Rebecca rolled down the car window, her face bursting into an impossibly radiant and bright smile. Excitedly, she raised a shotgun and let out a joyful scream towards the outside: "Hahaha! I knew you couldn't resist!"
The private car driver passing by almost slammed the brakes, nearly veering off into the dirt road by the highway.
He thought this crazy woman was about to rob them with the shotgun!
Rebecca looked at the driver's terrified expression and only laughed heartily, making a V gesture before retracting into the car and humming a tune happily under Mercer's speechless gaze.
Once they returned to the camp, she toned down her emotions a bit and started looking at Mercer's arrangements for the next action.
After finishing the action plan, Mercer and V drove non-stop toward the vicinity of the Biotechnology Building.
...
Unlike the smooth carjacking, Mercer and V drove around the building several times, and his expression gradually turned serious.
"Looks like it's going to take a bit more effort."
"What do you mean?"
V was taken aback.
"The people at Biotechnology have tightened their defenses... it seems losing a technical supervisor made them suspect someone might be targeting their 'poisoning plan'.
I guess tonight, quite a few people will be working overtime, preparing to deal with the possible exposure of the scandal, or hastily revising their plans."
Mercer summarized succinctly.
V scratched his head, not quite sure how he could tell: "So what do we do? Should we just forget it? After all, we did make quite a bit of money off that woman.
Plus, selling that machinery to Old Wei or on the black market could fetch another 100,000 Euros, and we could earn a 150,000 Euro commission from Wagako, I think that's pretty good.
Damn, I never thought I'd make this much money in one deal in my life! Split among everyone, we could live it up for a whole year!"
Mercer didn't reply, just thoughtfully surveying the surroundings.
V had a point, infiltrating the Biotechnology Building for Wagako's 150,000 Euros, especially under lockdown, wasn't exactly a great idea.
But his ultimate goal was really to get a look around the servers to see if there was anything he wanted or any more valuable data.
So, as long as there was a chance, they had to go for it — as for V's talk of living it up for a whole year, he dismissed it as nonsense.
Just look at her aspirations... having three meals a day of synthetic meat, grabbing a couple of beers at the bar, moving into a new doghouse, that's what she calls living it up?
Mercer's fingers tapped lightly on the steering wheel. After thinking for a while, he said, "We'll give it another try tonight. According to Wagako's data, we have at least three ways to sneak in and take a peek.
As long as there's still a way in, we can try to get a look inside.
If the guard setup has changed and security has been increased, we withdraw. If there's not much change, we proceed with the plan.
This time we don't need to go directly to the server room, we just need to go to the executives' office on the 17th floor and hack a computer with a local server.
With your skills and mine, sneaking in is just a matter of going from 'very easy' difficulty to 'quite difficult'.
I'll prepare a safe escape plan — if an accident happens, we can retreat directly from the rooftop."
V froze: "Retreat from the rooftop? How are we supposed to retreat?"
Mercer smirked, his gaze stopping on a large dumpster.
At this moment, the dumpster was being clamped by a yellow, drone-like device with mechanical arms and it was beginning to ascend slowly.
This was a special operational drone called 'Halo', produced by Zeta Technology to rival the Caucasus Company's Alas Drone from the Russian Federation.
This drone consists of four jet nozzles like crab legs and a metal clamp fitting the size of a dumpster.
Its daily task is to retrieve dumpsters throughout Night City, clamp them, and then fly them to a suburb landfill to dump them.
It's fully automated, requiring no human intervention, and even if it malfunctions, it can automatically alert and find a safe spot to land or return to the drone heliport at the waste management company if it detects anomalies during self-inspection.
It's not expensive, ubiquitous, and operates 24/7.
This is because the dumpsters are also connected to the network, and once they detect trash is full, they trigger the auto-retrieval system, sending a signal to the waste company for the drone to come for cleaning.
Mercer's prosthetic eye glowed, and in the next moment, the high-flying Halo drone suddenly paused in mid-air for a moment, then left along the original route.
"I've hacked this drone and that dumpster — anytime we need, I can forge a signal that the dumpster needs cleaning, letting this 'Halo' fly over without triggering any alarms.
Then, using the program I've installed, I'll instantly hijack this drone, and we can enjoy a ride in a makeshift hovercar."
"Come on, is that even possible?" V seemed a bit anxious: "Won't that thing get shot down with just a few bullets? If we get dropped, we're dead meat."
"Relax, it's built tough. Its maximum load is 800KG, and apart from a short range, it has no deficiencies, but it can fly for an hour no problem.
At its full speed of 100KM/h under full load, it can hover across the city ignoring terrain, enough to get us out of Night City."
After Mercer finished speaking, he paused and said, "Besides, we probably won't need this thing, as long as we're cautious enough and quick enough, with our skills, the chances of getting caught are very low.
The specific plan is — I'll deal with all the annoying cameras, robots, auto turrets, and locks.
You handle all the living things in our way.
That basically makes it as if there's no one in this Biotechnology company.
We can wrap it all up in ten minutes, silently steal all the data, and leave."
"Taking everyone out means there's no one, getting rid of all witnesses means we weren't discovered... I get it now, A, you seem calm, but you're actually crazier than me!"
V quipped, looking at her hands, clenching them into fists: "I haven't done much sneaking around, you better not blame me if something goes wrong!"
"Actually, I haven't really done much sneaking around either," Mercer admitted honestly: "But the last time I did something similar, it went pretty well."
The job at the Arasaka Base was something Mercer thought could totally serve as his 'stealth handbook'.
Even if he did things in a simple and crude way, after all, in the end, isn't he still at large to this day?
"Really?" V looked at him skeptically.
Mercer nodded confidently: "Really! Just watch tonight!"