Cyberpunk: Ultimate Cyborg System-Chapter 59: Sneaking and Looting.
Chapter 59: Sneaking and Looting.
"... Time to move..."
After studying the three-dimensional model of Caligo’s underground base, Dante drafted the routes he would take and prepared to go out. The 3D model Volcan created had the location of all enemies, but that was before Type 8-3 was dismissed. Without its Spatial Awareness ability, updating the map was going to be difficult.
Volcan’s basic ability to track people relied on tracing their connection to the internet, but he had to be close to the target to make that happen, and with the enemies’ NIMs being inactive and the jamming field covering the entire building preventing him from connecting to the internet, it wouldn’t have worked either way.
One thing for sure, the enemy wasn’t going to remain oblivious to a prisoner escape for long. Epsilon probably has a way to deliver his orders to his henchmen, and soon enough they would be sweeping the building for any signs of the escapee.
With the gun he looted from Rechy in his hand -the one Larry gave him was taken away- Dante walked to the door and reached for the handle. As he prepared to pull it open, however, Volcan spoke up.
[Dante, before you leave this room, there is something I would like you to do.]
’What now?’
In such a tense situation, Dante didn’t appreciate being interrupted out of nowhere.
[I have performed a scan on some of the equipment in this room. Some of it contains rare materials that can be used to upgrade your bionic implants in the future.]
’... And?’
[You can place them in the Storage. I will handle processing them into their base materials.]
A pang of annoyance struck Dante once again. He hadn’t given the matter much thought before, but now he was starting to wonder how the upgrades the AI mentioned were supposed to work.
Looking around the room, he got a feeling that it was used to produce something. The machines lined along the walls made it look like an assembly line, but the dust covering them said that they hadn’t been used in quite some time.
’... I guess we can sell them for some Gold as well...’
Production machinery wasn’t easy to come by; big corpos were very strict about their monopoly and would do anything to ensure no one got their hands on such things. Of course, a criminal organization had its ways, and so long as one had the money, it was still possible to get almost anything.
The urgency of the situation made him reluctant to waste any time, but Dante still decided to go around and gather the machines. He walked to each one, placed his hand on its surface, then waited as the neon green lines formed a net over it while making sure the door was always within sight.1
The machines were already unplugged so the process didn’t take long. Ten minutes later and all of them were gone, stored safely in Volcan’s extra-dimensional storage.
’Alright, now we go.’
Caligo’s underground hideout was vast, to say the least. It had six entire floors underground, making the whole thing the size of a shopping mall. The interior wasn’t made to be easily traversed, that’s for sure.
While some of the corridors were normal enough, others were remodeled to serve as extra rooms. The stairs leading up were placed in the corners of the entire structure, and as if to make things worse, some were sealed shut. Apparently, it was a deliberate choice intended to stop people from using the same set of stairs to climb all the way up, forcing them to cross each floor to do so.
According to the 3D model, there were only two elevators in the entire hideout. They seemed to go from the bottom-most floor to the surface, and seeing how a few yellow dots were around each end, it was clear that the entrances to both were heavily guarded.
From the looks of it, the place had been much more crowded in the past, but just like the room he had rested in, it hadn’t been in use for some time. While moving around, Dante came across many signs that it had been abandoned recently. He could only wonder what could have led Caligo to that decision.
On more than one occasion, Volcan drew his attention to some of the tools and machines they came across. Dante had to shut him down after a while. As much as the prospect of looting every trinket they came across sounded appealing, it simply wasn’t doable. The enemy had already reached his position and was carefully checking every corner.
The first one was a silhouette he noticed while crouched beside one of the machines Volcan had pointed out. Another one followed right behind it, both passing beside a stained window that opened toward the corridor as they headed toward the room’s second door, the one Dante planned on going through next.
Careful not to make a sound, Dante moved behind a large barrel near the corner and waited. With them being this close, Volcan’s sensors picked up their position and displayed them on the three-dimensional model of the hideout. When zooming in on a single room, the dots representing each person turned into simplified humanoid models.
Two yellow figures were only a couple of meters away. They took different routes around the tables at the center of the room, moving slowly with weapons held at the ready.
[Evaluation Complete.] Volcan chose to whisper the words as if afraid to be heard by the enemy. [Both are Level 1 cyborgs. Enhanced bones around the arms and head. Subdermal armor at the front of the torso. One artificial lung each.]
’Are they twins or something?’
The more likely answer is that Caligo offers its members some form of standardized enhancements, much like the military. One of them got dangerously close to Dante’s hiding spot. He was about to look over the barrel, and Dante prepared to meet him with a gun pointed to his head, but then a loud clang shattered the silence in the room and the gangster turned to the source of the noise instead.
"Fucking hell! Don’t scare me like that!" He shouted at his friend who seemed to have knocked something off the table.
"Chill. It was just a mistake."
From their voices, it wasn’t difficult to tell both were on edge.
"There is nothing here." The one who caused the noise spoke. "Let’s just go back and tell them we found nothing."
"Like hell we’re gonna do that." The second one clicked his tongue.
"Oh c’mon! I didn’t sign up to fight goddamn superheroes!"
"Nobody signed up for anything. We do as the boss says and keep our mouths shut. That’s it."
"Goddamn it..."
Whispering a few more curses, the first one walked toward the backdoor -the one Dante entered from- The second didn’t move for a few seconds, sighed, then followed after him. Once the door closed behind them, Dante let out the breath he was holding.
’They think I’m one of them...’
The thought alone made him want to laugh. Waiting a few more seconds, he moved out of his hiding spot and silently made his way toward the next door.
In Chapter 43: New Function, Volcan’s storage function was introduced. I later realized that I made it way too overpowered since it allows Dante to store anything just by looking at it (I mean, if it’s like that, he could just look at someone and let them suffocate inside the pocket dimension).
For that reason, I decided to nerf it a little. You can go back and read the part to understand the changes, but if you don’t want to, I will explain it here:
To activate the storage function, Dante has to meet a few conditions:
1)He has to be touching the object he wants to store with at least one hand.
2)He has to wait until the object is scanned, which could take some time depending on the size, density, and complexity of the object (Rechy’s corpse took 10 seconds to scan )
3)The object has to remain still while the scan is performed.
