Gearbound: Cyberpunk 2077-Chapter 216

Leo pointed at Lucy standing behind him. "Exactly, and I don't want to repeat myself again. My patience is limited—if you keep resisting, I'll have my companion pull the answers straight out of your neural link."

"There's no need to doubt her. She's an expert netrunner, and judging by the state of this place, I doubt you've got any serious ICE set up."

The woman glanced at Lucy in fear. "Alright, fine, ask your questions. I'll tell you what I know."

Leo was satisfied with her cooperative attitude. "First, I know something happened at the Cloud Club a week ago, and they called you in to investigate. I want you to tell me what went down at the Cloud, and what you found out."

As soon as the woman heard the words "Cloud Club," her face immediately changed. "Who sent you to ask these questions? You shouldn't be poking around in this."

"Right now, I'm the one asking questions, and all you have to do is answer. Understand?"

The woman was overwhelmed by Leo's presence, her expression turning even more unpleasant.

"Good. Now, answer."

"At 1:50 a.m. a week ago, there was a netrunner attack in Room 11 at the Cloud Club."

"A netrunner attack?" Leo frowned slightly. This netrunner sounded a lot like the one pulling strings behind Evelyn, trying to silence her.

The woman nodded and continued, "The witness was Thomas Briggs, who was in the system with one of the dolls. The attack sent him into shock and caused symptoms of mental disturbance. Later, it was found that the netrunner attack also triggered a malfunction in the doll's behavioral routines. The management at Cloud was afraid of a broader assault, so at 2:06 a.m., they ordered all off-duty and vacationing security staff back on duty. Ten minutes later, Tyger Claw reinforcements arrived, but it seems the netrunner's target was only Room 11."

Leo asked, "The doll—what's her name?"

The woman frowned as she tried to remember. "I didn't really pay attention. I think it was Adeline Porter or something."

"You sure it wasn't Evelyn Parker?"

"Yes, that's it. How do you know?"

Leo ignored her question. "Is that doll still at the Cloud?"

"I don't know." The woman shook her head.

Leo looked surprised. "You don't know? Didn't you investigate there?"

"I was investigating the attack, not a missing persons case. The doll is Cloud's business—they'd handle it themselves. How could an outsider like me interfere?"

Her answer was fairly reasonable, and Leo decided to tentatively trust her. "Alright, so what else did you find? Any intel on the netrunner who attacked the doll?"

The woman shook her head again. "No... don't look at me like that. Really, nothing. Those people were smart, really skilled.

Listen, that's the Cloud, not some back-alley dive. That place is the top entertainment club in Japantown. Do you know how much money Cloud brings the Tyger Claws every month?"

Leo crossed his arms. "I don't know, and I don't care to know."

The woman swallowed nervously, clear fear written on her face—fear not only of Leo's team but also of the Tyger Claws whose secrets she was spilling.

"You don't need to know. Just understand that when something happens at Cloud, Tyger Claw reinforcements arrive in ten minutes flat. That shows how much they value it. In other words, Cloud's net defenses, if not top-tier, are still nothing some random gutter netrunner can breach. But those people pulled it off, and they didn't leave a trace in cyberspace.

That not only means they have exceptional netrunner skills but also very advanced equipment. What I don't understand is, after going through all that trouble, they weren't after Cloud's server data, and they didn't aim to crash its systems—they just attacked a single doll, one without even VIP access."

Leo raised his hand to interrupt. "What exactly do you mean by that?"

The woman gave Leo a surprised look. Someone like him, she had assumed he'd be a regular at the Cloud.

"You've never been to Cloud? Alright, Cloud has two levels: the lower floor for regular customers, and the upper floor for VIPs. The dolls on the VIP floor are superior in every way, but they'll also drain your wallet a lot faster."

To bypass Cloud's firewall, leave no trace in cyberspace, and precisely attack Evelyn's neural link—any one of these feats could be pulled off by half the netrunners in the city, but to achieve all three at once would eliminate ninety percent of them. That left mostly corporate hackers.

"Could it have been a corp job?" V asked over the comms.

"I don't think so," Leo replied. If another megacorp wanted Arasaka's relic, they'd have had better ways to employ Evelyn. And to the corps, loyalty mattered more than ability—Evelyn was too smart, too scheming. You could hear her scheming from a mile away. No company would gamble on her.

"This kind of cleanup feels more like gang tactics—the Voodoo Boys."

V sounded shocked. "The Voodoo Boys? That secretive gang from Pacifica?" She'd heard of them but never encountered them herself. Part of it was their intense secrecy, and part was their nasty reputation.

"All I'm saying is, it fits their style. The Voodoo Boys are almost entirely composed of Haitians. Nobody in their right mind wants to work with them, because they call outsiders who help them 'Ranyon'—which roughly translates to 'doormat.'"

"Doormat? What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means wipe your feet on them, then toss them out."

From the hall, Jackie cursed. "Shit! I had a buddy who almost got roped into being a doormat for the Voodoo Boys—good thing we talked him out of it."

"Leo shook his head. 'Working with the Voodoo Boys is worse than working with a corp — at least a corp keeps you around as long as you're making them money.

Anyway, this is just my guess. We don't know for sure yet if Evelyn was working for them. All we can say is, the ones capable of this are either a corp or the Voodoo Boys."

Afterward, Leo continued questioning the woman for a bit, but nothing more came out.

"Alright, that's everything I know. Gentlemen, ladies, please get out of my house now."

Leo stared into her eyes. "You're not telling the truth."

A flicker of panic shot through her eyes, though she quickly masked it.

"W-what do you mean?"

But Leo didn't miss that brief crack in her expression. "You're hiding something."

The woman, sitting on the bed with her hands braced on the mattress, suddenly lunged toward the headboard, pulling a Rostović DB-2 Satara double-barrel kinetic shotgun from under the pillow. But before she could even aim it, the barrel was caught in an unyielding grip. She struggled desperately, but it was useless—the barrel felt like it was clamped in an iron vise.

With a shriek, she threw herself at Leo, only to be slammed back onto the bed.

"Let me go! Let me go!"

Lucy quickly stepped up, pulled out her personal link cable, and plugged it into the woman's neural slot.

"No—"

The woman, who had been thrashing wildly, suddenly went limp, like a robot switched off.

"Easier than I expected." Lucy hadn't thought a detective renting an apartment in the North Industrial District would have top-tier anti-hacking implants, but she was still surprised by just how flimsy the woman's ICE was. To Lucy, it was like a child's sandcastle.

She quickly found what the woman had been hiding. "She knows Forrest, the manager at Cloud. Everyone calls him Woodman. He was the one who called her in to investigate."

"And I found a few other interesting tidbits. Didn't expect you to be such a party girl behind that serious detective image."

The woman couldn't move, couldn't speak, but her expression clearly read: Get the hell out of my head.

"Relax, detective, I'm not going to break your neural link," Lucy said, patting her cheek lightly. "Okay, she wasn't lying—she really doesn't know Evelyn's whereabouts. Other than that, nothing worth noting."

With that, Lucy unplugged her personal link. For someone with barely any ICE, someone like Lucy wouldn't even need to harm their neural link unless they were dealing with a corp agent—someone with encrypted implants and self-destruct programs designed to protect their data.

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