2. A Curious Thing

Clearing out the secret base did not take much time. Calling it instantaneous would certainly have been disrespectful to the loyal personnel inside who still professed allegiance to Hanako Arasaka, but saying it took any real effort would not have been accurate either.

With the internal access codes of Hanako's faction that Carl had acquired in advance, the defenses of this secret base—enough to withstand attacks from ordinary Badlands tribes and corporate special forces squads—never got the chance to do anything before they were easily disabled.

The blast doors obediently slid open, the automated turrets lowered their barrels and entered sleep mode, and even the laser tripwires in the corridors meekly withdrew their crimson gaze. These defense systems, which should have given even corporate special forces a headache, now resembled the dolls at Clouds in Night City, left for anyone to play with.

Once the base's own security force—the only thing that could have counted as an obstacle—had been neutralized, the people inside could not pose any hindrance to Carl and the Aldecaldos.

There were some guards in the base who could be considered competent, but that was all. The true elite had long since been transferred to Arasaka Tower. Those left behind in such a remote base were merely marginalized second-string personnel—qualified to serve as captains in ordinary combat squads, but not even fit to be pawns in the corporation's real power games.

There were seven people in the secret base altogether. Within two minutes of Carl and the Aldecaldos making their move, every one of them—hastily grabbing weapons and wondering why the alarms had not gone off—was lying on the ground.

Strolling through the secret base, a broad underground space divided into ten rooms and roughly the size of a large warehouse, Carl cleared out and preserved the