The Creators: From Night City

Page 416

Song Zhaomei's expression turned serious, and she immediately replied, "Understood!"

"Gloria, coordinate a team to form a task force, and while you're at it, spread the word on the 'Afterlife' platform to see if you can get any information."

The head supervisor nodded in agreement, and with a flicker of his prosthetic eye, he began working.

Jiang Bingze tapped the glass observation window of the life support capsule, preparing to use other methods besides these investigative techniques.

…………

River is a good cop and a good friend. He is upright but not pedantic, kind but not a saint. He is decisive but also approachable. He is shrewd but also knows the rules. Therefore, several former employees of Anti-Entropy who have dealt with him maintain a good relationship with him.

When Valerie, who was in charge of the Special Operations Department, learned of this news from the mission assigned by the Grand Master, she was somewhat incredulous.

But top-secret internal operation reports are unlikely to be wrong.

She could only tell herself that this was still Night City, where good people often didn't get their due.

But she could always do what she could to stand up for her friend.

So she carefully selected the most capable employees for this task.

He was once an insignificant figure who was driven to the brink of suicide by Valerie, but now he has become the liaison for Carter Smith, the secretary to the head of the Special Operations Department.

Senior agent Vincent serves as the team leader.

She oversaw the entire process.

The three of them went to the medical department to conduct the necessary victim investigation for the mission, and also took the opportunity to visit River.

Eleanor was very welcoming to Valerie, and thanks to the 'insider connections' between the shrewd intelligence chief and the head of the medical department, the three of them naturally met River, who could already be declared dead in the medical field.

How is he?

“Strictly speaking, it’s no different from a declaration of death.” Ellen Elinor spoke frankly, with the cold, doctor’s perspective on life and death.

"What is that?" Vincent pointed to the observation window and asked.

In fact, Valerie was also very curious, since the cup was placed very conspicuously next to the medical pod.

The mercury-colored cup appears to be cast in silver, with countless tiny gold chains tightly wrapped around it. The exposed cup walls are faintly visible, adorned with numerous delicate mouths and ears in relief, making it both exquisite and eerie.

“To be honest, I’m curious too,” Ellen Eleanor said mysteriously, pointing upwards twice with her finger.

“Mr. Sabur put it there himself.”

Everyone present was more or less aware of their boss's extraordinary abilities.

Therefore, everyone paid more attention to that strange cup.

Valerie's prosthetic eye was of the highest grade. After magnifying the details of the cup dozens of times, she discovered that the chains were actually pieced together from some kind of mysterious symbols, and the cup seemed to contain some kind of red liquid.

"Wine, is this a wine glass?" Valerie wondered to herself, but suddenly a soft, ethereal white noise reached her ears.

The golden chains gleamed for a fleeting moment, startling everyone present.

In that brief moment of distraction, the white noise in Valerie's ears vanished without a trace.

A strange feeling crept into her heart, causing her to involuntarily abandon her plan to investigate further.

"Okay," Valerie clapped her hands, drawing the attention of the others.

“Carter, go to the technical department and get all the data records you can find on River. Vincent, go to the armed forces and pick a few good fighters. We’ll go to the crime scene later.”

Chapter 849 Alternative Investigation Methods

At the same time, 'like honey'.

A gentle sea breeze caressed River's face; everything felt so familiar and comforting.

The detective finally broke free from the gentle embrace, stood up abruptly, and instinctively reached for his gun at his waist.

His thoughts were still on the Tiger Claw Gang's headquarters, still on his deathbed.

But his hand grasped at nothing, and his eyes were met with a sea of ​​gold and a shimmering lake, which made him involuntarily freeze in his tracks.

“River Ward, tell me, what happened at the Tiger Claw headquarters?”

Jiang Bing appeared by the lake at some unknown time and looked at the detective, asking him a question.

“Mr. Sabur, you…, I…, this…”

After hesitating for a long time, the detective finally managed to stammer out, "Am I dead?"

"Dead, but not completely dead."

"what?

The detective was a little confused.

"What happened at the Tiger Claw Gang's base, detective?"

“That’s right! People from the Russian Federation! Mr. Sabur, the Tiger Claw Gang and the Cleaners’ backers have gotten together. They’re backed by people from the Russian Federation, and the people behind the Cleaners who buy organs are from the Russian Federation!” River became visibly excited when talking about his work, recounting his discovery that day.

“My body camera recorded it all, boss. They were making a deal, and the buyer was clearly a Yugoslavian. I filmed his face!”

"very good"

Jiang Bing nodded in satisfaction after receiving the answer.

"Mr. Sabur, is this the Dream World? Am I dead or alive?"

"Welcome to Rumi, but this is not Mewtwo."

"Also, thank you for providing this lake; it's beautiful."

Honey is the dream of the Lord of Eternal Flame, but now it is more than just the Lord of Eternal Flame's dream.

As the result of Jiang Bing's research on the dream of 'Ya Nan', it can now absorb the thoughts of those who enter this dream, manifest the things that are obsessing in their hearts, and continuously grow.

Just like Gehrman and 'Hunter's Dream'.

"Can I go back?" Looking at the lake that only existed in his memory, Rivers seemed to have misunderstood something, and his lips turned white instantly.

"Of course, but your soul is severely damaged, and this is my first time dealing with this, so you need to rest well in this beautiful dream for a while."

As a spoil of war for conquering the 'Yanan' dream, Jiang Bing gained a deeper understanding of all things in the world, especially the soul, through the analysis of this illusory yet real dream, since the 'Yanan' dream contains the soul information left behind by hundreds of thousands of people.

"Soul? Dream? Rest?" River's already dark face had turned as black as the bottom of a pot.

Unfortunately, Jiang Bing, who had obtained the answer, had already disappeared by the clear lake.

River looked around and saw only a vast golden plain surrounding the small lake. There was no one else in the world but himself, and he couldn't help but feel a deep sadness.

Although he hadn't read many books, he still knew a lot about the descriptions of where the souls of humans go after death in myths and legends.

The boundless, peaceful plains before him looked remarkably similar to Yalu, the reed plain of the Nile Delta in ancient Egyptian mythology; the Eleusine plains in ancient Greek mythology; the paradise of the afterlife in Celtic mythology; and the resting place of Helheim in Norse mythology.

I'm probably still dead.

As Rivers lamented the passing of spring and the coming of autumn, Jiang Bing's figure suddenly reappeared.

"By the way, can I borrow your memories?"

He reached out and extracted memories from Rivers about the time before his death, and from these memories, he obtained the description of the Russian Federation man that the detective had mentioned.

"Even if you are on a business trip during this period, the relevant subsidies will be deposited into your salary account. Also, heading north is where human settlements are located."

Before River could even speak, Boss Jiang, having finished speaking, vanished without a trace.

Only one Night City native remained standing there, dumbfounded and stunned.

Sapphire Blue, 33rd floor, a conference room.

You're saying all the data has been erased?

Valerie held the blood-stained body camera, her brow furrowed in worry.

This time, the enemy was more professional and troublesome than she had imagined.

"The camera, the storage space of the prosthetic eye, the flash memory data of the communication base station node—all the information that could be found has been erased. It used 'microwave explosion' technology; very professional." Song Zhaomei slumped in her chair, toying with a data hacking dagger produced by [Anti-Entropy] in her hand.

“I know,” Valerie sighed. “Those Tiger Claw gang thugs don’t know how to do this. Only the CIA of the new America, the hunting dogs of the EU, and the GRU of the Russian Federation would do it.”

Song Zhaomei's hard-won, youthful face twitched involuntarily.

"This is really troublesome."

No matter how troublesome the task, it had to be done. Fortunately, Valerie had participated in many more difficult missions when she was working in the Arasaka Counterintelligence Department, so she was not afraid of this at all.

“We can start with the Tiger Claw Gang. They always have some bits and pieces of information. As long as we have new information, we can find new directions for our investigation.” Valerie used her professional experience to suggest the second solution.

'Dodo'

Song Zhaomei tapped the conference room table lightly with the hilt of her short knife and said, "I'm sorry, this way is blocked."

“All the people in the Tiger Claw Gang who knew about this are dead. They did it themselves. The Tiger Claw Gang leaders who cooperated with them are definitely still alive. But the problem is that this ‘fruit’ is hidden very well. Anyone in the Tiger Claw Gang could be the culprit. We can’t possibly arrest them all.”

Valerie's cheeks twitched involuntarily. This ruthless and decisive method of silencing reminded him of Arasaka's style of operation as a secret agent.

"The only option left is to use a brute-force method. We can collect floating-point trace data from all communication base stations around the crime scene to investigate the new users who connected after the incident."

“When using the ‘microwave explosion’ technology, all personnel must be disconnected from the network and isolated, and they will inevitably need to reconnect to the network.”

Song Zhaomei gasped.

Do you know how many people live in Night City? And how many people in Westbrook go online every day?

"The method may be clumsy, but it works."

Valerie frowned and continued, "You don't need to worry about computing power. My permissions are sufficient to request the 'Domain' to temporarily allocate II computing power support for me for a few days. That should be enough."

"Enough my ass!"

In this respect, Song Zhaomei was much more professional than Valerie. She put the rough data model into the network access warehouse with computing capabilities and ran it for only one run before refuting it without hesitation.

"But that's all we can do. Who told me to get into this mess?"

"I still have one more quota for applying for Level III access computing power this quarter, let's use it."

Song Zhaomei's words greatly surprised Valerie.

'Domain' AI, as the current butler AI program of [Reverse Entropy], has been used by most of the middle and senior management employees, who also know that it was written under the leadership of a mysterious hacker named Raphael Marx.

However, only a few people know that a corresponding supercomputing array was also completed along with the 'domain'.

Chapter 850 'Black Hand' Alley

After all, even the best program needs a corresponding platform to support it and powerful computing power to run.

In addition, essential network defense systems such as IEC, MFA (Strong Authentication System), DDoS protection, and IDS/IPS (Intrusion Detection and Prevention System) also require powerful computing support.

The exact location of this mysterious supercomputing array is top secret, and its shape, structure, and operating principles are naturally unknown to anyone.

Valerie only learned the name of the supercomputing array by chance from the complex company documents because of her special position with a high level of confidentiality.

'Xiyong'

A strange name with no apparent origin.

Although the true nature of this supercomputing array remains a mystery, the computing power it provides truly serves the vast majority of [Reverse Entropy] employees.

Valerie had made a simple estimate of 'Chion's' peak computing power out of professional habit, but the result made her keep the answer to herself.

However, it is undeniable that computing power is a measure of a power's 'soft power' in the cyberpunk era. In this era of interconnected things and cyberspace becoming the cornerstone of real life, having sufficient 'computing power' is undoubtedly equivalent to having sufficient cyber forces.

Similarly, the amount of computing power that can be allocated indirectly reflects the status of the person allocating it.

Just as the two sides hit it off and were preparing to go all out, a text message was suddenly sent to the mission's communication channel.

[Sabur Lerek: (Image 1 of the killer) (Image 2 of the killer)]

[Sabul Lerek: The mastermind behind this mission.]

The senior employees of [Reverse Entropy] all knew that their boss was incredibly capable, but they never imagined he was capable of this much.

Valerie's task force wasn't even fully staffed yet, but Boss Jiang had already solved the case.

With the facial data of these murderers, the difficulty of solving this case has been reduced from finding a needle in a haystack to finding a clue by following a map.

With this level of difficulty, let alone Song Zhaomei, even a novice hacker who knows image retrieval could easily find the target by comparing it with the database.

After all, the database of the Night City public surveillance system, which is the most challenging to build, is now almost entirely based on "reverse entropy".

Song Zhaomei acted immediately and, with little effort, caught the other party by the tail.