The place felt hollow. In the living area—no one. But on a few desks, coffee cups still warm; papers scattered in a hurry.
The staff had bailed the instant they heard about the attack—no hesitation, no grandstanding.
Very on-brand. Know your role, don't play hero, evacuate when told.
No wonder in the game's finale run on Arasaka Tower you barely see any regular employees.
It suited the two of them just fine—less sneaking past eyes, more just avoiding cameras.
Lin Mo also knew where Regina's data would be.
In earlier sims, frustrated with stalled infiltration, he'd tried brute-forcing his way in a couple times. Painful—but he'd learned the interior map and where the prize sat.
"Check, check—do you read me? Is the channel clean?"
A gentle female voice rang in their ears; both halted.
"Sasha, you cracked their subnet?" Lin Mo asked, pleased.
Per his pre-op orders, the team kept comms clear—only Mann and Lin Mo did quick status pings. If Sasha was chiming in now, the netrunner cell had made progress.
"Partially," she said. "Kiwi and I can't fully take the plant's entire subnet, but we found the lab's segment in cyberspace and we've seized the camera grid in your area."
"Short version: from what I see, there aren't many stragglers left inside. If those cloaks are getting stuffy, you can take them off for now."
"Nice work." Lin Mo exhaled.
If there'd been a single thing he hated most, it was the endless chokepoint cameras.
"How's it look outside? How long can the raiders hold?" he asked.
The building's soundproofing was too good—he could barely hear the war outside.
Mann's voice cut in: "Don't get me started. Company dogs didn't have dinner, apparently—they can't organize a proper line. But those meatheads brought toys. From where I'm sitting, the booms haven't stopped."
"Heh. The harder they go, the better for us," Lin Mo said.
He still didn't know the raiders' goal. Didn't matter. He'd use the window.
With the remote hack team online, he didn't have to babysit Lucy through every hard-jack; the girls could hold the doors from the net.
A netrunner cell on overwatch is the spine of a crew.
With Sasha feeding live intel, Lin Mo felt like he'd toggled wallhacks, a warm voice in his ear steering him right: which corridor, which door—no wasted steps.
"Didn't expect this op to feel relaxed. Lucy, maybe learn from your senpai, huh? See how reliable she is," he couldn't resist needling.
Lucy only twitched the corner of her mouth—no energy for his jabs.
—
They reached the testing wing.
If first-hand research lived anywhere, it was in the test wing's data vault.
In cyberspace, that data was fully visualized—no way Sasha and Kiwi would miss it.
The sim had already told Lin Mo the files were here, but he played dumb, letting Sasha's voice guide him to a server rack.
"The terminals along the testing side should all hold relevant data," Sasha said. "Have Ms. Lucy pull everything, to avoid gaps."
"On it." Lin Mo nodded, glancing at Lucy—who had shed her cloak and was quietly scanning the room—then lifted a brow. "Don't just stand there. Your stage."
"Yeah, yeah." She moved to a console, jacked in, then moved to the next, and the next—daisy-chaining everything.
Lin Mo watched her face. For some reason, once they were here, her expression had gone… bad.
Like she hated this place.
As she cycled terminals, her look shifted from overcast to glacial.
"Filthy bastards," she hissed.
He took it in silently. She was always cool and remote, a moon hanging high—silver-bright, phases unreadable.
Right now, she was the moon at its coldest, darkest.
"What did you see that pissed you off that much?" he asked, softening his tone.
She shot him a flat look, exhaled, gathered her words, then laid out the highlights.
Lin Mo listened calmly, expression unchanged.
Boiled down: Moore Tech and Arasaka had cut a deal—trade the core tech for the new Berserk model to secure the partnership, then co-develop later gens.
This lab existed to push those Berserk revisions.
What set Lucy off was Arasaka adopting Moore's method wholesale: manufacturing cyberpsychosis to create test subjects and squeeze out more "results."
Regina had briefed him already; he wasn't surprised, and he didn't spike like Lucy did.
But he also knew he was only getting a summary. Lucy had read it all. Every line of atrocity had gone straight into her head.
No wonder she was furious.
Sasha chimed in, clearly watching through the cameras: "Primary objective's done. You can exfil now—or go for the secondary. The holding area for the test subjects is directly under the testing wing. A basement prison for cyberpsychos."
"Security down there's tricky. Kiwi and I can crack the locks if we grind for, say, ten minutes. After that, you'll still have twelve combat drones to deal with. For most mercs, that's… sticky."
She paused—then her tone lightened, like remembering a win: "But you'll be fine, right, Lin Mo?"
"Depends how tough the frames are—but it should be fine," he said modestly.
"So—you going?" Sasha asked.
"Came this far. We look," Lin Mo nodded.
He glanced at Lucy—she was still lost in her own head, eyes on the scrolling dumps she'd cached to her neural storage.
He waved a hand in front of her face, like calling a spirit back. She blinked to.
"We're heading to the basement where they keep the cyberpsychos. Quit spacing out. What're you stuck on?" He beckoned her along.
Lucy closed her eyes, shook her head, and fell in step. After a beat, she said, hesitant, "Just… some old things. Doesn't feel good."
"Oh—seeing Arasaka's inhuman experiments stirred up bad memories?" Lin Mo smiled, almost like he could read minds, studying her face.
Sure enough, her lips parted in surprise. "How did you know?"
"Not exactly rocket science. Movies do this all the time—the hero sees something, remembers the past, and bam, plot avalanche. I've seen the trope a million times. Feeling low is normal. With this kind of dehumanized 'research,' it'd be a miracle if it brought back happy memories."
"You rich kid, you really consume… everything," Lucy couldn't help a thin smile.
She had remembered—fear of Arasaka etched in, the loneliness of having nowhere to belong, dreams with no place to land.
"By the way, I stashed some candy in your bag," Lin Mo added. "If it all gets to you, have one."
"You put that in here too?" She gave him an incredulous look.
"Yup. Why do you think the satchel was so heavy?" he said, deadpan.
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