At the gate of the Arasaka Base, the team leader responsible for maintaining and inspecting the outer facilities of the base was frowning as he looked at the Arasaka employee in front of him, wearing a full-cover spacesuit, who hadn't spoken for a long while.
Izumi turned his head stiffly, and under the thick helmet of the spacesuit, his expression was unclear. He could only be seen pointing at his own head.
"What do you mean? Fine, just hurry up and change out of your suit, and then explain to me clearly. There is a rocket launch scheduled at the base today, and we still have to check the launch site, don't waste time..."
Before the head of equipment finished speaking, he suddenly saw that the employee named Izumi was walking towards him with somewhat stiff steps.
At the same time, his network communication device received a message.
[Izumi: Boss, my suit is stuck. You have to help me. By the way, there's a video of an equipment check here. I think there might be a problem with this equipment. Could you help confirm it?]
"Damn! Problems should be reported on the spot, why wait till now? Damn it, are you mute?"
The team leader scolded while turning his head to look at the other team members.
"What's your situation?"
At this moment, the team of employees who went out to check the equipment looked exactly like Izumi — ever since they returned, they hadn't said a word, as if they were bewitched.
The team leader suddenly felt a bit eerie.
But those team members just exchanged a glance, and then, in unison, turned around and walked towards the dressing room.
The uniformity of their actions... it was almost like they were robots.
The team leader frowned tightly and hesitated before opening the video sent by Izumi. The content visible in the video, however, was nothing but a pitch-black space sky.
What kind of stuff is this?
Before the team leader could react, the next moment, his body suddenly trembled as if struck by lightning. Within mere seconds, he abruptly lost all strength and collapsed, kneeling weakly to the ground.
However, like a robot rebooting, he slowly adapted to his limbs and gradually climbed up from the ground, his movements somewhat stiff as he stood upright.
Then, he then turned his head directly back to his workstation, sat in his seat, and expressionlessly extended his hand, connecting a data cable to his computer.
Before long, the maintenance gate of the Arasaka Base silently opened.
Two people wearing single soldier armor, carrying oxygen backpack, jumped down from above the base, landing lightly under the influence of the Moon's gravity, and then swaggered along the maintenance gate towards the inside of the base.
"This black light is really sinister..."
V's muttering made Mercer chuckle: "How many times have you said that already?"
"No matter how many times, it's sinister... this thing of yours is scarier than the viruses in zombie movies, those guys are like your puppets on strings!"
V emphasized, feeling an inexplicable chill down his spine.
Mercer, however, spoke in a serious tone: "Strictly speaking, it's not me controlling them, but the AI of the Black Light program itself... I'm just giving commands to the AI."
"No wonder you insisted on coming here in person. If I had developed something this scary, I wouldn't dare let it 'play' by itself either."
V finally understood the terrifying aspect of the Black Light virus.
They openly entered the base through the maintenance gate of the Arasaka Base, passed through a disinfection gate, and then through a pressurized isolation room.
This was to allow the room to slowly transition from the Moon environment to Earth's environment, adapting people while also ensuring indoor and outdoor pressure balance.
When the doors opened again, the oxygen backpacks on Mercer and V's backs began to automatically emit inhaling and compressing sounds — it was automatically supplementing oxygen.
And what appeared before V and Mercer was a massive maintenance workshop filled with various tools and equipment, not to mention robots and employees in Arasaka uniforms.
However, at this moment, those employees were either standing dumbly in place without moving, sitting in their seats, or walking around in erratic, zombie-like steps, not at all like living people.
"It's like walking onto a zombie horror movie set..."
V continued to mutter — Mercer understood. This girl was somewhat scared. This scene somewhat resembled a horror movie atmosphere.
She could kill without blinking, but surprisingly, she was afraid of ghosts!
Ha, Mercer wasn't planning to expose this secret anytime soon.
"Wait a minute, I'll connect the Sky Net system. The Sky Net system can adapt to Black Light, and also let Venus keep an eye on the Black Light AI..."
Mercer walked to a computer in front of an employee, a data cable shot out from the mech wrist, he unplugged it, connected, and personally hacked into the Arasaka system after a long time.
"There's really been no improvement." Mercer remarked: "The Arasaka system I hacked a few years ago is still the same setup..."
"Is Arasaka Saburo here?" V circled the maintenance workshop by herself, feeling like the style of these Moon Bases was not too different.
"He's here... Hmm, found him." With the connection to the Sky Net system, supported by Venus's powerful computational power, Mercer effortlessly took over the authority of the work server connected to the maintenance workshop.
Then, he recklessly spread the Black Light program — in Mercer's prosthetic eye vision, inside a slowly rotating 3D architectural graphic, red dots were increasing at a visible speed.