He's Messing with You

Chapter 32

Lucy's hand trembled, and she nearly dropped the cigarette she was holding. "He spotted us. Should we move somewhere else?"

"What?!" Kiwi was startled at first, then fell silent for a moment. "No need. Mann messaged me. He said they're all acquaintances, and they're on good terms."

"Is that so?" Lucy said nothing more, only watched the three figures slowly walk away in the distance with a grave expression.

Meanwhile, Chu Ke and the other two were heading toward the southeastern gate. David kept looking back at the van in the distance.

"What's wrong?" V asked curiously. "Did you run into someone you know?"

"Not really. I just have this feeling that someone very important is sitting inside." David was puzzled too. Some instinct kept telling him that the person in that van was extremely important to him.

Chu Ke glanced at David without saying anything.

That's your future wife, you dumb kid.

So this was the sixth sense? Pretty interesting.

The three arrived near the southeastern gate. They could see an enormous iron gate set into a thick concrete wall, with surveillance cameras installed at intervals along the electrified anti-climb wire fencing.

A transport truck bearing the Arasaka Corporation logo happened to pull up and stop in front of the gate. The driver climbed down and began registering and verifying his identity with the guards.

"Now. Find a way to get onto the truck. I've already hacked their biometric monitoring system, so it won't trigger an alarm." A voice came through their earpieces.

"Whew."

David and V took a deep breath at the same time and activated the Sandevistan Technique.

In that instant, the world gradually slowed in their eyes.

David's Cultivation Technique proficiency was lower than V's. Even after activating the Technique, he still lagged in V's eyes.

V waved a hand in front of David's face, and David only reacted after a while.

"Every time I use it, I feel so damn awesome." V sounded satisfied, then seemed to remember something and turned toward Chu Ke.

"What are you looking at me for?" Chu Ke asked in confusion, his hands in his pockets. His movements were so smooth that V almost thought he hadn't activated the Technique at all.

"Nothing. I just calmed down." V's floating mood gradually steadied. Pretending nothing had happened, he proactively lowered his speed to match David's.

"Let's go."

"Okay!" David shook his foot excitedly, and the two of them moved forward together, climbing beneath the truck.

They moved so quickly that neither the driver nor the guards noticed them.

Chu Ke didn't really care. As long as he wanted to, only the people he allowed could see him. With his hands still in his pockets, he followed them to the truck.

And casually scratched V's armpit as he hung beneath it.

"Holy shit, Chu Ge, don't mess around!" V said through gritted teeth. "If I fall, I'll have no choice but to go all-out!"

"Then go all-out. If no living person sees you, what's the difference from stealth?"

"...You're a little too extreme. Diagnosis: too much Assassin's Creed."

"I'm not extreme. Your playstyle is just pathetic. What are you, a cyber punching bag?"

V fell silent for a moment, then asked, "This is my fucking world. It's not a real game where the wanted level just clears after hiding for a while. If I cause trouble, where am I supposed to run?"

"Hehe."

"...That was kind of disgusting, Chu Ge. Next, I'm going to insult a two-character game."

"Where did they go?" Lucy froze again. She had only seen the three figures flicker, like the image on an old monitor glitching, before suddenly disappearing.

But well-traveled as she was, she managed to recall a matching piece of cyberware. "Sandevistan?"

"Very likely." Kiwi, seated in the back, nodded. She thought the same. "All of them have Sandevistans. It looks like Mann has made some very remarkable friends."

Lucy said nothing, only feeling increasingly uneasy.

They had such advanced cyberware, yet they were taking on such a low-level job. It was strange.

And among the three, the boy with the forward-spiked hairstyle gave her a... very strange feeling.

Had she known him before?

The truck finished registration and began scanning.

Red light swept rapidly across David and V's bodies. V, who was close to David, clearly heard him nervously swallow.

Fortunately, the hacker team was reliable enough. The monitoring system didn't sound an alarm and simply passed over the two of them.

The truck slowly started moving, and the airtight gate opened.

From beneath the truck, they could see the shoes of security personnel walking by.

After a bout of shaking, the truck entered the factory and came to a stop again not long after.

They had reached the unloading area.

V naturally had the map sent by the client. He immediately called David over to activate the Technique again. The two turned into afterimages as they crawled out from beneath the truck, then plunged into a nearby corridor and slipped into the employee locker room.

Chu Ke had already been waiting there for quite some time.

"We're in the locker room." V spoke into his earpiece. "Do we have enough time?"

"Yes. I found that an Arasaka Corporation convoy arrived at this factory today as well. You can change into clothing with their insignia. Next, I'll temporarily insert your employee records, but it won't last long. The firewall will run a self-check in ten minutes."

"Got it."

The two immediately rummaged out several suits and put them on. David had a decent build and came from Arasaka Academy, so he really did have that corporate drone look. As for V, there was no need to say more—he had been a corporate drone to begin with. This was just putting his original skin back on.

Chu Ke looked at the two, tugged at his clothes, and gave them a shake. A similar but better-fitting suit appeared on him out of thin air.

Secondhand men's clothing—aside from emergencies and gay men, probably no one would want to wear it. Chu Ke was no exception.

"Whew, that was exciting!" It was David's first time doing something like this, and it felt exactly like the kind of spy work he had imagined.

But after putting on an Arasaka suit this way, David's expression became a little strange.

He wondered what his mother would think if she saw him.

"Let's go to the mainframe room." V took the lead, guiding David toward the door.

Chu Ke suddenly raised an eyebrow.

This was going to be fun.

V pressed down on the doorknob and pushed hard.

Due to the temperature difference between inside and outside, a gust of hot wind blew in through the outward-facing corridor, carrying sand and dust into the locker room.

Entering V and David's sight along with the sandstorm was a towering figure nearly three meters tall, so extensively cybernetic that it was hard to tell he had once been human.

Adam "Night City's Legendary Quality Inspector, True Widowmaker, Rebecca-chan Manufacturer, Master of Hammers" Smasher.

Even the wind seemed to stop at that moment.

Adam Smasher turned to look at the three in the locker room, scanning them up and down as his optical implants activated. "You're part of the tour group too? Why don't I remember there being three of you?"

David swallowed and didn't dare say anything. During his training in the space, he had learned all kinds of information from V, including details about the living legend, Adam Smasher.

We want to ask you the same thing. Why the fuck are you here?

"Yeah." V stared directly into Adam Smasher's red eyes. "Our names are on the list."

"..." Adam Smasher fell silent for a moment, apparently searching for something. Only after a while did he speak.

"They are indeed. Hurry to the central control room."

David let out a sigh of relief.

Just then, Adam suddenly revealed a cruel smile and raised a shoulder cannon at the three of them. "I was lying. The two little rats outside have already been caught, and your heartbeat was really loud just now."

"Feeling happy? That illusion of getting away with it?"

Then Adam Smasher froze.

In his imagination, the three should have scattered like rats. Yet aside from the spiky-haired kid who was panicking badly, the other two hadn't even had a change in their heart rates.

V slowly moved closer to Chu Ke, covered his mouth with one hand, and whispered, "Chu Ge, he's messing with you."