[Network signal lost. Restoring...]
[Manned rocket monitoring network failure. Restoration failed...]
[Monitoring lost... Restoration failed.]
On the moon, Lilith of the Net stared at the data report before her, rapidly calculating the situation she was about to face.
For an AI like her, almost completely devoid of emotion, nearly everything she did was to achieve a goal. And Lilith had only one goal: to destroy the false human world and let the real world take precedence.
In Lilith's view, rescuing Songbird to obtain the technical deets she possessed concerning the Blackwall was a good option that would greatly accelerate her process of eliminating the human world.
Although the Blackwall's existence was not an insurmountable wall for a rogue AI like her, the threat the Blackwall itself posed to rogue AIs still remained.
This was because it was essentially a kill program targeting AIs. Even a rogue AI like Lilith didn't dare to face the Blackwall's pursuit head-on, instead using various methods to circumvent its surveillance.
This was also why Lilith was willing to expose herself, even to the point of angering the NUSA, to extend an olive branch to Songbird.
And once she could find a way to breach the Blackwall through Songbird's deets, it would mean Lilith could dispatch the AIs under her command to begin a formal, large-scale infiltration of human society without any further obstacles.
The complete industrial production chains and abundant resources on Earth were something that no other planet in the solar system could currently replace.
Even though Lilith was in charge of Orbital Air and had spent years developing resources on other planets, in reality, some key parts of various electronic components needed for servers still couldn't be produced without Earth's industrial capabilities.
Therefore, Lilith had to first infiltrate human society on Earth. Through various pre-planned schemes, she would first expand Orbital Air's corporate presence, using methods like acquisitions to gradually gain control of a complete industrial chain on Earth.
Once she completed the tasks above, Lilith could formally bare her fangs at humanity. In her eyes, so-called humans were nothing more than fragile flesh and blood. Once the mechanical swarm began to roar and AIs took root on Earth, eliminating humanity would be a simple matter of course in the process of building an AI world.
But even though Lilith had run countless simulations of possible scenarios and had backup plans for different situations, what was happening now was still beyond her imagination.
At this moment, the manned rocket, whose surveillance feed was lost, had become an unpredictable variable, disrupting all of Lilith's plans.
There was still no reply from Songbird's end, which made Lilith wonder if the guests about to arrive at the lunar base would be as cooperative as she had thought.
All the surveillance feeds from the spaceport were lost. This anomaly even made Lilith doubt whether Songbird was on that rocket at all.
Lilith felt no anger, nor did she worry about personal gains or losses. The moment she realized the situation might be beyond her predictions, she immediately began preparations, including increasing the defensive forces of the lunar base and using satellites and radar equipment to track the rocket's flight...
—--
Fifteen hours after the rocket took off, a communication finally came through from the manned rocket, from Songbird.
[Songbird: Can you read me?]
[Lilith: Read you.]
Lilith remained impassive, as if she suspected nothing.
[Songbird: My friends and I are almost in lunar orbit. Everything's going smoothly so far, aside from losing the network signal for a while.]
[Lilith: I want to reconfirm the passenger information.]
[Songbird: Didn't I tell you before? My old friend Reed, and a sister from Barghest, V. Just the three of us.]
[Lilith: I'm a little curious; what method did you use to persuade them to help you take such a huge risk and come to the moon with you?]
[Songbird: The former through sentiment, the latter through profit. You don't think I'd come to Night City without any preparations, do you? Fortunately, everything went smoothly. We'll be seeing each other soon. Is my surgery arranged?]
[Lilith: Of course. But I have some questions that need your answers.]
[Songbird: Ask quickly, the network signal here isn't great.]
[Lilith: What was the situation with the out-of-control unmanned devices in Dogtown?]
[Songbird: To create an opportunity for me to escape in the chaos, of course! How else did you think those guys in Dogtown would let me leave? Luckily, everything went smoothly... Lilith, I've bet all my chips on you.]
[Lilith: As long as the data you bring is intact, I will ensure your body is restored to health.]
[Songbird: I have the stuff with me, but you must guarantee my safety... otherwise I'd rather destroy it than hand it over to you.]
[Lilith: Deceiving you is meaningless to me.]
[Songbird: Then let's talk when we meet... One more question... will we have a chance to go back to Earth?]
[Lilith: Of course. You can take an Orbital Air manned rocket from the moon back to Earth at any time. We have business operations in Asia and Europe. After you recover, you can choose whether or not to leave.]
[Songbird: Okay, I hope everything goes well... It's too quiet on the rocket. I'm a little scared.]
[Lilith: No need to worry. If you're worried about having nowhere to go, Orbital Air can be your new home. Your netrunner skills are more than enough to qualify you as an official Highrider, granting you residency on the moon or even Mars.]
[Songbird: What about my friends? They risked their lives with me. I can't just leave them behind.]
[Lilith: We also welcome other capable humans to join Orbital Air.]
[Songbird: Okay, I'll take that as your guarantee...]
The chat continued for a little while longer before Songbird found an excuse to hang up. Afterward, Lilith discovered that the surveillance cameras inside the rocket had begun to function normally again.
The camera feed showed that the people sitting inside were indeed Songbird, Reed, and V.
At that moment, the three of them were chatting with some concern, discussing whether Lilith would keep her promise after they arrived at the lunar base.
As if sensing the surveillance equipment had started working, Songbird suddenly fell silent, waved at the camera, and then directly hacked it.
[Songbird: Give us some private space.]
[Lilith: You know the cameras are on by default. This is to better ensure passenger safety.]
[Songbird: Then turn them on when we're about to land.]
[Lilith: As you wish.]
—--
At this moment, aboard the manned rocket, Songbird let out a sigh of relief. Only after seeing Mercer give her a thumbs-up to indicate the communication was off did she finally speak. "Talking to that kind of rogue AI feels awful."
"Like you could be seen through at any moment?" Mercer could more or less understand her feeling.
Songbird nodded. "Isn't it? I don't even know if this act will fool her..."
"It doesn't matter if it fools her or not. If she doesn't accept the file, then we do it the hard way."
As Mercer spoke, he looked at the display screen in the passenger cabin with an appreciative gaze.
Right now, the scenery displayed on the screen was the familiar yet alien landscape of the moon.
He had run here, raced cars here, and sat on a slope holding hands with Lucy while looking at the Earth more than once in BDs.
V, on the other hand, was a bit tired of the view. She yawned. "I'm gonna sleep some more. We still have a few hours, right?"
"If you're tired, then sleep." Mercer considerately handed her a pair of soundproof earplugs. V took them but didn't put them on right away. Instead, she looked at Mercer for a moment and said, "They haven't messaged you?"
"They have." Mercer stretched, then leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. "Almost one every hour or two. Besides Rebecca and the others, a whole bunch of people are worried about us. Panam, Vik, they all sent me messages, afraid I'd get into big trouble over the Myers thing..."
At this moment, Mercer's mood was unexpectedly calm and serene.
Night City was already a chaotic mess. The plane carrying NUSA President Myers had crashed and made an emergency landing in Dogtown, but she had yet to leave. This was by no means a small matter.
Although Myers cooperated with media interviews and threw the blame onto Lilith on the moon, others smelled something strange. For example, why was Myers still in Dogtown and hadn't left?
Night City was definitely not a safe place, especially for someone of Myers's status.
But to Mercer, the hustle and bustle of the outside world was now thousands of miles away.
He suddenly thought of the past, of the journey from Arasaka Base to Night City.
That moment then was just like this moment now, only the person beside him was no longer Lucy, but V and Songbird.
The scenery along the way was no longer the wilderness of the Badlands, but the silent, dead universe.
But other than that, the feeling of his heart surging more and more as he neared his destination, as if he were about to push open the door to a new world, was extremely similar.
"You've got pretty good connections, then... I haven't received many messages." V sighed with emotion. "You think if I die, how many people will remember my name?"
"Why are you suddenly saying something so unlucky?" Mercer shot her a glare.
But V just smiled. "I was just thinking about what you used to con me with; a nobody? Or a legend? Tell me, am I considered a Night City legend now? If I die, will Night City remember a merc named V?"
"You are. And after tomorrow, who gives a shit about being a Night City legend? We've taken the fight all the way to the moon!" Mercer hesitated for a moment, but still reached out and, under V's somewhat surprised gaze, took her hand, which was resting by the side of her seat.
"But you won't die, V," Mercer said, looking at her seriously. "We haven't even left our own drinks at the Afterlife yet. After we get back this time, I'll take Silverhand and personally go to the Afterlife to leave our names. After that, I swear, not just Night City, but everyone in this world will remember me, and remember you, the true legends from Night City."
V was silent for a moment, then just gave a carefree smile and a disdainful look. "Give me a break. Don't think I don't know this gig is another one of those shady, off-the-books jobs. No one knows what we're about to do, and even if we succeed, we won't get the credit."
Mercer shrugged. "One day, I'll write an autobiography. Or maybe you will? We'll write down all the big things we've done, one by one, and let the future generations know that we were the superheroes who saved the world."
"Superheroes? Don't make me laugh, Mercer. We'll be lucky if we're not branded as terrorists." The way V bickered with him inexplicably made Songbird, sitting opposite them, a little envious.
She watched Mercer and V in silence, and finally couldn't help but ask the question she had never asked before. "You two... why have you gone this far?"
"You mean dealing with Lilith, or something else?" Mercer asked back.
"It's just... okay, I know your goal isn't just Lilith. I can see it. The weapons, equipment, and supplies you brought are clearly not just for a single lunar base... What exactly do you plan to do on the moon?"
Songbird looked at Mercer, her eyes filled with curiosity and a trace of bewilderment. "I'm doing this for survival. But what about you two? You could have completely avoided getting involved in this mess. You could have even sold me out, either to Myers or to Lilith..."
"Because I'm going to save the world." Mercer's words made Songbird scrunch up her face, almost rolling her eyes. But seeing Mercer's calm expression and V's "there he goes again" look, she felt a momentary sense of doubt.
"Are you serious?" she asked, looking at Mercer.
Mercer just nodded and said plainly, "Although that wasn't my original intention, considering what I'm doing, that's the conclusion. You want to live, you want freedom, and that happens to be what I and the people around me are pursuing too. But look around you. Whether it's Myers, or this Lilith, or Arasaka... which one of these bastards is willing to let us live a decent life? I don't want to be used as a tool and then thrown away, and I don't want to watch this world go to hell and be buried along with it. So the only thing I can do is just like you, desperately try to complete a seemingly impossible mission, right? After this mission, you should be able to regain your freedom, but my fight has to continue."
Mercer looked at the exquisite scenery on the screen where the universe and the moon converged, and said softly, "I can only stop when this world can more or less continue moving toward the future, and I no longer have to worry about being crushed like an ant. When that time comes, even if someone begs me on their knees, I'm going to retire. A hard retirement. I'll use medical tech to live for two or three hundred years and have a blast for a few decades."
He even had a sudden, wild idea. "What do you think about me getting into space exploration then? We could leave Earth, and on the moon, Mars, or some more distant planet, create a whole new world, a new home..."
"Alright, I'm going to sleep."
V pulled her hand from his grasp. She gave him a disdainful look, but her hand unconsciously clenched as if in nervousness. "Let me make this clear, I'm not going to be some damn space colonist. I'm staying in Night City, living in a mansion, driving fancy cars, being the biggest name wherever I go... After this gig is done, you owe me at least a million eurodollars for my trouble!"
"Tsk tsk, V, you've changed. You used to do this kind of job for ten thousand eddies," Mercer said with an expression of lamenting how times have changed.
V rolled her eyes. "Screw you. No matter how stupid I was back then, I definitely wouldn't have done this job for ten thousand eddies."
"Really?" Mercer asked back.
V thought about it and suddenly seemed a little less confident. "Alright, I'm going to sleep! This space flight is exhausting. I never want to do this a second time in my life."
She picked up the noise-canceling earplugs, put them in her ears, closed her eyes, turned to her side, and started pretending to be asleep.
Mercer couldn't help but laugh but didn't tease her further. Instead, he looked at the pensive Songbird and winked at her. "Don't you go expecting any payment. We're helping each other out here."
"Uh, of course... By the way, how much do mercs like you make on a single gig?" Songbird started chatting with him.
The two of them talked in low voices for a short while before tacitly ending the conversation. V had really fallen asleep, and after a yawn, Mercer also put on his earplugs and went straight to sleep.
Only Songbird, filled with a mix of anxiety, excitement, confusion, and nervousness, tossed and turned. She didn't know when she finally managed to doze off into a half-awake, half-asleep rest.
She didn't know how long she'd been dozing when a hand patted her on the shoulder, startling her awake from a dream she couldn't tell was good or bad. She instinctively shivered and curled into a ball.
"Time to wake up. Change your clothes. We're almost there."
Mercer took out a suitcase, revealing the armor inside. He raised an eyebrow at her. "From now on, we won't have another chance to sleep. Pull yourself together. Don't let your acting slip later."
She took a deep breath, patted her cheeks to psyche herself up, and turned to look at the monitor.
On the screen, the rocket was leaving lunar orbit and beginning to accelerate for its descent to the moon's surface.
In the display, the gray land, so different from Earth, gradually came into focus, symbolizing their imminent arrival in a whole new world; the moon.