"Fuck..."
In the dimly lit building, a Scavenger with only half a body left was crawling on the ground, leaving a long trail of blood that mingled with the many stains from other victims already there.
The surrounding wires and light bulbs flickered with electric sparks, casting a gloomy and obscure light.
All electronic equipnt in the Long Beach scrapyard suddenly exploded, and the servers supporting the Scavengers’ internal communication had turned into cyber bombs, frying the brains of the unlucky ones who were using the network at that mont.
Just ten minutes ago, he was relieved that he wasn’t watching porn on the net at that ti, but now his thoughts had changed:
Damn it, to be alive is like this, those who died just now only had to die honestly, but those of us still alive have to fumble in the dark, making nerve-wracking repairs to the circuits, never knowing if we’ll be electrocuted by so wire...
Even after what felt like an eternity of groping and repairing, now he also had to drag his intestines across the ground.
Pain invaded his brain, his consciousness was blurring, what was it that kept him so determinedly crawling?
The Scavenger made it to a corner of the wall and tried to lift his head to glance at the hamr on the table.
"Ugh, motherfucker, I’m done."
Bang!
A Scavenger pried open the corner of the table, and the hamr smashed down from the tabletop, bursting his skull open, ending his life.
Boom—
The sound of flas and explosions ca through the corridor, with heavy footsteps echoing in the underground facility.
The Long Beach scrapyard was enveloped in darkness, with the occasional sound of gunfire and fighting, loud and piercing, the muzzle flashes stark against the blackness.
Creak—
The sounds of the fight were varied and bizarre, concrete getting shattered, color steel plates used in construction emitting a screeching noise under pressure, but compared to Night City, the battles here always lacked one sound:
The screams of panicked pedestrians.
"Bitchin’!"
Boom!
Jack blasted a circle out of the concrete wall, with gravel scattering everywhere.
Crossing through the breach, a few Scavengers were sitting on the ground, covering their faces and retreating in terror, but Jack didn’t make a move; a gang of burly Animal Gang mbers carrying big guns and clubs rushed in and quickly killed all the Scavengers.
The scene was a bit grueso: the Animal Gang liked to use close-combat weapons whenever they could.
Jack shrugged his shoulders and said with a sense of disappointnt, "That’s it? I thought this was the biggest Scavenger nest, but where’s the resistance?"
"Didn’t you see how many people’s prosthetics equipnt here has been wrecked? They can’t even handle the hallucinations in their heads, let alone engage in a firefight... you’re overestimating these organ harvesters."
Lille walked and directed V to take out a small scanner from a temporary backup box added to her wheelchair.
Scavengers typically have average combat abilities; no one’s heard of any Scavenger targeting companies with strong regular armies or Lone Wolves to snatch their kidneys. They mainly work by deception, drugging, hacker skills, or bartering with other shady thods to achieve their goals. Even when they resort to forceful ans like kidnapping, the targets are usually ordinary civilians without much fighting ability.
V was still shaking his head, not fully recovered from the attack.
For safety, Lille had even turned off all her neural implants, including those from Si Anweisitan, which significantly slowed her reactions and she was still adjusting.
"Damn... the person who attacked just now, did they co through here?"
"It’s hard to say, but probably not."
Lille could gather a detail from the original storyline: Lark was affiliated with New Arica, and New Arica actually had a few remaining agents in Dog Town, much like the Netherworld Dog left behind in Taiping State.
These agents had essentially lost contact, and even within New Arica’s own archives, they were dismissed and even silenced for various reasons.
However, under certain circumstances, it was entirely possible for them to be rehired by New Arica: in the original story, President Miles, in an attempt to recover from his setbacks in Dog Town, reactivated these agents with a simple proposition, telling them that they could leave Dog Town once the job was done.
Not everyone had co to Dog Town by choice, so they could not choose to leave on their own, and the offer to leave the warzone and return to "civil society" was nothing if not tempting...
Moreover, there really were agents among them who were super devoted to New Arica—so much so that even if New Arica abandoned them, once the President’s plea ca, they would scurry back to contribute to New Arica.
And one of the agents, her main stronghold was in the Long Beach Junkyard, where she opened a bar among the garbage heaps...
The bar was easy to recognize in a place so scarce of such resources, so upon arrival, Lille imdiately confird the situation with the bar:
It was already closed, with no indication whether they had skipped town or were just lying low. Lille didn’t do too much probing, to avoid exposing too much information.
V placed the transmitter, retracted the personal link, and surveyed the bloodstained walls and the operating room, "Is this where they earn millions of Euros yearly?"
"In Dog Town, their main business isn’t the trafficking of human organs, second-hand, or pirated prosthetics."
Lille’s wheelchair moved forward, the chanical arm sliding down from the armrest to the ground, working on the cables.
The Black Wall’s attack even reached this far, indicating that by that ti, Lark had already hacked into the equipnt here, using it as one of the network attack springboards.
Obviously, with her skills, in cahoots with New Arica’s field agents, it wasn’t hard to do whatever they wanted here.
While examining the hideout’s equipnt, Lille explained to V, "First off, the Long Beach Junkyard is a dump, nominally for people to throw away trash, but what gets thrown away here is mostly valuable facilities and equipnt. Goods co in, trash goes out; the unlucky schmuck who ordered genuine products ends up with junk produced here.
To soone who can’t acquire or afford the real deal, they end up paying above market value for these goods. It’s large-scale trafficking.
Secondly, Scavenger... Scavenger has a humanitarian aid organization under his na."
V and Jack were taken aback by these words:
Scavenger and humanitarian aid together in one sentence?
They had seen dozens of hollowed-out bodies upon storming the hideout, so carelessly piled in the trash room waiting to be shipped out, others even stuffed in refrigerators to be discarded with them when they broke down, with faux humans clearly priced at the door.
Organs, skin, facial features, implants... they had everything, and in the eyes of the Scavenger, there were no such things as people, only commodities full of vitality.
They were running humanitarian aid?
"There’s a saying that if the goods ant for humanitarian aid are too valuable, those in charge of the aid will devalue the goods until they are almost worthless.
So in this world, there isn’t such a thing as humanitarian aid; Night City wouldn’t spend money on that. Everyone knows it’s pointless—there’s no money in it."
Lille’s eyes glowed blue as he locked onto all the cables, attempting to recover so data, but there was almost no progress. The destruction inflicted by the Black Wall on both software and hardware was too thorough, with the re aftershocks causing unimaginable damage.
"...However, the jobs Scavenger was originally doing didn’t cost much to begin with: a bullet, a dab of drugs, and a healthy person could be taken care of. On the other hand, by doing this, they had an additional channel to dispose of goods, and they might even find big jobs, like with Luxor Manor and those bigwigs who needed a disposal service...
In this field, they virtually had no competitors, as humanitarian aid is an area where profit is nearly impossible. But if the costs are low, it can still be managed."
V frowned, "So what on earth did they aid with..."
"Of course, they ’aided’ those living in despair with cheap hallucinogens."
Reviews
All reviews (0)