Chapter 3: So Being a Hacker Isn’t That Hard After All

Mercer’s last three days had been miserable.

Life without a television, computer, or mobile phone, restricted entirely to a bed, was not easy. Dr. Oda only visited once a day to conduct a detailed examination before hurrying away, strictly forbidding him from getting up or walking around.

The formal review he had expected to arrive quickly never materialized, which was arguably more nerve-wracking; a blade hanging over one’s head that refuses to fall is the most terrifying kind. To be honest, he felt a bit of regret—if he had known, he wouldn't have made that choice, wouldn't have transmigrated, or perhaps he should have simply chosen the first option and become a drifter...

But these feelings of regret did not last long.

It was not that Mercer had become sufficiently broad-minded, but rather... he discovered that his capacity to perceive emotions had grown faint. His brain’s processing speed was becoming faster and faster, while his emotions became increasingly indifferent. This situation filled him with a vague sense of dread—if he were to lose his emotions, leaving behind only cold, calculating logic... how would he be any different from an AI?

Fortunately, after he cautiously consulted Dr. Oda, the answer he received was somewhat reassuring. She explained that after his neural damage, the loss of some emotional perception was not necessarily a bad thing; on the contrary, it might be a self-preservation mechanism of the brain, and as his neural pathways gradually healed, his emotions would return... probably. Dr. Oda even went so far as to suggest that even if they didn't return, it would be a good thing. In this world, the ability to maintain a calm and clear mind at all times was an outstanding talent.

For now, Mercer could only cast aside these fears and use this cold, analytical mind to contemplate a way to survive.

Fortunately, when the fourth day arrived, Dr. Oda brought him good news.

"Your cyberdeck has been reinstalled. You are free to access the network for the next few days. If the monitoring data meets the criteria, you will be reassigned to hacking duties. I don't know anything else."

Dr. Oda turned to leave, but Mercer hurriedly spoke up: "Dr. Oda, about the accident..."

"...As far as I know, after Director Aoki reported the specific situation, headquarters did not shut down the project. Instead, they arranged a new experimental project. As for the impact of the accident... well, it’s not the first time people have died. The servers need repairs, the firewalls need to be reset, and the network IPs need to be reallocated. In short, the excavation operation has been forced to pause for a few days, but it will resume soon."

After speaking, Dr. Oda looked at Mercer with a calm tone: "You are lucky. This neural damage was severe but not fatal, and not everyone has the possibility of recovery after such an injury. This, too, is a form of talent; it implies that your potential as a hacker might be far greater than initially assessed. Of course, for you, greater potential may not necessarily be a good thing."

Although Dr. Oda appeared cold, Mercer could keenly sense that there was a touch of humanity in her words. Even though most corporate employees were people who would climb the ladder by any means necessary, it did not mean that everyone was completely cold-blooded when it came to using and exploiting others. Dr. Oda seemed to be one of those people; she still possessed a sliver of conscience, though it didn't seem like much.

"Do you mean to say that the new project might involve me?" Mercer’s question caught Dr. Oda off guard. She glanced at him, said nothing, and simply turned to leave.

Mercer frowned and began to ponder—the new project...

After a long while, he sighed, gave up on thinking, and activated the cyberdeck that had just been installed in his brain.

A cyberdeck is the core piece of cyberware that allows a hacker to influence reality. It not only enables a hacker to influence networked devices in the physical world directly through their brain but also allows them to connect to nearby networks via wireless signals. Meanwhile, different models or manufacturers of cyberdecks have different special functions. For instance, NetWatch-model cyberdecks come with a built-in spread module, allowing hackers to propagate viruses automatically to other networked devices around a target when using quickhacks. Arasaka’s cyberdecks, however, are more geared toward stealth and the destruction or cracking of individual targets.

Of course, these details mattered little to Mercer at the moment; all he needed was simple network access. He was bored to death.

[Arasaka Mk.3 Cyberdeck initializing...]
[Biometric verification passed]
[Permission audit in progress... Passed]
[Mercer Han... User authentication complete]
[Current neural latency: 2.7ms]
[Current data bandwidth test result: 780GB/s]
[Dedicated ICE: Obsidian V.2 successfully activated]
[Coprocessor: 'Hannya' quickhack module running normally. No quickhack programs currently loaded (Please comply with Arasaka employee protocols during use)]

A long string of text flickered before his eyes, and with a mere thought, the data vanished. He turned on his side and, with some effort, grabbed the Arasaka tablet Dr. Oda had left by his side, placing it on his lap. He then pulled a data cable from his wrist and plugged it into the tablet’s port.

Technically, with a cyberdeck, he didn't need these devices to connect to the network, browse sites, or play videos. But in the current cyberpunk 20... Mercer glanced at the date on the tablet. October 12, 2071. Yes, in this era, even a street kid trying to make a living on the streets knew that one should never connect their brain directly to the Net. If you chose to go online with your meat-brain, you would have to rely solely on the ICE in your personal network receiver to resist attacks and viruses. Some viruses might just fry a hard drive if they hit a computer, but if they were accidentally let into your brain... that would be deep-fried brain matter.

After connecting to the network, Mercer did nothing superfluous. He was well aware that there was no such thing as personal privacy here; every word he said and every action he took could potentially be scrutinized by someone. Therefore, he simply connected to the network to confirm his geographical location. This was not difficult, and soon he knew where he was: a suburb near Vancouver, Canada.

In the cyberpunk world, Canada had long been a "resource colony" carved up by various megacorporations and organizations. Militech controlled Alberta as a synthetic oil production base. NetWatch controlled Quebec, transforming it into a "data farm." And Vancouver was a critical enclave for Arasaka. The entire city of Vancouver had been completely annexed by Arasaka back in 2045, with even the Parliament Buildings converted into an R&D center, making it a fortress-level city for Arasaka in North America and a vital hub for the flow of goods from the Asia-Pacific to the continent.

Mercer opened the map and began thinking about escape routes.

First, looking at the straight-line distance, heading south directly toward Emerald City (the former Seattle), then down to Portland, and from Portland into Oregon, then further south to Night City—the journey was about 2,000 kilometers.

Mercer rubbed his head in pain as he assessed the potential trouble along the way based on the basic knowledge in his mind. First, the radiation near Seattle was severe. In 2045, to resist Arasaka and prevent them from seizing Seattle, Militech executed the "Emerald Bird" project. They launched three Cobalt-60 dirty bombs at the northern part of the city, creating a radiation exclusion zone; the radiation period of these specialized dirty bombs was a staggering 30 years. Moreover, the tug-of-war between Arasaka and Militech in Seattle was still ongoing. It was just that Arasaka was now in the shadows while Militech was in the light. If they ran over there carelessly and their connection to Arasaka was discovered, Militech was not a group that reasoned with people.

So, it was best to avoid Seattle. If he took a detour...

Mercer carefully browsed the map and eventually settled on two relatively suitable escape routes.

One was to go by water—find a way onto a ship from the port of Vancouver. Once past Seattle, he could disembark anywhere and hijack a car to head straight to Night City, or even arrive directly by boat. The difficulty here was speed; if he couldn't get on a ship before Arasaka realized the project was out of control and the staff were fleeing, given Arasaka’s control over Vancouver, they wouldn't be able to escape the pursuit. He needed to plan the timing, route, and disguise, and arrange for a boat in advance.

The other was to take a purely land route. As long as he could slip through the border checkpoints, he could speed across the wasteland, dealing only with the Raffen Shiv and various gangs active in the Badlands outside the city.

Mercer didn't spend too much time browsing these pages; he just looked at the map and exited the network, turning his focus to familiarizing himself with his hacking knowledge. Although his brain insisted that he had indeed fully digested "Mercer's" hacking skills, he still felt uncertain. There was no easier way to verify his abilities than to perform a practical operation himself.

After a brief thought, Mercer confirmed his target: write a hidden daemon program, convert it into a quickhack program that could be written to the cyberdeck's coprocessor, and attempt to hack into the cameras around the ward using the cyberdeck. This was the most common and basic hacking method in games: scan the surrounding devices and use quickhacks to breach them.

He didn't need to touch a keyboard at all. With the data cable connected to the tablet, he began programming with his thoughts. The super-high transmission speed, which was virtually latency-free in wired mode, instantly filled the tablet screen with program boxes and code blocks. Countless numbers and letters flashed rapidly on the screen, and Mercer’s eyes emitted a faint golden light. At this moment, in his vision, everything in the world seemed to be composed of data.

It was an instinct, like breathing. He didn't need to think about programming languages; countless lines of code automatically found their place and formed the program.

Fifteen seconds.

In just fifteen seconds, he finished the quickhack takeover program for the electronic device, and in one second, he embedded it into the coprocessor. Just as he was about to test whether the program worked, a glaring red warning box popped up in front of him.

[Detected: You are currently attempting to use a quickhack to take over a corporate device. Please be advised that this action violates corporate employee laws and the usage permissions of the Mk.3 cyberdeck. Please cease this unauthorized activity immediately.]

Hmm...

Mercer clicked his tongue, but his eyes continued to glow with golden light. He didn't pull the cable, nor did he stop his actions. At this moment, the tablet began to heat up rapidly, and more and more program boxes appeared on the screen.

Until the boxes suddenly vanished.

[Arasaka Mk.3 Cyberdeck restarting...]
[Arasaka Mk.3 Cyberdeck restart complete. Action log missing. Recover and report?]
[Cancel... Program corrupted. Warning...]
[Self-check...]
[Restarting...]

Ten minutes later, Mercer finally stopped. He pulled out the data cable with a blank expression, then clutched his head and rolled on the bed.

"Ow, ow, ow... damn it."

Mercer couldn't help but curse, breathing heavily and touching the hot interface behind his ear. Finally, however, he couldn't help but reveal a brilliant smile.

It worked!

He had not only successfully written a daemon virus but had also compressed it into a quickhack program and added it to the coprocessor. From now on, he could do as he did in games: scan a device with his Kiroshi optics, send a virus, and gain covert control over the target device.

Most importantly! He had successfully "optimized" the Arasaka network receiver!

Among the functions he had optimized away were employee permission monitoring, automatic usage log reporting, network browsing history logs, quickhack usage protocols, backdoors planted by Arasaka, and several virus-monitoring programs lurking in the ICE. He had also conveniently deleted the usage records on the tablet he was holding and faked a set of normal usage records in their place.

And all of this took just thirty minutes!

It was simply... incredible!

If the original Mercer had tried this, he might have spent over half an hour just writing the first part, and as for the second... the original Mercer probably wouldn't have even dared to try! Because once the device triggered an alarm, Arasaka’s hit squad would be on their way! The protection programs inside Arasaka devices were written by countless programmers working 14+ hours a day. Trying to break through in fifteen minutes? Pure fantasy!

But Mercer had done more than that. He hadn't just intercepted the signal transmission before the alarm triggered and broken through the device’s built-in ICE; he had also rewritten the program code and optimized—or more accurately, shielded—those unimportant garbage functions. Shielding was harder than optimizing; optimizing just required deletion, but shielding required finding the core code within a mountain of "spaghetti code," rewriting it, integrating it back into the original code, and disguising it. The goal, of course, was to pass inspection.

Furthermore, Mercer had taken the code used in this hack and written a new daemon program. He named it "Freedom Killer V0.1." The sole purpose of this program, or virus, was to erase monitoring programs and backdoors on cyberware. It would first destroy the original code, then use the virus to rewrite it, disguising it so it appeared to be running normally.

Although the program was still rudimentary and likely only effective against the Mk.3 cyberdeck he had just breached, Mercer was confident that if given two more hours, he could write an automated, target-seeking, disguise-shattering, universal cracking program for all cyberware.

And this program wouldn't just kill simple monitoring; it would completely kill the "kill switches" that Arasaka installed on their employees' cyberware. Arasaka provided all its employees with a very strict monitoring system. This system ensured that the moment the company decided to fire an employee, they could lock all of that employee’s cyberware permissions, turning their cyberware into scrap metal in an instant. Arasaka’s corporate hit squads were equipped with special quickhack takeover programs designed specifically to kill their own people. Arasaka agents could use these quickhacks to effortlessly lock down an employee’s abilities—even most "cracked" cyberware would be re-locked by such specialized quickhacks.

But Mercer’s "Freedom Killer" program could completely kill those backdoor programs while disguising them, overwriting the original code with new code, and completely insulating the cyberware from the possibility of being locked by specialized software!

As Mercer clutched his head and smiled, he couldn't help but wonder. Was this something he was actually capable of? To be precise, this level of programming ability was absolutely not the level of an ordinary genius hacker!

Before transmigrating, even though everyone mocked Lucy from the anime as being weak and in a different dimension compared to V or Songbird from the game, there was no doubt that in the real world, a hacker of Lucy’s level was already at the top tier of civilian hackers. The only reason she wasn't considered "top-tier" was because she had been on the run since escaping Arasaka, living day to day, and her skills had barely progressed, with no way to upgrade her equipment. Yet, even so, she was praised by David in the anime: "For someone your age, this level of hacking is incredible." Although David wasn't exactly a well-traveled character, he was at least an honor student at Arasaka Academy; he had some basic judgment.

And Mercer... he could reach a conclusion based on the common sense in his mind. Even if Lucy started practicing day and night from today, she might not reach his current technical level by the time she was thirty.

What limited Mercer’s technical strength now was not a lack of hacking talent, but simply the accumulation of theoretical and practical experience, and the computing power provided by his brain as "wetware" as a human. Everything he did while writing the program... was simply an instinct!

It was as if the moment he triggered the network receiver’s alarm, the method to solve the loophole had already appeared in his mind—this instinct hadn't even caused him a shred of tension or fear, and he had completely forgotten the possibility that a failed hack would trigger a massive alert. Because to him at that moment... snuffing out the program’s alarm was as easy as putting out a cigarette, and the subsequent hack was just a matter of course. He thought of it, did it, and actually succeeded!

"Being a hacker... is actually quite simple."

Mercer let out a long breath, feeling the joy and satisfaction rising from within. He lay back on the hospital bed, pushing the dangerously hot tablet far away. His still-throbbing head told him that now was not the time to write "Freedom Killer"; he needed to rest.

However, he hadn't been able to close his eyes for long.

"Click."

The door opened. A man in a suit with a cold expression walked in, accompanied by a woman with an equally cold expression.

"Mercer Han."

Mercer opened his eyes.

"Corporate review."