Chapter 134

I sighed as I stretched my arms above my head, finally home. I still hadn’t really noticed any differences in weight or balance driving home, so I was very satisfied with Vik’s work.

 

That man deserved way more than the stack of eddies I had given him for his time and skill.

 

He deserved all the eddies!

 

“Hey, there you are!” Jun called out as I walked in the apartment. Jun was sitting on the couch, stupid ogre arms hanging over the top as he had obviously been staring blankly at whatever tv show he had been watching.

 

“Hey Jun-Nii!” I called out as I wandered over and flopped onto the couch beside him.

 

“Oh? What’s got you in such a good mood?” Jun asked, poking at me a little which I swiped away at him.

 

“I got some new chrome. Vik took great care of me.” I told him flexing my arms without going into detail.

 

Jun would know how long it would take to heal up from such an invasive surgery after all.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Just Bone and Muscle Lace stuff.” I lied to him, before relaxing back and looking at the TV. “Anything good on?”

“Nothing you’d like.” He said laughing.

 

“Blegh.” I answered, sticking out my tongue. “I guess I’ll get back to work.”

“Work?”

“I’m trying to finish a new program, zappy zap.” I muttered, wiggling my fingers.

 

“I don’t even want to know.”

“It’s a Short Circuit hack!”

 

“Mhmm.” He agreed, but really he was just ignoring me.

 

“Well I know the first person I’m testing it on.” I muttered, and of course in response Jun reached over to grab me, and I kicked out and then we were wrestling, only now things were different!

 

Jun’s stupid ogre arm might be super strong, but now I could bring to bear all of the strength of my own chrome arms!

 

I reached out and grabbed his arm with both hands, and squeezed, actually forcing his arm to bend away from me.

“I’m strong!” I told him my face splitting into a big grin.

 

Which is when Jun huffed out a laugh and just jerked his arm forward.

 

I had about half a second to realize Jun was a fucking asshole before the movement flipped me entirely off of my butt and then off the couch, crashing into the floor with a loud thump.

 

“You are such a dick.”

“Can’t let you get too overconfident with those wet noodles you call arms.” He mocked, flexing his arms at me, as I just lay there on the floor for a minute stewing.

 

I was going to chrome up so much that I could throw him around, I decided. Right then and right there.

 

Was I going to chrome up because I wanted to be a Cyborg? Because I wanted to be strong enough to kill Scavs, or to go toe to toe with cyberpunks like Thomas?

 

No. I must defeat my brother.

 

I stood up and brushed myself off ignoring the mocking smile on Jun’s face as I stalked away with all the dignity I had left to go find my laptop.

 

——

 

I spent the rest of the night hammering away at Short Circuit.

 

Although I was making great progress. My version was already much smaller than the version I had originally picked up from Yoko. The problem was, I wasn’t really coming up with anything to make it special.

 

It would just be an efficient version of the hack, which wasn’t a bad thing, but if I was going to make something I wanted it to be more than just efficient.

 

Short Circuit at its most bare bones was a hack that attacked power systems for cyberware, convincing them they needed to do an emergency discharge to keep something from exploding.

 

That was actually why it was nonlethal. Sure an electronic jolt wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience, and it might knock you out, but it wouldn’t kill you.

 

The emergency discharge couldn’t release enough power to instantly stop someone’s heart or anything.

 

But I wanted more than just that.

 

I wanted something that would make a netrunner do a double take when they saw it. Something that Sasha wouldn’t just blow off when I handed it to her. Something that might just save her life.

 

I had already added in the same multi hack functionality that I had developed for Reboot Optics, and Weapon Glitch.

 

This program would jump to anyone in the network and try to short them all. Of course it wouldn’t be as effective as someone with something like a Tetratronic Rippler Cyberdeck, which was designed to allow multi hack.

 

Anyone with some bare bones ICE would stop the jumping hacks cold, but not everyone had that.

 

Plus that was just a bonus. A basic design addition that barely added any RAM requirements to the hack.

 

I wanted this hack to be unique.

 

It had to do something that no other Short Circuit could do. I pulled away from the keyboard as I grumbled, flopping onto my bed and trying to figure it out.

 

I had considered trying to make it do more damage to Cyberware, but that was what Cyberware Malfunction was. That was a different hack entirely, meant to do something entirely different.

 

So what was Short Circuit meant to do?

 

Disable enemies for a short time.

 

I couldn’t really make it more disabling. The discharge function was surprisingly well protected against intrusion. I would have to make a variant against every cyberware I could come across… Which might explain why Cyberware Malfunction was a much more RAM intensive hack.

 

So… It was meant to disable someone. I couldn’t modify the base function, but what could I modify?

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

 

I went through the code of my own implants, searching through information in my own system.

 

When it struck me.

 

Each piece of cyberware had its own battery. Small bits of flash cyberware might have tiny batteries, but the bigger pieces?

 

So if each cyberware had their own battery…

 

That means each piece of chrome had its own discharge function.

 

Short Circuit normally caused everything to discharge. Which yeah I could see how that would be useful, but what if instead of one big burst, I made it last longer.

 

Each battery could be discharged in a sequence, starting with the biggest battery to still have that massive shock.

 

It would make the discharge last longer for sure.

 

I started fiddling with the code. I would have to make it larger, to fit in the discharge sequence in the hack, but it wouldn’t even need a full Daemon to control it since that information was already stored in everyone’s agent. I mean, there was already a function in the agent that kept track of battery power of Cyberware.

 

That little program would be the first thing attacked and it would discharge each battery in a row.

 

I cackled evilly as I imagined some gonk with more chrome than brains stuck spazzing out on the ground as every piece of chrome he had electrocuted him one after another.

Heh, defeated by your own Mr. Studd.

 

Also, and more importantly! It would be exceptionally strong against drone and robots. They had multiple battery systems, and each one discharging would be a massive problem for a full mechanical body.

 

I hummed pleased as the inspiration hit and I felt my hands blurring across the keyboard as the code came together.

 

—–

 

I stayed hiding in my bedroom for the rest of the night, and late into the afternoon the next day before finally I finished bug checking the code, and I finalized it.

 

I flopped back, letting the laptop finish turning the code into a working hack and just considered what to do next.

 

First I had to meet Sasha.

 

Then… Profit?

 

I blinked at the joke and snorted. Yeah that sounded good. No, I thought as I rose up and stretched deciding to get changed and clean up before heading out.

 

What I needed was some XP.

 

I needed to kill a bunch of gonks so I could get more stat points for adaptation.

 

Decision made I hurried over out of the room to the bathroom to jump into a quick shower.

 

While I did that I made a few calls. Pretty amused that I could make a business call while shampooing my hair without a struggle.

 

Of course the very first call I made I got yelled at.

 

*Ah so you finally come crawling back to me? Do I even know a merc by this name? Certainly not one who has done any work for me recently…*

 

*Wakakooooooo!* I whined into the line, purposefully being as annoying as possible. Two could play at that game old lady!

 

“Ah, she hung up… Well played.” I muttered as I instantly called back again.

 

*As I was saying.* She continued without missing a beat.

 

*Wakako. I’ve been busy, not just with personal stuff, but with like crazy stuff in general. But I’m back on the merc grind. You need anything done, I’m free to handle it.*