After the conversation ended, Lier rushed home so urgently that Matt wondered if the kid was racing to write his will.
Since the system had already deducted an hour's worth of points, he might as well check on Bloom Security's setup along the way.
The spare room in the apartment was now packed with computers and hardware.
John, the warehouse manager, had arranged everything strictly within the areas Lier had marked out, keeping the place from looking too chaotic. Anthony was helping him.
When Lier returned, he caught Skye fiddling with the main breaker-
"Boss!" Skye immediately stood at attention. "All the equipment's here. Do you want to flip the breaker yourself?"
"No, I trust you-this is your first home, too. Go ahead and power it up."
Skye froze for a moment. "This is my home?"
"Obviously." Lier waved a hand, but kept the rest to himself:
If it wasn't your home, how would I trick you into working for me?
As an employee, Skye was adaptable and good at following through.
While Lier was over in the cyberpunk world, only simple tasks could be handled here. Without a deputy, that would become a huge problem.
But his words stirred something in young Skye's heart. She turned away and pulled the breaker down.
"You said it-John, Anthony, hang up the business sign!"
One of them stood beside the breaker while the other two held up the sign and hung it outside. The whole scene looked rather comical.
With a snap, the power came on.
[Host has established his first research institute.] [Name: Bloom] [Director: Skye (Daisy Johnson)] [Specialties: information engineering, network security] [Potential development direction: xenobiology] [Research institute bound to system. Please lock in the current research project.] [Once a research project is locked in, researchers' creativity will become highly focused on that direction. Tech points may be consumed to grant the director inspiration from another dimension.] [Currently available option based on institute status: ctOS system (from the Watchdogs world)] [Expose the director to more projects to unlock new options.]
Lier raised an eyebrow-his cheat had upgraded.
CtOS was an excellent project for a company. It was a hyper-connected Central Operating System that made a city smart, linked it to the system, and coordinated its planning to improve operational efficiency.
More importantly, the project wasn't limited to software. It also involved hardware upgrades.
If they could actually pull it off and bring it to market... money wouldn't be a problem for a while.
[Research project locked in: ctOS] [Upon completion of research, the laboratory's type will be locked in, providing a cross-dimensional data transmission link.]
Lier stepped forward and gave the excited Skye an earnest pat on the shoulder. "You're the company's director now. Do a good job. Finish the NYPD project first, and then... I have some technology here for you to look over."
With that, Lier moved over to his dedicated computer.
The computer had a large array of hard drives and a special interface-for discreetly connecting his Personal Link.
Lier transferred data from 2077-the design principles behind an antique shard.
The teaching materials came from Arasaka Academy. They used an old cyberdeck shard as an example of a design flaw that allowed netrunners to burn it out over the network, frying the implanted user's nerves in the process.
But a cyberdeck shard that was ancient history in the world of 2077 was cutting-edge architecture in 2011.
In fact, if the shard wasn't implanted in a human body, that flaw barely qualified as a flaw at all.
To save time, Lier uploaded the finished shard's design drawings directly. Learning could happen gradually, but making money needed to happen fast.
"What is this? A Central Processing Unit design based on a new architecture...?!"
Skye stared intently at the files Lier was rapidly uploading to the server, her eyes widening!
After taking a look, she said tactfully, "Boss, I might not be as smart as you, but I'm not an idiot..."
"I know you're not. I'll write you a business plan and find someone-Anthony, do you want to be a company executive?"
A bewildered Anthony pointed at his own face. "Me?"
"Yes, you. Basically, I need you to communicate with people using what I write, just like before. Starting today, you're the president's assistant."
Lier kept an eye on the time as he spoke. "Anyway, the company's next stage of development will take effort from everyone. I'll spend the next few days putting together a plan.
"Skye, study what you have for now. John, take the crew out to work on-site-Skye will direct you remotely.
"Anthony, you'll communicate with the officers and property owners. Don't get nervous, and keep your points clear. If there's anything you don't understand..."
Skye raised her hand and interrupted. "Ask me-I get it now. You're planning to tie me down in this little room, and make it my home forever?"
Lier shrugged. "You can arrange your own time off, but the technology you want to learn is right here, whether it's hardware or software."
Skye muttered, "Fine, fine. If it weren't for the free room and board..."
With everything arranged, Lier clapped his hands. "All right, ladies and gentlemen. You're now employees of Bloom. I look forward to seeing what you can do."
The three people in the office felt as though they were dreaming: a teenage dropout and two unemployed workers.
But Lier didn't have time to give them much of a pep talk. He turned and left the room.
The three of them were left exchanging looks.
The twenty-first century was the century of biology.
But graduating with a bioengineering degree didn't necessarily mean landing a good job. Biology graduates who also knew how to code, on the other hand, did well. Very well.
And if they were especially skilled in hardware development on top of that, they would still be apex predators in the job market in 2077.
In 2077, however, the education required for such qualifications already cost more than three million eddies.
Biotechnica had a DNA Splicing Instrument. Its operating principles were unknown, but the company used it to develop crops from which CHOOH2 could be extracted.
Biotechnica also had vast wheat farms in Night City, and... a secret human experimentation program.
Lier reached out and lowered the window blinds, creating a large blank surface on the wall, then stepped onto the treadmill-
This was a way to build up his physical fitness.
As he ran, Lier pictured himself sketching out an operational plan on the blinds.
A large title appeared in his field of vision: Bio Era Heist.
First, the target was the DNA Splicing Instrument-but that thing was up in Orbital City.
In 2077, the vast majority of corporate industrial production took place in Orbital City, in enormous factories that were safe and boring.
As a company at the top of the food chain, Biotechnica was a little different-it had its own orbital space station for production.
Core equipment like the DNA Splicing Instrument certainly wouldn't be in Night City.
He had to find a way to trick them into bringing it down.
Two locations appeared on the blinds: Orbital City and Night City. Lier drew a line between them, then added a question mark.
There was one situation in which the company might risk bringing the thing down: if its work required it.
From a social engineering perspective, Lier needed to hold a Biotechnica executive based in Night City hostage and make the situation so dire that bringing an instrument down became the best solution.
Biotechnica's executive... as far as Lier remembered, in 2077, it was a woman named Joanne Koch.
And something he could blow up into a scandal-they were conducting human experiments on Nomad Families in the Badlands.
It might be useful-Lier added a question mark after those two lines. He still needed to learn more about the details.
Next came the safeguards.
Robbing Biotechnica didn't just mean robbing Biotechnica.
Early in Biotechnica's development, it had voluntarily shared its CHOOH2 production process to avoid being crushed by the two energy giants: the Soviet World Petrochemical Group and the Petrochemical Group.
Now the three corporations effectively held a monopoly on that energy source. Although Lier only wanted to treat his illness, this would undoubtedly cause a massive uproar.
So Lier wrote two more names beside Biotechnica: Soviet Petrochem and the Petrochemical Group.
Rubbing his chin as he ran, Lier thought the situation was clear. If he didn't take measures to cover himself, the three giants could join forces and kill him before he even knew what had happened.
Just because street punks casually killing corporate employees was commonplace in Night City didn't mean corporations had no way to deal with them.
The history leading up to 2077 had no shortage of massacres and wars inside cities. Those were the moments when corporations truly bared their fangs.
I need someone to take the blame. And for this... once I've stolen the instrument and secured the data, I'll have to help them send it back and pretend nothing happened.
A name surfaced in Lier's mind: Arasaka.
If those three companies tried to track down the instrument, they would inevitably send troops into Night City. That was certainly something Arasaka didn't want to see.
But Arasaka couldn't withstand joint pressure from the Soviet Union and New America, either. That gave Lier an opening: he could use an anxious, desperate Arasaka to send the thing back.
Then... someone's covering the return trip. Who gets blamed for the theft?
The answer was anyone, as long as it wasn't Lier-
Lier drew a red question mark there, then extended a line from it and broke it in the middle.
The break represented his Security Firewall. He had to cut off any possibility of being traced, both physically and over the network.
Keeping the operation covert and misleading went without saying, but in 2077, practically anything he did would leave some trace on the network.
So, on the network side... he needed a Network Data Bastion to conceal as much of the residual data in cyberspace as possible.
Lier suddenly thought of his cheat.
A data bastion was a fortress in cyberspace, built by combining the layout of physical network equipment with the construction of cyberspace data structures.
It could protect private information, and wealthy people all used them.
Fundamentally, though, as long as something existed on the network, no fortress could be one hundred percent impenetrable.
Unless the information wasn't on the network in the first place.
Something that didn't exist obviously couldn't be breached. Lier could take a step back and make the bastion incomplete.
Lier shifted his gaze to his system-
[Upon completion of research, the laboratory's type will be locked in, providing a cross-dimensional data transmission link.]
He could try removing part of the bastion and placing it in another dimension, then transmitting the data whenever he needed it.
A Cross-Dimensional Key-give the cyberpunk natives a little taste of what a cheat could do.
Then he would start by securing a Network Data Bastion.
"Whew-" Lier let out a long breath and stepped off the treadmill.
Just then, Padre sent him a message:
"Lier, the client wants to thank you in person. She's saying goodbye to her daughter beside the Afterlife. Stop by if you have time."
Before you continue