Mercer endured a miserable three days.
No television, no computer, no phone—just a bed and four walls. Life in confinement was far from easy.
Dr. Oda visited once a day, ran a thorough examination, issued the same instructions—not to get out of bed or move freely—and then left quickly.
The official corporate review he had braced himself for never arrived. That absence only heightened his anxiety; the most terrifying blade is the one hanging overhead, yet to fall.
Honestly, he regretted it a little. He wished he had never made the choice, never transmigrated—or at least picked Option 1 and become a Nomad instead. But those regrets never lingered long.
It wasn't that he possessed extraordinary mental resilience. Rather, he noticed his emotional responses had dulled considerably.
His brain processed information faster and faster, yet his feelings grew increasingly numb. The realization filled him with a quiet dread—if he lost his capacity for emotion and was left with nothing but cold logic, how would he differ from an AI?
Fortunately, when he cautiously raised the concern with Dr. Oda, her response was reassuring.
After neural damage like his, partial loss of emotional perception wasn't necessarily catastrophic. It could even be the brain's protective mechanism. Emotions should gradually return as the nerves healed… probably.
She even added that, in this world, the ability to remain perpetually calm and clear-headed was a valuable asset. If the emotions never fully returned, it might actually be an advantage.
For now, Mercer set the fear aside and used his newfound clarity to plan survival.
On the fourth day, Dr. Oda delivered good news.
"Your Net access port has been reinstalled. For the next few days, you may access the Net freely. If monitoring data remains within acceptable parameters, you'll be reassigned to resume netrunning duties. That's all I know."
As she turned to leave, Mercer spoke quickly. "Dr. Oda, about the accident…"
"…As far as I'm aware, after Director Aoki submitted his report, headquarters did not cancel the project. They've approved a new experimental protocol instead. As for the incident's fallout… well, fatalities aren't unprecedented here. The server requires repairs, the firewall needs resetting, IPs must be reassigned. In short, excavation operations were paused for a few days, but they'll resume shortly."
She met his gaze, tone even. "You're fortunate. The neural damage is severe, but not fatal—and not every damaged brain has recovery potential. This resilience indicates your netrunning aptitude may far exceed the initial evaluation."
She paused. "Of course, greater potential isn't always a blessing."
Though Dr. Oda maintained a clinical demeanor, Mercer detected a faint trace of humanity beneath the surface.
Most corporate drones climbed the ladder without remorse, but not everyone could remain utterly cold-blooded.
Dr. Oda appeared to be one of the rare exceptions—still carrying a sliver of conscience, however small.
"Are you implying the new project might involve me?" Mercer asked.
The question caught her off guard. She glanced at him, said nothing, and walked out.
Mercer frowned, turning the implications over in his mind. A new project… After a long moment, he sighed, gave up speculating, and activated the freshly installed Net access port in his skull.
The Net access port was the cornerstone implant for any netrunner. It allowed direct influence over real-world networked devices via brain interface and enabled wireless connection to local networks.
Different models carried specialized features. NetWatch ports included viral diffusion modules for Quickhacks, automatically propagating malware to nearby devices. Arasaka ports prioritized stealth, precision strikes, and single-target destruction.
None of that mattered much right now. All Mercer needed was basic connectivity.
The past few days had been excruciatingly dull.
**[Arasaka Mk.3 Net access port activating…]**
**[Biometric verification passed]**
**[Permission audit… Audit passed]**
**[Mercer… Usage permissions authenticated]**
**[Current neural latency: 2.7 ms]**
**[Current data bandwidth: 780 GB/s]**
**[Exclusive ICE: Obsidian V.2 successfully launched]**
**[Coprocessor: 'Hannya' Quickhack module operating normally. No Quickhack programs currently loaded (adhere to Arasaka employee protocols during use)]**
The cascade of text vanished with a thought.
He rolled onto his side, laboriously pulled the Arasaka tablet Dr. Oda had left within reach onto his lap, and jacked the cable from his wrist into its port.
Technically, the Net port allowed wireless access—no peripherals required—but in 2071…
Mercer glanced at the tablet's clock.
October 12, 2071.
Even the lowliest street kid in Night City knew better than to plug their brain straight into the Net without safeguards.
A virus that might only fry a hard drive on a computer could cook your gray matter if it reached your neural interface unprotected. You relied solely on onboard ICE.
After connecting, Mercer kept his actions minimal. Privacy didn't exist here; every keystroke, every query, was almost certainly logged and monitored.
He simply pulled geolocation data.
Outskirts of Vancouver, Canada.
In the Cyberpunk world, Canada had long since been carved into corporate resource colonies.
Militech dominated Alberta for synthetic oil. NetWatch turned Quebec into a sprawling data farm. Vancouver had been fully annexed by Arasaka in 2045—even the old Parliament building converted into a research fortress. It served as Arasaka's primary North American stronghold and a critical Pacific-to-Atlantic logistics hub.
Mercer opened a map and traced potential escape routes.
Straight south: through the Emerald City Exclusion Zone (old Seattle) → Portland → Oregon → Night City. Roughly two thousand kilometers.
He rubbed his temple. Radiation levels around Seattle remained lethal.
In 2045, during Operation Emerald Bird, Militech detonated three Cobalt-60 dirty bombs in northern Seattle to deny Arasaka the city—creating a thirty-year exclusion zone that still glowed hot.
The Arasaka-Militech proxy war in Seattle continued, now mostly in the shadows. Running through openly with detectable Arasaka cyberware would draw immediate attention—and Militech wasn't known for mercy.
Better to avoid Seattle entirely.
After studying the map, he narrowed it to two viable paths.
Option one: maritime escape. Secure passage from Vancouver's port. Once past Seattle, disembark anywhere and acquire ground transport—or stay aboard all the way to Night City if possible.
The challenge: speed. If Arasaka realized the project was compromised and personnel were fleeing before he boarded, their grip on Vancouver would make escape nearly impossible. Timing, disguise, forged credentials, and pre-arranged passage would all be critical.
Option two: pure overland. Cross the border checkpoint, then blaze through the Badlands—dodging only Wraiths, Raffen Shiv, and other nomadic raiders.
He didn't linger on research. After a quick scan, he disconnected and shifted focus to verifying his new hacking capabilities.
His mind insisted the original Mercer's skills had been fully absorbed—but doubt lingered.
The fastest way to confirm was practical testing.
Target: write a stealth daemon, package it as a Quickhack-compatible payload, embed it in his OS, and attempt a covert takeover of the ward's security cameras.
Classic netrunner 101—scan → Quickhack.
No keyboard required. The wrist cable fed his intentions directly into the tablet. Zero-latency wired mode flooded the screen with code frames almost instantly.
Golden light flickered in his eyes. The world dissolved into cascading data streams.
He didn't consciously program. Lines of code simply assembled themselves, finding their places like pieces of a puzzle he already knew by heart.
Fifteen seconds.
A complete stealth takeover daemon, compressed into Quickhack format, embedded in fifteen seconds flat.
One more second to integrate.
Just as he prepared to test, a glaring red alert box flashed.
**"Detected unauthorized attempt to deploy Quickhack against corporate equipment.
This action violates Arasaka employee regulations and Mk.3 Netrunner OS usage permissions.
Cease immediately."**
Mercer clicked his tongue. The golden glow in his eyes intensified.
He didn't disconnect. Didn't stop.
The tablet's chassis began heating rapidly. Code frames multiplied exponentially.
Then—everything froze.
**"Arasaka Mk.3 Netrunner OS restarting…"**
**"Restart complete. Action log corruption detected. Restore and report?"**
**"Cancel… Program corrupted. Warning…"**
**"Self-diagnosing…"**
**"Restarting…"**
Ten minutes later, Mercer finally withdrew.
He yanked the cable free, clutched his head, and rolled on the bed.
"Ow—ow—damn it…"
Breathing hard, he touched the overheating port behind his ear—then broke into a wide, triumphant grin.
It worked.
Not only had he compiled the daemon and packaged it as a Quickhack—he had silently bypassed and rewritten Arasaka's monitoring layer.
Employee usage auditing, automatic logging, browsing history, Quickhack protocol enforcement, embedded backdoors, latent virus scanners—all gutted or blocked.
He even sanitized the tablet's usage logs, fabricating a clean, mundane session.
Total time: thirty minutes.
Incredible.
The original Mercer might have taken half an hour just to write the daemon—and would never have dared touch the OS safeguards. A single failed breach could summon Arasaka security in minutes.
But Mercer had intercepted the alarm signal before transmission, cracked the onboard ICE, rewritten core routines, and disguised the changes so flawlessly they would pass inspection.
He even spun off the exploit code into a standalone virus: **Freedom Killer v0.1**.
Purpose: seek out and destroy monitoring/backdoor programs in cyberware, overwrite them, and spoof normal operation.
Currently limited to Mk.3 OS variants—but give him two more hours and he could generalize it into a universal hunter-killer that automatically targeted, neutralized, and disguised itself across any corporate cyberware.
Most crucially, it would eliminate Arasaka's infamous "kill-switch" insurance policy—the remote lockdown that turned employee implants into inert scrap the instant the company decided to terminate them.
Arasaka agents carried specialized Quickhacks designed to re-lock even compromised cyberware. Freedom Killer would preemptively neuter those backdoors, overwriting them with benign code.
Mercer lay back, still clutching his head, grinning through the pain.
Was this really him?
This level of instinctive, near-instantaneous mastery far exceeded even high-tier netrunners like Lucy from Edgerunners.
Lucy was exceptional—especially for her age—but she'd been on the run since childhood, scraping by, unable to push her skills further or upgrade hardware.
Even if she studied relentlessly from this moment forward, she might never reach Mercer's current technical ceiling by age thirty.
What limited him now wasn't talent. It was raw accumulation of theory, practice—and the finite processing power of a human brain.
Yet the moment the OS alarm triggered, the solution had simply appeared in his mind. No fear. No hesitation. Shutting down the alert felt as trivial as snuffing a cigarette.
He had thought it, done it—and succeeded.
"Being a hacker… is pretty easy, isn't it?"
He exhaled slowly, savoring the rush of joy and satisfaction, then shoved the still-scorching tablet away.
His pounding head warned him: now was not the time to iterate on Freedom Killer. Rest first.
He had barely closed his eyes when—
*Click.*
The door opened.
A stone-faced man in a suit entered, followed by a woman wearing an equally frigid expression.
"Mercer."
Mercer opened his eyes.
"Company audit."