[Memory storage reading…]
[Cyber-modulator operation log reading…]
[Hardware damaged…]
[Data stream intercepted. Restoring…]
[Little Octopus: Boss, it really was a cracked hardware-software combo. Pretty impressive—though when it glitched, the guy just straight-up died.]
Eren Street was a slum built from decades-old, irregular low-rise apartment blocks. Illegal add-ons twisted over the narrow alleys, blocking out even Night City's glow—let alone the sky.
Before the operation began, Leo was still scanning and checking the stall owner's memory system.
The Brainiacs were a group that specialized in schemes and manipulation.
Judging from the stall owner's behavior before and after death, there was a strong chance he'd been remotely controlled by the Brainiacs—they wanted someone to take the bait and walk right in.
Leo exited the data stream and returned to reality.
The wrecked Ho-Oh Nightclub on Eren Street was still under reconstruction, surrounded by scaffolding. Nearby, cyber-augmented laborers worked tirelessly—then wandered off to the doll shops next door to blow off steam afterward.
On the surface, Eren Street looked unchanged.
No Brainiacs in sight.
Someone once asked: since Leo had both Arasaka Academy training and advanced netwatch certifications, why did it always seem like he got nothing out of his info dives?
First off, information tech isn't magic. There's no floating "data mana" in the air you can summon through willpower—no "seventh-tier cyber-mage suppressing sixth-tier sorcerers" nonsense.
Info warfare is multidimensional work. Processing power is a vague metric—an attacker with just 1 CCU of compute can still collapse a corporate system if they gain admin access.
On the other hand, breaking through complex encryption layers, endpoint defenses, and multi-band encoded comms without the keys means an exponential increase in power requirements.
Even the simplest dynamic grid encryption algorithms can change keys sixteen times per minute, with 729-character alphanumeric keys—brute-forcing that is practically impossible.
More advanced transmitters can even recognize complex radio patterns, using specialized mathematical transformations to parse a vast spectrum of frequencies—ranging from ultra-low 3 Hz to ultra-high 3 GHz—capturing specific data packets in each cycle and translating them through proprietary modulation formulas.
The sheer complexity of math, cryptography, and electronics meant that in this post-internet, LAN-fractured age, pure brute force couldn't crack a custom local network.
The odds of randomly connecting to the right node were worse than hitting a probability with a denominator larger than the number of particles in the universe—by exponential magnitudes.
Out in the Badlands, radio silence made brute-forcing slightly viable.
But in Night City? The airwaves were alive with invisible data streams. Trying to smash through thousands of overlapping networks by force—
Impossible. Not even Bartmoss could pull it off. The Internet didn't even exist anymore.
Knowledge wasn't an instant source of "power," or Night City wouldn't be full of dropouts.
After all, braindances were way more fun than textbooks.
Most people only saw visible enemies:
The annoying neighbor across the hall.
A classmate they hated.
Some guy on the bus.
Or some talking head on TV, or a forum user with the wrong opinion.
A strong cyberarm or a gun could solve those kinds of problems quick.
Hackers dealt with problems—that's why they needed to learn.
And if even after learning the numbers didn't make sense, there was always social engineering.
In most cases, a hacker had to gain a physical interface point in the real world before taking the next step.
Secondly, though the Brainiacs were also heavy modders, unlike the Maelstrom Gang, they sought knowledge, not just chrome.
They were insidious.
Leo had found traces of communication in the stall owner's system—frequency bands, ports, even partial keys. But who could say the Brainiacs' "servers" weren't honeypots primed to detonate?
Everything had to be pieced together the hard way—contact, trial and error, elimination, and reconstruction—to find a real point of entry.
And contact… always meant risking a trap.
In netwar, both sides fought for initiative—whether triggering traps as defenders or grabbing intel as attackers. Whoever struck first held a massive edge.
And if you didn't have that edge—
Why fight the net at all?
Eren Street was already completely surrounded.
NCPD detectives held the outer perimeter while the Moxes tightened their inner ring—262 fully armed fighters advancing street by street.
The Mox weren't exactly organized, but their presence in the streets was enough to scare civilians off—an obvious sign that something big was happening.
The NCPD might've called them trash daily, but at least they trained under a watered-down corporate program. Their formation work was tighter, more methodical.
Plainclothes cops swiftly took up combat positions in alleys and stairwells, clearing ambush zones step by step.
At the front of it all—Mackinaw's car, parked dead center of the siege line.
The Brainiacs might be masters of deception, but when info was one-sided, overwhelming firepower was the cleanest countermeasure.
However…
Leo glanced at the shadows ahead. The NCPD officers were advancing too fast—unnaturally efficient.
Too skilled.
Too young.
[Incoming Call: River]
[Leo: New recruits?]
[River: Half the department got arrested or quit. Been recruiting fresh blood lately—this op's perfect for field training, especially with you guys leading the charge.]
[River: Don't underestimate them. Fresh grads are the best you'll ever get.]
The NCPD might look useless most of the time, but that was due to… many outside factors.
Fresh academy grads still had training discipline burned into their neural memory. Their muscles remembered the drills, their implants still synced perfectly, and their belief in the badge hadn't yet been broken by Night City's rot or by despair.
They were fast, strong, and—most importantly—still believed.
[Leo: I bet they're whining about working with a gang again, huh?]
[River: Heh. Not this time—sorry, I may have spread a little rumor.]
[River: With a legend like you leading, they don't see the issue.]
[River: Some even think you're undercover.]
In the driver's seat, V laughed. "Hear that, Jackie? The badges think we're role models."
Jackie chuckled, sparks from the welding torch flashing around him.
Leo was prepping a new piece of gear on Jackie.
The "Scorch Knuckles" — gauntlet-style weapons.
Whether in Atlas or here in Cyberpunk's world, Leo needed a tougher frontline fighter.
On Mackinaw's trunk, Jackie was finishing his final armor adjustments.
[River: Though, that thing you're strapping on him? Kinda over spec. You might wanna register it.]