Sasha didn't know what Maine was thinking, but she knew one thing for sure—he was furious.
After all, this entire mess had started because of his impulsive decision.
Of course, the real trigger came later—after she finished her mission and accidentally saw the Biotechnica drug files her mother had brought back.
That was when she learned the truth.
The drug caused progressive neurological damage. In severe cases, it led to death.
Her mother had only been seriously injured at first. She should have survived.
Instead, after being administered that so-called painkiller, she died quietly in her hospital bed.
Biotechnica knew about the side effects. They always had.
They simply didn't care.
To them, human lives were expendable—as long as the profits kept flowing.
Back then, Sasha had been running a fever, her head burning, her emotions spiraling. All she wanted was revenge for her mother—and to stop more people from dying the same way.
So she leaked the files to N54 News.
But that moment of hesitation cost her everything.
Her escape was delayed. Biotechnica's combat drones surrounded her.
No one else on the team was hurt—but she had almost died.
The guilt still crushed her chest.
"…Sorry."
Sasha lowered her head. Her voice was quiet, her eyes brimming with remorse.
"Oh, I'm not blaming you," Maine said with a sigh. "I just want you to stay the hell away from that guy—Xiao—from now on. He's no different from corporate dogs."
He paused, then added grimly,
"If anything, he's even more dangerous."
"What? But he saved me!"
Sasha looked up, confused. Her first impression of Xiao had been good—especially after hearing people call him a poor entrepreneur. That alone had earned him some goodwill in her eyes.
"He didn't jump in right away," Maine said slowly. "He avoided the fight at first. Then, only after I called your name, he suddenly moved."
Maine replayed the scene in his mind.
He was certain of it—Xiao had dodged deliberately.
Then, the moment Sasha was identified, he acted.
"I don't know how he knew you," Maine continued, "but he saved you on purpose. That's what bothers me."
"I'm just a netrunner," Sasha scoffed, popping a piece of bubble gum into her mouth and leaning back with her hands behind her head. "No money. No background. What could he possibly want from me?"
She smirked.
"Hmph. Must be because I'm gorgeous."
Maine ignored that and pressed on.
"The Badlands should've been under the Mechanicus' control ages ago. What happened with the Red River Stone Tribe was never exposed. Even the middlemen didn't know about it."
His expression darkened.
"So how did he know?"
Rumors were already spreading—about the Mechanicus, about Vought, about where all that technology really came from.
The Mechanicus never denied it.
They never confirmed it either.
They simply stayed silent.
And that silence was the strangest part.
After all, the Mechanicus worshiped the Ohm Messiah with fanatical devotion. For them to tolerate technology branded with Vought's fingerprints—technology tied to the so-called God of All Machines—was completely abnormal.
There were only two possibilities.
Either they were working together…
Or Xiao himself was the God of All Machines standing behind the Mechanicus.
And either way, someone who controlled such terrifying brainwashing technology was dangerous beyond measure.
If you were caught by him, your very personality could be erased.
"Maine, you've been poisoned by corporate propaganda," Sasha shot back. "Yeah, the Mechanicus is… intense. But they're not evil."
She continued firmly,
"They provide clean water and arable land to Night City. They shelter the homeless. They brought order back to the Badlands and Pacifica."
Maine fell silent.
Sasha knew why he hated the Mechanicus.
He was Haitian.
And the lawless Haitian factions—especially the Voodoo Boys in Pacifica—had suffered the most after the Mechanicus moved in.
People were beaten for breaking Mechanicus law.
Some were dragged into plantation labor camps, forced to work day after day like slaves.
Maine wasn't angry for himself.
He was angry for his people.
"Alright, alright. You're right," Maine said at last, clicking his tongue. "Who doesn't know by now that the safest places in Night City are Pacifica and the Badlands?"
His smile was bitter.
"How ironic."
He didn't want to argue anymore.
After all, Sasha was white.
And no matter how much she sympathized, she would never truly understand.
…
…
By the time Xiao returned home, the part-time worker had already cleaned up the wrecked apartment.
After constructing his fusion furnace and advancing to the Golden Core stage, Xiao began planning his next step—the Nascent Soul.
Nascent Soul power involved the soul itself, a field Xiao had barely researched.
In that domain, he was heavily restricted.
He had no solid blueprint.
The only promising direction he could think of lay in the development of cyberspace and soul-based AI.
But before he could even begin experimenting, he noticed something unsettling.
The cyber dimension was becoming… filthy.
As more people flooded into it, chaos began to take root.
All kinds of twisted entities—monsters born of human malice—were emerging and growing stronger.
With no centralized surveillance, the cyber dimension had become a truly unregulated network.
Every shadow lurking in the human psyche found a place to manifest.
The Mechanicus' internal control over this area was lax.
Believers were still human.
Faith in the Ohm Messiah didn't magically rewrite their personalities.
After all, over ninety percent of the Mechanicus was made up of nomadic tribes, mercenaries, and scavengers.
Expecting moral purity from them was laughable.
Xiao's Papal Code could restrain their bodies and suppress their urges—but it couldn't erase their nature.
All the violence they couldn't release in the real world poured almost entirely into cyberspace.
As a result, the cyber dimension gave birth to ever more chaotic zones… and ever more vicious viruses.
Yet Xiao didn't intervene.
He didn't ban them.
He didn't clean them up.
Because chaos itself was one of the foundations of the cyber dimension's growth.
For cyberspace to evolve, two conditions had to be met.
First: computing power.
Every nanomechanical insect produced a fragment of data. One fragment was nothing—but accumulated endlessly, the computing power would only continue to rise.
Second: data consumption.
Any data could be devoured—viruses, redundant junk programs, corrupted files.
As long as it was data, it could be eaten.
The more data absorbed, the larger the cyber dimension became under the IGTA Transformation Algorithm.
Xiao didn't care what kind of data it consumed.
Light or dark—it all became fuel.
Through the IGTA Transformation Algorithm, every piece of data was converted into a corresponding structure in the real world…
And became part of the ever-expanding cyber dimension.
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