Diana frantically looked up, and sure enough, not far off by the street, a group of guys dressed like street punks were smoking and occasionally glancing towards her.
She pretended to remain calm: "I assume you brought me here and won't let me bring bodyguards because you guarantee my safety, right?
If I die, there's no talking about cooperation."
[?: Fair enough, place the chip on top, and you can leave.]
A storage box was mounted under the drone. Diana didn't waste time, opened the box, and after placing the chip inside, asked nervously, "Where's the footage?"
[?: Let me collect the money first. If the money's in place, the video will be sent to your email. By the way, I advise you to prepare early. I'm planning to sell the news of server data and biotech being used for poisoning towns.]
Diana rubbed her forehead in agony: "I know... I'll pin everything on Joanna. Please cooperate a bit; we agreed, you help me land smoothly and get out of this mess, and I'll get you the equipment you want.
Of course, there's also money... I promise you won't be working for nothing."
[?: Agreed, but I think you should leave now, don't you think?]
Diana glanced at a few eager Voodoo Gang members in the distance, promptly got up, and slipped back into her car.
She was sitting in an autonomously driven Delaman sedan, fully bulletproof, with no driver. An AI named Delaman was responsible for the service, even capable of activating battle mode to ensure her safety in times of crisis.
This was the only company in Night City licensed to use AI auto-driving. Ever since it 'independently developed' an AI named Delaman, the company rapidly seized the entire taxi market in recent years.
From pricing to service, it almost crushed its competitors.
Recently, Delaman finished the transition to full AI driving, formally dismissing all drivers in favor of AI automated driving.
Its privacy and safety led it to become the first choice for many Night City elites during public transport.
Seeing Diana get into the Delaman, the Voodoo Gang members exchanged a look and quickly got into their car—they'd seen her put something in the drone.
They excitedly drove in the direction of the drone, with one Street Kid trying to hack it with a rapid cracking program.
How to say it, it had a beautiful sense of a fool challenging a master.
The drone's original scanning signal transmission system couldn't help Mercer establish a network connection with them over such a distance.
But when this Street Kid foolishly tried to hack the drone and actively established contact with it.
It meant—he connected to Mercer's network willingly.
And the result?
"Watch me hack down that drone..." The Voodoo Gang hacker excitedly exclaimed.
However, the next moment, his eyes widened suddenly, and his hands began trembling.
Mercer took just three steps, less than a second, to fry this Voodoo Gang kid's brain into mush.
Step one, using the drone's Network Access Vault, capturing the Voodoo Gang kid's network signal.
Step two, using the drone's Network Access Vault, establish a data connection between the Voodoo Gang kid's network and his own.
Step three, send a rapid cracking program to the Voodoo Gang kid's brain—the hacker only had time to see the words "being hacked" before losing consciousness completely.
Mercer didn't even finely control with his mind, just wholly provided computing power to the rapid cracking, within less than three seconds, the program was sent to the Voodoo Gang hacker's brain.
The reason it took three seconds was that the data transmission speed of the drone's Network Access Vault was limited.
Then, it was the classic use of hacking into a subnet centered on the hacker himself, beginning to spread the Magic Puppet Program.
Under the chain infection, in just three seconds, the Voodoo Gang members in the car had only one line of glaring red text left in their prosthetic eyes, filling their entire vision.
[Fatal system error]
[Asystole]
When the fiery skull flickered a death signal in their prosthetic eyes, it signified their brain-machine bio-monitoring system had sentenced their bodies to death.
Not far off, Diana instinctively looked back and saw the Voodoo Gang members' car dash straight toward the roadside barrier, plunging off the road, overturning to the beach below.
Before the car went off the road, Diana's prosthetic eye clearly saw that inside their car, everyone's heads erupted with blue arcs, engulfed in flames.
Did they just get slaughtered over a remote network? In just a few breaths of time?
Her body trembled slightly, cold sweat instantly covering her back.
What kind of monsters have set their sights on her?
...
"Woohoo!!"
"We're rich!! A! We're rich! Damn, it pays to target corporate dogs! Can we do a few more jobs? Who's the target next time? Militech? Arasaka? Kangtao?
You tell me, which company's corporate dogs have the most money? Damn it, don't bother me, let me hold it a bit longer! This is a million euros!"
V clung tightly to the small box in his arms, looking as if he wanted desperately to kiss it or even devour it.