Only the surveillance cameras are directly connected, which is probably to facilitate the protection by personnel inside the base.
And in the room where Ena Tanino is located, there are no surveillance devices, only some network signal fluctuations can be detected, indicating that there are other networked devices in her room, possibly defense facilities.
Mercer speculates that this subnet belongs to a dedicated security server of the Arasaka Company in Vancouver, perhaps also responsible for exclusive communication channels for some executives.
This led Mercer into brief contemplation, but soon he clarified his plan of action.
First, Mercer started programming on the server.
Countless lines of code surged rapidly, and the special software he needed was woven at a high speed.
The first step was signal isolation. He must block Ena Tanino's ability to transmit messages externally as soon as he hacks in.
Next is signal takeover. He must immediately take over the communication software in the opponent's brain-computer interface once hacked in.
The last step is disabling the prosthetics, without causing major damage to avoid any automatic alarm facilities embedded inside some prosthetics.
Hmm, also need to write a life-sign spoofing program.
This is written for the life-detection prosthetics on her body, to prevent a trauma team from being activated or this program having an automatic alarm function if there are issues with the biological signs.
He must ensure he does not trigger any alarm devices connected to this subnet, nor be detected by potential AI on the subnet server.
Otherwise, once exposed, his safe escape time would be reduced.
While writing code, Mercer wondered if it was worth doing all this for potentially existing intelligence and resources. But then he thought, even if he did nothing, Ena Tanino could wake up at any moment.
Since today is the day for his prosthetics installation, she might have to wake up for the hovercar's arrival and sign-off. She could not possibly be unaware of the hovercar's exact arrival time.
And most importantly...
Damn it, trying to trap me?
Although he didn't know what traps she might have embedded in the prosthetics, a top-grade prosthetic offered for free is impossible at Arasaka.
She couldn't be so kind to freely transform him into a hacker version of Adam's Hammer just to gain his favor.
So...time to settle old and new scores!
As soon as the programs were ready, Mercer immediately began to act.
Step one, using computing power, he immediately used a cracking program to break the opponent's subnet signal.
Once connected, he used the Desire for Death to pierce through the hidden combat robot's ICE in the office.
Then he used device takeover, turning the Arasaka robot into his stand-in.
Step two, while taking over all the scannable devices in the house, Mercer, using the robot's vision, found Ena Tanino's bedroom.
The robot approached the password lock in front of the bedroom door, and Mercer hacked into the password lock using the network receiver built into the robot at close range and began cracking it.
It took just a second for the automatic door to swoosh open. In the massive bedroom, Ena Tanino suddenly opened her eyes, only to see a guard robot with glowing red eyes.
"What..." she hadn't finished speaking when she suddenly found, to her horror, that warning messages in bright red were emerging in her prosthetic eye.
[ICE...]
[Detected ICE failure...]
[You are...]
[Alarm...]
The text on her prosthetic eye flooded almost like a screen full of texts that turned to gibberish before they could even finish. From the appearance of these texts to turning into gibberish, it was less than a second!
Hacker! It's a very powerful hacking attack!
Ena Tanino instinctively activated the alarm function built into her prosthetics, then quickly reached out and struck the vase on her bedside table.
The vase was deftly knocked into the air by her and shattered to smithereens on the ground, but all in vain.
The vase was connected to the base's emergency alarm system, and removing the optical sensor beneath it would trigger it.
But now in the Arasaka Base, Mercer called the shots. Her alarm signals fell into the monitoring room and then vanished because all alarms had long been turned off and required manual restart in the monitoring room.
As for the alarm function in her prosthetics...
"Oh, close call. Just a bit more, and you would have gotten the message out."
Mercer's half-body image appeared in her prosthetic eye, like a video call. Upon seeing the image of Mercer reclining in a hacker chair, Ena Tanino despairingly realized her predicament.
'Impossible, how did you crack the server's AI?'
Ena Tanino then horrifyingly discovered that she couldn't even open her mouth to speak, her whole body stiff like a vegetative state, with all prosthetics locked and seemingly even her brain nerves manipulated.
"Don't worry. You can't speak because after I took over your brain-computer interface, your biological signals were also disrupted, preventing you from precisely controlling your body...
But no worries, I can hear your voice—from your brain."
Mercer said in a relaxed tone:
"It's truly fascinating that human consciousness, the brain, the signals it emits can be converted into data.
And as a hacker, while in deep dive, I could observe, analyze, and disturb these brainwaves by taking over your brain-computer interface...
How did the Soulkiller Protocol you developed in the form of a Network Access Vault manage to directly capture human data in the real world?