Cyberpunk: I'm Not a Scavenger - Chapter 71: The Great Blackout (Patreon)

Ten minutes earlier, at Biotechnica Tower.

A piercing alarm echoed throughout the building. Crimson emergency lights flashed wildly along the corridors.

Biotechnica's rapid-response force had already arrived aboard AVs. A single member of one of those elite tactical squads carried enough cyberware to let V rescue the president eight hundred times over.

"Where's the security supervisor?! The security robots on floors 23, 15, and 34 are out of control! We need backup!"

"There's a major breach in our ICE defenses! An unidentified netrunner's signal is moving between floors! Fuck! Where are our netrunners?!"

"We've detected probing attacks from other corporations! They're siphoning off our processing power!"

Inside the command center, Biotechnica's acting security supervisor was frantically coordinating the responses. Sweat poured down his face, and several fresh needle marks stood out on his neck.

He had no intention of ending up like his predecessor, dragged out of bed in the middle of the night.

To keep himself alert enough to do his job, he'd already injected more than three times the recommended dose of stimulants.

"Impossible! That's absolutely impossible! That netrunner and his accomplice already escaped!"

He slammed a hand against the table, his natural eyes bloodshot.

Then a thought struck him. Suddenly, everything seemed to make sense.

"This has to be a trap those damned thieves set for us! If we chase after those two rats, the netrunner hiding inside will use the opportunity to steal our corporate secrets!"

At his command, the units pursuing Pantheon and Sasha outside the building were urgently recalled. Only a few teams stayed behind to conduct a token search.

Unfortunately, catching the mysterious "netrunner" still inside would be far from easy.

The feeds displayed in the command center were an absolute circus.

The dozens of malicious programs and viruses Pantheon had left behind were running wild, spreading everywhere they could reach like horses that had broken free of their reins.

The security robots rebelling was the least of their problems.

What the fuck was going on with the sabotaged sewers, the runaway garbage trucks, and the endless stream of Biotechnica's dirty secrets appearing on every screen?

Holy shit! Couldn't that bastard at least make a normal virus?!

At this point, the security supervisor was no longer worried about losing his job.

He was worried about surviving until morning.

"Don't look! Nobody look! Those images are malicious fakes! It's a conspiracy by the enemies of democracy!"

The head of public relations, who'd originally come to enjoy the spectacle, was suddenly beside himself. He snatched the supervisor's communicator and tried to make everyone forget what they'd seen.

Fortunately for the company, it exercised absolute control over its augmented soldiers. The incriminating footage in their fields of vision was promptly covered with pixelated mosaics.

Biotechnica was clearly far more efficient at that than at handling ordinary corporate business.

After a brief scuffle, the security supervisor wrestled back his communicator and ordered the technicians to pinpoint the intruder's location.

The mysterious signal kept darting between floors, leaving the tactical squads unable to determine where it was coming from.

With tears practically in his eyes, the supervisor resorted to his last remaining option.

Cut the network! Shut off the power!

As the receivers were disabled and the available data channels narrowed, the supposed netrunner had fewer and fewer places to hide.

"The signal's disappeared! Its last location was the backup server room on the twenty-second floor!"

The technician shouted the news excitedly and transmitted the coordinates to the nearest tactical squad.

The squad rushed to the twenty-second floor. The moment the elevator doors slid open, a filthy mixture of sewage and garbage poured inside.

The sight alone was enough to turn their stomachs. Even battle-hardened veterans began cursing.

What sick bastard of a netrunner had invented a tactic this vile?

If other netrunners started copying it, would the tactical squads have to add simulated cesspit combat to their training?

The team's own netrunner had it worst of all.

A considerable portion of his cyberware had to remain exposed for cooling, and some of the foul liquid seeped directly into his body through its ventilation openings.

"Urgh! I'm going to fucking kill him! Urgh!"

The squad inched forward through the filth, with part of their vision still obscured by corporate censorship mosaics.

They were furious. Never in their careers had they been subjected to anything so humiliating.

Suddenly, ripples spread across the foul water as something shot past their feet.

They opened fire immediately. When the shooting stopped, several bits of machinery floated to the surface.

The squad's technician took one look. His face darkened, and he ground the words out through clenched teeth.

"It's a fucking robot vacuum cleaner!"

Several of the heavily augmented soldiers nearly lost control of themselves. They charged recklessly toward the room where the signal had last appeared.

BOOM!

They blew the door apart. Inside, the only thing waiting for them was a yellow creature on a screen, clutching its belly and laughing hysterically.

"Hahahaha!"

BANG!

The soldiers smashed the screen to pieces, but the maddening laughter seemed to keep ringing in their ears.

The so-called mysterious netrunner was nothing more than an intelligent virus Pantheon had left behind. With its mission complete, the program destroyed itself, leaving the squad with nothing but a disgusting mess to clean up.

Back in the command center, the security supervisor went deathly pale and collapsed into his chair.

He knew he was finished.

But was Pantheon really done?

When the virus stopped transmitting its "heartbeat," a red light blinked on a bomb hidden in a corner of the building's main electrical distribution room.

It was an ordinary EMP bomb with relatively limited power.

For some time, however, Pantheon's malicious software had been covertly hijacking the building's electrical supply and gradually diverting power toward that room.

When the bomb detonated, all that accumulated energy discharged at once, resonating with the original electromagnetic pulse.

A small EMP storm erupted from the main distribution room and raced through the lower and middle floors along the power lines and the building's metal framework.

The upper floors escaped the worst of it thanks to their independent power grid.

The electromagnetic storm was confined to Biotechnica Tower. Even so, it was powerful enough to disable virtually every device without military-grade shielding and wipe out enormous amounts of unsaved information.

Surveillance cameras, ventilation, payment systems, automatic doors, and countless security robots and drones all went dead.

The tactical squad on the twenty-second floor suffered the worst fate.

The pulse punched through the shielding on their implants, sending arcs of electricity dancing across the sewage.

The netrunner, with so much of his cyberware exposed, took the brunt of it.

"Ugh..."

The high-frequency electromagnetic pulse disabled his implants. His eyes rolled back, and he pitched face-first into the filthy water.

Ordinarily, falling over would have been a minor inconvenience. But without the assistance of his cyberware, he couldn't support the hundreds of kilograms of equipment attached to his body.

His teammates weren't doing much better. Their implants were throwing errors in every direction, forcing them to curse and reboot their systems.

By the time they noticed their netrunner lying motionless, he'd already drowned.

Outside, the lights of Corpo Plaza were still shining as brightly as ever.

The sudden blackout at Biotechnica Tower was like a drop of blood falling into a shark tank.

Militech, Arasaka, Kang Tao, and other corporations dispatched agents to take advantage of the confusion.

Even Night City's top netrunners were drawn to the disturbance.

Nix from the Afterlife, Chang-Hoon Nam from Wakako's organization, Brigitte of the Voodoo Boys, and the mysterious Songbird.

Hidden interests converged around the tower, countless pairs of eyes watching one another in the darkness.

Corpo Plaza had descended into chaos.

And in the middle of all that, no one was paying attention to a few thieves making their escape.